Beautiful Dreamer ...

“Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me,

Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee,

Sounds of the rude world, heard in the day,

Lull’d by the moonlight have all passed away …”

  ~ “Beautiful Dreamer”

  ~parlor song by American songwriter

              Stephen Foster

                  ~ 1826-1864

 ~published posthumously in March 1864

  ~ one of Foster’s most memorable ballads & best loved works

  ~ recorded by Bing Crosby in 1940 & various other artists

 ~ Foster, known as “the father of American music,” was an American songwriter known primarily for his parlor music. He wrote more than 200 songs, including “Oh! Susanna,” “Hard Times Come Again No More,” “Camptown Races,” “Old Folks At Home” (“Swanee River”), “My Old Kentucky Home,” “Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair” and “Beautiful Dreamer.” Many of his compositions remain popular today. He has been identified as “the most famous songwriter of the nineteenth century” and may be the most recognizable American composer in other countries. His compositions are sometimes referred to as “childhood songs” because they have been included in the music curriculum of early education. Most of his handwritten music manuscripts are lost, but editions issued by publishers of his day can be found in various collections.

An April sunset beckons as a beautiful blossom waits for a nearby bud to wake and bloom on my favorite pink magnolia tree at Trexler Memorial Park, Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Remembering Where The Bluebells Bloom ...

“Sacred watcher, wave thy bells!

Fair hill flower and woodland child!

Dear to me in deep green dells –

Dearest on the mountain wild.”

                           ~ Emily Bronte

                                 ~1818-1848

                               ~ “To The Bluebell”

This little girl touches the beguiling bluebells blooming in early April near the banks of the Swabia Creek at Lock Ridge Park and Furnace Museum, Alburtis, Pennsylvania in this candid capture.

The blooming of the multitude of Lock Ridge bluebells – also called grape hyacinth – is a clarion call of spring in the Lehigh Valley, drawing many people to photograph and glimpse their beauty in the span of the few weeks they bloom.

Lock Ridge Park is a park built around an historic iron ore blast furnace just outside Alburtis, Pennsylvania in the Lehigh Valley. The park preserves portions of the former Lock Ridge Iron Works, which dates back to 1868. The 59-acre park was opened in August 1976.

Huckleberry's Summer ...

   “I do not wish any reward but to know I have done the right thing.”

       ~ “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”

      ~ first published in the 
United Kingdom, December  1884 
& in the United States, February 1885

             ~ by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

                     ~ 1835-1910

 “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” or in more recent editions, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” is commonly named among the Great American Novels. The work is among the first in major American literature to be written throughout in vernacular English, characterized by local color regionalism. It is told in the first person by Huckleberry “Huck” Finn, the narrator of two other Twain novels, “Tom Sawyer Abroad” and “Tom Sawyer, Detective” and a friend of Tom Sawyer. It is a direct sequel to “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”

The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River, set in a Southern antebellum society that had ceased to exist over 20 years before the work was published.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher and lecturer. He was lauded as the “greatest humorist this country has produced,” and William Faulkner called him “the father of American literature.”

This young boy is reminiscent of Huckleberry Finn as he sets sail to fish in the Jordan Creek as a summer sundown nears in this candid shot, presented in sepia, which I captured on a gorgeous mid-July evening at Trexler Nature Preserve, Schnecksville, Pennsylvania.