Webster community mailbag

16 Jan

Here’s a great socially-distanced, outdoor activity that everyone in the family will love.

It’s a Scavenger Hunt hosted by the Webster Recreation Center on Saturday Jan. 23. Children and their adults are invited to participate in a fun morning of searching, exploring and discovering one of our local parks.

The event, held at the Rec Center at 1350 Chiyoda Dr., is designed for children of all ages, with three different levels of scavenger hunts (under 5 yrs old, 5-8 yr olds, and 8-12 yr olds). You can sign in anytime between 9 and 11 a.m., work together to find the clues around the park, and record your answers in the special scavenger hunt answer key. When you’re all done, return your answers to earn a fun prize.

Cost is $5 per child or $20 per family. Pre-registration is requested (register the children only), but payment will be taken at the event. To register, visit the Webster Parks and Recreation website and search for program #101205-A. All proceeds will be donated to the Friends of Webster Trails for maintenance and improvements of trails in Webster.

So bundle up and have some fun!

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The Webster Public Library will host a Webster Area Preschools “Open House” from January 25 to 29.

During that entire week, during their regular hours, the library will have a special display set up in front of the community room with information about Webster area preschools, including brochures, registration information, and virtual events. If you have any questions, contact Jason at (585) 872-7075 x6119 or jason.poole@libraryweb.org.

The library is also offering several adult programs via Zoom this month. Still coming up are Meditation and Self Love on Jan. 20 and Recycling 101 on Jan 26. Registration is required. For class descriptions and registration links, visit the library’s website, choose Events and Classes and find the class you’re interested in on the calendar.

February will also be a busy month at the library. Here’s a visual gallery of some the programs that are coming down the pike:

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Finally, here’s an opportunity to show off your inner photographer.

The Webster Museum is putting together a gallery of “favorite spots in Webster.” This is a follow-up to the museum’s popular holiday photo gallery last month.

This time, they’d like you to take a photo of your favorite Webster spot, then email it to photos@webstermuseum.org to be included in the gallery.

Check back at the website often, because they’ll be updating the gallery as submissions come in.

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Businesses helping businesses during this difficult time

15 Jan

A ripple of kindness is quietly spreading through the Webster community.

It’s called Webster Business Pay it Forward, an effort begun by businesses almost a year ago to help their fellow small business owners weather the Covid economy.

I first heard about the program from one of my readers (thanks, Nancy!) who saw a Facebook post from Ric Thomann of Webster Interiors. Ric had purchased ten gift cards and long-stemmed roses from Kittelberger Florist, which were to be given out free to the first ten customers who visited Kittelberger and mentioned the program. Not only did the gift card purchase benefit Kittelberger, chances were good the patrons who used them would be spending even more than that in the store.

The roses were just an extra special touch.

Ric was able to give me a little background, particularly that the movement was spearheaded locally by Dr. Joe Manza of Wellness For You NOW Chiropractic on North Ave.

Ric wrote,

During the earlier stages of Covid, Joe went out to a few businesses and pre-paid for some products from the Webster businesses and then splashed what he did on his and Webster Facebook group pages to encourage the community to take advantage of his generosity and hopefully bring additional awareness and customers to those businesses.

The Webster BID, the Village of Webster’s business association, got wind of the idea and started spreading it through the village, benefiting almost a dozen small businesses to date.

Dr. Joe, however, refuses to take credit for the original idea, saying that the concept began with a business growth group he belongs to called Black Diamond Club. He started the ball rolling “early on in the apocalypse” by opening a tab at the Lake Road Country Store for $150 worth of fish frys for anyone who had lost work and needed a hot meal.

He wrote,

Not too long after I posted this offer on Facebook, a high school friend of mine who operates a very small musical instrument repair business jumped in and added to my tab. That made my heart melt! Later on, I did another one at Knucklehead Brewing. I bought ten growlers for any first responders, nurses, fire, police … as a thank you for their hard work.

And he didn’t stop there, paying it forward to Performance Hobby, The Goodie Shoppe, Kiss Me Cookie and The North Bee. Come February, he’s planning to do it again, to benefit another local business, Barbells & Body Fuel.

The big idea is that it is absolutely necessary to support our community in as many ways as possible. Too many people have been negatively impacted by the virus and the lockdown. Job loss, reduced incomes, business closings, depression, and so forth have become the side effects of this situation.

