Looking down on the University of Montana campus from midway up Mount Sentinel, it’s easy to let the enormity of the view dwarf the growing city of Missoula below. With the lumber industry having receded over thirty years ago, Montana’s second largest city owes most of its identity to the flagship university. It’s a quintessential
Continuing the spirit of the previous blog post—surveying big buildings and extolling those that look good from all angles—I migrate this time for a brief look at a building in my hometown that has always captivated me and certainly achieves minor landmark status. Most other visitors to Indianapolis who have lingered in this neighborhood have
Washington National Cathedral, among the highest-profile religious institutions in the country and certainly in the capital city, has long attracted visitors (pilgrims?) not just for its harrowing Neo-Gothic architecture, or its frequently filmed interior (the site of many presidential funerals), but also for the celebrated green space, which together occupy a hilltop plot measuring 57
An incredibly busy time of year forces me to crank out a few analysis-shy “throwaway” posts so that I can still meet my monthly quota. This time around, it’s a familiar subject as well: the cherry blossom season around the Tidal Basin in Washington DC. By this point in April, the blossoms are typically all
Though my articles rarely reflect a hot-off-the-presses event, here’s another exception to that rule, which I feel compelled to publish now (instead of three months from now) because, I fear, waiting that long will cause its significance to fade from collective memory. The event to which I refer is obvious from the title: the demise
To the average observer, this just looks like a shallow creek threading through a lightly urbanized area. Nothing special at all. Kind of drab, even. But to the locals, this riverfront image is probably quickly recognizable: the architecture of the buildings, though distant and none too striking, gives it away. Or maybe it’s the bridge
I’m breaking all of my own rules these days. Averse as I am to including two analysis-free montages in a row, now I’m taking the violations a step further by featuring two consecutive articles that a) offer very timely content (likely to seem irrelevant in a few days) and b) carry heavily political undertones, though
Biking along the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) in the final days of summer yielded some unexpected opportunities for leaf-peeping. The GAP, a massive rail-trail conversion linking downtown Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Maryland, allows uninterrupted bike/pedestrian access from the Steel City to Washington DC, by means of a transfer onto the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Canal Towpath
It’s not a rhetorical question, but it’s one that I would have struggled to answer until recently. After all, I’ve spent years exploring some of the dreariest corners of underperforming American retail: one or two dead malls in my hometown of Indianapolis (which has resisted mall decay more than most cities, almost entirely due to
This article represents an interesting first. Frankly, I’m surprised it’s taken this long—15 years of blogging!—for someone to approach me about this while I was out snapping pics for my blog. Given that I have over 20,000 photos consisting primarily of mailboxes, parking meters, cracked curbs, lonely utility poles, labelscars, and miscellany that would only
Looking down on the University of Montana campus from midway up Mount Sentinel, it’s easy to let the enormity of the view dwarf the growing city of Missoula below. With the lumber industry
Continuing the spirit of the previous blog post—surveying big buildings and extolling those that look good from all angles—I migrate this time for a brief look at a building in my hometown that
Washington National Cathedral, among the highest-profile religious institutions in the country and certainly in the capital city, has long attracted visitors (pilgrims?) not just for its harrowing Neo-Gothic architecture, or its frequently filmed
An incredibly busy time of year forces me to crank out a few analysis-shy “throwaway” posts so that I can still meet my monthly quota. This time around, it’s a familiar subject as
Though my articles rarely reflect a hot-off-the-presses event, here’s another exception to that rule, which I feel compelled to publish now (instead of three months from now) because, I fear, waiting that long
To the average observer, this just looks like a shallow creek threading through a lightly urbanized area. Nothing special at all. Kind of drab, even. But to the locals, this riverfront image is
I’m breaking all of my own rules these days. Averse as I am to including two analysis-free montages in a row, now I’m taking the violations a step further by featuring two consecutive
Biking along the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) in the final days of summer yielded some unexpected opportunities for leaf-peeping. The GAP, a massive rail-trail conversion linking downtown Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Maryland, allows uninterrupted
It’s not a rhetorical question, but it’s one that I would have struggled to answer until recently. After all, I’ve spent years exploring some of the dreariest corners of underperforming American retail: one
This article represents an interesting first. Frankly, I’m surprised it’s taken this long—15 years of blogging!—for someone to approach me about this while I was out snapping pics for my blog. Given that