Robert Pence

Wonderful machines. A very good custom lab that was walking distance from my house had an Imacon drum scanner, but I don't know what model it was. They could do just about anything as far as processing and printing, and were wonderful at E-6 medium-format film, but they went out of business last month. As the amateur film-processing and printing business dwindled, there wasn't enough pro lab work to cover the overhead. I have a handful of 4x5 B&W negs that I never got around to having scanned. I suppose I ought to send them out and get them done while there are still places that can do it.

The Amish are somewhat a mixed bag regarding strictness on use of machinery. In a lot of areas the Mennonite and Amish communities are somewhat interwoven (both have Anabaptist roots), and because the Mennonites don't have as many restrictions on ownership and use of machinery, they're more likely to use and maintain it. Some Amish, though, do own older steel-wheeled tractors that they are allowed to use for stationary belt power (threshing, grinding feed, sawing wood, shelling corn), but not for field tillage or transportation. Some Amish have "baler carts," two-wheeled horse-drawn carts equipped with an engine and a power take-off to run machinery like hay balers and combines, and one for whom my brother has done machine-shop work has an industrial diesel engine on a trailer that can be used for belt power. A non-automotive diesel doesn't use electric ignition or electronic controls, so I guess that gets him a pass from his bishop. The old-order Amish use open buggies year-around, and you'll see them going down the road in blowing show with big black umbrellas to shield themselves from the wind. Some use bicycles, although they're not common in my area, and lately I've seen kids on roller-blades. They don't hesitate to ride in cars, and Amish construction crews typically have an "English" driver on the payroll to transport them to jobs and run work-associated errands. In downtown Berne on a Saturday, you'll see quite a few families being dropped off by van drivers to do their shopping. Some have cell phones, although I don't think they're approved by the local bishop except maybe for business purposes for the contractors. I don't know how they charge them. Maybe they take them to an "English" neighbor, or maybe they have inverters to charge them from the batteries for the marker lights on their buggies. Amish will travel by train or bus, and I've occasionally seen them on commercial flights. When I used to travel more by train, I often saw Amish traveling from Northern Indiana to visit family in the Lancaster, PA area.

The Amish around Lagrange and in the Sugarcreek area apparently don't have a strong aversion to being photographed, especially when participating in public events. On the other hand, I don't even try to take photos that include Old-order (open-buggy) Amish in the area where I grew up; they don't want it at all, and when they're working in the fields and see a car slow or stop along the road, they'll often take refuge behind their horses. The fellow on the tractor in the threshing scene isn't Amish; he's Mennonite. He has a trimmed beard and moustache. Amish don't grow moustaches.

The increasing crop yields probably are not sustainable. They come from intensive farming with petrochemical-derived herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers that are causing long-term damage to ecosystems. Genetic modifications create crops that are resistant to insect damage and can withstand herbicides used to control weeds, but insect pests are adapting to the genetic modifications and weeds are developing tolerance for the herbicides. Meanwhile, intensive agriculture and yield maximization are depleting the carbon and carbon-source organic material in soil that make it a viable medium for plant growth. Enormous amounts of fossil-fuel energy are consumed and emissions are created in manufacturing the machines used in intensive agriculture, far more even than the energy consumed and emissions created in operating the machines.

Neat photos. Sugarcreek is cute, pretty touristy. The Ohio Central Railroad used to run passenger train excursions to Baltic on weekends, but I think they ended that last year. Another interesting place in Ohio Amish country is Kidron, especially on a market Saturday. Don't miss Lehman's Hardware. The "haystacks" are actually shocks of wheat. The wheat is cut by a horse-drawn machine called a binder, that ties the stalks into bundles. Bundles are gathered by hand into shocks, usually three or so bundles standing upright with one across the top to shed rain, and allowed to dry. Then, they're loaded onto wagons and taken to a threshing machine where the grain is separated from the straw. A threshing scene at Lagrange, Indiana Power is often from older steel-wheeled tractors (1929 Case here), sometimes owned by Amish just for this purpose. In this setup, the owners are Mennonites who thresh for the Amish.

Gorgeous garden and wonderful photos!

Paradise, indeed. :roll:

Good shots. Canton looks like it's making a comeback, and has a reasonably clean attractive downtown but without much street life. No pic of Heggy's Chocolates? Yum!

Good shots, wonderful neighborhood.

Beautiful. The lighting in that Cleveland shot is perfect!

Spectacular scenery! You do some excellent night photography.

I agree, but I think it's good to provide faux communities for the folks with way too much money. It blunts the impulse for them to take over our comfy old neighborhoods and gentrify them out of our reach. I say give them their own space, and maybe they'll leave us alone.

Nice. That's a handsome courthouse, and the addition was done in a fashion that doesn't completely violate the views of the original.

Such elegance! Great pics.

Some interesting buildings, both then and now. That old courthouse was pretty impressive; shame it's gone.

High-class, high-priced escort. Discerning gentlemen only, please. :wink:

KJP - I can do that. I feared the original RAW files had been lost in a hard drive crash, but a search through a file drawer full of CDs turned up the originals - on the last disc in the drawer, of course. I'll PM you to work out the details.

Good stuff!

Attractive neighborhood, with an interesting variety of housing styles. It's a shame they can't find a use for the school, but there's only so much demand for senior housing and the maintenance on big old buildings can be pretty costly.

I think 759 is on display in a Lima park. It ran in the 1960s or early 70s as I recall, but its status as display-only is probably permanent now. It was cannibalized for parts during one of 765's overhauls, and would take an extraordinary amount of work to return it to running condition. I don't know of any other surviving examples of the series. The last of the Nickel Plate S2 Berkshires were built in 1944, and they represent a high state of refinement in steam locomotive design and construction. They were stoker-fired and carried 23 tons of coal and 23,000 gallons of water in the tender. They were intended for the fast freight that enabled the Nickel Plate to compete with the bigger roads that parallelled most of their Chicago-Buffalo route, but proved to be such hot performers that they were used in passenger service too. 765 can top 70mph with a 20-25 car freight train, and has pushed 80 with a passenger train excursion.

Hydrobond is right. The dry summer means lack of surface runoff that carries soil into the rivers. The Saint Marys River across the street from my house is less brown than usual, this summer.

One day I expect we'll get to see, and maybe ride, a double-header pulled by 763 and the other operable Lima-built S2 Berkshire, Fort Wayne Historical Society's NKP 765. Here's what 763 will look like restored:

I'll agree. The Nikon D70 was significantly better than 35mm, but not quite up to medium format, IMO. The D200 seems to clearly stand up to medium format; I made some 12x18 300dpi prints from D200 shots for an exhibit, and the detail is as sharp and crisp as I could want. I still had hopes of using up my remaining inventory of 120 Fuji Reala and Provia 100F, but the pro lab that I used has gone out of business (not enough film-based photography) and there's no one else local that I trust. I may shoot up the stuff anyway and send it out of town, or maybe I'll just forget it. The Nikon scanners are pretty rugged; I've run thousands of slides and negs through my 8000ED, and it's still going strong. Now, watch it die tomorrow! I've thought about upgrading to a 9000ED while they're still making them. I expect film scanners to become nearly extinct before long, except maybe for the high-end drum scanners that the pro labs use. So far, Nikon hasn't released 64-bit drivers for their film scanners, and I suspect that the current generation may be the last.

All you have to do is pledge your soul. Money, success and pleasure will be yours. For a while.

They don't do that any more. Several years ago Lafayette completed a massive railroad relocation project to consolidate several lines through the city and eliminate many grade crossings. For some 2005 photos of the depot/transportation hub and other shots around town, click here