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Some random items on display yesterday (Saturday) at the American Philatelic Society's big annual show in the Chicago suburbs.

A letter sent by John Hancock as president of the second Continental Congress. The British post office delivered government mail for free under the inscription "On His Majesties Service". The Continentals delivered official mail (using Patriot couriers, not the British mail, of course) for free under the inscription "On the Publick Service".

Framed handwritten folded letter cover dated June 20, 1775, addressed to The Honble Nicholas Cook Esqr, Lieutenant Governor of the Colony of Rhode Island at Newport, signed John Hancock, marked Congress Philadel.


A telegram sent from Washington to Philadelphia in 1849 via Samuel Morse's telegraph line.

Framed Magnetic Telegraph Company telegram form dated Philadelphia, March 14, 1849, addressed to Alderman Chauncey Baltzey, with a matching envelope mounted below.


A stock certificate for a mining company incorporated in Nevada in 1863, with a stamp at left (note George Washington's head) showing payment of US internal revenue fees.

Stock certificate of the Fly By Night Gold and Silver Mining Company, incorporated in Nevada, dated May 12, 1863, with a faded red overprint reading SPECIMEN and a beehive vignette; names J. B. Sharks as holder of twenty-five shares.


A letter sent by a sailor on the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor.

Wartime Sailor Mail cover addressed in handwriting to Mr. Granville Hastings, Avoca High School, Avoca, Texas, from D.M. Masters, U.S.S. Arizona, Pearl Harbor, T.H., c/o Fleet P.O. Honolulu, Hawaii, December 7, 1941 machine cancel.


A propaganda stamp produced clandestinely in the German Democratic Republic in the early 1950s, as a parody of a normal GDR stamp.

Side-by-side comparison of two blue stamps labelled Genuine and Parody. The genuine stamp shows 12 and DEUTSCHE DEMOKRATISCHE REPUBLIK; the parody reads ARBEITE LANGSAM IN DER UNDEUTSCHEN UNDEMOKRATISCHEN REPUBLIK, both with a 5 value.


"Work slowly in the UnGerman Undemocratic Republic"

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Today (Sunday) I visited the third trolley museum of this trip. I think this is the last one. :wink:

IMG_1399.webp


This is in South Elgin, along the Fox River which runs N/S through a string of Chicago's western suburbs. Their 2-mile line was originally part of the Aurora, Elgin & Fox River Electric line. Unlike the East Troy museum, there's no real museum/station building, just a small shed that sells tickets, souvenirs, erc., and a storage barn which houses part of their collection.

Today they were running two cars alternately. First I rode one built in 1945 for the Chicago, Aurora & Elgin, which ended service in 1957.

Red and silver streetcar parked on grass beside wooden utility poles, with "CHICAGO AURORA AND ELGIN" painted along its side and "458" on the body, a sign on the front reading "EXPRESS CHICAGO".

Interior of a vintage streetcar with maroon upholstered bench seats in two rows, cream-colored walls and ceiling, and large windows showing grass outside. A conductor in a dark vest and cap walks down the aisle, and two passengers sit near the middle of the car.

Interior of a red tram or streetcar cab, with a uniformed motorman in a black vest and peaked cap operating the controls near a large red control stand, with trees visible through the windows.


The other one was a Chicago Rapid Transit 'L' car built in 1924.

Green and cream vintage electric trolley car with a red sign reading BLACKHAWK FOREST PRESERVE, standing on a wooden platform beside a track.

Interior of a vintage streetcar with brown leatherette bench seats, overhead grab straps, and open windows along both sides; several passengers are seated, one in a light blue blouse with a bag strap and a young child nearby, and another in a light shirt with glasses reading.


Sitting at the museum entrance to show that they were open for business was a North Shore Line car similar to the one that I rode at the IRM on Thursday.

Green and red vintage electric streetcar numbered 715 with the destination sign reading Shore Line Route Evanston, running on tracks beside a road lined with trees, with a flag mounted on its roof.


A bike/hike path runs alongside much of the line.

Two cyclists on a paved path beside a river, lined with trees and green shrubs. The rider in front wears a grey shirt and white helmet on a blue bike; the rider behind wears black on a grey road bike.


Here are three bridges over the Fox River in quick succession: railroad, road, and bike/hike.

Green-painted steel bridge overhead with a small covered pedestrian and bike platform beneath it, stone piers and metal railings, with a rail trestle bridge crossing the river in the background.


In 1991 I spent a couple of weeks working with an experiment at Fermilab. On one of my free days I bicycled to the museum, probably over this bridge.

