Robert Pence

Not bad! 'Nother quaint Ohio town with lots of great brick buildings.

Cute town. Some of the commercial structures look fairly well preserved. Maybe you're thinking of Union City? It's been many years since I've been there, but I remember it as a larger community with more commercial buildings.

Yum! Lots of gorgeous oldies, and only a few poster children for the stamp-out-cladding campaign. The WAPA Theatre has at least one night of infamy in its past. I was there, but I ain't tellin'.

This is true...but a bird could still sh!t on it, or a drunk college kid could puke on it, or someone could take pieces of it off for scraps. I know of a case where a thief hacksawed through a sign post to steal a bike that was locked to it with an unbreakable lock. I've heard of the same thing with parking meter posts and small trees. In a downtown area you'd think people would take notice and challenge the thief, but they don't. The don't want to get involved, and it's not their bike.

The U.S. needs to start breaking down the legal barriers against carriers running intermodal operations, and encourage them to invest in transportation systems that serve a broad base of communities and travelers using the best modes for various trips with seamless interconnections. It's stupid to have airlines competing with rail competing with highway motorcoach, because each has its niche where it works best. Motorcoaches have been the biggest losers under the current system. They've nearly been squeezed out of existence in the past ten to twenty years, and now many small-town residents have no connection with the outside world other than private car. Canadian Pacific once operated steamships, airplanes, trains, motorcoaches and a hotel chain that served travelers using and connecting between the various modes.

Beautiful photos. The places look like something from a story book. Looks like a pretty hard life compared with what we're accustomed to.

Incredible scenery! Boggles my mind to realize my ancestors left that for Pennsylvania and ultimately for the flatlands of northeast Indiana!

Beautiful photos, dense, lively city!

Beautiful gardens & public spaces!

I think I screwed up not embedding this in the column. :[ They can be run inside the downspout. Assuming the top end is accessible, just fish it through.

There are electric heat tapes that are made for use in gutters and downspouts; I used one to cure an ice-damming problem with the gutter & downspout on my back porch roof. You can find them at most hardware stores, and they plug into 110V.

Georgetown is quite a gem; excellent pics. I was there briefly several years ago, and didn't have a chance to explore or take pics. The area also hosts one of the best antique farm machinery shows in Ohio, with lots of demonstrations of historic technology and practices.

Yep. CTA has been in a retrenchment mode for years. The first great leap backward was when they did away with the A and B trains on the Red Line and made all the trains all-stops. It slowed down travel on that line significantly. When a transit system is in a funding crunch, service reductions almost always reduce revenues more than they reduce costs. It's the beginning of a death spiral. Ridership declines because of poor service, so management tries to fix the problem my making the service worse.

That was less than a year ago, Rob. :lol: Times flies when you having fun, I guess. Dang! You're right! December 3, 2006. There's just too much excitement in my life! I better slow down! For any newbies or others who missed them back then, here's a shameless link to the Middeltown photos from that day. I enjoyed that tour, and enjoyed meeting some people who are putting their own money and sweat into trying to revive Middletown.

Very nice!

I recall some of those grand South Main Street homes from the tour at Christmastime a couple of years ago. The city has taken a hard fall from its hey-day in steel and paper, but it still has interesting character and some significant buildings. It would be wonderful to see some life return to downtown.

Looks nice! I like the opening detail shots in this set.

Beautiful shots, especially the dusk ones!

I shop for fashions at Big R and TSC (Tractor Supply). There's a pretty good Carhartt store near South Bend, too, but Carhartt has started to shift from real work clothes to hipster faux working-class.

Nice! It looks quaint, cute & fairly busy.

Wiedemann's could have been improved by running it through the horse one more time.

Don't get uppity with me, young whippersnapper! :whip: I LUUUUUV kitties! :wink:

I've met quite a few handsome male nurses in various visits to the hospital, and most units have at least one strapping fellow assigned to help move, lift, turn patients who have mobility problems. It's a teaching hospital, too; hence, quite a few handsome young interns and residents. My two weeks was not entirely devoid of eye candy.

Randy! If you can't play nice with the kitty, just leave it alone! I luv kitties! They're so soft and warm and nice to have snoozing/purring on my lap.

The courthouse is really pretty well-cared-for, and the old main lobby of the Brumback Library has that great vaulted ceiling, arched windows, mosaic floor and a marble fireplace. Again, impeccably maintained, and the expansions have followed the architectural theme of the original. The setting is one of the best for a library that I've seen, too -- expansive and park-like. Balyeat's is darned good. Downtown Van Wert has been hit hard by loss of industries and an invasion by the scourge of American downtowns everywhere, Wal-Mart. The Wassenberg is outstanding, especially for the size of the town. Each year I look forward to seeing the Ohio Watercolor Exhibition there, and a few years ago I managed to get some photos into the fall photography exhibit and brought home an honorable mention on one. I was pretty tickled, for a first-timer.