Becky's Shaded Perch We're usually correcting and adding things, so please check back again if you'd like to. Yahoo and GeoCities have given me a large space to work with, and I chose a part of the Rain Forest near a waterfall to build my home page. I've found lots of amazing information, sites, and links on the internet, and have listed some of my favorites here. Visiting New Jersey I know I'll always be homesick for the Atlantic, so I've collected some sites I can visit. When I want to vicariously experience my ocean and breathe the salt air, I can, on one of these sites . .. This includes a large collection of internet links about the wind and sea. This contains lots of links about the ocean. This site has information about current water levels, tide currents, and predictions about tides. This one is special. Try it! Pictures and images in New Jersey (Note: This page is taking me forever to put together!! It's still not ready for viewing.) This page has several good surf and weather links, as well as a live camera at Point Pleasant Beach. When I was little, we studied the Lenni Lenape Indians, who lived in New Jersey before the English and Europeans came. I found a site with sound recordings of birds, and their names spoken in the Lenape language. Here are tide charts (listing hourly high and low tide data) for selected cities along the Middle Atlantic Coast. Here's another way to look up information about ocean tides and currents between Maine and Virginia. Timetables - Grand Central Station, Penn Station . . . Even though I can't be back east as often as I'd like, I can always check in on schedules and plan trips for myself on the net! This lists Penn Station-Grand Central Station/Newark Airport Bus Service. I'm very grateful that Jackie Kennedy (Onassis) recognized the timeless beauty of Grand Central Station and its worth as an American architectural treasure, and blocked its demolition in the early 1970's when it was slated for "modernization." Because of her initiative, it has been painstakingly restored, even to re-gold-leafing the grand arched ceiling. East Coast Newspapers, Skycams, Traffic Reports, Magazines, Maps, . . . This is the home page for News Channel 4 in New York City. It summarizes news, traffic, weather, and sports, with linked URLs. You can sign up for daily news highlights in a.m. and p.m. editions, sent to your e-mail address. There are also links for about a dozen metropolitan traffic skycams which are accessible twenty-four hours daily. Many newspapers have their own web sites, including the New Jersey Star Ledger, and the New York Times. You can find transportation maps for New York City at this location. I've been enjoying exploring the Unofficial NJ Transit Home Page here. My Parakeets and Other Pet Bird Sites As of December 2008, I have two cockateils and one parakeet. The newest member of our family is Sofia. I named her after Sofia Loren, and also because Sofia means wisdom in Italian. (Probably wishful thinking on my part.) The breeder who sold Sofia to me named her Tornado, which might be more accurate - she loves to hang upside down from the side of her cage and beat her wings as hard as she can, then she zooms outside the cage and around the room several times. In the process she scares the other birds, so I have three birds flying around the room until they're tired. Sofia is still pretty young, so she has several different calls. I can hear her imitating Jonesie, too. Tiggy is getting along in years (11 1/2 or so), but is still full of energy and defends her territories fiercely. Mrs. Jones is also well. When Mrs. Jones first joined us, she was almost entirely light and dark shades of grey, with a tiny bit of yellow in her face and underneath her tail feathers. As she's getting older, she has more and more yellow on her face. I wouldn't have thought patches of yellow would be pretty, but they are! There's a page with pictures of the birds here. I've read that silence can be very unnerving to pet birds, so I often play a cassette tape of bird calls from around the world. The birds seem to like it. Jonesie has added half a dozen calls to her repertoire, and LoLo used to imitate several, too. LoLo and Jonesie learned each other's distress calls, so when either one called to see whether anyone else was around, the other used to mimic the call she heard, rather than responding with her own distress call. It was confusing - I couldn't tell who was calling unless I was watching them! When I'm on the phone, all of the birds join in, and imitate the cadence of whatever I'm saying. Then there are patterns that sound like phrases without clear words - like "uh-HUH!" and "all-RAH-eet!!" and so forth. I want to share two great bird-related finds. An author named Mattie Sue Athan has written a number of books on parrots and macaws and other large birds. She has studied cats, dogs, and humans (!) from a behavioral perspective, and