Tag: WNY Love Letter

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“I’ll take ‘KINDS OF RAMAS’ for $1000, Ken”

The answer: “This type of widescreen photograph can be created in Lightroom by stitching together multiple photographs from a single vantage point.”

“What is a panorama?”

Last Sunday I was at Chestnut Ridge park on a wonderfully clear day, and thus I was able to take a series of shots of the entire Buffalo-Niagara region, with visibility all the way to Niagara Falls, ON and beyond, and I was further able to experiment with creating a panorama in Lightroom. And here it is:

I know, that’s…tiny, as presented here. For the full-size enlargeable version, go here. I’m very happy with how this turned out! For one thing, I never realized that the OLV Basilica in Lackawanna can be seen clearly from up there.

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Sun and Moon (and clouds)

In Buffalo, the eclipse was simultaneously an astonishingly powerful and deeply disappointing experience. Clouds were in the forecast all along, but for the last several days, local meteorologists were constantly offering up reasons for optimism…which turned to “Sorry, we’re not clearing out until after totality, bummer, but it’ll still get dark and stuff.”

I know these folks don’t control the weather, but for all the technology and scientific expertise they have, it sometimes seems that their ability to offer up any kind of reliable forecast has been whittled down to timeframes measured in hours, or even minutes. I know some people around here were lucky enough to get enough of a view of totality to get a photo or two, but I wasn’t that lucky; all I caught of totality was a brief glimpse, maybe half a second.

Those four minutes or so of darkness, though? They were amazing. Truly, astonishingly amazing. For every cynic out there who has been saying things like “It’s just like at night, what’s the big deal,” I can’t say it any other way than to simply say, “It’s not just like night.” There was something qualitatively different about those four minutes…in how quickly they plunged over us, in how the flocks of gulls in the parking lot across the street went mad, in how everything in my circadian-rhythm loving body was screaming, “This isn’t right.” I can see how eclipses were terrifying moments for humans, for millennia, before we learned what they are and how to predict them and thus rendered them a thing of wonder.

There were other feelings, too. I couldn’t help thinking of Mom and how she would have loved to make it to today. She loved the sky and celestial happenings. I remember going to see if we could spot Halley’s Comet back in 1986, and she loved the Perseid meteor shower. She would often send me emails: “Go outside tonight and look at the moon because Venus and Mars are going to be right by it.” She would have been amazed by today, even if she would have been really annoyed by, as she would almost certainly have phrased it, “all these goddamned clouds”.

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The trains don’t run anymore….

Photos from a short walk at the Orchard Park Railroad Depot yesterday. The Depot, you may remember, has been lovingly restored after years of neglect after the trains stopped running, and the tracks are now a rail trail.

The glass insulators on the old railroad power line poles always fascinate me when they’re still intact up there, even after all these years. My father had a coworker years ago who loved railroads and he had a few of these insulators on the shelves in his office.
I hope this person properly penalized themselves a stroke! (The rail trail borders a golf course.)
My phone, taking a picture of me as I took a picture of it. Whoa.
I like how this turned out. I got the colors exactly the way I wanted them. This one, and the next, were edited in Snapseed; the ones above were edited in Lightroom.
I honestly think I nailed my personal appearance yesterday!

These weren’t the only photos I took! I actually took a bunch, but of those only these were the real keepers; some others were actually practice photos I really don’t intend to do much with. I was using a new ND filter that stops a ton of light, and I used it to practice a bit of shutter-speed work as well as a couple of shots of the sun, just to get used to using it before the Total Eclipse of the Heart–er, Sun happens on April 8.

Later this week, they’re saying we may get snow. I mean, fine, winter’s not technically over yet, but today, as I write this, is St. Patrick’s Day, which is generally my personal cut-off point beyond which I am pretty sick of snow. Though this year hasn’t produced nearly enough snow for me to be sick of, so…I guess we’ll see how I feel.

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At the Ridge….

Highmark Stadium and the city of Buffalo, looking north from Chestnut Ridge Park

For the first time since Cane died last September, I went hiking at Chestnut Ridge Park yesterday.