So have I visited Fermilab on this trip? Unfortunately, no. In order to get in, one now needs a "Real ID". My driver's license doesn't meet that standard yet. I do have a passport and passport card which would do the trick, but I didn't bring either of them with me. So I could only grab this picture at a traffic light, before turning:

Street scene at an intersection with a traffic signal showing red, a green sign reading "Kirk Rd" on the mast arm, and a blue sign reading "Welcome to Fermilab" beside the road.


This doesn't lead to the main gate, but I remember going through here occasionally.

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collinsmark said:
... Final 2025 Nebraska trip post.

Nearly every day when driving around, we would end up passing this new construction with massive amounts of electrical infrastructure involved (electrical substations galore). My brother in-law questioned if it was some type of new power plant being erected. One day we decided to drive a bit closer and investigate.

Alas, not a new power plant. It's the other side of energy flow (consumption, not production)*: probably a new data center. See Fig. 1.

*(I suppose it could be both to some very limited extent.)

View attachment 364534
Figure 1. What I'm guessing is a new data center in the area.

View attachment 364533
Figure 2. Nebraska sunset.

Again, the house is just a house in the neighborhood (Fig. 2). I've never met the people who live there.

View attachment 364535
Figure 3. Omaha's Eppley Airfield.

And finally, the flight(s) home. Starting with Omaha's Eppley Airfield (Fig. 3), and ending with landing in San Diego (Fig. 4).

View attachment 364536
Figure 4. Balboa Park as seen from the airplane window.

You can see Balboa Park's Lilly Pond (Fig. 4, slightly above center).

Approximately 1 year ago, I took a photo of the Lilly Pond with an airplane in the background (See post 2061, Page 42 of this thread). The picture here (Fig. 4) is from the opposite direction.

You can make out a couple of people on the bridge/walkway on the other side of the Lilly Pond. Perhaps one is a photographer taking a picture of me!

And that wraps it up for the Nebraska trip pics. Now it's time to get motivated and take some more pictures in San Diego.
That sunset is spectacular
 
Finally unleashed the Ludwig in Manchester.

Stage set for a rock band with a large Ludwig bass drum with a white head, red drum kit behind it, a 'Ozzy Osbourne' backdrop banner reading 'OZZY BUZZARD' and a 'ABRACADABRA' banner, two guitars on stands and a row of guitar effects pedals in the foreground.

Took an image in Hull to get the keys in but that BD still owns the stage.
Concert stage lit in pink and purple with red and blue spotlights above; a drum kit with a Ludwig bass drum sits on a raised platform, with keyboards and a guitar amplifier on the left and a pedalboard on the floor in front.
 
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I started for home today (Monday). I wanted to avoid the expressways and their tolls, so I followed local roads south through the western Chicago suburbs to Joliet, then east through the southern suburbs along route US-30, the "Lincoln Highway", continuing through northwest Indiana to Michigan City where I am tonight. It was a rather slow slog until I reached the rural parts of NW Indiana.

I visited the Fabyan Windmill which I had never done, even though it isn't far from Fermilab and I had often seen it on maps. If I had been there yesterday I could have taken a tour inside.

Fabyan Windmill, a tall wooden windmill with shingled walls and a gallery around its base, its sails angled against a clear blue sky, with a small wooden shed in front and a gravel path curving through green grass.


Then I passed the Fermilab main gate, with the main laboratory building (which we called the "high-rise") in the background.

Intersection with green traffic lights hanging over a road, a street sign reading Kirk Rd, and a large dark steel arch in the distance beside a Fermilab sign.


In Valparaiso, Indiana (which everybody apparently calls "Valpo"), I said hello to the state's best known culinary figure: Orville Redenbacher!

Bronze statue of a smiling man with glasses and a bow tie, seated casually on a wooden park bench with one leg crossed over the other, on a brick paved walkway beside grass.


Finally, in Michigan City, I visited the new South Shore Line station that opened just two months ago, in connection with relocating the tracks that formerly ran down the middle of the street, streetcar-style.

A silver and orange electric commuter train with a pantograph raised waits at a platform, with signs reading TRACK 1 and TRACK 2 over the tracks and a restored brick and stone station facade behind.


The façade of the old station was restored and incorporated into the new one, which has a large parking garage for commuters, and will have apartments in the future.

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I forgot to post this in yesterday's batch. There are wide loads, and then there are wiiiide looooads!

Flatbed truck on a city street hauling a very wide white boat hull under a blue tarp, with a yellow OVERSIZE LOAD sign on the back, passing a blue city bus.


The driver must have plotted his route in advance, to ensure that he always had at least two lanes going in his direction.

