Robert Pence

Great coverage! I've walked the Midway Plaisance many times. It actually was the Midway of the 1893 Columbian Exposition, venue for the more tacky and risque amusements, including Little Egypt. The Museum of Science and Industry was the Palace of Fine Arts during the Exposition, and was later reconstructed as a permanent building; the orginal structures were temporary structures built of paper-mache over wood-and-wire matrices, and most of the complex burned in an arson fire a couple of years after the fair closed. The Fountain of Time sculpture, by Lorado Taft, was recently restored after years of weathering and erosion.

Lots of sirens passing my house just now. So far I've seen four police cars, an ambulance, and a crime scene van. [edit 09:18] FD crash rescue truck just now. Hazmat team next? [edit 09:28] FD pumper

The daughters aren't the only victims. Think about the lives ahead of those seven children. I used to have difficulties with impulse control, and the first thing that popped into my mind often was the next thing that popped out of my mouth. Back in the good old days of typewriters and mechanical calculators, I worked in an accounting office with a motormouth. She never shut up, and was able to talk endlessley without a detectable pause to take a breath. Her ceaseless chatter flowed along with the ambient noise of the workplace. One day she came in late because of a doctor appointment. She said she was experiencing pain in her jaw, and launched into a lengthy dissertation on how her jaw hurt. I quickly jumped in with, "Betty, it's because it never gets any rest." You could have heard a pin drop.

I fell backward and injured my tailbone when I was about fourteen. Serious pain, indeed, plus nausea.

Neat stuff and excellent photos. It looks like they do it up right, despite the mild climate and lack of snow. I'm going to Chicago in a couple of weeks, and looking forward to the festivities there.

Gorgeous pic, C-Dawg. Looks like a calendar photo.

http://www.urbanindiana.com/in_michigan-city/mich_city_20080330.html

I have Verizon FIOS for my internet access and land-line phone, but I haven't turned on a television set in my house in more than two years so I've had no need for cable. Other TV options here are Comcast, sattelite, or an antenna (5 local broadcast channels including PBS). At least weekly I get mailings from Comcast and from Verizon trying to sell me television service. They go in the trash unopened. A few years ago one of Comcast's pushy door-to-door salesmen wasn't going to take "No" for an answer. I was being quite civil, and it wasn't working. Suddenly insane homicidal crazyoldman took charge and got in his face and started screaming. "Get away!" "Leave Me Alone!" "Didn't You Hear Me?" "You Want Me to Kick Your Ass?" Stuff like that. He started backing up and I stayed right with him. Once he started down the steps I had the high ground and I doubled my fury. He ran. Haven't had a Comcast rep at my door since then. I'm really very nice if people just take the time to get to know me. :angel:

I've been reading about the plan to make the Big Four bridge accessible to pedestrians and cyclists. As part of a larger package to make the riverfront more friendly, it sounds even better. In the mid-seventies I rode my bike to Louisville from Fort Wayne - my longest solo bike ride - and apart from two solid days of rain and the rural roads around Shelbyville and Charlestown, Indiana, where white trash in pickup trucks threw stuff and ran me off the road twice, finding a way to get across the Ohio River was one of the more perplexing parts of the trip. I don't recall all the details, but I know it took me a little searching to find a bridge accessible to non-motorized traffic, and then I think I had to walk my bike across on a narrow sidewalk because of the intensity and speed of the car traffic.

Excellent photos. Overcast winter light does some interesting things; I know my faulty color vision is partly to blame, but as I looked at some of those I first thought "black-and-white" and then as I looked at them a little more I realized "No. Wait. There's color."

Good stuff. Good b&w photos often make me feel like I'm connecting with something from a different time, even when I know they're current images.

She knows her way around a camera pretty well! I love the second-to-last photo with the colorful berries against the snow and dull light.

