Naples, southwest Florida. Choppy waters on the Gulf of Mexico. Paul Goldfinger photo. Click to enlarge.
Naples is a fabulous international city in southwest Florida.
The downtown is elegant with beautiful shops and restaurants. Yet, despite attracting tourists, the beaches are open and uncrowded. That’s because there is plenty of parking and no mega events to force the residents into their homes such as happens in Ocean Grove and continues into September and beyond.
This photograph is from March, peak season for southern Florida.
Paul holds an alligator. It feels like a chicken. Eileen Goldfinger photo 2014.
By Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger.net
They say that you should never smile at a crocodile, but this one smiled at me, so what the heck avenue should I do? If you go to the Everglades, you can get to meet crocs. We saw one munching on a large anhinga (bird.)
This little guy seemed harmless enough, although I held him/her only long enough to get this photo.
And, from Peter Pan:
“Never smile at a crocodile
No, you can’t get friendly with a crocodile
Don’t be taken in by his welcome grin
He’s imagining how well you’d fit within his skin
Never smile at a crocodile
Never tip your hat and stop to talk awhile
Never run, walk away, say good-night, not good-day
Clear the aisle but never smile at Mister Crocodile.”
OK, here’s a joke (get ready for special instructions:) An elephant is drinking in the river. A crocodile swims over and bites off the elephant’s trunk. The elephant looks down and says (pinch your nose) , “Very funny, very funny.”
I taught my grandson Noah this joke—it was his first joke.
Everglade’s air-boat. Takes tourists on a wild ride through the Everglades Wilderness Waterway. Paul Goldfinger photo.
Riding around the Everglades in an air-boat driven by a local denizen, you can get close to a crocodile. (I guess it could be an alligator…not sure) I think the guides have a deal with the neighborhood crocs who secretly get pieces of meat to come near the boat.
Hello. What’s that ticking sound? This one came to the boat looking for spare change. He wanted to go for coffee. I suggested Starbucks. Paul Goldfinger photo.
La Creperia and Café. Tampa, Florida. Paul Goldfinger photo. Click once to enlarge. 2018.
JOSEPHINE BAKER “Nuit d’Alger”
And below is a link to another Josephine Baker song called “I Have Two Loves.” The scene is Paris, and that is a very Parisienne thing to do, and tres dangeroux.
Naples, Florida. 2015. By Paul Goldfinger. Click once to enlarge.
SIMPLY RED “Every Time We Say Goodbye” from his album Simplified
This is one of my all time favorite songs. Words and music by Cole Porter for a stage show in 1944.
The lyrics are appreciated viscerally and down to your soul. One of the cleverest lyric lines in music occurs when it goes, “There’s no love song finer, but how strange the change from major to minor, every time we say goodbye.”
If you listen carefully you might be able to appreciate the change in chord progression during that line from A flat major to A flat minor—a brilliant musical moment where the music and lyrics match exactly and the meaning is deepened by the chord change.
Paul Goldfinger photograph. Captiva Island. Florida. Pirates once roamed here. Click on image to enlarge. Tri-X Collection.
“All the Things You Are.” Live with Ken Peplowski (clarinet) and Friends, honoring Benny Goodman (clarinetist and orchestra leader.). Jerome Kern wrote the music, and the words are by Oscar Hammerstein II.
Jazz musicians love this classic. Charlie Parker said that this song had his favorite lyrics. He used to call it “YATAG” which is an acronym for the lines “you are the angel glow” in the “B” part of the tune.
“You are the promised kiss of springtime That makes the lonely winter seem long. You are the breathless hush of evening That trembles on the brink of a lovely song. You are the angel glow that lights the star, The dearest things I know are what you are. Someday my happy arms will hold you, And someday I’ll know that moment divine When all the things you are, are mine.”
LANA DEL REY “Blue Velvet.” This song is from 1950, and Tony Bennett was the first to have a hit with it. Lana Del Rey is a currently active recording star who made this version first in 2012, and it was well received.
David Lynch, who made the movie of the same name, liked it very much. Del Rey is a glamorous star who wore an off -the-rack dress from the mall to the Grammy Awards.
The version of Blue Velvet below is from her album Born to Die–the Paradise Edition (2018)
Her latest album was nominated but did not win at the 2020 Grammys. It is very good.
