Robert Pence

I have to go to Chicago this Friday ( April 8 ), a short-notice but essential trip. I wanted to take Amtrak from Waterloo, Indiana, about a half-hour drive from home. The trip to Chicago would have worked out, but when I looked at the return I saw that the Capitol Limited, which might have gotten me home at a reasonable hour, was sold out. The Lake Shore Limited wouldn't get me back to Waterloo until around 1:30am, if it's on time, and that's entirely too long a day for me to willingly subject myself to. What struck me is that the Capitol is sold out for that date. Tell that to the legislators who think nobody wants to ride trains. So, it's a 115-mile drive to Michigan City and probably a rattly, somewhat jiggly ride, depending on what equipment is in the consist of the South Shore train I catch, and after I'm done in Chicago, a rattly-jiggly ride back to Michigan City and another 115-mile drive home. It sure would be nice to have some options. Flying is a bother for no more distance than is involved, and way too expensive, and I'm averse to unnecessary long drives, especially since I'll probably be leaving for home right at the peak of Chicago rush-hour traffic.

That's impressive. Clearly there's an owner who recognizes the importance of maintaining the value of the investment. I've seen so many good, old buildings that were allowed to deteriorate by owners who milked them for cash flow while putting as little money as possible into them.

Ewwwww! :-o :oops: :-(

Neat! The building is a gem, and the quilt display would have been something to see. A close friend and contemporary of mine has been quilting since she learned it from her mother as a youngster, and her mother was creating quilt designs on a Mac when she was in her nineties.

Cute shot! Somebody probably has been feeding him. A few years ago a neighbor raised an orphaned baby squirrel that he found. The critter had no fear of humans, and I had a heck of a time teaching it that I was bad news if I caught it in my bird feeders. Most squirrels would scram at the sound of my back door, but this one would just look up, and then go back to pillaging the sunflower seeds. It took a few garden-hose blasts to make it averse to human presence.

Didn't anybody even use a stethoscope to listen to your breathing?

Dammit David! Get medical attention now! You should have done it immediately after the accident. Combustion products from some plastics can cause permanent and progressive lung damage that can be life-threatening if not treated quickly. People inhale hot steam or gases and/or fumes from burning plastic in car wrecks or industrial accidents and think they're OK after a little while, and then in a day or two they find themselves in serious trouble and hospitalized in critical condition. You see what that did to your skin? If you inhaled it, you can bet it did they same thing in your respiratory system. Edit: I don't mean first thing in the morning. I mean now!

Since the tower was closed and you couldn't go to the top, here's a photo from 1986. They were raising funds then to repair it: Click the image to see more.

Indiana's pro-highway lobby has managed to scam the state's taxpayers for years, and the taxpayers, being indifferent and unwilling to learn how state financing works, have been complicit in their own fleecing. Governer Daniels and the road-building advocates tout the fact that federal money will cover eighty or ninety percent of the construction of new interstate highways, and that lulls the taxpayers into thinking they're getting a bargain. What they don't understand is that the state has a statutory limit on the number of lane-miles it can maintain, and is already maxed out under that statute. The state is obilgated to assume the maintenance and operating costs of interstate highways, so for every mile of new four-lane expressway built, it has to abandon two miles of two-lane state road, often in the same counties traversed by the new expressway. Those former state highways seldom go away because they provide access to local farms, businesses, residences, and small towns. Local governing entites have to assume the maintenance costs of the roads they "inherit" in perpetuity, and pass them along in the form of higher property taxes. In addition, the vast amounts of land occupied by the new rights-of-way disappear from local tax rolls so that tax revenue is lost to the local entities. Local taxpayers get hit with a double whammy, losing existing tax base while having to assume additional road-maintenance burden. Road advocates counter by saying their new highways will bring development that will generate revenue to more than offset the negative tax impacts. I'm skeptical of that argument, because when new development does come, it's often lured by ten-year tax abatements that mean it will be a long time before local taxpayers see any significant benefit. Meanwhile, the new roads bring noise and air pollution and attract the sort of interchange development (truck stops, trucker motels, "adult" businesses, etc.) that has more negative than positive effects upon quality of life in the area.

While in Washington, PA, did you check out the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum?

I think there's a limit to how far society should go in protecting people from themselves. Our long-standing practice of thwarting Darwin has given us a generation that buys into Tea Party doctrine. Maybe huffing engine degreaser would have helped.

I thought it was getting pretty touristy-tacky twenty-five years ago, but Oh, Lord! Those golf carts! The sight makes me shudder! :-o

It sounds as if Walker has just been made aware of the impact that Talgo's intent to move most of its jobs farther west, and he's trying to salvage what he can while saving face and not appearing to backpedal. I haven't been to Milwaukee since the Amtrak station was renovated, but I understand the renovation didn't include fixing the trainshed. That place is a deplorable mess and a hazard to passengers in icy weather. The lighting is poor, the platform surfaces are cracked, patched, and uneven, and the roof leaks. In cold weather the wet platforms turn to ice rinks. No matter how nice the station is on the inside or from the street, the trainshed makes a poor first impression on any new visitor arriving there.

I think you have flagellated yourself to perfection. These are stunning! You have just raised the bar.

That's how they reproduce. Instantly, microscopic spores in the yellow ooze penetrated your skin and found their way into your lymphatic system. In a few days you'll break out in painful blisters, and then myriad tiny worms will pop out all over. :-o Striking photo, by the way.

