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Webster celebrates summer today

24 Jun

fireworks-mdIt’s officially summer, and the town will welcome the season today (Saturday) with a grand celebration.

The Town of Webster’s annual summer party will be held at the Webster Recreation Center, 1350 Chiyoda Drive, beginning at 4 p.m., and will feature food trucks, games, and inflatables for the kids.

The band Stateline kicks off the entertainment from 5:30 to 7:15 p.m, followed by Brass Taxi from 7:45 to 9:45 p.m. A huge fireworks display caps off the evening’s festivities at 10 p.m.

There’s plenty of free parking in the Rec Center lot or across Chiyoda Drive at Xerox, and a shuttle will be provided all night long.

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An image from last year’s Waterfront Arts Festival

You’ll also want to mark your calendars right now for the third annual Waterfront Arts Festival, scheduled this year for July 29 and 30 at North Ponds Park.

The third annual Webster Waterfront Arts Festival will take place this year on Saturday, July 29th and Sunday, July 30th at North Ponds Park.

Artists from all over Monroe County will line North Ponds’ walkways, displaying an incredible variety of high quality craft items. There are food trucks, entertainment, a wine tasting booth and other exhibits.

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It’s summer in the village

17 Jun

 

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The Webster Schroeder Jazz Ensemble was one of three bands to play Friday night. 

It shouldn’t have come as any surprise to me that the Friday night concert series in Gazebo Park was starting up last night, but it did.

My husband and I were trying out the fish fry at the “new” Webster Hots Friday night (it was great) and while we were chatting with the owner, he told us about the concert, which featured three high school jazz bands. So after dinner we strolled to the park to check it out.

It was an incredibly perfect evening to sit outside and listen to music. After the Webster Thomas Jazz Band finished, we even went home quickly to grab our quad chairs, returning just in time to enjoy some of the Penfield Jazz Band’s set, and then the entire performance by the Webster Schroeder Jazz Ensemble.

As we always do at these concerts, we saw lots of our friends and neighbors there, which made the evening even more enjoyable.

The concert was the first in the village’s Friday Night Concerts series. The rest of the schedule looks like this:

  • June 30: Claudia Hoyser Acoustic Duo (country)
  • July 7: Burnt Cane (tropical)
  • July 28: The Ryan Johnson Project (fusion)
  • August 4: Rochester Metropolitan Jazz Orchestra
  • August 11: Rochester Brass & Electric

All concerts begin at 7 pm in Gazebo Park on North Avenue.

Also coming up this summer in the village are the Movies in the Park (kids’ movies on Tuesdays and two “date night” movies on Saturdays), the annual two-day Webster Jazz Fest on July 21 and 22, and the next Wine Walk on August 12. Stay tuned for more details about them in the coming weeks. More details about them all can be found at http://websterbid.com/.

Let the summer begin!!!!!

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Crowds for the first Friday Night Concert were pretty good thanks in part to the gorgeous weather

email me  at missyblog@gmail.com. “Like” this blog on Facebook and follow me on Twitter and Instagram

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It must be summer, because….

17 May

fiesta

… I just received a press release about the St. Rita Fiesta!

This little festival is one of my favorite ones of the entire year, and not just because it’s close to home. There is always so much to do for the whole family, and organizers seem to keep adding new things every year.

This year — the fiesta’s 63rd — there will be a zip line and bounce houses for the kids, and live music by The Breakfast Club and Ruby Shooz. There’ll be an expanded list of food trucks, as well as the fiesta’s traditional pancake breakfast, fish fry dinner, and chicken barbecue. And of course the plant sale and book sale will be back again.

This year’s big raffle prize is $10,000 cash or $15,000 towards a lease from Vision Automotive.

The Fiesta also features  5k and 10k races on Saturday, June 3. I’ve run this race, and it’s a nice flat course which is perfect for strollers and new runners as well as seasoned competitors. The race is followed by a pancake breakfast.

Families can order wristbands early, which gets kids all-access passes to the bounce houses, zip lines, and bungee trampoline at a discounted price. Discount wristbands can be purchased through the Fiesta website or at the St. Rita’s Parish Office.

Admission to the Fiesta is free. For more information, visit the St. Rita Fiesta website. St. Rita Church is located at 1008 Maple Drive in West Webster.

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Webster Mailbag

25 Apr

mailbagI tell ya. Go away on a cruise for a week, you think you’ve got everything tucked away for a while, and you come back to an overstuffed email box.

Let’s get started.

