It’s spring again, and that means its time for early blooming cherry trees and weeping cherries to fill the sky with pink and while blossoms. While you can find these trees throuhout the state, they are particularly concentrated in the southern counties.
I like this shot becasue it makes this tree look so much larger than it actually is.
This hand is just one of many body parts that make up The Awakening, a sculpture currently located at the new National Harbor complex in PG county, just south of the beltway. (capital beltway) In whole, the piecies reveal a man who is essentially buried but who is begining to move out of dirt in which he lies. His hand and face are the most dramatic features, which imply a sense of urgeny to his actions. It’s tough to photograph that urgency becasue there are at least 90 children playing all over the statue at any time. However, this lonely hand seemed to do the job.
The sculpture was orginally located a few miles up the Potomac, DC at the point where the Potomac and Anacostia rivers meet.
Here’s another picture of the re-purposed Mt. Washington Mill complex. Next to the Starbucks is a Whole Foods.
This is a picture of the dam at Lake Elkhorn in Columbia. I have passed by this place hundreds of times, but before yesterday I had never stopped to walk around. Like every lake in Maryland, a state without any natural ones, Elkhorn is man-made.
It’s one of the many lakes in the town of Columbia that were built by and owned by the Columbia association. These lakes generally will have multiple neighborhoods built around them. However, despite the densely populated neighborhoods in which these lakes can be found, it seems to me as though the planners made great efforts to keep the the lakes surrounded by trees, playgrounds, open grasslands and trails.
However, along almost almost every lake, and as featured in this picture, there is a break in the tree line and there are usually a few homes that disturb the illusion of isolation with their placement on the water.
I’ve found that, in this town, the most interesting feature of these small lakes are the dams. This one has a group of cascading steps which are a bit unusual for a dam. The water moves in a continuous flow through the center of the dam, though the entire area looks as though it was build for a flow of water 30 times as voluminous. It makes an interesting distraction.
Nothing says sensational journalism like a loose link between two ideas where the second idea tugs at your heart and plays on popular opinion.
You could make such a link by one day showing a beloved movie theatre at risk of being re-purposed and by then following it with a rather poorly developed connection
to a re-purposed property that now holds the most emotion evoking sign of cultural conformity: a Starbucks. The implied, rather elementary thought to be provoked here is: you don’t want your beloved theater to be come a Starbucks do you? If not, you better go out there and do something.
If I were to be a sensational daily-photo writer I would do something like that.
Actually…
This Starbucks is part of a re-purposed property, the Mount Washington Mill, in Baltimore. However, its about as far from the Senator issue as it could be. This is one of the success stories, perhaps even one of the early success stories, of attempts to redevelop part of Baltimore’s expansive unused industrial space. There is a clear difference. That is: there are plenty of unused warehouses, and many of them could easily serve another purpose. Re-Purposing can absolutely be a good thing. It’s just a matter of context.
Here’s one of those sidewalk markers. This is the perfect example of what the Senator is. It’s the kind of place that celebrates film in Maryland. It just makes you proud. Proud that the Senator is in your state and proud that you can be a part of the whole experience.
This is the beloved Senator Theatre, on N. Charles St. in Baltimore. It is a single screen movie theatre, a Baltimore establishment, a symbol of pride, a tie to the past, and an outright institution.
In the lobby of the Senator you used to find photographs of other classic Baltimore movie houses. They were, of course, all movie houses of the past, with large single screens, ornate decorations, and an inordinate amount of seats. When I saw those pictures I always had two feelings. One feeling was a yearning to have been in those places in their prime. The other feeling was a realization: it brought joy to me because I remembered that, in being there at the Senator, I was in the same world that I was seeing in those photos. I was standing in a survivor and I was privileged to see movies the way that they should be seen. (well the way that most should be seen)
Last Sunday the Senator joined those other movie houses.
It’s not that there weren’t signs, but its still a bit hard to take. The Senator had been on the brink of receivership since before I had stepped foot inside it. The threat of the theatre closing was always there; in the news, on signs, and on the e-mail list. It was so present and so constant that I had just about assumed that this was the way things would always be. It may seem difficult to believe, but it is acutally surprising that it finally happened.
You can read all about the closing and its future on the Sun’s webpage, and you can to to the theatre’s website as well. so I won’t repeat anything. However, I will say a few more things.
The Senator had become the kind of place that celebrated movies. When there was a movie filmed in Maryland, it was shown first at the Senator. There would be spotlights and a huge crowd, and the stars of the movie would inevitably come to the premiere.
There are squares on the sidewalk that commemorate these moments. A sort of baltimore walk of fame. Perhaps I’ll post a picture of one of these tomorrow and will continue my rant then.
As a tribute to the Terps’ vicory in round one of the NCAA tournament yesterday, I’ve chosen the most popular Terps Basketball Souveneir that I could find. The reusable plastic cup from the concessions at the Comcast Ceneter.
This was not very hard to find given that there are only two things that I regularly use for beverages in my house: Terps plastic cups, and Orioles plastic cups.
This is literally the seedy underbelly of Bethesda. It’s the tunnel that takes hikers and bikers underneath Wisconsin Ave, and allows them to continue their trip towards Georgetown along the Georgetown Branch Trail/Capital Crescent Trail.
Though its a weird place, its generally not that seedy. As you can see, its fairly well lit, and its in very good shape. Those are actually very nice lampposts that guide ones way.
This is the Ercoupe 415D as displayed in the College Park Aviation Museum. A testament to the legacy of innovatiove companies that set up shop around the airfield in the first half of the 20th century, it was built in Riverdale, MD. The Ercoupe was designed to be the plane that anyone could fly. The controls were simplified and many things like the control of the rudders were automated so that it could simply be steered and accelerated. To aid the plane’s simple steerability, the nosewheel of the plane and the engine with it (Correction made-see comment below) moved to the left or to the right. It was supposed to be stall proof and spin proof and slip proof.
In 1946, after the war, innovations in aviation could return to the private sector, and though it was designed before the war, this was one of those planes that fueled people’s rekindled dreams of personal aircraft for all who wanted one.