Category Archives: Family and Friends

World Series of Birding 2013

A little over a month from today, Saturday May 11th, is the annual outdoor escapade and fundraiser known as The World Series of Birding. Ellen and I have signed up with the Cape May Bird Observatory Century Run team as usual. Along with many other teams we will attempt to spot as many bird species as possible. The top teams will go from midnight to midnight, and cover the entire state of New Jersey. Our Century Run team’s goals are a little more relaxed: we go from 5 AM to about 9 PM and stay within Cape May County. It’s still a marathon to test one’s determination, but usually a lot of fun, too. Each participant pledges a minimum of $1 per species seen, which you can supplement with pledges from friends and family if you like. And that, my good friends, is where you can participate!

As in the past, I’m encouraging you to make a pledge for my WSB big day, to help me raise funds for the Cape May Bird Observatory, part of the New Jersey Audubon Society, and their valuable mission of conservation, education and research. You can pledge any amount, but the usual method is to pledge per species seen. Last year our total was a very good 146 species, as the weather really worked for us, as did our scouting and travel plan. A more typical total is 140 species. If we tally 140 species, a pledge of 50 cents per would result in a monetary gift of $70. A pledge of $1 per species would mean a gift of $140. As a bonus, I’m offering any of my Signed Prints as incentives: for a pledge of 50 cents per species, the print of your choice, for $1 per species, any two! This can, if you like, include my next, as yet unannounced print. Higher pledges are welcome and will garner more prints in the same ratio. Pledges lower than 50 cents will get you a signed comic or two that I lettered, my choice. All pledges will support education about and preservation of New Jersey wildlife and natural resources, as well as my enduring gratitude!

Here’s a LINK to my blog about last year’s WSB Century Run, if you’d care to read it. And if you’d like to pledge, click the CONTACT ME link here or in the right column of this page and let me know by email. I’ll be collecting pledges until May 10th. Oh, and if you’d like to participate in person by joining the team, let me know that too, and I’ll put you in touch with someone to sign you up. Our team will be out there tallying on the 11th, rain or shine, hoping for good weather and lots of migrating birds. Who knows, maybe this year we’ll hit the elusive goal of 150 species. Here’s hoping!

Christmas Trains

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You may recall I wrote here a few weeks ago about a train set Ellen and I hoped to set up this Christmas at her sister Ann’s house. The trains, and the houses and other accessories were bought by her dad in Germany when the family was stationed there in the 1950s. The trains are made by Fleishmann, and it’s HO gauge, so quite small, but very well made. After Ellen had this idea at Thanksgiving, we got the trains out of their box (they’ve been in it for about 40 years) and tried them out at our house. They needed oiling, but we ascertained they did work, so we brought them up to Ann’s and here they are. Dave set up a plywood board on saw horses, Zach painted it white, and Ann, Ellen and I set things up last night and this morning.

Ann and Ellen enjoyed this trip down memory lane, their father set them up every Christmas for many years.

This is the large steam engine.

Here’s the diesel engine, which runs, but we weren’t able to get it well lubricated, so it squeaks a lot. We’re keeping it on a siding.

The small steam engine is a real work horse and both pulls the best and runs the fastest.

Here’s Ellen enjoying running the trains. Later I managed to hook up some street lights, we’ll see how they look this evening. It’s a fine train set, probably worth a good deal of money, but worth more in memories to Ann and Ellen.

If you’re on Facebook, you can see the trains running HERE.

Cape May Christmas Visit

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At least once in the Christmas season Ellen likes to get out for an evening’s entertainment with an appropriate holiday theme. Yesterday we drove down to Cape May, where the season is very much in evidence. Here we are in a shot taken by a friendly stranger in front of the town’s Christmas tree.

You never know what you might see in Cape May, and in the small park where the tree was, we found a group of riders enjoying the warm, foggy evening and attired for the season. “Why can’t I do that? I want to do that!” said Ellen.

Even the horses were in holiday gear.

After dinner at the Jackson Mountain Cafe, we walked around the historic area a little, enjoying the decorated mansions and bed and breakfasts like The Queen Victoria, seen here.

Just outside we enjoyed hearing a group of very professional carolers entertaining the crowd.

As far as decorations go, Columbia House was the most gaudy one we saw.

The main reason we were in town was to attend this performance, which Ellen had seen listed in the paper. We both like Alcott’s “Little Women” which was part of this performance (the Christmas section), as well as two short stories about Christmas. We weren’t sure what to expect, but it turned out to be a one-woman show by Gayle Stahlhuth, the director of this small local theater company. She was excellent, doing narration and all the speaking parts from little girls to men to several characters with ethnic accents, very lively and entertaining, filling the small church’s stage area with her enthusiasm. Afterward my first comment to Ellen was, “I couldn’t even TALK that long!” There’s another performance at 8 PM on Dec. 14th if you’re able to catch it.

