After a long week, here’s a little piece of peace: an old mill dam now deep in the woods. It’s one of my favorite places. I’m calling it quits early tonight. I'll see you tomorrow. [Photo by Buddy Poland.]
Your daily comments are anchored in reliable history and are not cluttered with diatribe nor are they drowning in emotion. As a retired lawyer and amateur historian I appreciate your efforts.james hawley
In the town of Chittenango where L. Frank Baum was born is a wonderful waterfall approximately 167 feet high. It is situated in an old New York State Park
I worked in Cazenovia, NY for several years when I could not find work in Michigan. I would hike the Link Trail, an old railroad bed, alongside Chittenango Creek to get to the falls and have something to do during weekends and time after work. If I was not canoeing Lake Cazenovia.
At times, my visiting German workers would come with me as I had little else to do out there. Or perhaps a dinner at the Brewster Inn an old Rockefeller Summer home and a hotel. People would come to Cazenovia from NYC to escape the heat.
It was pretty out there walking in the silence of the woods and listening to the rapid flow of Chittenango Creek which fed the falls. I would sleep soundly those days and nights of exploring.
I have no famous saying to end a post or an evening. So lets use Edward Murrow's famous sign off. “Good night, and good luck.” And I look forward to reading tomorrow's commentary.
Thank you for the picture. If you tap on the picture next to my name, you will see another picture from the Stone Quarry Hill Art Park. I would walk out there also just to look around from the hills there and the independent art works. Being 500 miles away from home, it kept me busy. "Stacks" by David Harper which is in the shape of an extended hand holding a library of books. To me, it represented a hand of knowledge.
Turning the pages of books has become a lost art. I would always have a book with me to read while going to Asia to read on the plane and in my room.
My wife & I married & graduated at Syracuse University. Many of our classmates & housemates were local. Cazenonia & Chittenango Falls were among our popular respites from all night art & architecture school projects. Bill, you forgot to mention Cazenovia College, a girls college that drew young college men from Syracuse like, I shouldn't say. But the pastoral nature of Chittenango & Casenovia was popular for all kinds of natural reasons. If my memory serves me right, Chittenango Gorge was part of this nature preserve. As we went south & west towards Ithaca where our daughters eventually went to college, gorges & falls were prolific and the Finger Lakes magnificent. Then we get into wine country.... Heather & Bill, your cues to our memories are so sweet next to the bitterness that we taste everyday with the documented and analyzed ransacking of our world from marauding political extremists and their opportunistic oligarchs. But we must shine a light, and photos of nature and recollections of sweet memories remind us of what we are fighting for and what can and should be. Thank you.
The family as a whole has roots in western New York. This time, I needed to work in 2008 and my work background is transferable and very applicable to any industry.
If you look at the picture next to my name you will see another memory from Cazenovia as taken at Stone Quarry Art in the Park (The Hand of Knowledge). An interesting place to visit and equally easy walk on another Link Trail (2.5 miles) to get to from Caz after parking your car in the Veterans Hall lot (sixties - seventies XMarine Sergeant). An English prof would send books for me to read while overseas.
My landlord Charlie had 4 daughters who all went to college. The oldest went to Caz College. To wit and in my fifties at the time, I was there to work. His daughters would talk to me from time to time when they visited Charlie who lived in a 4000 sq. foot old Victorian house on Rippleton Road and just up the road from the Brewster and the Lorenzo. The son of a Bricklayer who never finished grade school fixed a lot of things for Charlie and introduced liberal politics and economics to the area.
I hesitate to add too much to Prof. Heather's as I may be pirating her columns of knowledge. Thank you for responding with your thoughts and memories.
Bill, where did you work in Cazenovia? My partner works in Cazenovia at Knowles formerly Dielectric Corp. I'm often in Cazenovia and do enjoy Chittenago Falls. If you have a chance, I post many pictures of Cazenovia Lake on my Facebook and Instagram pages. We lived on Lincklaen St for years. I do miss that Village. We now live about 30 miles south of Cazenovia in the historic Village of S. Otselic.
I worked at Marquardt for a few years before a cordial parting of ways. I got a little closer to home by working in the Mansfield/Lexington , Ohio area. Another area which has some history to it.
I would hike Mochican State Park for hours on end. If you ever watch the Shawshank redemption, the actor who played Brooks Hatlen or James Whitmore was portrayed walking a street with a suitcase. The street was in Mansfield. Mansfield Reformatory was the prison.