By the time they end up in one of those places, most people are incapable of doing either. Chain smoke, drink to excess, and eat lots of saturated fats, and maybe you'll be lucky enough to die of a sudden massive stroke or heart attack before you end up in one of them. Even if that doesn't work, at least you haven't lived the deprived life of an ascetic and then ended up in one. A lot of people in nursing homes could still function on some level outside despite their physical disabilities if it weren't for dementia. My mom is 97 and has been in a nursing home for more than four years, starting before she was almost completely bedfast, and I attribute it to her refusing adequate treatment for her high blood pressure and spending too much time watching and listening to evangelical preachers on TV and radio and not challenging her mind. Her sister, a retired M.D., is three years younger and has to use a wheelchair to get around; she's in worse physical shape than Mom was when Mom went into the nursing home, but she has kept her mind active with reading, studying, solving puzzles, and listening to scientific and other lectures on tape, and she's still living at home with once-daily visits from a caregiver who makes breakfast and coffee and gets groceries. She's still 120 percent mentally and I would never try to fib to her because her bullshit detector still works as well as it did sixty years ago when I was a little kid. Not much is known yet about the causes or possible treatments for Alzheimer's, but I think it's generally accepted that mental laziness hastens decline in cognitive function.

It's amazing how fast structures can fall apart when they're unused and not maintained. In recent years the process has been accelerated by scrappers ripping out ceilings and walls to get at copper wiring and plumbing. Even the best nursing homes are unpleasant for me because they remind me of hospitals where I've spent much time. Worse than hospitals, because hospitals are meant to be places of healing and restoration, whereas a lot of nursing home patients are in irreversible decline with failing minds and bodies. There's no healing expected, just the alleviation of pain and discomfort insofar as is possible.

Second best present I ever got as a kid wasn't even at Christmas. When I was about twelve years old I got a broken washing machine. Tore that thing all apart and found out what it was made of. Best present was a couple of years later - a worn-out flathead Ford V-8 engine from an old pickup truck. Same sort of experience, but with more grease and dirt.

The next fllight to Ft. Wayne leaves in 90 minutes. I think we need to have a lil "chat", sweetie. Your gay card may just have to be suspended for a while. I just called the security people at the airport and told them to be on the lookout for a tall, stylish Puerto Rican terrorist. You might wanna' reconsider your travel plans. :wink:

I don't like to shop. I do research before making occasional major purchases like cameras, cars, and computers that I get a lot of use out of. I've kept cars an average of six or seven years, and the longest was twelve. I used my last 35mm film camera, a Nikon FM, for 25 years. Malls suck. Their overpriced frivolous stuff draws recreational shoppers like cow-poop draws flies. I buy clothes at Tractor Supply (TSC) and other farm-supply stores; they have quality work and casual clothes that wear like iron for good prices, and lots of hardware and tools. The stores are redolent with the aroma of new tires, a smell I like as much as leather. Anybody who tries to take away my gay card will have to pry it from my cold, dead, un-manicured fingers!

Interesting history, and a quaint-looking village.

I've seen some dramatic skies along the southern shore of Lake Erie, but nothing to match that!

That immediately conjured up such a vivid mental picture that I about cracked up reading it! If there's a bridge downtown, camped under it should be an emaciated guy wearing camo fatigues and aviator sunglasses and sporting an overgrown gray beard. He should have a medium-sized, short-haired mutt dog that's as skinny as he is. Oh. And there should be lots of obscene graffiti on the bridge piers.

I wouldn't recommend trying any remedies like busting out plaster. The damage will be bad enough already, and if the landlord decides to be a prick, he may claim you contributed to the damage and try to stick you with part of the repair cost.. Instead, gather the stuff you value most in case you have to evacuate if things go completely out of control.

I'm glad you did that. A lot of people are perennially on hard times with no one to fall back on, and they're so used to the daily struggle that it takes them completely by surprise when a stranger does something nice for them. There are a lot of small, non-monetary things that can make someone's life better, too, like noticing that an elderly or disabled person is having difficulty reaching something on supermarket shelf and lending a hand, hoisting a suitcase into or out of the overhead rack on a train for someone who can't quite do it, or shoveling a sidewalk for the single mom next door who's so swamped she doesn't know what to give up next. Most of us can make other people's lives a little nicer if we just pay attention to what's going on around us and practice feeling empathy (instead of annoyance, sometimes) for other people. It makes a better, more peaceful world and in the end we all benefit.

Youngstown:

I think a few folks need to reline their hats. :weird: :wink:

It might make sense to move this thread to the General Photography forum and make it a sticky there. Feedback, anyone?