Chestnut Ridge is an old park whose development by Erie County began back in the late 1920s, and a lot of the park’s original infrastructure, quite a bit of which still stands, was built by work crews of the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression. Chestnut Ridge is a very large park–at more than 1100 acres, it is 300 acres larger than New York City’s Central Park–and it covers a lot of rugged terrain, ranging from forested hills to steep gorges through which streams run. The most famous feature in Chestnut Ridge Park is the Eternal Flame waterfall, which is just that: a waterfall behind which there is a small grotto into which natural gas seeps from underground. This gas is almost always aflame, and if it happens to be out, you can literally reach in behind the water and relight it, if you’ve brought a lighter with you.

Chestnut Ridge was a common destination for Cane and I in our weekly nature walks and hikes, and we covered a great deal of the park’s terrain and trail system over our years of trekking there. My last visit to the Ridge with Cane was last July, I think…which was therefore the last time I was there at all. Shortly after that visit he started limping slightly, and that was the beginning of his end.

Yesterday was my first trip there alone in many years.

Being up there yesterday was many things. It was beautiful, obviously, and being in nature was honestly what the doctor ordered after what’s been a trying few months recently. I kept thinking, though, of the presence I was missing; I’d walk a hundred feet and suddenly realized that I hadn’t had to stop three times for a greyhound to smell this tree, that bush, this patch of dirt, that rock. When you’re used to walking those trails with one hand always holding a leash, it’s a bit strange when that hand is unoccupied. And when I made my way down to the side of the stream at the bottom of one of those gorges, there was no watching as Cane found a deep spot to lay in–you know, to cool off–and to drink.

I won’t be staying away from Chestnut Ridge this long again…but it’s not going to feel the same there again, is it?

Photos:

Stream in Chestnut Ridge, from a bridge. It’s been very dry the last six weeks; usually there’s much more water than this, this time of year.

The trees that I call “the Fallen Sisters”. Again, note how dry the stream is. This time of year that whole streambed is flowing.

Inside an old pump house. The pump is long gone.

It was a good day, a good walk in the woods. There was even time for a touch of whimsy, like plucking a few wildflowers and wearing them in the bib of my overalls. One should always strive for a touch of whimsy. At least, that’s how I see it.

 

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All aboard!

Today we took a fall train ride. There’s a train that does scenic rides out of the depot in Hamburg, NY. We did this a year ago and greatly enjoyed it, so we did it again today. It’s an out-and-back ride, covering maybe twenty miles out and twenty back, or maybe less; the train slows way down when going over two trestles that cross the two branches of Eighteen Mile Creek, mainly so people on board can go Ooooh and Aaaaah and take pictures.

First, when going on a train ride, one dresses appropriately. Bring on the hickory stripes!

It was also cool out, hence the scarf. First wearing of a scarf this season!

Also, a couple of the workers on the train complimented my outfit. So that’s two weekends in a row getting compliments on my overalls. Yay! (I really love the hickory stripe pattern, if you couldn’t tell.)

And now, photos. All of these were taken on the return trip, when I got the window seat; The Wife had the window on the way out. WNY is putting on a lovely show so far this fall, I must admit. The stream is Eighteen Mile Creek, which actually has two branches that meet in a confluence a mile or so downstream of each place where the train crosses. The creek is named by virtue of its mouth lying eighteen miles downshore from the beginning of the Niagara River.

I’m told there is lots of good hiking along Eighteen Mile Creek. Cane and I never made it down here. Alas….

If you want to see all of the photos from the ride, plus a video I culled together, it’s all in a Flickr album, here.

Now, photos:

Today was the kind of day when the sun came and went and the clouds moved so quickly you could see their shadows rolling across the fields.

This is just somebody’s yard, but they have three giant willow trees. I love willows. I wonder how the one in front of our old house is doing….

Lots of old railroad detritus on the sidings by the depot.

 

 

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“Then you may take me to the Fair–” “We did that.” “No, it’s a DIFFERENT Fair this time!”

Our summers often pivot on two fairs: the Sterling Renaissance Festival, and the Erie County Fair, which we attended on Friday the 12th. (I would have posted about it sooner, but then that dumbassed virus showed up and put its feet on the furniture and drank from coasterless glasses and got crumbs over everything and was basically just a big asshole.) While The Wife was unable to attend Sterling because of her recent foot surgery, she was able to attend the County Fair, by virtue of a day-long scooter rental.

