From mills to lofts, Dorchester, MA

One hundred and fifty years ago, poor laborers from the dying farms of New England toiled long and dangerous hours in these old brick factories. Today, they stand renovated into upscale lofts, as people continue to pack in to partake in the wealth of cities and escape away from rural poverty.

Ashmont train yard, Boston, MA

Where the Red Line ends in Boston, at the Ashmont train yard.

Blue Hills Towers, South of Boston

Towers on a peak in the Blue Hills reservation, a sprawling hilly park on the Southern edge of Boston.

Dirtbike tracks, Southern MA

A webwork of dirtbike tracks where people play beneath the power lines, somewhere in Southern Massachusetts.

O'Hare Ceiling

These round ribbed ceilings in Terminal 1 of Chicago O'Hare Airport make me think of dirigibles, like the Hindenburg. Probably not the best association in an airport, but there you are.

Industrial apartment building, Augsburg, Germany

An impressively blocky and industrial looking apartment building in Augsburg, Germany.

Dam spillway lip, Augsburg, Germany

Serrated lip of the spillway below a small dam near Augsburg, water smoothly flowing across it in a thin laminar stream.

Dam cubes, Augsburg, Germany

Concrete cubes, at the base below a small dam near Augsburg. I have no idea what their purpose might be, but each is about half a meter on a side.

Small dam, Augsburg Germany

A small dam with just the cutest little control building, in a park on the outskirts of Augsburg, Germany.

Priesterseminar, Augsburg, Germany

A seminary for training clergy, inwardly turned architecturally and nestled in a quiet suburban corned of the city of Augsburg.

Exercise and art, Augsburg, Germany

People exercising by the base of an industrial-scale artwork on the campus of the University of Augsburg.

University of Augsburg, Germany

A streamlined-looking building at the University of Augsburg.

Pre-show Bavarian dancers, Augsburg, Germany

Traditional Bavarian Dancers, having a nosh and beer in the afternoon before they go on to perform. Drinking before dancing seems to fit well with Bavaria in the stereotypes in my head.

Pharmacy sign, Augsburg, Germany

I like the German "pharmacy here" sign much better than the ones in the rest of Europe (green cross) or in the US (medicine mixing bowl).  I just love the stylized old-timey "A for Apothecary" that makes me think less of medicine and more of alchemy.

Fountain at night, Augsburg, Germany

An outdoor fountain at night, its dribbling streams illuminated beautifully into watery tentacles of light.

Animal-people mural, Golden Hall, Augsburg, Germany

Some of the art in the Golden Hall is a bit strange in its subject matter, like this mural of animal-people, featuring a quite unusual-looking mermaid-ish character at the center.

Golden Hall, Augsburg, Germany

Heroic statuary, paintings, and decor coating every inch the the walls of the Golden Hall in Augsburg, Germany.

Golden Hall ceiling, Augsburg, Germany

The opulent ceiling of the "Golden Hall" of Augsburg, Germany, built during the Renaissance in the civic center of the city.

Elevated minigolf, Augsburg, Germany

Another view of this curious German elevated mini-mini-golf course.

Elevated minigolf, Augsburg, Germany

A very curious thing I came across in a park in Augsburg, Germany: an elevated miniature golf course, each teensy course on a table a few meters long.

Ominous gate, Augsburg, Germany

This dread portal is just the sort of thing that any right-thinking adventurer should find truly ominous and carefully back away from.

Atlas-Sisyphus Deadlock, Augsburg, Germany

I have no idea what this statue is actually supposed to represent, but my mind has decided to interpret it as Atlas and Sisyphus colliding with their burdens, each thus blocking the other from progressing further.

Munich railcar

Another bit of the German rail system: perspective down a train car in Munich.

Onion dome in a German village

Seen from a train, I don't know whether this onion-shaped dome belongs to a church or a municipal building, but I like the way it pokes up above the treeline in the center of its otherwise-mostly-hidden village.

