At the 2009-2010 Ranger's season opener against the Ottawa Senators, at the world's most famous arena, I heard a few things that stuck out in mind as being rude, stupid, and completely unnecessary.
     
Now, everybody who frequently goes the Garden to watch the greatest hockey team on earth play, knows that things are shouted from the mouths of fans that would make the Sopranos blush.  Most of these obsceneties are directed at the refs, the opposing team, Michael Rosival, and Denis Potvin.  These are perfectly fine with me and I have no beef with these comments.  Many of them come from my own mouth.


What I do find mildly offensive is when John Amirante is singing the Canadian national anthem, and people start to boo.  I will say that 99.8% of the fans are not guilty of this, but 2 guys in my section are.  Also, screaming out "socialized medicine" during 'Oh Canada' isn't really insulting to the people receiving free health care.  Another thing that made these guys completely stupid was when they yelled out "go back to where you speak French," or something like that.  OK, first of all, the only current NHL team in Canada that plays where they speak French is the Montreal Canadians.  In Ottawa, they speak English.  The same goes for Toronto, Edmonton, and Calgary.  By the way, do Daniel Alffredson and Alexi Kovalev speak French?  Yes, the Ottawa Senators suck, but the country that invented the sport that you are paying a lot of money to see, doesn't and it gives the citizens of the United States a bad name when a few retards from New Jersey think they are being funny.  


The same two guys continued their juvenile behavior when play started by screaming "shoot the puck" every time a Ranger touched the puck, even when the Rangers were in their own defensive zone.  I'm shocked they didn't yell it when Henrik skated around into the trapezoid to stop the rolling puck.

In any case, all in all the season opener was fun and exciting with the New York Rangers beating the Senators 5-2.  

 

Outside the station, the clock in front of the Grand Central facade facing 42nd Street contains the world's largest example of Tiffany glass and is surrounded by sculptures carved by the John Donnelly Company of:  Minerva, Hercules, and Mercury. For the terminal building, French sculptor Jules-Felix Coutan created what was at the time of its unveiling (1914) considered to be the largest sculptural group in the world. It was 48 feet high, the clock in the center having a circumference of 13 feet.

As I was coming back from Connecticut on a ferry traveling through the calm waters of the Long Island Sound, we passed a lighthouse. The rays of sunlight burst through the dark clouds as we approached Orient Point as if it were showing us our destination. This was taken with my wife's point and shoot camera because I had left my big Pentax behind. Sometimes a great photo means getting lucky and being in the right place at the right time.

These barrels were on the patio of Theodore Roosevelt's house on Sagamore Hill in Oyster Bay, Long Island. I thought they made a nice simple still life, so I took them from a few different angles and chose this one as my favorite. The lighting effect that you see on the red brick wall was actually finessed in photoshop to make the photo visually more interesting.

For those of you who have never visited Sagamore Hill, you should! Located on Long Island's north shore in Nassau County, Teddy's house is a National Park and historical museum. They give very interesting tours and the grounds are beautiful and ripe with photo opportunities. If you go on the right day, President Roosevelt himself might even give a speech on his back porch. Sagamore Hill was known as his "Summer White House."