White stamens with tiny puff, originally uploaded by Aunt Christina.

Well, I've been meaning to post for a couple of days, but it's been a crazy couple of days and I haven't gotten around to it. Work has been busy, with teen summer reading in full swing and programs like Recycled Crafts (where we made a wallet out of an old audio cassette tape, and tried to finger-weave a lei out of plastic grocery bags-- but did not have much success because despite doing it twice before at workshops, I just couldn't get the hang of it using only the photo directions :-( And we had a horse show at the farm two weeks ago; I took a bunch of photos of "my" horses in that, which you can see on my Flickr stream. (It rained for a solid hour during the English riding portion of the horse show, then the sun came out for the last half, when all the Western classes were on: does someone Up There have something against English riding style? :-)

My July Fourth started on Friday night with some great fireworks at the public park in Independence, Ohio--great place to be on Independence Day, eh? My friend Peggy had invited me along with her family and friends to watch the display together. I took some pretty decent fireworks photos, had some burgers and fair food, enjoyed the company. Then early Sat. morning I was up and in downtown Kent for the annual Kent Heritage Festival, which is a daylong party in the streets with craft and jewelry vendors, information booths, kids activities, a classic car show, lots of food vendors, and live music and dance troups on 3 stages. I sat at the PDC (Portage Democratic Coalition) booth for several hours, asking folks to sign a petition to get Single Payer Health Care onto the ballot in Ohio. Not the most fun way to spend the day--lots of people heard our "get health care for all Ohioans" plea and said "oh but I've got health care!" as if we were personally handing out health care to people. Sigh. And one woman was just so steamed at the idea that she spent five minutes yelling at the top of her lungs at us, despite our calm requests for her to stop yelling and just tell us her opinion like a civilized human being. We weren't twisting anyone's arm, it's just a petition to get the legislature to consider the idea for crying out loud. Anyway, that was a bit disconcerting. But I had the company of my good friend Kat and we enjoyed the weather (70's, sunny then overcast) and the smells (if not the sight) of the pig roasting on a spit right across the way from our booth. (!) The new cajun restaurant was advertising its pulled pork sandwiches (which were very tasty) with this poor naked burning pig, blecch. Quite a risky endeavor considering all of the vegetarians who live in Kent! But it was a very oft-photographed attraction...

The highlight of the day for me was getting to ride in the caboose! Of a train! Whoo-whoo!

It was only a twenty-minute ride up and back on the tracks running from downtown up along the river, but it benefitted the chamber of commerce and I've never been in a caboose before, so it was fun. We got to sit up high in the "cupola" seat and everything. Felt just like a little kid. Even had to wait at a crossing for the dumb car drivers to finish racing across the tracks: evidently the crossing arm didn't go down when it was supposed to, because we were sitting there for a few minutes blowing our whistle as these idiots kept driving across, right in front of us! Makes you wonder about people's IQ sometimes.



After the train ride we walked around enjoying the festivities, and ate a "butterfly fry", which my Nebraska friend cannellfan informs me is called a "spiral spud" or something like that where he comes from. I'd never seen these before, they were quite tasty--made out of one giant Idaho potato spun into one long curly strip. It was like a series of potato chips connected into one strip. Mmm.

I was to end the day with a quick jaunt down to the riverbank to watch the River Ducks Race: they drop about 1,000 rubber ducks (each sponsored for $5) into the river and the first duck to make it to the ending point wins. Something, I'm not sure what (enduring glory and its own song? Oh but Ernie already wrote that song.). So after stopping home to feed the horses I parked at the Kent Free Library and walked down the street to go to the river. THEN DISASTER STRUCK. (cue dramatic music, or rather, the silly Benny Hill music) As I prepared to cross the street at the curb, I looked up for cars, there were none, I glanced back down and stepped off the curb but wasn't looking closely and CRASH! I fell down. Landed on the outside of my right ankle instead of the bottom of my foot. I think I misjudged where I was on the curb; I thought I was on the high curb when I was angled to go over the ramped curb cut instead, so I had farther to land. I dunno, either way I'm an idiot. Passersby were very nice and helped me back up. Now I was mad, because all I wanted to do was see the silly ducks and then I was going to drive to my parents' house to enjoy a fried chicken picnic with them. So I hobbled over to see the ducks anyway, because I was that stubborn (and I was practically there anyway). That turned out to be more entertaining than expected, because one of the girls who dumped the box also had balance issues and slipped into the river! Got soaking wet. It was pretty funny, after we determined she wasn't hurt at all. (Those photos haven't been uploaded just yet, but the little duckies are very cute.) Then I drove home and asked my parents to come to me instead of me bringing the food to them.

Ever since then I've been resting my ankle, icing it, keeping it wrapped and elevated. I have had other people feeding the horses so I don't have to worry about that job, and I stayed home from the library for 3 days in a row. The ankle's much better now, still keeping it wrapped and staying off it as much as possible. But the swelling's all gone and it doesn't hurt unless I bump it. I have nearly all of my mobility back, but I'm not walking on it yet. I've been learning the fine art of walking on crutches, as well as a walker and a cane borrowed from friends, and I even used my office chair at home as a wheelchair :-) I will never take two good legs for granted again, lemme tell ya....

Rusted snowy remains, originally uploaded by Aunt Christina.

