Feathers dust Rochester NY

On Friday, July 26, 2013, there was an amazing confluence of feathers in the Rochester NY sky.  

This photo was taken on Jefferson Rd. looking east, but others saw them all over the entire sky. 

It was so startling, I thought of all the rough edges of this city that need dusting. 

Immense water coming into L. Ontario

This is October 8, 2011 -- incredible water flow over both Horseshoe Falls and the American Falls.

sweet smell

Milkweed is in full bloom ~ July 1.

cormorants

When angles of cormorants fly over and perch on the upturned tree roots on the sandbars, I'm amazed how much they are off the general radar. Fish-diving birds make their home on Braddock Bay - spending summer days airing their wet wings.









Yang 108 Form:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IlhW5UIu_U

migration

So, here is a captive hawk posing for a photog, but it's an amazing spectacle altogether.

The hot winds are still blowing in turkey vultures and others from the south. The fogs and rains of this month give cover for migrating birds.

willow

Despite reports to the contrary, spring has sprung.

before dawn

the world is white and blue

wind and waves

The March winds are coming early – it's mid-February and while the garden catalogs are open, there's still a lot of snow and ice all the way out into the lake. Out on the island it's mysterious and wintry.

ice walk out to island

Greg and I hiked across the frozen bay to the island today, January 23.

Oh baby, it's cold out there . . . one ice fisherman had set tipups all over Salmon Creek just past the bridge. We were, obviously, the only ones out there in the minus –1 windchill – frozen faces, three deer across the road when we turned around.

December at dusk

Angles of geese coming into the bay on winds from the far west are finding little open water on the bay today at dusk in mid-December. Ice as far as the sandbar, endless roaring of waves with no break, it feels like it does just before we're about to get a storm from the prairies of Manitoba. Posted by Barbara

Late November Day on the West Spit

Waves have been crashing and spray whipping up along the sand bar, wind now coming in from the northwest while deep blue L. Ontario churns and boils. The west spit of Braddock Bay is less than a mile trail through weathered and splintering cottonwood trees planted at least a half century ago. The trail winds through live trees interspersed with white snags looking a bit scraggled and lonely against the gray and white clouds. The roaring wind is a sign that more wild weather is coming. Today the cold wind brought in some horizontal snow and despite a warming trend predicted, it will likely be one of the last days of the fall.
Posted by Barbara

Screech Owl at Braddock Bay

The eagles [bald and golden], owls [barn and screech], hawks [red-tailed, harris], fit in with the true gray November day.

These birds were on display at Braddock Lodge on East Manitou Rd. by Braddock Bay Raptor Research people.

Looking downstream in October

October 19
Salmon Creek about a half mile upstream of crossroads at Hilton, NY

cornstalks on curtis hill

Everyday I traverse the Curtis Road hill, the southside of which looks like a long esker, a gravel-deposited ridge running west to east for about five miles starting at Townline Road and ending at Manitou Road where it dives down into the Salmon Creek valley. It just disappears. Now October, field corn and soybeans have turned this peaceful yellow-tan color and are often whipped by the coming November winds. The hill is treeless today and looks strangely bare except for the cultivated fields and occasional home, old farmstead, and what intrigues me the most . . . the tenant-farmers dwellings.

The Gate is Now

Japanese Arrow Bamboo is just too strong a plant for most people, but it's beautiful . . . .

"The underlying fabric of the world sustains us" . . . this is a statement from "The Buddha," a film that describes the origin of Buddhism, a world view with ideas that are deeply ecological, interdependent, linked. . . then take a turn toward the human condition.

"The gate is now" refers to the concept that paying attention opens the inner door ~ outer and inner life touch at this gate of attention. To the extent that you pay attention to this moment, you have access to the universe within. Though this back-and-forth process, reality reveals itself without reasoning.

The inner life, the spirituality, the 'religion' of the buddhist is only 'taught' through the living, human being who 'walks, talks and laughs.'

All of the benefits of this approach to life are available to everyone, every moment and forever without allegiance to a doctrine, a theory, a dogma.

"Strive on untiringly,' Buddha said. His ideas, more a philosophy than a religion, arose in the fifth century BCE. For most of my life I have been taught to rely on, depend on and turn to 'reasoning' to back up my observations. Reasoning's foundation, logic or coherence, helps observation become science, a textbook agreement among us to approach things with prior evidence-based thinking and recording.

Science can be a buddhist practice when approached as continuous striving and review.

Spirituality is mental . . . an inner peaceful place, a sanctuary for our feelings, thoughts and observations, where even suffering and torment find a place.

The gate is now . . .the world is revealing continually . . .inner peace is at hand.

Posted by Barbara

immerse yourself . . . .

