October 2015

Happy Halloween! It’s time for a spooky creative writing exercise! Write nonstop for fifteen minutes, beginning with “It was a dark and stormy night…” Don’t worry about grammar or spelling. Just write for fifteen minutes and have fun. That’s what it’s all about. Below is what I did in fifteen minutes. Don’t let this picture […]

Note: On Monday, October 26th, I went to the groundbreaking at the Sandy Beach Park Club for the restoration of the club’s shoreline. The Buffalo-Niagara Riverkeeper is doing the restoration, which entails removing the hardened shoreline and replacing it with a living shoreline. A hardened shoreline has a lot of concrete and rip rap. Rip rap

Yesterday, I finished my ten-day experiment in keeping a gratitude journal. I have to say that it was a fascinating experience. I tried to name five things each day for which I was grateful. My goal was to be grateful for different things each day. On Sunday, I said:I am grateful for the sun, the

On August 1st, I began my 366-day photography project at Buckhorn Island State Park. It is a wildlife preserve and an important bird area. Many migratory birds come to Buckhorn in the spring and leave in the autumn. Buckhorn Island State Park is a spectacularly beautiful place. It has several types of wetlands, including swamps

It’s Monday! The day for the weekly update of my 366-day photography challenge. It is hard to believe that almost three months have passed since I began the challenge. I am nearly one-quarter of the way through this project. Summer has melted into autumn. My green world has exploded into warm colors and flying leaves.

Pumpkins large and smalldecorate porches and doorsOctober colors. Green leaves become redand then flutter from the treescarpeting the ground. Big muddy pumpkinafter a chilly rainfallit is harvest time. Deep red maple leavestime etched in jagged edgesshare silent stories. Taste of the seasonacorn and butternut squashbaked with brown sugar. Sit on a tree stump,by the calmness

Halloween does not feel like Halloween without decorations, either autumnal or scary. There has to be a few pumpkins and a few scarecrows and a few skeletons and other characters to give Halloween that special look.  But where did all those scary and not-so-scary things come from? Why do we have a “Halloween”?There was a

Western New York is the home to restaurants that serve foods from numerous countries. It is possible to take a culinary tour of the world without leaving Western New York. A few months ago, two friends and I decided to do just that. Since we started going out for the occasional lunch, we’ve enjoyed Thai,

On Monday, October 19th, Mary Stewart and I went to take pictures of the Niagara River and of the sights at Beaver Island State Park. It was a lovely, though windy, autumn day. The trees don’t look spectacular, but it still looked delightfully autumnal. This is the Niagara River. Grand Island is one of the

I have been fascinated by Bhutan for a long time. It is located in the Himalayas and is mostly forest. It is considered to be one of the world’s leaders in environmental conservation. It has three types of ecosystem: alpine zone (4000 feet and up) with no forest cover, temperate zone, and subtropical zone. Some