And now for another eyesore and a neglect of duty

Click this link and take a look at the photos on the first two pages of the photo stream and then come back, go ahead I will wait.

The tenants of this house were packing up and moving out today after ten months of the landlord refusing to fix the leaking roofs, leaking plumbing, clogged sewer line, electircal problems, water heater problems, mold growing on the ceilings, the floors so bad tha the tenant actually fell through one as he was leading me through the house to take pictures.

Long story short, the building commisioners office was called a little bit before 3:30pm and told the tenants are moving out, and they want to make sure this slimlord is not able to put another family in this death trap of a house.

Building Inspector Ron Hartman all but flat out refused citing that he is supposed to get off work at 4:00pm.

I put the tenant on the phone with him, and he explained everything going on in the house, and how he will not be able to have access to the house after midnight, again, more concerned with getting off at 4:00pm than to get in the house while he has a chance, knowing full well once the willing tenant was gone, he could not enter the house with out the property owner asking him to come in (are building inspectores vampires where they can not cross a threshhold to a home unless invited?)

Thankfully, Pat Mclaughlin, John Gonder and Kevin Zurchmiede realized that their duties to serve this community does not necessarily end with a certain position on the dail of a watch.

I also hope these three take Hartman to task on his basic refusal to act.

more bars in more places...

Adding a little Decor

My Daughter, my Niece and a couple of friends decided to addd a little decoration to the front windows of the Family Health Center on Spring and Tenth for the parade Saturday.

A few hours and about $20 for poster paint and foam brushes, and the fate of my windows were sealed!

Question is do they still do this downtown for Harvest Homecoming?

First lines....

Below are the first lines in some of my favorite books and stories, care to name them?
(no particular order of favoritism)


"Call me Ishmael."

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."

"Not long after with my family to New HampshireI happened a path that into a wood on the edge of town."

"Barnardo: "Who's there?" "

" Lo! 'tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!"

"From my grandfather Verus I learned good morals and the government of my temper."

"When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods..."

Excellent Birding

Double-Crested Cormorant in Flight

Black-Crowned Night Heron
Capsian Tern In Flight



Osprey catching a fish

(please excuse the low quality of these photos, they are the raw product and have not been proccessed)
The processed photos can be seen HERE

The Falls of the Ohio is a hot bed of good birding opportunities right now. The young Osprey raised on the tower by the hydro-electric are pretty much full grown and very capable apex predators.

A small flock of Caspian Terns has taken up residence, taking advantage of the low water levels to target easily caught shad and Skip Jacks.

Like wise a very healthy population of both Black-crowned Night Heron, and Double-Crested Cormorants are doing very well in the shallower than normal waters catching fish and crayfish.

A large Beaver has also been spotted on multiple occasions, and is getting more accustomed to people, making him less reclusive.

A friend of mine has also photographed a perfect example of a Peregrine Falcon, and I have finally been able to capture a return of a healthy pair of American Kestrel. Unfortunately it has been since early spring that I last saw either the juvenile or mature Bald Eagles that were nesting in Loop Island Wetlands, and hunting the falls area for fish, ground hogs, opossums and the likes.

A New Project

Praktica was never known as the cream of the crop when it came to 35mm SLR Cameras, but this one is VERY special.
This is the camera that replaced my dads Kodak Retina, a camera that my dad would curse and scream about and claim that he didn't care if he got it from my grandpa, and how worthless it was, little did he realize that Retina is a GEM, and a highly valued part of photography collectibles, but I digress, This battle worn, tired and damaged Praktica bore witness to countless family vacations, it has hiked on the Appalachian Trail, trekked through the Badlands of South Dakota, waded the Marshes of the Barrier Islands of South Carolina, driven the entire length of the Blue Ridge Mountains, shot twisters in the plain states, and the sapphire blue waters of Lake Superior and the head waters of the Mississippi river.
This old camera had shot graduations, weddings, births, a hand full of crime scenes, one horrific shoot out scene, it has captured the images of many loved ones, both friends and family who are no longer with us. And more importantly it is a link between a father and a son whose passion for photography is a skill that was learned by watching, listening and being shown step by step.

During the days when my dads health was failing, and he was feeling weaker, while climbing rocks to take a picture of God only knows what on the West Prong of the Pigeon River on the Chimney Rock Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, he lost his footing on what he loudly cursed as a "bastard of a snot rock" he fell and broke his camera, cracking the upper body and damaging the aperture selection wheel, he never got it fixed, as a few months later he got in the foot pursuit and fight at White Castles, where he felt he was having a heart attack, and the course of treatment for that led to the discovery of a small shaded area in his chest on an xray, and since then his camera has been silently sitting in a closet, waiting for the promise to be repaired.

Years and years and years later it has come to me, with a request that it take its place on my monument to borderline OCD with cameras, ranging from the late 19th century film plate cameras, through the first "daylight cartridge camera" in a new sized format of 35mm, which allowed the user to change film in broad daylight and take up to 24 shots in glorious black and white, (remember the Retina mentioned............), to the forerunners of what today are called SLR cameras (single lens reflex).

