Here we go with Flickr

My first thought as I was poring through images on Flickr was I have a long way to go if I ever want to be a professional photographer! I did try to take some classes while in grad school, but the class schedule clashed with my other classes. My then-fiance somewhat graciously allowed me to take his expensive camera to some of the gardens around Tallahassee. Too bad the thing was broken (not by me!), so I never did see if that (what I hoped to be a) supercool photo of a spider's web ever turned out.

Last night, my husband and I caught a few minutes of Rachael Ray's show that she did in Dublin, Ireland. Since I am half Irish-American and I got to spend some time in Dublin (not even close to enough though), I decided I was going to go look for some Dublin photos to post and talk about here. I looked at photo after photo. There were some gorgeous shots, but I did not see any of things I recognized from my brief time there. Then I thought, what about looking at photos of a place I do know? I want to see the beauty of a place I know so well in a whole new way, so I directed Flickr to my hometown: Albany, New York. I was not disappointed. There are some beautiful photos on there, and they brought back so many memories: the Tulip Festival, Washington Park, etc. (Note to Al: I did not see any photos of Price Chopper. Weird.) Anyway, I am going to attempt to get some photos into this post and tell you what they mean to me.

Ok, so this is the New York State Museum building. The museum is in on the bottom part. The upper floors are the New York State Library and New York State Archives and other offices. For the Sactown folks, this is to Capital District schoolkids what Sutter's Fort is to Sacramento schoolkids. We had a field trip there almost every year. Anyway, the middle part (above the arches) is where I spent the summer of 2000 for my library school internship. I dug around in mental health records from 1860 forward and compared sets kept at the hospitals and sets sent to Albany to determine if both need to be kept or not. I spent many a nice day eating lunch on the steps you see there and taking walks around the pool for exercise like many, many state workers.

This is the State Education building downtown. This is where my family would park every year for the St. Patrick's Day parade. You'd have to get there early, so we'd pack all sorts of sandwiches, chips, fruit, water, hot chocolate for the kids, and coffee for the grownups. We'd meet up with other family members, and the kids would literally run up and down the steps and around the columns for hours while the adults sat in the car, trying to stay warm and gossip until the parade began. The energy I had back then! The more artsy image of this building is not actually posting, so I will try again in another post.