Burbs
And the ever popular Compost!
We finally got some fairly nice weather in between rains and I’ve been taking advantage of it to haul in some compost. The yard is too wet to drive the truck over it so I’ve been hauling it in the little trailer behind the lawnmower. Hopefully we’ll be able to grow something back here now other than weeds, oregano and dust baths for the burbs.
Yep, it’s spring!
It’s early spring, and that means the urge is starting to kick in again.
I never used to be much of a traveler. I was always a homebody. I hated traveling, hated the discomfort associated with it, hated staying in motels, hated having to try to find someplace to eat. I hated everything associated with traveling.
The result was that for the first 50 years of my state I’d hardly been more than a hundred miles from the place I’d been born, and I was quite content with that.
Then something, I’m not sure what, happened. That’s when the — the urges started to kick in. And suddenly the guy who hated traveling, hated being away from home, was finding himself in places like, well, like this:
Or like this…
Or this
Or these:
So what happened? How did someone who hates traveling so much end up doing exactly that? I have no idea. It’s weird, really, this urge to go wandering, traveling.
I was starting to think that I’d got it out of my system. I wasn’t going to go wandering very far from home this year. If I went anywhere at all it was going to be less than a day’s travel from the house.
But now that the weather is getting warmer, things are starting to grow again, that damned urge is coming back… Same thing happened last year. Wasn’t going to go anywhere, I told myself. Nope. At least not very far, not more than a couple of hundred miles. If that. And ended up spending over a week out in the Black Hills…
This year I’m not going anywhere though. I am going to stick close to home. It’s too expensive, too time consuming. No sir. Not going anywhere.
But then there are those damned urges. Don’t know where they come from.
Personally I blame allergies.
An icon of my youth is, I’ve been told, going to be torn down in Manitowoc, the old Penny’s building.
This is one case where I heartily approve of the decision if does indeed happen. As you can see the building looks like it’s ready to fall down all by itself. The two upper floors have been abandoned for years, windows broken out, covered up with plywood. The main floor was remodeled, if you can call it that, into small shops that now house, well, basically they’re junk shops except for a small art studio and resale shops that sell rummage sale items, a few antiques, on a consignment basis.
Saturday I was talking with a shop keeper downtown who used to rent space there and she told me that while it was cheap, she got out years ago because she was afraid the building was going to fall down around her ears. She told me that there were plans in the works to tear it down and replace it with a parking structure. We went in to look around and I can understand why she got out of the place. It’s pretty bad in there.
Going to Manitowoc’s downtown, the old shopping district, is a kind of bittersweet experience for me because I find it nostalgic, sad, exciting, interesting and hopeful all at the same time.
When I was a wee lad we did some of our shopping there in the downtown. At the time it looked like this. I found this image on-line somewhere.
Downtown was the hub of the city, where everyone went to shop. Penny’s was there, as was Sears. Woolworths had a store there, the old “five and dime” store. Kresge’s, another 5&10 store was down there as well. The elegant and upscale Schutte Bros. department store with it’s pneumatic cash tube system. Dozens of smaller shops all running down 8th street and going down the side streets. It was a thriving, bustling place. Just over the bridge was the Boston Store, and Sears.
Sears is long gone. Kresge’s closed down. The Boston Store closed. Schutte’s closed, and eventually the other shops, the jewelry stores, tailors, shoe stores, all of them closed or went bankrupt as shopping patterns changed.
The elegant and upscale Schutte Bros. store is in a sad state. It looks like this now.
It’s been standing empty for I don’t know how long now. There have been attempts to do something with it. A half dozen different restaurants have tried to make a go of it on the main floor, but none of them have worked well, and it’s been empty now for years, slowly deteriorating.
Somehow this old building has managed to remain almost as elegant and beautiful as it was when it was first built probably almost a hundred years ago.
If memory is correct, and there’s a good chance it isn’t, this building originally belonged to the International Order of Odd Fellows, a fraternal organization that was popular back in, oh, the early 1900s. They spared little expense in the design and construction, and thanks to owners who cherish these old buildings, they’ve restored it and kept it in pretty good condition, and it’s one of the finer buildings downtown now.
Another fixture of downtown, the huge old malting/beer facility right on the lakeshore, is going to be hanging on, too.
It had been owned by few different beer companies, the latest being Budwiser. Budwiser moved out of the facility a few years ago and we were afraid it would fall derelict like so many others. But it was purchased by Briess Malting of Chilton, a major producer of malted grains for the brewing industry that’s been in business for over a hundred years now.
The old imposing bank downtown is still there too, looking just as impressive and intimidating as it did when it was first put up.
I don’t think it’s a bank anymore. Someone told me they think city offices are in there now.
The old Mirro Aluminum building is finally coming down at last. After being abandoned by it’s new owners when Mirro Aluminum was bought out and shut down, it sat empty for ages, gradually falling apart.
After years of the city squabbling with various owners, various schemes for getting rid of it, the city itself finally had to take over the property to get it demolished.
This little guy seems to have made it through the winter unscathed. We rescued this cute little guy from the compost heap about two years ago. I don’t know why someone discarded it in the first place.
The buds from yesterday are in full flower now and absolutely beautiful.
Despite the cold, rainy weather we’ve been seeing signs of spring outside in the gardens as a few things start to peek their heads up out of the leaf litter, mulch and debris left by the winter.
Not the best photos in the world but I took these with the iPhone 7. I’ve only had it for about three weeks and I haven’t used it much for photography and I’m still trying to get used to it’s quirks.
It’s certainly better than the camera in the iPhone 6 was, but it’s still not even close to what something like a, oh, a mid-range Nikon or Cannon pocket sized camera could do for about a third of the price.
And unless I’m doing something wrong, the iPhone camera has some rather serious, for me anyway, issues. The color seems off to me. Color rendition actually seems worse than it was with the iPhone 6. Photos seem darker than they should be except under bright sunlight. The autofocus is constantly changing as it struggles to try to find something to focus on when taking closeups.
I’ve seen some spectacular photography that was done with the iP7, but I’m beginning to wonder how many of those photos were taken under ideal, artificial conditions or even had considerable post processing done to them. If I can work up enough ambition I should go out with the good camera and take side by side photos with both the Fuji and the iP7 so I can compare them side by side.
This image was taken with the Fuji. I wish you could see it full size because the detail is so good at full resolution it would more than fill your entire screen and is so sharp you can count the hairs on the bee’s legs. And the Fujifilm camera I use isn’t exactly a high end camera/lens system and has been out of production for a few years now.
I suppose it comes down to the lens system being used. I don’t care what kind of optical systems they develop for these phone cameras, it comes down to basic physics. A lens that’s not much bigger than the head of a match isn’t going to produce results as good as what I get with something like my Fuji’s macro/zoom lens.
Trying the gallery mode now. Click on a photo to start the gallery thingie. I hope. Note: Photos here are from the Badlands National Park in South Dakota
Speaking of cats, here are the Siamese recharging their solar batteries the other day when the sun made one of its rare appearances.
grouchyfarmer 