Robert Pence

Quite charming!

I think Florida is driver-unfriendly, too. The area where my parents lived for a few years (Englewood) is populated with retired geezers from Indiana and Ohio and they still drive just as aggressively as they did back home when they were thirty years younger, only now their eyesight is gone and their reflexes are shot to hell. During one of my visits Mom and Dad were giving me a tour of the area and I was driving their Suburban. We're going down a busy two-lane highway at the posted speed limit, and I hear a horn blasting insistently behind me. Looking in the rear-view mirror, I see a guy at least (no exaggeration) ninety years old peering through the steering wheel of his big-ass black Cadillac with his right had raised in a middle-finger salute, tailgating me so closely I couldn't see his headlights. I slowed down about 10mph and ignored him.

Beautiful!

My AVG 8.0 Internet Security raises a threat alert on two image files in this thread:

About fifteen miles from Fort Wayne, and about 6 miles from the Indiana/Ohio State Line. Harlan is a village that in recent years has been enlarged by new homes built by people who commute to Fort Wayne for work. It's in Amish country. On the surrounding roads you'll see farms with no electric lines leading to them, and horsedrawn buggies. Or the horse poop where the buggies have gone.

http://www.journalgazette.net/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080307/LOCAL07/803070328 Published: March 7, 2008 6:00 a.m. 6,700 pounds of pot seized Police grab $6 million haul, AK-47 By Abby Slutsky The Journal Gazette HARLAN – With a small statue of the Virgin Mary in a window and an American flag flying in front, the Antwerp Road home police raided Thursday looked like an average family home. But what police found inside the home was anything but average. Inside the house at 22633 Antwerp Road, just east of Harlan, Allen County police found about 6,700 pounds of marijuana. Wrapped in large plastic bricks, the marijuana filled the home’s basement, lining the walls and sharing spaces with exercise equipment and a collection of “Star Wars” figurines. DVDs from “The Sopranos” lay on the floor near the area where the marijuana was found, and a “Scarface” poster was the only art on the wall in a small room in the basement. [email protected]

You like playing with the rules too much. :) Rules? I'd guess that the permit involves signing a release, just so the building owner won't be held liable if an artist is injured in a fall or other accident on the property. Seems quite reasonable to me. The property owners are paying taxes and other costs on their buildings and it's generous of them to provide a public canvas. I don't think it's expecting too much on their part that they have some say-so in what goes on, and protect themselves from lawsuits.

Excellent photos, Nathaniel; I love the last shot. Is it supposed to be metaphoric? ("And the first shall be last.") I like Defiance; it's a nice town. They have a park at the confluence of the Auglaize and Maumee Rivers marking the site of Fort Defiance, and a few miles to the east along the Maumee River is a state park that includes canal-era Independence Dam and a restored Wabash-Erie Canal lock. I'll bet if you were to look up newpapers from the time of the courthouse rededication, you'd see that someone boasted of the tribute to its architectural heritage in the shape of the windows on the new addition. J.C. Johnson was from Fremont. He was a contractor who taught himself architecture, and had a pretty good eye for the details of the architectural style of the times; he certainly held back nothing in that area, and his basic structures were solid and enduring. His engineering skills must have been lacking in the area of roofs and towers, though. Of his three mid-1870s courthouses I know of, none kept the towers he created, and only one still has its mansard roof. His original design placed a tall, slender, elegant tower dead-center atop the building. When the buildings were fairly new, the towers developed problems, shifting and creaking on windy days. Decatur, Indiana (Adams County) was the first to go, replaced by a different tower positioned over the front entrance where there was enough structural strength to support it. That was part of an 1890s general remodeling designed by Brentwood Tolan, architect for the Allen County (IN) courthouse in Fort Wayne. Winchester (Randolph County) exprienced the same structural problems, but it wasn't until 1955 that they addressed them with a major desecration performed by Bluffton (IN) contractor Herman Reiff. The battle over demolition there apparently has been put to rest, and the last I knew, discussions were ongoing as to what to do about restoration. There's not a lot of money around for public works projects nowadays, and Randolph County may be feeling the pinch worse than some others in the area. Add the 1875 Whitley County sheriff's residence and jail to the list of J.C. Johnson's creations. It was replaced quite a few years ago with a new structure, and the only use it sees now is as a Hallowe'en haunted house. I haven't been inside, but I've heard the festivities have fairly well trashed it. It's a shame, as it would make a splendid county historical museum if someone could cough up the million dollars or so that I'd speculate would be needed to restore it.