We enjoyed our evening out with a Christmas theme, and it’s put us in the right mood for wrapping gifts today.

Toy Trains

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I’ve had trouble finding time to blog lately, what with a heavy workload, Christmas tasks, and so on, but I’ll try to do better. Yesterday Ellen and I visited this train museum near our home. We’d been to it when it first opened some years ago, and after our ride on a real steam train recently, Ellen thought she’d like to get her father’s train set out of storage and see if it will run. We thought a visit to this shop might be helpful for tips and ideas.

The setup is pretty large, with at least five tracklines running at the same time, and lots of trains on the walls, too. We enjoyed seeing it again, and the proprietor, Mr. Jones, was happy to talk trains with us. His setup is all “S” gauge American Flyer trains. He gave us some advice about our set, which I hope to write about and show here at Christmastime.

It was hard to get pictures of the trains in motion, as the light level is not the best for that, but it’s a great setup.

Lots of accessories and signage.

Mr. Jones told us about the evolution of the American train makers over the years. This is a fairly new Lionel train, now made in China. Unfortunately we learned that Flyertown will be closing at the end of this year, at least as a public museum. It’s become too costly to run, mainly due to insurance costs, so Mr. Jones will be returning to a private train buff then. If you have a chance to visit south Jersey before the end of the year, Flyertown in Clermont is worth a visit.

The Christmas Card Conundrum

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I’ve never been very religious, but I do have a fondness of some of the traditions of Christmas. I think I began sending cards to friends and family in 1972, the first Christmas I was not living at home with my parents. Above is the cover of the hand-made card I sent that year, or actually a recreation of it from a black and white photocopy. It was made from two layers of colored paper, a light color cut to show the white interior, and a dark color cut more extensively. Pretty crude, but lots of work. For years the recipients asked if I was going to do more like that, but I was never that ambitious (or had the time) to do hand-made cards again. Thereafter they were store-bought cards.

I’ve send cards out every year since, with a list that fluctuates but is usually around 30 recipients, and since we’ve been married (1989) Ellen and I have both sent cards, adding another 20 or so for her friends and family. Some years I had time for lengthy personal notes in each one, but I think that was only in the early years. Generally I write a short note, a sentence or two. Ellen likes lengthy notes, and most years is still writing cards the week of Christmas. A few times we tried the “printed group letter insert” method of telling everyone what we were up to in the past year, but most years there isn’t a lot to write about. Our lives are fairly similar from year to year, except perhaps for a vacation trip and a few events like weddings or funerals attended, which do not make for gripping reading.

Today I asked Ellen, “Do you want to send Christmas cards this year?” and she answered, “Not really.” So I think we’re giving up the tradition. We may be late to that trend, the cards we receive have dwindled. Ellen’s sister Ann hasn’t sent any out for at least 10 years. Older relations are dwindling, too. We get some cards from our generation, but most everyone we get them from has our phone number and emails, and that goes for people we work with as well. My blog covers most of the more interesting things we do with pictures and commentary (at least interesting to us). So I guess my plan going forward is, if I receive a card from someone with a personal note, I’ll reply in kind, but explaining we’re not sending cards anymore. Cards with just signatures or printed names will probably not be replied to, except perhaps for an email thanks. I’m not a fan of e-cards, so I don’t plan to go that route.

It’s not easy giving up a 40-year tradition, but as you get older, you yearn to simplify your life, and this is one small way to do it. If you’re reading this, and you usually get a card from us, be sure we wish you the happiest of holidays!

Tommy’s Train

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Ellen’s cousin Tommy passed away recently of a heart attack, too young at 48. Tommy had a lifelong passion for trains that began in his childhood, both with model trains and the real thing passing along the tracks near his home. As an adult he worked for that railroad, and in his spare time helped out as a volunteer with the Black River and Western steam train, a small tourist line running between Ringoes, Flemington and Three Rivers in west central New Jersey. Sunday there was a memorial run of Tommy’s favorite engine, #60, on the line, and friends and family were invited to gather there, remember him, and ride the train he loved.

It was a pretty nice day for mid-November; cool but mostly sunny. We were able to gather outside the train first and talk. Here’s Ellen with some of the family, including her Aunt Rita and Tommy’s sister Marian at right. Marian is the one who gathered everyone, though Tommy’s friends on the railroad ran the event.

Hard to see, but there were some enlarged photos of Tommy taped to the engine. That’s him as an adult at left, and as a child at right.

After about an hour the train was getting up steam and it was time to climb aboard.

