So many nights I'd sit by my window: austin

austin_dern

So many nights I'd sit by my window

Oct 11, 2024 00:10

Sister's family made it through the storm okay, with no serious harm to people, animals, or house, as I hear it. So that's a relief. It has got me wondering what their evacuation plan is in case of need, but I imagine they have a plan in mind, or else are forming one now.

In brighter news, as it were, I saw the aurora tonight! It was bright enough that I could see the sky colored red with my bare and weakening eyes, never mind what it looks like in camera. Meanwhile after the roundup of the humor blog's postings for the past month I'll get back to the last of that walk around the neighborhood I took last spring, and why I took photos of what may seem boring stuff after buying chocolate that I finished eating as long ago as last month.

So here's an average, unexceptional-looking street crossign in our neighborhood. But do you see what's special about it?

Yeah so for whatever reason this intersection hasn't gotten upgraded to the modern styles of traffic lights and cross/dont-cross signs and all, and it's apparently the last in the neighborhood with the old-fashioned signals.

Words on the walk/don't-walk sign. Most everywhere else has gone to icons instead.

Not sure just how old the rusted-out 'To Cross Street' sign is. It looks ancient but for all I know it's from 2019 and just gets a lot of icy slush.

Some better-looking signs that still seem to have had some elements shoved at them.

Liz's Alteration Shop, here, was destroyed in a fire and they've been rebuilding it without the house in back (which was a total loss) and they've gone and put on a new peaked roof and changed the frontage all around so that I had to go back to google street views and make sure it was the spot I thought this was.

Looking east along Michigan Avenue. As part of a major, year-and-a-half reconstruction project, they're tearing up and rebuilding the whole street and doing a lot of sidewalk work and for some reason part of that is cutting down all these trees. They'll be replaced, yes, but it'll be decades before the replacements look like this.

So some more of the spring that wouldn't be anything. Note across the street the Office Furniture Outlet and Supplies, which was closed in like 2018 when the landlord hiked up the rent, and which hasn't been replaced with anything, so thanks, land speculators, you're screwing everything up.

And a look down to the block we're most interested in, the one that has the hipster bar and also one of the three comic book shops in walking distance.

Trivia: While driving downhill from North Ray on the third moonwalk Apollo 16 astronauts John Young and Charles Duke kept gaining speed, coming to 17 kilometers per hour, despite having brakes on all the while. Source: Across the Airless Wilds: The Lunar Rover and the Triumph of the Final Moon Landings, Earl Swift. (Swift is not clear whether Young was reading something off the speedometer or whether he was making a fanciful claim.)

Currently Reading: The Emerald City of Oz, L Frank Baum. Marvel Comics adaptation by Eric Shanower, Skottie Young.

lansing, humor