Happy Valentine's Day to my Panoramio friends

Palmina Moore, on February 14, said:

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY TO YOU ALL!!

Hugs & Kisses,

Palmina

Rafal Ociepka, on February 14, said:

:-) Happy Valentine's Day to you too, Palmina :-)

Rafal

Billy B@rk, on February 14, said:

Beautiful flower Palmina. I love the water drops on it. Happy Valentine’s Day to you too. Did you & Kevin do anything special…anything you can tell everyone about? ;)

©junebug, on February 14, said:

What a lovely flower, Palmina! I love the water droplets! Hope you had a wonderful Valentine's Day! Greetings, Anne

Marilyn Whiteley, on February 14, said:

What a lovely, delicate flower! I hope you had a special day. Greetings, Marilyn

Palmina Moore, on February 16, said:

Rafal Thank you. I looked at your wonderful Valentine greeting too. It's lovely!

Billy Kevin is the most romantic man in the world.....NOT!!!! He came in from work, had something to eat and went to bed. He had been up since midnight and didn't get in from work 'til 6 mind you, so it was o.k. and besides.... I'll get at least three weeks of guilt from it! LOL No seriously, I got a lovely bunch of roses sent to work. I Think they were from Kevin LOL

George thank you,

Anne thank you also. It is a rose of some kind - smells very nice. I took it a while ago during a rain shower.

Thank you Marilyn. I did it was nice.

Jenper It is a lovely day isn't it for romantics all over the world.

Paul eeh lad you a charmer! I hope you had a good day pet

Thanks to you all. I hope you all had a wonderful St. Valentine's day.

Love

Palmina

Juanjo Hidalgo, on February 16, said:

¡Very good shot Palmina! One macro impossible for others, for me.

Greetings, Juanjo

©Toodleberry, on February 16, said:

Happy Belated VD to you too Palmina.

Beautiful focus.

Cheers.

Oh unfortunately I will not be going to that wedding of Sydneysiders. Taking a 10 week class in digital photography, and I'd have to miss at least 3 classes. That would be like throwing $300 into a sewer and I couldn't go to Australia for only a week. By the time I got over the jetlag I would be home already. But I will get there one of these days.

Thanks for your extended hospitality.

Chris

Palmina Moore, on February 17, said:

Thank you Juanjo.

Toodleberry sorry you aren't going to get over for the wedding. One week just isn't enough to justify the travel is it. I hope your lessons go well. I'm hoping to do a course in Photoshop when I have the money. Any time you do get down under, you'll always have somewhere to stay.

Palmina

©Toodleberry, on February 17, said:

Palmina,

You are absolutely so kind. I'd love to see your beautiful Australia. I was so disappointed that I didn't schedule well, but yes one week is not enough. I am not one to travel while I travel; I like to see as much as I can in one area and forfeit seeing everywhere else, althought I would like to see the York Peninsula and the Great Barrier Reef, but Melbourne and Sydney would be enough for a first visit. I still have not learned Photoshop either, but my class required Adobe's Lightroom. You can't manipulate like in Photoshop but it is great for cataloguing and developing is quicker I am told than Photoshop. Today I am learning how to use Photo Mechanic which seems like an equally useful program to catalogue (captions and metadata). Lightroom is cheaper than Ps and P. M. is cheaper than Lr. If you come back to Brooklyn, you, my dear, have a place to stay with your hairy puff ball. ;} It would be a blow-up mattress as I only have a one bedroom apt.

Cheers (lady who jumps out of planes),

Chris

Palmina Moore, on February 23, said:

Hi Chris Sorry it's taken a while to reply. Panoramio has been playing up a bit and although I got an email with your comments, it's only just yesterday that the comment has appeared on screen. It's a pity that you're not going to make it over but whenever you come, the offer is still there. You could spend 4 weeks and not see everything in Melbourne and the same could be said for Sydney. You'll still have to be prepared for travel though as everything is so spread out here. It's about the same distance from Melbourne to Sydney as it is from New York to Charlotte N.C. The time it takes though seems different. I don't have any experience of driving in the U.S.A. but I assume it is like England because a lot of it is built up. I much prefer Melbonre to Syndney and Victoria to N.S.W.but maybe I'm just biased.

I haven't heard about Lightroom, I'll have to have a look at it. I'm really a dodo when it comes to technology (I need a 10 year old to teach me, I think!) I can just about turn on the computer. I'm sure so many shot's that I've deleted would've been o.k. with just a bit of tweaking but they are relegated 'cause I don't know how to do it.

Thank you for your very kind return offer. It wouldn't matter if we slept in a cardboard box - 'cause we'd be in NEW YORK!!!! It would be a thrill! When we were there, it was just for a flying visit, a stop over and couldn't see anything - we went up to the top of the Empire State building as the rationale was if we can't get there, at least we might be able to see it. I'd always wanted to see Liberty but only got a glance as we drove to the airport in Newark. I'm afraid when we booked the holiday, we fell into the hype of the movies and the T.V. thought that New York wasn't somewhere we would like to spend too much time. We chose L.A. instead....big mistake. I have never been so disappointed as when I saw Hollywood. The Chinese theatre, somewhere I'd longed to see was so much of a disappointment that I cried. What a horrible, dirty place! (I'm sorry to any Hollywood natives out there, but it doesn't match the build up one always gets) Yet the day we did spend in New York was wonderful, everyone was so friendly and helpful. Boy did we make the wrong choice! Still.....lesson learned.

