This past week I finally met the Buffalo everyone warned me about. Three years ago when I told everyone I was moving to Buffalo, they all said, “Why do you want to live there?! There’s nothing but snow!” But I was enthusiastic about Buffalo and still am. According to my landlord, I got off real easy my first winter here–and last year was pretty mild too. I still couldn’t understand why everyone was trying to terrify me about the snow; I wasn’t really all that impressed–UNTIL this past week. What an awful lot of snow we’ve had–for March?! I got stuck 3 times in one night!

Thankfully, there are a lot of brave souls in Buffalo who don’t let things like a 16″ of snow hinder their Saturday night. It was very warm in Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum where a selection of the peace murals were being exhibited. Several of the students and instructors showed up to see all of the other group’s murals and meet kids from all over the city. It was really exciting to see their faces light up as they stood in front of their murals. As always, it was also a great time to just hang out and catch up with our volunteers and supporters. You certainly missed out on some warm homemade treats; Kathleen Moriarty was a baking fiend and made a luscious (LUSHus) apple cider cake–my mouth and my eyeballs were watering! A special thanks to Sharon Cavanaugh of the WAY Program for bringing some other baked goodies. I want to express a tremendous thanks to everyone who stayed to clean up–our own Jess, Peter, Kevin, Bryan Lohr, Nic Garelick and others.

If you weren’t able to see the 30 murals first hand, there may be other opportunities soon. We are looking for more locations so that the murals might tour throughout the summer.