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New Book: “Viet Nam Short Stories”
It’s been over a year since my last post, on August 31, 2025. I would plead laziness, but actually I have been busy translating my novels into French and Vietnamese and working on my newest book, Viet Nam Short Stories. I even stopped going to the Edwin B. Forsythe Wildlife Refuge to take pictures and…
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Small Butterflies
Last year, I purchased a Persimmon tree to plant in our backyard, but had to wait until this Spring for the tree to be shipped. Unfortunately, the seller sent it to someone else, and I seemed to have received four organic plants instead. The company told me to keep them since shipping the plants back…
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Indian River Inlet Bridge
This week I drove to Bethany Beach, DE to visit some friends. For that I had to drive over the Indian River Inlet Bridge, officially named Charles W. Cullen Bridge and completed in 2012. It is a beautiful 2,600 ft (792 m) long cable-stayed four-lane bridge with its pylons anchored on solid dry land to…
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Zinnia, Cleome
Zinnias are the quintessential flowers of summer. They come in all shapes, colors, and, most important for me, are easy to grow from seeds. I sowed some seeds this Spring and several plants have been blooming in our front and back yards despite the mini drought currently affecting our region. This year Cleome or Spider…
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A Wave and a Painting
Some of you may remember the photo below. Nine years ago I captured a crashing wave near Barnegat Light: Over the past several months I painted the wave and added some additional landscape features, not necessarily from Barnegat, to the image.
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Red Foxes, Swallowtails
Red foxes have been living in a corner of our backyard for as long as we have been in our house. In early June, a mother Red Fox was supervising her cubs playing there. The mother was very suspicious and kept watching me for as long as her cubs were playing (I was a good…
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Mountain Laurel
I have not posted much since the beginning of this 2025 mainly because I have been involved in helping a friend translate his book from Vietnamese into English. However, two months ago in late May I went to Wells Mills County Park in Waretown, NJ to photograph Mountain Laurel at the peak of their blooming…
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Spring Flowers
This is a view of our backyard two months ago: Yesterday, the sun came out and so did the blooms. The weather is still quite cool. At this moment it is 33 °F (almost 0 °C) outside. I hope the flowers will survive and be able to put on their spring show as in previous…
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Snow Geese 2025
On Tuesday of this week I went to Edwin B. Fosrsythe National Wildlife Refuge. There were not very many birds or ducks, except for a flock of probably 2,000 Snow Geese resting by one side of Wildlife Drive. Some geese were landing on the marsh. Others were taking off, a few at a time. The…
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Bristlecone Pine
I took the following photo of a Bristlecone Pine in Great Basin National Park in 2015. This kind of tree is known to live for thousands of years, and, even after they die, their gnarled remains endure for a long time, becoming as hard as the rocks around them. I cropped the photo to give…
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Red, Blue, and Black
The second storm of the season spared us, dumping just 1.5 inches of snow on the ground. The new snow was powdery and made everything look white. Our backyard birds seemed agitated as they feasted themselves on a new batch of sunflower seeds in the birdfeeder. For a few hours I saw at least ten…
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Northern Cardinal
It snowed yesterday, giving us about two inches of snow, enough to cover our yard with a white blanket. I hurried to refill the birdfeeder. In no time the Juncos and other small birds came to feast on the sunflower seeds. There were also several Northern Cardinals, the males resplendent in their Red coats. Merry…
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Yellow Leaves
I have not been able to go on any photo shoot since undergoing cataract surgery in both eyes over the past three weeks. However, yesterday I reprocessed some of the photos taken at Glacier National Park in the fall of 2015. With the latest updates and improvement in software over the past nine years, I…
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Season End, or Beginning
Here are some photos I took of some birds at the refuge in September at the refuge. I will be off for the next few weeks due to cataract surgery, but will be back in November. In the meantime, I would like to introduce you to a beautiful Vietnamese song. The three sopranos are Vietnamese…
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The River Wild: Kootenai Falls
The River Wild is the name of a movie made in 1994 featuring Meryl Streep and Kevin Bacon. I have not seen it but when I travelled near Kootenai River in Montana nine years ago, the owner of a restaurant said that I should take the time to photograph the Kootenai Falls where parts of…
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Late Summer, Early Fall
I took the following photos over several weeks from late summer into early fall. The refuge’s Wildlife Drive is about 8 miles long, 5 of them covered with Goldenrod bushes on both sides of the road. Nearer to home, our town library planted a butterfly garden this past summer. I used my Samsung Galaxy cellphone…
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Arranged Marriage – A Love Story
