new project

I'm embarking on a 365 day photo project. If you can stand to look at more photos and read more of my sparkling prose, please join my on my new journey. Oh, and just in case you were worried (and I know you are), I'll still be posting here, too!

Here's the project address:
http://eleganceofwords.blogspot.com

one word project

One of the photos I took this spring was chosen for the Shutter Sister's One Word Project. This month's word was "wish." To see the whole series, click here. Mine, shown here over on the left, is the one for December 29th.

As I wrote when I took this photo: these words were carved in the top of a picnic table in New Salem, Massachusetts, on a hillside overlooking the Quabbin Reservoir. I didn't realize when I took the picture that my name is also carved there, along with the slogan. Hannah pointed it out to me when she saw the photo, and I knew then that this photo was meant to be. So this is my mantra and my daily wish, and I hope it can be for you, too, when you need it. Have courage!

giants in lights

The Cape Cod Times this morning had an article about the giant metal sculptures along Route 6A in Sandwich that are lit up for the holidays. Coming home from a meeting the other night, I snapped this photo of the glass blower. If you're in the vicinity, it's a fun night drive to see some very creative lighted sculptures.

stopping by woods

Before the blizzard

After the blizzard

recent chester loomis auction

There is a Chester Loomis painting listed on ebay at the moment -- it looks like one of the small studies he did in his leisure time.

I contacted the seller with a question, and he said he bought it at an estate auction in Frederick, Maryland this November, where seven or eight of Chester's paintings were up for sale. I checked out the auctioneer's website, and to my surprise there was one of the paintings I seem to remember hanging in Ruxton -- "Normandy Milkmaid." It was painted in the 1880s when he lived in France. I guess it was sold, along with a number of other paintings, when Grandma's house was sold, back in the late 1970s? Or could it have been at Uncle Jack's?


The other paintings in the group are listed on the Trout Auctioneer's web page if you scroll down a bit, and additional images can be seen here. Here are several more that I remember -- "Capri Girl," and a study for a stained glass window for the Presbyterian Church in Englewood, New Jersey, where Chester and Sara Dana lived:



While it's lovely to know that our great-grandpa's work is still being bought and appreciated, it's hard to see a part of our family history up for sale. But maybe that's a delayed reaction, since the paintings were originally sold off over 20 years ago. I don't know. Do you all remember these paintings or am I mixing them up with some of the studies and prints I have in his sketchbooks? What do you think?

starlings

This photo from my series of starling shots made the top 50 in the November Boston Globe RAW amateur photo contest -- the theme was silhouettes.


To see the complete top 50, click here. To see the final top 10 winners, click here. And congratulations to the winners! There were some amazing photos submitted.

secret life of toys

I have been having way too much fun with the theme this month for the Boston Globe RAW amateur photo contest, which is "Toys". I was a definite dolly-girl as a kid -- I filled my bed with stuffed animals and dolls before going to sleep at night, and the dollhouse that Dad made me was my most treasured possession. Of course I was convinced that my toys had a parallel life when I wasn't around. I could spend hours imagining what adventures they had and what they might say if they could talk. My favorite book was The Little Wooden Doll.

I still have many of the dolls and toys from my childhood, and also many of Nick's and Hannah's. It was great fun to get them out and see how they were doing after many years tucked away in a box. And they rewarded me by coming to life!

artistic inspiration

My cousin Pam is one of the dedicated followers of this blog, and also a regular commenter (thanks Pam!) When I was 12 years old she came to spend the summer with us and work in my parent's restaurant, and I developed an instant girl-crush on my funny, pretty, quirky older cousin. I wanted to BE her -- she was so cool, she even looked good in the brown waitress outfit she had to wear to work. And when she caught me smoking upstairs in our 100+ year old house, she managed to convince me it was a stupid idea without making me feel stupid. How did she do that? A gift, I think. She also wrote with these really fantastic Lindy pens that I can't seem to find anymore, but that's another story.

So it was really amazing when Pam said that one of my photos inspired her to paint -- Pam is a talented artist and illustrator. She had gotten her inspiration from a photo I took of the sky over Barnstable Harbor -- one of the first photos I took when I bought my first camera last winter. I get inspiration in so many surprising ways, and I'm glad I could inspire someone else! Here are the photo and resulting painting. As Pam would say -- yay!

Click the image for a larger view

is anybody out there?

