Yesterday, I boarded the Ventura again for one of the final sails of the season. This time, we took the Metro North railway to Tarrytown, New York and boarded the sailboat at the docks there. After motoring under the Tappan Zee bridge, a cantilever span across the Hudson River completed in 1955, Captain Pat (behind my dear friend Kathryn in the second photo) hoisted the sails and we glided by wind power along the west bank of the river. 
We sailed on a beam reach with the wind to our right for a couple of hours, taking in a great view of the palisades on the Hudson’s west bank, until the wind shifted to directly ahead, putting us “in irons” as the sailors say, and Pat had to turn the motor on again. From Tarrytown to the docks at the Wintergarden, near the former World Trade Center site, was about four and a half hours. Though the fall foliage hasn’t arrived yet, you couldn’t ask for a more delightful, partly cloudy, but crisp fall day.
Today, I went for long, meandering walks in Prospect Park, between the Brooklyn neighborhood where I’m now living (Prospect Lefferts Gardens) and my old neighborhood, Park Slope. As I came back, I noticed these big puppet masks and costumes sitting on a park bench near a gazebo, across from a meadow where a bunch of Caribbean islanders were playing soccer.
I have no idea what the masks of a big green head and a scary gray bug were doing there. Did I miss a pageant? Is it just practice for Halloween? The former occupants of the costumes were nowhere to be seen, or I would have asked.