Penny

I am not motivated by any New Years eve or year-end theme, so I am going to keep on going with normal posts.

Penny teaches in a graduate education program at a local university.  Her fields are leadership in education and training teachers to work with diverse populations.  For several years, she has gone to Iceland to teach for a month or two at a time.  Iceland?

Happy New Year, everyone!

Janet

Janet was a lawyer specializing in family law, mainly estate planning and adoptions.  After she retired a few years ago, she wanted adventure.  So, she took an apartment in Paris and spent several months brushing up on her French.  Then, she went to China for a couple of years and taught English.  Now, Janet is halfway through a Peace Corps assignment in Ukraine, teaching English again.  But, she was able to come back to Hartford to be with her children and friends for the holidays!

Sisters of Saint Joseph

The convent of the Sisters of Saint Joseph is on a 177 acre property on Park Road in West Hartford, on the Hartford city line.  The Sisters have owned the property since 1898.  There is a large brick convent building and a chapel, but most of the acreage is undeveloped.

This fall the Sisters issued a request for proposals to buy and develop the property.  The town has very little undeveloped land, so this poses an opportunity as well as a risk.  I am one who thinks the property can be developed into something terrific.  We will see.

Back in Florida.  It was circuitous but I am not one to complain.  Have a great weekend, everyone.

More Snow

It snowed again overnight.  West Hartford's Town Hall had a classical look with a few inches on the ground.

I was supposed to fly back to Florida  last night, but the storm has wreaked havoc along the East Coast.  I will get back when I get back, but it is likely to be an ugly process.

Reality Check

When I show photographs of fine houses like the ones I showed yesterday, I sometimes get questions about whether everyone in greater Hartford lives like that.  No, they don't.  You usually see appealing houses here because they are the ones that attract my eye, or I am a snob, or both.


But, these houses on Arnoldale Road give me a good opportunity to show you the kind of modest houses that many middle class people in this area live in, right next door to a couple of finer houses.

Above you see them on Christmas morning and on the left you see them about 24 hours earlier.

Hartford Had a White Christmas!

OK, it was only about half an inch of snow, and it melted away by dinnertime.  But, my motto is that, so long as it is going to be cold in Connecticut, there might as well be some snow.

This is a medley of fine houses on the Hartford side of Prospect Avenue, taken early on Christmas day, before the snow had footprints. Hartford is on the east side of Prospect Avenue and West Hartford is on the west side.

Merry Christmas

Congregation anticipating last night's Christmas Eve service, Asylum Hill Congregational Church, Hartford.

The lead-glazed terracotta nativity scene on the left was crafted by Benedetto and Santi Buglioni in Florence, Italy, around 1520.  It is from the William Randolph Hearst Collection.  Currently it is in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where I photographed it with my iPhone in the summer of 2011.

Merry Christmas to all.