What Are These Mysterious Blue Boxes?

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I saw the first one a few weeks ago on the way back from Chili. Hidden in a tree along the telephone wires on Lehigh Station Road hung what appeared to be a Mysterious_Blue_Box_300blue jacket. Since I was the only one in the car, I didn’t get much of a look. I figured it was something left over from the many recent graduations. You know, like those crazy sneakers-hanging-from-the-telephone-wire things you used to see everywhere.

Then, on the same drive home, I noticed another blue jacket hanging from tree shrouded telephone wires on Mendon Center Road.

“Wow!” I thought to myself. “That must have been one big party!”

Again, I couldn’t take a good look. I arrived home and promptly forgot about these navy garments.

Until this past Sunday. While traveling on Gulick Road in Honeoye (that is the road leading to Cumming Nature Center), I saw no fewer than three of these unexplained cobalt (or deep purple) three-sided boxes. (It being an early Sunday morning, I was able to actually pull over and stare at these things.)

What are they? My mind reels with the possibilities. Could they be the onset of some alien invasion? They appear to have cryptic markings on at least one side, but my zoom lens failed to discern the language. Or perhaps, in placing them deep within leafy branches overhanging telephone wires, maybe they are camouflaged surveillance devices furtively planted by this now-apprehended Russian spy network.

If you have an idea what crazy story might explain the existence of these mysterious blue boxes, add your thoughts in the comment section below.

Alternatively, if you know what they really are, let us in on the secret.

Chasing the Iron Ghosts of Blasdell Junction

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A different year. A different time. A different era. A different culture.

Dry cinder and billowy steam painted the surroundings. The clanking and grinding of metal against metal pierced the air. The steady distant drone of heavy industry Blasdell Junction - RR Sign Amidst Nature_300provided background color for the audio pallet.

Within less than one square mile of reshaped earth lay more than twenty-two linear miles of railroad. Stacked one above another, the tracks featured motive power from five Class 1 railroads and one industrial switcher.

Squeezed within a quarter mile wide swath of land included: two junction tracks (formerly the Terminal Railroad that bypassed the busy railroad yards of the City of Continue Reading “Chasing the Iron Ghosts of Blasdell Junction”

D&C Writer Disses Western New Yorkers

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Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. — Teddy Roosevelt

1116416_66523644_sled_royalty_free_stock_xchng_300

A few weeks ago, a columnist from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle wrote a piece titled “Winter as Metaphor for Community’s Woes.” If you’ve read the column and you’re a true-blue Western New Yorker, you’ll immediately see the column itself as a metaphor for our community’s woes.

The writer, while acknowledging the obvious diminution in our region’s stature, meekly states “The decline we’ve seen is not a character flaw; it’s the result of economic forces beyond our control.”

Actually, the statement reflects the major character flaw many die-hard residents of the western frontier of New York State see in our neighborhood – too many people, especially those floating merrily in the ether of high profile, fail by wallowing in self-pity rather than seizing the reins of self-improvement.

Continue Reading “D&C Writer Disses Western New Yorkers”

Western New York Media Market: Whole Greater than Sum?

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A decade ago, before the financial crisis that opened the first decade of the new millennium, Adelphia Communications, in addition to a cable channel called the Empire Sports Network, owned a radio station with the call letters WNSA. The two worked in tandem and, at least until the falling stock market exposed the Regis family, this modest media juggernaut gained a respectful audience.

Western_New_York_Microphone_300On the cusp of a content driven era, the small cable company had, together with the Buffalo Bills, successfully begun to build connections within a broader Western New York Region. This bigger footprint would include not only Buffalo and Niagara Falls, but also Rochester, Jamestown and several other cities within the roughly seventeen western-most counties of New York State. With a growing national market, Adelphia offered the allure of becoming the new century’s CNN (or at least ESPN). And with its intention to build an impressive headquarters in the state’s Queen City, Buffalo finally had a new hope – one that might bring it to rival Atlanta in cable communications.

But, as it seems to have happened to our region ever since Canada left us no choice but to build the Saint Lawrence Seaway, fate once again dealt a bad hand. Continue Reading “Western New York Media Market: Whole Greater than Sum?”

The Snow Monster Returns: Buffalo Bills, Undefeated for the Decade!

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Bills_Game_Close_Up_300Should I stay home or should I go?

With red letter snow warnings, ominous travel advisories and a plethora of church service cancellations, the question wavered annoyingly in my own mind and unspoken on my worried wife’s barely wakened lips.

Should I stay or should I go?

The last game of the season. A meaningless game. Against a team that expects to bench most of its starting players. The beleaguered Buffalo Bills, banished for the past decade to the Siberia of no-playoffs, have done little to earn back the loyalty of staunch fans since the heresy of hiring Tom Donahoe. Why should any humble fan place their body in harm’s way, especially when the kind Gods of Time-Warner decided to sell-out the game (the only way they could then broadcast it to local viewers).

Should I stay or should I go?

Continue Reading “The Snow Monster Returns: Buffalo Bills, Undefeated for the Decade!”

It’s a Wonderful Western New York Life

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It's_a_Wonderful_Life_250For the umpteenth time I find myself watching Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. Yet, in all the years those reels have run through my retinal receptors, for the first time I really see the poignant – if unintended – metaphor.

We – Western New York – are Bedford Falls.

I don’t mean in the literal sense like Seneca Falls. I don’t mean in the physical-proximity sense because the movie mentions Buffalo and Rochester. And I don’t mean in the meteorological sense because those are definitely lake-effect snowflakes in the film. Rather, I speak of a much more mysterious philosophical aura that borders on the eerie similarities of tragic prognostication laced with a fringe of hope.

Continue Reading “It’s a Wonderful Western New York Life”

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