A New Year

 I hope the new year will be an outstanding one for you.

Oenoke Ridge

 

Oenoke Ridge (Connecticut Route 124) is a high end avenue leading out of New Canaan's center westward into New York State.  There are many stunning houses, but they are generally far apart without easy places to park.  I will come back another time.

Wonka and the Prospector

 After a sleepover for the granddaughters, we went to see Wonka at the Prospector Theater.

Wonka is a new movie that is a prequel to the Roald Dahl book and movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  The girls' verdict is that the movie is great.

The Prospector is a wonderful theater with multiple movie screens.  It opened in 2014 when rescued from demolition by Valerie Jensen, a visionary who saw the theater as a way of providing paid employment for adults with disabilities.  (This is Valerie, whom I spotted in the lobby after the show.)

At least 75 percent of the Prospector's employees self-identify as disabled.  They are called "Prospects,"  they are paid for working at the Prospector, and they "Sparkle."  

This artwork -- the message "Sparkle On" constructed with colorful buttons -- recalls a noted lawsuit against the State of Rhode Island for having unpaid disabled adults spend days sorting buttons into containers, then emptying the containers so the disabled adults would do it again the next day.

West Main Street

 The Carpenter house drew me to Main Street, Mt. Kisco.  

Some of the house's neighbors are also impressive.

Carpenter House

It was a nice day, so I drove to Mt. Kisco, New York, to see the Carpenter House, an 1870s Victorian on West Main Street.  Its style has been described as Second Grand Empire.

Apart from its lovely architecture, the house is noted for two reasons.  It was the principal location for the 1980 movie "Ragtime."  Later in the 1980s the American Girl franchised based the home of the doll "Samantha Parkington"'s grandmother on this house.

For the curious, here is an article.

Ornaments

 

Friends have collected doll ornaments for decades.  They display them on their Christmas tree.

Merry Christmas!

 I hope the large bearded man and his team visited you last night!

Merry Christmas!

Main Street

 Main Street looks great all lit up as Christmas nears.

A realtor.

A salon.

A florist.

A jeweler and others.

Wow!

A family in our neighborhood puts on a brilliant light show at their home every Christmas season.

Each year, I wonder if they can do any more.  They did.

And this year their next door neighbor got in the spirit, too.  The competition is on!

Books on the Common

 Back in Connecticut.  

Books on the Common is a marvelous independent bookstore on Ridgefield's main street.  It got in the holiday spirit with good lights and greenery.

Victoria Park

 The residents of this Naples neighborhood go all out for Christmas decorations.

I had to see it again, but hurried photos from a car crawling along on crowded streets weren't easy. 

Golf Cart Parade

 We enjoyed a Christmas golf cart parade.

Penny and Lily.

Bob and Melanie, the first prize winners.

Victoria

 Love the umbrellas.

Great Egrets

 

I had a good day photographing great white egrets. 

Pepe Mar

 Mexican-born artist Pepe Mar now lives and works in Miami.  Mar's works are now exhibited at the Baker Museum in a room off the lobby of Artis-Naples.  Mars creates large, colorful pieces with figures created from clothes bought at thrift stores and paint.

The room is wonderfully colorful, with the red in Mars' works playing off against the huge Chihuly chandelier, and reflections on the polished marble floor.

 

A Quiet Moment

 Two security guards took advantage of a quiet time in the galleries to have a conversation.

Dawn's Forest

The lobby and a side room of Artis Naples hold a huge, white, three dimensional installation, Dawn's Forest, by Louise Nevelson.

The Face of Immokalee

The Face of Immokalee is a public art project of large black-and-white portraits of Immokalee residents.  It is hosted on a wall of the Baker Museum in Naples and on the walls and trucks of Lipman Farms in Immokalee.

 Immokalee is a farming community east of Naples.  It is the center of the region's agriculture industry and home to many immigrant and migrant families who work the fields that produce a large amount of the United States' fresh produce.

Immokalee is at the base of our food chain and is among the most economically disadvantaged towns in Florida, yet it is ironically located within one of the wealthiest counties in the United States.

The portrait photographer Michelle Tricca envisions The Face of Immokalee as a way to champion this agricultural community.  Photoshoots were conducted between 2019 and 2023 with Immokalee residents, including farmworkers, students, community leaders, athletes and working professionals.

Michelle Tricca is a portrait photographer based in Naples and Cape Cod, Massachusetts. She has been awarded funding for her ongoing project The Face of Immokalee from the National Endowment for the Arts and from the Florida Department of State, Division of Arts and Culture.

Wandering - III

 Some more photos from wandering around my community.

A red-shouldered hawk posed atop a dead tree covered by vines.

A friend has planted lots of milkweed.

A female anhinga sits here most days.

This was earlier that day, the sunrise that greeted me above the 16th fairway.