Events

The slide scanning project is almost done. I'm right now scanning the end of 1998, right around when I switched to digital cameras. Here are three from the mid-1990s showing bits of Chicago that no longer exist. First, in this view from the Sears Tower from April 1993, you can see Meigs Field and Soldier Field, both since destroyed: This April 1995 photo shows the view from the Michigan Avenue Bridge that now would encompass Trump Tower: The sun, however, still rises above Lake Michigan:

Autumn in the Green Mountain State: Cornwall, Vt., 17 October 1992. Same here: Just up the road in Whiting, same day: And up in Weybridge, 1 November 1992:

Coincidentally with the Illinois Dept. of Resources' desperate (and probably too-late) effort to stop Asian carp from getting into the Great Lakes comes another tragically predictable outcome of local politics. The Mayor of Chicago this week forced a budget through the City Council over an unusually-high 12 dissenting votes that raids the paltry parking meter trust fund only a year after the (allegedly) corrupt and (actually) stupid decision exactly a year ago to sell the streets of Chicago: As has...

During the few months I lived in Vermont, Bill Clinton got elected President. He spoke at one big rally that year, up in Burlington, and thanks to a press pass from a friend at a radio station, I got to see him in person: I think you can see the Secret Service agent pushing me away in this shot, though Clinton himself couldn't get enough of the rope line: Then-Vermont-governor Howard Dean was there too:

Few people knew before, you know, this blog entry, that I lived in Vermont for a few months in 1992. (I was young, I needed the work.) Actually, it was the most beautiful place I've lived. That said, I grew up in one big city and went to college in another, so the things that made Vermont beautiful were precisely those things that made it difficult for me to live there: wide open spaces, trees, idyllic rural living, etc. I moved back to Chicago in short order, but not after taking a few hundred photos....

More photos from 1992. Taking the Kyle of Lochalsh train from Inverness through the Scottish highlands capped the trip. I took three rolls of film in as many hours. (We didn't have digital cameras back then, so each photo, with processing, cost about 35c—the equivalent of about 70c today—so those three rolls represent about $75 of today's dollars.) Here are three of those shots, from 24 June 1992: Note, please, that I have licensed some of my work as stock photos, and I would like to do so again. So...

After detecting Asian carp DNA only 10 km from Lake Michigan, the Illinois Dept. of Resources last night started killing everything in the Sanitary and Ship Canal that runs through the city: About 8,300 liters of the liquid toxin rotenone were put into a 6-mile stretch of the canal near Romeoville Wednesday night. More than a dozen boats were to go on the canal later today to begin cleanup operations.... The toxin was put into the water because fears that the carp--which can grow to about 150 cm and 50...

The trip I took in 1992 went from West Sussex, England, to Nice, France; Genève, Switzerland; Strasbourg, France; then back to the U.K. As I continue the (excruciatingly slow) process of scanning all these slides, I'll continue to post the better ones. Like these, the first from Nice: And Strasbourg:

Like many Americans, I backpacked through Europe right after graduating from college, in the summer of 1992. I've been scanning all of my slides, gradually, for a couple of years in fact, and I'm now up to that Europe trip. (The trip starts on slide #2362, and I'm just today up to slide #2500.) Here are two. First, Chichester Cathedral, England: Then, from Rolle, Switzerland: I'm glad I took slides—almost all of them on Kodachrome 64. Some of the earliest photos still have perfect color and grain, 27...

Just a few quick things today: The temperature hit 13°C today, not a record but definitely a pleasant day in December. In Chicago. Because, of course, there are parts of the world where that temperature on any day of the year would cause alarm. Matthew Yglesias thinks mutual funds are stupid. I'm linking because of his two clear charts. His recommendations: index funds. (But...is any of this news?) The local pizza place around the corner folded last week. This was Parker's favorite summer hangout. We'll...