Taking a Train Out West
This year, my wife and I took a three week trip out west. We took the train for most of the way and it was fun. I enjoyed being able to look out the windows at the scenery without having to worry about the road ahead of me. One thing that did bother me a little was that there were so many times when I would have liked to have stopped and gotten a closer look at something and perhaps take some pictures.
We took thousands of pictures and I have over 600 posted on Flickr. I won't post that many on here, but I wanted to mention some of the problems of taking photos from a moving train. Focusing is impossible. If nothing else, the foreground will always be blurry. While shooting through windows, you have to deal with reflections, glare, tinting, dirt. Most importantly, you only get one chance because the train just keeps on moving down the line.
Update on the Bellflower Photos
I have some pictures of the Schowengerdt Memorial Christian Church in my gallery.
I didn't have much information about the church, but recently I received a note from the great-great-granddaughter of the city's founder, John W. Schowengerdt.
The note reads as follows: My father, Richard Schowengerdt, just passed away in Dec. of 2021 so now the property with the old church on it belongs to me but I am going to sign it over to an old family friend who lives in Bellflower (I am 67 years-old and I live in So. California).
My great-great-Grandfather donated several plots around town for the construction of churches, for any and all denominations the people desired; I have no idea what the original denomination of this particular old church was but whatever you discovered is probably correct.
Sincerely,
Maria Schowengerdt
The Unfortunate Name of DA
1: Facebook automatically reduces the quality of any posted photograph by something around 90%.
2: Anyone can get on DA or go to my DA gallery and do a word search to find pictures of topics they are interested in. My photographs aren't just for people I know.
3: Speaking of which, there is the boredom factor. Only a minority of my friends are interested in Route 66, turtles, abandoned farm houses. My stream of photographs would quickly become tedious and they would soon tune me out.
I'm sure there are other reasons than those (feel free to remind me of them).
But this conversation started when I replied to to one of his posts by posting a link to a photograph of Spencer's Grille on Route 66. Even after I explained what DeviantArt is, he would not visit the site because of his Christian morals, "I would like to see your stuff, but in MY case, I'm exremely unlikely to go to "deviantart" to find it!".
Keep in mind Flickr has many of the same issues that DA has, but my my friends and family have no reservations of visiting that site. The problem is less about the content of the site and mostly about the name.
I have atheist relatives who won't visit the site for much of the same reason and anyone who has a government issued laptop can not go to DevianArt without jeopardizing their career.
Updates
I was unable to find any information on the web about this and so it's origins were a mystery. This past week I took my wife's car over to a dent removal shop in Illinois. We were going to have to kill about 5 hours so I did a quick internet search and added the word "haunted" to my internet search. Lo and behold one of the top results was something for Sweetin Mansion. I want to look into this a bit more and then update the photo descriptions, but briefly, it was built in 1848 with three floors, walnut woodwork, a grand ballroom, three foot thick walls, and it had a natural stream running through the basement. So far, one source is claiming that the building was destroyed by treasure hunters looking for hidden gold. On a less happy note i revisited the site of a church that was being torn down
. What I had last read about this place was that the new owners of the property were going to build a big new house that would incorporate a lot of the stone from the old church. When I drove by the site this week I was disappointed to see that they instead built two McMansions and there is no sign of any of the old stone. Here in the St. Louis area there are some Route 66 food establishments that I've wanted to visit but I haven't because they wouldn't have anything my wife would eat. So my solution was to take my father instead. We started off going to the EAT-RITE diner where the only vegetable choice would fries with or without ketchup. And then we headed to the DONUT DRIVE IN. I brought some donuts home, but my wife made me keep them in my office. I hope to get those pictures posted soon.
Feeling Kind of Fuzzy
But this year it seems like I'm never able to gather and post my thoughts in a coherent manner.
I just got a CPAP machine this week. I'm hoping that once I get used to wearing scuba gear to bed, I might get better rest at night and that that will help matters. I hope so.