Posts Tagged ‘Pennsylvania’
To the world’s ruin
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator had been planning a Pennsylvania day trip for a while, one which would see him piloting the Mobile Oppression Platform (the MOP) on a two hour long, mostly north western journey, from Pittsburgh to Pennsylvania’s Venango County.
As is my habit for ‘away games,’ a fair amount of research back at HQ was undertaken. A Google Map was created with a series of way points and destination markers to follow and order the day. I always build an itinerary which would be fairly impossible to accomplish in one go, but there you are. Weather forecasts for the destination had been observed for the preceding week. A final embarkation date was arrived at in the last 48 hours before the trip, as to which of two or three candidate dates might be atmospherically propitious for the effort. Every day is D-Day for me – gotta get it right or you’re wasting your time, and there’s no greater sin than wasting time.
One left HQ, in Pittsburgh’s Borough of Dormont, at 4:30 in the morning and it was just 31 degrees Fahrenheit outside when I did. A companion was going to be coming along on this one, whom I’d pick up not too far from the half way point on my journey, at about 5:45 a.m.
The plan was to arrive just as the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself was rising in the vault of the sky. I was counting on fog rising off of the Allegheny River, in its hinterlands, but not quite as much fog as the peas soup we encountered upon arrival.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The night before this trip saw me emptying the camera bag out, and cleaning up all the equipment. Dust was blown off the lenses, an inventory of the bag’s contents accomplished, and everything was packed back up for travel. I would be bringing the full kit.
Clothing for the day was also laid out the night before, so as to not disturb Our Lady of the Pentacle or ‘razz up’ Moe the Dog at 4 in the morning. Also, a sandwich was constructed, the water bottle filled, and travel plan reviewed. I had even put the sandwich and the water bottle in the car so I didn’t forget them. It was colder without than inside my refrigerator, so…
As a note: I’m an absolute moron and klutz in the mornings, prior to having inhaled a few cups of coffee. Anything that I’ve left for myself to do in the early hours – other than ‘blow ballast’ in the lavatory, shower, and dress – has a 50/50 chance of successful completion. Long experience has taught me to handle all the fine details of preparation on the night before an adventure lest something gets left behind.
Leaving little to chance, and advance planning, is my way. It’s also why I’m seldom late for appointments.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was a somewhat harrowing drive. One thing about the so called ‘red counties’ surrounding Pittsburgh that I just don’t understand revolves around street lighting. If you’re a Conservative, please explain this one to me in the comments section. Does street lighting, along major highways, somehow impugn your freedom? Do you just not want to pay for it? I really don’t get this one from a public safety POV, but as a prophylactic measure I activated the ‘brights’ on the Mobile Oppression Platform’s (MOP’s) head lamps and drove north cautiously.
One has recently became aware of a statistic affecting this part of the nation, which states that a Pennsylvania driver has a 1 in 59 chance of wrecking their car by hitting a deer, sometime during their driving career.
You know what would help shrink that deer statistic? Proper, and endemic, street lighting… but I digress…
One made it to the halfway point, where I was meant to pick up my traveling companion, in Pennsylvania’s City of Butler. After we tucked his gear into the back of the MOP, the northernly pathway was resumed. We arrived here, at the first destination on my Google Map just as the sky began to lighten up.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That anticipated fog was omnipresent, but was a great deal thicker and more opaque than I had counted on. A temperature inversion had occurred, which saw the atmospheric milieu shift from temperatures in the the high 70’s just a day before, then absolutely collapse into overnight temperatures in the high 20’s and low 30’s. It was definitively freezing out, but the Allegheny River’s water hadn’t received the memo and it was still about 50-60 degrees (that’s Fahrenheit for you euros and canucks). Thick slabs of fog and mist thereby occluded the first destination I had pegged for the day’s effort.
I like to start these photo expeditions at a point of elevation, it should be mentioned. The location we were in was an overlook park set against a steep hill. The river was flowing about 800 or so feet below us, but you could not discern the small city below us for love or money.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is something else I plan for, unexpected circumstance. We took a few photos of the fog, as you’ve probably noticed by now. There were two central locations we were meant to visit on this day, with the first one being where we were – the community of Oil City, Pennsylvania. The second was about twenty miles north of here – up in Titusville, Pennsylvania. Given the atmospheric conditions here in Oil City, we decided to reverse the order of the various waypoints on my map and return here later in the day. We hopped into the MOP and drove a short distance up to Titusville to see ‘it.’
