Robert Pence

I have a family member who, no matter what simple statement of fact I make, has to jump in and invalidate it in any way he can contrive. I'm not the only one he does it to, though; he does it with everyone. As far back as I can remember, he's been driven by a compulsion to prove he's smarter, more perceptive, more objective, more analytical than anyone else about anything, any time, anywhere. I'd probably get pissed at him if I didn't feel sorry for him.

Creeper. :-D You're just envious of my view. :angel:

^It's been studied/advocated for a long time. During one of my early Cleveland visits in late 1978 or early 1979, a newscast reported on a test run by the state Public Utilities Commission, I think, using Amtrak equipment to investigate the feasibility of 3C service.

This afternoon the temp got into the 60s and twice I saw promising signs of spring -- shirtless runners, all lean and taut. Perhaps it will be a good summer, living by the Greenway.

That's the only part of your statement that came close enough to coherence to merit a response. The infrastructure - roadbed, rails, etc. - for the 3C project is largely in place and much closer to being ready for passenger trains than the infrastructure for the Cleveland-Toledo-Fort Wayne-Chicago project, and although $400 million may sound like a lot of money to those unfamiliar with the realities of the costs of railroading, it's pretty small considering the distance involved. On the other hand, the infrastructure for the Cleveland-Chicago route is a long way from being anything a passenger train could use, even on a ferry move without passengers. West of Fort Wayne the second track and the signaling system have been removed; most of the line is fit only for local freight trains traveling at restricted speeds. East of Fort Wayne into Ohio, the portion of the proposed route that I've seen is about as near to abandoned as it could be without actually being so. I've driven along part of it, and in places rails barely show above the weeds, with ties completely buried. So much of the Cleveland-Toledo-Fort Wayne-Chicago right-of-way has been neglected for so long that rails and ties will need to be torn up, ballast removed, the grade rebuilt with proper drainage, and reballasted, and then new ties and rails and a complete signaling system installed. That clearly will require a more rigorous environmental assessment than will the upgrades to run passenger service on the 3C corridor. The money should be spent where it will make the biggest difference in the shortest time frame, and that's clearly the 3C corridor. As much as we'd love to have Chicago trains back in Fort Wayne, before they can become a reality, both Ohio and Indiana are going to have to commit a bundle of money to the prerequisites, and although Governor Daniels has given lip service to the idea, his real passion is roads-and-bridges and he continues to push taxpayer dollars into the I-69 southern extension, a boondoggle that is ill-conceived in so many ways it could be the subject of a book that most people wouldn't care enough to read.

I got one too, and I agree with both of the above. The "right-turn-on-red" policy creates a hazard for pedestrians, too. One morning walking to work, I had a "Walk" signal as I started across the street. A woman at the light was waiting to make a right turn and looking to the left for traffic, and I was crossing in front of her from the right when she started up. I was able to throw myself onto her hood instead of going under the car. It scared her worse than it did me, although I did get a pretty good bruise out of it. On another occasion on my lunch break I was crossing the street to get to the post office. A woman in a Buick turned across my path dangerously closely. I was carrying a paper cup of crappy vending-machine coffee, and I yelled and threw the cup at her car. It hit her rear window and the coffee splattered across the glass. She was headed for the post office too, and pulled into the lot. I went in and bought my stamps and mailed some letters, and when I came out, she still was sitting in her car. I just stood by the door, and eventually she gave up and left. I hope my experiences have made both of them more considerate drivers.

Excellent tour and photos. My mom told a story about her mother, aunt, and cousin. None of them ever drank, except on the day that the big local breweries (all gone now) released their bock beer. All of them were staid, proper German folk of substantial girth, with a strong sense of domesticity and propriety except on that day. They'd observe Berghoff's release bock beer at the neighborhood tavern a couple blocks away, and come home in late afternoon prancing and dancing and singing.

Gorgeous shots! Those bring back some memories. I had a friend who was a pilot and who moved to San Francisco in the Seventies. When I visited there in 1982 I got in touch with him. By then he was working as a commercial pilot and flight instructor. I offered to cover the expenses, and late one afternoon we took off from a small airport near the city and spent some time sightseeing. Recently I've been scanning Kodachromes from that experience; there aren't as many, but some of the views are from similar angles.

Wow!

^Agreed. Uh-oh! Can't stop!< :yap: > I'm old-school about some things. If I prepare something for a show, most likely it will be an 11x14 print with a 16x20 white mat and narrow black frame, preferably wood. I like the arctic white mat with a black core; it makes a narrow black border when bevel-cut. I've taken to using clear acrylic instead of glass; even "picture glass" has a greenish tint to it, and that tends to mute colors and flatten contrast in some prints. I think the difference is most noticeable in crisp black-and-white prints. Acrylic is really clear, and it has a couple of other features that I like; it's much lighter in weight than glass is, and it provides better UV protection for the print. On the down side, it's more expensive, more easily scratched, and can be damaged by chemical glass cleaners. If I sell prints at an art festival, I don't mat or frame them; the buyer usually has his/her own preferences and favorite framing shop. I print 11x14 or 11-inch full-frame centered on 13x19 paper and leave them untrimmed. I back them with cardboard and enclose them in crystal-clear bags and then display some on wire-grid panels and use plastic milk crates as bins for the rest. People can go through the bins to their hearts' content without damaging the prints or degrading the display quality. The bags are available for all the old standard print sizes and for most current inkjet photo paper sizes. They have reclosable peel-and-seal closures and are, as the name implies, crystal clear. < / :yap: >

