Sense of historical disparity

'Even the great man himself acknowledged the disparity in their recognition.
"I have had the applause of the crowd," Frederick Douglass wrote to fellow abolitionist, escaped slave and Marylander Harriet Ross Tubman. But, he wrote in the 1868 letter, three years after slavery was abolished in the United States, "The midnight sky and the silent stars have been the witnesses to your devotion to freedom."
Nearly a century and a half later, Tubman's family descendents say there's still truth - and consequences - to his words.' Read on.

Who will save the Charles?

"Now that Tom Kiefaber has been untied from the railroad tracks just before the final credits, those who enjoy movies for grown-ups can start wondering about James “Buzz” Cusack. Kiefaber’s Senator Theatre remains to live another day, and hallelujah for that. But Cusack’s Charles Theatre’s about to face a threat of its own. And it deserves to be preserved for the same reason as the Senator. There’s more at stake here than a happy movie ending." Read on.

"What shall we do tomorrow? What shall we ever do?"

While it's true that we make our own lives, it's harder to make an interesting life in some places than it is in others.
I remember talking to a man in the cable TV industry who compared selling cable in the Albuquerque region to selling it in the Baltimore area. "Albuquerque was a tough sell," he said, "but Baltimore was easy." I asked him why. "Because there's so many other things to do in Albuquerque."
I've lived in both places and he's right. Plenty to do there, not much to do here. Why is that? No, never mind, I don't care why. The better question is: Will it ever get any better?
My only hope for the region is BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) which has, for some sadistic reason, thousands of people moving to suburban Baltimore from points north, most of them within a few minutes ride of NYC. Think they'll like Harford County? I don't think so either.
In a recent Sun article, a man from a company relocating here was absolutely dumbfounded by the lack of decent restaurants showing up on his GPS. Well, I got news for you buddy, it wasn't a mapping error.
A couple of years back, I ran into a childhood friend who'd become a chef and opened an outstanding eatery in Harford County. He spoke to me of his frustration over regional tastes. He'd entered a dish in a local restaurant competition and been beaten out by "cheesy fries." Sadly, and inevitably, his outstanding eatery became a sports bar.
And that's just food. There ain't many other activities here either: cultural, recreational, shopping, educational - it's all pretty bleak.
One can eke out a sort of half-assed recreational life in Harford County, but it isn't easy. My hobbies these days include this blog, where I take pictures of old buildings that are on the verge of becoming parking lots. I have leveraged the great vacuity of the place into a kind of sad art. It's not much, but it gives me something to do.
You BRAC folks have a tough job ahead of you. You will be like pioneers homesteading on an empty plain. What will win out in the end: culture, or emptiness? The odds aren't at all clear.

A new life awaits in Harford County!

Another rail trail in York County?

"Plans are quietly being assembled toward establishing another rail trail for public use in York County -- this one running along the former Ma and Pa Railroad.
Such a path could complement the popular York County Heritage Rail Trail, which runs from the city of York south to the Maryland line. The two trails could even be linked someday, although an advocate says she s proposing to study only a potential segment between Spring Garden Township and the Felton borough line." Read on.

Trout School

Trout School is located on Trout School Road near Felton, PA. That's all I know about it. I like the front windows. And yes, it really is leaning.

Canon EOS 5D
©2007 falmanac

Visits nose-dive at Smithsonian air, space hall

"Overall Smithsonian attendance has fallen 27 percent since 2001, compared to the air and space museum’s decline of 46 percent in the same period." - MSNBC

Nice article, but they failed to mention the fact that it's impossible to drive in the DC area without getting a parking ticket. Heck, I even got one in the Silver Spring Metro garage for being a mere 12 minutes late. Our family used to visit the Smithsonian twice a year, but not anymore.

Sale of Sparrows Point mill ordered

Mittal Steel Co. NV must sell its Sparrows Point mill to satisfy concerns that it would have a monopoly on U.S. tin production, the Justice Department declared today. Read on.

