Under Construction

Last week, I visited Bucks County Community College last week for the first time in a while, several months at least.  I found things to be quite different this time.  The campus was under construction, which was nothing new, but I found more areas being renovated than before.  Also, some of the areas I thought would be finished by now are still being remodeled.  The first thing I noticed as I was making my way across the campus was the fencing on both sides of the walkway.  The area outside of Pemberton Hall (the administrative building) was now occupied by heavy construction equipment and the beginnings of what will be known as Newtown Commons.  The accompanying picture should give some idea of what it will look like when completed.   I’m guessing it will be ready to open in time for the fall 2012 semester, but I am quite clueless when it comes to guessing on these things.  I didn’t bother asking anyone, and I’ll try to remember next time I’m there.

Next, I made my way to the library, which has also been under construction for quite some time now.  For years after I was a student there, the library looked generally the same, but in the last few years, has been radically altered.  A good part of the lower floor was partitioned off and converted to the bookstore, which moved there from its previous location.  Until a few years ago, it occupied a room in the area where the Newtown Commons is now under construction.  The upstairs, where the book stacks are located, is now entirely closed off due to the construction.  Anyone who needs a book checked out has to give the name and number of the book to one of the student aides, who will then run up and pull the book.  The tutoring lab that was formerly upstairs had been moved downstairs for the construction.  It is unrecognizable to me since the lower floor has been renovated to handle the entire library operation process, except for the books. 

There are other areas being renovated as well.  Construction work in the cafeteria appears to have been completed.  That had also been going on for a while as well.   I thought some of the work being done was only temporary, but the work seems to have stopped there, unless there is another phase planned for later.  I included a photo of the garden.  I didn’t see any workers or equipment there, but the muddy patch with tire tracks all over it indicates that there is work being done there, not to mention the fact that the area is taped off.  Again, I’m not sure how long it will be before everything is done, but at least some parts of the campus will look a lot different from what I remember, even just a few years ago. 

Overlooking the Train Tracks

The track pictured here is part of the Norfolk Southern railroad system.  It’s not far from where I live in Langhorne, Pa.  During my childhood I often hiked along these tracks and through railroad property to the banks of the nearby Neshaminy Creek.  A few things have changed since then, as the rail line changed ownership a few times, and there were previously two tracks there.  The other track was torn up sometime in the eighties or nineties.  The volume and frequency of train traffic has probably dropped somewhat, although I didn’t really notice.  There has also been a lot of development in this area since then, some of it bordering these tracks.  People still brought the houses knowing full well the development bordered railroad property, and most of them probably didn’t mind that.  Some developments were built next to grade crossings, which require the train engineers to sound the horn four times at each crossing, which I heard later did cause some homeowners to protest at township meetings.  But most people either were ok with it, or found a way to live with it or soundproof their homes.

I always wanted to find out where this line went.  I saw on maps that going eastward, a spur splits off and junctions into the CSX owned tracks near the Oxford Valley Mall, and follows that line across the Delaware River into New Jersey.  From there, it cuts across the state until it reaches the terminal in Kearney, outside Newark.  The trains that don’t merge into the CSX line go a few more miles to the U.S. Steel Industrial Park in Fairless Hills.  I don’t know how much business comes from the U.S. Steel Industrial Park today, but I do know that some trains still go there.  There is still some business to be done, and some cargo to be picked up.  Going westward, the line eventually runs alongside the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Southampton, and continues along the highway past Norristown.  It runs near the turnpike for a while, and then apparently junctions in with the Amtrak line going toward Harrisburg.  From there, I don’t know how long it stays with the Amtrak line, but I do know that the trains running near my home eventually make their way across the country and terminate in Pittsburg, California, in the Bay Area.  So I think at least some of the trains running on this track are travelling from coast to coast.

