Robert Pence

The movement to revert to two-way street systems is gaining momentum. I figure that about twenty years after all the other cities in the midwest have made the change, Fort Wayne will start to discuss studying it. Then, they'll spend about a million dollars on consultants who will tell them to go ahead. One or two influential suburban developers will protest, and they'll scap the whole thing and go on with the status quo.

Impressive album, KJP!

I think the courthouse is pretty fabulous, myself.

It's a complex issue. American agriculture is amazingly efficient if you measure efficiency in terms of quantity of food produced per acre farmed or per man-hour of labor. I worked for a while with an engineer at GE whose hobby and passion was statistics. One of his projects was an analysis of the efficiency of American agriculture measured in terms of energy inputs and outputs. He tallied up inputs in calories in the form of food consumed by farmers and farm animals, and fossil fuels used not only to fuel farm machines, but to produce the machines and agricultural chemicals used in producing food. Then, he totaled up the calories of food energy produced. As near as he could calculate, in the era immediately following World War I, when most of the work of planting, harvesting and nurturing crops was provided by human and animal muscle power and fields were fertilized mostly with animal manure and sometimes with mined minerals, the average American farmer put one calorie of energy into every three calories of food energy produced. In modern farming, with its massive machines and chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides (many of which find their way into the ground water, but that's another topic), he calculated that the average American farmer puts about thirty calories of energy into every three calories of food energy produced -- a striking negative result! According to his research, American agriculture was ninety times more productive in energy terms in 1918 than it is now. In the fifties, when I grew up on an Indiana dairy farm, we had a big operation at 300 acres. Dad was a good farmer and a frugal businessman, and although we didn't have new cars, we lived in a decent house and ate well, and he was able to put away enough to send three boys to college and save up for a comfortable retirement for himself and Mom. Mom and one of my brothers and I still own the land, which we rent to a farmer who operates about 3,000 acres. He runs a good business and makes good money, but has an enormous capital investment in equipment and probably a lot of debt. I doubt if his annual net is anywhere near the aggregate profit of the twenty or so families who used to farm that 3,000 acres. I've fielded calls from people who want to buy county road frontage to build their dream house in the country. So far, I haven't chased any of them with a pitchfork, but I don't encourage them. We already have too many soccer moms with SUVs full of kids, blasting at 70mph along country roads safe at 45mph, endangering kids on bikes, pets, and farmers transporting machinery from one field to another. The sprawl of shopping centers and subdivisions onto farmland, facilitated by agriculture that gains its productivity through petroleum-based fuels and chemicals, destroys urban density and increases traffic congestion, environmental damage, and our dependence in imported oil.

That's a nice downtown; it's a pleasant-looking place.

Color me green with envy! Fabulous views!

^... and not far away is Natural Bridge, one of those wonderful Kentucky State Parks. It's a gorgeous place in the fall, with great trails.

I'll second that.

A landfill outside Fort Wayne has sunk wells to capture the methane, which is piped to a nearby industry and used as fuel. There are other places where the same thing is being done. Some municipal sewage plants capture the methane from their process and use it to run engines that power generators to meet their electrical needs. I'd think they could do something similar with that landfill, capturing the methane and using it for heat and maybe even power generation.

When the DC Metro system was designed, the residents of Georgetown didn't want it in their neighborhood for that reason. I wonder how many have come to regret their resistance. In Baltimore, the police in the northern burbs used to meet the arriving northbound light rail trains to intercept any "undesirables" arriving from the inner city. I don't know if they still do that.

I started renovating my house in 1987, and it isn't finished yet! Not even finished, and some of the earlier work needs to be spruced up, already.

When you cross the state line into Indiana, you should set your watch back thirty years.

Wilmington has some fine oldies! I wish I were fabulously wealthy; I'd go around buying neglected unique vintage buildings and restoring them, and maybe even renting them out at a loss just to preserve them and keep them alive. :crazy:

Visit Peninsula on a nice weekend, and you get some idea of the amount of activity the towpath attracts. I'd think it could be a tremendous shot in the arm for the flats if it were to attract anything like that amount of business. At Peninsula, the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad is a major attraction, too.

The last that I read, the restaurant smoking ban hadn't had any adverse effect in Fort Wayne. One restaurant owner blamed the ban for his going out of business, but that wasn't true; his place was across the street from a large office building with a no-smoking policy, and it was the closest one that permitted smoking throughout the whole dining room. Especially in bad weather, the smokers from the office building flocked there for lunch. I tried the place a couple of times. I'm not a picky eater, but his food simply wasn't good, and his service was so-so; when people couldn't smoke there any more, they had no reason to go. A couple of neighborhood greasy spoons with an almost-exclusively blue-collar clientele responded by becoming "private clubs" that sold lifetime memberships for $1. I've eaten in both, and high cholesterol probably sends more of their regulars to an early demise than smoking.

The main reason I quit going to nightclubs was the smoke. As a former long-term smoker, and a ten-year survivor of a smoking-related cancer, I won't willingly increase my risk factor. I think, too, that former smokers are often bothered more by second hand smoke than are people who never smoked. After coming home from even a short period at a club, I used to undress in the laundry room and toss my clothes directly into the washer so that I wouldn't have to smell them the next morning. If a restaurant ban were enacted over a wide enough area, I think it would be to the restaurant owners' advantage. During busy times, owners and wait staff like to turn over tables as quickly as possible, and diners who linger for a cigarette or two and a couple of free refills on their coffee have an adverse effect on productivity and profits. If they can't smoke in the restaurant, people will go somewhere else after they finish their dinner, and free up the seating for more customers.

Nice job! Thanks for showing the renderings along with the under-construction photos.

The Perry County Jail looks appropriately depressing -- probably even more seedy and rundown inside than outside. The courthouse in Lancaster has gorgeous cornices. Interesting light in that shot.

Here's a detail shot of the ornament on the facade of the former Woolworth building, taken during the September 4th forum meet. I think the facade is nicely representative of downtown retail design of a past era. It just needs to be spruced up.

I think Van Wert qualifies as a Main Street.

The courthouse is pretty classy. It looks like it's had a good cleaning since the last time I saw it, about ten years ago. Amish patronize natural food stores, too.

Interesting Odd Fellows building. I assume the Pavlov Music Center teaches bell ringing? Is Connie's Mud Puddle a female mud-wrestling joint? :lol:

Maybe they're trying to make time stand still.

Delightful courthouse!