News comes in bunches

It's been a few days since my last post. There's not been much news on the river, and I've been working with my pictures. A lot of photos I put on here go through quick edits for reasons of timeliness. Lately, I've stopped taking new pictures and havce gone back to working on old ones. I've picked out a few that I'm working with slowly and deliberately to see exactly how good I can make them.

But this morning, there seems to be a lot of Ohio River news happening. So here goes...

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With the Ohio River bridge at Madison, Ind., coming down soon, an engineering professor at Purdue University will be testing whether modern theories about "fracture critical" components and bridge collapse are accurate.

It sounds like it will be a fun experiment, at least if you like seeing bridges fall in controlled demolitions. Or not.

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And that old bridge over the river near Wheeling, the one that's been tied up in court for a while, might be coming down soon after all.

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Here's an AP story talking about how urban areas are growing and rural areas are shrinking population-wise. For some reason, it uses Moundsville, W.Va., as an example, although I don't understand why.

The story is a short one and doesn't try to understand what's really going on in rural areas. I grew up in an area of farms and such. While I'm no "expert," I can say that there is a downward spiral in rural areas. One thing that has changed is that the agricultural infrastructue of my youth no longer exists. I don't see dairy farms anymore (long hours, hard work) or as many meat-packing plants. And I don't see people growing as much of their own food.

The thing is, there are too many deer now. Those critters will eat the apples off your trees and the plants in your garden. I hardly saw deer when I was young. Now you have to be alert for them every time you drive.

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Maybe I'll read this one tonight. The Cincinnati Enquirer looks at pipelines in its area. I know there are several around here, including some that cross the river, but it's not something I've worried about. And unless someone in this article gives me a good reason to, I probably won't. My worry list is overloaded right now with stuff I can do something about. I've about run out of room for things I can't do anything about.

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Speaking of pipelines and such, my coworker Pam Kasey has written a short piece about a shale gas company investing more than a billion dollars in northern West Virginia, including a fractionation facility on the Ohio River. Yeah, shale gas is the new big thing going in the upper Ohio valley.

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And that's about it. If I've missed anything, drop me a line.