So I've been doing this blog for nearly 4 years, and before that I had the homesickcure website for probably another 6 years. I'm mulling over what's next for me in the cyber-world. I'm not one of those profound bloggers who expounds on the deeper meaning of life. I don't wax poetic very often, and I don't try to solve the problems that face us in the world. I mostly share bits of family news, photos, history, and little moments of life that seem...well: shareable.

I'd love to know who's reading this blog, so I humbly request that you leave a comment and let me know you've visited. If you haven't ever commented before, it's easy! Click on the word "comments" in the line below this post. Type a comment. Then, if you don't have a google account, click the button next to "Name/URL" and type in your name (you don't have to type in a URL unless you have a website of your own.) Or you can post as anonymous, but why hide in the shadows when you can dance in the light? When you're all finished, you can click "publish your comments."

Thanks everyone! And happy December 6th!

the sign on my door

I have a double-sided sign on the glass door of my office at the library. When the door is open it says "Lucy Loomis, Library Director, is here," because when I sit at my desk no one can see that I'm actually in my office. When the door is closed and I'm out and about, it says "Lucy Loomis, Library Director, is elsewhere," so people know I'm not actually in there, hiding.

I was just doing a search on flickr for photos of Cape Cod, and what should I find, but this photo, taken by a total stranger. Check it out!

most viewed

I have to admit that I'm something of a flickr stats addict. For those of you who are unfamiliar with flickr, I can go in and see how many times my photos have been viewed, who's left comments or who calls one of my photos a favorite.

Some of the most viewed photos are of Hannah and Nick, and I also have high stats on the ones I post in groups and in contests. But the two surprise frontrunners are photos that people find through internet searches -- and here they are:

I found this Old Quaker bottle in the bottle dump near Hathaway's Pond in Barnstable. I suspect that most people stumble across this photo because they've found a bottle, too, and may be searching to see if it has any value. Not a very good photo, but....

And the runner up is Joe's Twin Villa, the infamous hot spot in the village of Osterville -- a sort of historic hangout amidst the mansions along the southside of Cape Cod. Joe's is mentioned in this entry on Osterville in the Urban Dictionary.

You never know how you will connect with people -- sometimes through the smallest common thread. So, meet me at Joe's and we'll toast to life with a shot of Old Quaker! Cheers!

babes in toyland

Here are scenes from the Barnstable High School Drama Club's production of Babes in Toyland -- of course, many featuring our own Miss Hannah.

homesick no more

My old website, homesick cure, is now a thing of the past. The site was created with Yahoo's old Geocities service, which in web terms was pretty much a dinosaur, and Yahoo has done away with that service as of October 2009. So, the pages on the site are no longer accessible. (And since I had no clue that the end was near and didn't save copies of the pages, it's not a simple process to recreate them.)

Some day if I have the time and energy I may create some new site on Chester Loomis and/or the Leonard family history, since those were the ones that got a lot of feedback from people doing research. For now I'll stick with blogging until the next new thing comes along.

scenes of thanksgivings past

Pa Loomis carves the turkey as Sara and Dorothy (and unknown woman) look on
Maryland, 1957

May need help on this one.
Uncle Gerome, Roosie, Pa Leonard, Aunt Al, ?, Aunt Ruthie, ?, Uncle Markie, Uncle Hal,
Wadah, Peter Leonard, Aunt Ann, ?, Aunt Tardy
Halcyon Farm, Lakeville, Massachusetts, 1958

Skipping a decade or three...

Grandma Susie, Matthew, Tom, Aunt Cyndie, Kyria, Lucy, and Jeffery
East Bridgewater, Massachusetts, 1989

Aunt Junie, Tom, Arlene and Arnold Hall, Fransje
Halcyon Farm, Amsterdam, NY circa 1990

Frank, Fransje, Uncle John, Aunt Cyndie, Seth
Halcyon Farm, NY circa 1998

Susan and Biddy
Halcyon Farm, NY circa 1998

Hannah, Kyria, Nick, and Matthew -- the cousins
Halcyon Farm, NY circa 2000

Don't forget the preparations

The Loomis girls make the blue cheese dip -- Lucy, Dorothy, Sara
Halcyon Farm, MA circa 1971

The men mash the spuds -- Tom, Uncle John & John (and Brud looks on)
Halcyon Farm, NY circa 1991

Here is evidence of the effect of Thanksgiving dinner

Tom and Lucy, looking chipper, pre-dinner
Halcyon Farm, NY circa 2000

Seth and Tom, after the meal
Halcyon Farm, NY
Date unnecessary -- same scene every year

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We love you and miss you!

what fills yours?

sungdog and moonbow

I captured some interesting cloud phenomena this week -- so here's a little meteorological info you can use to wow your friends.

