Yesterday my Red Hat group, the DARling Dames, lunched at Willow Creek Farm in Broadlands, Virginia. What a spectacular site it is. Our hostess, Jayne, and her daughter Kim, baked the most creative “Red Hat” cookies, which we received as favors. You can see them at My Flickr Slideshow.”
The image, Willow Creek Farm, was originally uploaded by barneykin. It is posted here from Barneykin’s account.
I’ve never lived on a farm, nor had any connection with farming, although, of course, many of my forebears did. However, I have always wanted to have a farm bell mounted in my garden as a remembrance of those bygone days of simpler times. What a surprise it was last Christmas when my son’s family gave us an old farm bell that they had found in Warrenton, Virginia.
Well, good Captain Cliff does not like to work outside when the weather is cold, so the old farm bell sat, packed and boxed, all winter long in the garage, where we bumped and crashed into it whenever we were entering or exiting our vehicles. It was in the early Spring, when we were visiting a home on the Eastern Shore, that I was captivated by another old farm bell. It was so charming and I took photographs of it and even blogged one of them: Old Farm Bell
After we returned home, and I posted my pictures, Captain Cliff became a bit eager to install my Farm Bell. He opened the box and unpacked it, and to our suprise, it was identical in every way, including the manufacturer’s name, to the one that we had see at the Maryland home. How delightful! So we tried to copy that one, including the new black paint.
My son suggested that we not paint it; that we leave it in its original patina, as it is in this photograph. I think now that we should have heeded him, but we didn’t. This photograph is how it appeared before the paint job. We have not yet been able to find proper cotton roping for the pull cord, but we are still looking. This synthetic rope is not quite right, but it is all we have.
I finally got around to making this test of Picasa Web Albums with Cudleigh Cougar. I have ranted a number of times of my dismay at having my images made much smaller when I upload them from Picasa2 to Picasa Web Albums. Google wrote and told me that was caused by my editing of my images before uploading. Duh? Isn’t that what Picasa2 is for? Isn’t Picasa2 supposed to be a photo editing software program?
IMAGE QUALITY
You mentioned that the files you downloaded from Picasa Web Albums were not the same size as the original files that you uploaded. The difference in photo file size can be attributed to any edits that you made within Picasa before you uploaded. After you make edits to your photo, Picasa needs to then re-sample the image to create a new version of the jpeg (apart from the original). This requires Picasa to apply an amount of jpeg compression to your photo. In order to incorporate your photo edits into your uploaded image, the actual size of the uploaded photo is therefore less than the full photo file.
If you made no edits to your photos and uploaded it at the ’slowest upload; largest size setting,’ you would find the full photo file uploaded.
Whatever, … here I am performing a test. I am uploading these two “unedited” images of Cudleigh Cougar at the “slowest” upload, largest size, using the “Web Album” button in Picasa2. Image cudleigh001 is 3264×2448 pixels, 4.5 MB, and Image cudleigh002 is 3264×2448 pixels, 4.8 MB, in Picasa2, on my computer.
After uploading to Picasa Web Albums (which is incredibly easy with the Picasa2 software) I then downloaded one image back to my computer, and sure enough, the Google guy was correct. I was able to download the full size that I had uploaded. Now that was only because I had NOT “edited” the photo. Once a photo is edited in Picasa2 - everything changes, and much smaller images are sent to the Internet. It doesn’t make sense, but that is the way it is.
Then I did a second test, this time sending an entire batch of “edited” images to Picasa Web Albums. You can read about that here: http://picasaweb.google.com/barneykin/GrandBarneySFarmBell, and know why I am now using Flickr for most of my photo album storage, even though I continue to love using Picasa2 software.
The whole idea of it makes me feel much OLDER. Having a thirteen-year-old grandchild cinches it; now I must certainly act like the senior adult that I am, or am supposed to be. I have to make better decisions about my life, and on my choices of things that really matter. What am I saying? That is advice that would be better for my granddaughter, Raquelinha, whose thirteenth birthday is today. Yes, once upon a time, a long while back, I turned from twelve to thirteen, and I remember it being a milestone of my life. Seemingly, all at once, I was expected to behave like a young lady, and no longer like a little girl.
I am sure that today my thirteen-year-old granddaugter feels much older than she did yesterday. She is now more responsible. She is a young lady and no longer a little girl, as she was in the picture above. From this moment on she will need to ponder each and every decision that she makes. She will need to think about her choices of all the things that really matter, like friendships, family, life and God. Although it sounds burdensome, it is the way that life is for young women. Instead of thinking “what a burden,” young women think “what a joy to be a woman.”
I try and look back upon the days of my own childhood, but it is mostly forgotten. However, I remember a few fleeting moments of the arrival of my first grandchild, and of the joy she brought to her grandfather and me. When we first saw her, she was five months old, and we immediately carried her to Balboa for her first carousel ride. I remember her beautiful innocence at the age of three. By age five, shown in the photograph, she was considered a princess by her mother and father. At age ten she was an accomplished athlete, and by eleven her many other skills and talents were delightfully manifest to her world. Those days of her life were like the gentle rains from heaven, with each raindrop falling slowly to earth. Then, much too quickly, the drops turned into rivulets and flowed away, down to the River of No Return, never to be seen again. Those soft delicious raindrops exist now only in the memories of her loved ones who were with her then.
The gentle summer rain is over. Now we watch the morning sunrise, as it proclaims to the new adult: “This is the day of your responsibility. From now until life’s end, you leave your footprints in the sands of time. Tread carefully. Bid adieu to those carefree days of frollicking in my warm sunshine. That was yesterday. Today you are grown up, and in control of your destiny.”
