The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
It’s International Overalls Day, or as I call it, “Saturday”. Originally created by Niels Windfeld Lund, a University professor from Norway who manages to out-do even my devotion to the Sacred Garment, this day is just a time for like-minded goofballs the world over to bask in fellowship and sweet, denim comfort. There’s a Facebook page and everything.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need more coffee.
Here at Casa Jaquandor, our regular day to go to the library is Thursday. That’s carved in stone. We always go on Thursday. Except for weeks when Thursday is some kind of holiday, such as the upcoming Thanksgiving Day…or last week, when Veterans Day fell on a Thursday. So, we decided to postpone until Saturday, and instead of going to our own Orchard Park Public Library, we headed instead into downtown Buffalo and the Central Library. We’ve been to the Central Library a few times, but not in a while; we like to get down there a few times a year. One great thing about living in a county where all the libraries are members of a larger County Library system is that you have access to all the books, county-wide; but that’s only a help if you know what you want. For browsing, you’re limited to what’s available at the library you actually visit. Now, the Orchard Park Library is a lovely facility and over the years we’ve spent a lot of time browsing there. But the Central Library is something else.
First, though, we had to actually get down there, into downtown Buffalo. And that meant…Route 5 and the Skyway, which is actually our favorite route into the city anyway. Below the fold are photos from the day.
Route 5 leads past a lot of Buffalo’s industrial past. First, you come to Lackawanna and the steel mills that no longer do much of anything at all.
These kinds of urban ruins are endlessly fascinating. All these giant machines used to be so much of the source of money in Buffalo…and now they just sit there, idle, unused, slowly oxidizing.
And then, we’re past the former steel foundries and we’re into the region of Buffalo’s earlier mega-industry, when the city was the shipping terminus on the eastern Great Lakes. Next up are the grain elevators.
Finally, it’s up and over the Skyway itself. This is a very tall bridge that rises up over Buffalo’s inner waterfront, presumably built this way to accommodate the huge ships that once pulled into the inlets to load and offload at the grain elevators. Nowadays, there are almost never any ships down there, and the Skyway itself has become a source of much debate ’round these parts; many folks think it should be demolished and replaced with ground-level highways and drawbridges, in order to allow for easier access to the waterfront and in order to remove from Buffalo’s dormant waterfront an enormous eyesore. I, personally, don’t have much of a dog in that fight; the Skyway’s not the most attractive thing and it does cast a large shadow on the ground, but it does provide a fast way into the city from where we live, and lots of cities manage to have bright, vibrant waterfronts even with expressways and big bridges towering over it all. (Toronto is one of them.)
Plus, there’s the view you get when you come over the top of the Skyway, with the entire city of Buffalo looming right before you.
After a bit of driving around downtown trying to remember which street we were looking for admiring the architecture, we arrived at the Central Library and headed inside — but not before finding this fountain, which we hadn’t seen on our last visit (because we’d gone into the library through another entrance).
It’s a beautiful object. The water wasn’t running, I suppose because of the onset of colder temperatures. I did find the placement here kind of odd — the fountain’s just sitting there, at a street corner. I wondered why it wasn’t placed on the Library plaza or in Lafayette Square, across the street.
And then it was into the Library, where we spent about two hours, reading and browsing. I spent some time in the Mark Twain Room, which is devoted to the display of various ephemera pertaining to the great writer. I loved his chess table:
But what really caught my eye, over which I lingered for some time, were the pages from the manuscript of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
I find something very appealing about seeing these pages: Twain’s neat cursive script, his large hand contrasted with the small paper he used, and his on-the-fly editing. A writer’s work-in-progress always fascinates me — you can see the progress, right there, on those slightly faded pages.
A trip to the library is mainly, though, about browsing the stacks.
It’s funny how, over the years, that particular stance there has become totally natural to me. It comes from almost four decades of working my way through bookstores, libraries, and my own bookshelves at home. It’s the rightward head-tilt I adopt in order to better read the titles on the spines.
Years ago, my sister took a trip to England for one reason or another — her first, actually, she’s been there many times since — and she brought me home a copy of a musical score. Mozart’s Requiem, if memory serves. I still have that score, in my parents’ home somewhere, along with all of my other scores which will come home with me one day when we have space enough to house them. But the score was printed in the UK, so the title on the spine was printed in the reverse of the way we do it here in the US: the title ran up, not down, relative to the front cover. I suppose if I ever take a journey to England, I’ll have to recalibrate my neck for their bookstores, the same way I’ll have to recalibrate my driving for their roads!