In NY, I used to eat at Seven Stone Steps, Brae Loch, and the Pizza place across the street which had excellent pizza. Walked for miles on the Link Trails. I rented a room from Charlie and stayed at his house for a few years.
I was badly in need of solace tonight. I just can’t take anymore which is odd for me at 73. Even with major traumas in my life I was calm and peaceful. And I was never depressed until now. Thank you for the pieces of peace!
Sandy I’ll bring the wine (Two Hands Angel’s Share) to go with your organic grass fed beef. During rationing in WW II the beef available was increasingly grass fed. This had a yellowish tinged fat, was called ‘utility beef,’ and was shunned by many consumers. Now, of course, it is considered spot on. Personally, I’m not picky.
Depression is normal re destruction of Ukraine, 2nd Holocaust, FoxFix Tucker and Orban, Putin, Murdoch, Trump, FB Nazi owner Zuckerberg, our Republican Party, warming, GOP & Russian fascism and Russian hydrocarbons controlling Germany et al, ubiquitous plastics, anaplasmosis fed tetracycline in the water of livestock, for weight gain, obesity in humans, destroying insect food, starving song birds and others, antibiotic intolerance building, creating emotional instability in young males, suicide by murder, Black hating fascist Trump Cult GOP misfits, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s treatment by our Nazi senators, the 6/3 Scotus stench and Clarence Thomas and lovely White Ginny... corrupt food, water, air - and the useless United Nations (in)-Security Council with Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy’s virtual riff 100% true... if you’re NOT depressed, you need psychiatric care from a drugstore shrink..
Trump is claiming at every campaign stop that it was BIDEN that surrendered to the Taliban even though it was actually Trump who went off, without the Afghan government, and signed a total surrender agreement. Trump claims Biden was "weak" and Trump, of course, would never have "surrendered". A complete and total lie.
But, Dr. Richardson, unless some pretty able communicators in highly viisble positions, like perhaps Biden himself, clear this lie from Trump up, 80% of America will soon believe what the video says.
Somebody needs to communicate to Biden that it is time to start clarifying things on routine basis.
Or, the Republicans are going to do a total sweep. No lie. While Biden is fixated on working his arse off to help Ukraine and manage the country, Trump is pouring lies out onto Americans like syrup onto pancakes.
Americans, for the most part, believed George Bush's lies and they will believe Trump's too.
Nevermind that even if BIDEN HAD (he did not) surrendered to the Taliban it was still the right thing to do. BUT, it was TRUMP who wrote the surrender agreement and walked away.
I hope you can help get somebody in the administration, somewhere to start fighting Trump's lies.
EVERY TIME TRUMP SPEAKS TRUMP SAYS THIS LIE. It will work unless someobody stops it OR gets a more effective and TRUE message out there.
It was TRUMP that signed the surrender agreement that called for withdrawal by May 1, 2021.
It ws BIDEN who EXTENDED the date to the end of August (or maybe end of September).
I definitely think Democracy and freedom are off the rails when someone like Trump is permitted to openly go around lying like this about the American President.
You are 100% right. I have screamed into the abyss for decades. W/Dickie/Luntz were experts at rewriting history with fiction. Occasionally, books came out setting the records straight. Do you think Foxers read them??? Look at the best seller lists sometimes. Now that CBS has hired one of the most egregious purveyors of chump bull Schitt, I feel hopeless. True that Heather is a voice for sanity, but 600,000 is no match for Rupert’s lying horde. They are all around me in red Texas with no significant push back. Rupert has made chump seem to be a hero, while denigrating every democratic effort to save us. The sheep baa and the opposition plods on, unaware…
Mike, you are so absolutely right! The lies have to be set straight. Who's Biden's closest advisor or the most trusted person to tell this truth? Maybe Prof. Richardson will contact him? Maybe Jen Psaki could address it -- and continue addressing it as well as other lies. The WH invites input and makes it easy. I hope you will do this. https://www.whitehouse.gov/get-involved/write-or-call/
During the last six years at that precise moment I hear or see that pomposity of self-aggrandizement I am almost overcome by a violent gage response until I either look the other way or at least turn off the sound/channel.
And I am not the only one to do so.
So, It makes no difference what he says or does if there is no one being subjected to his totally preposterous B S...
Fear not.
VOTE INTELLIGENTLY and help your neighbors to better understand the legislative issues, the incumbents and the candidates perhaps a neighborhood pot luck bar-b-q...
George, if I held such a bbq, I’d be the only democrat there. I’m training tomorrow for the communications group at The Union, and if I pass and possibly able to I will get out the word about Jabba’s taliban surrender.
