Robert Pence

Beautiful set, well-photographed in fortunate weather and nicely documented. City Hall is more lavishly decorated that I had imagined. The atrium of Ellicott Square reminded me a lot of the atrium of the Santa Fe Building in Chicago, although Ellicott Square is more opulent than the Santa Fe Building. I did a little Googling; Ellicott Square was designed by Daniel Burnham, and the Santa Fe Building was designed by Burnham associate Frederick Dinkelberg. For many years, Burham & Company's offices were on the 14th floor of the Santa Fe Building.

Solid-looking neighborhood, with an interesting variety of building forms. I like that.

But that doesn't mean it can't happen. Cincinnati subway.

Beautiful photo set, and great examples of architectural styles from a long time span. Thanks for sharing them.

Anyone interested in historic cemeteries might find Cleveland's 1876 Riverside Cemetery worth a visit. It's on Pearl Road (W25th Street) immediately south of I-71. It has some dramatic topography and abundant big, old trees, as well as graves of people who were around in the city's early years.

I've been on the other end of that, accused of being a protester. A couple of years ago at a 4-H fair in the county where I grew up, I was taking photos at the auction where the kids sell their project animals. Most of the animals are bought by local businesses as a way of sponsoring the kids and getting their names in the paper, and many are destined for someone's dinner table. I found myself confronted by a burly farmer accusing me of working for PETA. Fortunately I went to school with one of the organizers of the auction, and I motioned for him to come over. He vouched for me. I don't know how far things might have gone, but the guy who confronted me was pretty menacing.

Having come of age in an era when people rolled their eyes, at least mentally, at me for my advocacy of bicycling as functional transportation, I'm amazed and delighted when I see infrastructure projects like this. It's one thing for public officials to profess support for bicycling, and quite another for them to pony up funds for real construction. After all these years, I feel vindicated.

I really liked walking around Pilsen, and I hope I can return there next summer on a warm sunny Saturday when there's more sidewalk traffic. I think most people were home having supper when I was there last week. I wasn't in Union Station during the roof reconstruction. The old roof was still soot-blackened, possibly going back to the steam locomotive era. I'd still like to see more emphasis given to making the train sheds in American stations more attractive; most of the major metro ones still are forbidding subterranean caves compared with many of the ones overseas. Millennium Park is a tremendous asset to downtown Chicago, but every time I go through the former Randolph Street station I miss the city skyline views from the South Shore platforms. Now everything is encased in raw concrete and there's nothing to look at except pigeons strutting brazenly among the hard wooden benches in the small waiting area. Descending still deeper into the abyss are the Metra Electric South Water Street platforms, echoing with the howling of the trains' HVAC systems as hordes of rush-hour commuters pour in or out. That was a lucky moment. I had composed the shot just for the buildings and was waiting for a gap in the traffic, when those two entered the frame. Mostly by reflex my finger pushed the shutter button.

Beautiful. I've read that cattails are edible, but I don't know what parts, how they're prepared, or in what season.

Quite beautiful and well maintained -- and well photographed.

