Our Trip to Buffalo

Erie County Courthouse, downtown Buffalo

A couple weeks ago we had the chance to go to Buffalo, NY with some friends. They were going because Giselle (otherwise known as Miriam, otherwise known as sis) was in a ballet performance, and had to be there for rehearsals--so we got to spend a whole week in the city, splitting our time between rehearsals and seeing the sights. We visited Niagara, which was utterly amazing and cannot be described in words; we toured some decommissioned ships at the naval park (very cool); we drove and walked through downtown Buffalo with its wonderful churches and old skyscrapers; and we spent one long and interesting evening walking up and down the street with a tired toddler and a sick toddler, poking into bookstores and candy shops and cafes, trying to find a place to eat that wasn't a bar or a budget-breaking restaurant.

You don't realize until you're on the road, away from everyday comforts like refrigerators and microwaves, how important food really is. But when you have eight people who spend all day running back and forth from state park to ballet studio to hotel room, it's very important to have adequate meals. And when your only refrigerator is a small styrofoam cooler and you have no oven or microwave to speak of, dinner becomes a matter for careful strategy. You can't come home half an hour before dinnertime and throw together something from what you have in the fridge. So it turned out well that we had a Walgreen's next door and a grocery store down the block. We brought a crock-pot and an electric griddle to our hotel room from home, and Giselle's mother cooked some great meals in our improvised kitchen by the bathroom sink while the Four of Us sat on the bed and watched Dick Van Dyke episodes.

(By the way, if you ever happen to be out late walking on Elmwood Avenue, getting tired and looking for someplace to eat, you might try SPoT Coffee. I don't know of any other place that gives you a rubber chicken to identify your order and lets you sit on a blue velvet armchair while you eat quesadillas and bruschetta. Also, the best way to follow up said dinner is to go down the block to Starbucks and get a Java Chip Frappuccino with whipped cream and mocha drizzle. I'm just saying.)

Anyway...on with the pictures.

On the way up: at the New River Gorge in West Virginia.

Driving through Pennsylvania.

Our first sight of Buffalo.

Looking down Delaware Avenue from our hotel room, with the Walgreen's next door.


Walking to the Tri-Main building, where Buffalo City Ballet is located. The building was once a factory which at different times produced Model T Ford's, Bell aircraft parts, and engines for the Navy. Now it's been converted into space for offices and shops.


Buffalo Naval Park. Behind us are the USS Little Rock (larger, on the right), the USS The Sullivans, and the USS Croaker (the submarine).


We found this almost by accident, driving around the theater during a rehearsal, but it turned out to be one of the best stops of the trip. It's the old New York State Insane Asylum, built in the 1870's. The building, empty now, has halls sprawling over several acres, all connected to one another with copper-roofed passages. It's an amazing place and very creepy. Henry Hobson Richardson, the famous architect, designed it, and another famous designer, Frederick Law Olmsted, did the grounds. But it hasn't been used in years: they stopped using it for patients in the 1970's and it's lain empty since the administrative offices moved out in 1994. It was made a National Historical Landmark in the '80s, and Wikipedia says that New York has set aside some money to restore it. I hope so; it's such a beautiful building that they shouldn't let it go to waste.


We were looking for a grocery store the first night we arrived and saw the silhouette of this building not far from our hotel. (If you have ever been driving around a strange city at night and suddenly seen the outline of a castle looming black against the night sky, then you know what it's like.) It was too late to explore that night, but of course we went back when daylight came. This is the Connecticut Street Armory, built in the 1890's for the 74th Regiment of the New York State National Guard. These days it's a meeting place for several military and veterans' groups.

Niagara Falls!

At Niagara Falls State Park.

Shops on Elmwood Avenue.

The fair and ghostly Giselle, who was, after all, the reason for the whole trip.

(Pictures by Tim, Giselle, and The Moms)

Forth unto Buffalo!

I love it....

...when I hear my four-year-old sister giving her stuffed animals feigned British accents.

Charlotte Mason and Play

This is from the ChildlightUSA group blog, and is by a schoolteacher. This is just a snippet from The Art of Play:

"Recently I stood on the playground [a paved parking lot with no swingset or games] with a prospective parent and her comment was, 'How do the children play out here? What do they do?' As I began to tell her, she interrupted, not out of rudeness, but more out of incredulity. 'Yes, but there’s nothing out here for them to do!' As I told her of the elaborate make-believe games, complex tag games with different rules for different players, and just plain old digging in the dirt, she eyed me skeptically. 'You must work hard to plan all this for them.' It was inconceivable to her that a group of five and six year olds could conceive of their own games, organize themselves, and implement the plan without an adult directing, supervising, and managing the whole affair."

For Mother's Day

The Ambleside Online website has been temporarily changed to a lovely palette of pink shades.

And here's a sweet series of pictures of a little girl imitating her mother.

FLDS Reading

I've been keeping up with the FLDS case by reading the CommonRoom blog, which is focused on the state's lack of hard evidence to justify their actions is removing children from their home, and how this could set precedents that we have reason to be wary of.

I've also been reading accounts of former members' claims of abuse within the group that would warrant removal of children - claims about what amounts to water torture on infants to teach them not to cry, brainwashing of women to the extent that mothers don't protect their own daughters from forced marriages to older men and women accept a life of enslavement, and abandoning young men who have been raised to fear and distrust "the world" by thrusting them out into that world in order to decrease competition for brides.

This case is a real mess, no matter how you look at it. I've heard of a few women who have escaped the group and told tragic stories about life within the compound, but no accounts from any of the young men who were forced out and had to learn to make their way in the outside world. If that's true, and such men do exist, I wonder what their thoughts are about all of this? Where are they now, what have they done to survive? Have they kept their beliefs and tried to be absorbed into similar groups (or perhaps more mainstream LDS churches?), or do most of them reject God altogether? And, if the stories are true about how children are raised to expect men to dominate women, and women to submissively accept that lifestyle, how do these men fare in marriages out in the real world?

How to Make a Baby Romper from a T Shirt

Today's tip from WikiHow.

If You Give a Child a Worksheet

This is so cute - it's a post at Hunsucker's Home.

Forest Redbud

(taken during our trip to Buffalo NY, of which more later...)

Petal-Song

Or should I call it Thethuthinnang? (Watership Down again.) I don't do abstract pictures often, but I liked the way these dogwood blossoms came out.

Radio Bookmark

WRKA - hits of the 60's and 70's
I was looking for 70's music, and this is the first one I found online. It seems to fit the bill, so I'm bookmarking it.