GUS, if if your bbq was announced on you tube a week in advance and it was a Hawaiian traditional whole pig luau with the first twenty attendees free food...you would at least attract twenty of the most greedy R's for your communications' conversion skills, Eh!?
I am praying you will fully exceed your greatest expectation in passing that test!
Your daily comments are anchored in reliable history and are not cluttered with diatribe nor are they drowning in emotion. As a retired lawyer and amateur historian I appreciate your efforts.james hawley
So beautiful and peaceful. Thank you Heather and Buddy. Namaste
Thank you, Karen! It is the smallest of gestures that mean so much. I needed to be seen and you saw me. Pass it on and I will do the same.
"Nature's ways are best..."
https://youtu.be/qvQa04JP73o
Thank you Barbara. Your words are very kind and I will pass them on. Our world is in great need of kindness.💖
In the town of Chittenango where L. Frank Baum was born is a wonderful waterfall approximately 167 feet high. It is situated in an old New York State Park
I worked in Cazenovia, NY for several years when I could not find work in Michigan. I would hike the Link Trail, an old railroad bed, alongside Chittenango Creek to get to the falls and have something to do during weekends and time after work. If I was not canoeing Lake Cazenovia.
At times, my visiting German workers would come with me as I had little else to do out there. Or perhaps a dinner at the Brewster Inn an old Rockefeller Summer home and a hotel. People would come to Cazenovia from NYC to escape the heat.
It was pretty out there walking in the silence of the woods and listening to the rapid flow of Chittenango Creek which fed the falls. I would sleep soundly those days and nights of exploring.
I have no famous saying to end a post or an evening. So lets use Edward Murrow's famous sign off. “Good night, and good luck.” And I look forward to reading tomorrow's commentary.
Bill H, your lovely writing is so evocative, it made me homesick. Here are the Chittenango Falls with their cascading steps:
https://pre00.deviantart.net/a546/th/pre/f/2012/325/9/4/94c1682226bbd02e2dd9dd2a86ff8642-d5lqeny.jpg
Thanks for that. Peace and calm rolled over me as I gazed at it.
Lovely, Ellie!
Ellie:
Thank you for the picture. If you tap on the picture next to my name, you will see another picture from the Stone Quarry Hill Art Park. I would walk out there also just to look around from the hills there and the independent art works. Being 500 miles away from home, it kept me busy. "Stacks" by David Harper which is in the shape of an extended hand holding a library of books. To me, it represented a hand of knowledge.
Turning the pages of books has become a lost art. I would always have a book with me to read while going to Asia to read on the plane and in my room.
Always take a book with me - mainly for dr visits!
I did. That’s lovely!
Thank you Ellie, nice to see them after the lovely description!
Wonderful capture. I wanted to walk into it.
Wonderful picture!
A favorite place of mine too! Thankfully not far from me in Utica!
Hi Lynn, let's connect! You can email me at heathersherd@gmail.com
I remember areas not far from me with beautiful falls like that - way back when I was a kid - I assume they're still there.
My wife & I married & graduated at Syracuse University. Many of our classmates & housemates were local. Cazenonia & Chittenango Falls were among our popular respites from all night art & architecture school projects. Bill, you forgot to mention Cazenovia College, a girls college that drew young college men from Syracuse like, I shouldn't say. But the pastoral nature of Chittenango & Casenovia was popular for all kinds of natural reasons. If my memory serves me right, Chittenango Gorge was part of this nature preserve. As we went south & west towards Ithaca where our daughters eventually went to college, gorges & falls were prolific and the Finger Lakes magnificent. Then we get into wine country.... Heather & Bill, your cues to our memories are so sweet next to the bitterness that we taste everyday with the documented and analyzed ransacking of our world from marauding political extremists and their opportunistic oligarchs. But we must shine a light, and photos of nature and recollections of sweet memories remind us of what we are fighting for and what can and should be. Thank you.
David
The family as a whole has roots in western New York. This time, I needed to work in 2008 and my work background is transferable and very applicable to any industry.
If you look at the picture next to my name you will see another memory from Cazenovia as taken at Stone Quarry Art in the Park (The Hand of Knowledge). An interesting place to visit and equally easy walk on another Link Trail (2.5 miles) to get to from Caz after parking your car in the Veterans Hall lot (sixties - seventies XMarine Sergeant). An English prof would send books for me to read while overseas.