This year we were graced with probably the most perfect weather for the Fair we’ve ever had: it was clear with low humidity, there was a light breeze all day, and the high temperature was 72 or so. It was simply a perfect day for going to the Fair.

We had a mostly great day, though The Wife petered out quickly by the end (it was her first major long outing since before her foot surgery in June). There are some notable things from years past that aren’t there anymore, which does happen every year but seems more sadly common moving forward. The biggest thing I missed this year was the giant model railroad exhibit that used to always be set up in the Grange Building; hopefully that manages to return next year. Also, the lovely old building that used to house the woodcarving exhibits is entirely gone, having been demolished for safety reasons, which is a shame. The Fair is still a huge amount of fun and can easily kill and entire day, but it did feel–this year and last–a bit more wide-open, which is to say, a bit more empty. I’m hoping for rebounds in the future, but…who knows.

After reading lots of online complaining about prices, I have to report that while prices were up, they did not seem wildly up to me. I spent roughly what I usually spend in terms of food, plus a little. But I never got the sticker shock that I had at the Sterling Renfest when I saw that the turkey legs that were once $9 are now $16. They also rolled parking and admission into a single price, which eliminates the need for money handlers at the parking entrances and makes getting into the park that much quicker, but folks are complaining about that online too, for reasons I can’t fathom.

Here are some photos from our day at The Fair. I have more available in a Flickr album, if you like this sort of thing.

Proper Fair attire.

Wide view of one of the main junctions at the Fair. No, I did not eat at Mr. Sticky’s. Sticky buns and cinnamon rolls are wonderful, but I can’t eat such heavy stuff at The Fair.

 

I always love the ole firefighting equipment.

 

This guy won SECOND place for woodcarving! I’d have given it first, which went to a duck decoy. (Yes, it was a VERY well-done duck. I just love this dude better!)

Beautiful chess board! I like how this carver took inspiration from, but did not reproduce, the classic Staunton pieces.

Always a favorite thing: the quilts.

Mural on the Grandstand exterior.

We don’t eat NEARLY as much at The Fair as we used to. Ribbon fries, though, are ESSENTIAL.

Dinner is always Chiavetta’s. I make some mean Chiavetta’s in my backyard, but the pros just somehow always seem to get it done just right.

Sheep. (I am not convinced that sheeps and goats aren’t somehow the same beasties, just at different points in their lives. I mean, I know they’re not, but some part of me remains pretty sure they are.)

The Fair is most beautiful at the end of the day and into early evening. We left shortly after taking this. Hopefully next year we can manage a little later stay….

I’m already looking forward to the 2023 Fair!

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The Rainbows of the 716

One of the things that sticks in my memory most strongly from our trip last December to Oahu is the rainbows. Every day, at least one rainbow. It just became this thing I did every morning: Get up, make the coffee, go out to our balcony, look off to the right, and see a rainbow. I even saw my first moonbow there.

Western New York is not nearly so prolific in the rainbow department.

But the other night, our WNY skies put on a show. A series of thunderstorms rolled in from Lake Erie, and in their wake, the sunlight did its thing. It started with the faintest wisp of a rainbow, barely there:

As the evening progressed, the bit of rainbow brightened…

…until finally…

And the rainbows were impressive in their duration, too: this one lingered in the sky for a good, long time. On the second pic above, we were heading home from dinner at a gluten-free restaurant in Lockport, which is way up north, about 30 miles. I took that full rainbow shot from the car in I-990, north of the Amherst UB campus, after about ten miles of driving. (Safety note: I was not driving! The Wife was driving. I was not doing sky-photography while driving.)

Another ten or twelve miles later, as we were approaching downtown Buffalo on I-190, there was this.

That just made me all kinds of happy.

Meanwhile, in the other direction, out over the lake, the sky was doing this:

Obviously nobody is ever going to mistake Buffalo for Waikiki, all right? But the sky here can really put on a show sometimes. And in Buffalo you can see sunset over water.

