Summer Pictures, Connecticut II

Now that I have a digital camera and take 275 pictures every time I leave the house, rather than poring over them and picking out 10 "best" ones, I am experimenting with posting a random selection based on some number games of my own devising. Anything that is egregiously bad I don't include, but otherwise the sample should give a reasonable idea of the story I am trying to relate. One thing I notice is that compared to other people I almost never take restaurant/eating pictures, especially pictures of the food. One can easily overdo this, but sometimes I do find it of interest to see where other people go and what they are eating. A lot of people also take a lot of on-the-road shots, highways, signs, rest areas, which I also find I like a little of in a travel narrative, though I usually forget to take such pictures myself. This is all a roundabout way of explaining why this second batch of pictures is rather dull.



1. The Connecticut State Heroine, Prudence Crandall, and Her Student. Prudence Crandall ran a girls' school somewhere in Connecticut, I forget exactly what town, to which in 1833 she admitted a single black student, sending the local community into convulsions. When Crandall refused their demands that this student be put out of the school, she was briefly imprisoned. Shortly thereafter the school was shut down and Crandall ended up going to the Kansas/Nebraska area, never returning to Connecticut. Now she is the official state heroine there, which honor I do not think exists in every state. This monument is a very recent addition, supposedly the result of a campaign by the enlightened schoolchildren of the state, who objected to state hero Nathan Hale's having a fine statue of himself in the capitol building while his feminine counterpart had no such commemoration.

2. View of the Rotunda. This statue is called "The Genius of Connecticut". It is large and bronze and occupies the center of the building's rotunda. It is a replica of an older statue which used to stand atop the dome but was removed after being damaged in the hurricane of 1938 and melted down during World War II. There is evidently a plan to eventually put this statue on top of the dome as well; at the moment they can't afford it.

3. I believe this is a much smaller cast of the "Genius".

4. The Baby, Expressive. This is back at Devil's Hopyard, while everyone else was swimming.

5. Another View of the "Genius", With Some Architectural and Decorating Details. I like the small chandelier, the pointed doorway, the inlaid ceiling, and the gold leaf wallpaper pattern as a general rule.

6. This One Might be Overkill.

7. Chapman Falls, Devil's Hopyard State Park. Where the Sign Used to Be. I am guessing. It probably said "no swimming" on it, as I later found a much smaller no swimming sign with vertical letters attached to a tree. Lots of people were swimming in the falls.