My landlord Charlie had 4 daughters who all went to college. The oldest went to Caz College. To wit and in my fifties at the time, I was there to work. His daughters would talk to me from time to time when they visited Charlie who lived in a 4000 sq. foot old Victorian house on Rippleton Road and just up the road from the Brewster and the Lorenzo. The son of a Bricklayer who never finished grade school fixed a lot of things for Charlie and introduced liberal politics and economics to the area.
I hesitate to add too much to Prof. Heather's as I may be pirating her columns of knowledge. Thank you for responding with your thoughts and memories.
Bill, where did you work in Cazenovia? My partner works in Cazenovia at Knowles formerly Dielectric Corp. I'm often in Cazenovia and do enjoy Chittenago Falls. If you have a chance, I post many pictures of Cazenovia Lake on my Facebook and Instagram pages. We lived on Lincklaen St for years. I do miss that Village. We now live about 30 miles south of Cazenovia in the historic Village of S. Otselic.
Linda:
I worked at Marquardt for a few years before a cordial parting of ways. I got a little closer to home by working in the Mansfield/Lexington , Ohio area. Another area which has some history to it.
I would hike Mochican State Park for hours on end. If you ever watch the Shawshank redemption, the actor who played Brooks Hatlen or James Whitmore was portrayed walking a street with a suitcase. The street was in Mansfield. Mansfield Reformatory was the prison.
In NY, I used to eat at Seven Stone Steps, Brae Loch, and the Pizza place across the street which had excellent pizza. Walked for miles on the Link Trails. I rented a room from Charlie and stayed at his house for a few years.
Bill, Ron worked for Marquardt for several years before moving on to Knowles. Literally, next store. 😂
We've eaten at those places as well. Good times. I used to love to grab a book and sit by Cazenovia Lake.
Shankshaw Redemption is one of my favorite movies. I know just the scene you mean with James Whitmore.
There is beauty in this Country, we just have to look for it. Somedays are harder than others.
Have a great day.
Linda
https://www.thebrewsterinn.com/dinnermenu...
Fun Fine Dining & refined wine list worth advanced pedigree knowledge...
Lovely!
Beautiful….thank you for ALL you do….sleep well.
Deepest gratitude, dear Heather, for your extraordinary work. You are our touchstone. Rest well! 💛🙏🏼🙏🏿🙏💛
Thank you for such beauty and for all you share with us.
I was badly in need of solace tonight. I just can’t take anymore which is odd for me at 73. Even with major traumas in my life I was calm and peaceful. And I was never depressed until now. Thank you for the pieces of peace!
Barbara, if you’re not depressed, you’re dead. Try the best red wine, and organic grass fed beef.
Presumably, your organic grass fed beef ;-)
Federally certified organ grass. Beef fed only organic grass. Closed herd.
NOP. Organic grass fed. www.lewisfamilyfarm.com
Sandy I’ll bring the wine (Two Hands Angel’s Share) to go with your organic grass fed beef. During rationing in WW II the beef available was increasingly grass fed. This had a yellowish tinged fat, was called ‘utility beef,’ and was shunned by many consumers. Now, of course, it is considered spot on. Personally, I’m not picky.
1212 Whallons Bay Road your call.
Sandy I am oiling up my three wheel walker as I write.
Double Moderna, masked, call ahead. Want the Signal number? Sandy
Sandy Reminds me of a WW II song:
Coming in on a wing and a prayer
Coming in on a wing and a prayer
Though there’s one engine gone
I’ll still carry on
Coming in on a wing and a prayer.
Love this prescription. A friend just prescribed filet mignon for my anemia. I'll add the red 🍷!
Depression is normal re destruction of Ukraine, 2nd Holocaust, FoxFix Tucker and Orban, Putin, Murdoch, Trump, FB Nazi owner Zuckerberg, our Republican Party, warming, GOP & Russian fascism and Russian hydrocarbons controlling Germany et al, ubiquitous plastics, anaplasmosis fed tetracycline in the water of livestock, for weight gain, obesity in humans, destroying insect food, starving song birds and others, antibiotic intolerance building, creating emotional instability in young males, suicide by murder, Black hating fascist Trump Cult GOP misfits, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s treatment by our Nazi senators, the 6/3 Scotus stench and Clarence Thomas and lovely White Ginny... corrupt food, water, air - and the useless United Nations (in)-Security Council with Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy’s virtual riff 100% true... if you’re NOT depressed, you need psychiatric care from a drugstore shrink..
Stay the course. It’s darkest before dawn.
Sandy
What a calming, centering picture this is. Thank you, Buddy.
