This mosaic is from the exterior wall of the American Visionary Arts Museum in Baltimore.
Monthly Archives: September 2009
29
Sep 09
Fells Point
Here’s a shot of Fells Point in Baltimore at night, with the Black Eyed Susan at the dock and the Domino Sugar Plant in the background.
28
Sep 09
Rain
I had a complete lapse in judgement when I left the house on Saturday to go to the Maryland game, bringing an umbrella in case it rains. Of course, the umbrella helped on the way there, but once inside, you can’t use it or you would block the view of everyone around you. Now I knew this, sort of. I figured that my seats were on the top of the stadium and I could move to the back row with my umbrella and not bother anyone. As luck would have it, a friend offered me the much better seats from which I took this picture. So this meant I was subject to discomfort from the elements again.
Like many of the people in this picture I paid the price for my lack of proper rain protection. It turns out the price is $5, which gets you a plastic poncho at the concession stand.
25
Sep 09
Laurel Station
I took this shot after the train in yesterday’s picture had passed to give you a view of the Laurel station itself. The station was designed by Francis Baldwin, who made many distinctive brick buildings for the B&O railroad. I’ve shown a few of them before, but I thought I’d show a close up of this one to give you a feeling for the detailed woodwork and brickwork.
24
Sep 09
Laurel
Here’s a freight train rushing through the Laurel Marc station just before dusk last week. I very much like the blur in this shot as it makes the train seem like it was moving a bit faster than it actually was.
23
Sep 09
Girl in Bridge
One last post about the bridge in Frederick as I found it to be interesting. This portion of the bridge contains a distorted picture (called an anamorphic projection) of a girl. The catch here is that if you look at the picture from the proper angle. (in this case from a window in the adjacent building) it looks normal. By approaching from the opposite side as you can see below, I got close to it.
22
Sep 09
BF Bridge
Well, nobody guessed what was different about the bridge in yesterday’s picture. So I will show you here. It turns out that all of those stones are actually just painted in.
It is called the Mural Bridge and both sides of it, as well as the walkways underneath the bridge are painted to look like a stone bridge. However, there is more. There are tons of little extras just like this butterfly painted into it as well, but they are only visible when you move in to look closely.
18
Sep 09
The Pratt Truss Bridge
Earlier in the week, I showed a picture of a railroad bridge and this is another. This is from a Pratt Truss Bridge spanning the Little Patuxent River in an area formerly known as the town of Guilford. The bridge’s primary purpose was to carry the railroad to the granite quarry just north of the river. When the quarry shut down, so did the town and then the railroad had no use for the bridge, so it fell into disarry. However, within the last 10 years the bridge has been restored and made into part of a nature trail.
I’ve included a full picture of the bridge from the trail below.
I wasn’t there in the best weather for pictures, so I saved the quarry for another time.
17
Sep 09
September 17
On September 17, 1862 in what was then just Sharpsburg, MD, the bloodiest battle in American history was waged along the edges of the Antietam Creek.
Since I’ve vistied Antietam, I’ve been fascinated by all the history of the battle and the events leading to it. You can find a lot of intetnet articles which will describe the battle for you. I hope you look into them. You can lean about how an equal number of Union generals and Confederate generals were casualties of the battle. You can also learn how better leadership on the Union part could have made this draw into a decisive victory, and may have ended the war years ahead of time.
Since I’ve visited, I’ve read enough to know that, in many ways, the Union had a chance to win the war here in Western Maryland, but let it slip from their hands. Did you know that the Union received secret informaton on confederate positions as they made their way to Sharpsburg? It’s true. The Union acted on it, but a bit too late, which is why the real engagement happened in Sharpsburg, and why we don’t hear nearly enough about the Battle of South Mountain. Did you know that before Antietam, the Confederates entered Western Maryland thinking they could recruit people they found along the way? That’s true too. What we know as our state song began as the Confederates’ efforts to recruit Maryland citizens to their side.
I’ve learned much of this since I’ve visited Antietam. However, nothing will ever compare to seeing the park itself. Only by walking through the fields and over the actual creek did I realize how overwhelming it is that the bloodiest day in American history took place over realatively small areas of land.
It’s the compact areas where the majority of casualties occurred that make you stand back and think about this battle. There were three major battle areas. Each one was relatively well contained. There was a corn field in the morning, later a line defined weakly by a sunken area (called bloody lane, which is roughly seen in the right side of today’s picture up to the modern viewing tower) and late in the day battle moved to a bridge over the creek (visible in a previous MDP post).
It’s an amazing experience to see these places yourself and to imagine what it was like to fight for them. I hope you get to go to the fields and see what I mean.
**** Also: for those who want to learn more, the NPS website has a gallery of pictures taken by Alexander Gardner, a photographer who came to Antietam and photographed the aftermath of the battle. It’s not for everyone, but if you are interested, I’m posting the link here.