There may be other uses for this line in the future.  About ten to fifteen years ago, I read that SEPTA considered using this part of the line for their proposed Cross County Metro, a commuter line running between Norristown and Trenton.  However, SEPTA has long been financially strapped, going back well before the recession hit.  Construction for this project would probably last several years as it would involve making these tracks ready to handle passenger trains, and to have the passenger and freight traffic co-exist.  For one thing, the line would likely need to be electrified, running a catenary wire overhead to power the passenger trains.  This would affect the freight traffic, since the freight cars are often double-stacked along this line, and there may not be enough clearance with the wire.  For this reason, and also to be able to handle the increased volume of train traffic, the second track may have had to be rebuilt.  Stations would need to be constructed.  It would be convenient for me personally if a station was constructed right near my home, but it’s probably not one of the proposed locations, and it doesn’t look like there is room to construct a parking lot there.  The traffic on route 413 going under the tracks is already heavy, and it doesn’t look like it would handle the incoming and outgoing cars well.  I imagine the closest station to me would probably be somewhere near the Oxford Valley Mall, or maybe in Southampton, a few miles to the west of where I live. 

One thing for sure is that I think it would be a good idea to have the Metro Line constructed.  I’m for anything that will leave fewer cars on the road.  It would also make certain places more directly accessible than if I drove a car there, although those places would be limited.  If I worked somewhere along the line, and I found it affordable to do so, I would take the train there.  However, I don’t know how many other people would take the train to these places.  Transit will help make our society less car-dependent, but of course accessibility would be limited to what could be reached by a train or a bus.  It just simply may not be practical to invest in something like this.  But one thing I’m fairly certain about is that this line will continue to be used.

The Bane of Winter

  It is now early January, and we are just a little past the Christmas season.  The holiday lights and decorations are gone, except for a few lingering reminders.  Soon those few remaining displays will be gone as well. We are now entering the bane of winter, which is why I took the pictures that appear here.  I wanted to go out and get some shots of bare trees to convey the image of this time of year, just past the holiday season, and the winter solstice, and before the thawing of spring comes.  It’s a time of short, cold days although they get progressively and noticeably longer as the winter moves through February.  There is often snow on the ground, although there has been very little of it so far in this area.

  The weather was actually warm on Saturday when I took these pictures.  It was a great day to go outside, especially since there won’t be too many days like it in the months to come.  But the actual weather didn’t matter a whole lot to me when I took these pictures.  The trees will still be bare, and the camera can’t catch the unseasonably warm weather unless there are some visual indicators in the background, like someone wearing shorts or a few crocuses popping up through the grass.  There were boats out on the lake that day, but not at that moment.  What I got was a winter picture, although a frozen lake and snow would have made it look more convincing.

  In the months ahead, we’ll be looking at more cold weather, with a few mild days here and there.  Although there has been very little snow so far, there will likely be some snow days coming.  We have a few snow shovels in our basement, and I expect to be using them before the winter is over.  I’ll be using my camera as well, to capture the images of the fallen snow when it comes.  Right now, I’m still using the heat and defrost in my car.  The cycle of time will turn as it always does, and spring will be here before we realize it.  The weather will get warmer, the days longer, and the trees and bushes will bloom.  But until then, we’ll be going through the bane of winter, as these pictures show.

O Tannenbaum

  This is a picture of the Christmas tree which sits in the community park in Langhorne.  There was an illumination ceremony last Friday night, for which part of the street was closed off to traffic.  It’s something that has been happening all over around this time, to kick off the holiday season.  And of course I came across plenty of houses with Christmas lights, but I haven’t mastered night photography, and I don’t really know if my camera has the settings to capture it.  Most of the Christmas lights came out blurry, and I didn’t know how to sharpen the image.

  After a quick Wikipedia check, I found that the tradition of lighting Christmas trees originated in what is now present day Latvia and Estonia in the 16^th century, and in Germany a little later.  Those trees were first illuminated with candles, which sounds like a fire hazard.  They were adorned with religious ornaments, such as the communion wafers used by the Catholic Church, and later sweets were added for the children.  I didn’t research how the Christmas tree eventually became a household item during the holiday season.

