Lake County Metroparks
MISSION
To conserve and preserve the natural resources of Lake County while providing a variety of safe, affordable and enjoyable educational and recreational programs and activities that enhance the quality of life in Lake County now and for the generations to follow.
The Lake County Probate Court Judge, Mark J. Bartolotta, appoints a three-member board of citizens to govern Lake Metroparks without compensation, for three-year alternating terms. In March of each year, the Board of Park Commissioners appoints an Executive Director who serves as the Chief Executive Officer for the park district.
WHAT’S HERE
Portions of two state designated wild and scenic rivers — and many tributaries — flow through and are protected by Lake Metroparks. In addition to protecting watersheds and open space, Lake Metroparks annually provides more than four million visitors with countless recreational and educational experiences at diverse facilities including an agriculturally-themed park, a nature center, a state-of-the-art education and wildlife rehabilitation center, two golf courses, more than 60 miles of trails including a 4.8-mile paved bike/hike trail, six parks on Lake Erie’s shoreline and a cross-country ski center.
Yesterday I discovered that Lake Metroparks has recently set up a series of webcams, including three at their Lake Erie park locations. Since the pandemic I have rarely gone to the Lake Erie shoreline. Before the pandemic I was there almost weekly between March and November. So, I am now able to be there virtually every day all the day. Virtual lakeshores are even better that virtual liturgies!
Last night I watched the sunset as seen through all three sites. Today I set up my computers so that I can easily use them as screen savers. My new iphone takes wonderful pictures; it even shifts me into "natural light" mode when I take a screen shot.
Today I made the following post to a website, Lake County Ohio Weal, that I plan to use for developing a Commonweal Local Community for Lake County. Click on the link below and enjoy!
Thanks, Jack. I see a lake freighter! Cloudy up here today, too. About 65. Do your beaches ever have e. Coli closures? Closings in the most developed areas along Lakes Michigan and Huron here are now pretty routine on and off during the summer. People with summer homes fight putting in municipal sewer systems that would alleviate the problem (taxes would be raised), and farm run-off from intensive livestock is another problem.
ReplyDeleteI don't know much about beach closings since I don't watch TV, nor get the local newspaper. There are a lot of warnings on the internet about rip tides when the waves get high.
DeletePre-pandemic, Headlands Beach (the State Park which is to the left of the light house in the Fairport Harbor photo, in other words on the other side of the Grande River) did not gather enough people to maintain lifeguards.
They had a sign system for swimming based upon previous weather, e.g. rains the day before with run off meant poor swimming. They were no longer taking daily water samples.
I was there one day when some high school science teachers were taking their students on a tour of the dunes, which are between the light house and Headland's beach. Their opinion of the water quality was not high.
I ceased to swim several decades ago. The walking road is a fair distance from the water (a very wide beach) but elevated so that one has a good view of the lake, but little contact with swimmers who cluster near the water.
Lake Metroparks seems to be a really nice resource for your area, both to visit in person and virtually through the web cams. Thanks for the links.
ReplyDeleteWe have a smaller lake here where we like to walk. Yesterday morning seemed still and calm early, so I suggested to my husband that we go out there. By the time we got there, the wind had whipped up to 25-30 mph. We walked for half an hour anyway, but agreed it hadn't been the best day for that. Oh well, Nebraska.
Jack, thank you for this. I have greatly missed natural beauty since coming to California. No birds in San Jose. As of last night we are in an assisted living place. It’s new, nice, clean but on a main road, and our view is of the church parking lot next door.In Maryland we looked out on a woods and stream that were beautiful all year. The bird feeder attracted dozens of birds of different varieties. The place we were moved to at least gave us an apartment 2 bedrooms, bathroom, small living room and open kitchen. It is the only place we found in San Jose that would take my husband with his needs and have enough space for me to live with him. All of our sons will spend most of the summer in Europe. I’m hoping to move home in September. It will be hard to arrange everything but I do NOT want to live here for the rest of our lives. I have not found a place in Maryland either that we could live in together and few assisted living places anywhere will care for my husbands needs. So we hope to go home, get our house ready to sell and buy a 3 bedroom ranch home with an open plan. At home my husband will live in the family room where he can see the birds, the woods, the deer, the fox, the squirrels, and the occasional heron. It’s a SSW exposure and is bright and sunny as long as it’s not a cloudy day. Pray for us to make that move! With a new home We want an extra bedroom in case we have live-in care. It will cost a fortune but the place are in today does too. We just have to pray we don’t live too long. The sons say they will pay if we run out of money. We’ll see.
ReplyDeleteMy husband and I love the water and I will check your webcams every day to see a bit of natural beauty, which is one of the things I really miss from home.