All those years on NYC’s Newtown Creek, where the oil pipelines and rail shipments of crude petroleum ‘product’ were heading to for distillation in the 19th century, had made the names of these two communities quite familiar to me from historical research about the oil business. This is where the petroleum destined for refinement and distillation in Brooklyn and Queens, along the fabulous Newtown Creek, originally came from.
We found our way to ‘it.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
By ‘it,’ I mean the Drake Well. The site of the very first modern, and commercial, oil well, on the planet. Dug in 1859. U.S.A.! More on that one tomorrow in what very well might be the longest post I’ve offered in years.
What you’re looking at is the spot where the end of the world started.
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Youghiogheny River Lake
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In 1806, the National Road was conceived and funded by the United States’ first President and Congress with the goal of providing an east west route out of Washington D.C., to enable westward expansion, trade, and travel. Today, it’s called Route 40 and it’s a part of the Interstate Highway system, which incorporates several local roads into its path. After visiting the Great Cross in Pennsylvania’s Jumonville (described yesterday), on a day trip out of Pittsburgh, a humble narrator piloted his Mobile Oppression Platform into the corduroy landscapes of the Laurel Highlands. Along the way, in a mist choked ‘hollow,’ the 1944 vintage Youghiogheny River Lake was encountered. I felt the need to pull off the National Road and get a few shots of the lake. That’s the bridge which Route 40 rides across it, in the shot above.
There was a scheduled destination which I was trying to make, in Western Maryland, but as always – I had left HQ in Pittsburgh early and built time into the schedule for moments of serendipity.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I didn’t venture too far from my route, and these shots were gathered in the parking lot of a recreational marina along Route 40, which sat on a small prominence overlooking the water. The Youghiogheny River is dammed nearby, by a United States Army Corps of Engineers installation that provides flood control, and is also a hydroelectric generating station which adds 12 megawatts of power to the electrical grid.
The Youghiogheny River is a tributary of the Monongahela River, which starts its southeastern journey away from ‘the Mon’ back in the Pittsburgh satellite city of McKeesport. The river is 132 miles long, and the ‘Yough’s’ drainage hinterlands ultimately flow into a watershed feeding into the somewhat distant Mississippi River. There’s a huge tourism and sport fishing industry here at the lake, which is also used as a drinking water resovoir, and the waterfront here draws about a million visitors a year to an otherwise quite rural area.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While I was shooting these photos, a few codgers were getting ready to lower their boats into the water, off of pickup towed trailers, and they were getting ready to try their luck at harvesting fish. The lake is stocked annually, I’m told, by the USACE and the Pennsylvania Game people with a variety of game species like trout.
This was my first time roaming about in this part of the country, and along the route I encountered something I’ve never witnessed before – National Parklands which were once battlegrounds. In the case of one of these parks, Fort Necessity, the battles occurred before the birth of the United States itself, during the French and Indian War in 1754. Everywhere you go, there’s something ‘George Washington’ related.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This was largely a scouting mission for me, part of learning about the greater region which Pittsburgh is at the center of. Pittsburgh is a cultural and financial megalopolis separate and distinct from the massive East Coast’s seaboard megalopolis, with New York at its center, or the Great Lakes megalopolis centered around by the zone between Detroit and Chicago. If you’re unfamiliar with the megalopolis concept, here’s a Wikipedia page that sums it up.
I’m making an effort, at the moment, to explore the edges of my new home. I’m using what the local CBS station’s weather people display on their forecast map as one of my guides to map it out. The weather map I see on the news extends into the middle of Ohio, the north side of West Virginia, Pennsylvania’s city of Erie to the north, and to Western Maryland to southeast. The latter is where I was heading on this particular morning.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Also found along the route to Western Maryland, but much closer to Pittsburgh, is the Laurel Caverns outfit. I remember seeing photos of the caverns on a View-Master disc when I was a little kid, and I’ve always wanted to experience them for myself. That’ll be one of my winter day trips, though. For you youngsters, an analog version of ‘Tik Tok’ travel videos is what View-Master offered several generations before the digital era happened.
