Foxy

While I have plenty of rabbits, squirrels, and deer in my back yard in Silver Spring, over in Herndon they have foxes!

Here's a short video of him in action:

And speaking of things with red hair, here's my nephew making his YouTube debut with a movement from a Boccherini Cello Concerto.

And here he is playing it with his school orchestra.

I Want Sunshine!!!

Okay, I got that off my chest. I am truly bored with this weather. So I'm going put up some pretty pictures now - maybe that will cheer me up.

Last week I was at the Church of the Reformation almost every night doing a recording session. It was a delightful experience and the highlight of my summer (if you can call it that) so far. The architecture in this church is very unusual - I'm not even sure of the style, but it was a nice place to be for most of the week. I like the way the middle supports for the beams look like giant pencils.

These guys were about a foot from the side of my head all week long. I enjoyed their company very much.

I walked around a little bit during the breaks and enjoyed the interesting architecture outside as well.

The church was only two blocks from the Capitol. It was pleasant to see it from this point of view on East Capitol Street. I'm usually driving towards it on North Capitol.

This week I've been wondering if it means anything that the cabinets in the house I'm never going to get to move back into are exactly the same color as the mist always is in Twilight:

Silver Spring Avenue, Then and Now

This is the house my mother grew up in at 917 Silver Spring Avenue. The watercolor above was painted by my uncle from the photograph shown below. If you look closely at the photo you can see my grandmother standing in front of the steps, and the two little kids sitting in the dirt driveway on the right are my mother and her brother Philip, who painted the picture many years later. You can click on the photo if you want to get a closer view of it.

In the mid-1960s the county forced my grandparents to sell so that they could put in this parking lot, shown below. It has looked like this ever since.

Now it seems they have some big plans for this area, which you can read about here. At least it will look a lot nicer than it has for the past 40 years or so.

And if you want to do more reading about this area, there is a very interesting post about the houses that used to exist one block over, on Sligo Avenue.

hallucinating again...

Doesn't this picture sort of look like notes on a music staff?

Doesn't it? Sort of? Somewhat? Come on people, humor me!

Here it definitely looks more like just a bunch of pigeons.

And now, a couple of videos featuring ornithological hygiene:

Sparrows taking a "dust bath"

A robin splashing in a bird bath on my parents deck. In keeping with the hallucinatory theme, my father is commenting on another bird in another bird bath and my mother is agreeing with him. This implies varying amounts of surrealism, depending upon your level of familiarity.

Meanwhile, the Capital was gleaming gloriously in the early evening light as I drove to my gig on Monday night.