Best of luck. Our savings ran out last year, and we're down to living on SS and SNAP benefits. We'll soon need to sell the house and find low income elderly housing complex. Most of these are tiny basement studios with combo living/bedrooms, galley kitchen, and shower. Long wait times. I can see why people would rather live in an RV. There's more room. Hoping that home sale can leverage us into a slightly bigger apt with tub and separate bedroom on ground floor. Will be interesting when the car gives out. Public transpo is in-county only, and our docs are one county over.
DeleteOld age ain't for sissies.
Anne and Jean, will pray. Thanks for letting us know what is going on. Wish I could fix everything for both of you.
DeletePrayers and wishes don't solve poverty. Please consider voting for candidates who are cognizant of what it means to be broke, old, sick, useless, and exhausted from trying to keep up appearances out of shame. Now Raber is in early dementia. It's a miserable existence, an end of life I could never have imagined in my worst nightmare. And if all that isn't fun, I got grave sins galore piled up and couldn't get Father to agree to offer Last Rites before my biopsy last year. So I got Hell waitin' for me on the other side.
DeleteJean, take this for what it's worth. Probably zero. But have you ever looked into this:
Deletehttps://www.nerdwallet.com/article/mortgages/reverse-mortgage#:~:text=A%20reverse%20mortgage%20is%20a%20home%20loan%20that,on%20the%20proceeds%20or%20make%20monthly%20mortgage%20payments.
A lot of negatives, but at least that might allow you to remain in your home.
About the priest refusing the Anointing of the Sick to you, sheesh! Talk about spiritual malpractice..Please don't give up seeking some more competent spiritual help, you're not going to hell.
P.S. TFG isn't in anybody's corner except his own, not voting for anyone who will shred the social safety net.
Yeah, I looked into the Tom Selleck Option. And many other things, including a property tax abatement, a home equity loan, Senior Services, and moving to Mexico. I'm broke, not stupid. This is why I don't talk to people about this IRL and why I have broken off with all but a couple friends.
DeleteGetting Raber to retain info is sometimes a challenge. I expect that's going to get worse, so, again, moving asap is important.
As for Hell, that will have to remain in the hands of the Almighty. I can't afford to contribute to a church or run around the diocese vetting priests.
I still try to help in my cancer group and knit for the baby pantry. You can't work off your sins with good deeds, but those groups have been blessings that help me feel useful.
There are thousands of elderly people in this boat, so I thank anyone thinking about this when they go to vote.
I need to stop whining now and move on.
Ugh. My apologies. We've all got our crosses, and there's no excuse for dumping frustrations and then being mean and bitter.
DeleteIt's okay to vent!
DeleteYes - more than ok to vent.
DeleteJack, that sounds wonderful. I'm glad you're able to leverage these resources.
ReplyDeleteJean, I grew I up in a family with plenty of brains and education but little money. I think I’ve mentioned the year I was in college with no home to go to because my mother lost her home when my dad divorced her. It was a tiny home, but it was sold to pay off my father’s debts. Nothing left after. He moved in with a sister. At 55, after raising five kids mostly alone, one with brain damage whom she helped to realize his full potential, but no salaried work for 30 years, she took a job at the UCLA Conference center near our home. She was a grad of UCLA which is where she met my father, a “ brilliant” chemist with zero money sense-. Class of 1931. They gave her a small room to live in as part of her pay. I was at college courtesy of two full scholarships which paid for all my tuition and all my room and board and even my junior year in Paris. I started SS wages at age 13 - $1.00/ hour.. Since I lived in a resort area the legal work permit age was 13 instead of 15. I worked summers and weekends during the school year at local tourist attractions and saved all my money. Once my mom had to borrow money from me out of my extensive earnings to pay the tab she had run up at the local grocery store. I used the savings for my spending money in college - an occasional movie or hamburger out with college friends (many of whose doctor, lawyer and businessman daddies gave them credit cards at the best stores and new cars to drive) I spent holidays and summer with friends and a sister. Technically I was homeless that year. So I grew up without a dad at home most of the time, little money but with other gifts. My husband and I were very lucky, worked hard at good jobs, were careful with money, and had substantial retirement savings and a paid off house and cars- then he fell. Everything has changed . So I understand what it feels like to be near the end of life in circumstances never imagined in a million years. Thank God for our “socialist” Medicare and AARP Supplementary insurance. George’s medical bills are well over $ million but have been covered. We were among the fortunate. We still are in the sense that we have enough for assisted living or in home care for a few years because we didn’t get forced into bankruptcy to pay medical bills. ( About 40% of bankruptcies are due to medical bills in our horrible and absurdly expensive healthcare system) We had assumed we would leave something to our sons to help them pay for the grandchildren to go to college. They will be on their own for that now.
