Busted

Driving along the Southern Tier. I still had the bad taste of Bath in my mouth, and as we passed Corning and Elmira I didn’t want to even think of stopping to go through and do some sign-spotting. Instead, as we skimmed along the Pennsylvania border, the sign-spotting came to us. Somehow, I had completely […]

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Mixed Blessings

Our trip through the north end of the Finger Lakes had been glorious, as it almost always is. The lakes themselves are, of course, spectacular, but even the spaces in between are bucolic, full of meadows and farms and wide-open spaces. The normal routine for us has been to go to Geneva and cut south […]

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Atop the Finger Lakes

In the last post, I stated without reservation that Skaneateles, New York, for my money, is the best small town in the United States, and even taunted Lititz, Pennsylvania in the process. In fact, I even had to tone down my taunting in the final draft of that post. As for the positive aspects of […]

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New York State of Mind

Not the most original title, huh? But this is the song I would play every time I came home from college: I had the exact moment timed on my audio cassette version of Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits so “New York State of Mind” would play as soon as I crossed the border. That kind of […]

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Nick’s Diner

One of the most interesting aspects of what I do here is the reactions I get. I’ll be covering this in greater detail in some future posts, but I just wanted to say how happy I was to receive word from the owner of one local business who appreciated a contribution I made to Instagram. […]

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Sign Picking in Adamstown

Adamstown, PA is known as the Antique Capital of Pennsylvania, boasting such massive outlets as Shupp’s Grove, Renninger’s, Green Dragon, The Mad Hatter, and a number of others to warm the heart of any seeker of vintage stuff out there. It had been a while since I had been down there, and my memory was […]

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Vanishing America

Far too often in what I do, I am reminded of how quickly something can change. I know I’ve said it often, but it remains true, that photography is about this very moment , that even though I can go to the same place and take the same picture, the weather will be different, the […]

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Ghosts of Harrisburg

There are many things that make a great photograph. Composition, lighting, and my personal favorite from Ansel Adams: where to stand. Contrast is another factor, and by that I don’t necessarily mean something you can control in Photoshop. I recall watching a retrospective on Monty Python and hearing Terry Jones say something very interesting on […]

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The Strand

I was remiss in not adding one of the old theaters to my new page: The Strand in Kutztown, PA. It’s the oldest one of the bunch, and according to all the history I’ve read on the subject, the first and only theater this grand college town has ever had. For more on this one, […]

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On the Ritz

I failed to mention something when I was talking about the trip I made to Montoursville a few weeks ago: one of my main reasons for going out in that direction was to see The Ritz Theater, a 1923 one-screener located in Muncy, PA. I stumbled upon it in my research about a month ago, […]

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The Danger of the Everyday

For four years I lived on Lookout Mountain, just south of Chattanooga. All throughout the South, there are (or used to be) signs and barns and birdhouses with “See Rock City” painted on it, and I lived within easy walking distance of that fine tourist attraction. Despite that fact, I never visited it. Not once. […]

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