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The Hills of Home…

…or home-that-was.

This photo was shared on a Facebook group I follow, called “Olean NY: Memories in Time”, which is just that: memories of the Olean, NY region through the years. This is a photo taken by drone from the top of what is locally called “Rock City Hill”, the high mountaintop just south of Olean, and one of the highest points in the region. This view is northwest, toward the village of Allegany, where I grew up.

My issues with the region aside, New York’s Southern Tier is a hauntingly beautiful place. I don’t exactly miss it, but…I do miss views like this.

Full version available here. Original Facebook post here.

 

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Autumnal Images

A lovely post about autumn, over at Nerdishly:

Punctuated by long nights and scented by benign smoke and wet leaves, the period between first frost and December is my favorite part of the year. The furnace is pressed into service by 5 a.m., and I, now be-sweatered and -socked from rising until bedtime, begin yawning before 6:45 p.m., but the rest is a sort of everyday magic, from the perfect circles bored into the pumpkins by what I imagine to be a stout but agreeable-enough nocturnal animal to the prehistoric trumpeting of the sandhill cranes as they gather in ever-widening circles over our home before beginning their journey away from the prairie; from the slant of the afternoon sun on the living room floor to the color of the sky when I collect the mail; from best-of booklists to seasonal menus… I adore autumn.

I make no secret of my love for autumn. While I enjoy a lot of summer activities, I always feel a certain disconnect during summer. We’re culturally wired to worship summer, but I tend to keep summer at arm’s length. Warmth is nice, to a point; hot gets unpleasant. And there’s too damned much sunlight in summer! I know that sounds weird in our sun-drenched culture, but I like nighttime, I like moonlight and stars and the flicker of firelight when it’s the only light to be had. I don’t like sunrise before 7am, and I really really really don’t like that it’s light enough to read outside at 10pm.

No, I don’t hate summer. But I’m always glad to see it in the rear-view mirror.

Fall? The time of crisp mornings, earlier sunsets? When the winter stars start to peek over the horizon? The time of lovely flannel and sweaters and overalls after multiple months of boring shorts and t-shirts? The time of color and of apples? Of spooky tales? Of huddling around the fire, and not just sitting near it? Yeah, autumn is the stuff.

This year the transition has been significantly warmer than usual, and the traditional fall color hasn’t been its usual self to this point. By this point we’re usually “past peak”, but this year…heck, maybe we won’t even peak at all. But there’s still a lot of beauty out there.

Here are a few images from just the other day, taken at Knox Farm State Park and from the Mill Road Overlook in East Aurora.

From Knox Farm:

From the Mill Road overlook:

I live in a beautiful place, and this is its most beautiful time of year.

 

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Strange towers and diverted disasters

 This weekend The Wife and I spent a bit of time driving on US 20A, from Orchard Park to Perry Center, where we hung a right for a day trip to Letchworth State Park. After Letchworth we went to Avon, NY where there’s a good pizza place we like (they also do gluten-free!), and then we drove home, traveling south from Avon to Geneseo and then back home on 20A again. US 20A is one of my favorite drives for a number of reasons, all of which boil down to that it’s just a beautiful road to drive, with its roughly 85 miles going from the flatness of the Buffalo area into the hills of eastern Erie County and then into the more rugged terrain of the western Finger Lakes region.

In addition to US 20A being a beautiful drive (and it’s one of many gorgeous drives in autumn), it’s also a bit less-traveled than its coast-to-coast parent road, US 20, which runs about twenty miles or so north of 20A (the A is for ‘alternate’). Many farms dot its length, so you often have to be on the lookout for a tractor or a combine or hay wagon on its way from one part of one farm to another. US 20A runs east-west, which means lots of railroad crossings, and as you exit East Aurora and start encountering hills, you dip into small towns and up out of them on the other side. (Danger for leadfooted drivers: speed limits go from 55 to 35 immediately at the foot of the hills!)