Chicago - November 2 & 3, 2011 Millennium Park, CTA, Pilsen All Photographs Copyright © 2011 by Robert E Pence Usually I drive to Michigan City and stay overnight, and then take a South Shore train to Chicago in the morning. That's a drive of almost 120 miles and 3 hours from my home in Fort Wayne. Although Amtrak stops at Waterloo, Indiana, only 35 miles and less than an hour's drive away, Amtrak's schedule- keeping is unpredictable and Chicago hotel rates are about three times those I can get for a decent overnight in Michigan City. With winter's treacherous driving conditions approaching, I thought I'd try Amtrak again for the first time in about three years. I booked a reservation on Train #49, the Lake Shore Limited. My train was 47 minutes late at Waterloo, 48 minutes late leaving Elkhart, 52 minutes late leaving South Bend, and 1 hour and 53 minutes late arriving at Chicago's Union Station. During the last part of the trip we were behind another Amtrak train and it was behind a slow freight. We'd stop and wait, and then get up to 20-30 mph, and then stop and wait again. That went on beginning about Portage, Indiana. Amtrak Amfleet coach 35104 was comfortable, smooth-riding, and quiet. Union Station. By my recollection, the lighting in the train shed has been improved since my visit in 2008. Looking out across the Chicago River. GE P42DC Diesel-electric locomotive 145 is one of four locomotives painted in earlier Amtrak paint schemes in observation of Amtrak's 40 years of passenger train operation. Locomotive 145 wears the Phase 3 scheme used by Amtrak from 1979 to 1993; I think it's much more appealing than the current drab scheme on the locomotive in the following photo. Metra commuter cars After checking into the Central Loop Hotel and taking a brief nap, I walked to Michigan Avenue to locate the bus stop that I'd need in the morning. It was a little more than ten minutes' walk from the hotel. Next, I went to the El stop on Adams and caught a Pink Line train to 18th Street, to have a look around Pilsen. By the time I got there the light wasn't optimal for photography but I gave it a try anyway. Starting with a few shots from the station ... Most of the wall surfaces in the station were decorated with colorful art, and there wasn't a lot of tagging. Food aromas along 18th Street are tantalizing. Instead of paying meters, put your money in this machine or use your plastic, and print a receipt that you put on your windshield. The gable-roofed building behind probably predates this facade by many years. St. Adalbert's Parish was founded in 1874 to serve the Polish immigrants of the Pilsen area, and still conducts masses in Polish as well as in Spanish to accomodate the many Mexican families who have settled there. The current church was completed in 1912 at a cost of about $200,000. I didn't go inside, and after reading a little bit about it, I realize that I should have. Back to the El and another look around from the platform before boarding a train back to the Loop. Adams and Wabash. How I'd love to shoot some HDR night photos from here, but just taking street photos from the platform is sometimes a tenuous proposition and use of tripods in the stations is strictly prohibited. It's been a long day for me. I'm going back to my comfy hotel room. Thurday - all done with the essentials and ready for another photography walkabout, just in time for the cold rain. Taking these sculptures from concepts to physical works had to have required considerable design and fabrication expertise. Glimpses of another exquisite example of metal fabrication skills in the realization of art, Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate, popularly known as The Bean. The Nichols Bridgeway, opened in late 2009, is 620 feet long and connects Millennium Park near the Pritzker Pavilion with the third floor of the Art Institute's Modern Wing. The bridge was designed by Italian Renzo Piano, who also designed the Modern Wing. Commuter tracks carrying Metra Electric and South Shore trains bisect the Art Institute fifty feet below the bridgeway and enter Randolph Street/Millennium Station and South Water Street Station beneath Millennium Park.

Thanks for sharing those. I've seen many photos of the exterior, but didn't know that the interior is so well finished and interesting.

Those houses are charmers, and the whole place looks most livable.

If your engine has a timing belt (don't know anything about Subaru, but most cars that have them recommend replacement at 100K miles maximum), and if the dealer replaced it as part of the big batch of repairs, it sounds like they screwed up and got the engine out of time. If that's the case, most likely the engine is destroyed. Running with the cam(s) out of time would account for the smoke and sluggishness, and it wouldn't take long to put the engine completely out of operation. That's an inexcusable error on the part of a dealer service department, and they should make it right at no expense to you. Check the local Better Business Bureau to see if there are other complaints against that dealer's service department, and if they can bring any pressure for the dealer to be honest with you about what happened.

Around 1900 there was a tremendous boom in natural gas production in the area around Winchester, Dunkirk, and Montpelier, Indiana and spreading through about a fifty-mile radius. The gas supplies, then thought to be inexhastible, gave rise to a lot of land speculation and industries. Glass-making was foremost among them, but there were iron foundries and rolling mills, too, and many operations of various sizes producing bricks and drainage tile from locally-mined clay. The gas fields produced a tremendous flow over a fairly short period, and although I remember a few producing gas and oil wells into the sixties and seventies in the vicinity of Petroleum and Pennville and over through Salamonia, little evidence remains of the riches and wild-west boomtown atmosphere that prevailed for a few years in some those towns.