This led to a bit of experimentation with self-portraiture, whilst perusing the cookbooks:
And you never know when you’ll find a book seemingly tailored exactly to your interests!
Yup, a book on donuts. In fact, they had several books on donuts. I checked out two. Yay, donuts!
When we finally left the library, the daylight hours were waning quickly. The view of Lafayette Square was very pretty, though:
And then it was back to the car, and back to the Skyway. Over the Buffalo Naval Park (note to self: Go to the Naval Park! It’s ridiculous that you’ve never been there!)….
And along the lakeshore as the sun began to set over Lake Erie.
On the way back, it was back past the steel mills and the neighborhoods in their shadow.
These neighborhoods always look sad to me. I suppose that many years ago, they were the homes of families whose fathers and husbands worked in those now-dormant mills. Now, they’re houses that have outlived the reason they were built there.
And lastly, the Ford plant in Hamburg. This factory is still going strong, although it somehow manages to end up on the “endangered list” every few years. We’ll see what happens, I suppose.
Such was our day.
(And, between The Wife and I, we actually managed to max out my library card! Time to read some of this stuff.)
OK, I recently got a search engine hit for “100 Reasons Why Overalls Are Awesome”. Well, I suppose I could come up with such a list, but…well, I don’t feel like doing that much work, even though I’ve certainly done my own yeoman duty on singing the praises of bib overalls throughout the years! So I’ll just do something lazy, and do a search on Twitter for “overalls”, and post the tweets the amuse me the most. Here we go!
(Oh, I’m not actually grabbing a hundred of these. I haven’t got that kind of time.)
NEW RULE: Overalls are not conducive to dancing to (80’s) Music. It makes the nipples raw. That is all. (Here’s why shirts are handy.)
Case in point: this guy asked me out the day I wore a skirt. The next day, I wore overalls, and he broke up with me. *sigh* (Some guys are idiots. What can I say?)
So in my college years guys always thought it was hot when girls wore overalls but I just found out why they really wore them…yuck. (No idea.)
If I do not maintain my appearance with clippers, it looks like I’m wearing fuzzy overalls (I’m trying not to picture this.)
“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” ~Thomas Edison (Judging by how often this shows up in the search results, this must be the most popular quote about overalls in history.)
Wearing only overalls in public should never replace pants and a shirt. Put on a shirt, old man. (For God’s sake, yes. They don’t cover everything, guys.)
Some redneck in overalls just picked his kid up at the bus stop while holding his hunting rifle! WTF?!
I miss wearing overalls. (So wear them! Do you need a permission slip from The Queen of Fashion or something?)
Only babies and toddlers should wear bib overalls. (Duly noted. Next.)
Th-this guy just walked in wearing overalls. I don’t know how to feel. (Such angst over some stranger’s clothes! How will we go on! Style points for stammering on Twitter, though.)
I wish overalls were instyle. I would wear ’em all the time. (Again with the notion that the arbitrary decisions of other people should determine what we do. Weird.)
I haven’t researched outside of this rural Georgia McDonald’s yet, but so far my study shows that 87% of Americans wear overalls. (This cracked me up. For the win!)
Didn’t wash my painting trousers till yesterday afternoon and they are still damp. Wearing damp overalls is not the best start to a Monday.
It was not a good idea for my roommate to wear overalls while I’m high. (I don’t wanna know.)
I’M NEVER TAKING THESE OVERALLS OFF. Soo comfy! 🙂 (Now there’s the spirit!)
OK, I’m done now. Sifting through a bunch of tweets can be a horrible, horrible experience. If tweets are representative of how some people actually talk, civilization is doomed. But overalls are awesome!
Back in the hazy days of the early settlement of Blogistan, it was a common thing to post about weird search engine queries that led folks to our respective blogs. You don’t see this much anymore, mainly because most such meme-things tend to fall aside eventually and because after you’ve been blogging a while, there’s a natural raising of the bar for how weird a query has to be before you take any real notice of it.
So, congrats to the person who landed here looking for “people driving topless in overalls”. Sorry you didn’t find what you were seeking, but…well, let me know if you find it!
Well, I suppose that title may be putting things a bit…strongly. And definitely rudely. Sorry about that, Girl Scouts.
But!
