A Tempestuous Relationship

The sky is so mean to me sometimes, I honestly forget why I stick with it.

Today's newspaper, for example, revealed that it's given me just four clear days since Dec 1. Four! Certainly such abusive negligence is sufficient grounds for divorce in any court in the land.

But then, just when on I'm the verge of filing the necessary papers, it unexpectedly gives me something like this and all is forgiven:

Jan 30, 2012 - 5:46 PM

Jan 30, 2012 - 5:50 PM

Jan 30, 2012 - 5:54 PM

I'm such a sucker for a pretty sky.

If it ends up dropping a tornado on my head someday, I'll have no one to blame but myself....

Now You See It, Now You Don't (2)

Central Ohio's Japanese Tea House isn't the only well-known structure that's disappearing this month.

Seneca County's courthouse in the county seat of Tiffin is disappearing, too.

After a bitter fight lasting the better part of the last decade, county commissioners finally decided to demolish the structure late last year after savage state budget cuts left them with no good way to pay for the necessary renovations.

This is apparently the first time that an Ohio courthouse on the National Register of Historic Places will have been demolished. It will leave a big hole in the center of Tiffin - a hole that won't be filled any time soon, if ever. Trials and other normal courthouse functions are apparently being held in a "temporary" location that is hard if not impossible for those in wheelchairs to get into.....

Like many of the Ohio courthouses built in the 1800s, Tiffin's (built in 1884) used to be a pretty impressive place.

Here's a postcard view of it, circa 1944:

And here's a more recent view:

I think it was back in the 1950s that the original clock tower was replaced by a streamlined version that never failed to startle me as I passed by during my semi-regular trips through town in the 1980s and 1990s. (Apparently Seneca County has a long history of not being able to come up with the money to do things right.)

Here are two views from the last few weeks:

Jan 4, 2012

Jan 24, 2012


If this destruction were the prelude to bigger and better things it would of course be much easier to accept. Instead, it seems like just one more sign of the decline and fall of Ohio (if not the US as a whole).

Like so much of Ohio, Tiffin seems to have peaked in about 1970. Since that time it's lost nearly 20% of its population. It now has significantly fewer people than it did in 1950.

Is there a limit to the decline short of zero?

I don't know.

But I don't think I'd bet on things bouncing back much in my lifetime.


(To learn much more about all this, go here. Want to get a better idea of what's being lost? Go here and here.)

The Gap

Jan 15, 2012 - 5:28 PM

Jan 28, 2012 - 5:43 PM

Jan 29, 2012 - 5:37 PM


Note to Mother Nature: Two weeks between visible sunsets is much too long. Don't get me wrong - I really do appreciate the 16 minutes of additional light you've given us in the evenings since Jan 15, but... I miss seeing the sun's slow day-by-day shimmy to the north. Why, the point at which it disappears from view has moved almost an entire house width under the cloak of this month's clouds! This will not do. Please reform your ways immediately. Thank you. (PS - If you're still requiring animals to kill and eat each other in order to survive, I don't want to know.)

Seven Things I Learned This Week

----- Since 1961 more than 200,000 Americans have served in the Peace Corps. (They've worked in 139 different countries.)

----- 10,000 manhole covers are stolen in Bogota, Colombia every year. (That's about 4% of Bogota's 250,000 total manhole cover inventory.)

----- There are about 5600 Taco Bell restaurants in operation these days. (That's about 1000 fewer than 12 years ago.)

----- About 60,000 novels were published during the Victorian Age (1837-1901). (About 30,000 novels were published in the US last year.)

----- The adhesive on US stamps can withstand temperatures ranging from 158 degrees (Fahrenheit) to 40 degrees below zero. (That's just one of the ways US stamps are better than I am.)

----- About $58.8 billion dollars are spent on lottery tickets every year in the US. (About $18 billion of that is profit - roughly 31% - for the 43 states and the District of Columbia that run these lotteries.)

----- The oldest inmate in Ohio's prison system is 90.


I suppose that's more than 7 things, if you want to get technical. (I don't.)

I hope you've learned at least as much. (Learning, after all, can be a fine distraction from bad weather.)

Caught In The Act

King Of The Yard

Today would not have been a good day for you to put on your favorite gray sweatshirt and then scurry around my patio like a mouse....

According to my less than perfect records, this is the first time I've seen this guy since December 14. I bet he's been around when I haven't been looking, though. Predators are like that.

Sunday's newspaper told me that hawks like this have become increasingly prevalent in Ohio's suburban areas during the last 10-15 years. Apparently more and more people are putting seed out for the birds, inadvertently turning their yards into smorgasbords for hawks in the process.

Although the newspaper assured me that hawk attacks have little impact on the overall population of birds, the impact they can have on individual birds seems indisputably impactful - especially if I happen to catch a glimpse of that impactfulness while I'm trying to eat my lunch.

Just last week I'd tried to minimize the dangers of hawk attacks by telling my S.O. that cardinals must taste bad since their bright red feathers against white snowy backgrounds don't seem to make much sense otherwise. Well, the newspaper specifically said that hawks eat cardinals. Now I want to establish something like the witness protection program for them.

Do hawks eat elephants? I doubt it. But I guess I'll find out for sure if I dress my cardinal friends up in elephant suits and they end up disappearing.

2011: Great Year Or Greatest Year?

Ok, truth be told, I thought 2011 kinda sucked.

But that's pretty much my opinion of every year.

On the bright side: 2011 could have been much worse.

On the brighter side: 2011 was actually better than many years in some ways.

Here are a few examples I gleaned from recent newspapers:

----- Fewer people died on Ohio roadways in 2011 than in any other year since they started keeping records back in 1936.

----- Fewer people were murdered in Columbus last year (92) than in 2010. Or in 2008. Or in 2006 and 2003. And in the 21st century only 2004 had so few summer murders (18).

Um, ok - I thought I'd collected one or two other pieces of good news about 2011, but... I seem to have misplaced them.

Let's hope I can find them again before their loss becomes a strike against 2012.