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Werneth Low, Hyde. Fantastic just to escape from the city, go up ont' 'ills and look down at the city. We thought the pubs would go under in 2001 as we had a bad foot and mouth outbreak. They closed a lot of unessential roads to contain it. Luckily a few survived unlike a significant % of the live stock in the area. A terrible time for farmers during those years.

Overcast sky with sunbeams breaking through clouds above a hazy town spread across a valley, seen over a wooden post-and-rail fence and a dry-stone wall in long grass.


Wide view across a hazy urban landscape from a hillside, with a wooden fence and rough grass in the foreground, a city skyline in the distance, and sunbeams breaking through a grey cloudy sky.

Messed with the filters, trying to bring out those rays.
Hazy view across a wide valley from a hillside over a wooden fence, with sunbeams breaking through heavy clouds above a distant city skyline and tower blocks.


I'll see what I can do at night too, just the lights.
 
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pinball1970 said:
Messed with the filters, trying to bring out those rays.
If your software has got the possibility to do gamma correction, you could try that (lowering the overall luminance using gamma correction can maybe bring out the rays more).

It's personally one of my most used edits.

Edit:

I forgot to say I also play around with exposure while doing it. Lowering the luminance with gamma correction and then also increasing exposure can bring out more "dramatics", so to say.
 
The Sunday seafood situation
Outdoor table by the water with a bowl of red soup garnished with herbs, a bottle of white wine, a wine glass, and a plate with a wedge of cheese. Wooden stilt houses and a netted rope railing are in the background.
Evening waterfront scene: a bottle of white wine and a plate of cheese on a tiled table with two empty wine glasses, a woman with red hair standing by the water, and boats and a shelter behind.
A young woman with dyed red hair in a white top and white shorts stands on a net-covered wooden dock, looking out over calm grey water toward a distant shoreline.
A woman with red hair in a white top sits at a blue tiled table by the sea, reading a spiral-bound menu with pictures of food, with wine glasses and a bottle beside her.
 
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Right down the road from the local, looks like someone tangled with MAYHEM.

Badly damaged dark-coloured car crashed into roadside brush, with its crumpled front end, bonnet pushed up and a detached black bumper lying on the ground in front.
 
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Back stage at Hull, I have that distorted look, like when the victim in the ring watches the video.
Also note the ghostly Omen like projection to my head.

Photo taken through a glass panel of a backstage room with a standing person holding up a phone to take a picture, and a seated bald man in a dark shirt looking down at a phone beside a hookah pipe.


Something a little more upbeat, Strawberry studios in Stockport.

Three-storey red brick building with a black painted ground floor and the sign "STRAWBERRY STUDIOS STOCKPORT" above the entrance, with a street lamp in front.


Today is Cleckheaton festival in Yorkshire, very small charity do.

I'm hoping everyone likes some Black Sabbath!

Outdoor festival stage with a wooden canopy and deck, a drum kit, guitar amplifiers and a bass player on stage, with black speaker cabinets and stacked wooden steps in front, and people in the grass area to the left.
 
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Stairs carved from cliff, Le Fort de Buoux. From brother in Provence
Hiker in a sun hat and red backpack descending a narrow path of stone steps carved into a rock cliff face, with trees beside the drop.
 
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morrobay said:
Stairs carved from cliff, Le Fort de Buoux. From brother in Provence View attachment 364785
I dream about that scenario, not in a good way!
 
Cluttered workbench with a bench power supply showing 0.431 and 2.138 on its red LED displays, an oscilloscope, a blue LCD module, and a black PowerWall-style inverter labelled PROWATT SW beside a red tool case.

Solar panel emulator with power supply, 12VDC LFP battery bank and 2000W sine inverter for load testing

Bench power supply displaying 0.131 A and 32.05 V above a blue-backed LCD module showing 'BAT V13.8 PV V31.4' and other readings, with wiring and test equipment around it.

Two green printed circuit boards on a blue mat: the assembled board on the left has an RJ45 jack, headers and a 16 MHz crystal oscillator, and the bare board on the right shows its silkscreen labels.

Two green printed circuit boards on a blue mat: the left board is populated with components and has a header strip and labelled jumper pads reading B-REV, B-NORM, A-NORM; the right board is unpopulated bare PCB with pads and silkscreen.

Working on my home energy controller project. Full test-bed testing the 'final' PCB.
Green circuit board with a microcontroller chip, connected by ribbon cables and jumper wires to a Microchip PICkit programmer on the right, on a dark work surface.
 
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Bow Sonar Sphere of a Seawolf class nuclear submarine.