  Every year when I was a child I watched the children’s special Santa Claus is Coming to Town, which I now also have on DVD.  For most of my childhood, that was the official story of how Christmas trees were first illuminated.  It happened during the wedding of Chris and Jessica Kringle in the forest, with the Winter Warlock using his magic to light all the trees.  It’s an easier and more appealing way to explain to children where all the stories and traditions came from.  Most people probably didn’t bother to research the actual story anyway, as it’s just a curiosity.

  I’ll be taking more walks in the upcoming weeks, and I’ll probably have my camera some of the time.  I may be able to get better pictures of some Christmas house lights.  There’s also going to be a live nativity scene at the Langhorne Methodist Church on Christmas Eve.  If I get some pictures there, I’ll post them here.

 

Overlooking Jim Thorpe

  I took this picture about five years ago, and I believe I was using my old film camera.  I stood on a vista overlooking the town of Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania.   Since my mother grew up there, and my father in nearby Lansford, I visited this area frequently as a child to see our relatives.  It was later, sometime in the 80’s, when Jim Thorpe really boomed into a tourist town.   The place I stood to take these pictures is outside a nightclub called Flagstaff, built sometime in the early part of the twentieth century.  I don’t know if it’s the same building that once housed big bands like the Dorsey brothers or if the original building was torn down and replaced.  The vantage point was an obvious draw for the venue, where people could dine and listen to music, while at the same time viewing the town from several hundred feet above.

 For anyone happening to read this that is unfamiliar with the town or the person, I’ll try to give a Wikipedia in a nutshell summary.  Jim Thorpe is named after the famous athlete of the early twentieth century.  He played professional football and baseball, and won several gold medals in the 1912 Olympics.  However, he is also well known for having those medals revoked after it was learned he had been paid to play football and baseball.   That of course meant he was a professional athlete and technically ineligible to participate in any Olympic event at the time.   During his lifetime, he probably never set foot in the town that is now named after him, and I believe the closest he came to Mauch Chunk (the town’s name at the time) was the Allentown and Bethlehem area.  He was raised in Oklahoma as a Native American, and spent the final years of his life as a struggling actor in Los Angeles.  Off the field, his was a troubled life, plagued by alcoholism, financial difficulties, and two failed marriages.  Professional sports were not a multi-billion dollar industry during Jim Thorpe’s time, so being a professional athlete did not bring him fortune.  He was able to get some small roles in Hollywood, but unable to establish a solid acting career. It was a few years after his death in 1953 that Patricia, his third wife and widow, found the town of Mauch Chunk an attractive place to bury her late husband, and one that would build a memorial for him and give him the respect his family believed he deserved.

  In 1955, the issue was left to voters on a referendum as to whether to provide a memorial for Thorpe and rename the town after him.  By a narrow margin, the residents of the two boroughs of Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk, separated by the Lehigh River, voted to merge and rename the town in Thorpe’s honor.  The memorial was built, but went mostly unnoticed for several decades before a tourist railroad helped revive the town.  With the railroad and its natural beauty, Jim Thorpe was reinvented as a tourist town and mountain resort.  During the anthracite boom, Mauch Chunk was a transportation center for coal coming from the nearby towns.  Once it arrived there, it would be shipped by canal alongside the Lehigh, then the Delaware River until it was loaded onto ships in Bristol, Pa.  Later, when railroads took over, Mauch Chunk was the railroad center for loading trains with coal from the nearby towns.  From World War II onward, the area had been dying after oil replaced coal as the home heating fuel of choice.  Some mines were still operating as late as the early 1970’s, but were manned by a skeletal crew. 

