Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

It will get even wilder at the main parade on Saturday although there will be fewer dogs.

I meant to get more of these pictures edited but Madeleine was over last night. Not that I mind, but she particularly likes my attention. This child has been strongly attracted to music since she was old enough to notice. My daughter and I were playing her YouTube clips of our favorite opera bits. She liked Papageno and Papagena's aria from The Magic Flute, Les Petits Soldats from Carmen, really liked The Ride of the Valkyries, but was transfixed by the Prisoners' Chorus from Fidelio. She watched the faces open up as they emerged into the light and, in her little squeaky voice, said "they're happy!" That's my girl.

NOTE TO FLICKR USERS: some of us upload our photos to Flickr and then link them to Blogger when we prepare a post. I've got thousands done that way. Yahoo, which owns Flickr, announced major cutbacks on Tuesday while they continue to try to figure out just what it is they do. Flickr will be cut back somehow but not eliminated. Until we find out what's going down, I'm uploading my photos directly to Blogger. Sure hope this doesn't cause my blog to lose several thousand linked images.

Reflet de pharmacie

The green cross of a chemist/pharmacy is reflected in the rain as someone walks by... The second photo is horrid, you can't even see the cross... :-)

Samedi rue Carnot, le reflet de la croix verte de la pharmacie tandis qu'un passant fait irruption... 

The 3-dimensional illusion in historical photos

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For ABC Wednesday, D is for Dina in 3-D glasses.

Dozens of glasses wait for visitors and pupils who come to the Open Museum in Omer.

You can't see them properly, of course, but here are some examples of the big three-dimensional photographs taken in Eretz Israel in the late 19th century.
Here above is Jerusalem's Jaffa Gate when it still had the Ottoman clock tower just outside the Old City wall (the tower was soon torn down by the British in 1922).

This is labeled "Ancient Fountain of the Virgin, Nazareth, Palestine."
It was fascinating to gaze at these pictures; I felt like I was really "in" the scene, mingling with the women and children. 

Fallahin plowing.

"Tiberias, a town of Jewish fisherman, Sea of Galilee"

Please click on the photo and then once again.
You can read how stereographs were made and how American publishing house Underwood and Underwood produced and sold the set about Eretz Israel in 1900, focusing mostly on the Christian market.
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Spring came early

The daffodils are out and the ravens are chasing the squirrels, it's hard to believe it is only the beginning of February.

Bow WOW!

It's silly season in STL. No place in the US can hold a candle to New Orleans' Mardi Gras or Carnival but at least we come in a distant second. As I've stated in these pages before, St. Louis loves an excuse to drink in public.

The first major event is the Barkus dog parade, which was held on Sunday. People, many of them in costume, parade around the Soulard neighborhood with their pets, many of them in costume. Those poor dogs. This is just an introduction to the zillion pictures I took.  

Yesterday's picture was the very last marcher in the parade, someone dressed in a dinosaur suit. Go figure. But then the Grand Parade is this Saturday, one of the best local photo ops of the year. And a week from Thursday we get to our favorite tropical escape, seen here annually for years. We're looking at a torrent of material.