Meant to post this Friday as soon as I had the photos, but I ran out of time as I was going out with friends to see Bolt in 3-D (adorable fun movie, I highly recommend it, though you totally can skip the 3D, it doesn't really add much). Then Saturday was our library's special joint private screening of Twilight for our teens (another fun movie! They did the book justice, yay! And we had over a hundred teens come, double yay!) so I got distracted by all of that. But today's a lazy Sunday and I wanted to share my interesting experience from Friday morning.

On Thursday afternoon a CSX coal train derailed as it was zooming through Kent, Ohio, the town where I went to college. No one was injured, thankfully, but 13 cars left the tracks, spilling coal everywhere and slightly damaging the bridge they were passing under. You can read more details from the Akron Beacon Journal and the Kent-Ravenna Record-Courier--they had photographers on the scene immediately so they got really dramatic closeups of the spilled coal and etc. Well, I've never seen a train wreck before, and my inner photojournalist was screaming at me to go see what I could see and shoot what I might find interesting. Couldn't go right away, however, because Thursday night after horses I had an invitation to a jewelry party at a friend's house--friends with whom I haven't talked in years and whose new house I hadn't seen before, so I'm hardly gonna skip out on them despite the fact that a) there was a blizzard in progress and b) I'm not really a jewelry shopper. So, argh, had to wait til Friday morning to go stomping about the riverbanks. (Wouldn't have seen much in the dark anyway, though I later saw large lights on poles because, as I learned, they worked throughout the night clearing the tracks.)


This is a bulldozer shoving spilled coal out of the way in order to make room for replacement track to be laid. The Crain Ave. Bridge is in the background, with a worker walking across.

It was quite a little adventure, because the weather was fierce. Beautiful snowstorm, but it was quickly covering up all the train car wreckage, so as I photographed them I was thinking they looked more like stuff you'd find in an old junkyard, sitting neglected for years, than they looked like the results of a fresh accident. It lent a melancholiness to the scene, I guess, and also spoke about the passing of time or something, if you wanna get philosophical about it all. I just wanted to document some of it for myself. By the time I arrived they'd cleared all of the cars off the tracks and were working on laying replacement tracks.


Workers assist as a crane (yellow thing) lifts a section of new track into place.

I couldn't get closeup shots because the Crain Ave. bridge, which they'd been passing under when they messed up, was closed to traffic. So I had to content myself with shooting from the high bank above the tracks. Kent has 2 sets of train tracks going through town, one upper set on the ground level, as it were, that pulls up beside the old 1870's train station (now a restaurant) and the Williams Brothers Mill, a grain mill that still produces a lot of grain that gets shipped around the country. That's where I was. Then there is the lower set of tracks, about 15 feet down, along the Cuyahoga River, where trains pass through that are not stopping in Kent. You can get a better idea from this photo, taken from the other bridge, the Main Street Bridge, facing upstream:


The Cuyahoga River is at far left, then the lower tracks (with the headlight of a train engine visible--it had pulled in a flatbed stacked with new track sections), and then the upper tracks. There is a boxcar barely visible up there, right at the mill. They have this cool funnel to shoot grain down into a traincar, I've always meant to take photos of that sometime. But I digress...


Those lower tracks go underneath two bridges, and this illfated train of 119 cars (yoiks!) was doing just that when it derailed. Luckily the bridge was hardly damaged at all, because 15,000 cars drive over it every day, but it's still closed while they repair the damaged sewer lines underneath it, which the train smashed. And this 40-year old bridge is due to be replaced next year, so I suppose it was a good thing this wreck happened now, to the old bridge, and not to a brand-new span. Anyway, I walked all around town up and down the river, both banks, trying to get shots through all of the trees. We have a lovely wooded riveredge, with a park and trails, but right now it was in my way! :-) Oh well. What started out as a "photojournalist wanna be" trek turned into an Ansel Adams-type landscape photo shoot, as I kept getting distracted by the gorgeous snow covering everything.





Just wished the light had been better--but I can't have it both ways, can I, you either get sunshine or you get falling snow :-) Rarely both!I couldn't shoot with gloves on, however, so I had to stop far sooner than I wanted to or get frostbite. Plus my car was getting buried in snow after only a few minutes! And this is the stuff I like to do in the snow, not ski on it or sled down it, but tramp in it and shoot it....sigh...
As always, if interested you can see more photos at my Flickrstream.

Today on my day off I ran a bunch of errands, and ended the trip at the Borders store at the mall, where I was eager to use my Members Reward of 40% off a boxed DVD set. :-) (Yes Red, I'm one of those people who buys tv shows on DVD, but just til I get caught up on collecting my favorites)  Anyway, as I casually sauntered across the parking lot, right in front of the doors, I tripped on a pothole and went s.l.o.w.l.y. down on my knees, swearing profusely (no kids around)....right in front of a moving car, of course. Yikes! and, Ouch! Plenty of room for the driver to see me and stop, thankfully, and ask if I was okay. I said I was--even though I'd twisted my ankle and scraped my knees and was in rather a bit of pain, old chap... But my coupon expired today! Must! Use! Coupon! So I dragged my bleeding self inside the store to the cool air and over to the restroom to clean myself up. As I hobbled to the checkout to purchase my precious Season 3 Babylon Five, I felt a little like I'd been through a battle to capture the hard-won prize....Okay mostly I felt like a clumsy idiot....

Now I plan to spend the rest of the day in comfort in front of the computer, leg propped up. And, maybe in front of the tv, where I just happen to have another season of the best scifi show ever to watch now. ;-) I certainly appreciate this set more than the ones I blithely snagged off of Amazon...