  I remember it was in July when I took these pictures, and it was a bit hazy, so it wasn’t a totally clear day.  The Lehigh River divides the old town of Mauch Chunk on the left from the small part of the former East Mauch Chunk visible on the right.  To the left of center is the Asa Packer mansion, and the building with the clock tower is the Carbon County Courthouse.  The train station is toward the bottom center, and is partially obstructed by the trees.  From this height, the town looks almost like a model train display.  The vista where we stood is actually on the west side of the river, as the bend in the river is also obscured by the trees.   

  I haven’t been up there in a while, but I hope to go back soon and get some more pictures from ground level.  I do have some pictures I took over 10 years ago that I may post here sometime, but I actually snapped those pictures on a disposable film camera.  It was later on when I wanted to get more serious about photography.  Photographing Jim Thorpe is one of the things that got me interested, as I wanted to take people there to see the area, but obviously I can’t take everybody.  Since I couldn’t always bring the people to the places, photography provided me with a way to bring these places to the people.

A Willow Tree's Place in the Game of Golf

  While I was out walking today, I took this picture from a hilly side street near where I live.  Part of that street runs along the border of the Middletown Country Club.  The willow tree pictured here sits by a pond, in a small valley between the hill on the right and the mound on the left.  The fairway lies on the hill to the right, so the object for this hole is to get the ball over the pond and have it land it on the green.  The challenge is to not overshoot or undershoot the ball.  Undershooting can run the risk of landing the ball in or near the water.  Overshooting can take the ball off golf course property.  Just to the right of the green pictured here is a large net meant to catch balls that sail past the green.  However, they often go over and through it.  I know the man who owns that property.  He has told me that he sometimes hears the balls hitting the side of his house, and he is always picking up balls from his yard. 

  Since the golf course property runs along the street, which is another way to lose a stroke.  Even though the street is a little off the trajectory between the hill and the green, aiming the ball too far the wrong way can land it on the concrete.  On the whole, I don’t know how this course rates with professional or experienced golfers.  My only experience has been with miniature of chip and putt courses, so I would find any real golf course challenging.  The only remote idea I have of what it’s like to play 18 holes comes from playing the old Sega Genesis video game about 15 years ago. I don’t think I’d be able to clear that pond or the trees if I had to shoot from the hill.  But in the middle of all that is this willow tree by the pond, which I thought would make a nice picture.

More Pictures of Core Creek Park, Back in May

  I’m going back to the archives again for these pictures, which I took back in May at Core Creek Park.  The lake pictured here is Lake Luxembourg, which was constructed sometime around 1980.  Previously, it was a park named after the creek which ran through it, which was dammed up to form the lake.  Core Creek remains a stream as it enters and leaves the park property, but most of its run within the park limits is now flooded out.

  I’m not an engineer, so I have no real idea how it is planned.  I didn’t see any models or drawings of what the proposed lake was projected to look like.  There are busy roads nearby, and at least one bridge across the creek that probably had to be replaced.  There are several developments around the perimeter of the park, but in 1979 it was almost all farmland, and it was probably far enough away from the lake not to be affected by the flooding.  The development boom came later, in the early and mid-80’s, and this of course would make park side and lakeside properties desirable and expensive.  The houses and estates would maintain a high asking price as long as the flood hazard was minimal.

  Also nearby and just out of the view of the camera is St. Mary Hospital, which borders the park.  I often see medical staff taking walks on their lunch break, and there is a back entrance along the park road for ambulances to get in.  The traffic near the main entrance of the hospital can get congested, so this offers a back way during the rush hours.  There have been some improvements made to the roads near the hospital, but some of them are still narrow and weren’t really built to handle heavy traffic.

  If I remember right, I took these pictures in the mid-afternoon, and they look a little shadowy.  The picture of the field now looks a little blurry to me.  I checked the settings, which were on a relatively low shutter speed.  I forget if I took these pictures on automatic or if I set the controls myself.  I also forget how much I played around with the editing on Picasa. However, there is something I like about the blurriness, perhaps just the way the grass swaying motion is blurred.