I tend to be a serial information junkie when I find a subject fascinating enough, though often my thoughts can drift off on quite a bunny trailing tangent from what I had intended to research. Take yesterday for instance. I started off looking for pictures of an old opera house here in town, which I have been unsuccessful in finding any photos or information on for quite some time. There were however lots of photos of the much more well know Palace Theater here, which has been beautifully preserved, and on which there is no shortage of photos and information.

The point being is, I have always had a fascination with the past and the obscure. I find it sad to look at old photographs and see all that small minded people in this area have left to pass into ruin, or demolished in the name of progress. Yesterday my opera house bunny trail lead me to pictures of the old Paramount theater in Toledo, Ohio. The photographs of what the building had once been like made me want to cry to read that the place was demolished before I was even born.

Sometimes I’m not so sure that so called progress is such a good thing. Is the loss of history really worth more downtown parking space, an office tower, or another big box store? In the day of cheap and pre-manufactured, everything seems to lack the beauty and attention to detail that is taken for granted until it is lost. Are we doomed to a world of cookie cutter suburbs, steel and glass office buildings, parking lots and crumbling ruins of what little does remain?

For someone from a grey and empty neighborhood that very little now remains of, walking into that theater would have been like visiting a palace, that old school that was demolished for a department store, much the same. It seems all that will soon be left of our history is a stack of photographs of things it would have been incredible to see anywhere but google. Very sad….