Thanks for the beautiful picture, Heather. Have a nice evening.
Thank you for bringing a piece of tranquility to me. I’m a big Buddy fan.
Enjoy the solace.
Thank you, Heather and Buddy. Rest well.
Hi Dr. Richardson.
Trump is claiming at every campaign stop that it was BIDEN that surrendered to the Taliban even though it was actually Trump who went off, without the Afghan government, and signed a total surrender agreement. Trump claims Biden was "weak" and Trump, of course, would never have "surrendered". A complete and total lie.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/29/frank-mckenzie-doha-agreement-trump-taliban
Trump, at EVERY speech he makes now, claims that BIDEN is the "weak" one that "surrendered" to Afghanistan.
Here is a video of Trump spreading this lie. Everything said in this video is a lie.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/29/frank-mckenzie-doha-agreement-trump-taliban.
But, Dr. Richardson, unless some pretty able communicators in highly viisble positions, like perhaps Biden himself, clear this lie from Trump up, 80% of America will soon believe what the video says.
Somebody needs to communicate to Biden that it is time to start clarifying things on routine basis.
Or, the Republicans are going to do a total sweep. No lie. While Biden is fixated on working his arse off to help Ukraine and manage the country, Trump is pouring lies out onto Americans like syrup onto pancakes.
Americans, for the most part, believed George Bush's lies and they will believe Trump's too.
Nevermind that even if BIDEN HAD (he did not) surrendered to the Taliban it was still the right thing to do. BUT, it was TRUMP who wrote the surrender agreement and walked away.
I hope you can help get somebody in the administration, somewhere to start fighting Trump's lies.
EVERY TIME TRUMP SPEAKS TRUMP SAYS THIS LIE. It will work unless someobody stops it OR gets a more effective and TRUE message out there.
It was TRUMP that signed the surrender agreement that called for withdrawal by May 1, 2021.
It ws BIDEN who EXTENDED the date to the end of August (or maybe end of September).
I definitely think Democracy and freedom are off the rails when someone like Trump is permitted to openly go around lying like this about the American President.
Soon, everyone will believe it.
You are 100% right. I have screamed into the abyss for decades. W/Dickie/Luntz were experts at rewriting history with fiction. Occasionally, books came out setting the records straight. Do you think Foxers read them??? Look at the best seller lists sometimes. Now that CBS has hired one of the most egregious purveyors of chump bull Schitt, I feel hopeless. True that Heather is a voice for sanity, but 600,000 is no match for Rupert’s lying horde. They are all around me in red Texas with no significant push back. Rupert has made chump seem to be a hero, while denigrating every democratic effort to save us. The sheep baa and the opposition plods on, unaware…
I remember a bumper sticker from the early 00's: "When Clinton lied, no one died"
You realize most everything trump says is projection?
Mike, you are so absolutely right! The lies have to be set straight. Who's Biden's closest advisor or the most trusted person to tell this truth? Maybe Prof. Richardson will contact him? Maybe Jen Psaki could address it -- and continue addressing it as well as other lies. The WH invites input and makes it easy. I hope you will do this. https://www.whitehouse.gov/get-involved/write-or-call/
During the last six years at that precise moment I hear or see that pomposity of self-aggrandizement I am almost overcome by a violent gage response until I either look the other way or at least turn off the sound/channel.
And I am not the only one to do so.
So, It makes no difference what he says or does if there is no one being subjected to his totally preposterous B S...
Fear not.
VOTE INTELLIGENTLY and help your neighbors to better understand the legislative issues, the incumbents and the candidates perhaps a neighborhood pot luck bar-b-q...
DO IT!
George, if I held such a bbq, I’d be the only democrat there. I’m training tomorrow for the communications group at The Union, and if I pass and possibly able to I will get out the word about Jabba’s taliban surrender.
GUS, if if your bbq was announced on you tube a week in advance and it was a Hawaiian traditional whole pig luau with the first twenty attendees free food...you would at least attract twenty of the most greedy R's for your communications' conversion skills, Eh!?
I am praying you will fully exceed your greatest expectation in passing that test!
An interesting offering from the Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-if-fox-news-viewers-watched-cnn-instead/2022/04/03/c8e14052-b34e-11ec-8358-20aa16355fb4_story.html
Stairway to heaven.
Thank you for demonstrating such fine self-care! ❤️
Peace, Heather. You deserve it!
I love seeing bits of Maine. Some of my ancestors lived there. I am hopeful to visit one day. Thank you for the beautiful photo.