My oh my, aren't we all so busy busy busy.  At first I was worried that the honey dippers had made some kind of horrible mistake while providing maintenance at Gab and Eti's theme park and the whole of Bullamanka had been sucked into some kind of vacuum vortex, but then Michael made a post and I realized we were all still here.  What a relief.

Well, I'm still busy, and about to get much busier, but since preservation is all about recycling, and I hadn't piped up in regard to early influences, I thought in the interest of economy and efficiency, I would recycle an earlier post that speaks to my place in this thread.  Some day soon I hope to post an original thought, but right now my commission is about to be sucked into the public relations vortex of "the big bad commission beating up on the nice sweet little old lady that has been in the district since before its period of significance, even," and it wasn't even our idea to go there, but before I leave I wanted to have a brief moment of communion with you.  Sooooo.....

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I was away for a week moving Dad from the homeplace of 51 years near Toledo to his new apartment in Akron near my brother. 
What a great place for a childhood. Grew up right on the Maumee River, the largest watershed in the Great Lakes. At my house the river is 1/4 mile wide. Down the south-facing former-grape vineyard now lawn-infested hillside is a broad flats leading to the Miami-Erie Canal towpath. Over the towpath and into the woods we went. In the winter, we tobogganed down the hillside, seeking to achieve the other side of the towpath. Up and over was an amazing feat. This required building a snow-bearing ramp from the crest of the hillside up one-story to the now screenless screened porch on the first floor of the house (walk-in basement on the rear). Then you mist with water the night before the run. On the resultant sheet of ice, slickened by the morning sun, the next day you fly with lungs wide open down the hillside screaming your delight (or screaming in horror at the approaching tree...it depends). 
How many forts did we build? Underground, on the ground, in the trees.  How many tarzan vines did we swing? How many ice floes did we pole around in the flooded canal way? How many hockey pucks did we slap into the woods never to be found again, except by people that populate Archaeology-L? How many severely modified bicycle woods-exploring contraptions did we pedal long before the mountain bike was created as a fashion statement? How many flaming glue, homemade gunpowder spewing plastic model cars and trucks careered pell-mell down the brushy hillside course to crash in a paroxysm of smoke and firecracker explosion? How many crawdads did I expose from under the rocks I overturned? How many crawdads did I sell at my curbside "crawdad stand"? [The answer is none; lemonade is better. This is the reason I never did become an entrepreneur. Maybe if I'd grown up in N'awlins.] 
And two blocks the other way was downtown Maumee, where I could smudge the glass case with my runny nose choosing all the components to complete my nickel bag of candy. I could go on, but I'll spare you a paroxysm of reminiscences. 
Well, after the trip to move Dad, I had to take the family to do something special, so on the way home from home, we took a side trip to see the Lost World Cavern outside Lewisburg W. Va. How very appropriate.
__________________________________________________ 
Dan Becker,  Exec. Dir.      Much like the Lorax who speaks
Raleigh Historic                    for the trees
Districts Commission          I speak for the buildings and
[log in to unmask]                 even for Mies...
            DISCLAIMER:     ...But my views may not be 
                                            RHDC's