photos

These two old barns and silo are along Route 98, probably in the Town of Batavia, near Elba.

Nice sunny day -- a good day for hoisting a new heating and air-conditioning unit atop the St. Jerome's building as part of ongoing renovations.

The forecast for today -- more drizzle, and rain showers into the night. Then it starts to clear, but temperatures over the next three or four days will range from 22 degrees to 58 degrees. Starting tomorrow, it will be partially cloudy for a few days, clearing to a sunny, but slightly chilly day, on Saturday.

Photo: Taken this morning, a horse on Pearl Road in Oakfield.

Stacy Wirth provided this picture. She was driving on Brookville Road in Alexander today when she spotted the Bald eagle dining on a deer carcass.

Did you like the sun today? There's supposed to be more of that where that came from. In fact, the weekend should be quite nice, with highs in 40s and more sun.

Not to put a damper on things, but Weather.com is predicting snow overnight in a week.

But in the meantime, pre-spring weather with highs in the 40s and sun, or partly cloudy, seems to be in our immediate future.

Pictures: From this evening, a barn on Lear Road. Below a tractor and old garage on Wilkenson Road.

Ian Cromwell and his girlfriend drove around Batavia today and saw quite a few snowmen, so they got inspired to build their own.

The weather Web sites say it's 36 degrees in Batavia. My thermometer reads 42. The sun is out with a smattering of puffy clouds in the sky to add a little artistic flourish over the snow-draped houses of the Southside. Pachuco and I were returning from the longest walk we've taken in weeks and I spotted this snow family on Ganson, so I went back with my camera.

The forecast for tonight and tomorrow is snow/flurries (depending on which Web site you believe), and snow is forecast for Tuesday. 

Winter ain't over yet.

This old barn is on Clipnock Road near Route 5 in Stafford.

My fascination with the old barns of Genesee County continues. This one is on Griswald Road near Route 33.

UPDATE: I changed out the picture. The more I looked at it, the less happy I was with the blue tinge of the previous photo.  I ran it through PhotoShop again and got a better color.

Also, a correction: The barn is in Stafford.

I was on Ross Street yesterday ,and saw this squirrel,   eating someones smashed pumpkin.

We are ready for spring: Everytime I drive past this sign outside the Ace Hardware on Route 19 in LeRoy, I wonder: Is the store saying,"We've got all the products you'll need this spring -- we're ready for you"? Or, are they saying, "Man, glad winter's over!"? Or both?

Andrea Bozek, from the Office of Rep. Chris Lee, sent us some photos from the congressman. It looks like Lee snapped these shots from the Capitol steps, above and behind the ceremony. Some pretty neat shots here, including President Barack Obama's swearing-in. Please note that the photos have been cropped to best fit our site. You can view the full size photos by visiting the link above.

Earlier today, Lee got us his statement following the inauguration.

“President Obama’s inaugural address set the right tone for the work that lies ahead in repairing our economy and restoring the public’s trust in their government. I am hopeful that today marks the beginning of an era of progress grounded in a commitment to bipartisan solutions."

Thanks to Steve Ognibene for sending us these photos from the final day at the Genesee County Fair Saturday. (The little lady on the "Scrambler" ride is his five-year-old daughter, Alyssa.) If you have any pictures or video or poetry or whatever about your time at the fair this past week, send it along, and we will put it right up on the site. Mail your submissions to: philip (at) thebatavian (dot) com.

It has been more than a few days since I've had the privilege and opportunity to get online and share the news and happenings here in Batavia with you folks. That's in part due to the holiday of the Fourth, which I spent with family, grilling dogs, tossing a frisbee and being as American as I could be — not always easy for a self-professed francophile.

My absence from this virtual space is also in part due to all the time I spent enjoying myself at Batavia's summer festivals this past weekend. Quite simply, I was having too much fun behind the camera and out of doors to get inside to my office to tend to the behind-the-scenes work. But the fruits of those labors will now pay off. So be sure to check back with the site throughout the day. We'll have a couple videos going up about the Ramble Music and Arts Fest and the Batavia Boogie skydiving festival.

For now, here are some highlights of Saturday's action courtesy of the lens of Sonia Mineo who was kind enough to snap some still shots of the weekend festivities while I busied myself behind the video camera.

Sometimes, all you need is a zoom lens to get up into the clouds. That was all it took for Sonia to snap this shot of a parachutist coming in for a landing at the Genesee County Airport Saturday afternoon. It almost looks as if he's sitting on a cloud, just hanging out up there.

It was quite a sight to behold, as the planes full of 20 or so skydivers soared up through the clouds, higher and higher until the fuselage seemed no bigger than my pinky nail. You couldn't see any of the divers for a minute or so, not with the naked eye.

Then, all of the sudden, you saw them — a dozen or more colored blips in the azure of the sky.

Some of them pulled fancy moves on their way down, spinning or spiralling with their chutes. Most, when they landed, came down with a trot onto their bums or on their sides or into a quick tumble through the grasses. A few of them, however, came down walking, almost nonchalantly, as if there were no difference between pedalling through the air and stepping on the ground, so graceful and fluid were they.

While it was hard to ignore the tragic start of the Boogie on Thursday, when Brighton native Joseph Schickler fell to his death when his parachute failed to deploy, most of the divers continued to take to the air. We even overheard a few say that that was what Schickler, who was known for his sense of humor and good cheer, would have wanted.

Chalk art was a big hit at the Ramble Saturday. Artists young and old — including mural artist Vinny DelPlato — filled up more than half of School Street with their multicolor scribblings.

But as you might have expected, the music was of course the main draw. At a few times during the day, Saturday, it was a pretty tight squeeze in Jackson Square.

Be sure to visit the site later this afternoon for video coverage of both events.

Thank you to an anonymous friend who sent us this link to a page of photographs taken at St. Joe's Parade this past weekend. We were unable to make it to the festivities, so we're grateful that someone else took the initiative to document the occasion and get us involved in sharing the experience.

In fact, this is a perfect example of how the community can help make its own news. We're here to get the ball rolling, but this project we call The Batavian really works best with your participation.

I've tacked up a couple photos to the post here. For now, you can see the rest at the photographer's Flickr site. Hopefully, we'll get all of the photos loaded into our own account so you can access them with a simple click of the Photos button up near the top of the page.

If you have some photos of Batavia that you would like to share with your fellow residents, please don't hesitate to drop us a line. As always, I can be reached at philip (at) thebatavian (dot) com.

Finally paid a visit to the Holland Land Office Museum on Main Street this afternoon. Ron Pinney was kind enough to take me around and show me some of the artifacts they've got on display there. He told me about the corkscrew as big as a cat that the colonials used to unplug lumps of dried fruit from a barrel. He showed me the dentist chair and the rusty metal tooth-yanker that made us both wince. 

Pat Weissend came out and introduced himself, too. He's the museum's director, and a bit of an online experimenter himself. He has been filing podcasts all about the museum and its goodies for some time now. There's one about the infamous anti-Mason William Morgan. Another about the Seneca Chief Red Jacket. Even a quick three-minute episode called: "Where did the name Batavia come from?" Check it out if you want to find out.

Tune into The Batavian next Friday for a video tour of the Holland Land Office Museum, led by Pat Weissend. In the meantime, here are a few photographs I snapped while I was there today. Maybe you can figure out what they are.