I have heard personally that this little initiative has helped so many people and businesses which makes me hope others are inspired to contribute to the cause, just like my friend did by adding to my tab. If we can come together to serve our community by giving just a little bit more or extra – if/when possible – so that life is a little less of a struggle and a bit brighter for those in need then we are all better off.

The Webster Business Pay it Forward initiative is still going on. The wave of kindness continues to spread, so you’ll want to keep an eye out for it, for your opportunity to help support our local businesses.

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

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Local athlete makes a splash in North Dakota

14 Jan

I received a Proud Momma email the other day from one of my most faithful readers, AnnMarie Johansson, who knows I like to highlight Webster’s young people and their accomplishments.

AnnMarie wanted to let me know that her son Dan, a 2013 Wester Thomas graduate, is making a name for himself as the equipment manager for the University of North Dakota.

The local newspaper there, the Grand Forks Herald, recently featured Dan in a long article on the front page of its Friday sports section. It describes how the very physical job keeps him in constant motion, leads to a lot of late nights and early mornings, and very few days off.

Ann Marie wrote that back in the day, Dan played a for the Webster Cyclones youth hockey association and “maybe a year or two for JV,” adding, “He was never ‘good enough’ for varsity.”

She and her husband Eric are, naturally, very proud of their son.

Click the “Download” buttons below to check out the article yourself.

page-1Download
page-2Download

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

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Library, Hope House collaborate on successful clothing drive

13 Jan
HOPE Ministry Director Margery Morgan with a carload of donations. (Photo provided)

The Webster Public Library and HOPE Ministry joined forces recently to bring a little bit of happiness and warmth to local families during the holidays.

The organizations teamed up to host a two-month long winter clothing drive to benefit the families who rely on Hope House, located at Holy Trinity Church, for food and clothing.

The library hosts this giving event every year, and library patrons and staff members always come through in a big way. This year, enough hats, mittens, scarves, coats and socks were collected to fill a large SUV floor to ceiling.

“There was just SO much,” said Margery Morgan, Director of HOPE Ministry. “A lot of it was hand-knitted and hand-crocheted,” she added, and seemed especially pleased with all of the socks and brand new items they received, items they can’t always offer to their clients. All of the donations will be distributed to low-income Webster families during the Hope House’s regular food distribution hours.

This year’s clothing drive has ended, but the Hope House continues to accept donations of personal hygiene items, cleaning items and food. The need is especially great as the pandemic continues to devastate families’ lives. Illness and unemployment have driven many people into a place they never dreamed they’d be: needing assistance just to put enough food on the table.

If you’d like to help out, visit the Hope House website or Facebook page to see a wish list of items the ministry especially needs. Contact-less drop-off for donations is available. And if your family needs the kind of support the Hope House provides, give them a call at 585-265-6694 to discuss your situation, or stop by during their normal hours of operation.

“We’re here because we want to help people,” Morgan said. “Nobody should be hungry.”

Hope House is located at Holy Trinity Church, 1450 Ridge Rd., Webster. Hours are Monday 4 to 7 p.m, Tuesday 9 a.m. to noon and Wednesday 2 to 5 p.m.

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

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Girls on the Run needs you!

8 Jan

A couple of years ago I volunteered for a short time with the Girls on the Run team from Schlegel Elementary School. I fancy myself a runner, so thought I could use my positive experience with running to encourage these young ladies, some of whom had never run any distance before.

What I discovered is that the program is about so much more than running.

For sure, the girls do a lot of running. But what really impressed me about Girls on the Run is the program’s focus on life skills, confidence, positive self-image and personal and community connections — all while encouraging physical activity.

The eight-week program is for girls in 3rd through 8th grade, and is run entirely by volunteer coaches who follow a structured curriculum and engage their teams with fun, interactive lessons. Teams meet twice a week in person or virtually, and the season culminates with everyone participating in a 5K. The year I helped out, that event was held at MCC. It was a huge party with lots of teams and hundreds of girls coming together to celebrate their successes.

Right now Girls on the Run needs more coaches to help bring this inspirational program as many young ladies as possible. Coaches do not need to be athletes but must be at least 18 years old to serve as an assistant or 21 to serve as a head coach. All volunteer coaches must complete a background check and attend a virtual training session.

It could be a life-changing decision for everyone involved. As one coach said,

“It was so rewarding to be part of the girls’ journey to becoming empowered women. And I can’t begin to describe how changed I am as a person by learning the curriculum alongside them.”