The Webster Public Library’s spring book sale, sponsored by the Friends of the Library, happens this week.  Tuesday night is the members-only preview night, from 5 to 8:30, when members of the Friends get first crack at the incredible selection of books for sale. Don’t worry if you’re not a member. Memberships will be available at the door, so walk right up and take advantage of this special opportunity.

The general sale begins Wednesday April 26 at 10 am and runs through 8:30 pm. Thursday April 27 is buy one get one free day, and Friday (10 am to 5 pm) and Saturday (10 am to 1 pm) are bag days, when you pay just $3 for a bag of books.

All monies raised go to support library programs.

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The Webster Museum will host Webster resident Ed Harding for a very interesting archaeology program on Saturday April 29 at 2 p.m.

Harding will share his story on how finding a projectile point while digging a fence post in his father’s back yard in 2012 has kept him digging and finding many more Native American artifacts. He learned that the first arrowhead was more than 3,000 years old.

If you’ve found any smooth rocks or interesting rocks you think might be important, feel free to bring them along to the presentation and have Ed take a look at them.

And while you’re at the museum, make sure to check out the collection of Native American artifacts, which are also located on a Webster map according to where they were discovered. If you haven’t seen the woolly mammoth molar yet, which was found on a farm on State Road, it’s pretty cool.

The Webster Museum is at 18 Lapham Park in the village. It’s open Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday from 2 to 4:30 p.m. Admission is free and it’s  handicap accessible.

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St. Martin Lutheran Church, at 813 Bay Road in Webster, will host its Spring Chicken BBQ and FunFest on Saturday April 29 from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m.

Half-chicken dinners including salt potatoes, cole slaw, roll, butter and beverage are available for $10.00. Pie slices and other desserts will also be available for purchase. A hot dog dinner for kids is $2.00.

Dinners are eat-in or take-out. Tickets can be reserved by calling the church office at 671-1899, or purchased at the event while supplies last. Proceeds support the church’s Christmas Stocking Project, which reaches more than 500 local youth in Monroe and Wayne counties.

The FunFest will feature the a bounce house, face painting and balloons.

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The First Baptist Church of Penfield, 1862 Penfield Road, has let me know about two events coming up in the next few weeks.

The Holy Yoga Spring Series, titled “Finding the Extraordinary in Our Ordinary Lives,” begins April 27 and runs every Thursday through May 25. The series is described: “Each week we will become a living prayer; praying together the prayer that Jesus gave us. Gentle, slow flow Holy Yoga will stretch us in heart, mind, body and soul.”

Classes begin at 6:30 p.m. and cost $10 each. All are welcome. Please bring your own mat.

On Saturday May 6, join the First Baptist Church of Penfield for Chicken Barbecue from 2 to 6 p.m., or until sold out. Chickens will be prepared on site by Gale-Wyn Catering. Dinners are $10.50 and include a half barbecued chicken, coleslaw or macaroni salad, salt potatoes, roll and butter, plus a dessert. Eat in or take out.

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email me  at missyblog@gmail.com. “Like” this blog on Facebook and follow me on Twitter and Instagram

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Greater Rochester Peep Show a sweet success

8 Apr

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Just a quick blog to tell everyone to tell everyone about my trip to the Greater Rochester Peep Show on Saturday afternoon.

What fun it was. More than 80 “paintings” and dioramas featuring marshmallow Peeps were spread among two rooms at the Webster Recreation Center, depicting everything from a library to a construction site to a baseball field. The creativity was amazing, and several of them made me laugh out loud.

The Peep Show runs through Sunday, from noon to 4 pm. There’s no admission charge, but you can purchase concessions and voting tokens to vote for your favorite entry. Kind of the “Peeple’s Choice” winner.

The kids will enjoy peeking out of the 8-foot long fairy castle and shooting peeps with a slingshot on the Peeps target range.

You don’t want to miss it. Noon to 4 Sunday, Webster Recreation Center, 1350 Chiyoda Drive.

You can see a lot more photos in my Webster on the Web Facebook gallery.

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I need photos!

20 Mar
websterpark

A stunning view of Webster Park by Joe Altieri.

If you follow my Webster Blog Facebook page, you’ll see that I regularly change the photo at the top of the page. Usually the photo goes with my most recent blog post, but sometimes I just don’t have anything interesting to put up there.

So this is where you all come in.

I would love to have a collection of great photos representing our great town, which I could tap into when I need a cover shot. Your photos could be a stunning landscape, like the one above by Joe Altieri, or perhaps just a shot of your kids sitting watching a sunset at Sandbar Park.

