Heart of the Neighborhood

 Community ceramic mural designed by Marisa Temple with the help of many Westcott neighbors, 

installed in 1999 on Harvard Place near the corner of Westcott St. 

Dog Loves Snow!

Onoñda’géga’ Ohnéganos; Onondaga Water, the Sacred Lake

The Creekwalk ends at Onondaga Lake, long a sacred place for the Onondagas, as it should have been for all of us. It ended up being the most heavily polluted lake in the United States. Efforts to return it to its natural state are slow coming, minuscule and half-hearted. Still, this sign is welcome, situated at the beginning of the lake where bald eagles have been seen during especially cold winters. Today it was raw and cold down there. Still, it is a wonderful place to be.

I could not find the true Onondaga word or words to put a name to the lake here. The best I could locate were the word for the Onondaga people, and the word for water.

Illustrating the Strength of Ice Crystals

Al Fresco

Afternoons Begin to Lengthen After Today!

The rising sun inches southward. The mornings are shorter and shorter in the Northern Hemisphere until, sometime on January 3, the earth’s morning tilt stops and in an instant, as we move onward in our orbit, the sun begins to rise earlier again.

In the meantime, and this is the important thing I hang on to this week, by the clock the afternoon reaches it shortest on December 9, today! After today it’s all gravy, at least in the afternoons. By the middle of January the afternoons are perceptibly longer. Tomorrow the difference is just a few seconds, gradually becoming a minute and by the end of January, 2 minutes every afternoon.

All this is “by the clock”, of course. Check out the Farmer’s Almanac or an astronomical website to see what I mean. http://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/syracuse?month=12&year=2014

A sundial gives no clue to this modern phenomenon. The true shortest day is still Winter Solstice, December 21, at exactly 6:03 PM in Syracuse, or something like that depending on where you are latitudinally.

Knowing that things start improving in the afternoons early in December always lifts my mood. Celebrate December 9!

Noah's Ark at Brandywine River Museum

 Critters are made from natural materials: dried flowers, seeds, pods and husks. They are sold as a fund raiser after the holiday season.

Sweet Chalk Cows

Chalk drawing by Stephen at Freedom of Espresso in Liverpool.

Window Paintings!

These bright illustrations caught my eye on West Fayette across from Lipe Art Park.

Rudolph!

Tribute to Taras Shevchenko, Ukrainian Freedom Fighter, Poet and Painter

This memorial stands in front of St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church in Tipperary Hill.

Pot, Bench, Snow and Leaves

The pot contains pineapple sage salvia elegans, which only hits top speed as the season closes! The late frost this year gave us an especially happy display.

Celtic Cross at the Foot of Tompkins Street in Tipperary Hill

Peter Coleman, long-time Tipperary Hill businessman and mayor, brought this Celtic cross from Ireland. 

Wharton Esherick Museum

Wharton Esherick's home and studio, a National Historic Landmark for Architecture, are located in Paoli PA near Philadelphis. Link to the museum is here. 

Bathroom tile

Bifurcated spiral staircase between Esherick's studio and living spaces.

Stool seat

Treetop dining area

Who Knows the Ways of Snow?

Serpentine Building Stone in Chester Co. PA

Ornamentation on Stone Building in Chester Co. PA

The Foxes Say Happy Thanksgiving

Brandywine River Museum at Chadds Ford PA

Pennsylvania Sunset

We drove to the Philadelphia area on Tuesday to be with family on Thanksgiving. On I76 we encountered some traffic that was moving pretty well. The sunset was spectacular, building in intensity and lasting for a quarter of an hour or more. Every so often the traffic slowed to a crawl as it often does when there is an incident up ahead. We realized the "incidents" happened whenever the road ahead turned directly into the sunset!

Stillwater in November

By mid-November I realized that I should have gone to Rap-Shaw early in the month. The weather stormed and snowed, winter seemed to be settling in early, and finally the surface of Stillwater began to freeze. There is a cam, here, so we often check the conditions from home.

Then, yesterday, the skies cleared and the air significantly warmed. The ice began to look soggy and the snow on it melted. 

Monday morning dawned clear and warm. The cam shot looked promising. The quest was on.

Ed and Brenner kept me company on the drive, opting out of the lake crossing. The water level is still low but no where near some of the lows we have seen in other years. It was perfectly lovely to be on the water and the island.

The photo below shows some of the thin ice that was drifting in sheets, blown loose from some far shore or cove. The south wind was blowing fairly strongly.

Record Breaking 30,000 Crowd for AHL Crunch Game in the Dome at SU

Four days to build the ice; less than a day to destroy it to make way for a basketball game the next day.

The Crunch usually play in the War Memorial. People were psyched!