Great comprehensive tour; the Marriott was under construction when I visited during a very hot August in 2008, and I never made it as far as Franklin & Marshall College. I'm happy to see the renovation/restoration of the Amtrak station; it's a classic PRR station and was getting shabby around the edges. There was entirely too much kitschy clutter in that grand waiting room, too. Perhaps they can find a better place to store some of that stuff The Central Market has been freshened up since I was there, with significant improvement to the lighting. As I recall, it was lit with floursecent fixtures, and too few of them, at the time of my visit. Lancaster is as a dense, active core, and it's conveniently located near a lot of other historic attractions.

Take consolation in the fact that today, you probably can go to any pharmacy or grocery and score a year's supply for less than fifty cents on the dollar. :-) I'm think' I oughta' do the same with candy corn. I've always had a sweet tooth for that stuff, ever since I was a little kid. So what were you for halloween. I was an old man raking and bagging leaves as the kids and their parents paraded by. The kids didn't pay me any attention, but I could tell some of those young parents thought I was scary. :evil:

Wow on the color saturation!

Take consolation in the fact that today, you probably can go to any pharmacy or grocery and score a year's supply for less than fifty cents on the dollar. :-) I'm think' I oughta' do the same with candy corn. I've always had a sweet tooth for that stuff, ever since I was a little kid.

Me, too. I mowed my so-called lawn a (hopefully) last time and bagged all the clippings and leaves. Man, I was exhausted. Browsing UO, on the other hand, is so peaceful and relaxing. I'm glad I'm retired; I can't imagine and having to spend a whole day at work doing the boring and unpleasant stuff my boss wanted.

About twenty minutes ago, a half-dozen police cars passed my house going very fast, with lights and sirens. A few more passed at intervals after that, and then a fire department crash truck. Now, traffic is backed up as far as I can see. I'm curious about what's going on, but the only way I'd be able to get close enough to see and maybe get photos would be on my bike, and it's just too damn gray and damp and chilly for me to feel motivated enough to do that. For that much police response it has to be more than a run-of-the-mill car crash. Edit: Just looked up a local TV News web site. The location is a collection of conjoined 1960s-era warehouses that I think are wood-framed with steel siding, maybe actually wood siding cladded over. Momper is the biggest insulating company in town and does both wood-fiber and injected or sprayed foam, and their warehouse probably is wall-to-wall and floor-to-roof with insulating materials. They have a large fleet of trucks that they park inside, too. Edit: (Monday) The warehouse was 34,000 square feet, and it's completely destroyed. The wind was from the east, and that's why I didn't see or smell the smoke. Today it's changed to the more normal west, and every now and then I get a smell of the smoke. Yesterday the fire crews fought it for several hours until it no longer threatened other area buildings, and then they stood by to let it burn itself out to minimize the amount of contaminated water that was going to a nearby drainage ditch. It's still smoldering, and an excavator is picking at the rubble. The entire roof and two of the four walls have collapsed and West Main Street still is closed. That's one of three major routes westward from downtown. The usual alternative would be Spring Street, but that's also closed for reconstruction of a bridge over a railroad line.

Me again, with this again. It's not "terrible," but UO has been quite sluggish much of the time for at least the past couple of days. Sometimes it's near normal, but mostly when I click something, I feel like I might have missed it and should click it again to see if it works. I'm not having this problem on any other sites.

To set a "kinder and gentler" example, you only need to make sure he's not watching when you do what must be done.

I'm busy at the moment; I'm trying to figure out an approach for dealing with my own crazy busybody. Every attempt so far has just resulted in her raising the stakes, and any next step would have to be one against which she can't retaliate. Maybe I should wait until Spring, when the river is high and fast.

That's an attractive downtown. All I knew of Jackson was the area near the Amtrak station, which incidentally is a must-see. It's handsomely restored to it's 19th-century appearance insde and out, and still hosts regular passenger trains.