This was actually quite a drive. I had started out at about 5 in the morning, with a thermos of coffee, a full bottle of ice water (and a Genoa Salami sandwich) in the car. For vast stretches of the route, the speed limit along this route is quite high, sometimes it was 70 mph. Other sections go through towns and cities, and the speed limit drops as low as 25 mph, or 15 in school zones. Traffic lights pop up here and there as well. I could have gone a bit out of my way and taken the high speed Pennsylvania Turnpike, but then I would have had to pay a bunch of tolls and missed all the cool stuff I saw without gaining a significant advantage in terms of travel time.
As mentioned – scouting for the future, that’s me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As is my habit, I had extensively researched the route in advance and had a number of saved locations plugged into Google Maps. At one point, I passed by signage extolling the fact that the Mason Dixon line had just been crossed and I was officially in the ‘South.’
More tomorrow, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
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An ‘off’ evening
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One forces himself to get out and shoot, even when ‘I’m not feeling it.’ Such was the case a few weeks ago when a humble narrator drove over to West End Overlook Park to crack out a few exposures. It was foggy/misty out, and low lying clouds had obliterated any notion of light from the vault above. I was hoping for atmosphere, but I got ‘murk.’ The wrong time of day, and the wrong day as well. Bleh.
So, why do I present these shots as part of today’s post? Because I think it’s important to show the ‘screw up’ stuff along with your more precious shots, that’s why. As often mentioned, I’m always messing around with the various formulas I use when shooting. In the case of the shot above, that experimentation didn’t work out as intended. Technically speaking, it’s all there – sharpness, etc. – but the shot just doesn’t ’click.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On a slightly happier note, I met a deer. Pittsburgh has a deer problem, I’m told, one which revolves around an overpopulation in the abundant urban forests of the City’s suburbs and parks. The multitudinous Deer thereby find their normal food depleted and scarse due to their reproductive success, which in turn causes these sprits of the forest out onto city streets, and highways, and into the neighborhoods in search of forage causing a dangerous situation for man and beast alike. Y’see a lot of dead deer along the highways in the region. I mean… a LOT.
This situation has spawned a wonderful political argument, incidentally, which I’ve been following all summer.
– One group of ‘nature loving ex hippies’ want the government to distribute contraceptives to the deer. I’ve been waiting for a reaction by the Catholic Church to this plan.
– Another group, best described as ‘guys with pickups, beards, and guns’ have offered to just hunt and kill all the deer in Pittsburgh, so ‘problem solved’ if only the Government would get out of their way.
It got pretty political, pretty fast, this story. I enjoyed the heck out of it, while reading the local newspaper and watching the TV news. Nobody suggested releasing Wolves or some other large predator, but that’s the most effective control mechanism there is for Deer. An adult wolf eats about 50-60 pounds of meat a week, I’m told. I like that one best.
To combat this particular pickle, the Mayor’s office of the City of Pittsburgh has decided to allow an organized posse of 50 specially licensed bow hunters to cull the herd, under scientific and the State game authority’s guidance, in the various urban parks and wooded areas wherein the beasts dwell and multiply. The archers will be allowed a limited number of kills, but the meat from some percentage of their prey will be given to needy families that live on public assistance. No word on the contraceptive angle, yet, although the political estate promises new solutions next year.
The nation in a nutshell, this.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This shot is better than the first one for me. It ‘clicks’ to my eye. More or less the same settings but what’s the difference… composition? Subject? (West End Bridge over Ohio River with Rivers Casino and I think that’s Pennsylvania Route 65, aka the 65th Infantry Division Memorial Highway) I really don’t know.
That’s the whole point of forcing myself out into the world, I guess. Sometimes it pays off. Most of the time, in fact… but there’s the odd ‘off’ day where nothing much works.
Funny thing is, as I was driving home, I absolutely knew that the contents of my camera memory card weren’t all that enticing. I was annoyed by this, in fact. A humble narrator, thereby declared that he’d have to go back immediately.
I went back to HQ, set an early alarm, and was driving back to this spot, in the dark, at about 5:45 in the morning. Check that sequence out on Monday, lords and ladies – at your Newtown Pentacle.
