UPSTATE NEW YORK VISION

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Recently I drove up to Albany New York and had the most enjoyable drive, watching the scenery turn from green to majestic colors such as: gold, orange yellow and even browns. It is the face of Mother Nature at her most beautiful.

It is also a trigger for the season ahead, as we come to autumn and the winter cold. Fortunately for me I love the changing seasons. And would not want to live in a Floridian climate all year long. The weather has an effect on me that changes my personality and attitude about life. It is the season when the trees and grass, plants and flowers all die: that I get reborn!

As a child into early adulthood, I would read about the early settlers and the lives of those early New Yorkers before we were a nation, and to see some of the towns I pass and it is thrilling to be in a sense: part of history.

One year I was in Niagara, staying in a hotel for a meeting scheduled for a long weekend and got up early. Being I couldn’t sleep and too early for breakfast, I decided to take a walk around the town and see some sights without hindrance of traffic or people.

As I found my way around, I came to this nicely manicured walkway along a stone building and realized it was a Catholic church. Curious and because both my mother and TLW (The Little Woman) would put a wooden spoon to my head if I didn’t know what church it was, I looked for a sign and found one. “Saint Mary of the Cataract” it said. I thought that perhaps the Catholic Church was exhausting ideas for names, since I know they already used up “Our Lady of the Snow” and my idea: The Church of the Holy Mackerel would probably not be used. Why would you be using someone’s eye issues and naming a church after it?

Walking back to the hotel, I noticed a sign in a store window about the cataract, and this was beginning to alarm me, as all I could picture was someone with a huge lump in their eye walking around bumping into people and we all needed to watch out for him! I wondered what the optometrists were getting in these parts of New York State?

Then like a vision (clear of cataracts) I must have been visited by who else but: St. Mary of the Cataract, enlightening me as to what a cataract really was! A waterfall, such as Niagara Falls, is a cataract. It now made sense since the main ballroom at the hotel was also named the Cataract Room, and thank God, not an examination room or special room for people with cataracts!!