Photo of the Day One
Power Plant, by Flickr user jazzmanzem
I've been thinking for a while now that I'd like to do a twice-daily photo post. See, I subscribe to quite a few Flickr groups, and I generally find myself saving quite a few of the better pictures for use as desktops and the like. Beyond sharing some of these great, scenic shots with my flist, I'd like to mainly feature snaps of areas around the Upper Midwest, just as a way of showing off a place I'm very proud to have grown up in and still call home. Along with posting the photo I'll try to write a little description of the image for context, at least as much as I'm capable of commenting knowledgeably on the subject.
This first is a photo of the Madison Gas & Electric Blount St. Generating Station, located right in the middle of the Isthmus here in Madison. When I first moved to Madison I lived in the shadow of these stacks, right along the shore of Lake Monona. There is a spillway from the plant at the end of my old street where clean, heated water was expelled into the lake. Even in the coldest parts of winter the ice wouldn't freeze all the way up to the spillway, leaving a place for waterfowl and fish to warm up. The main building of the plant (not visible from this side) dates from 1902 and features some pretty gorgeous brickwork.
Unlike most people I've talked to in Madison, I love having a power plant right in the middle of the city. At a rating of 190 megawatts (190 million watts), it's a very visible reminder of our power consumption, one you see whenever you're driving down West Washington Ave toward the Capitol or up John Nolen Drive on your way into town from the Beltline. When we come home on a Sunday night from a weekend trip to Chicago, the sight of it always reminds me to turn on only as many lights our place as necessary.