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(Maki Becker, Buffalo News) In the spring of 2003, the Massachusetts Avenue Project turned a vacant lot on the West Side into a vegetable garden.

The neighbors didn’t exactly know what to make of it.

“They thought it was weird,” recalled Diane Picard, executive director of the organization. “Or they thought: ‘Oh, this is a nice little gardening project.’”

Ten growing seasons later, urban farming is flourishing in Buffalo, just as it has in cities across the nation.

A small but growing group of people with a taste for local food, a passion for living sustainably and a devotion to ensuring everyone has access to healthy, affordable food has started urban farms in vacant lots on both the West Side and the East Side.

This year, urban farming is approaching a new level in Buffalo.

A group of young people who recently bought up old vacant lots on Michigan Avenue and Peckham Streets has teamed up with other East Side urban farmers to form a farming cooperative. Their goal is to pool their skills and resources so that they can generate enough produce to feed themselves and sell at market stands to the public.

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(By Emma Sapong, Buffalo News) Four years ago, Claver and Edisa Sango were homeless refugees who were trying to raise a family, living in abject poverty in a squalid Congolese refugee camp.

Today, the Sangos own a new four-bedroom house in the Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood.

“I’m very happy,” Claver Sango said Sunday, through an interpreter. “In the refugee camp, I had no hope, no dream of having my own home.”

But the Clarence Habitat Coalition made the American Dream possible for the couple from Burundi.

Through the coalition, Clarence residents raised $85,000 and worked with Habitat for Humanity to build a house for the Sangos in Buffalo.

The four-bedroom, 1,350-square-foot ranch house on Fox Street was dedicated Sunday.

“Immigrants have so much to offer, and they have so much to overcome — language, culture differences,” said Monsignor Fred Leising of Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church. “So we wanted to help them better integrate in the community and welcome them.”

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A memorial for the homeless who have died on the streets in Western New York was unveiled Wednesday at the Matt Urban Hope Center. Sharon Cantillon / Buffalo News

Local advocates for the homeless Wednesday launched the longest night of the year with the unveiling of a memorial dedicated to those who have died on the streets merely for lack of adequate shelter.

The outdoor memorial rests in the earth at Memorial and Paderewski drives, just feet from the Matt Urban Hope Center, where Karen Carman serves as director. During Wednesday’s service, which included a candlelight vigil, Carman described homelessness as a social tragedy.

“We have men, women, children, veterans, the elderly homeless, [all] living on the street. We have people with mental disease living outside unable to fend for themselves,” said Carman.

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Sister Mary Johnice Rzadkiewicz and John Reed share a laugh over a singing moose during Christmas dinner in the Response to Love Center on Kosciuszko Street. - Derek Gee / Buffalo News

Twenty-six years ago, when Sister Mary Johnice Rzadkiewicz was studying at a Philadelphia seminary, Mother Teresa came to town, and the two women sat at the same lunch table.

“Mother, do you think I could come to Calcutta?” Sister Mary Johnice asked. “I want to learn how to work with the poor.”

“She looked at me and said, ‘Little sister, go back to your neighborhood. Find your Calcutta there.’”

That’s exactly what Sister Mary Johnice did.

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Buffalo’s Central Terminal is reveling in recognition and dollars.

It was awarded $10,000 after receiving the most votes in a weeklong competition co-sponsored by the National Trust for Historic Preservation on Facebook that saw hundreds take part.

The Art Deco train station bested the Colored Musicians Club, Graycliff and Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site.

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(By Sandra Tan – Buffalo News)

In the sanctuary of St. Adalbert Basilica stand two facing paintings. One is of St. Adalbert’s martyrdom. The other depicts the story of St. Peter walking on water toward Jesus until his faith falters in the face of the wind. Peter begins to sink until Jesus reaches out to save him.

The stories offer parallels for a church community desperate for salvation in the face of Bishop Edward U. Kmiec’s ruling that the church cease all regular Masses and merge with St. John Kanty after this Sunday’s special Mass celebrating the basilica’s 125th anniversary.

“We’re basically trying to stay together as a family,” said church trustee Lori Dinero.

Parishioners spent this past Sunday with local artists from Painting for Preservation. The group, formed in March, comprises artists who visit neglected and endangered historic sites with cameras and sketch pads to keep an artistic record of buildings before they’re lost.

They mixed with long-memoried churchgoers struggling to find hope.

Longtime parishioner Irene Kupinski found it hard to look up at the church’s brick walls and 40-foot-wide dome without tears as she passed out roast beef sandwiches to fellow parishioners and supporters.

This Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood church was responsible for her indoctrination into the faith, for her sacraments, her education and three generations of family devotion.

“I’d give part of my life if I thought God would hear me and keep it open,” said Kupinski, 72, who lives a block away from the church in the house her mother was born in.

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*Brian Meyer – Buffalo New) What’s a surefire sign that business is booming at the Broadway Market this Easter season?

When the pierogi people sell out of their signature food at 10:30 a.m. on Good Friday.

“What? No pierogies?” one man asked incredulously.

Julie Czochara of Keeping Traditions Pierogi smiled politely.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “We sold out a few hours ago.”

Don’t blame poor planning. Czochara and her husband, Greg, prepared about three times as many of their doughy delicacies as last year. They were sure they were set for the onslaught. They planned on making more pierogi to cater to Saturday shoppers. In the past couple weeks, they estimate they’ve sold about 24,000 pierogi.

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(Sandra Tan – Buffalo News)

Forgotten and forsaken.

That’s how residents feel in census tract 16, the southern end of the Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood.

The rectangular census tract between Broadway and William Street lost 47 percent of its population — more than 2,000 residents — over the past decade. That’s the biggest population drop of any census tract in Erie County.

Fewer than 2,300 residents remain.

Sitting in the shadow of soaring and venerable churches — St. John Kanty and Corpus Christi — are weary old homes with broken and missing windows, boarded-up doors, faded paint, sagging rooftops and broken-down porches.

In between stand vacant lots and lived-in homes struggling to fight the tide of desolation. The old Central Terminal and railroad tracks line the southern boundary of the tract, bounded by Smith Street to the west and Bailey Avenue to the east.

“It’s a wreck now,” said 58-year-old Clark Street resident Ed Kijania, who left the neighborhood in 1987 for Florida and returned in 2000. “It used to be beautiful.”

This area was once home to a large Polish population. Most left decades ago. In more recent years, residents — both black and white — have left to flee the crime and overall neglect that has taken hold here. Others passed away.

“They’re not moving,” said Coit Street resident Diane Kilanowski, 57. “They’re dying.”

Kilanowski’s home was built in 1816 and has been in her family for three generations.

With the city’s help in 2001, Kilanowski got a redevelopment loan to side and reroof her house. But the contractors did such a shoddy job that moisture leaked into the walls and she can’t live on the first floor anymore because of all the mold.

Nobody wants to help, she said, despite the countless calls she’s made for assistance.

That’s the story in a neighborhood where the remaining habitable homes sell for $1,000 or $2,000 a pop. Redevelopment programs here have failed so far, she said.

Since 2000, this part of town has lost 1,094 blacks and 893 whites.

Morton, an M&T Bank clerk from Coit Street, doesn’t blame people for leaving.

Her own home is modest but warm. She owns it free and clear and is glad she has a working alarm system.

But the area isn’t safe, and there’s no sense of community pride. She’s embarrassed to tell co-workers where she lives and doesn’t invite them over.

Just recently, she said, someone came through the neighborhood and scraped the inspection stickers off people’s windshields to resell on the street. Her car was one of the ones left with a cracked windshield.

“If opportunity allows, and I can get enough money where I can afford to, I’d live somewhere else,” she said. “I’d move, too.”

[Read full story in the Buffalo News--->]

You’d think that after 70 years of friendship, there wouldn’t be much left to talk about.

But don’t say that to a group of former East Side teenagers who formed a club in 1941 that continues to meet every two weeks.

“It started at my house 70 years ago,” said Helen Resutek of West Seneca. “We were just friends from the neighborhood, and we decided to get together, and then it followed by itself.”

The original group of five quickly grew to 11, and they have remained close through the years. The group includes three pairs of sisters, two who married brothers, and another who married the brother of two of the sisters.

Saturday, they celebrated the remarkable 70th anniversary of their club with a limousine ride to Henry’s in Kleinhans Music Hall for dinner, followed by a Buffalo Philharmonic pops concert.

Joining in the fun were Resutek, 86; Rose Witman, 87, of Depew; Genevieve Ferenc, (CQ) 88, of Depew; Mary Legierski, 83, of North Collins; Mary Banasiak, 87, of Hamburg; Helen Pilarski, 85, of Depew; and Florence Bartoszek, 83, of Florida.

The Polish heritage is strong in the group. Most grew up in St. John Kanty Catholic Parish, and Legierski, the only Irishwoman, speaks Polish as well as any of them.

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