Here's a sundog, which is also called a mock sun. It's "a colored, luminous spot or halo appearing to the side of the sun." The luminous spot is caused by the refraction of light through ice crystals in the atmosphere.


And on Halloween eve we saw this night rainbow, also caused by refraction of light through ice crystals in clouds. I guess it's different than an official moonbow, which is produced by light reflected off the moon...if you want to get all technical about it.

my daughter the ghoul

pembroke bees

Mom sent me a copy of this nice article on the work done by her quilting group the Pembroke Bees, making quilts and other items for hospice patients and injured soldiers. And here she is, hard at work on a piece of red work. Good job, ladies!

honorable

Thanks, all, for voting for my photo in the Boston Globe's September amateur photo contest. I came in 6th with an honorable mention! See the winners and the top 10 photos here:
http://www.boston.com/community/photos/raw/2009/10/the_september_jobs_contest_win.html

the haunted oak

A snippet of a powerful poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, together with a

layered photo technique I've been experimenting with.

photo joy

I've been entering the monthly photo contests on the Boston Globe's RAW amateur photo page for a few months, and this month I'm in the group of top 25 finalists -- yay! They have a theme every month, and September's theme was jobs. The first photo below is the one I entered in the contest, and the others are ones I took on the same theme. It's a challenge to ask strangers if you can take their picture and have it come out looking natural. Try it!

lucy speaks

Me, chatting to the Lothrops at the Lothrop Bible rededication (see previous post).

lothrop connections

The Sturgis Library got some press in the Cape Cod Times about our rededication of the Lothrop Bible in a ceremony yesterday that was attended by about 120 people -- inlucing many Lothrop (Lathrop, Lothropp, Lowthorpe) cousins, pictured above. Our library was built as John Lothrop's meetinghouse in 1644, which is how it gets its distinction as the oldest library building in the country.

This may not be of interest to most of you, except that I discovered in my research that we (the Loomis cousins, anyway) are, along with what seems like half the United States, descendants of a sort from John Lothrop. Our 5th great grandfather General Israel Putnam's second wife was John Lothrop's great-granddaughter.

This line goes -- for you all keeping score at home:

Rev. John Lothop
I
Samuel Lothrop
I
Samuel Lothrop 2nd
I
Deborah Lothrop Gardiner second wife of General Israel Putnam
I
Hannah Pope Putnam (Israel's daughter from first marriage) m John Winchester Dana
I
Israel Putnam Dana
I
Charles Smith Dana
I
Sarah Dana m Chester Loomis
I
Charles Loomis
I
Eliot Loomis
I
Lucy Loomis & siblings

Thus endeth the genealogical lesson for the day!

saturday nite

While Hannah was attending the Harwich High School homecoming dance last night,

I was out taking night photos around Brewster, killing time while I was waiting to pick her up.

To see photos from that night, click here.

almost october

A quiet Monday on the beach in Dennis.

I spent an hour or so wandering around the Antiques Center of Cape Cod -- lots of great outdoor sculpture, salvaged bits from old buildings, signs, and interesting odds and ends.
See more images here.

coastsweep 2009

It was a perfect day to participate in Coastsweep 2009 -- I joined other Barnstable Land Trust members to help clean up several beaches in Cotuit. We picked up an amazing array of trash, from wrappers and bottles to rope and signs, and lots of bullets and balloon strings and plastic bags. My most horrifying find was a bag of fermenting bait worms -- even after a shower, I can still smell them. Yum!

To see more photos of the gorgeous day and other recent photos, here's a slideshow.

metamorphosis

In the children's room at the library we have a monarch caterpillar transforming into a butterfly right before our eyes. I think the grownups are even more fascinated than the kids!

the lure of fall berries

These little berries were shades of blue, purple and green against red and orange foliage -- striking!

These are my favorite -- like little bunches of candy, or Easter eggs

If I were a bird, I'd eat these, wouldn't you?