My 366-day photography project: week fifteen

A bit late... my update for week sixteen of my 366-day photography project. On Monday, November 16th, the weather was delightfully mild. I took a walk to the cemetery. I visited my father's grave and I walked around the cemetery. 

Whitehaven Cemetery is a peaceful place in the woods. It is a good place for families to come and remember their loved ones. Unfortunately, some of the loved ones who are remembered died far too young. It is a sad thing to see one year on a tombstone, as is the case here with little Diane Rose.

The families come and they remember. This grave, which is for a sixteen-year-old boy named Cole and another family member (his father?), is decorated for Halloween.

This building was formerly used as a chapel. Until this last visit to the cemetery, I had never seen the doors open. I peeked inside and saw that the building is now used for storage for machinery for groundskeepers.

On Tuesday, I went to Zumba. I am taking pictures of bears in all sorts of places so that I can continue my illustrated bear stories.

This is a crochet project that I am working on. It has a Christmas theme. It will either be a pillow or a lap blanket.

This is a close-up view of a crocheted square.

I am fascinated by people who work outside, especially people who work with big vehicles and heavy machines. They work in all weather without getting a break for snow and cold. The garbage has to be taken away every week, regardless of weather because the alternative is... yuck.

On Thursday, I went to Buffalo to spend the day. Oooh! The Big City! Alas, all of those outdoor photographs that I was going to take didn't happen. These few pictures of the Network of Religious Communities at 1272 Delaware Avenue were my only outdoor photographs. The wind gusted and the rain came sideways. Many leaves came off of trees that day.

This is another view of the same building. 

Inside, I had the opportunity to participate in a Talking Circle, which is organized by Agnes Williams and the Indigenous Women's Initiative. We have a light lunch and then the talking circle. The guest speaker for this month's talking circle was Latitia G. McNaughton, who spoke about nutrition, using a holistic viewpoint. She talked about traditional foods in the Haudenosaunee (or Iroquois) nations.  A PhD candidate at the State University of New York at Buffalo, Latitia is doing research for her degree. She is studying the role of traditional foods as related to language and human bodies.

In our culture, we seem to have problems with our foods. We eat too many processed foods and not enough healing foods. "We've lost the nurturing relationships to our food," Latitia said. She talked about a variety of topics, including farming and agriculture, seed keeping, seed sowing, etc.

Latitia suggests the book Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Kimmerer. For more information about food as healing, take a look at Latitia's blog at Indigenous Food Revolution. You can also hear recordings of the Mohawk language! Latitia spent a year in a Mohawk language immersion program.

Two visitors to the Talking Circle from the Western New York Peace Center. 

Here is the group at the Talking Circle, except, of course, me, as I was taking the photograph.

The building at 1272 Delaware Avenue is also interesting. Here is one of the light fixtures.

The winds had howled during the talking circle. My original plan was to walk through Delaware Park, heading northward to my friend Ellen's house. Pouring rain and howling winds made that plan a non-starter. Fortunately, Agnes Williams dropped me off at Ellen's house. I was happy not to be soaking wet when I arrived. Above is Ellen's daughter Amelia.

When Ellen came home with two friends, we had dinner. The table was decorated with lovely roses. 

This is Sammy, the bichon frise. He is a very sweet and friendly dog and I was the happy recipient of many dog kisses.

After dinner, we drove to Saint Joseph Collegiate Institute to see Ellen's son Thomas perform in the play, "Rumors," by Neil Simon. There were four of us: Ellen, her two friends, and me. We invited Ellen's son, Joseph, to come along but he said that he already had plans to attend a different performance. Amelia also was planning on attending a different performance. Well, Thursday night's performance was actually a dress rehearsal, but it's open to friends and family to watch. We arrived early so we were invited to wait in the art room.

Ellen has her program, and she is ready for the entertainment to start.

This is the scenery.

The play is about four couples who are having a party. The party has been overshadowed by the host's suicide attempt. Or maybe it wasn't a suicide attempt??? Needless to say, the characters find much solace in alcohol. After consuming a lot of liquor, they proceed to tell unbelievable whoppers to some cops who are investigating the shenanigans at this same residence. At various times, all of the characters fall on the floor. The play was hilarious. I laughed until my sides hurt. 

Here is part of the cast. Thomas is second from right in the back row. After the play, Ellen drove me home.

On Friday, I baked cookies!

During my busy day in the Big City, I went to Hyatt's to buy art supplies. One of the things that I bought was a drawing book with black paper. This is my interpretation of an amaryllis. 

This is a stylized drawing that I did to explore black paper. It is a mixed media picture. Media used are gel pen, colored pencil, oil pastel, and marker. I like how lighter colors, especially pink, stands out on the page.

On Sunday, I went to church. The coffee hour serving table is well decorated for the season.

John Pickwell brought in these beautiful bottles that he designed.

On Monday, November 16th, I went to Jean and Paul's house to rake the lawn and to put the garden to bed. It turned out to be a two-day job. It was a pleasure to work outside. I took pictures of the last flowers of the season. There will be a few more pictures in next week's post.

The Christmas Cactus is an indoor plant.

The work on the sewers became even more interesting to watch and to photograph.

I think that the workers were there all night. After my book club meeting, they were still there. When I went outside after eleven o'clock to look at the moon, the workers were there, wearing headlamps, with the headlights of their vehicles illuminating the area.

I spent the evening at a meeting of the book club at the Grand Island Memorial Library. The book that we discussed was The Boys in the Boat, by Daniel James Brown. It is about the rowing team from the University of Washington that won the gold medal in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany. It is an excellent, beautifully written book that captured life in that era. It told the story of Joe, who had a very tough life and was able to overcome all odds to become an athlete and an engineer. I will write a review of this book in the next few days.

More pictures of the last flowers of autumn in the next update!