Robert Pence

Neat stuff!

They should just proceed with extending it to Tower City, and then put it under RTA management. That would soon kill it, and they they wouldn't need a CEO. :|

Nice shots! I think the first one looks better in black & white than it would in color.

Great shots! The city looks interesting. The Interstate traffic looks intimidating.

In Indiana we save our last year's phone book for that. In the good old days, when everyone got one of those big, fat Sears catalogs, that was the best! We just hung on a nail in the outhouse, and we were good to go for quite a while.

Excellent details!

Probably, at some time in the past. I'm glad I got my education out of the way a long time ago, before there was so much stuff to learn :wink:. A lot of the experiences that created images and shaped my thinking haven't stayed in the foreground in detail. Probably one of the more influential things I read in my late teens was Looking Backward, by Edward Bellamy. I had sort of naturally evolved some socialist leanings on my own, but they weren't defined or named in my consciousness, and that book helped give them form. A little later, probably in my late twenties, The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich. Almost forty years ago (1968), Ehrlich was aware of the trends that are becoming visible to many people now. I believe it's Kunstler, in one of his recent books, who writes of the impact of over-population on world resources, and of the ways expanding population and declining energy resources may interact.

And the spinoff and my role model, Crankshaft.

< :speech: > Some writers touch upon the relationship between oil and food supplies, but very few have the balls to flatly state that earth's population far exceeds the carrying capacity of the planet, and only the abundance of non-renewable energy resources has made it possible to grow and temporarily sustain that population without even more widespread deaths from starvation and exposure to the elements. For various reasons, religious zealots of differing stripes renounce any talk of limiting population growth. Many exhort their followers to multiply like rodents so that their one true faith can dominate all others. Economists of the breed that has proliferated over the last couple of generations see continuously growing numbers of people with continuously expanding material desires as essential to economic stability. That flies in the face of even the most basic comprehension of the realities of existence in a limited physical space. Either we work to reduce population levels through relatively painless gradual attrition, or we deal with the alternatives of resource wars, widespread famine and pandemic disease. </ :speech: >

Great job! I like both cities. When I attended the meet in Cincinnati, I wasn't very familiar with it. In addition to the topography and architecture, it has a lot of neighborhoods and each one I saw had its own character. I expected something good, and got much more than I expected. Dayton impressed me, too. Admittedly, trolley buses had something to do with it; I love them. The downtown still has some good examples of the kind of architecture I grew up with, and some of the new stuff (Schuster Center) is wonderful; with a resurgence of downtown activity Dayton could have a great feel. I'd like to see what it's like on game days. BTW, Dayton's art museum is world class; stunning setting, gorgeous building, and first-rate exhibits.

I had never heard of this fraternal order, so if course, I had to google it. The Knights of the Maccabees organized in 1878 in London, Ontario. A primary tenet of the organization was providing aid and support to children and widows of deceased members. In the 1960s the Maccabees reorganized as the Maccabees Mutual Insurance Company. The company still exists.

That flea market looks down-home folksy! Some of those joints in Amherst look like the kind of place you'd take your motorcycle chain on a Saturday night and have a heck of a time. These are live traps. They look like raccoon-sized. Mom's neighbor set one out because something was killing his chickens, and one morning he found an absolutely furious bobcat in it; it was harder to set loose than it was to catch. He and a friend put poles through the cage and loaded it into the back of a pickup and took it about forty miles away to a back road next to a woods, and used a rope attached to the latch to open it. That cat practically exploded out of the cage and disappeared into the woods in a flash. Maybe the stroller explains why this party girl isn't in Urbana any more:

Here's a connection I didn't expect. Yesterday evening, I bought a room-sized rug at Lowe's. When I went to the area where I had always found carpet padding, there wasn't any. I asked an employee, and he referred me to a supervisor, who flagged down the store manager. The store manager said that there's a shortage of carpet padding, and they couldn't just sell me padding by itself. When I showed him the 8 X 11 rug on my cart, he went to the warehouse area in the back of the store and emerged a while later with the padding. He said he couldn't find one piece big enough, but he sold me a couple of remnants that I was able to piece together to get the job done. I googled "carpet pad shortage" and found a couple of references. From what I read, it looks like the petrochemicals used to make the foam are in short supply (oil supplies & refinery capacity being diverted to gasoline & diesel?), and what foam is available is being shipped to China because that's where all the furniture manufacturing has been outsourced. It's putting a crimp on builders and remodelers.

Marc, don't make a habit of that; you'd be missed at Urbanohio. Glad you came out of it OK. I look forward to pics.

Not now (don't have time), and probably not here. I'm saving that one for a magnum opus on my web site, possibly with photos. If I were to post that rant here, it might trigger a flame war that could get me banned. I have too much fun here to risk that. Man, do I need a life, or what? :? :roll: :-D

There used to be a place called "The Wrecking Ball" on Lorain in that general vicinity, 15-plus years ago. It was just a run-down old house cram-packed with doors, windows, cabinets, trim and hardware salvaged from demolished houses. When I was working on trying to restore some of the 1800s character of the inside of my house, I picked up several doors and other odds and ends there, pretty reasonable.

Great!

I've just learned that I stand to inherit lots of money! It seems various relatives have died recently and left no other heirs, and I stand to get a big chunk of their millions. I've gotten emails from two different lawyers in the last two days. I think I'll use my newfound wealth to buy and restore Dayton's Arcade. And I didn't even know I had relatives in Nigeria! :roll: :lol:

Sweet-looking place! Lots of historic buildings still in good condition and in use. The depot is a beauty.

Might be safer when someone's trying to walk home falling-down drunk, too. :-D

A lot of work is done there -- lots of Photoshop and quite a bit of word processing, spreadsheets and bookkeeping. The photo was taken immediately after setup, but after a recent cleanup,it looks almost that good again. The paperwork, coffee cups, donut bags, etc. had piled up to where they were starting to obstruct my view of the monitor, and I couldn't find some important documents, so I had to roll a bin up to the door and start shoveling.

:lol:

For the last two systems I've built, I've bought quite a lot of hardware from Tiger Direct. Their prices haven't always been the rock-bottom lowest of all vendors, but their shipping is prompt and I always get exactly what I ordered, in good condition. With the rebates, the prices turn out pretty decent. I always price around, but I often end up going back to them. Rebates are a nuisance, but usually worth my time -- especially when I'm building a complete system.

Sweet! Shelties have such a great disposition; they're as lovable as a Collie and not so big.

Very nice! Pleasant-looking, quaint town with a strong appreciation for its history.