Robert Pence

Great thread. I love the bright, happy colors in Clifton, and the variety among the neighborhoods is wonderful. I second the sentiments on Graeter's!

Nice job, beautiful fall pics. That's an interesting bell tower, very non-traditional but I like it. Re name change for the team, funny that Quakers should get angry. Maybe they need a refresher course. :wink:

Yay Cleveland! Those left me smiling!

Pretty stunning collection. Thanks for taking the time to scan and post those. [Edit:] I found a map of "The Main Portion of Cincinnati, Ohio" in a 1900 Rand McNally Atlas of the World. I scanned it and made it large enough that the street names are legible, so it's pretty big. Rather than post the image file (1.6MB), here's the link.

Damn fine stuff! Welcome!

He will damn well stay away from my bird feeders if he knows what's good for him. :x

That's the latest strategy by the religious right -- rather than a multitude of groups pushing their agendas within their own jurisdictions, they pool their resources and concentrate on one state or municipality at a time. That approach gives the lie to the federal officials who think that gay marriage should be a states' rights issue; the religious right is crossing jurisdicitions just as judges and legislators say the federal government shouldn't do.

Good stuff! Looks like that was a terrible fire that destroyed two good houses.

I agree on Centennial; The view in #2 will get better and better as the young trees get some growth on them.

Milwaukee, one of the midwest's best cities! That neighborhood is new to me, and I love it. Thanks for the great post. You might enjoy a typical downtown walkabout from an SSP forum meet on a cold, drizzly weekend in March, 2005. Toward the end there's even a flashback to Summerfest 1985. Just click here if you want to see it.

Thank you for a most enjoyable tour! I appreciate your annotation, too. One of the things I picked up from this is that while historic preservation is desirable, day-to-day commercial activity trumps that where a choice has to be made. The utilitarian retail stores like pharmacies, restaurants, grocers are what feed the energy that keeps a community alive. Some once-grand architectural masterpieces have been severely altered with contemporary low-budget signage and storefronts, but there are people living there who depend on those merchants. Thanks again for all your work in putting this together.

Paradise, indeed! What splendor! This one really grabbed me; I think it's a strong image:

The wonderfulness continues!

Wow! :-o @ Park Plaza!

Great set, both parts; I've never seen the Kent State campus, and I really enjoyed this set. The fall colors are beautiful, and the campus has an interesting mix of architecture with some very nicely laid-out areas. Thanks for posting these.

Love the autumn light! That's a nifty powerhouse. The old freshman dorms are .. different. Brutalism in brick?

With 98 percent of precincts reporting, Allen County, Indiana (Fort Wayne) turned out 63 percent of registered voters, shy of the 70 percent expected by election officials. Still a decent showing, and part of it may have been because of the weather, sunny with temps in the 70s and brilliant fall color. Most years going to the polls involves an umbrella, a warm sweater, and tromping through wet leaves. [Edit Nov 7 2008]: Very much like 2004, city core precincts supported Obama. Nearer the central city and around my (mostly-white) neighborhood west of downtown the support was between fifty and sixty percent. The southeastern neighborhoods, strongly minority with a mix of black, asian, and latino, supported Obama with more than sixty percent of the vote. As expected, suburban and rural voters went heavily for McCain.

My thoughts, too. Americans have come to expect simplistic answers and quick fixes, and the current mix of messes has taken years to come to fruition. It won't be fixed quickly, and I hope that Obama can bring together the minds who can make progress while managing the expectations of the voters who elected him. America, and the world, for that matter, still face perilous times.

Gorgeous photo! I can almost feel and smell the freshness of the place.

Since I built my system 3 years ago there have been a lot of changes, so I'll leave that to the tech people who are more up-to-date than I am. For external storage I like the Western Digital Mybook USB drives. They come in different sizes up to 1 terabyte, and they're reasonably priced. In my opinion they're better than the Maxtor external drives - more durable and reliable. I lost a bunch of stuff to a failed Maxtor one-touch that wasn't very old, and I've read of other people experiencing the same thing. Staples has the Mybook, and their prices are probably as good as anyone's. I bought the 500GB version so that I can use it with my laptop when I travel, to offload pics from my camera's compact flash cards. Then, when I get home I can just plug it into my desktop and go to work.

That's what you get for having Graeter's. Any would-be competitors take one taste of Graeter's and just close up shop 'cause they know their case is hopeless. :cry:

With 92% of precincts reporting, Indiana has gone for Obama. The margin is teeny-tiny, but for Indiana to not go overwhelmingly red is pretty amazing. I got stereotyped leaving the polls. Outside the station a black man about my age with a clipboard was conducting an exit poll. He asked me if I had voted for McCain/Palin or Obama/Biden. I replied that I had cast my vote for Barack Obama. He started to mark his board, hesitated, looked at me with an expression that could only be disbelief, and asked me again, "You did say Obama?" I replied that I hadn't even for a minute thought about voting the other way. He got this big damn grin on his face, and we both cracked up. :lol:

I voted at Fort Wayne's elegant 1912 former Pennsylvania Railroad Station, now the home of an architectural firm and a venue for receptions and other events. From my house to the polls, vote, and back home again was less than an hour. My heartfelt thanks to all the people who trooped down to the election board in the days before November 4 and stood in line for up to three hours to avoid getting stuck in long lines on election day. My precinct had three machines, and things would have moved faster if some people hadn't been completely unprepared and tried to figure out their choices while seeing them for the first time after they got into the booth. Some of them took fooorrreeeever to cast their votes.

Maybe it would have helped if you had explained that you wanted to check out the transportation infrastructure. :-)

Charming & tidy!