Nice ice It was in our forecast, but never happened. I even put my camera battery on the charger the night before, in anticipation.

Well, that's good to know. Mass transit just attracts welfare queens and other parasites and freeloaders who sponge off the hardworking taxpayers. Anybody who's willing to get off their lazy a$$ and go to work can afford a car, and won't need no mass transit! That goes for the dadgum tree-huggers and their global warming, too. Pot-smokin' freaks! :x :wink:

Sweetwater recently moved into a new HQ north of town. The place is huge! They're highly-regarded locally for their community involvement, and known coast-to-coast for professional equipment. One of my renters works there in tech support. Indianapolis has a lot of good stuff, both modern and vintage. There's a terrific museum at the speedway, featuring a lot of racing memorabilia including cars going back to the earliest years. Quite a few beautifully-restored classic cars of the street variety, too. Shameless plug -- check out my web site to see some of the highlights from around the state, from the dunes along Lake Michigan to the scenic hills in the south.

Indiana ain't so bad. It teaches you to appreciate other places more. :-( Hmmm! What's going on? They always test the emergency (tornado, etc.) sirens at 12:00 noon on the first Wednesday. It's usually about a thirty- to sixty-second test. It's 11:30 and the one nearest my house has been going for about three minutes with no sign of quitting. Maybe we're under alien attack. There. It just quit 11:32.

Looks quite pleasant. When I saw "Decatur" I thought of Decatur, Indiana. Not quite the same ambience:

Spectacular shots! The Hoover Dam tour looks fascinating. :clap:

I think most of the St. Charles cars stayed high and dry through all the flooding, but much of their route was trashed by fallen trees and wrecked catenary. The newer, replica cars for the waterfront line and Canal Street, on the other hand, were nearly submerged and completely ruined and will have to be rebuilt before they can return to service.

Some sweet houses, both large and small. The big, old trees help the neighborhood.

Not as bad as I expected. :wink:

Auditors are by nature and definition cynical and remorseless. Field auditors are at the bottom of the pecking order, fresh out of school, regarding their peers as rivals and monitoring each other as cynically as they investigate their targets. They prove their competence and diligence by finding things that are wrong, and their career advancement depends upon finding fault. Based on that reward system, their interpretation of their job isn't to determine facts; it's to send somebody to the gallows.

Beautiful shots. I've encountered more than a few inanimate hotties over the years... :roll: Our temps got into the fifties today, but it's been raining for a while and now it's 38. Tonight's forecast calls for continued precipitation as temps fall into the 20s and wind picks up to 20-30mph. Probably yours tomorrow! :-D

Beautiful city. I visited there several years ago with Mom & Dad, and I'm thinking that's the city that has a Banyan Street, aptly named because it's lined with huge overarching Banyan trees that make the street like a tunnel.

Good Lord! Stunning courthouse!

Sweetest photo ever!

Makin' me envious!

Very beautiful. Places like this give rise to conflicting feelings for me. I chafe at the idea that the very wealthy can stake out the best places as their own exclusive domains, but I cringe at the thought of what would happen to the historic character and charm of those places if commercial developers were to gain access to them. The country can only use so many Atlantic City-style resorts.

Cute town! It looks like folks are diligent about shoveling their sidewalks; some people around my neighborhood could take a lesson from that.