“I love the autumn – that melancholy season that suits memories so well.”
~ Gustave Flaubert
~French novelist
~1821-1860
The moon peeks over the Springhouse at Trexler Memorial Park, Allentown, Pennsylvania, as dusk settles in in this painterly, HDR scene I captured on a beautiful mid-November evening.
The log cabin was part of Springhouse, the summer home of General Harry Clay Trexler (1854-1933), an American industrialist who built a business empire in Allentown. The park is his namesake.
“I stood face to face with the moon and the ocean and the future that spread out with all its bewildering immensity before me.”
~ Pat Conroy
~ 1945-2016
Footprints in the sand lead up to the Strawberry Moon dipping into the Atlantic Ocean at the edge of the shore in the surreal, surely seen by the man who left his footprints after coming face to face with the moon and the ocean and the future that spread out with all its bewildering immensity before him.
I created this image by blending my monochrome shot of Folly Field Beach Park, Hilton Head Island in the Lowcountry of South Carolina on a beautiful late October morning in 2018 with my shot of the Super Strawberry Moon holding court in the sky over the West End of Allentown, Pennsylvania in the Lehigh Valley at 10:33 p.m. June 24, 2021.
This Super Strawberry Moon is the last near-Supermoon of 2021. According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, the name “Strawberry Moon” originated with Algonquin tribes in eastern North America, who knew the June full moon as a signal to gather ripening fruit of wild strawberries.
This Super Strawberry Moon rose just before 9 p.m. in the Lehigh Valley, about a half-hour passed sunset. It is the first full moon of summer 2021.
“I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.
You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. — I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. — Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.”
~ from “Had a Declaration,” letter from
John Adams to Abigail Adams
~ July 3, 1776
~ John Adams
~ 1735 ~ 1826
~American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding Father who served as the second President of the United States of America 1797 ~ 1801
Liberty’s rays of ravishing light and glory light up the summer night sky during the 2021 Fourth of July Fireworks set off from J. Birney Crum Stadium, Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Happy 245th Birthday America!
How wonderful it would be to have fireworks – and the fire of patriotism – in our hearts every day!