Come up with some annoying tics, twitches, and mannerisms to display while riding elevators. Clear your throat every few seconds, sniff a lot, and vocalize and mumble, and people will let you have an elevator all to yourself. :-D

Cory, if the printer only offers the old standard sizes that jmecklenborg cited (for example, 11x14), size your image so that the wide dimension will be 14 inches. The height of the image will come out to about 9 3/8, leaving about 3/4 inch of white space at the top and bottom. You can either trim that off, or mat over it. Most ready-made framing and matting materials still conform to the old glass-plate ratios, as do some medium-format film cameras and most large-format cameras, but most 35mm cameras and DSLRs have aspect ratios of 3:2. If you want to keep the full frame, it's no crime; there won't be mobs of photographers and printers at your door with torches and pitchforks. If you choose to stick with the old standard aspect ratios of 5x7, 8x10, 11x14, etc., then you just need to keep that in mind and allow for crop when you're composing an image in your viewfinder. BTW: pretty striking image.

Some of those photos of snow and ice-covered trees have an ethereal quality. Nice work!

Even under cloudless skies some places can feel gloomy, this time of year.

Spectacular scenery and beautiful photos.

It's a former church. I've seen it but I can't remember what denomination it was; the architectural style is similar to what has been used by some Baptist congregations (not Southern) in the Midwest. You'd think someone would give a damn enough to keep the weeds and brush cut, and pull down the vines that are overgrowing it, but that's Marion. There's a CVS next door, and they may already own it with future plans for expanding their parking. The lovely cobra-head street lights, some on weathered wood poles, add to the downtown's charming ambience, and it looks like there's been a recent demolition next door to the tattoo parlor. The fortunes of Marion and nearby Anderson have been strongly tied to the fortunes of GM, especially Delco and Fisher Body. Neither town was doing particularly well before the recent round of auto-industry troubles.

It's been three or four years since I've been there, and it looks as though there are more downtown vacancies now than then. It's good to see that the courthouse restoration work has started; it was desperately needed. They discussed restoring the dome that was lost to fire long ago, but I don't know the status of that. Most Indiana counties are in rough shape financially, and Grant County is a long way from being the most prosperous. My dad once said that the reason there were no big trees on the courthouse square was that they were all cut down as part of an effort to erase the memories of the 1930 Lynching. Marion was, and to some extent still is, a focal point for KKK activity. Although people try to suppress the history whenever it comes to light, some prominent families likely have Klan skeletons in their closets.

Time Travel:

Beautifully done.

That's how cars are. By the time you reach 100K-plus miles, all the innards have reached a delicate equilibrium. Change one thing, and you unleash a cascade of problems. The more stuff you fix, the more stuff breaks. Preventive maintenance can start a death spiral; change the thermostat, hoses, and fan belt and flush the cooling system, and the next time you're more than a hundred miles from home you'll realize that the crud in the cooling system was all that was plugging the myriad corrosion leaks in your radiator. You'll realize it when you stop for gas and smell anti-freeze; you start looking around to see whose car is leaking, and then you look under yours and see a steady stream of green fluid emitting under the front and quickly forming a river that flows toward the nearest drain. That's gonna' cost you a couple hundred bucks and a night in a lumpy-bed flea-bag motel in a town where the only night life is a dive with antlers over the bar and the smell of stale beer and cigarette smoke emanating from the front door, no two chairs that match, and a big, mean, local drunk who likes to start sh!t with strangers.

Or taupe. That's the official name for the most common color of 1980s Steelcase office furniture. It's the standard-issue color for the vinyl siding and trim in midwestern subdivisions, too.

Yeah. It's in the same irrelevant silliness category as the job interview question, "If you were an animal, what kind of animal would you be, and why?"

^Very nicely-written article. The writer recounted experiences that sounded very much like mine, even though I haven't taken an overnight trip by train in many years. A roomette is absolutely the greatest travel experience there is; you have your privacy and a place to fully stretch out in comfort when it's time to sleep, and the opportunity to mingle with new people in the lounge and diner. I've always slept like a baby in a roomette. The motion and the sounds are a lullaby.

Remotely related to this thread, I've read about cargo ships and tankers built using concrete as an alternative to scarce, expensive steel during World War I. I think some may have been built at Toledo. From contemporary articles (1919 - 1920), they seemed to be successful, but for some reason the practice ended.

The Masonic building looks like it's had a major makeover. I don't particularly care for the replacement windows, but at least it's being maintained well and is occupied. Nice, tidiy main street.