For more information about coaching and Girls on the Run of Greater Rochester, click here.

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Where has Missy been?

7 Jan

This blog thing can be a capricious beast. Some weeks I have so many blog ideas that I have to make a list lest I forget something. Other times — like these last few weeks — those ideas have been few and far between. Now that the holidays have passed, there seems to be little going on, at least that I’ve been told about.

Finally, though, something came across my dining room table/office desk that sparked my interest: the latest edition of the Webster Today.

You may know this publication as the former Town Times, what it was called during Supervisor Nesbitt’s tenure. This is the second edition of this new and improved quarterly newsletter. The first was published in October and I was immediately impressed by its glossy, full-color layout and the clean and organized way it presented information.

This latest edition continues to impress. Some of my favorite features, again, include

  • a table of contents right on the front cover
  • a complete town government directory on the inside cover, perfect for tearing off and putting on the fridge
  • photos of the town board members
  • LOTS of information about the Rec Center
  • handsome photo illustrations and colorful charts

There’s also a nice visual spotlighting several of the positive things that happened in 2020, including opening of the outdoor ice rink at the Rec Center, the re-imagined Summer Celebration and the Parade of Lights. There’s even a fascinating 2-page feature compiled by the Webster Museum highlighting almost two dozen Webster residents who fought in the Civil War and are buried in town cemeteries.

Every home and business in the town received a copy of Webster Today this week, so if you haven’t gotten yours yet, keep an eye out for it. And if you tossed it in the recycle bin without even looking at it, I recommend you rescue it and take a closer look. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

And by the way, if you know of anything going on in town you would like me to blog about, please email me!!!

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

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Here’s where you can recycle your Christmas tree

31 Dec

I don’t know about you, but I put off taking down my Christmas tree until at least New Year’s Day. This year it may stay up even longer because it brings me much needed daily joy breaks.

When it does finally get stuffed out the door however, I don’t like setting it out with the garbage. Seems like a very undignified end for a tree which served us so proudly as a glorious symbol of the season. Instead, I try to pay it forward and recycle it to be turned into mulch for next spring’s gardeners or pine chips for the trails.

Here’s some info on a few nearby places you can do that:

Webster: According to the Town’s website, you can drop your tree off at the Town High Department, 1005 Picture Parkway, betweem now and Feb. 28.

Penfield: The Penfield DPW is accepting trees at their facility, 1607 Jackson Rd. You’ll see a sign to the right of the facility’s gate, and you can drop it off right there. You can also leave the tree with the regular brush pickup.

Irondequoit has a Trees for Trails program, which is descrbed on their Facebook page:

Rather than put your Christmas tree to the curb after Dec. 25, bring it to Helmer Nature Center, where it will be used to create wood chips that mitigate trail erosion. Starting Dec. 26, bring your tree to the Helmer parking lot for recycling. We will collect trees until the Jan. 16th Trees for Trails event when volunteers will help unload your tree and High Falls Tree Service and Irondequoit Lawn & Landscape will be on-site recycling trees. This will happen from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Helmer Nature Center is located at 154 Pinegrove Ave.

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The weird tradition continued, even without snow

26 Dec

Several days ago I blogged about an unusual, decades-old tradition my family has, the annual barefoot snow walk. (Click on the hyperlink to get a little more detail about the tradition’s history and recent interations.)

In that blog I pledged that the crazy tradition would continue, even though I wouldn’t be getting together with my extended family for the holidays. As promised, I set up a Zoom snow walk instead, and invited family members from around the country to participate.

It proved to be as crazy a virtual gathering as it usually is in person.

Just before the appointed time, 11 a.m. Christmas morning, cousins and nephews and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles from around the country started joining the meeting, and it wasn’t long before we were all barefoot and heading out the door. Many carried their phones to record the event, others had propped their laptop up on the porch or had a non-participant hold the recording device. (These nonbelievers are usally in-laws.)

We didn’t all have snow, but that didn’t stop us. I made sure, for example, to gather up a couple of buckets-full on Christmas Eve before the rains started and threw it in a freezer. The next morning we brought it to our gathering at my daughter’s house in Gates. It had frozen solid and I had to break it up with a hammer, but it was enough for the three of us to stand in.

Here, for your viewing pleasure, is the wild video.

Top row are my eldest daughter Sara and her boyfriend Tom in Cheektowaga; my daughter’s living room; my brother Chris and his family in PA; and my brother Greg in CT.