I have just discovered that Facebook does not allow PageOnce to access it. This is after I have just recently opened accounts at both sites. I have my entire Internet world on PageOnce — except for Facebook. Facebook has blocked PageOnce. I thought that Facebook was a “social” application? How sociable is it for Facebook to NOT allow me to include my Facebook account on my PageOnce page? The entire world is there, except for Facebook. Apparently, Facebook is not keeping up with technology, always a bad sign. Facebook seems to be already losing it. There has got to be a better social site.
Journeying along the Highway 66, I’ve heard much clamor about this “Facebook” thingy. Well, not wanting to fall behind the rest of the civilized world, while I’m speeding along Route 66, I opened an account to discover it for myself. I was able to connect with a few friends and the wife of long lost cousin in England, however, I am finding that using Facebook is much more difficult than blogging, such as here at WordPress.com or at Blogger. Plus, I find the advertising distracting and much of it a bit distasteful. It’s nice to have no advertising here at WordPress.
While I’ve had no trouble at all getting my PODs from VODPOD posted here (see on the right), at Facebook it was quite different. Facebook has a VODPOD application, and after one jumps through all the hoops, it won’t display what one programs in. Very frustrating!
I am frustratingly FINISHED with trying to use Facebook’s VODPOD application. Apparently it only works if one has only ONE pod. I have seven and there was no way to get the pod I wanted to show. So, I created an entirely new VODPOD account with only one pod, uploaded my videos to it, and VODPOD at Facebook will still only show the unwanted POD from my “old” VODPOD account, even though I am signed into VODPOD with my new account and new password.
The POD at VODPOD that I wanted to share is already posted here at this blog on the right hand side. I tell you, I see no reason to bother with that Facebook thingy, if you already have a blog, unless you are seeking new Internet friends. Of course, I can only display one POD here at my “Vanishing Memories” blog, but at least I can specify which one to display, unlike at Facebook.
If you want to connect with me at Facebook, the link is here on the right too. If you would like to see my POD at VODPOD of Appalachian Music and Dance, here it is: http://neddy.vodpod.com/ .
In July of this year, Captain Cliff and I found ourselves travelling along that “Highway 66″ heading down to Aquia, Virginia as I wanted to try and find the Old Concord Cemetery. Now don’t anyone tell me that you cannot get there from Highway 66, as I did it. I found the old burying ground, however there were no visible names on the ancient markers. On the way home, I stopped at the Crucifix Monument to snap some pictures and learn a bit of local history about the area of Virginia that my forebears settled in the 1630s. They were cousins to the BRENTS.
In the early seventeenth century, the Catholic BRENT family had left Gloucestershire, England for the New World, where they settled in Maryland. When the BRENTS were colonizing Maryland, Colonel Giles BRENT had done as did John ROLFE of Virginia who had married an Indian princess at Jamestown. BRENT’s bride was a 12-year-old student or ward of his spinster sister Margaret BRENT, who was operating a school for the Piscataway children. When Giles BRENT claimed almost all the land of the Maryland Colony due to his marriage to the Piscataway chief’s daughter, he got himself, and his BRENT sisters, into a dangerous situation with the Lord Baltimore government. The BRENTS were forced to cross the river and live in Virginia.
Colonel Giles BRENT and his spinster sisters, Mary and Margaret BRENT, Catholics all, were allowed safety in Protestant English Virginia, whereas in Catholic Maryland, Colonel BRENT was in grave danger of losing his life. They settled at the Colony of BRENTON, at Aquia, Virginia, in the mid 1600s. This was the first Catholic settlement in English Virginia.
Margaret BRENT was America’s first suffragette, but few have ever heard of her. She was an outstanding, accomplished women. She acted as Lord Baltimore’s attorney, and in fact was probably running the government of the colony. She was able to own property, because she never married, and she even demanded the right to vote. It was denied of course, but the Marylanders did bestow upon her the title of “Gentleman” Margaret BRENT. After the move to Virginia, she seemed never quite so powerful, probably because of her “out of favor” Catholic religion.
The bronze plaque pictured is at the Crucifix Monument on the east side of Jefferson Davis Highway, at Telegraph Road, in Aquia, Virginia.
Only A Paper Dog
Captain Cliff and I took a leisurely drive along the back roads of Stafford County. One thing I will not soon forget were the dogs. Dogs, Dogs Everywhere! Big Dogs. Barking Dogs. Car chasing dogs. This was the least scary dog of all, as he was only a “Paper Dog.”
“A country without a patent office and good patent laws was just a crab, and couldn’t travel any way but sideways or backways.” ~~The Connecticut Yankee
I have just finished an audio reading of Mark Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” from John Greenman at Librivox.org.
Having patent attorneys amongst my descendants, I was quite captivated by the Connecticut Yankee’s valuation of patents. As soon as he had obtained rank of importance in Camelot, the Yankee wrote:
“The first thing you want in a new country, is a patent office; then work up your school system; and after that, out with your paper.”
“the very first official thing I did, in my administration — and it was on the very first day of it, too — was to start a patent office; for I knew that a country without a patent office and good patent laws was just a crab, and couldn’t travel any way but sideways or backways.”
I so enjoyed Mr. Greenman’s audio presentation that I sent his reading of “Tom Sawyer” to my grandson. Now I also have been captivated by listening to Tom’s Adventures on my computer: http://www.archive.org/details/tom_sawyer_librivox.
See my “FEED” button at the top right hand side? It is a bit difficult for a Granny to understand and keep track of, but it makes keeping up with the Internet a bit easier. It is like having your favorite magazine delivered to your house, instead of you having to go down to the drug store to buy it.
account.
