The home page and original site for the Famous Grazing Blogs

There are more than a dozen Famous Grazing Blogs residing on the cybersphere. Some are dormant and some very active. They all link back here to the Granddaddy of our blogs, founding in May of 2004.

Saturday, February 09, 2013

View from my window - Winter Storm Nemo

Though it's hard to tell, that's a color photo taken from my studio on the 2nd floor.

That's my car.

That's a tree bent over with heavy snow in front of my car.

When the snow melts; sometimes the trees bounce back.

Sometimes they don't.
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Friday, February 08, 2013

While we still have power…

So far this well touted blizzard has been very well mannered.  Two PM was its scheduled time.

I find seeing questions on the various weather related sites as to the “scheduled” time for this natural phenomenon to arrive.

We are so attuned to seeing the world through the eyes of one lens or another, and there are SO many more lenses out there of late, that we have come to see the world as a scheduled event. 

The close-by passage of an asteroid in the very near future is being posted with the times it will be visible with hand held magnification.

It takes away a little of the wonder, a little of the mystery of the world. Consider the mythology that would be written if our less electronically connected ancestors looked up and saw a rock flying really close to the earth. Now our reference point is it will pass inside not only the orbit of the moon but inside the orbit of communications satellites.

The glad tidings reported is that it isn’t “scheduled” to hit either the earth, the moon, and most important, any communications satellite. And we go about our business sure in the veracity of that information.

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Saturday, February 02, 2013

On this bright but very cold morning I am riding the Amtrak Acela; going south to The City.

I am meeting friends there for a exotic lunch followed by attending the performance of Fiorello at the City Center.  It is somewhat sad to go watch a musical about one of NYC's greatest mayors so soon after the death of another.

Edward I Koch &  I closely interacted twice when I lived in NYC.

We bumped into each other several times, from when he was a congressman not supporting Eugene McCarthy to the day I retired from city service but those moments weren't all that memorable for either of us.i

The first time we interacted more profoundly was in the rear of an Italian restaurant on Pleasant Avenue, an enclave surrounded by Spanish Harlem.

The second time he came to visit me with a box of cookies and to ask, paradoxically, how I was doing instead of himself.

Both of hiz honors were heroes of a sort to me. The first because Fiorella read the funnies to the children of the city on WNYC radio during a newspaper strike and the second, I will admit selfishly, for the cookies.

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