Photos 5-17-2026

I finally figured out how to get the images off my camera. Starting with at church for St. Photini's feast day.

sch 5/20

 

Orthodox fellowship, if a little out of focus

Our bookstore

Photos 4-28-2026

I finally figured out how to get the images off my camera. Muncie, again, from the convenience store to downtown.

 sch 5/20 

 

Waiting for the bus at University and Reserve

Laundromat & coffee shop 

Goodbye Vera Mae's

A self portait of a sort

Walnut Street views

And goodbye Casa del Sol.

 

All The Good Trump Is Doing

 Like weakening our global influence through starving American research:

Self‑censorship, more stress, tougher recruiting – we asked US researchers how the Trump administration’s science policies have affected them  

 Like lining his own pockets with our tax dollars:

IRS barred from auditing Trump’s old tax returns  

Republicans defeat Gallego amendment pushing back on fund to compensate Trump allies 

Trump’s stunning IRS settlement  

Vance defends stock-trading spree in Trump financial filings: ‘Come on, man’ 

Trump’s $10 Billion IRS Shakedown Takes Darker Turn, Unnerving Experts 

America’s Fascist Playbook Is Wreaking Havoc around the World 

Chomsky was not convinced the US had turned completely fascist yet—but he did think it was heading there. For Chomsky, the saving grace of the moment was that Trump was a cartoonish figure. “I’ve said for a long time that the United States is very lucky that we haven’t had a charismatic figure who is honest, dedicated, committed to establishing fascist rule. What we’ve had are clowns: Joe McCarthy, Jim Bakker, Donald Trump, who’s just a narcissistic megalomaniac. We haven’t had a real Hitler type. Well, we could get one.” 

***

Should American democracy fall, other democracies will fall with it. Constitutional systems and charters of rights and hard-won battles for freedom that took centuries will crumble. This cannot be our fate. Nor can the eventual lurch into doomsday be our future. The great challenge before us now is to defeat fascism and save the planet. It will fall on people alive today to build a new consensus and win this struggle for democracy and freedom. 

 Or as some fellow once said:

... It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. 

sch 5/19 

5-17-2026: Anderson to Indianapolis; a Day of Futility

 I finally figured out how to get the images off my camera. It was time to catch up with my travails and troubles of this past Sunday.

Anderson's Applewood - Target is gone.

I stopped for lunch here close by IU

I had the chicken shwarma, and it was good. The Chinese restaurant I went to after my sentencing with CC and Ray S is gone. Perhaps it was an omen of things gone. It was the last time I saw Ray.

Then I got to the IU campus:

 I think I knew there was to be a fair at Military Park across the street from the McKinney Law School. If I knew, I had forgotten. The day being hot and not being able to find a parking spot, so I headed towards the closest parking garage I knew of. It cost me $20.

Walking from the garage to the law school, I passed across the canal. It looks like a bit of Venice dropped in on Indianapolis, or so it is probably hoped.

 When I got to the law library, it was closed. Sweating, tired, and put out with my lost time. The event at the park looked like it would cost money. Between that and my inflamed temper, all I wanted was to get out of the area.

 Some views of the area then:

 

 

I headed east looking for K's 2-in-1. I stopped at Irvington Plaza, or what there was of it. When I was a kid, more than 53 years ago, there was life and business here. 

The building in the background was a bowling alley. I remember going there with my cousin Paul. It had to be 1971 or 1972, when he was at Purdue. I associate The Loggins & Messina song “Your Mama Don't Dance” with the visit, so most likely 1972. The red-roofted building was the Dairy Queen my mother would take us to; she had a milk allergy and it seems to me she could eat at DQ.

In the second photograph, there was a Haag's Drug Store at the corner. Here was where I first saw Vampirella and Creepy comics. There was an S & H Green Stamps store further up the buildings. Mom collected stamps, I recall putting them in the books and a couple of shopping trips there. Haag's and S & H are long gone.

 

All is empty, as decayed as the pavement.

Continuing east searching for an office supply store, I found a Karma store. Once our most wide-ranging record store. This is at Post Road and Washington Street. I recall buying my copies of Mott the Hoople's Mott, Graham Parker's Squeezing Out the Sparks, and Stiffs Live there. All three records are now long, long gone. 

 

Also decayed was Washington Square. Memory says it was to be built after my family moved back to Anderson in 1973. It forced the closing of Eastgate, the mall we most often shopped at when I was a kid and the first enclosed mall in Indianapolis. 

 I did not find the store I looked for, so I went searching for my great-aunt's grave. 

 

 

I falled in that, too.

 

Then I headed north to another Staples. I had some old woman start to sideswipe me. Driving regresses me into a foul-tempered, cranky old man. No luck finding what I searched for, so I came home with my nerves frayed and my temper throbbing.

 

Everything hoped for went unaccomplished. Futility, all was futility. But it was a bright, sunny day.

 

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Photos From 4-29-2026

Much time has passed from these images of Muncie on an April afternoon as I went from the bus station to the doctor. I finally figured out how to get the images off my camera.

 sch