Middle row: me, my son Sean and youngest daughter Erin at her house in Gates; my sister Mindy in Greene; my cousin Laura in AZ (where she put her feet in a pool); and my cousin Amy in MA (holding a phone where my aunt and uncle are FaceTiming in from Cape Cod and walking in their snow).

On the bottom: my nephew Tim and his girlfriend Manda are watching while they drive; my cousin Paul in Horseheads; and my nephew Drew in MA.

Now here’s the really neat thing about all of this, and one of the few positive things to have come out of this pandemic. In total, 21 children and adults were part of the 2020 COVID Barefoot Snow Walk, from all over New York and four other states, including Arizona. It was something we never would have done in a normal year.

This is the first time all of these people have been “together” in one place. I haven’t seen most of them in more than a year — even years. And I don’t care the reason, or that it was through a computer screen. It was just great to see them all.

Hoping you all had a merry Christmas filled with your own comforting and unusual traditions.

No snow on Christmas morning? No prob. We saved some from Christmas Eve.

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A happy story for Christmas Day

25 Dec

As we near the day we can finally say goodbye to a difficult 2020 and welcome a fresh new 2021, it helps to remember that some good things actually did come out of this awful year. Here’s a story about one of them.

Almost every week since the beginning of April, 5-year Julia Meyers has been playing virtual Yahtzee with her new friend Marion, a resident of Maplewood Nursing Home.

Julia and Marion playing via Google Duo

They get together via Google Duo, usually on Tuesday afternoons, and spend about a half hour playing one game of Yahtzee, each using her own dice and board. Marion is assisted by Maplewood’s Volunteer Coordinator Lori Porte, and Julia’s mom Linda helps her. But despite the board-side assistance, there’s plenty of excitement and conversation passed back and forth between the competitors themselves. And judging from the end of the game I watched earlier this week, the competition is pretty fierce.

It was Linda who originally came up with the idea as a way to have Julia connect with one of the residents.

I reached out to The Maplewood when the pandemic started because I was looking for a way my daughter could give back during these hard times. My grandmother spent time at Maplewood before she passed away in 2014 so that was my connection.

They first tried just video-chatting with another resident, but that didn’t work very well. Someone came up with the idea to play a game instead, and suggested Yahtzee. Lori found a resident whom she thought would be able to follow along pretty well and enjoy playing with somebody she’d never met before.

The games were on.

Both young and old have benefited from the weekly interactions. Julia gets to practice her math and number-writing skills. Marion enjoys seeing Julia and her 5-month old brother William every week.

The games have forged a friendship that reaches beyond the computer screen. Just before Thanksgiving, they even got to “meet” through the window. Marion and Lori used the occasion to give Julia a wooden jewelry box inscribed with her name. Before they presented the gift, Marion even asked Lori to line its drawers with purple felt, Julia’s favorite color.

More recently, Julia and Linda gave Marion her own Yahtzee game for Christmas — so she didn’t have to continue using Maplewood’s game — and a frame with a picture from the window visit, where Marion can keep track of the Yahtzee scores. Recently, Linda even discovered that one of Marion’s children is a neighbor of theirs.

The overall game score is pretty close. Julia won again on Tuesday, so she’s up 15 games to 13. But Marion needn’t worry. She’ll have plenty of chances to catch up. Julia said she’s planning to keep playing the games for “29,000 years.”

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

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Holiday music and a visit from Santa

24 Dec

Here are a few holiday delights for you and your family on this Christmas Eve.

The first is a beautiful rendition of O Holy Night, shared by Carly Thomas, the orchestra director at Klem North and Schlegel Rd. elementary schools.

Carly is a member of several orchestras, and is normally very busy performing holiday concerts at this time of year. But as there’s nothing normal about this year, one of her orchestras decided to try something different. They recruited some vocalists and put together a COVID-friendly arrangement of O Holy Night, recording their parts individually.

The result is incredible. Carly is the violinist in the red sweater against a white background.

Next, here’s a special treat for children and adults alike. Santa himself reading the Christmas Eve classic, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas. This video was originally posted on the 2020 Webster Holiday Parade of Lights Facebook page.

May you all have a blessed holiday, enjoy your family, and please remember to be safe so that we can all get back to celebrating Christmas properly once again next year.

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

You can also get email notifications every time I post a new blog by using the “Follow Me” link on the right side of this page.

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