The Schumin Web is the website and blog of Ben Schumin, a writer and photographer.
Recently, I took a day trip down to Stuarts Draft visit my parents and scanned in a bunch of old photos from various old photo albums. I did this mostly to have a larger pool of vintage content for the photo set about my trip to Arkansas back in May, but it also helps to […]
Sometimes, things come just a little too close for comfort. Such was the case on July 28, when a tree fell behind my house during a storm while I was at work. I got a message from Elyse at 5:30 PM telling me that a tree had fallen on the house, and that she didn’t […]
So… Elyse and I are now the proud parents of two buses. We have former CARTA bus 3426, i.e. “Biscuit”, and now we also have former Razorback Transit bus 2, which Elyse has nicknamed “Onion”. Yes, you heard that right. A bus from Razorback Transit, as in the University of Arkansas Razorbacks. As in, from […]
So once again, smoke from Canadian wildfires has blanketed much of the eastern US in a thick haze, which has been a somewhat regular summer occurrence since 2021. It rolled in yesterday, on a day that Elyse made me go up to York, Pennsylvania. The wildfire smoke in Pennsylvania had something of a burnt-plastic smell […]
On June 29, Elyse, Kyle, and I went down to the National Mall and checked out the Great American State Fair. We really only went for one reason, that being to see Metro’s exhibit, where they had car 1000 on display following a recent restoration, alongside a hard mockup of the upcoming 8000-Series railcars. Other […]
From June 4-7, Elyse and I took a long weekend and made a trip up to Niagara Falls in Canada. The main inspiration for the trip was to go to the Niagara Falls Comic Con, i.e. one of those fan expo events where people dress up in cosplay outfits, celebrities do meet-and-greets and panel discussions, […]
Back in late April, I met a couple of Power Rangers at a meet-and-greet event at Big Lick Comics in Roanoke, Virginia. Elyse and I made it a weekend trip down to Roanoke, and went to the event on the last day. The meetup was through Power Rangers Playback, which is Catherine Sutherland and Nakia […]
On May 29, I got to go on a special VIP tour of the White House with a group that I am a part of. I have studied the history of the White House quite a bit, learning about the different modifications that it has had over the years, the various decorative styles that have […]
I figure, if you’re going to get hurt, you might as well have a good story to go along with it, right? I recently managed to hurt myself while flying my drone, and while the injury was minor and will heal on its own just fine, it came with a really good story that I […]
While Elyse and I were in Rogers, Arkansas on our recent trip, I made specific efforts to make peace with my experience in elementary school. Recall that I had a difficult time in elementary school, likely due to my autism, and the school’s being somewhat unequipped to handle cases of mild autism like mine, mainly […]
So as I announced previously, hello from Rogers, Arkansas, where I lived from 1985 to 1992. I’ve been having a good time out here, seeing a much bigger and more developed Rogers than was there when I left it, but which still feels very familiar. One thing that I did was to swing by our […]
Recently, Elyse went to a Washington Nationals game and came back with this: For those not familiar, that is a Montreal Expos hat, with “Montréal Baseball” text and “elb” logo. Prior to 2005, what is now the Washington Nationals played in Montreal, Quebec as the Expos, where they led a somewhat ho-hum existence. When the […]
File this under “things that I really didn’t think that I would ever have to discuss”, but here we are. Recently, following some extremely unhinged remarks from the White House concerning Iran, there have been various calls to remove President Donald Trump from office via the 25th Amendment. That amendment, which governs presidential succession and […]
On Saturday, March 28, I found myself at the third day that “No Kings” events were held, this time in Trenton, New Jersey, of all places. I realize that Trenton seems like a really random place for me to go to attend one of these things, but I promise you that it makes sense. Every […]
Recently, I changed the line beneath the logo from the site URL to the tagline “Thirty Years of Adventures”. That change is consistent with what I’ve done for past anniversaries divisible by five, though this is completely new wording compared to what I’ve done for 10, 15, 20, and 25, which all said either “Celebrating […]
I am really looking forward to the first half of May. That’s when Elyse and I are making a two-week trip to Rogers, Arkansas, where my family lived from February 1985 to August 1992. Living in Rogers was a mixed bag, for sure. Neither parent had particularly wanted to move to Arkansas in the first […]
