New Jersey Color

Along the Delaware River, near Stockton, New Jersey.

Weather conditions this year seem to have prepared the way for one of the best seasonal viewing conditions in memory.

Within the last week, a metamorphosis of autumnal color from the trees and shrubs of northern New Jersey has resulted in living scenes of brilliant change for everyone to enjoy.

 

When prompted by such beauty, I’m unable to resist the urge to pick up a camera.  Both photos in this post were taken during the latter part of the afternoon when the sun’s light grows softer and makes it much easier to obtain a good shot.

 

Subsequent software processing of digitized images significantly helps to correct exposure mistakes made while shooting.  As most of you may already know, it’s almost impossible to record an image as accurately as the human eye sees it.

A Touch of Stealth

Against an uncamouflaged background, this mantis soaks in the sun.

Pretty-looking things are not always what they seem to be:  In this case, nature’s innocent-looking praying mantis fits the bill.
 
With a long and slender body, twig-like legs, a triangular head that can rotate 180° with its two large compound eyes; the beguiling appearance of this bug-eating little monster is very deceptive to humans
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The mantis gets its name from the way that it can place its forelegs together in a mock-praying position.  Even its formal name, Mantis Religiosa, attests to that.
 
But the mantis does not pray.  Au contraire, it preys, and it is very good at it.  When the mantis assumes its professed “praying” stance, it remains perfectly still, with no movements at all for what can amount to tens of minutes at a time, shifting its posture ever slightly to a different stealth position so that it can strike out, hold, and disable its target.

A Fictional Tale as Authentic as Reality

Richard North Patterson is one of my favorite writers.  Although he is technically a fictional novelist, some of his books are so close to reality that they nearly cancel out the imaginary nature of his tales.

One of Patterson's best, a real thriller.

“The Devil’s Light,” written in 2011, three years after one of America’s greatest crises, is a story of intrigue, deception and terrorism – a tale of cunning and espionage so realistic in its depiction of events that it becomes credible:  a nuclear attack upon . . . . Well, I don’t want to give away Patterson’s very intricate, can’t-put-down-the-book, spider web of a plot.

Patterson is not a mere weaver of stories.  Like many of his other books, this one is suffused with the result of in-depth research and prior consultation with prominent persons who have walked the talk.  His writing resonates with reality.

In some ways, he is a prophet – but then again, who listens to prophets?

Here are a few quotations from “The Devil’s Light,” thoughts ascribed to the book’s characters as the story swiftly progresses:

“As a nation we’re addicted to wishful thinking, staggering from crisis to crisis with the foresight of a two-year old.

Summer's End

The autumnal equinox, the last day of summer, marks the sun’s passage directly overhead at the equator, an event that will occur at precisely 10:29 p.m. eastern daylight time this evening, September 22.
 
Since warm, vacation-type weather in New Jersey usually ends around the end of August and, because Labor Day signals the onset of school, most people consider the summer to have come to an end by that time.

Don't come any closer!

But this year the warm temps persisted beyond that time, even way up north in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire where Pris and I vacationed and where, as late as the weekend of September 5^th, it was warm enough to swim comfortably in the waters of Lake Winnipesaukee – an occasion which I did not miss to take advantage of.

Even up there, nearly 400 miles from The Garden State, the warm weather persisted and rain stayed away except for one day during our stay.  As most of my faithful readers have come to know, I never miss the chance to shoot photos of opportunity, and will take advantage of any serendipitous occasion to put one of my cameras to work.

Pernicious Intolerance Continues in the Arabian Peninsula

In Saudi Arabia, a faux American ally whose only mutual interest with the West is the pumping of oil, a stark difference between our two ways of life came to the forefront a mere few days before tomorrow, the  thirteenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on America.

Just days ago, the International Business Times reported that Saudi Arabia’s Haia, the Arabic term for that nation’s religious police – officially known as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice – raided the private residence of a Christian Indian in the Saudi city of Khafji and arrested at least 27 Asian Christians who had met there for worship.