Upton Monument

This protest sign appeared for a time today in front of the Upton Monument at Main and Ellicott streets.

It's gone now.

The City Manager's office has the sign. If the person who placed it at the intersection wants it back and can prove ownership, it will be returned, County Manager Jay Gsell said.

"There's so many things that are not appropriate about that sign," Gsell said.

Such as: It was placed without permission; permission would need to be granted by the city, state and county; the veterans consider the location hallowed ground; nobody knows who placed the sign.

(The person in the picture is just a pedestrian who happened to be in the area at the time the picture was taken.)

Temperatures could drop as low as 25 degrees tonight and that is going to be bad news for flowering trees, budding plants and other shrubs with newly sprung sensitive leaves.

"Twenty eight degrees is the critical temperature," said Jan Beglinger, agriculture outreach educator and master gardener coordinator for the Genesee County Cornell Cooperative Extension.

If it drops below 28 degrees -- especially if there is no breeze and cloud cover -- a lot of plants could be damaged.

Beglinger recommends covering plants with blankets, burlap or newspaper (but not plastic, which doesn't provide any insulation), where and when possible.

Blooms and budding for plants have come unseasonable early, but Western New York is not officially out of winter yet.

"I knew when we had beautiful weather for 10 straight days, we were going to pay for it," Beglinger said.

Photos of the cherry blossom of the trees between the Upton Monument and the Old Courthouse. I figured today might be my last day this year to get any shots of the blossoms.

Trevor Wanberg, of Rochester, was in the little park behind the Upton Monument this afternoon waiting for a friend to get off work so they could jam. Wanberg said he and his friend are looking to get a band together, but don't get many chances to practice together. Wanberg is generally only able to make the trip to Batavia on his days off, when his girlfriend, who has a job in Batavia, is able to give him a ride. While I snapped a few pictures, he picked out a crisp version of Neil Young's "Needle and the Damage Done."

As Victor Thomas, 26, and three of his buddies watched the news of Osama bin Laden's death last night and saw the celebrations in Washington, D.C., and New York, they wanted to be part of something in Batavia.

So they jumped in a car and drove downtown.

"The City of Batavia was dead," Thomas said. "Not one person was out. Nobody was honking horns or celebrating."

So, Thomas, along with his cousin Christopher Thomas, 26, Ordy Edwards, 26, and Jason Armison, 24, decided to drive to the only place open to buy sign materials -- Walmart -- and get a board and some paint and fix up a sign.

They made a red, white and blue sign and painted on it, "Osama Got Obama'd."

He said they then mused for about 20 minutes on where to place the sign. They thought about putting it in front of the courthouse to represent justice, but then they did a little research on Emery Upson and discovered one of his specialities as a general was tactics in invading enemy territory. That made the Upson Monument, they thought, the perfect place to commemorate Osama's sudden demise in a protected compound in Pakistan.

Now they're a little upset that county workers took the sign down -- Christopher Thomas happened to be driving by at the time and retrieved the sign -- and are planning a rally at 4 p.m. in front of the Post Office.

Victor said anybody wanting to show support for freedom of speech or the United States should attend.

Thomas has seen the comments on The Batavian and is surprised that some have taken the sign as a partisan political statement.

"There was no thought about politics," Thomas said. "They both have O's, Osama and Obama. We didn't take it in a political way. He's our president and every soldier fighting is marching to his orders. They (some readers) took it as political and we just were trying to be traditional or patriotic."

He said he was worried the sign would be taken down, but was hoping it would stay up today so people could drive by and honk their horns, "just to give some kind of recognition to what happened on 9/11 and what our troops are doing."

Photo courtesy WBTA.

Some time over night somebody placed a red, white and blue handmade sign in front of the Upton Monument that read "Osama Got Obama'd."

By 9 a.m., the sign was gone.

County Manager Jay Gsell told Dan Fischer at WBTA that county workers removed the sign because the Upton Monument was not the appropriate location to place it.

Photo courtesy WBTA.

Yesterday, there were no obvious blossoms on the trees behind the Upton Monument at Ellicott and Main streets. This morning, an explosion of pink.

Surely, spring is here, finally?

The seven-day forecast calls for more rain this week, but supposedly, Saturday will be clear, which is good news for those of us who have gardening to do.

The eagle atop the Upton Monument at Main and Ellicott in yesterday's late afternoon sun.

From inside the County Legislature's chambers.

Arriving back in Batavia from Geneseo at dusk, I remembered that one of the pictures I've been thinking about trying to get, is the front of Batavia Police Station at night because of the funky green lights on the front of the building. That led to a general playing around with night photography at the intersection of Main and Ellicott streets. These are the four photos from that session.

No flags, no wreath, no flowers -- Helen Batchelor looked at the Gen. Emory Upton Monument a couple of summers ago and thought Batavia's most noteworthy war hero, and all the veterans and war dead he represents, deserved something better.

On her own -- Batchelor is not associated with a local veterans group, but is on the board of the Holland Land Office Museum -- Batchelor decided to do something about Upton's "nakedness," as she put it.

She planted spring bulbs this year and through Legislator Hollis Upson managed to get a $20 donation each from each of the county legislators for new flags. That only left the issue of the wreath.

One evening Batchelor ran into local funeral director and veteran Ron Konieczny at Alex's Place and he asked her what she had been up to recently, and she told him about her Upton Monument project.

"What can I do to help?" she remembers him asking. "We need a wreath," she said. "He said, 'I'll take care of it,' and he did. He called Kathy at The Enchanted Florist and we have a wreath."

The wreath is now officially in place and will stay affixed to the monument until Christmas, when a holiday wreath will replace it, and for every year for the rest of his life, Konienczny said, there will be an annual wreath and a Christmas wreath placed on the monument -- all at his own expense.

"The wreath is a symbol," Konienczny said. "It has no beginning. It has no end. And this is how we remember the deaths (of our military service personnel)."

Pictured, from left, are Upson, Konienczny, Nancy Konienczny and Batchelor.

Terry Ross affixes brand new flags to the Upton Monument in preparation for Memorial Day.

Tulips at the base of the Emory Upton Monument have come into bloom.

The cherry blossoms (or I assume they are cherry blossoms) are in bloom behind the Upton Monument outside the Old Court House at Main and Ellicott streets.

BTW: We still might get thundershowers today and tonight, and there's still a chance of snow on Friday night.