Great Square Inches

I hate public radio pledge drives so much that I won't be having the radio on much this week, but I'm making an exception for The Midnight Special.  Rich Warren just proved why, spoofing the pledge drive by playing a couple of comedy cuts about the thank-you gifts that you can't actually get with your pledge.  The first one was a gag that almost made me fall out of my chair, an old cut by someone named
Bob Conrad.  It begins by giving this great pitch about how we invented the condensed book to make great literature more accessible to busy people, and abridged audio recordings, and such.  And then it goes on to offer the next version of this idea:  Great Square Inches In Art.  That's right, a collection of reproductions of famous details of famous art.  Mona Lisa's smile, God's finger in The Creation of Adam from the Sistine Chapel, the pitchfork from American Gothic, etc.

Maybe it's funnier because I'm in the process of producing a photo post of what I did yesterday, an important part of which is cropping the photos so that the image I'll put on-line can have enough detail to be interesting without taking a week for me to upload, because everybody else has broadband but I still don't.  And it probably loses so much from my description that you're now scratching your head wondering what I've been smoking, but it was so funny I had to post about it.

Heron Park, part 1

birder2 has been telling me about this great place for birdwatching, just a few miles from my house, where the Great Blue Herons have a colony of nests, for a couple of years.  But the road to the place has been under construction and it's been more or less impossible to get there.  The construction is finished, though, and she finally took me there.  For my own reference, and perhaps of interest to other people reading this, you get there by taking Henning Road north from US 150 (just east of the M.L.King exit on I-74) past the entrance to Kennekuck Cove County Park, take the first right (2300 N), then the first left, and then after a mile or so, right on West Newell Road, following the sign to Heron Park.  (I believe West Newell Road can also be reached from the other side, from Illinois Rt. 1, but that involves going through Danville.

( pictures of the facilities at Heron Park )

Heron Park, part 2

The rest of this set of pictures will be of various birds that I photographed.

( click for a bunch of bird pictures! )

The astute reader will notice that, even though at the beginning I mentioned that the reason for this park was a breeding colony of herons, I haven't shown any heron nests or baby herons.  I do have some, and some other cool stuff too, but those are waiting for the next installment of this report, when we proceed Across the Road.  Because if I stay up another couple of hours working on this tonight, I will pay for it tomorrow when my alarm goes off at 6 for me to go take care of tigers.  Now it's time for a quick check of email and the friend's page, and to sleep.

EDIT: I had the image size tags wrong on the first red-wing picture, so it was in ThinVision. Take another look, if you care.