At the Yard House

April 3, 2014 by Howard Dale Posted in Places Leave a comment

I imagine that not all Englishmen like beer, but a great many of them do. I’m one of them.

When we go to a restaurant I also seem to have a knack of ordering something from the menu that they don’t have. At first I thought that this was because I order “out of the ordinary” or exotic dishes. After all you can’t go to a diner in suburban New York and order Mulligatawny soup and expect them to have it – even if it is on the menu. However, this happened so often (including once when I ordered a burger in a cafe on Second Ave. in Manhattan) that I finally came to realize that it’s just something I have to live with. I used to get angry. Now I don’t. On occasion I’ll even ask if there’s anything they don’t have before I ordered.

Yesterday we went shopping at the Pallisades Mall. It doesn’t usually take me long to shop: a quick trip to Barnes and Noble just about does it. So while I was waiting for Eirah to finish I thought I’d sit down and have something to drink. I’d noticed the “Yard House” before but had never been inside. In I went.

They have 180 different beers. I perused the menu and decided I’d have a pint of Newcastle Brown Ale. The guy disappeared and came back shortly after to say that they were out. I actually didn’t feel too bad. After I’d ordered I’d asked myself why I’d ordered Newcastle Brown (which I already know very well) rather than one of the other 179 beers. He’d brought me a sample of another brown ale, which was very tasty so I had that instead.

Happy Birthday Eirah

March 31, 2014 by Howard Dale Posted in People, Places Tagged gallery Leave a comment

Today is my wife’s birthday so we decided to celebrate by having dinner at the Hudson House River Inn in Cold Spring, NY. Its website states:

Built in 1832 and operated as a hotel since then, the Hudson House River Inn is truly part of Hudson River history. The Hudson House is located on the serene waterfront approximately one hundred feet from the Hudson River in the quaint, antique shopping village of Cold Spring. When at the Hudson House you will indulge in breathtaking views of West Point, Storm King Mountain and the majestic Hudson River and mountains. The inn is currently on the National Register of Historic Places. Whether you visit Hudson House River Inn for a long weekend, a romantic dinner for two, or for a private function, we are sure Hudson House will leave a lasting memorable impression.

We arrived just as the sun was going down. It really is a charming place and the food, while not out of this world, was more than adequate.

Wider view of the Hudson House. Our table was right next to one of the windows on the front of the building.

View over the bandstand with the Hudson in the background.

Interior

The birthday girl with her healthy Ahi Tuna sashimi. My less healthy NY strip steak in the foreground.

Prints and Frames

March 31, 2014 by Howard Dale Posted in Thoughts Tagged gallery Leave a comment

I post pictures to this blog. I post to Flickr. I occasionally post to Facebook. But, like many people I imagine, I rarely print any of the pictures (except for the rare photobook). If I print them small they have a way of disappearing for decades in boxes and albums. If I print them larger I have nowhere to put them. So generally I don’t print.

Just lately we did some work on our basement and this gave a little more space for putting up pictures. I didn’t want to spend a lot of time and effort into it, but I had the urge to see what some of my pictures would look like up on the wall. I bought a couple of inexpensive frames from Amazon.com, had a few “quickie” 8x10s done at Walmart and CVS and put them in the frames.

I haven’t hung them yet, let alone thought about a good way of lighting them. But even just propped up I like the way they look. It’s completely different from viewing on screen.

I think I’ll do some more.

Fascinating documentary on William Klein

March 31, 2014 by Howard Dale Posted in Photographers Leave a comment

I very much enjoyed this documentary. He seems like an interesting guy with a good sense of humor and the photographs are great.

When I watch such documentaries I almost always get a little bit depressed. This is because of the gulf between my efforts and theirs. It’s not that my pictures are truly awful. I’ve seen many that are much worse than mine. Rather it’s that my photographs don’t say anything and lack the impact that those of great photographers have. You don’t want to look at them twice. Still I guess we can’t all be great so I’ll just have to continue and see the extent to which I can improve.

Storm King Arts Center, New Windsor, NY

March 30, 2014 by Howard Dale Posted in Black & White, Places Tagged gallery Leave a comment

The Storm King Arts Center proclaims:

Widely celebrated as one of the world’s leading sculpture parks, Storm King Art Center has welcomed visitors from across the globe for fifty years. It is located only one hour north of New York City, in the lower Hudson Valley, where its pristine 500-acre landscape of fields, hills, and woodlands provides the setting for a collection of more than 100 carefully sited sculptures created by some of the most acclaimed artists of our time.

…

The nonprofit Storm King Art Center was founded and opened to the public in 1960, thanks to the efforts of the late Ralph E. Ogden and H. Peter Stern, co-owners of the Mountainville-based Star Expansion Company.

The initial gift of what is today the Museum Building and its surrounding property was made by the Ralph E. Ogden Foundation, Inc. Over time, Star Expansion Company donated 300 contiguous acres, as well as 2,100 acres of Schunnemunk Mountain (now owned by the State of New York and designated Schunnemunk Mountain State Park) that preserve Storm King Art Center’s view-shed.

Although Storm King was originally envisioned as a museum devoted to Hudson River School, by 1961 its founders had become committed to modern sculpture. Early purchases were sited directly outside the Museum Building as part of a formal garden scheme. However, with the 1966 purchase of thirteen works from the estate of sculptor David Smith (1906¬1965), Storm King began to place sculpture directly in the landscape. Since then, every work has been sited with consideration of both its immediate surroundings and distant views.

Fifty years after its founding, Storm King continues to grow and evolve, and is among the world’s leading sculpture parks.

Some of sculptures are truly impressive. It’s not often that you see such large sculptures surrounded by so much open space. Taken in 2008 with a Konica Minolta 5D