I had once tried to write a story with a character whom I called the cliche master. Everything that came out of his mouth would be a cliche.  Unfortunately, in the attempt to conjure up that many cliches from memory, my brain froze and went into auto shutdown mode. So I gave up the project. […]

There are nonlethal ways to protectyour farm animals from predators. On April 15th, my topic for the day was “nature’s cleanup crew.” Lesley Sampson of Coyote Watch Canada, who came to Grand Island to discuss better ways for humans and coyotes to co-exist peacefully, mentioned the term, “predator friendly environment.”  Coyotes eat mice and ticks.

rural Wisconsin, June 2015. The sky is considered to be overcast when clouds obscure at least 95 percent of the sunlight. The sky appears dark, even at midday, and any body of water will reflect the grayness of the sky. During the winter, the sky is frequently overcast. In Buffalo, New York, overcast skies are

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