If you’ve ever seen an oil refinery, you might have been struck by the byzantine arrays of pipes snaking seemingly in every direction. For people over a certain age, it might remind them of the classic “3D Pipes” screen saver from the nineties. But unlike in that computer program, each pipe in this dizzying mass … Continue reading Lost in a Windows Screensaver
Seen below is the unfinished reactor core of a nuclear power plant. I had visited this place before, and posted about it in more detail in this previous post. But after that initial exploration, I began visualizing a shot that wasn’t possible on that first visit. At a different time of year, the sun would … Continue reading Prometheus, Unfinished
About telve miles west of Lisbon lies Sintra, a town which has been home to the most affluent of Portuguese society for centuries. Nestled in a small mountain range named for the town, its elevation and accompanying milder temperatures had made it an ideal summer destination for kings and nobility looking to escape the sweltering … Continue reading Paths and Palaces of Sintra
I covered Lisbon in a post a couple weeks ago, specifically its Alfama neighborhood. Today, the rest of this city gets a spotlight. I joke that I like to travel so as to get lost in foreign cities. Though I’m not actually trying to get lost, I do like to simply wander around, poking my … Continue reading A Return to Lisbon
Chicagoans like to complain about spring. It goes straight from winter’s cold to summer heat, they say, as if unaware that the couple months of fluctuating temperatures, frequent rain, and gusty winds is, in fact, what spring looks like in the Midwest. It’s as if people expect our dark and raw winters should immediately give … Continue reading Springtime
A year and a half ago, on a previous visit to Philadelphia, we tried and failed to get into this church. Our consolation prize would be the rectory, in which fire extinguisher hanky-panky would leave one of our party down and out for the night, a victim of suggestive pantomime gone terribly wrong. (She was … Continue reading Saint Sialia Church
In a ravine in the woods of rural Pennsylvania sits an impressive collection of decaying trolleys and railcars. It is on private property, owned by a man who set out to restore and possibly resell them. Unfortunately, once word of these cars leaked out, it was only a matter of time before they inevitably were … Continue reading Trolley Graveyard
The largest psychiatric hospital in the world once operated in a small, nondescript southern town. From its founding in the early nineteenth century, it steadily grew as the decades passed and as the treatments it offered evolved from the primitive to the merely misguided. Ultimately, the idea of keeping the mentally ill locked away en … Continue reading Vandalia State Hospital
Every time I’ve returned to Gary the last few years, it’s with a feeling that I’m coming to flog a dead horse. After all, I’ve been visiting this city for going on fifteen years, and it always seems there isn’t much left to see. But each time, the horse is still floggable. Or alive. Or … Continue reading The Great Outdoors
A mansion tucked away in the wilds of Tennessee stands empty. Its isolated location has no roads leading to it, and no signs of any infrastructure surrounding it. There isn’t even a visible driveway, any pavement having long reverted to dense grasses and underbrush. This would suggest that the house has been abandoned a long … Continue reading Tennessee Gothic
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