Carroll to celebrate tradition of syrup-making at maple festival

Canceled! Carroll County - Carroll is celebrating the American tradition of collecting maple sap and boiling it down to rich maple syrup at its 21st Annual Maple Sugarin’ Festival.
The event will be held from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. March 4 at the Hashawha Environmental Center off Route 97.
Costumed participants will perform chores of the early 1800s in a living-history area that features a log cabin. Read on.
Canceled!

Is this what it looks like?

Because it looks like a mobile chicken coop. Baffling.

Historians: Slave code's a myth

"If you were a slave trying to escape bondage in the pre-Civil War Deep South, what would you do?

A. Look at fences to see if someone hung up quilts with coded patterns telling you when to run, what to take, where to go.

B. Go to a big town in the South and try to blend in with free blacks.

C. Get to a port and take a boat.

If you answered A, you may have read a book that claims slave-made quilts reveal codes that were part of an oral tradition that was secret until a few years ago. Or you may have seen the slave-quilt exhibit at the Plymouth Historical Museum, on display through June 20.

According to historians, only B and C are correct." Read on.

photo courtesy of Wikipedia.org

The joys of minutia: Jacob Lyman and the "hardluck regiment"

We found this marker while wandering around a church yard in York County, PA. I wondered why "Herman's Co." was inscribed, instead of the usual company lettering. Was Herman's Company famous for some heroic deed? First I looked into the regimental history of the 103rd PA Regiment. It's a pretty awful tale: mauled at the Seven Days in 1862, and then 2 years later, captured at the battle of Plymouth NC, with most of the survivors perishing at Andersonville, the 103rd was truly a hardluck story. Heck, these guys almost starved to death while training in Kittanning!
But I still couldn't find anything about Herman's Company. Finally, I found a roster that explained the writing on the wall. Herman's Company was Company D. Why wasn't it written on the stone? Because the 103rd had two Company D's; the original Company D, and a replacement Company D, sent in 1865. Happily, our man, Jacob Lyman, was in the second company and never went through the terrible ordeal that consumed most of the original 103rd.

Between Gettysburg, Pa., And Emmitsburg, Md., Mason and Dixon Still Draw Subtle Distinctions

"A few years ago, Brad Edmondson and I decided to found the Institute for Northern Studies. Edmondson, former editor of American Demographics magazine, lives in Ithaca, N.Y. I'm from Memphis.
Our think tank would treat the North in the same anthropological way that many people treat the South. We would explore Northern folkways -- such as food, language and music -- and we would talk knowingly of Yankee yells, speaking Northern and "the New North."
Recently I had an opportunity to spend a weekend doing fieldwork along the Mason-Dixon Line.
For non-historians, the Line, surveyed in Colonial days, runs along part of the borders of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware. The boundary has served as a shorthand for referring to the North-South cultural divide." Read on.

Whacking Day

1772: York County, Pennsylvania

Three and one-half feet of snow falls in the county followed by a freezing rain. A thick crust forms, a condition that leads to the near extinction of deer and shortages in the deer herd for years. "Nearly every man and boy in the county now turned out to chase deer," a historian wrote, "for while the hunter could run fleetly on the crust, the poor animals struck through, and from the wounds received on their legs, were unable to proceed far."

(From "Never to be Forgotten" by James McClure, A year-by-year look at York County's past published in celebration of York County's 250th year. Available here. Online excerpts are here.)

Harco in Wired?

While many of us are still ticked off about its use in the last election, Harford County has found a new use for auto-dialers: "Parents in Harford County don't have to turn on the radio this winter to see if the latest snowstorm has closed schools.
A new service being used by school officials automatically calls students' homes and plays a prerecorded message, much like the robo-calls used by political campaigns and telemarketers." Read on.

Are you ready for the snow?

