Floral Decorating - Who Would Have Thought?

Hi All,

Who would have thought it? I'm writing about floral decorating and various and sundry topics that are associated with it!

Well, first...what exactly is floral decorating? From Wikipedia, comes this extensive and comprehensive definition of floral decorating.  Evidently floral decorating has a long and established history throughout the world. The Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romand and Chinese all practiced floral decorating.  See the Wikipedia entry for more information.

For an alternative definition and description of floral decoration, readers can click on this link from Encyclopedia Britannica!

And...readers can see this link - under Floristry - to learn more about floral decorating.

The internet is a wonderful place to meet people who share the same hobbies that you do.  In addition, there is a vast trove of 'how to' information on virtually any hobby you can think of.  Click on this link from MarthaStewart.com for an article entitled, '30 Floral Decorating Ideas'.  And, of course, it comes from the doyenne of domesticity - Martha Stewart. So it has to be good.

Another excellent resource is Better Homes and Gardens - this link is titled, '10 Flower Arranging Tips' and is very nicely organized.  And, too boot, the pictures are very nice!

Finally, this next link comes from a magazine called Real Simple - and it bills itself as 'Making Life Easier'.   The title of this entry is 'Decorating With Florals'.  The real takeway from this entry is the 1-5 list of decorating with florals. For example, item 3 is 'Florals can go anywhere'; item 4 is 'Mixing florals creates energy'...you get the idea - the entry is a quick look at how readers can user florals in a modern setting.

And finally, now that I've whetted your floral appetite, blog readers might want to attend the floral decorating class at Farmingdale Public Library on Thursday, June 19th at 7pm. The class is being led by Scott Lucas, Greenhouse Supervisor at Old Westbury Gardens and will be one hour long.  Attendeeds will be introduced to the craft of floral design using materials readily available fro myour garden or garden center.  Sounds like fun!  Don't miss it!

Regards,
Stu

Road Repairs - Winter Took a Toll on Nassau Roads

Hi All,

I just spotted this article on the Farmingdale Patch - always a good site to learn about local goings-on in Farmingdale - entitled 'Cuomo: 300 Miles of Road Repairs Planned For LI'.  One of the highlights of the article is that '...Hempstead Turnpike between the MSP and NY Route 110 in the towns of Hempstead and Oyster Bay, Nassau and Suffolk Counties' will be one of the many areas targeted for the road repair project.

And with that out of the way, lets go to the New York State Department of Transportation to look at their website in just a bit more detail!

Click on this link for the 'About NYSDOT' blurb that they have on their website. It is a good introduction to the 'who-what-when-where-why-how' of the NYSDOT.  There is an interesting link to the Interstate 50th Anniversary (happened in 2006) on this part of the site to boot.

From the DOT homepage users can click on a variety of links including Jobs, Commissioner, Forms, News & Events, Projects, Programs and Services, Safety and Webcasts.  There is also a very helpful 'How Do I?' link at the top right part of the homepage.  

Digging a bit deeper on the site yields a great deal of useful information.  For example, clicking on the 'Safety' link brings the user to another page that has links for Amber Alerts, Safety First For Kids, Safe Routes to School, Safe Summer Driving, Safe Winter Driving, Standard School Bus Safety Inspection Manual, Rail Safety Grade Crossings and Operation Lifesaver. 

Finally, at the top right part of the NYSDOT homepage are 8 graphics - each of which represents a mode of transportation.  Click on any of these links takes the users to another part of the NYSDOT website on the topic of Auto, Truck, Pedestrian, Bike, Rail, Bus, Waterway, or Aviation.

Some of the topics users can find include: NYS Rest Areas, License and Regulations for trucks, an interactive map to view on-road, off-road, shared trails, park and ride, Historic/Tourist Railroads and Railroad Museums and much, much more!!!

So there you have it!  An extensive - at least by blog standards - summary of the NYSDOT website....

Seriously, who would have thought that the NYS DOT website would have all these gems and great links to information that folks need?

Enjoy the links!

Regards,
Stu

All Things Rain

Hi All,

It is a rain, dreary Monday morning - and I need a topic for a blog post.  What could be better than a blog post about 'All Things Rain' on a rainy, dreary, Monday morning?  Promise, I'll give you just a sprinkling of links and I also promise not to make the entry cloud - as a matter of fact, it'll be clear sailing from this point on.


