Our wacky spring

We are having a wacky spring here in Buffalo! In addition to everything else.

I took the picture up above walking in Delaware Park a couple of hours ago.

When I got home I took this picture.

That was out my back window!

You know one thing, walking in the park I thought how much I was appreciating what I saw.

This is my time of year!

I like weird weather!

Midsummer ... I am child of the summer, born on June 1, but summer is not my time. It would be, maybe, if I lived somewhere else. I love swimming, I love summer clothes, I love being able to walk around in long dresses and sandals. However...

There is something about the brooding weather that I love. The silence. The freedom to be with your own thoughts. The mists.

I cannot help it!

With which we give you Prince, "Sometimes It Snows In April."

Springtime in Buffalo

For a man-made lake, you know, Hoyt Lake is not bad!

I love walking in the park and it takes me about 20 minutes to get to this lake but that is going the long way. If I went the short way it would be more like 10 minutes.

It can get mighty quiet around Hoyt Lake this time of year. A miracle in Buffalo! This is where I learned the chirp of the red-winged blackbird. I love that bird's harsh drawn-out call. That is the sound of summer.

You can see the spring in the picture up above! And in this one.

On the other hand I took these pictures just last week. Heck, not even a week ago! Four days ago.

You will notice there are more wintry pictures than spring pictures. I am afraid I prefer the weather the wintry way when you get down to it. I have many more pictures that I took on cold days than on beautiful idyllic summer days.

I loved taking that wintry walk four days ago. It was colder than a well-digger's ass, as Tom Waits would put it. Well, not quite as cold, but I love quoting that song. And it was just about as cold.

There was nobody in the park! I ran into one gentleman going east when I was going west. We said good morning, as Buffalonians will.

Then he said, "Beautiful day."

And I agreed.

It was!

I am trying to see if I took pictures on the drizzly day I walked this week. Yes! I did!

Another shot.

I do love brooding days! Here is another.

This is a Buffalo spring for you. My brother Tony described it well once. He said that in spring in Buffalo it is as if winter and summer are in a battle for every single day. That is true.

And you know what the say about March. It comes in like a lion and goes out like a lion.

I am fine with it.

Walk in the park

It is amazing how just on a normal morning walk you can take inspirational photos!

I am proud of the one up above. It cries out for a quote.

"And I will go unto the altar of God, to God Who gives joy to my youth."

"Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning."

"Tut tut, I think it's going to rain."

"I think that I will never see/A poem lovely as a tree."

(Well, I thought this tree was lovely.)

"Let the sun shine in!"

What can you say, when you're an artist, you're an artist.

I am an artist!

City lights

Isn't that a cool picture? I should put it on Twitter. I am trying to Tweet more though like everything it is a habit that must be gotten into.

The picture is the trees outside The Buffalo News with the little Christmas lights.

Here is another shot.

And there is this one too. The light is somewhat different. The sky was different. Is this not a cool and brooding picture?

I liked these holiday gizmos you see when you are getting on the Metro Rail.

Fun with a camera! In a way these phones/cameras have changed our lives. You cannot just enjoy a sight. You have to photograph it.

On the other hand it is kind of neat to go over your life and you can see again what you saw on a certain day. And it does not take that much time out of your schedule.

It is funny with the snow now. The landscape is different. The sounds of winter -- the clank and scrape of snowplows. The whirling yellow lights of emergency vehicles. The traffic people on the radio. All the other stuff that Pennario was happy to leave behind when he moved to California as a boy.

You know what, as I told him, I do not mind not moving to California.

I would miss all this!

And this year we get only a couple of months. A few days ago I was still harvesting arugula from my, ahem, garden. Do your worst, you know? By March it will be over. We got two months' free ride.

It will be spring before we know it!

Gross!

Whilst scouring the Internet for a recipe worthy to christen my new Crock Pot, I am reminded over and over of the old wisdom:

Food Web loggers, ahem.

Leave the food photography to the pros!

I am not normally elitist. For instance I hate when a recipe is described as "restaurant style." Aren't restaurants supposed to be imitating home cooking? I also hate the term "home cook." I am trying to talk myself out of that but have not been able to.

However. Pictures are a different matter.

God knows I am not squeamish when it comes to food. I love to eat! It is one thing that brought me and Leonard Pennario together.

But the pro food photographers -- haha, it is early in the day and that almost came out "phood fotographers" -- have gifts that we normal people with our pocket digital cameras do not. Face it.

I have been guilty of amateur food photography too, God knows. So has Howard. Sometimes if dinner looks especially good Howard takes a picture of it. Which cheers me and flatters me, but then the picture goes on line and, ahem, something is lost in translation.

Today I resolve, I take no more pictures of food. I could not believe the pictures I found online on other people's Web logs in just five minutes of searching for chicken and cauliflower curry in a Crock Pot. This shot at the top is just the beginning.

