November 2016

I live on an island in the Niagara River. It is close to Niagara Falls, New York; Niagara Falls, Ontario; Tonawanda, New York, and Buffalo, New York. It is the largest island in the river. Other islands include Strawberry Island, Motor Island, Navy Island, Beaver Island, and Frog Island. Some of these islands are in […]

Feeling stuck for something to write about, I started looking online for a writing prompt, when I found this fun little short story writing contest. The contest is called “Flash fiction (an exciting writing prompt challenge).” The writing prompt is an entire paragraph. The idea is to finish the story and then share that story

Today’s blogging prompt was “What is the hardest lesson you’ve learned from having pets?”  Every day with a cat is a delight. I grew up with cats and I have loved all of the cats that have come into my life. The only hard day is when the cat dies. It is said that the

It’s November, and the weather certainly experiences abrupt shifts. It was much colder today than yesterday and it has been raining off and on. Today, I listened to a webinar about the hemlock wooly adelgid. The hemlock wooly adelgid is an aphid-like, invasive insect that threatens entire forests of hemlock trees. Hemlock trees (tsuga) are

Last year, I participated in the Western New York portion of the Walk for a Nuclear Free Future. That is a walk that occurs every five years, when the United Nations reviews the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. The portion of the walk that I joined started in downtown Buffalo and ended at Sunset Bay, on the

Last year, when I was doing the 366-day photography project, I accepted a “challenge within a challenge.” That challenge was to document an entire day with photographs and, the next day, share the story and pictures of that day in my blog. It turned out to be a lot of fun, so I decided to

When I was a kid, I had a collection of future career goals for myself. I think that I actually wanted to do all of them. Now that I’m much older, I know that there are truly not enough hours in the day to do five jobs simultaneously but, as a kid, I was not

It’s time for another conversation day with readers! I’ve gotten some great comments on recent posts, and I am very grateful to all of the readers who have taken the time to share their thoughts with me. I am, of course, very grateful for all of the readers of this blog. Thank you so much

Today, I went to Veterans Park to hear the Union Volunteers Fife and Drum Corps, who came to play music for the Veterans Day ceremony. It was held at eleven o’clock in the morning. The day is also known as Armistice Day. At 11 a.m., November 11th, 1918, World War I came to an end.

Winter is on its way. I can tell, not just by the calendar, but by the changing weather. Today, it has been very windy, and predictions are for the wind speeds to reach approximately 50 miles per hour. That’s not hurricane force winds, but it is enough to knock the remaining leaves off of the