Everybody loves Girl Scout Cookies, right? I know that I do. I love cookies in general, but the Girl Scout ones are special. My favorites are the Thin Mints (everybody’s favorite, I suppose) and the Coconut Samoas, those wonderfully chewy blends of fudge, caramel, and toasted coconut. Of course I’d love the Samoas, given my adoration of coconut, be it in candy bars, in cream pies, on cakes, et cetera. Even on fried shrimp.
Of course, the problem is that Coconut Samoas aren’t available year-round; you have to wait for the Girl Scouts to sell the things.
Until, that is, the fine folks at Keebler finally decided that Americans have suffered this state of affairs long enough. Behold the item I spotted quite by chance at The Store today: Keebler Coconut Dream cookies!
And they are wonderful.
The best part of this? The Wife and The Daughter are both afflicted by that odd disease that renders both of them hating coconut, which means that all these cookies are belong to me. Huzzah!
:: As long as I’m babbling about junk food, here’s the latest new candy I found. These have been on the market for a few months, but they’ve been hard to come by in my neck of the woods. It’s the latest variation on the chocolate-in-a-hard-candy-shell notion: the Pretzel M&Ms.
They look pretty much like any other filled M&M out there, obviously. How do they taste? I like them, but your enjoyment will likely hinge on whether or not you find chocolate-covered pretzels delectable, as I do. These basically taste like little morsels of chocolate-covered pretzel, which is reasonable because that’s what they are. I won’t buy these very often, but they will be welcome at Casa Jaquandor when I feel the need for an M&M fix.
:: OK, I wasn’t going to post this here, but just to show that I’m not all about the junk food these days, here’s one of my favorite early fall treats: fresh Concord grapes. Oh my, I love these things — even with their seeds. You don’t get that kind of grape flavor from the normal red or green grapes we usually buy. Living in a grape-growing region has lots of benefits, and they’re not all in corked bottles.
It sure strikes me as odd that science is doing no inquiry that I know of into the odd phenomenon that beer tastes better on Friday than it does on Tuesday. How does the beer know what day it is?!
A couple of weeks back, I took a short vacation. OK, it was actually a five-day weekend, but I called it a vacation, because that’s what it felt like. Below is a really long recitation of stuff I did on that vacation, complete with lots of photos, so it’s after the break.
:: I went for several walks in the woods, one alone and one with The Wife.
The one I undertook solo was a visit to one of my favorite Western New York spots, the Charles Burchfield Nature and Art Center, located in West Seneca, NY. I’ve blogged about this place before, but it’s just a fantastic area. It’s a small park tucked into a forest beside Buffalo Creek as it runs through one of Buffalo’s larger suburbs. It’s right next to one of the busier roads around here (Union Rd.), and yet, once you venture away from the park area and the playground into the woods proper, it becomes surprisingly serene and quiet. Trails lead away from a nice playground in several directions, a few going to the creekside, and a few going into the woods. The Burchfield Nature and Art Center (“BNAC” for short, the rest of the way in this post) always seems bigger to me than it really is. There’s a lot packed into a small space here.
Anyhow, I hadn’t visited the BNAC before in the fall, so I decided to throw on a pair of overalls, grab my camera and little tripod thingie, and head on out. And yet another plug for the utility of overalls, as my camera and tripod thingie tucked nicely into the rule pocket on the right leg!
As this was late September, the turning of the leaves was just starting to hit its stride:
I was there on an overcast fall day, but it never rained, and the light was still bright enough for the emergent fall colors to pop. The view above looks across Buffalo Creek to the other side (Clinton St. runs atop that embankment). The creek here is very shallow, not very rocky, and the water moves pleasantly quickly, which makes for a lovely wading stream during the warmer months. This time of year, though, the water is starting to chill down a bit.
These signs must be fairly new; I don’t recall seeing them there before:
There are a couple of interesting features in the midst of the walking trails, aside from the Leaves o’Three and the rushing waters of Buffalo Creek. For one thing, there is a beautiful, and big, gazebo.
There’s a picnic table there, which is covered with the usual extracurricular writings:
I thought it funny to note the juxtaposition of a Bible quote with “Smoke Weed!” But then, I’m an overgrown hippie to begin with.
More walking, then, and exploring the wooden walkways of the BNAC (which are elevated two or three feet above the ground):
The BNAC, at one point, is next to a graveyard. That enhances the peacefulness, I suppose.