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“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
Whiskey Boys Trail
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I find myself having to head over to Home Depot about once a month for some needed gizmo or material or tool or ‘something random.’ The drive to the nearest outpost of the retail giant takes me from the Pittsburgh suburb of Dormont through another town, dubbed Scott Township, on my way to a third community called Bridgeville (which counterintuitively doesn’t have all that much going on in the way of bridges). About midway through the 20 minute drive from Dormont, where HQ is located, I’ve been noticing signage indicating the presence of the “Whiskey Boys Trail” and “Kane Woods.”
Normally this sort of thing ain’t exactly my bag, but Moe the Dog prospers in natural areas. I still can’t let him off the leash, as he’s a puppy and thereby a total idiot, but part of his training and development requires trees and dirt. I don’t like taking him places that I haven’t checked out first, so… Hence.
A good dog is a tired dog, that’s the mantra.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There are basically three or four paths set into a fairly steep hill here. Every now and then, you’ll find a visual break in the ‘sylvania’ thing and see a road, or as in the case of the shot above, a bunch of utility poles. An hour’s drive from Pittsburgh will land you in actual, real woods, the kind people go hunting in and which are known for Sasquatch sightings. This ain’t that, but after shlepping around this trail for about an hour or so I realized that the little bastard would love this spot.
I’ve since returned with Moe, who proceeded to pull me up a hill at running puppy speeds. He ate about 25 pounds of spotted lantern flies, composted a few cubits worth of sticks and branches with his snapping puppy jaws, and was generally exhausted after we returned back home. He slept for an hour, puked lantern fly parts, and was a bit calmer than normal for about 24 hours. Then he bit me in the crotch again.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Moe has the advantage on this sort of substrate, I would mention, with his quadruped stance and pointy toes. I was wearing a pair of Merrel hiking boots with nearly bald soles, and he more or less was able to drag my fat butt anywhere he wanted to. If I had a sled with me, we could have delivered presents to orphans.
Back next week.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
Liberty, from on high
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another day, another Doctor’s appointment. As mentioned, this is one of the household projects at the moment. When you relocate, one of the things you lose is the network of various medical specialities which you’ve been a customer of. Meeting the new Doctor means that they’re going to want to run some tests to establish a baseline for their arts, and one of the things which Pittsburgh gets a huge recommendation for is the quality and abundance of its healthcare sector.
I should mention, this ain’t nothing like NYC where you gotta wait six months for an appointment or spend two hours on hold to talk to somebody. Things are actually functional here, and the time you spend with the Doc has zero relation to the amount of rent they have to pay some vampire in the Real Estate Industrial Complex.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Don’t get me wrong, the Real Estate people are very much here, they’re just not able to fully immerse their claws and fangs into every little thing the way they do in NYC. Pittsburgh learned the lesson of what happens when you allow one corporate sector to rule the roost and control the discourse. Every Doctor appointment in Pittsburgh, so far, has been fairly relaxed and complete. In fact, they often want to do more for me than I’m comfortable with. One of the docs I met with, a “GP,” was handed an 8 page comic book I drew for the occasion detailing my various physical issues. I told him it was a user’s manual.
The section in today’s post is called Liberty, I’m told. It’s nearby the Universities, but not too close. The people on the streets seemed a bit younger here, and it seemed like a cool neighborhood to live in if you want a more urban vibe. Apartment houses rather than private homes, but as you can see above – there were plenty of those too. This neighborhood hosts what (I guess) used to be called the ‘Western Pennsylvania Hospital’ that’s currently operated by the monolithic UPMC organization.
As a note, those homes are what I’d observationally describe as fairly typical “Pittsburgh houses” with the bricked front porches and tiny front yards. You’ll notice several of them hosting awnings, which aren’t fabric but metal instead, and those are also pretty common features. Saying that, this shot looks directly across the street from a hospital, so those are probably Doctor and Nurse and Med Student dwellings.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On my way back to HQ, there was a traffic accident somewhere in front of me so I ended up cooling my heels on the highway for a while with the car in ‘park.’ I took the opportunity to open the Mobile Oppression Platform’s moon roof and crack out a few of the kind of shots you normally can’t get when you’re hurtling along at .065 of the speed of sound.
The Pennsylvania peeps use the speed limit as a suggested starting point or as a ‘minimum speed’ indication. You’ll be doing 60 in a 40 mph zone and somebody in a Ford 150 will scream past you at 80 or 90.
Back tomorrow, and please remember to share this post on your socials if you dug it.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
The Newtown Pentacle 