THE SONGS OF A NIGHTINGAIL

Me, my brother, and my oldest younger sister  in a raft  on the water at Meeks Bay, Lake Tahoe back in 1947. That same summer this sea plane made an emergency landing on the lake at Meeks Bay one morning and we all went down to check it out.  My brother and I are standing by the plane.  Little sis is coming back up the beach toward Dad who was taking the picture. Later that day Dad took us close up around the plane in/on a kayak. Rafting down the Truckee River below Tahoe.  The larger blue rafts are rentals - usually with a guide along for good measure.   The Great Gasquet Raft Race on the middle fork of the Smith River in northern Calif.  Some of the rafts are quite imaginative, others are no more than a single inner-tube.  All for fun.  I don’t know that anyone was/is all that concerned about winning the race?  It’s just a matter of being out there on the water – usually on a hot day, and visiting with friends who might just happen to ...

  I took this picture of the Roman Baths when we were visiting Bath, England.  They’ve been around for a while – about 17 centuries.  Very pretty.  I could almost imagine the people, here, standing around beside it dressed in togas. J The Ring of Brodgar on Mainland Orkney, Scotland.  These stones have stood here beside the sea for 4000 years. Skara Brae – the ancient 4000 year-old homes by the sea of the people who raised the stones of Brodgar.  Their homes were built of stones, turf, and animal skins low in the ground as protection against the fierce winds and weather in colder parts of the year.   A depiction of the ancient homes of Skara Brae and the people who lived in them. The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk amusement park has been standing here beside the sea for 117 years.  It opened in 1907. 1974:  The picture window in my room in the maternity ward of Seaside Hospital situated beside the ageless sea in Crescent City, Calif.  B...

  Me, in white shirt kneeling down to bait my hook, and my sisters and brother fishing from an old falling-down bridge over the Truckee River just below Lake Tahoe.  I caught a 9 inch trout! I was standing on a bridge over the upper Merced River in Yosemite National Park when I took this picture of “Happy Isles” – so named for the happy sound the water makes tumbling over all the rocks in the shallow streambed as the river flows around two islands on its way down to the valley floor.  I don’t remember if this was the first or second island the river divides around. The western side of the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge stretching over the waters of the bay.  The bridge is separated by a tunnel through Yerba Buena Island so there are the eastern and western sides to it.  I took this picture from a helicopter landing pad where I think I’ve mentioned before a friend and I used to go to eat lunch on our lunch hours when I was working in the City.  We sat righ...

  1956 - A rare picture of my mother in the water at Lake Tahoe with my dad.  Tahoe’s water is very cold and she almost never went in except maybe up to her ankles.  Even here she’s only up to her knees.  She did have her bathing cap on, though, so perhaps she actually went in swimming, but I don’t remember. She did go swimming at Pinecrest Lake, however, which is cool, but not as cold as Tahoe.  Here, in 1953, she’s the legs climbing back onto her friends’ sailboat after letting it pull her through the water. 1956 – Yours truly at Santa Cruz, Calif. with my two younger sisters, waiting for the waves to catch me.  I don’t remember why I wasn’t in my swimsuit too? 1983 – My son and his two younger sisters by the ocean in Crescent City.  As you might suspect by the bare foot there, they had been playing in the waves, cold and foggy as it was.  We were visiting a friend who lived by the ocean and when the kids came up from splashing around in the wat...