Saturday, January 22, 2011

Editorial Viewpoint


Yesterday in Brooklyn we had another few inches of snow. After shovelling the sidewalk when it was barely getting light, I came up to my home office to eat a bowl of cereal and check in with the world. Sitting at my desk in front of the computer I was looking out the window when I saw the proverbial rosy fingers of dawn grace the snow-covered trees right outside in front of the house in a particularly beautiful way. Fortunately I had my digital camera on the desk, and miraculously the zoom lens was able to catch the sight out the window without me even getting up...to my amazement with a little adjustment in photoshop the colors I saw seem to have come out exactly as I remember them.

It's cold on the top floor of the brownstone: the building was built in 1907 and cheap replacement windows and a poor renovation job that did weird things to the steam plumbing a few years before we moved in means that sometimes I'm bundled up in a thick shirt and a sweater right here at the computer: Tonight it's supposed to drop down to the single digits fahrenheit, in fact. But a view like this reminds me why I love Brooklyn even if sometimes I do long for a view outside my window of ocean and palm trees.

6 comments:

  1. Beautiful picture, I love close up shots like that. I will have to dig through some of my old 'film' photos from photography class days of yore and post to my blog. Sigh.....yes, we all have our palm tree and ocean view days. Snowing here in St. Louis again today. And I thought you weren't suppose to wear white after Labor Day.....

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  2. i try to think of life like this often. it's nice to see others doing the same.

    sorry for my recent absence. i had to have emergency appendix removal! those things are a bitch when they wanna come out! but i'm good.

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  3. Freebones! Are you okay? Ouch! I haven't had that done but it doesn't sound fun.

    Annie, thanks. Nature gets a pass on that wearing white. You gonna tell her what she can wear when? I wanna see that!

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  4. oh yes, i'm just fine, ish! thank you. it's very simple. the appendix is a totally unnecessary organ, an evolutionary leftover. sometimes, it gets inflamed (happens to about 5% of people, according to my surgeon) and causes very serious pain in the stomach. after that, it needs to be removed in a day or so or it will burst which is no good. so they run some tests, determine that's the problem, and make a little two-inch cut on the right of the abdomen about two inches over and one inch down from the belly button and pull that sucker out. totally commonplace surgery. the recovery was ok. it was very hard to move for a few days, but i got lots of good food AND i have a newfound love for apple juice!

    lots of nice friends came to see me in the hospital too, so that made me feel very nice.

    i tried to get a laptop, but i forget my key when i left, and my landlord locked the door since she went to make sure everything was shut off when i called her. so i was without blogs for four days!

    but all is well now!

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  5. great photo! i like to think of you sitting in your brownstone eating cereal looking out at the world like this.

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  6. Thanks Casey. Some winters I think of moving my computer down a floor where it's warmer but then I realize how much mental stimulation I get from my view. So I'll be a little cold.

    and freebones, glad to hear all's well now.

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