No, I don't mean salt & shovels - I'm talking snacks. Potato chips, nachos, snausages, ice cream, pizza, and don't forget to rent some movies! The snow is coming and it's time to stay home for a few days - God willing.
Marylanders are infamous snow wimps, but it wasn't always that way. When I was a kid, people made heroic efforts to get to work and would never let a little snow stop them. Now, after 27 years of wage cuts, reduced benefits, union busting, & ever increasing job dissatisfaction, people stay home when the weather gets bad. Employers think this is a coincidence.
Last night we ran the aisles, buying everything from red bananas to capers. I don't even know what a caper is, but they looked tasty.

Will a giant seaplane fly back to Middle River?

" ... Few Mars seaplanes survive. But TimberWest still operates two to fight forest fires in the Canadian wilderness. The company plans to retire those planes soon, and British Columbia airplane enthusiasts hope to acquire one of them. The privately-operated Glenn L. Martin Maryland Aviation Museum is working to fly the other to Middle River, where it would become the showpiece of its collection." Read On.

B&O Railroad Museum on a roll

"Trains don’t literally leave the station at Baltimore’s B & O Railroad Museum, but money for new facilities and the first profitable year in the museum’s history mean times are good at the iconic city institution. “We’ve had our best year ever,” Chief Operating Officer Stefanie Fay said. “For the first time in our history we’re profitable.” Read on.

Historic Senator Theatre to be sold at auction

The Senator Theatre, one of the last of the nation's once numerous art deco movie palaces and the only one still showing films in Baltimore, is to be sold at a foreclosure auction Feb. 21.
... The Senator, at 5904 York Road, with its plush seats, 35-foot ceilings and elaborate murals about the history of entertainment, is on the National Register of Historic Places. Read on.

Scilipoti's lens peers back through time

" ... That’s what photography does: It puts a hold on time. It lets us get a fix on our yesterdays and the things we were feeling long ago, and maybe connect them with today. That’s what makes Thomas Scilipoti’s work so wonderful. Since the 1940s, he’s been out there in the streets of Baltimore, trying not to be noticed, trying not to get in the way, waiting for the right moment to snap his shutter — and giving us an enduring archive of memories." Read on.

The Dime is done

"... Baltimore, a city that prides itself on an organic quirkiness, has to face the fact that in the end, it could not sustain what had to be its strangest attraction." Read on.

Students slow to visit historic schoolhouse

Carroll County, MD - Not one Carroll school has visited the Historic Sykesville Colored Schoolhouse since it reopened six months ago as a museum.
“It’s surprising,” said Minnie Dorsey, a Sykesville resident who graduated from the century-old, one-room school off Schoolhouse Road in 1935.
Since the school’s September dedication, Baltimore City students have taken tours to see the authentic desks and textbooks, but those from Carroll schools haven’t, even though Carroll school administrators helped write the museum’s curriculum, said Patricia Greenwald, a retired Howard County teacher who volunteers as a curator. Read on.

Setback for hysteriacrats?

‘We’re the laughingstock,’ resident says after cartoon signs prompt scare. Read on.

"The men did not speak or enter their own pleas, but they appeared amused and smiled as the prosecutor talked about the device found at Sullivan Station underneath Interstate 93, looking like it had C-4 explosive.
“The appearance of this device and its location are crucial,” Grossman said. “This device looks like a bomb.”
Some in the gallery snickered." More here.

"Marketing Stunt: Did Boston Overreact?" Great ABC News video here, via Boingboing.net.

Zebro on Boston's Aqua Teen Bomb Scare on Youtube: Funny, comprehensive (adult language).

History channel turns to Baltimore’s Constellation

BALTIMORE - The USS Constellation’s hunt for slave-smugglers is the focus of a documentary airing on the History Channel this month.
The ship’s crew freed 705 African men, women and children in 1860 when they seized the Cora, a ship headed for U.S. auction blocks.
“The Constellation represents a little-known aspect of U.S. history that the Navy actively tried to halt the trans-Atlantic slave trade before the Civil War,” said John Pentangelo, curator of the Constellation Museum in Baltimore.
As the flagship of an African Squadron, the Constellation patrolled over 2,500 miles of African coastline, including the mouth of the Congo River. Read on.