The First Snowfall of Winter 2008

It was bound to happen sooner or later. We got our first snowfall of the season, and it wasn’t just a little dusting. It was one of those heavy, wet, lake effect snows that just keeps going and going and going. It also included a heavy dose of thunder. I don't know why, but the thunder I hear when there is "thundersnow" always seems so much loader, and rumbles longer, than thunder with a rain storm.

We are lucky that we got a lot of the leaves picked up over the weekend, otherwise we we have a thick mat of frozen leaves under all that snow. But, as you can see by the photos, some of the trees still have quite a few leaves on them that haven’t completely changed to their fall colors and are yet to drop. It does look pretty, though.

Some of the maples and the oak still have their leaves

One of the burning bush is getting cooled off with the snow

The blue oat grass is getting buried

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A Beautiful November Day

It’s early November, and it feels like summer. It’s about 70 degrees right now, with sunny skies and some high altocumulus clouds. The fall colors, while they are winding down, are still beautiful. Here are a few fall photos from today.

This is a picture of the small pond next door. With the bit of algae and some fall leaves on top, it looks a little like an impressionist painting.

Here are some altocumulus clouds peppering the sky, along with the tops of some trees.

The burning bushes are fiery red right now.


In some spots, there is quite a mix of color in the leaves.

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A Photographic History Lesson From My Grandfather – 70+ Years Later

Many years ago, after my mother’s father had passed away, she gave me a box of black and white photo negatives that were from snapshots taken by my grandfather over the years. With some of the negatives, he had them carefully rolled up and put back in their metal film containers; some were flat and grouped together using small slips of paper where my grandfather only wrote the year he took the pictures. At one point, I did attempt to look through some of them. Many of them were apparently photos of people that I could not recognize by looking at the negative. I tried to take a few out of the film containers and unroll them to determine the subject of the photos, but the negatives seemed brittle in some cases and I stopped so as not to ruin them. One thing was obvious: my grandfather liked to photograph people.

I tried scanning a few of the larger, flat negatives, but without having a software program at the time to help me convert the negative to a positive image, it became too time consuming to try to make anything of the pictures. So I carefully packed them back up, with the intent of going back one day when I did have better software to help me.

And then, I forgot about them.

Years later, and having some time on my hands today, I decided to bring the negatives out, scan some, and see if Photoshop would be of any help in figuring out what was on some of these pictures. I stayed away from the negatives that were rolled, as they still seemed to be too fragile to unroll. I selected a few from the larger, flat negatives that appeared to have a subject other than people in them. I was surprised to find that my grandfather appeared to have photographed a collapsed bridge sometime in 1938, so I searched the Internet to see if I could find out anything about the location of the bridge.

I appears that the pictures, dated January 29, 1938, were from the collapse of the Honeymoon Bridge (also known as the Falls View Bridge) at Niagara Falls. Ice that had blown down the river from heavy winds off Lake Erie a few days before had caused an ice jam that put too much pressure on the bridge supports, resulting in its eventual collapse.

Considering my grandparents lived in Cleveland and there wasn’t freeway access then as there is now, this was probably a big trip for them to undertake, especially in the dead of winter through the Lake Erie “snow belt.” (My guess is that they took US Route 20 most of the way.)

I thought I’d share some of the photos I was able to get from the old negatives. Granted, they are not as clear as others that can be found on the Internet, but to me they are priceless. It is as if my grandfather left me a gift of experiencing some of the history that he experienced, 70 years later.

By the way, you can find out more information about this bridge and its collapse, with some pictures, here and here.

Here are his pictures:

(the Falls)

The area where the bridge crossed over the river

The collapsed bridge in the ice filled river

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Squire’s Castle

One of the most interesting places to visit in the Cleveland Metroparks is Squire's Castle in the North Chagrin Reservation (located in Willoughby Hills, Ohio).

The castle "shell" really wasn't a castle. It was supposed to be a gatehouse for a large country estate to be built by Feargus Squire, one of the founders of the Standard Oil Company in the late 1800s. (The large estate was never built.)

Squire’s Castle is beautiful in the fall when the trees begin to change color. A few years ago, I made a video of some of my pictures and videos taken of the castle over the years and that video is below. Since the weather was warm and sunny today, and the leaves were showing some beautiful color, I took a drive out there for some new photos, which I have included here.


Squire’s Castle Video

Castle Interior

View from Squire's Castle

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A Tour of Cleveland In Vintage Postcards

Here’s something that anyone from Cleveland, Ohio may enjoy. The short video below is a nostalgic tour of the city of Cleveland that I put together using vintage postcards from the 1930s-1950s. It includes postcards of the Terminal Tower, city roads and bridges, Public Square, University Circle, public parks, and other buildings of interest. (The music in the video is one of Gershwin’s Preludes.)




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The Fairport Harbor Lighthouse & Museum

In July, I took some pictures of the Fairport Harbor Lighthouse and then forgot about them. Since we seem to be in a slow weather pattern right now, and fall colors seem to have stalled a bit, I thought it was a good time to bring out the lighthouse pictures.

The Fairport Harbor Lighthouse , at the mouth of Ohio's Grand River and near the shore of Lake Erie, should not be confused with the much smaller Fairport Harbor West Breakwall Lighthouse , which is only a short distance away on the shore of Lake Erie at Mentor Headlands State Park. In fact, you can see both lighthouses at the same time, depending on where you are standing either at Mentor Headlands Beach, or at the Fairport Harbor Lighthouse.

The Fairport Harbor Lighthouse also houses the Fairport Harbor Marine Museum, which unfortunately was closed the day we visited. We decided to head to the Fairport Harbor Beach which is just a short distance down the road from the lighthouse. And it is DOWN the road, seeing that the lighthouse is perched very high on a steep hill above the beach area. The Fairport Beach Park is much smaller than its neighbor Mentor Headlands Beach, but was still a very nice place to visit.

Fairport Harbor Lighthouse and Museum

Fairport Beach

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Fall is Approaching

Even though fall isn’t technically here yet, were are starting to see some leaves change color. Fall flowers also are adding some color to the landscape. Here are some pictures I took from the yard today. My “Black Beauty” Elderberry is loaded with berries!

I am sure it will be snowing before we know it (heavy sigh).

OK, we also had some fun with bubbles while we were outside.

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