The following is a translation of a short story in Vietnamese sent by an anonymous writer to an internet magazine based in Southern California. It appeared on July 26, 2024 at the following link: https://www.toiyeutiengnuoctoi.com/chuyen-tinh-co-hau-nay-co-that-khong/ When she came home after their wedding, she was sixteen and he was five. He was the only child of…
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Shore Birds at Barnegat Lighthouse
Ten days ago, I was on the jetty at Barnegat Lighthouse. It was a beautiful sunny day, not too hot. There were many people, maybe a hundred, walking or sitting on benches. Some were strolling like I was, others were down on the rocks fishing, but most were just sitting on benches, enjoying the light…
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Great Blue Heron Stretch
I took the following shots of a Great Blue Heron stretching at the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge on 9/12/2024 at 9:11 AM. It had been standing for quite some time on top of a wood piling on one side of a salt marsh. Once I started clicking away, it began stretching. After the…
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American Lady, Painted Lady
American Lady (Vanessa virginiensis) and Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui) are two beautiful butterflies that I have misidentified in the past, calling both Painted Lady. Two days ago, I went to a Monarch Waystation about a mile from the Barnegat Lighthouse to look for Monarch butterflies but instead found many American and Painted Lady butterflies flying…
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Sachem Skipper Revisited
I had to return to the library, and this time I brought my camera along. Many Sachem Skippers were still there having a great time with the buddleia and other vegetation planted for them. There was another white flower that I can’t identify. If you know its name please comment.
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Sachem Skipper
As I exited our town’s library yesterday, I saw several Sachem Skippers (Atalopedes campestris) feeding on flowers . Not having a camera with me, I took the following photos with my Samsung Galaxy cellphone. I am not an expert on butterflies, but I think these are three females of the species because of the presence…
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CFFC: A Single Flower
A recent photo of one of our Cleomes to answer’s Cee’s CFFC challenge: Cee’s challenge is here: https://ceenphotography.com/2024/08/20/cffc-a-single-flower/
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Ospreys
Ten days ago at the EBF refuge, I saw a male Osprey eating a fish he had caught while a juvenile Osprey was chirping loudly to ask him to bring the fish to it. He had already eaten his part, the head, and the rest belonged to the Osprey chick. August is somewhat late in…
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More Summer Scenes
The following photos are from the same trip I took last Wednesday to the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge near Galloway, NJ.
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Summer Scenes
Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge is the place I go to most often to photograph nature in general and birds in particular. The refuge extends over 48,000 acres of land along the coast of New Jersey, but not all in the same place and some areas are not open to the general public. I…
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The Purple Color of Myrtles
Nguyễn Hữu Loan (1916-2010) is an acclaimed, iconoclastic Viertnamese poet. I have translated below an article he wrote shortly before his death. I was born in a poor family. In my childhood, I did not have the opportunity to go to school like other children of my age. Only my father taught me a few…
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The Female Spy
Following is my translation of a short story written by author Phạm Thành Châu and published on April 30, 2011 on the web site for Viet Bao Foundation at the following link: https://vvnm.vietbao.com/a171018/chuyen-30-4-vo-chong-diep-vien After finishing secondary school, I took the entrance examinations to the University of Pedagogy with a major in English. While a student,…
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Some Summer Beauties
Here’s a mid-summer series of photos I took over the past week of some summer flowers from around our house. The one below is not a flower. It’s a watermelon which has grown up very fast since I first took its picture a little more than two weeks ago. The seed packet says it will…
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Summer Snapshots
I have not gone out on a photoshoot anywhere in almost two months. It’s been too hot or rainy, and I’ve also been busy with chores at home. However, this morning I went out to our backyard and got the following snapshots.
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Summer Heat
I took the following pictures at EBF Refuge a week ago. Finally, here are some shots of Clematis in the back of our house.
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Osprey Feeding Drama
This past Friday, at 8:31 AM I saw an Osprey family having breakfast by the side of Wildlife Drive at Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge. The male Osprey had gone fishing and caught a big fish for the whole family. Perched near the nest, he ate first consuming the head of the fish while…
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Refuge Flowers
I have not been to the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge in several months, but yesterday, dry and sunny, was a good day for a tour around Wildlife Drive. There were many wild flowers and the usual birds. The flowers were colorful, very showy. Refuge birds will be the subject of my next post.
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Books & Photographs