she writes about how to tame and bond with large birds. I highly recommend her book Guide to a Well-Behaved Parrot, for its insights about bird behavior. I have found that her comments apply to smaller birds as well. She is a pet bird behavioral consultant, and her work with birds informs her writing. Her advice is featured at this location, and I'll try to add her home page location when I find it. On the BBC I heard about a scientist named Dr. Irene Pepperberg, who also works with large pet birds. She's based at the University of Arizona, and one of her main focuses is documenting the intelligence and communication skills of African Grey Parrots. She works with parrots by modeling behavior she wants with a human partner in front of the parrots, and then the parrots imitate what they see the humans do. I heard that her main companion and research bird, named Alex, has died, but they have a large corpus of work that I think is really interesting! Her home page is here. This site lists locations and schedules of bird shows around the U.S. where pet and exotic birds are seen, judged, and sometimes traded. Family Home Pages My Dad has done decades of painstaking research on our ancestry. His home page is done from the perspective of my sister and me, and he put together this page, which shows three generations of family photographs. He has just recently finished a page about one of our German ancestors and how he came to America that is really interesting. Here is a pie chart showing my sister's and my ancestry that I think is neat. This chart is a different way to show our ancestry, with the generations radiating from the center. (I know the names are blurry, but I think this method of presenting the information is really interesting.) Library Archives Repositories of Primary Sources: Eastern United States and Canada Center for the Humanities - New York Public Library Welcome to the Chicago Public Library Miscellaneous Favorite Sites and Images Medical Information The New England Journal of Medicine's home page. The Medscape newsletter is comprehensive, and keeps a broad range of information updated. Its site includes access to search engines, various on-line coverage, daily diagnostic questions, special interest articles, and other medical information. You can access the newsletter at the above site, or subscribe to it, and receive it via your e-mail account. I like having access to the Christian Science Monitor on the net. I have always appreciated their professionalism and positive outlook on the world. Teletubbies! I like some of the "Britcoms" that the local public television station broadcasts at night. But I think my current favorite of the BBC imports is the Teletubbies. You can look here to see a page about them with pictures and sounds, or connect directly to their official program information site. Images Growing up, I enjoyed learning about the languages, music, and geography of Europe, and later Japan and China, but I still don't know as much as I'd like to about the sub-continent. These areas have become more real to me as I've met more people from Pakistan, India, and Bengladesh, and I'm very interested in learning about these places and their history. I'll offer some sources of information that I've found on the net for anyone who shares this interest. This site focuses on the South Indus before 1947. It includes slides, postcards, photos, and historical audio and film clips. When I was first learning how to download images from the Internet, I came across two images identified as "fatehpur." I think they are beautiful: fatehpur2 and fatehpur7. Movies I've haven't been able to travel to the sub-continent, and I'm happy that the Internet gives me access to images, sounds, and films from this part of the world. One evening after seeing a Satyajit Ray movie I was thrilled to find this site about his films, with background information, stills, and some biographical notes. To learn about current films and modern events in general within India , I enjoy reading the India Express on its home page. They also offer an e-mail news summary service based on recipients' areas of interest, with URL links. Advocacy/Supporting Good Causes The Opera browser was developed in Norway by a small company as an alternative to the "bloatware" browser programs that Internet and Microsoft put out, and as an effort to keep the browser market from being completely taken over by the big corporations. Here are links to organizations or people you might want to contact: The President and Vice President of the United States, as well as The U.S. Congress Robert Malesky, Senior Editor of the Weekend Edition on National Public Radio This site is full of information about safe-guarding privacy on the net, getting off junk-mail lists; spam, cookies, and related topics. You can contact me at this e-mail address: Email: shahadah.1@juno.com Page last updated December 3, 2008.