Snow Geese - Chen caerulescens - this is about two-thirds of a flock of several hundred I saw on St. Patrick's Day in Perry Township.

 
Allentown skyline - the tall building with the flag on top is the headquarters of Pennsylvania Power and Light Company.

 
Church spires reach toward heaven in Allentown.

 
War Memorial to the northern victims of Mr. Lincoln's War on the square in Easton. Here we see the south face of the monument which bears the names of three of the larger horrors of the war - Antietam, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville - as well as the names of two of the great butchers and arsonists of the period - Sherman and Sheridan - men who were unexcelled in the murder of women and children of all races. I call the men whose sacrifices are memorialized here victims because they were, for the most part, ignorant of the true causes for which they were asked to kill and to die.

 
A reminder of a bygone era of prosperity in Easton, Pennsylvania.

 
The Lehigh River - looking downstream from the PA-33 bridge near Freemansburg - was once a major transportation artery. Before the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company built the canal along the left bank of the river, anthracite coal producers near Mauch Chunk had to wait for periods of high water to float arks of coal as far as Philadelphia via the Delaware. Even so, arks often foundered on the rocks around Bethlehem where locals would sometimes scavenge coal from the riverbed at low water before the owners could reclaim it.

 
Architectural details like those seen on this older home in Macungie, Pennsylvania are not seen even on relatively expensive homes today. It amazes me that people seem willing to pay as much as a half million dollars for an overgrown salt box. But take a close look at the photo below to see how impressive a facade like this can be with a decent coat of paint and some flair.

 
Paint makes the house the way clothes make the man. Here is the nearly identical house to the one above, also on East Main Street in Macungie. See how much difference fresh paint and some painted on flourishes over the windows make in its appearance.

 

 

Like snow-capped peaks are these clouds behind the Blue Mountain in our brief interval of sunshine on Saturday afternoon.

 

Mist rises from the Maiden Creek swollen by heavy rain overnight and into the midday on Saturday and shortly before before a late afternoon thunderstorm added yet more to our recent superfluity of fluid precipitation.

 
Skunk and possum photos like this and the one below are getting better, I think. I have refined my technique for taking flash photos at night through glass. By placing some opaque surface flush with the glass and above the lens, most of the reflected glare from the window misses the lens. The flash does reflect a good deal off the glass which blinds me for a moment if I forget to close my eyes when I trip the shutter. The larger problem is there really is not enough light for accurate manual focus.

 
Possum drenched by rain looks a bit like a drowned rat. Heavy rain and high winds kept the cats in hiding somewhere, but the wild customers kept coming for free food.

 
St. John's UCC in Whitehall has one of the tallest steeples I've ever seen on a relatively small church. This is particularly noteworthy since such architectural exuberance is rather rare for congregations originating among the ethnic Germans of this area. As I have mentioned before, I think, there is not such a sharp distinction between plain and worldly as might be thought by most people whose knowledge of Pennsylvania religious traditions is no deeper than having seen the film Witness. Even among the Amish there is a range of plainness from those who view zippered clothing as worldly to those who can tolerate a telephone in the barn or workshop - for business use only - as plain. There are Mennonites who are nearly as plain as the Amish in their dress but drive cars; the more conservative among them painting over all the chrome in some dark color and earning the nickname "black bumper" Mennonites. And then there are the ELCA Lutherans and UCC who are more thoroughly modern in their personal lives but whose churches tend to simplicity in ornamentation as compared to Catholics and Episcopalians.

 

Interstate commerce in action at the former stone quarry at Coplay, now the home of "clean fill" from New York City and environs. The material in question is trucked in from about two hours away because it does not qualify as "clean fill" by the environmental rules of New York or New Jersey where it would have to go to a landfill permitted to handle more hazardous materials. The rules make such facilities very expensive so they have to charge high "tipping fees." As a "bewneficial use" in Pennsylvania - filling in old quarries like this one and worked out strip mines in the coal regions farther north and west, the costs of regulatory compliance are much less. The result is that "tipping fees" in Pennsylvania are low enough to offset the greater transportation expense. And, a few years from now, this real estate located a few minutes north of Allentown will be very valuable as a site for housing, offices or industry.

 

A warm day in early March was a good time to lay in the grass with noting to do but soak up the sunshine ... and yawn.

 
Mourning Dove - Zenaida macroura - perched atop the corn crib in the soft light of early morning. The association of doves with romance is reflected in the Latin name. Zenaide was a princess of Naples and wife of the naturalist Charles-Lucien Bonaparte.

 

House Sparrows - Passer domesticus - are known for communal nesting, these three are part of the colony inhabiting an old corn crib in the backyard. Also known as English Sparrows, they were introduced into Brooklyn in the late 1800s to reduce insect damage to crops. This must have been a government program because it turns out they are primarily vegetarian and not very useful for insect control. They have, however, proven to be very effective at displacing native bird species over a wide swath of North America.

 
Furball demonstrates another way to use my vehicle for amusement. After two days of false spring, we had about three inches of snow overnight Friday which promptly melted in the sun on Saturday. Furball saw the snow sliding in clumps down the side of the van and decided to attack the clumps as they came in range.

 
Striped Skunk - Mephitis mephitis - At last an opportunity came to get some decent shots of a skunk without too much risk of getting sprayed. This night the cat food dish was empty and it was rooting around in the snow looking for kibble that had been spilled. The glitter of the flash striking the snow was a bonus.

 
Virginia Opossum - Didelphis virginiana - This is the best of a number of exceedingly poor photos of possums at my door. They come in the middle of the night to raid the cat food but hide under the stairs as soon as I try to open the storm door; and shooting with a flash through glass yields very unsatisfactory results. I was inclined to view them as purely a nuisance at first. But, in reading about them, I found that they are immune to the venom of pit vipers and prey on snakes. So, maybe it's worthwhile to have them around instead of copperheads and rattlers.