One more from the archives: Irion County, Texas' first permanent courthouse, built 1901 at Sherwood from locally-quarried stone. In 1911 the new Kansas City, Mexico and Orient railroad bypassed Sherwood by about a mile and a half, and established the new railroad town of Mertzon. Businesses began to leave Sherwood and relocate to Mertzon, and in 1937 the county seat migrated there after a popular vote. Sherwood became a ghost town. The sign says "Sherwood Baptist Church" and gives the hours of worship. There never was a clock; the hands were painted on pointing to the supposed time of Abraham Lincoln's death. This wasn't uncommon in hardscrabble communities where there wasn't enough money for a clock right away. Camera: Zeiss-Ikon Contaflex Super, 50mm lens Film: Kodachrome II, 25 ASA/ISO Filter: Zeiss Polarizing, 3X filter factor

Exquisite! The flowers are crisp in detail with saturated colors, the background blurs out softly, and there's just enough variety in the patterns to make the photo very eye-pleasing.

I think some retail businesses do ban personal cell phones on the job. On a visit to the nearby Lowe's while I was making a return, an employee came to the customer service desk and asked to use the cell phone. He took it outside, and when he finished his brief call he returned the phone to the desk. It looked like they make a phone available to employees when it's necessary, and don't allow them to carry their own at work. At Kroger I sometimes hear them page an employee over the PA for a phone call, so maybe they ban personal cell phones on the job, too.

I'm flattered, kayteeohh. Actually, in that photo the climate and topography did all the work. I just did my tried to capture it with my camera. What I got wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but I like the way it turned out. The photo was taken southwest of San Angelo, Texas. The vantage point was one of the Twin Buttes that gave the adjacent dam and reservoir its name.

I wait for this all to blow over before posting. While id like to right the wrongs against me, at the end of the day it's not worth my time getting in contact with certain organizations of people. So far my insurance through Allstate has been really helpful. My renters covers damage to bicycles on the roadway. They asked for the motorists info and everything Good idea. If Allstate chooses to go after the driver they can muster some intimidating resources without costing you any more than you already paid for the coverage, and you won't have to deal with indifferent or hostile cops in the process. Years ago, I got "doored." A woman opened a car door into my path while I was running late for work and hurrying. The impact destroyed the frame and front wheel of my Peugeot PX-10 road bike, and fortunately only gave me some long-lasting bruises. Her insurance company was only too happy to buy me a new custom frame plus other top-of-the-line components to build a very nice bike, to get me to endorse a check. I got the further satisfaction of knowing that the driver's side door of her Camaro was sufficiently sprung that it wouldn't shut and latch afterward, and had to be replaced.

I've become sufficiently annoyed with a cashier who was having a personal conversation on the phone while s-l-o-o-o-w-l-y scanning/ringingup my items that I left my purchases on the counter and walked out. It's bad enough that companies understaff so badly that their cashiers have to handle business calls while trying to serve customers, but employees who let personal conversations come ahead of customers should be fired. If I ran a business, I'd require employees to leave their cell phones in their lockers while on duty.

I've read someplace about attorneys who take on cases where cyclists' rights have been ignored or abused by law enforcement. You might check with some cycling advocacy groups like League of American Bicyclists or Rails to Trails to see if they can direct you to any resources. Edit: ... or go back and take a bag of donuts with you this time. :wink:

I was there for only a few months, maybe from late February to late April. There was a period in early April when rains came, and the desert went from brown and gray to a most brilliant Spring green. That lasted perhaps two weeks, and then everything dried up again. There wasn't much development in that area in the early 1960s and the skies were dark at night. The air was dry, and when the air was still there wasn't a lot of airborne dust. My most vivid memory from the time was on the evening of my first day at Goodfellow AFB; I saw a movie at the base theater, and it was still light when I went in. Later, when I left the theater it was completely dark outside and the near-black skies were spangled with more stars than I ever imagined existed, bigger and brighter than I had ever seen them in the hazy, over-lit skies of the Midwest. There was a sort of porch with a railing outside the entrance/exit of the theater, and I just stood there leaning on the rail with my jaw hanging, taking it all in for a while. That triggers another memory; I saw "Hud," starring Paul Newman, there. Many in the audience reacted audibly to recognizing sights in the film, because San Angelo wasn't all that far from Odessa and it was part of the territory we had covered in weekend outings.

Dredging through the archives again, I came up with some photos I took during a 1963 sojourn in the vicinity of San Angelo, Texas courtesy of the USAF. The negs are mostly crappy because the film was sent through the base exchange for processing by some fly-by-night operator and there was no base hobby-shop darkroom that I could find, nor any place locally that I could buy a changing bag to allow me to load a daylight tank. My fledgling skills at photography may have had something to do with it, too. They're 35mm Tri-X (400 ASA), grainy and with some digital noise from scanning. They is what they is. Here's one, and there may be more later. Try not to be overwhelmed by the scenic beauty.

I can think of one thing: Falling asleep during the boss's presentation to a major client. I only nodded off for an instant, but the boss caught it. Maybe it saved my bacon that one of the client reps lost his fight with terminal boredom a few minutes later; I could tell that he was struggling before it overran him. Or visibly teetering on the edge of dozing off during a job interview. The interview was mid-afternoon, always the worst time for me, and I went to it after I got off my temp job where I worked 5am to 1pm. Of course, I didn't get the job, and from what I learned later about the company that was a good thing. Management was far to the family-values right, and hired accordingly. Even if I hadn't blown the interview, my not having a wife and kids and not belonging to a fundamentalist congregation probably would have disqualified me. If I had been hired, the social situation at work would have made the job untenable for me.