Today marks the anniversary of the completion of the world famous clock tower often referred to as ‘Big Ben’ at Parliament in London. To get technical, ‘Big Ben’ is actually the name of the famous bell in the tower. Regardless, 150 years ago today the famous clock was started & it has been keeping time ever since.

The Texas State Capitol; “Where time stands still”.
Last night the the Texas Senate Sergent-at-Arms Rick DeLeon unplugged the clock and stopped time at 11:58pm allowing the 81st regular session to continue past it’s midnight deadline to consider bills for the 81st session. Ahhh politics, where you get to make your own rules.
In any case if your must work late, it is a beautiful & inspiring building to do your business.

If you walk along the beach of Grand Turk in the Turks & Caicos Islands you might run across this old boat in the sand. (My guess is it’s still there. I don’t think is is going anywhere…)  There is something about the romance of boats. I love them. I especially love sailboats  & over the years I have owned a few. Some big & some small. I sailed my last boat from Tampa across the Gulf of Mexico to Texas. My first one was about this size and in about this shape. The last time I saw her was many years ago & she had found new life as a flower planter in a garden in Waco Texas.

San Francisco is such a beautiful city. I’ve had the pleasure of visiting what would be one of my favorite cities many times & shot this from my hotel room during one of my stays. I knew the image was of Telegraph hill, but I did not know the history of the tower until this morning when I decided to do a bit of research before posting the image on my blog. Coit Tower on Telegraph hill was designed to resemble a fireman’s fire hose nozzle and was built as a memorial to the philanthropist & honorary fireman Lilly Coit. She sounds like quite a woman. It’s worth clicking on the link to read more about Lilly and her history with the San Francisco Fire Department.