The first car was a club car, and that’s where family and friends gathered for refreshments and the ride, which took us slowly from Flemington to Ringoes. Regular passengers rode in the following cars. The children enjoyed seeing some deer along the way, but it was mostly about talking and remembering. Tommy’s ashes were put into the train’s firebox at several places along the way.

Some of the family and friends enjoying the ride.

At the Ringoes station some of us got off to look around the yard at the other train cars there. Here’s another Tom getting his photo taken.

It took about 15 minutes for the engine to uncouple from the passenger cars and move around to the other end for the return trip. The engine itself was not turned, but ran backwards to Flemington, with the coal car in front, as seen here.

Then it was time to reboard and take the trip back as the afternoon sun descended. It was a long drive for us to get to this event, but Ellen and I enjoyed it, and thought it was the perfect way to remember Tommy.

Cats, Company, Chilly Weather

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Our storm-refugee company, my friend Tim and my Mom, are still with us. Mom’s power went on yesterday, but Tim’s is still off, and they elected to stay a while longer, especially with another storm heading our way. Tim brought his computer, and it’s been nice having someone else working in my studio the last few days. Tigger seems to like it, too.

As for Leo, he’d rather try to catch the birds at the window feeder, even though he never can. He sits staring and talking quietly about those darn birds, then leaps up repeatedly, trying to get them, or at least scare them. At first they fly away, but already they’re getting used to him and beginning to ignore him.

The storm arrived as scheduled today bringing some wet snow with it. Not a lot, but enough to cover some of the ground.

Here’s the back yard with more feeders and the pond. It should all melt soon, as the ground is not very cold, but things could be different north and west of us. And the barrier islands, still trying to recover from Sandy, don’t need any more wind and storm surge, but will get some anyway. Hopefully not much.

Since the Storm

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Last Sunday through Wednesday we were at my mother’s place in central NJ, hoping to escape what we thought would be serious storm damage at our home near the NJ shore. The power went out there on Monday evening, but we were fine, having prepared as well as we could. Mom has an electric stove, so there was no cooking, and no heat, but she did have hot and cold city water (a new gas-powered hot water heater worked without electricity).

Wednesday we packed up and drove home, about a 2.5 hour trip mostly on the Garden State Parkway, which had just fully opened for travel. We had a little trouble in Mom’s area because of dead traffic lights, but once on the major highways it was smooth sailing. At the Parkway rest stops there were long lines of cars waiting to get gas, but otherwise nothing denoting a major storm had passed that way. By the time we got into the Atlantic City area, even that was gone. There was a line of cars waiting to exit toward Ocean City, one of the hard-hit barrier islands, but our own exit to Ocean View was not backed up. At the bottom of the ramp, a policeman was checking identification for vehicles wanting to go to Sea Isle City, another hard-hit barrier island, but we were going the other way to our mainland home, and everything seemed fine that way. Power on, no trees or wires down that we could see. Feeling more hopeful, we drove home, and it was just the same there, no damage, power on. Lots of leaves, twigs and branches in the yard, but only one small dead tree down in the woods.

Now we felt bad about leaving Mom in her cold apartment, and after consulting with my brother Doug who lives closer but was also without power, we decided we should bring her down to stay with us. Fortunately, my longtime friend Tim, who lives in the same area, wanted to come here, too. He was also without power. We arranged for Tim to pick up my mom and they both came down, arriving here Friday afternoon.

We’ve been having a good time here since, eating well, playing board games (Tim is a collector and game expert, you can read more on his website HERE), and Tim helped me clean up the yard yesterday. We all feel a bit guilty about those we care about who still have no power in north Jersey, like my brother Doug and Ellen’s sister Ann and their families, but everyone seems to be doing okay. And, of course, there are thousands whose homes on the barrier islands have been damaged or destroyed, but there isn’t much we can do about that except make donations to the Red Cross. Cleanup operations are underway from what we see in the paper. I’d like to get out there for some pictures, but don’t want to get in the way, so will probably wait a while.

That’s the report from here. Tim wants to head home Monday even if his power is still off, so he can vote. My Mom may stay with us longer unless her own power is back by Monday.

Home and all is well

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We’re back home, and despite the fact that the eye of Sandy passed right over us Monday evening (as confirmed by a local friend who was here), there was NO damage at all to our house and yard. Lots of sticks and leaves, a small tree down in the woods, but nothing important. Really, in the drive down we saw much less damage in this area than where we spent the last three days with my Mom, where there were lots of trees down, and power out everywhere. Our power didn’t even go out! I can’t quite understand why, but we’re very thankful and happy about it.

Summer Visitors

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The Greene family has returned home after their week with us, having enjoyed five good beach days and lots of pleasant evenings. Here are a few photos. Ellen, Ann, Zach, and Dave (at right) talking to his friend Danny.