Take a look at this exceptional video clip of waves washing ashore in Wayne County, New York . . . .
Pultneyville shore --- ChristinelikeCamera

Posted by Barbara

after a rain in august

Rainbow in the east sky
after August rain
heads down and
sun flowers.

-- posted by Barbara

Pea Soup: Great Lakes backstory

You be the judge. Photo take August 31, 2010 Braddock Bay, Lake Ontario southshore
Why we're in gridlock about what's happening to the Great Lakes and who is in charge . . . 

• 2010: Nuclear waste shipments on the Great Lakes ???

• 2010: The asian carp wars begin and while the US has a 'Carp Czar,' behind the scenes, American businessman is working with China to start an asian carp fishery here.

• 2010: oil spill goes into L. Michigan

• 2009: President Obama anoints a 'czar' to over see the "Great Lakes Restoration Initiative" which seeks to fund many, many studies, programs, etc. etc. - hey, NY, where are you on this list?

• 2008: PL 110-342 Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact is a legally binding interstate compact [NY, OH, PA, IL, IN, MI, MN, WI] to define management of the use of the Great Lakes Basin water. 

• 2008: the Centers for Disease Control never released a report, "Great Lakes Danger Zone" indicating the long, sick relationship between the water, its pollution and human health.

• 2006: Peter Annin publishes "The Great Lakes Water Wars" which addressed unregulated water withdrawals. Check out "Great Lakes Environmental Law" by Noah Hall.

• 2004: President Bush launches the "Great Lakes Interagency Task Force" which seemingly went, uh . . . . where?

• 1990-1999: we were too busy putting in computers to notice what was going on, but in the long run, computers will probably pull us out of this 'transboundary' mess.

• 1987: Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement of 1972 was amended by protocol -- US and Canadian governments sign this Protocol promising to report on progress and calling on the International Joint Commission to review "Remedial Action Plans" in what are described as 43 "Areas of Concern."

• 1978: Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement addendum promised a commitment to work together to rid the Great Lakes of "persistent toxic substances."---Hmmm . . . same year Love Canal comes to light.

• 1972: Canada and the United States signed the first "Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement" to control pollution and to clean up waste waters from industries and communities.

• 1970: President Nixon establishes the Environmental Protection Agency.

• Meanwhile, for decades, we are at the behest of the shipping industry, the mining industry, the chemical and allied industries who were just 'getting rid of waste', the lack of water treatment, runoff from agriculture, lawns, etc. etc.

• 1909: International Joint Commission is established . . . looks promising.

• How far back do you want to go . . . . to the romantic writer Gene Stratton Porter from Indiana . . . to Wisconsin's Aldo Leopold . . . Sigurd Olsen from Minnesota . . . .lots of native history . . . legend and lore.

• Who knows what? Who verifies what? Who separates hype from science? Who reads science correctly? Who cares . . . . the Great Lakes Information Network . . . . . Environment Canada . . . . the EPA . . . . you . . . . me?


• What does the EPA say online.

Time to ask 'at what cost,' agriculture?

Where do we swim, what water do we drink, when the L. Ontario shoreline from Nine-Mile Point in Wayne County to Bogus Point in Monroe County/NYS is inundated with primarily agricultural runoff steadily building massive algal blooms in which toxic bacteria are thriving . . . not to mention Sodus Bay which is simmering under a toxic blue-green algae blanket. Take a look at the incredible north-running rivers and streams: Genesee River, right, Irondequoit Creek, Salmon Creek, Buttonwood Creek, left, Northrup Creek, Fleming Creek and those that flow into the Genesee R. - Black Creek, Oatka Creek . . . . Ask yourself, with this massive water movement, incredible waterfalls, wildlife, fish and birds and humanlife ringing these watercourses, for whatever purpose has the US governmental agencies [EPA, DEC, SeaGrant, etc.] given a 'free pass' to agriculture? How in god's name has this lobby remained so powerful into the third millenium? Take a gander: US EPA calls Rochester Embayment "Area of Concern." If you look long enough at the 'partners' and 'stakeholders' over the past 50 years, you come up with one conclusion: all of the attempts to clean up the Great Lakes have failed because they were nothing more than buying time and pushing the problem off onto the next generation. Are you ever going to adopt organic standards, farmers and landowners? -- posted by Barbara

waterworld of invaders

Here is the underwater weed world in Braddock Bay, NY - a vast tangle of Eurasian watermilfoil (Myriophyllum spicatum) . . . . water chestnut (Trapa natans) . . . Curlyleaf pondweed (Potamogeton crispus) . . . fanwort (Cabomba carolina). . . duck weed or something like little green floating dots. There are both invasive plants and animals and the USDA National Agricultural Library knows, so does Cornell Cooperative Extension's Sea Grant.

Besides the weeds, there are perch, carp, pike, bowfin and little minnows that are so cute. -- posted by Barbara