ReplyDeleteAs far as heaven and hell are concerned I don’t worry about it. Nobody actually knows much about it. Whether they are even realities or exactly what they might be. Personally I’m not convinced anyone is in “hell,” not even the worst. God figures it out. God alone knows all the circumstances. You are definitely among the “ saved”. I’m not a bit sure about your pastor though. The two great commandments are to love.You have lived a life of love. Not perfect love ( only God shows perfect love) but love of others - your difficult parents, your husband, your son, your students, your fellow cancer patients, the babies you knit for and I’m guessing a bunch of others whom you’ve not mentioned. You seek God and goodness with all your heart. Heaven? You’re a shoe in. Your pastor seems to not even begin to understand the gospels, the teachings of Jesus. He’s the one who needs to worry. I went to mass here at the facility yesterday.There were 12 women, including a “ memory care” woman with her daughter. She held two very shabby stuffed animals in her lap, which she stroked continuously with a smile on her face. A big smile when the priest gave her communion. He obviously knows her well. Shabby stuffed toys because they are obviously well loved. The priest was older, of an ethnicity I couldn’t identify. Great priest - Pope Francis style, Vatican II type priest. All about love. All about kindness. He gave a good homily too. He came upstairs to give communion to my husband even after learning my husband is not a baptized Catholic. He knows that God doesn’t care about that formality, about man- made rules that shut people out. That God is a God of love, of inclusion, not country club exclusion. Jesus gave the bread and wine to his Jewish disciples and friends and didn’t ask to see Roman Catholic baptismal certificates. My husband was asleep but maybe next time. I whine and cry all the time and everyone here puts up with it, and every one of you are blessings in my life. Thank you all for being here.
DeleteAnne, I think you're right on the nose about Jean's priest!
DeleteThe Army installation at which I used to work would have a priest come in on holy days to say mass at the interdenominational chapel for the troops and employees. Sometimes, Dr. Howard J. would attend. He was an Episcopalian and very devout. I remember attending mass once with my supervisor as Dr. J. walked up the aisle to receive communion. I nudged my boss and said, "Hey, Bob, aren't we supposed to tackle Howard?" Well, maybe he converted recently.
DeleteA few years back, my neighbor gave Howard a colonoscopy and saw something he didn't like. He ordered a CT scan and they discovered a kind of lung cancer that had also metastasized. Turned out it was a very odd but treatable cancer. Upon taking a certain pill, the cancer in his lungs and elsewhere disappeared. He didn't smoke and was a runner so I attributed it to Pocono radon. Anyway, he was thankful to my neighbor and to God for his physical recovery. I think the pills, which he said he could never stop, reduced his immunity. He contracted COVID late in the pandemic and succumbed. But he was grateful for the extra years he received. He ended up Lutheran. Guess we should have tackled him.
Tsk, those damn Protestants! A priest in our diocese tried to explain why Protestants are barred from Communion and pretty much ended up making a case for a) how some Catholics fetishize the Host as a kind of relic (comparing it to a baseball souvenir) instead of the Living God, and b) why most Catholics probably shouldn't receive either if they are as poorly catechized as he suggests.
Deletehttps://faithsyndicated.org/non-catholics-communion
The Peter Kreeft's anecdote about the Muslim at mass is quite similar to something I remember being told by the nuns in elementary school. There was a very learned atheist who had a deep knowledge of Catholic teaching but did not have "the gift of faith." He said of the Eucharist that if he believed what Catholics believe, he would bow down before the altar and never get up.
DeleteThis is not commentary on the above, but I recall a couple of stories attributed to grade school nuns in the 1966 book Saint Fidgeta and Other Parodies by John Bellairs. In one, some children were playing outdoors, and they dug up a piece of uranium. One boy held it up in the air, and an airplane flying overhead stopped dead in the air. The boy then buried the uranium, and the airplane continued in its flight. And that is how it was discovered what uranium could do. In another story, some irreverent children were playing with an Ouija board. One of the children asked, "Is there a God?" The Ouija board answered, "Yes!" And the roof caved in, killing everybody.
In real life, my older sister had a teacher in high school—an elderly nun—who spoke frequently of the 12 Commandments. No one apparently ever found out what the extra two were supposed to be.
I read a letter to an advice columnist in the Washington Post a day or two ago by a woman who had lost patience with her parents. Every time she visited them, they were enthusiastic about making everyone play the 1983 version of Trivial Pursuit. That has nothing to do with the topic at hand, but I find it hilarious:
Dear Amy: This is a “trivial” subject that has nonetheless bothered me for years. My parents have the original Trivial Pursuit game, circa 1983. At various get-togethers, my mom will drag out this relic, and enthusiastically try to rally us around a good old game of “General Knowledge.”
I feel like she should upgrade her game, at least to a game from this century. We go round and round, arguing about the obviously outdated questions, which the parents insist be answered in the vernacular of what the correct answer was, back in 1983. Any suggestions to update, or at least omit the blatantly wrong answers, fall upon deaf ears.
I’ve become so exasperated by their childish behavior, and refusal to update, that I simply refuse to participate. We used to enjoy the familial camaraderie, but it now seems ludicrous to me, when most of these questions are no longer relevant.
Any suggestions?
— JC