Here is a companion post for last Sunday’s photographs of Beebee Lake. This was taken where the lake outflow continues as Fall Creek. Enjoy!!
Frozen Dam
Views from the bridge on Christmas Eve 2019
Category: Sculpture
The Arctic?
Views from the bridge on Christmas Eve 2019
No, on the afternoon of Christmas Eve I took the 1.2 mile walk around Beebee Lake, wearing Yacktracs for the icy paths, after a series of very cold days.
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View from Beebee bridge on Christmas Eve 2019
The lake surface resembled the images of a Saturn moon.
Icicles from Beebee Lake Bridge on Christmas Eve 2019
It is a picturesque structure, the bridge, spanning the mouth of a water filled gorge of Fall Creek.
View of a frozen Fall Creek and the lake taken while standing on Beebee Lake Bridge on Christmas Eve 2019
Here is another photograph of the interesting lake surface. All photos of this post are from my IPhone.j
View of a frozen Fall Creek and the lake taken while standing on Beebee Lake Bridge on Christmas Eve 2019
Fall Creek is frozen wall to wall of the gorge.
Slideshow of photographs in this series
View from Beebee bridge on Christmas Eve 2019 Icicles from Beebee Lake Bridge on Christmas Eve 2019 View of a frozen Fall Creek and the lake taken while standing on Beebee Lake Bridge on Christmas Eve 2019 View of a frozen Fall Creek and the lake taken while standing on Beebee Lake Bridge on Christmas Eve 2019
Copyright 2019 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
Christmas Vibrations II
Time to Move On and Remember
Christmas Vibrations I
Warm Wishes of Christmas
Merry Christmas from our family to yours
Peave, Love, Joy
Quaker Settlement Series 2
Gone too soon
Joseph P. Lee, a middle aged gentleman with carvings of a mature willow flanked by urns. In the intervening 162 years the upper layers of slate flake at the edges.
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Born June 6, 1799 Died June 22, 1857 Lived 58 years and 16 Days
Rhoda Ann Mattison, a wife who died too young. What was the relationship of James and Rhoda to Catherine and John?
Born October 14, 1794 Diet April 8, 1822 Lived 27 years 5 months 20 days. Wife of James Mattison
The carving is a pineapple (for hospitality) set in a elegant vase on a plinth flanked by ionic columns, a simple arch (banded to imply a rainbow?) surmounts all. Cross hatching implies space. An implied eternal banding of stylized leaves as starbursts.
I brought out the characteristic slate coloring. There is evidence of ware from the intervening 197 years, though the carving is surprising crisp.
Slideshow of photographs in this series
Catherine A. Mattison Born 1792/1793, Death March 13, 1815. Lived 22 years. John Mattison, Death December 2, 1831, Born August 15, 1815 (5 months after Catherine’s Death), Lived 15 years, 3 months and 18 days. 
Copyright 2019 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
Quaker Settlement Series 1
Delving the past
Taken from Perry City Road, NYS Route 142 on an early November afternoon.
On my way to Taughannock Falls, November 6, 2019 (see my post “Cuteness Break”, the first of that series) I explored a different route and came up this cemetery set among an appealing pine grove.
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A view of the Quaker Settlement Cemetery, taken from Jacksonville Road, NYS Route 143, on an early November afternoon.
Located in the town of Ulysses, New York there is a Quaker Settlement church a few feet further west on Perry City Road. I have Quaker ancestors, so took the opportunity to peruse the family names. The stones were unusually beautiful and touching, mostly local slate, some with intricate carvings.
Here is a headstone for two young people of the same family name. The white marble carved in the form of a willow, from the flowing lines and, knowing how our willows green up springtime, it calls to mind the same youthful greening as appropriate for two young people who lived 22 and 15 years.
Analysis of the dates, given in the following capture, tells the story of an young woman, a baby born 5 months after her death and who followed his aunt 15 years later.
Catherine A. Mattison Born 1792/1793, Death March 13, 1815. Lived 22 years. John Mattison, Death December 2, 1831, Born August 15, 1815 (5 months after Catherine’s Death), Lived 15 years, 3 months and 18 days.
I have a great aunt who also died young with a headstone naming her mother and father. Here is the granite headstone of Mary R. Daughter of George & Margarett Wills Died Oct. 3, 1886 Aged 20 years. Saint Mary of Assumption Cemetery, Sweetwater, New Jersey. My grandfather James Edward Wills was 9 years old at his sister Mary’s passing. He must have attended her church service and internment, standing at this spot.
Copyright 2019 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
Christmas Ornaments 2018 VII
Angels on High
On this Christmas Eve we offer you our sincere wishes for a blessed celebration of your personal holiday tradition.
Click this link for the first post of the “Christmas Ornaments 2018” series.
Copyright 2018 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
Christmas Ornaments 2018 VI
The past summer, the first of my retirement, my early morning hours were spent on Ancestry.com researching our family histories to bring this process, started 2013 in preparation for our tour of Ireland, to a point where I can start to consolidate it into a document shared with other family members.
It is a wonderful feeling when the pieces come together. For example the passenger manifest when Grandfather McArdle brought Grandmother and then three year old Mom to Quebec, Canada from the port of Belfast April 1926.
Their belongings are gathered together in just such a manner. My parents marked all my belongings that left the home with me with my name and address.
Our thought were on this when we selected this suitcase marked with the shamrock from a “Christmas Store” along the streets of the Pennsylvania town of Jim Thorpe, as the memory of our ancestors our exploration of Ireland.
Click this link for the first “Christmas Ornaments 2018” post.
Click this link for another post about Cobh, Ireland, “Annie Moore and her Brothers.”
Copyright 2018 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
Christmas Ornaments 2018 III
of this world
The attitude of today’s resin figure, alert, vigilant, aware while not exactly at odds with her accoutrements, provide a counter point to the flower banner and crown, a basket of flowers.
After publishing my previous post, “Christmas Ornaments 2018 II”, a word that escaped me during that writing came to mind. Lambent came to mind. From the Latin meaning “to lick”, used in the sense of “to glow with light”, as in a tongue of flickering flame, a visual analog to the numinous as in halos of the saints such as the “Immaculate Conception” of the first post of this series.
This fairy is entirely, by her dress, of an older version of this world, defiantly hanging on. Proud of her accomplishments, ready to vanish in a moment. Doing exactly as she pleases and happy to leave lambency to a fellow traveler, the Christmas Tree.
Copyright 2018 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
