You can't guess the message from Longwood Gardens (near Philadelphia) this week. Here it is:
Gardens Closed
As the search for the escaped prisoner from Chester County Prison continues, our Gardens are closed until further notice. We apologize for the inconvenience but know the health and safety of our Guests and Staff are our top priority.
This has been ongoing for a week. Longwood is North America's largest tourist destination garden. How big is Longwood? It is 1083 acres. That's a lot of room to hide in. They have been searching for him for 9 days. He is Danwela Souza Cavalcante, a 34-year-old from Brazil who was convicted of murder. The break-out wasn't detected for an hour and he seems to be elusive even though there are 8 sightings so far.
"Sources tell Action News the flurry of activity was in response to the discovery of an image of Cavalcante captured on a trail camera on Longwood Gardens property. That image was captured Wednesday evening but was not viewed until Thursday afternoon by law enforcement sifting through hundreds of captured images from trail cameras throughout the perimeter."
This has national coverage in the U.S. and the latest update is just 2 hours ago. It seems to me that we have an eerie fascination with prison escapes. The Wikipedia entry starts in the 13th century with a Tower of London escape. Perhaps that escape was famous because the escapee was too heavy for the rope. It broke and he fell to his death.
Our escape is the second last entry. Noted is that he crab walked up to the roof of the building.
There's a more recent entry - September 2023 when a prisoner escaped from Wandsworth Prison in London, "apparently by strapping himself to the underside of a vehicle."
And our fascination? How creative the escape methods are.
This is an historic train station in Virginia, found on the trip to the Lily Show with Brian. The doors are marked "colored" and "white." They were separated waiting rooms. I find out that William du Post purchased the Montpelier Estate in 1901 and had the train depot built to bring supplies and transport him to Wilmington, Delaware, weekly.
I saw dill pickle cucumbers at one of the vegetable and fruit stands on the weekend. We mostly pickle vegetables - and really, cucumbers for dill and sweet pickles in North America. But there is a long list of fruits and vegetables that are pickled in every country. I decided, though, that most people don't have my fascination for pickles, chutneys, relishes and salsas.
What did I decide we are all interested in? The recent story of the lobster diver in Cape Cod having a Jonah experience - that is compelling. I find out that a Jonah experience is considered only possible with a sperm whale as it is the only whale that can possibly swallow a human. The Cape Cod story involved a humpback whale, which cannot swallow a human. The only other story of this sort was that of James Bartley (1870-1909) being swallowed by a whale near the Falklands - and was in its stomach for 3 days. However, while this story has been much repeated, it was never proven. Moreover, the wife of the ship's captain who travelled on the ship at that time said it was false.
Our recent story was verified by Michael Packard's partner:
"A commercial lobster diver says he escaped relatively unscathed after nearly being swallowed by a humpback whale, in a biblical-sounding encounter that whale experts describe as rare but plausible.
Michael Packard, 56, said in local interviews and on social media that he was diving off the coast of Provincetown, Mass., on Friday morning when the whale suddenly scooped him up.
"I was in his closed mouth for about 30 to 40 seconds before he rose to the surface and spit me out," Packard later wrote on Facebook. "I am very bruised up but have no broken bones."
More about the story HERE. And if whales don't swallow people, and people don't survive being swallowed by whales, what is the Biblical story of Jonah, really? Check out the Wikipedia entry - everyone weighed in on Jonah and the symbolism of his 'giant fish' adventure.
A Daylily flower is particularly beautiful because of its little slippers. They are bluish-brown so I"ve given them some colour treatment to make them such a shiny blue colour.
The great blue expanse of both ocean and sky seems to be the appeal of the ocean view to me. This view is on the Pacific coast, south of San Francisco. National Geographic identifies the top ocean views as the high points where land and sea meet to provide dramatic vistas of craggy shorelines and pounding oceans.
Then there are the top ten beach cities, and the top 10 U.S. family beaches...All are welcome distractions during our coldest days in February.