Another odd structure on the BNAC grounds is an apparent “meditation temple” or something like that:
Of course, I had to oblige my Buddhist overlords:
(No, I have no idea if there’s anything Buddhist at all about the meditation thing, or about the goofy poses I struck for the camera. Sheesh!)
I spent a lot of time looking up:
At what, I don’t know.
The BNAC stands, as I understand it, on the site of a number of former settlements, some of the infrastructure of which are still visible, at least in part. In the middle of the park, I came across a fenced area that is the site of a graveyard that is so old that it’s completely overgrown by now.
In the time I was there, I only saw two other people. One was a woman who must have been a volunteer; she was sweeping leaves from the paths as her little dog followed along behind. The other was just some guy, walking through. Other than that, I had the whole place to myself. How wonderful!
:: I still had some time that day before The Daughter got home from school, so I went to visit one of my favorite places in the hometown, the old Orchard Park train station.
The place was pretty magical when I visited last winter, but this time, I wanted to see what it was like in the warmer months. Naturally, I waited until the warmer months were almost completely over, but I got there!
Most striking are the well-tended flowerbeds:
I spotted this sign this time, and I have no idea what it means:
Even though the day was pretty cloudy, for some reason the light in these two photos came out really striking:
Walking past the window, I noticed that the mannequin inside was wearing a hickory-striped cap and a burgundy shirt. And I was wearing hickory-striped overalls over a burgundy shirt. Whoa….
:: Walk-in-the-woods #2 was with The Wife to Chestnut Ridge Park.
Don’t ask me why I seem to be scowling so much! I really don’t know why my default facial expression seems to be a scowl, but there’s not much I can do about it at this point.
Anyway, we were trying to hike to the Eternal Flame Falls in the park. This is a waterfall whose main distinction, other than sheer beauty for being a waterfall, is the fact that natural gas seeps from the ground here, so behind the waterfall itself you can see a small “eternal flame” burning. (Or if it’s out, you can light it.) We didn’t get there, unfortunately; we took a wrong turn and ended up following the wrong trail, which was disappointing. We’ll get back there eventually, and see that flame, but it was still a lovely day of forest walking.
:: Later that day we left for on overnight jaunt to Ithaca, NY, and the annual Apple Harvest Festival therein. The Apple Fest is a typical outdoor festival, with lots of crafts tents, lots of food, lots of entertainment, and lots of people.
Among other things, we ate bratwurst:
And we bemoaned the fact that we discovered this joint after we were already full:
There’s a wonderful toy store there, where we always drop in for a bit of kid shopping. This year they seemed to have a lot more “odd” toys than in past years, such as this Stir Fry Set for kids!
And Ithaca is known for having lots and lots of bookstores, including my favorite used bookstore ever, Autumn Leaves Books:
Here I am, a few days later, after we got home, with the books I bought on this trip:
I should probably start looking into some kind of support group.
The books, from top down:
The Sardonyx Net, Elizabeth Lynn. Used. Bought because…the cover was cool. (You can do that, you know.)
Zoe’s Tale, John Scalzi. New. Bought because I haven’t given Scalzi any money lately.
The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss. New. I’ve heard good things about this one.
Hyperion Cantos, Dan Simmons. Used. This was on a rack labeled “Everything for a buck” at Autumn Leaves. When I plunked in down on the counter, the guy did a spit-take and said, “Geez, this wasn’t supposed to be out there!” Oh well! My gain.
Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy, Timothy Zahn. Adapted to graphic novel. New. I bought this because I had a coupon that knocked the price down quite a lot.
RASL, Jeff Smith. I like Jeff Smith a lot. I wasn’t blown away by the first few issues of this, but maybe it gets better.
The Hobbit, JRRT. Used. This is the Annotated edition, though, which is what got me to grab it. Plus it has a ton of artwork. I’m planning to re-read LOTR this winter, so here’s my copy of The Hobbit for that project.
Treasury of the Lost Litterbox, Darby Conley. New. Because I love me some Get Fuzzy!
And that’s about it. What I did on my Fall Vacation, 2010. Next stop: a tentative Winter Vacation in January!
(More photos available on my Flickr photostream. I didn’t use them all here.)
Looking down on myself…whoa! I took this with my cell phone, just holding it up over my head with my left hand whilst sitting in my arm chair using the Interweb to distract myself from the awful football being put on display by the Buffalo Bills. Hey, I gotta have fun some way, don’t I?
