Welcome or welcome back to Kitchen Table Kibitzing, a community series that posts nightly at 8:00 Eastern. remembrance and nomandates came up with the idea for this series during Netroots Nation 2013.
As we envision it, KTK is a community for those who wish to share part of their evening around a virtual kitchen table with kossacks who are caring and supportive of one another. So bring your stories, jokes, photos, funny pics, music, interesting videos (hey, palantir!), and so forth. We would also appreciate links—including quotations—to diaries, news stories, and books that you think this community would appreciate.
Please note that pie fights will be unwelcome in this community, just as in most other series at DKos. There's lots of space at the rest of the site for fighting with other Democrats, progressives, and liberals, and we don't want those battles dragged into this series.
Finally, readers may notice that most who are posting diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degree, but that definitely does not mean that newcomers will be excluded or unwelcome. We're happy to welcome guests to our kitchen table, and hope to make some new friends as well.
On Thursday evening, we covered food at the Jersey shore. But there is much more to be seen at the beach than plates of tasty shellfish! I'm endlessly fascinated by ocean surf, and the skies above it. As I said to someone yesterday, there's a new gorgeous picture every instant, and I have to make myself put down the camera and be present, or I'd just keep obsessively snapping all day, trying without success to capture the essence of Sea.
Here are a few of my efforts. They fall short of saving my experience forever, but I hope you'll enjoy seeing them anyway. ;) The coast in question is on Long Beach Island, a New Jersey barrier island; the calmer water you'll see is on the western, Barnegat Bay side of the island.
My Kitchen Table banner today was taken in the kitchen of the shore house I was renting.
|
Ocean beach at Ship Bottom, 6:30 Sunday morning.
☀
Looking west from the top of the ocean-buffering dune, across the island toward the bay.
☀
Barnegat Bay
☀
This shot of the "bay side", across the street from where we stayed, is kind of iconic. Back in the day, when jobs paid a family wage and seaside real estate in the wilds of New Jersey didn't sell for several million dollars, lots of working-class families from New Jersey and Philadelphia came and built modest summer houses. Those communities are still here. The homes have often stayed in the family or become year-round homes in their owners' retirement. These folks below are flying Italian and Irish flags in honor of their heritage, and that of a big segment of this population. (I rented from an Irish lady my age, and showed up to represent the Italians; she bought here when she was living at home after high school, working for the phone company.) These neighborhoods are hardest hit by storms like Sandy, because many older houses, built at ground level, have to be either demolished or taken down to the frame.
☀
Wildlife
☀
Ocean surf
☀
As a rainy day cleared up, the sky was pretty interesting.
☀
Sunsets over the bay. Have a good night, everyone!