Blue Lights and A Special Week

The week was wonderful as I performed my second library forum, this time at the Kingston Public Library on Franklin Street. It is a very impressive building, and clearly a hub of community activity. The facilities were excellent, and although I had a bit of difficulty with my computer set-up, always a source of much anxiety, before and during, one of members of the audience came up and realized that my screen was blank. My computer is set to turn off its screen after about 10 minutes, so that setting will obviously need to be adjusted. The rest of the presentation was flawless and fun as the audience was very interested. One of my participants, the fellow with whom I spoke over the phone the week earlier told me it was outstanding ! I then e mailed my contact at the library who asked me to do a series of lectures during the summer, which I will gladly do.

I also made contact with a technician at the New Paltz Lifetime Learning Institute who will be assisting me with my set-up when I begin to do their program of eight lectures, similar to the Saugerties LLI that I did last fall, on March 20. She seemed to understand my anxiety about that and we will meet on Wednesday to go through a dry run.

Last night's show was something I had looked forward to, but for some reason had been putting off for quite some time. I suppose I just never got around to creating a show. I told my audience that it was my lack of expertise in the area of Venice, but frankly I have no idea why. My very first show back in December 2011 was Venice, and that was it, despite the fact that we had hundreds of excellent photos. So I revisited Venice presenting a lot of different pictures from the original broadcast. I set them up in groups as the churches, palazzi, canals, side-streets, etc. and it was fun to put together. Also, after this next trip to Venice in May/June, I assume I will have additional images and stories galore, so this was a good introduction for that later time.

We were setting up, and I was feeling quite relaxed when Ellen indicated that she was getting a blue light reflecting off my glasses. We tried every angle, covering my body, etc., but could only remove the light when I turned away from the computer. I did the show with the computer shifted as far away from my view as I could while still being able to see the images. Then off we went and the show was virtually perfect. I then went to a party at a friend's house, so I did not actually get to see the video of the show until I got home much later. When I did finally look at it, there was nothing out of the ordinary, except an occasional blue light which was obviously reflecting off my glasses from the computer screen. I looked back on previous shows and noticed the same effect. It doesn't really hinder the presentation or the actual broadcast, so I am not concerned in the least. Perhaps it was worse last night for some reason, or perhaps Ellen never noticed it. Who knows, but even this time Ellen agreed that every week is a new adventure !