A good place to learn about rain is by clicking on this link from Wikipedia. Titled 'Rain', the entry (if printed) would be 29 pages. The entry is organized into 12 different parts (links below). 

1. Formation
2. Causes
3. Characteristics
4. Measurement
5. Forecasting
6. Impact
7. Global Climatology
8. Outside of Earth
9. See Also
10. Notes
11. Reference
12. External Links

Click here for a link that lets users search local weather archives for a particular day in history.  Users can enter the city, satte or zip code or airport code to find a particular location.  Then users can enter a particular date in order to view information about temperature, moisture,  precipitation and wind Daily weather graphs appear at the bottom of the page for temperature, barometric pressure and wind speed.

Click on this next link from Arizona State University for the World Weather/Climate Extremes Archive.  Users will find a lot of information about extreme weather - including, rain, temperature and much, much more.  

Wikipedia to the rescue!  Click on this link for a list of weather records - in particular rain records - from Wikipedia.

Finally, for information on what happens when too little rain falls, click on these links that discuss drought and the southwest portion of the United States.

U.S. Drought Monitor
Drought in the United States
Drought - April 2014 - National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Enjoy the links - and stay dry!

Regards,
Stu

Pride of the Yankees

Hi All,

On Tuesday, June 3rd (yes, it is June already!) the Farmingdale Public Library is proud to show the 1942 movie titled, Pride of the Yankees.  The quick blurb about the movie goes as follows: "Lou Gehrig, the Yank’s great first baseman and the son of poor immigrants, rose to heights of baseball fame only to be cut down at the peak of his career by an incurable illness known as ALS."

But there is far, far more to that!

Lou Gehrig was a Hall-of-Fame caliber first basement for the Yankees.  Click here for Lou Gehrig's vital statistics (baseball statistics at least) from  Baseball-Reference.com.

Several things: note that he was called 'The Iron Horse' because he played in 2130 straight games. Also note that he had quite a few nicknames: Biscuit Pants and Buster. I wonder how he got the name of Biscuit Pants.  Now that would be a great story to hear!

Well, a simple Google search using the phrase 'Lou Gehrig biscuit pants' turned up this result.  While it might be apocraphyl, it sounds like it could be true....click here for the answer to 'How Lou Gehrig got his nickname 'biscuit pants?'.

For even more information about Lou Gehrig, click on this link which goes to the Wikipedia entry for 'Lou Gehrig'.

Readers might also want to visit the National Baseball Hall of Fame website and, in particular, click on this link from the site.  Again, it is a link to Lou Gehrig.

Finally, click on this link from the library card catalog for 'all things Lou Gehrig' - including books, movies that we have in our circulating collection.

Enjoy the movie - and the books.

Regards,
Stu

RefDesk.com

Hi All,

One of the better reference related websites available on the internet is Refdesk.com.  The site is eclectic - it has something for everyone as this blog post will attest to.

Refdesk has many, many useful features for users including options to check your email from a central location, a debt clock, Contacting Elected Officials, Job Search Resources, USA Gas Price Map, Headline News from Bing, Google, and Yahoo.  There is also a way to select a news source from either AP, BBC, Bing, Fox, Google, NPR, UPI, WSJ,  or Yahoo!. 


Users can search Yahoo! or YouTube from the homepage and also look for the Fact of the Day or Though of the Day or This Day in History.

Users can actually search Refdesk.com - use the search box on the left side of the page.  Users can also use TheFreeDictionary.com as a computing dictionary, medical dictionary, legal dictionary, financial dictionary or an acronym finder.

There are also People White Page Resources available to users.  For example, users can search 50States.com, AnyWho.com, Intelius.com, WhitePages.com.  There are also Reverse Phone Lookup sites and Reverse Address Lookup sites....sigh. 

And, finally, there are good news sites like Amazing News, Gallup Well-Being Index, Good News Broadcast,  and HappyNews.com.

What I just mentioned are just 'some' of the link from the top half of the homepage on RefDesk.com.  When I say that the site is eclectic and chock full of links, I am not kidding.

One last note...toward the middle of the page are various links under the rubric 'Today's Pictures'.  Trust me - this is awesome.  Link under this category are as varied as Botany Picture of the Day, Earth Images, Kodak, Latest Mars Images, National Geographic Photos in the News, Reuters Pictures, Top News Photos, Weather Photo Gallery and Webcam Index.

The pictures and photos are completely addictive so watch the hours flow by as if they were minutes!

Enjoy the site and the many, many links!
Regards,
Stu