So this pavement milling machine has been hanging out near the building entrance. I wonder what it has on its mind.
Category: Local News and Views
Baltimore businessman processed hams, led by 25% of NaCl (1,4)
It’s been a while since I watched broadcast TV that featured ads from local meatpackers, so I missed the passing (I don’t follow the AP style book) of Nathan Mash in 1998. Something I read or heard reminded me of his customary spiel, which was two parts talking about ham curing and one part cryptic crossword puzzle setting, so I looked up his obit.
Proposed access road
TIL that IAD was originally planned to be built in what is now Burke.
And, yes, the story of its relocation is another chapter in the book of wins for well-organized and -connected European-American communities, and losses for African-American ones.
With a Southern Railway line forming the northern boundary of the Burke site, we might have seen VRE or Metro service to that airport in the 20th century instead of the 21st.
Since 1835
Washington’s National Theater quite recently gave up its rope-and-sandbags rigging system: it was one of the last of the “hemp houses.” Rebecca Cooper has the story for Washington Business Journal, and there is good video about the transition to the cables-and-counterweights system (less flexible, but standardized) that most hands know.
Going back a little farther in time, a documentary short from the 1950s shows IATSE Local 22 loading in the National’s touring show of My Fair Lady.
Half dome
The view from the National Gallery East Building’s roof terrace. The art downside is not so bad either, although Leta and I miss the two Sol LeWitt wall drawings that used to be there.
Enroute: 14
A lovely “bloom” of one of our common yellow myxomycetes in the Ridge Heights meadow.
Upcoming: 47
Pat Padua reports that Artomatic is coming back to Crystal City for 2017.
Checking in at the monuments
I saw a Bald Eagle soaring over the Tidal Basin. Maybe it’s going to be okay, after all.
Enroute: 13
The controlled destruction of 51 N Street, N.E, continues.
Baltimore adventure
An afternoon in Baltimore, visiting an old friend, a new friend, and friends through Leta’s G&S qwert.
Travel by water taxi, light rail, Metro, and MARC. Hey, Metro, lose the cheesy music piped into the underground stations. And why are American ticket vending machines such a U/X train wreck?
My newly-met friend is the Inner Harbor Water Wheel, views fore and aft. The wheel is positioned at the channelized mouth of Jones Falls, where it empties into the harbor. Floating trash and debris, man-caused and otherwise, is steered into the maw of the machine by the booms; trash is lifted and deposited into a dumpster. River currents, augmented by solar panels, power the gizmo. The googly eyes? Because Baltimore.
Enroute: 11
At left, a mystery slime mold busting out of the mulch, in my neighborhood on the way to the bus stop. At right, 51 N Street, N.E, being demolished ever so gradually.
Enroute: 10
One of several encouragements spotted last week along the blacktop paths from my house to the Metro station: Kate has a running coach with a generous supply of sidewalk chalk.
Linus vindicated
The Great Pumpkin rises again over Silver Spring. Thanks, Charlie!
Upcoming: 43
A reason to get back on the Orange Line: Artomatic is coming to New Carrollton at the end of the month, as Bob Niedt reports.
Predators
A great investigative series by Michael Pope for WAMU on car-title and consumer-finance-loan lenders in Virginia and their bait-and-switch tactics. To call these disreputable outfits bottom-feeders is an insult to catfish.