My great grandfather, David Wallace, born 1860.

Another shot of Maia’s great great great grandfather, Leslie Lickley. Born 1840. Died 1910.

This is my great great grandmother, Mary Lickley (née Robertson). She was married to Leslie Lickley.

I believe she was born 1841 and died 1907. Married 1859.

My Great Great Grandfather Peter Wallace (my father’s mother’s father’s father). Born 1827. This is a very primitive photograph, and much faded. This scan brings out pretty much all the retrievable information.

This was the view from my rear porch a few weeks back on one misty morning.

To be honest, I could keep milking my Ethiopia photographs for several years’ worth of Wordless Wednesday posts. This one is of some kids who were fishing off a pier in Awassa, not far from from the motel (more like a hostel) where we were staying. Our driver was very wary about us going for unescorted walks, but we always felt completely safe in Ethiopia. The people there are very friendly and respectful and very few people beg, with the exception of the children. The kids, to their credit, usually start by asking for pens, which they need for school. Next time I go back to Ethiopia I’m going to buy a big box of pens locally so that I can hand them out. Many of the children know a little English — enough to ask for a pen, and maybe to explain that they are very poor and need money. But they were no trouble — we just explained that we’d left our money at the hotel and they didn’t hassle us.

These kids were fishing in the rather unsavory-looking waters of Lake Awassa, but they were very happy to take a break and pose. Considering that most of them have never seen their own picture before, they’re remarkably good models!

I thought about posting a nice jolly sunflower or some lively kids playing in Ethiopia, but then I remembered it’s Halloween and I thought this rather gruesome image might be most appropriate.

My parents and I had just got back from a whale watch in the Gulf of Maine a couple of weeks back, and as our boat pulled into Rye Harbor a few people started pointing towards the dock. It was the shark, which was hanging from a crane by its tail, that was drawing their attention.

I’ve had my parents visiting for three weeks and because I was chauffeuring them around I didn’t have much time for blogging. But they left on Friday and I’m back!

This picture doesn’t need much introduction. It was a little out of focus when I took it so I used Picassa to sharpen the edges and I also bumped up the saturation for effect.

As usual, if you want to see a bigger version, click on the pic.

This is a picture of some kids I photographed in Ethiopia. This was taken in a small town south of Awassa, where another couple, Stacey and Eric, were meeting the surviving family of the two girls they were adopting. People in Ethiopia generally are very leery about getting their pictures taken. The children are an exception! Even kids who’ve never seen their picture before are natural posers!

Yeah, yeah. I know I’m early. But I was late last week so I’m making sure I’m on time.

Anyway…

Twilight. Rocking boat. Low light levels. Long lens. No tripod.

It can only add up to one thing. Impressionism!

Click on the image for a larger version.

Happy Wordless Wednesday! (If you’re wondering why there are words in this post it’s because the home page format doesn’t really favor purely pictorial posts).

This is a stained glass window from the same monastery that last week’s beetle and the week before’s priest hail from.

If you click on the image you can see a larger version.

This one’s a beetle I shot at the same church I mentioned in the last Wordless Wednesday post. He was a handsome fellow.

You can click on the image to see a full-size shot.

This was taken on a Konica-Minolta DiMage Z3, which had a fantastic zoom and macro capacity, and which I was sorry to lose when my car got flooded a few weeks after this picture was taken.

My blog seems mostly to be wordless these days! Once I clear a backlog of work that built up over the summer I plan to get back to ranting more regularly, but for now it’s nice to put something more visual out there. This pic is an Ethiopian Orthodox priest at Debre Libanos, a couple of hours north of Addis Ababa.

Click on the image to see the full-size version.