This Camera deserves more than to shield a shelf from collecting dust under its footprint, and it deserve more than bringing it down every now again and shooting a shot or two out of it as a novelty to say "look, this 80 year old camera takes just as good of shots as this Nikon D-slr"

This Camera deserves to be lovingly and completely restored, polished and fixed and brought back to the glorious photos I know it is capable of. Simple to operate for a full manual SLR, ergonomic in its design, with the perfect blend between rock steady mechanical operations aided with electronic guides, a relic of a now gone "country" the German Democratic Republic or Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR), so with a little luck, some patience and a little elbow grease, the old mans baby will be working again in short order, and I would love to exact revenge on that bastard of a snot rock and take its portrait with my old mans camera that the snot rock tried to destroy........

The Ties That Bind Can Also Strangle

George Rogers Clark

“Every day of our lives we are on the verge of making those slight changes that would make all the difference.”
~ Mignon McLaughlin

There is no arguing the fact that our fair city is in a state of crisis. Crisis in the form of economics, infrastructure, politics and operations. Of that the vast majority of us can agree on.

The question is often asked “how did we get to this point?” or “Whose to blame?”. Some of us consistently point fingers and shake them blazingly in the face of our elected officials. Some of us blame other Joe Citizens who dare to express their concern or opinions. And others still feel it is prudent to keep slapping the surface of shit creek with the only paddles we have left by constantly attacking and belittling those who have valid points.

We can easily blame Colonial John Paul who purchased the land that is now New Albany from George Rogers Clark, who in turn let Joel, Abner, and Nathaniel establish the city of New Albany on this particular geographic location, or we can blame Mayor Alexander Burnett Sr. whose turn at wheel had seen the Indiana State Fair ground turned into Camp Noble, a civil war mustering grounds for Federal Troops. Or we can blame Mayor William Hart for being at the Helm when the last Steam Boat, the Robert E. Lee, was built in New Albany, sending the city into economic turmoil for a period. ( but the same railroads that some of curse is the one thing that saved this city from certain economic doom), or who can we blame for the city losing the American Plate Glass Company and its 2,000 jobs in 1893? Or what about blaming Jacob G. Hauswald for the devastating flood, which to this date is still the worst disaster ever to befall this city.

New Albany, Circa 1876

We place blame everywhere, and on everyone we can. The uncooperative business owners who bring blight and corruption to our neighborhoods, the shady slumlord who skirts his/her legal, moral, and ethical responsibilities to make a few bucks off of the backs of those who it has been said, “has no choice but to rent a place like that”.

We attack our Police and our Police Chiefs for not doing enough to deter crime, and yet other factions attack the same men and women for spending money to do their jobs.
Same with the Fire Department personnel. Blame and complain, blame and complain.
George Carlin put this best when he said: “Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?"

When we feel that we have begun to run out of figure heads to blame and complain about, we start on one another. What group are you aligned with? What Blog do you read? Who are your friends? Who are you related to?

The Reno Brothers Gang, Famous for the first peacetime train robberies, and for being killed by Lynch mobs in New Albany, the members of the Lynch mobs were never Identified or Charged with a Crime, the lynching creating an international incident, and international newpaper coverage. Yet today, factions in this city seem to think that sections of sidewalks being fixed is worthy of international protest.



Folks there is plenty of blame to go around, and there is plenty of situations going on that is worthy of placing blame somewhere, but in the end exactly where will that get you? It hasn’t worked in the last 30 years, and I doubt this game plan will start working anytime soon.

The ugly, undeniable truth is it is really easy to find who is to blame for all of these problems that are plaguing our city, and it doesn’t fall on the shoulders of the Mayor, nor does it fall on the shoulders of the City Council, the Code Enforcement Officer, or even the Police Chief, it doesn’t fall on the shoulders of the department heads of the building commission, street department, sewage department or private contractors who deal with our trash.

Steamers Robert E. Lee and the Natchez in the race from New Orleans to St. Louis, lithograph by Currier and Ives

If you want to find the people to blame, we need not look any further than our own mirrors. For generations now we, the citizens of this city, have sat back and complained and looked for people to blame, and each election that rolls around, we get wrapped up in the promises made, “elect me and it will be peaches and cream, and sunny days on easy street”, then we wait for the peaches and get the pits, and no one specified that it wasn’t going to be sour cream as we roast under the scorching sun on pothole riddled, cracked and broken Easy Street surrounded by run down rentals and mounts of yard debris.

Yes, its an ugly truth, and as the opening quote said: “Every day of our lives we are on the verge of making those slight changes that would make all the difference.”, and that’s the problem, we are always on the verge, but never quite cross the line to making a difference.

Little victories have been accomplished, but the British kept winning victories during the revolution, and we all know how that turned out for them, which leads us right back to George Rogers Clark selling what is now New Albany to Col. John Paul.

The point of this is simple, New Albany has a lot of history, some good, some horrid. And yet the city has survived. We ALL have a lot to offer this city, unique skills, and talents, but above all else we all share one thing that is more powerful than any “crooked” politician, or ineffective council member, we each have a vote, and if we each use that tool wisely we can change the landscape of this community.

Though it has become readily apparent that my opinions do not mean a damn thing to CFA, I would suggest that we come together as a community, leave the politicians out of it (Sorry John Gonder, I know you are one of the good guys), and we work TOGETHER to come up with plan to bring about change.

On its trip through New Albany's neighborhoods north of downtown around 3:30pm, widespread death and destruction resulted across a 90-block area. Many homes were destroyed and blown away and 54 people lost their lives. Several children were killed as the storm destroyed a school on the northwest side of town. Damage in New Albany, in current dollars, amounted to nearly $19 million.