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I live in Grand Island, New York. It is in the middle of the Niagara River. It is a river that flows north from Lake Erie To Lake Ontario. Niagara Gorge in Lewiston, N.Y. The two largest islands in the Niagara River are Grand Island and Navy Island. Grand Island belongs to the United States, […]

daffodils growing in a newly clearedspace behind St. Martin in the Fields church Happy Easter. Here in Western New York, it was a sometimes sunny, sometimes rainy sort of day. For me, it was a busy, colorful day. I started the day with the choir at Saint Martin in the Fields Episcopal Church in Grand

Coyotes have a bad reputation for stealing chickens and killing small pets. Is it deserved? Are coyotes intruding in space that humans have carved out for themselves? Should they be removed? Do we need coyotes in our environment? Coyotes are an important part of the ecosystem, whether people like them or not. In Grand Island,

I’m a little bit behind in my 52-week photography project, which is OK because it’s not a contest. If it were a tortoise vs. hare contest, I would be the hare because I took a tea break while the tortoise just kept plodding onward to victory.  But I digress. It’s a good thing that I

K is for kyrielle. It is a French form based on the kyrie (Lord, have mercy, which is part of the church liturgy. This poetic form is written in quatrains (four-line stanzas). Each line has eight syllables. It can be written in various rhyme schemes, including aabb or abab. The “b” rhyme includes the fourth

Today’s post is sponsored by the letter “J.” In other words, it’s “J-day” in the world of the A to Z blogging challenge. My relationship to “J” is a bit strained at times. I went to “J-school” (for “normal people” whose education didn’t involve an undefined letter of the alphabet, that’s “journalism school”), but my

Two days ago, I shared part of Gretchen Beach’s story about drug addiction.  Gretchen: There is always hope. At the end of part one, Gretchen related that she had gotten arrested for driving a car full of drugs. She did not face legal charges because her drug dealer boyfriend’s boss was in the car and

During this month’s Ultimate Blogging Challenge, there are daily suggestions on blogging topics. One of the suggestions was to “stir up the pot” by writing about something controversial. One of the controversial things that was mentioned was President Donald Trump. That is how I am “stirring up the pot” today. There are many national cemeteries,

The “war on drugs” has affected all of us, in one way or another. Lately, because of the increase in deaths as a result of people ingesting a lethal mixture of heroin and fentanyl, the issue of drugs has made its way to television news and to newspaper reports. Drug addiction is nothing new, however.

On April 6th, Carol Rogers from the New York State Office on Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, gave a presentation on Lighthouses of the Seaway Trail and the East Coast at the regular meeting of the Grand Island Historical Society. Here are some tidbits from the meeting. Lighthouses have existed for centuries. The first lighthouse