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.

April can be a wild month

Torrential downpours mixed with sleet and winds bringing in migrations of birds, April is a wake-up call.

GreatLakesRestoriation website launches - seeks comments

Here it is: http://greatlakesrestoration.us Oh boy . . . . NOTE: Funding is on the 'chopping block' - March 30, 2011

Make a comment: Great Lakes & Mississippi River OY Interbasin Study is seeking comments

before dawn

the world is white and blue

Got a good idea? $40M is out there

UP TO $40 MILLION AVAILABLE FROM EPA FOR GREAT LAKES RESTORATION
PROJECTS

(CHICAGO – Feb. 25, 2011) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today announced that the agency is requesting applications from states, municipalities, tribes and nonprofit organizations for new projects to protect and restore the Great Lakes. President Obama has proposed a total of $300 million in funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative in Fiscal Year 2011, with approximately $40 million of that total allocated to EPA for distribution through this competitive grant program. The final budget is subject to Congressional appropriation.

“These grants will support critical work to protect the Great Lakes, which provide drinking water to 30 million Americans and support a multi-billion dollar economy,” said EPA Region 5 Administrator and Great Lakes National Program Manager Susan Hedman. “This year we are particularly interested in projects that create new jobs – for instance, using a conservation corps model for environmental restoration.”

Grants are available to fund a wide range of projects, including work to target invasive species, to reduce the impact of toxic substances and nonpoint pollution, to protect public health, and to clean up heavily contaminated “Areas of Concern” around the Great Lakes Basin.

"The work funded by these grants will help to ensure that Great Lakes water is safe to drink, the fish are safe to eat, and that beaches and waters are safe for swimming and recreation," said Hedman.

Applications are due by noon on April 11. Webinars on the application process will be held at 10 a.m. on March 9 and March 17.

See more information about applying for GLRI grants at
www.epa.gov/greatlakes/fund/2011rfa01/. More information about the
Great Lakes Restoration Initiative is at www.greatlakesrestoration.us/.

CONTACT:
Anne Rowan, 312-353-9391, rowan.anne@epa.gov
Mick Hans, 312-353-5050, hans.mick@epa.gov
GreatLakesNews is hosted by the Great Lakes National Program Office of USEPA:
http://www.epa.gov/glnpo/
SUBSCRIBE: Send a blank message to:
greatlakesnews-subscribe@lists.epa.gov

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.

Is a storm coming?

While a major 18" snow was predicted for tonight and tomorrow, Feb. 2, it veered off to the northwest and skittered across us with sprinkles of ice coming directly off the lake.

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.

map of here . . .

Here

Qigong ~ Eight Piece Brocade

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.

And you thought it would never happen on this scale

OK . . . . Sitka is selling Baranof Island water to India -----oyyyyyyy

November 10, 1975

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.

again a dawning

Saturday, October 2, 2010 ~ Six am . . . brilliant southern constellations in Orion and the planets followed by startling blue clouds and gold-hued rising sun. All the years we lived on the east side of this bay, we watched the sunset over corn fields, but since moving west, I now look directly east into the sunrise over shining water . . . . wonder if this having an effect on me?

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