Is this a plate or a Petri dish?

Photographing a half-empty dish does not improve things.

This dish should have stayed an ancient Chinese secret.

Bone appetit!

Two sage pieces of kitchen advice:

Stand facing the stove (from "The Joy of Cooking") ... and ...

Step away from the camera!

The mystery picture

A nice gentleman wrote to me and said, "Is this the picture of Leonard Pennario you bought on eBay?"

Because yesterday I wrote and said I could not find the picture to post because I had bought it and it was gone from the site. This is the picture of Pennario with the conductor Eugen Jochum.

This guy who wrote to me, unlike me he had two brain cells to put together, so he went and looked under "Completed Auctions."

Voila.

SO cool.

One afternoon in Buffalo

Howard took this picture. It is a Buffalo classic!

That car! It is a classic Buffalo vehicle. Howard said that a few minutes before he took this picture the guy was completely under the car with only his feet sticking out. It is too bad he could not capture that.

But he did take this picture a couple of minutes after taking the first one.

That is the Pierce-Arrow plant in the background. Back in the day they would build the Pierce-Arrows there and drive the cars around on the roof to test them. Buffalo produces things like that guy and that car in the picture but we have also produced wonderful top-shelf things like the Pierce Arrow and Leonard Pennario.

Last night Howard and I laughed and laughed over these photos.

Buffalo, you got to love this town.

We are so without vanity!

My Robo-childhood

My sister Margie posts old family pictures on Facebook. That is us up above at Fort Niagara. I am second from left, as if you could not tell. My brother George was not born yet!

Notice how my dad has us all under control. Also, I love his mailman socks.

I would place that pic at about 1968.

George came along in 1969. Here he is with Margie.

Ha, ha! As I wrote on Facebook, George still has that look.

Here is Margie riding the fishies at Crystal Beach.

It is funny that no one in Buffalo can get over the loss of Crystal Beach. Margie founded a Facebook group dedicated to it and people are just pouring in. Crystal Beach was not even in Buffalo -- it was across the river in Fort Erie, Canada -- but it was ours, and we loved it.

When I first talked with Leonard Pennario it took him maybe three sentences to bring up Crystal Beach. I may not have known his thoughts on Anton Rubinstein's piano concertos but I know what his favorite rides were at Crystal Beach. And he knew mine. Hey, what can I say, we had our priorities.

One more picture shows that even as a little kid I already had that aggravating wave in my hair that torments me to this day.

Now if I had my act together I would be able to post Pennario playing Schumann's "Scenes from Childhood," or "Kinderszenen" as it is in German. But alas, that is not yet on YouTube.

But there is this. Hahahaaa... I love how that one guy three months ago comments simply: "PENNARIO!"

My thoughts exactly!

Where was I? I was talking about my childhood. My friends used to kid me that I was a little space cadet but I guess all of in the family were little space cadets. Do you still use that phrase space cadets? Anyway, what I mean is that we lined up and obeyed like the Von Trapp kids.

No kids seem to behave like that nowadays and very few did back then, too. But that is how I know that it is possible that kids can behave. Because I was a kid and I remember that we did. There were things I was allowed to do and things I could not.

One more picture, of an orderly picnic.

I wish I were going on a picnic now instead of going to work!

And you know what, looking at that picture, I realize everyone else in the picture -- aside from my dad, who has passed on -- could go on a picnic today. I am the only one working!

Where did I make my wrong turn in life?

Theater in the round

Behold my first two round loaves of bread! I made Heidelberg Rye out of my Mennonite Cookbook. They are not perfect because this is not Wegmans. There are extra, ahem, curves from where I tucked the dough under.

The nice thing is I am used enough to baking bread so it is not a big project, just something else I throw together during the course of the day. I made my Heidelberg Rye while I was working on the Pennario book, after going to Hip-Hop Zumba Master Class.

Today in church I was astonished by how fast the year is going. It is the Feast of the Holy Family. We are already over a week into 2011. Son of a sea cook, what happened?

As long as we are taking stock here are pictures of the last few weeks.

The line at St. Anthony's to kiss the Baby Jesus after Mass on Christmas morning.

Howard admiring the mirror that Santa Claus left him.

Howard and Jinx, the family cat out at my sister Katie's, on Christmas night. Jinx is a darling, beautiful, good-natured black cat who wandered into their house once and stayed. That is my brother Tony at right, asleep on his feet.

My masterful photograph of the New Year's fireworks downtown. Ha, ha! You can just about make out the Electric Tower lit up green and red.

There was this beautiful sunset over the Buffalo harbor that I photographed from my desk at work.

The view from my desk at home yesterday in the snow.

And so we hurtle on into 2011.

I wonder what next week will bring!