US 20A is also an old road. It hasn’t always been designed as 20A, but its route has existed since before World War II. It goes through old towns and old places. There are many long-closed businesses along its length, including restaurants that I’ve never known to be open that still carry signage. Restaurants out in the middle of nowhere…but at one point there was enough business for someone to make some money slinging hash or frying steaks. Each little town along the way has its own local hangout, located in very old big houses with fading paint jobs, and woodwork that’s long been out of true, but with the current popular brands of beer advertised in neon (or whatever passes for neon these days).

There are two particular spots along US 20A that harken back to the road’s, and the region’s, younger days. Both are within sight of each other.

US 20A goes through a town called Warsaw, NY, which lies at the bottom of a steep-walled valley. The valley is actually so steep that trucks and other large vehicles (cars with trailers, campers, and buses) aren’t even allowed to descend 20A into Warsaw, from either direction. Going either way, before you get to the steep descent into Warsaw, there are big signs and even a turn-off for large vehicles to figure out their alternate routes. Here’s the signage at the turnaround west of Warsaw, for eastbound traffic:

Apparently this was all necessary because of a big fire that happened over fifty years ago:

It’s a trucker’s worst nightmare — losing your brakes while traveling down a steep grade. 

That’s exactly what happened to the driver of a large gasoline tanker on Warsaw’s East Hill about 5:55 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 2, 1969. The huge tanker careened out of control, smashed through a retaining wall and then crashed into a station wagon, rolling on top of it and bursting into flames. 

The station wagon driver, Thomas Drake of Elmira, was killed instantly. Tanker driver John M. Malatta of Macedon miraculously escaped serious injury, leaping from the cab before it became a giant fireball. 

Mr. and Mrs. Chester Kwiecen of Perry, driving up the hill behind the station wagon, narrowly escaped death by running to safety moments before their vehicle was overtaken by flames. 

Much of the East Hill area was transformed into a sea of fire, according to Daily News accounts. The explosion created a river of flames that engulfed four two-story homes within minutes, leaving 17 people homeless. All escaped safely, including an 83-year-old woman who was carried from her home by a neighbor. 

Still, the danger was far from over. 

Thousands of gallons of gasoline from the destroyed tanker leaked into village sewers, causing numerous explosions that blew manhole covers high into the air and caused a life-threatening situation for hours. 

As evening approached, the glow from the massive fire could be seen for miles around the Oatka Valley.

(quote from here)

In other areas around the country I’ve seen runaway truck piles, which are like exit lanes off the thruway except they go into a giant pile of sand, but 20A into Warsaw is too narrow for that sort of thing, so trucks have to just figure out a way around.

The truck entrance to Warsaw isn’t the only interesting thing there! Just before that eastbound truck turnaround, on the opposite side of the road maybe a tenth of a mile away, is this building and structure:

Courtesy Google Maps street view.

As you come around a bend at the top of one of 20A’s numerous hills and rises, the trees on the left end and then there’s that structure, with the bunker beside it. I remember seeing a lot more of these towers at the tops of hills on our various drives (we road-tripped a lot when I was a kid); I remember one standing atop the big mountain that rises just south of Olean, NY, just before you crossed the line into Pennsylvania. I wouldn’t learn for quite a few years just what these towers are, but they were once a crucial part of America’s communications infrastructure. They are microwave transmission towers.

The website 99percentinvisible.com (which I just found as I was searching for information on microwave transmitter towers, and which has a book that I just happen to be reading now!) has an interesting and brief page explaining these things:

Between early wired networks and today’s fiber optics sat a system of microwave relay towers transmitting information from coast to coast across the United States. Built in the early 1950s, this line-of-sight network spanned the continent using zig-zag patterns to avoid signal overlap. It conveyed phone conversations and television signals from the era of the Kennedy assassination through the resignation of Nixon.

There’s also a map of AT&T’s once-extensive nationwide network of these towers, and lo, the Warsaw tower appears to be on it! As I read this map, it seems that the next one in the network is in Springville, NY, a town about 30 miles from Warsaw as the crow flies (or as the microwave beam transmits). These towers have to be placed in line-of-sight from one another, which is how it all works.
Courtesy 99percentinvisible.org

On one side of this road, a bit of old communications infrastructure; on the other, a construct built in response to an awful accident in the region’s lore.

You can still drive through the old America. You just have to look for it and choose your roads carefully.

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