I made this request a few years ago for exactly the same reason, and received some wonderful photos. But I have long since run out and need to re-stock.

Of course, when I use your photo, I’ll be sure to give you credit. So please go through your images, or get out there and start snapping. Then send your favorites to me at missyblog@gmail.com. Please be sure to include information about who is in the photo (if necessary) and where you took it.

Thank you!

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Three special events this weekend

2 Aug

There are some really neat events coming up today and tomorrow that I wanted to make sure everyone heard about.

If you can remember back to the Relay for Life scheduled at Thomas High School the first week of June, you might also remember that the weather that night was stinky. Not only was the Relay washed out, so was one of its most meaningful ceremonies, the Luminaria walk.

In the Luminaria ceremony, people light candles inside paper bags decorated with messages for loved ones who are fighting cancer right now, and who have lost that fight. When the ceremony is done at the Relay for Life, the bags are lined up all around the track, while everyone makes a memorial lap. That was not possible with the rains we had that night.

But this evening, weather permitting, the Luminaria Ceremony will take place. Plans are to gather at Veterans Memorial Park in the village of Webster during the regular Friday Night Gazebo Concert (tonight’s features Barry’s Crossing), and place the luminaria around the park, up an alleyway, onto Main Street and back down North Avenue to the gazebo.  Everyone will be invited to join in the luminaria lap through the village after the concert.

We all know someone who has been touched by cancer. This is a beautiful way to honor them.

Tonight’s concert runs from 7-9 pm (bring blankets and lawn chairs) and the ceremony will follow immediately afterwards.

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Tomorrow, also at Veterans Park, the first-ever Webster Folk Festival will kick off at 1 pm. Seven different local folk groups will headline the festival, and a handful of smaller groups will fill in during the set breaks, assuring seven hours of non-stop music.  Musicians are invited to bring their instruments and sit in at the jam tent and there’ll be workshops in fiddle, ukelele, guitar  and drums, and an instrument petting zoo. Several village restaurants will offer refreshments.  There will be a big tent set up so you can get out of the sun, or bring your blankets and coolers and stretch out in the grass.

The music begins at 1 pm, and will continue in the village even after dark, as several of the performers will be playing gigs at Barry’s Old School Irish and Hatter’s Pub.

For more information and a schedule of performers, check out the Webster Folk Festival website and the Facebook page.

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If you’re more into hiking than music, consider attending the grand opening and dedication of the new Eva and Harlan Braman Preserve, on Ridge Road just east of Basket Road.

The preserve is comprised of about 60 acres of successional field, previously farmed, and about 11 acres of mature forest. In the recent past, the property provided important successional field habitat for bobolinks and other birds, including migratory birds.

The Eva and Harlan Braman Preserve was donated to Genesee Land Trust by Laurel Bruns and her brother, Gary Braman, in December of 2011.This gift is in honor of their grandparents, Eva and Harlan Braman.  Remembering a childhood of eating apples grown in her grandfather’s orchards, Laurel thought about the future of this beautiful natural setting and talked with her brother about turning it into a preserve that could be enjoyed by wildlife and by people.

Saturday morning’s ceremony will begin at 10 am with light refreshments, followed by the dedication at 10:30.  You’ll get a sense of the beauty of this preserve as you hike the half mile trail from the parking lot to the dedication site.  Be sure to wear sturdy boots (the grass can be high in places) and be prepared for birds and bugs.

For detailed driving directions, a trail map and more photos, visit the Genesee Land Trust website.

 

 

The spray park is back!

26 Jul

I received some good news from the Town yesterday. In Supervisor Ron Nesbitt’s weekly column, he announced that the spray park at Ridgecrest is up and running again.

Here in pretty much its entirety is what Supervisor Nesbitt wrote, which explains very well what the problem was all this time.

When the town sold the Ridgecrest building, the water line that ran from Ridgecrest to the spray park did not belong to the town any longer. That caused the town quite a few problems to get the spray park up and running again.  The town needed an easement from the Webster Firemen Association to get to a fire hydrant in the circle of the firemen’s property. We needed permission and plans that needed to be looked at by the Monroe County Water Authority. We needed a smaller tract shovel to dig the hole from the circle to the spray park so we didn’t destroy the parking lot. We had to schedule the time with the Highway Department and the Parks Department to get the work done when they had crews available. That all took time plus we needed to order parts for the park after the water line was in because we found out that many parts had become broken over time.

However, having endured the test of time and your patience the spray park is now open again for your enjoyment on the hot days we have left this summer.

Thanks to our Highway and Parks crews for their help in resolving the broken spray park issue.