Best wishes, Palmina

©Toodleberry, on February 24, said:

Hello Ms. Moore, I am in no rush. We all have lives outside this Panoramio-thing. Measuring with my finger on my globe, your estimation is right comparing NYC's distance to Charlotte with Melbourne's to Sydney. I'm sure Sydneysiders are biased to their region. Aren't we all. I prefer NY State to New Jersey, mostly because I don't like their highway system and their signs are not user friendly to me. But one of my favorite bands, Yo La Tengo, come from Hoboken, NJ (think also Sinatra, Nancy and her dad). Jersey has a lot to offer in comedy and music (exception Jon Bon Jovi). Southern Jersey feels the same way about NY. Lightroom is far better to me than iPhoto. iPhoto's organizing is so bizarre. Lr's is more comprehensible. (Oo I just heard that ABBA has asked John McCain {Republican contender}) or McCranky to stop using their songs. Too funny. I have never been to LA as an adult, so I can't speak well or badly of the city. I was an impressed 5 year old when I saw Judy Garland's hand imprints. I kind of remember Grauman's Chinese Theater. I would like to visit it though because it is a true American city, a 20th Century city, whereas NY is more 19th Century urban. We don't need cars here, they do. LA, I'm told, you really need to know someone to show you where to go to get the fullness of what it has to offer. When I meet up with friends who have moved there from NY, they are amazed at how expensive it has become in such a short amount of time here. One was amazed that his old dance studio on the Bowery, which was where restauranteurs would buy kitchen equipment (sort of a kitchen equip. rowe), is now a restaurant he could never afford. LA, I'm told, is quite affordable and still a very creative city. NYC unfortunately has been lacking in that. I think because it has become richer and Americans who would never have moved here in the past are moving here because of the mall-ish quality it's become. It's the first time in its history where young transplants are moving to the outer boroughs without reluctance. Don't get me wrong I love my city, but it's been disappointing me lately. When I'm in the city I feel like a tourist because all the things I knew have almost disappeared, but that's what NY does. It's a shape-shifter. One of our historians, Luc Sante (wrote Low Life a history of the Bowery) moved to Kingston, NY because he couldn't handle what many of us are feeling, which he coined Angry Nostalgia, and as he moved he said, "Let them turn NY into Beijing!" I call it the New Houston because everywhere I go there's a new bank with names that almost sound like they came from the Soviet Union, like Sovereign Bank. All in all, as Paris was the city of the 19th Century, New York the 20th, I think we are passing the torch to either another city, maybe Istanbul or maybe no city at all but the internet. Kind of interesting. This isn't a phenomenon NY is only feeling, but many cities. I hear from Denverites (demonym unsure?) that they feel the same. Americans have fallen in love with the inner city, and out with the suburbs. I think suburban-chic may be on its way. Perhaps? Not meaning to disparage because it is a city that deserves a good amount of time. I've only been in the Empire SB twice and never been to the top of Liberty (class mother in 4th grade couldn't make it, so we salmoned our way down the current of tourists). Brooklyn and Queens are now getting more attention than Manihatti. Good books: Forever by Pete Hamill (takes you from 1740s Ireland [outside of Belfast] to Sept. 11, 2001). You'll go through the voyage over to Manhattan, the insurgency of the American Revolution, the Draft Riots, the Civil War, etc. to the 11th. All written as an historical novel. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris, which is hillarious, will explain the new changes here. I would love to go to the fictional Porpoise Spit in Australia, where Muriel from Muriel's Wedding came from. Love both Rachel Griffith and Toni Collette (shape-shifter). One place you should see in Brooklyn is Green-wood Cemetery on top of the highest point of Long Island is a statue of Minerva who waves to Lady Liberty. The cemetery also has year round monk parrots from South America who settled in the Gothic Revival spires of the entrance gate. They settled here in the 60s when they were stow-aways on a freight plane. I am a bad editor as you can see.

Cheers from the City that has gone to sleep ;p

Chris

Palmina Moore, on February 25, said:

Hi Chris Thanks for the lovely response. I know exactly what you mean about the cities changing. My parents say I would never recognise Newcastle (my home town in England) anymore) The once glorious shipyards that straddled the Tyne are gone and in their place are new modern apartment blocks where you have to be very rich to be able to afford one. The old terraced streets are all but gone. I know Newcastle was a very industrial, working class place and it some respects needed to be brought into the modern world but not at the coat of wiping out all the heritage. Hell....I lived in a terrace house with an outside loo for the first 12 years of my life. A house where the coal man used to deliver the coal and tip it into the coal house in the yard. Still I much preferred the community feel that was then. Or do we really see the past through rose coloured glasses? I wonder.

Melbourne is now joining the 21st Century run. All the docklands have been taken down, all the factories that were along the river are gone and again, tower blocks gone up in there place. A lot of the old character is being replaced with trendy apartments, far out of the reach of 'normal' people. I guess for generations every new one has not been happy with the way their memories are being tampered with and we all just learn to live with it.

You would certainly still find a "Porpoise Spit" in Australia. Some of the old country towns still move along at their own speed and to hell with the modern. Take "Woods Point" where the photo's of the old service station are taken, chickens in the street and everyone moving at their slow pace. It's a breath of fresh air.

My view of one of my favourite cities to visit was shaped by a novel and it's sequels by Howard Fast - The Immigrants, about early San Francisco. I think when I go there a little part of me will still expect some part of that town to be present.

I'll keep an eye out for the books you mention. I'm not a huge fan, but Catherine Cookson used to write a good few books about the North East of England in early days. (A lot of them are like romance things, but if you get beyond that, they aren't too bad a history lesson)

Take care, Palmina