Large spherical bow sonar array covered in many small round transducers and wiring, mounted at the bow of a submarine inside a shipyard hull section.
 
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jtbell said:
I don't suppose that's an oil slick? ?:)
?
Don't know.
Not a bad idea.

The image has something like a double rainbow, but it seems incomplete. The sequence of colors does not make sense as a rainbow due to diffraction. It could be a fake.

Oil slicks, not thee most uncommon thing in Louisiana, cold make unusual color patterns due to the different distances between reflecting surfaces. Its orientation with the direction of the shadows implies a possible light source cause.
The reflected image in the swamp looks like clear weather. Not usually rainbow associated.
 
While passing through Huntington, Indiana, I visited the Quayle Vice Presidential Learning Center, named for Dan Quayle, vice president 1989-1992 under George H. W. Bush.

Two-story tan brick building with a pediment and white columns at its entrance, labelled Quayle Vice Presidential Learning Center and Museum, with an American flag and an Indiana state flag on poles.


When I entered, the first thing I saw was a cut-out photo of Mr. Quayle himself.

Museum hallway with a sign reading LOWER GALLERY above a doorway, an admission price sign listing adults $5.00, children $2.00, and group programs $5.00, a Highway of Vice Presidents sign, and a life-size cutout of a smiling man in a dark suit and red tie beside a staircase.


Nevertheless, the museum isn't really about Quayle. It's a collection of exhibits about all the US vice presidents, from John Adams through JD Vance. The presentation is purely historical and non-partisan, as far as I could tell.

Interior of a meeting hall with rows of maroon chairs facing a wall of framed portraits of US vice presidents, a lectern, American and Indiana state flags, and display cases.

Museum gallery with freestanding partition walls covered in framed newspaper clippings, portraits and printed panels, including one labeled 35 for Alben Barkley; a mannequin in a dark dress stands at right.

Museum display panel with numbered placards for John Adams (1) and Thomas Jefferson (2), each with portrait and text, plus a glass case holding a printed manual.

Museum placard for Elbridge Gerry, Vice President to James Madison (1813-1814), with a portrait of an older man in a white wig and dark coat, and a printed 1812 Gerrymander map showing a salamander-shaped district.


Quayle does get a bit more space than the others.

Museum display board with a placard for Dan Quayle, a glass case holding a red sweater lettered DANNY, and framed photos and documents, including a photo of a couple with a newspaper and a Quayle & Quayle Attorneys at Law sign.


Although Quayle was actually born and grew up in or near Indianapolis, he and his wife started their careers as lawyers here in Huntington, before he entered politics.

The guy manning the ticket desk and gift shop told me that their main "business" was hosting school tour groups. They stopped during the pandemic, along with most of the tourists. Traffic started to pick up again, but now they're affected by local streets being torn up for work on sewers or water lines. I had to drive around a bit to find a way there. They can't seem to catch a break! He was happy to see me and show me around.

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jtbell said:
While passing through Huntington, Indiana, I visited the Quayle Vice Presidential Learning Center, named for Dan Quayle, vice president 1989-1992 under George H. W. Bush.

View attachment 364897

When I entered, the first thing I saw was Mr. Quayle himself.

View attachment 364892

Nevertheless, the museum isn't really about Quayle. It's a collection of exhibits about all the US vice presidents, from John Adams through JD Vance. The presentation is purely historical and non-partisan, as far as I could tell.

View attachment 364896
View attachment 364895
View attachment 364894
View attachment 364891

Quayle gets a bit more space than the others.

View attachment 364893

Although Quayle was actually born and grew up in or near Indianapolis, he and his wife started their careers as lawyers here in Huntington, before he entered politics.

The guy manning the ticket desk and gift shop told me that their main "business" was hosting school tour groups. They stopped during the pandemic, along with most of the tourists. Traffic started to pick up again, but now they're affected by local streets being torn up for work on sewers or water lines. I had to drive around a bit to find a way there. They can't seem to catch a break! He was happy to see me and show me around.
Very nice for a Brit like me, you give me a glimpse of the US with your images.
 
BillTre said:
View attachment 364861
jtbell said:
I don't suppose that's an oil slick? ?:)

Yes, but apparently of an all-natural variety. "The rainbow sheens found as a thin film on top of pooled water in swamps and marshes are the result of natural oils released by decaying vegetation or the biological processes of anaerobic bacteria reducing iron in soil."
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-46346026

Btw, TIL about "rainbow swamps."
 
Ibix said:
🎵When the moon is your eye
🎵Like a big pizza pie, that's... amore?!
When the moon HITS your eye, not "is" you eye.
 

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