So spread the word and get out there and get wet!

 

One more thought from the bike path

26 Jul

Near where the path begins at Salt Road, it’s particularly icky

You remember a little while ago I posted a blog about the bike path that runs along Rt. 104? My husband and I have become very familiar with the section between Five Mile Line Road and Phillips, having ridden it at least a dozen times in the last six weeks to visit the village.

Well, on a recent trip to the village, we decided to get crazy and follow the path all the way to its eastern terminus at Salt Road. It was only another mile, I thought, and it might turn out to be the nicest part of the trail.

Boy, was I wrong.

That last (first) mile of the bike path from Phillips to Salt is in awful repair. Don’t get me wrong — there are parts where it’s pretty, twisty and lined with reeds and cat-tails, and buffered from the highway by mature vegetation. But the path itself is bumpy and broken up, just gravel in some places, and with grass growing through in others. It lies in a wet, marshy area, which probably makes it harder to maintain.  But a friend who lives near there tells me that the poor condition of the path in that section is mainly due to its frequent use by snowmobilers in the winter.

The 104 Bike Path is a terrific resource for our town and there’s much to be said for allowing all residents to use it, all seasons of the year.  Precisely for those reasons, the town or the state — or whoever is responsible — should perhaps start focusing more on its upkeep.

Grassy strips like this are common in the Salt-to-Phillips section.

Friends of Webster Trails get help from Eagle Scout

26 Jul

Today I bring you news of another Eagle Scout doing great things for our community.  He is Sullivan Easley of Troop 363, who chose to work with the Friends of Webster Trails (FWT) to complete his Eagle Scout project.

Thank you to Alisa Kokx for sending along the following article, which I have stolen from liberally. (OK, almost completely.)

A love of nature leads Sullivan (Sully) J. Easley of Troop 363 to complete his Eagle Scout project with FWT

Easley’s project included building six nesting boxes, which were installed at Whiting Road Nature Preserve, Gosnell Big Woods Preserve and Four Mile Creek Preserve. Easley also led a trail work effort on the future phase of the Green Trail at Whiting Road. Both project aspects were coordinated through Friends of Webster Trails.

Taran Bauer and Sully Easley (wearing hat) remove roots and vines where the future section of trail will go at Whiting Road Nature Preserve.

The nesting boxes will offer homes for screech owls and wood ducks. Per Easley, “I choose this project because I was interested in doing a project for FWT and I like wildlife. I first learned about FWT from taking part in a fellow Scout’s Eagle Scout Project at the Bird Sanctuary Trail last year. I was surprised by how many trails there are in Webster and by how many people use the trails.” Easley adds, “I learned a lot more about wood ducks and how they are present in Webster. Although they are not endangered, their nesting grounds are. They are tree nesters and like to live in abandoned woodpecker holes so the draining and clearing of forested wetlands for agriculture and timber and hunting in the early 1900s significantly reduced their numbers. Through conservation efforts and the installation of nesting boxes starting in 1930s, their populations are back.”

As part of his project, Easley also led a group of volunteers to help clear the future section of the Green Trail at Whiting Road Nature Preserve which will be opened later this fall once FWT completes the trail’s grading. FWT Trails Committee Chair Jeff Darling said, “Sully and his group of volunteers were instrumental in clearing mounds of multiflora rose and vines so we can site the new section of trail properly. This new trail will allow users to enjoy the northern 25 acres of the preserve and a view of Lake Ontario.”

In late April, Easley asked FWT’s Volunteer Project Coordinator, Alisa Kokx, for help identifying a meaningful project. All of the planning, purchasing of materials, building, installing, and trail work took place within the last two months. Easley was very determined to get this project completed since his family was moving out of state in early July. Per Kokx, “This was an amazing amount of effort and coordination for Sully with a short timeline. A typical Eagle Scout project usually takes six or more months. It was apparent that Sully was working on an aspect of his project practically every day in order to complete it prior to his family’s move. He did a great job planning all the details, organizing volunteers, and executing a very successful project … plus balancing school, various activities, and a family move.”

Easley led 26 volunteers on various aspects of the project totaling 203 volunteers hours. That’s pretty amazing for a youngster who just completed 8th grade at Willink Middle School.

Sully Easley and his volunteers install a nesting box at Gosnell Big Woods Preserve. From left to right: Andrew Streit, Derek Sahrle, Bill Wheatley (Troop 363 Asst. Scoutmaster), Sully Easley, Quentin Sahrle, Nick Bober, Kevin Thompson and Darwin Pray.

 

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