German train signals

I have no idea what any of these German train signals mean. I'll bet that they are some version of "stop", "go", and "slow", but they have no relation at all to how such things are presented on any road. This often seems to be the case for train signals, and I do not know why. Maybe it is just that in many cases these signals may be so much older than the need for signals on the roads?

Bonn Train Station, Germany

Steel webwork arches form a canopy over the train station in Bonn, Germany.

Chocolate Rainbow, Cologne, Germany

It may be "just advertising", but I love the commercial art of this chocolate rainbow advertising Ritter Sport.

Brussels cafes

Sidewalk cafes fill a bustlingly vibrant street in the heart of Brussels, Belgium. I love old European city centers like this, with their outdoor society in a the quiet and cleanliness of car-free air.

Forest grids, Belgium

And on the opposite end of agricultural order: grids of forest with trees all planted in nice, precise ranks near Brussels, Belgium.

Spanish fields

A patchwork of small fields making up one large farm, following who knows what ancient boundaries.

Madrid Airport terminal

One last take on the shifting shapes of the Madrid Airport terminal.

Madrid Airport terminal

The same chromatic patterning and waves of the Madrid terminals from outside the building.

Underground transfer train, Madrid Airport

Transferring between airport terminals in the underground train in Madrid, a visual rush through darkness and reflections.

Madrid Airport Ceiling

Complex circular lighting fixtures hang at every wavering fold in the ceilings of the Madrid airport terminals, adding another layer to their visual patterning.

Madrid Airport chromatic terminals

Slow progression along the rainbow in the lovely patterning progression of the Madrid airport terminal's roof.

Madrid Airport chromatic terminals

The Madrid airport has two long parallel terminals, each with a beautiful wavy ceiling and shades of color on the struts that gradually shift as you walk along from one end to the other.

Tetris housing complex, Chicagoland

This housing complex, on the other hand, has a feel more like Tetris too me, with a whole bunch of nice L-shaped blocks tight packed together.

Lego housing complex, Chicagoland

This Chicago-area housing complex makes me thing of Lego bricks, with its scattered raised square bumps.

Chicago Row Housing

Dense-packed row-housing near the inner edges of Chicago's suburbs.

Farmhouse complex, Iowa

An intricate complex of silos and barns around a farm near the Cedar Rapids airport, indicating that this farm must manage quite some acreage.

Traveling crane, Chicago

A traveling crane suspended on two long tracks that it can run back and forth along.  It looks like this one is set up to be able to pick up and move the big brown metal I-beams scattered about on the yard below it.

Roof spiders, Chicago

Whatever these roof-top systems might be, they make me think of giant metal spiders stretching their many legs across their surroundings.

Runway dot, Chicago O'Hare

This perfectly circular runway dot amuses me.

O'Hare takeoff

Turning to takeoff at Chicago O'Hare.

Infinite shipping

Well, not quite infinite I suppose, but sometimes the truck ports at these logistics companies certainly seem like they go on forever.

Industrial rubble, Chicago

I have no idea what the focus of this company might be, given the apparently themeless assortment of multi-colored, shaped, and textured industrial rubble in its outdoor storage yard.

Lab exhausts, Iowa City

The mark of every building with science labs: serried ranks of rooftop exhausts carrying away who-knows-what from laboratory fume hoods, carefully filtering (I hope) before ejecting it into the academic sky.

Citore Princess, Iowa City Park

I have no idea if the "Citore Princess" was ever a real riverboat or if it exists only on this unexplained, fading, and hidden mural in an obscure back corner of the Iowa City Park.

Burn maintenance, Iowa City

Another shot of the burn maintenance, a worker silhouetted against their smoky handiwork.

Burn maintenance, Iowa City

One morning as I walked through City Park on a teleconference, I came across workers running a large controlled burn, clearly conducting some sort of brute force vegetation maintenance.  The area they were burning is the flood zone of the park, where the river is invited to rise so as to spare built up areas downstream, so I am guessing this is part of the regular maintenance of this pseudo-wetland area.