Maryland Daily PhotoEvery Week Day a New Picture from MD

We’re going to end our short stay in Columbia with its most beloved sculpture, The Tree of Life.   The sculpture, as you can see below, is placed prominently at the waterfront in the center of the town.    It really gives you a sense of the way that Columbia was portrayed in the late 60′s and early 70′s as a futuristic ideally planned community.  In fact, this same theme is shown on the town’s flag and the sculpture’s likeness is prominently featured on almost all of the community’s official buildings and publications.

The Rouse company building, which was built in 1974 was originally intended to be a show piece.  It was a symbol of the new modern idea that was Columbia.  The building was placed across the plaza from the exhibition space, a less regaled Gehry work from nearly a decade earlier where the concept of Columbia was pitched to perspective new residents.   Like the Exhibition space, a few other buildings with little popularity outside of the area were built by Gehry and his Baltimore based architecture firm in the late 60′s.  Of these, Merriweather post pavilion is probably the most notable.

The Rouse building stands out from the rest.   It keeps your interest as you try to understand its workings.  It’s obvious that it was built in the 70′s, but it’s not a carbon copy concrete building like the rest of the area.  The outside is stucco.  (don’t sigh, it’s not bad)  It’s many outdoor areas with wood overhangs and potted green plants all overlook the man-made lake which is the centerpiece (if you don’t call the mall the centerpiece) of downtown Columbia.

Outside of its coverage of Ellicott City, there have been times when this website has been pretty hard on Howard County, really just becasue of the poor job it does on snow removal and for their extremely snobby bumper stickers.  I should also mention that it’s extremely difficult to find a gas station there.   However, this building ranks up there with Centennial Park, with Merriweather, with the Indian food buffet to which I occasionally go for lunch, with the town of Savage, and with the more recent performance of  it’s adopted son Willis McGahee, as some of the really good things Howard county has to offer.

In Ilchester, MD, a small town on the Patapsco river, you will find many traces of many things of historical interest. I was lured there by the ruins of a few old buildings sitting on the cliffs above the river that I found on some internet maps.  However I was too late a they were long since demolished.   In fact, going back to the internet, I found that it depended on which map service you used weather you saw the ruins still or not.  (actually on bing maps you can see them on certain angles of bird’s eye but not on others)

The town holds more intrigue though.  It is located at the end of the main area of Patapsco Valley State Park, in fact the main trail that extends through this park ends at a pedestrian bridge just south of this one.   That pedestrian bridge is built on the foundations of the original Patterson Viaduct, which carried the B&O main line, our country’s first 11 miles of railroad, from Mt. Claire to Ellicott City.  When that bridge washed out, the tracks were moved north about 100 yards, forcing them to travel through a tunnel and then crossing at the location of today’s picture.  I have pictures of that pedestrian bridge but they are trapped on my film camera right now.  We’ll get to it eventually.

I thought the patterns in this pile of rocks would make a good picture.  These are actually part of a retaining wall in Centennial Park in Howard county.   Originally I wanted to do another post today about Howard County.  I wanted to have a picture related to their declaration last week in praise of Willis McGahee.   The county executive had announced that last Friday was dedicated to the Raven’s running back and that in Howard County it would be referred to as  “McGahee Dayhee.”   Of course, there was no physical evidence left of this declaration and that made it very hard to photograph.  So I just thought I’d celebrate (though a few days late) with any sort of Ho Co picture and I’ll leave it up to you if you can find a clever metaphor between this picture and football.

The other day I was looking on google maps, as I do almost every day, for a faster way to get out of my office.   I noticed on one map that there was a tiny little grey area on the side of a highway offramp called Dorsey cemetery.  The Dorsey family was one of the most prominent families in Howard and county during the colonial period.  So it didn’t suprise me that they had a family cemetery in what seemed like an awkward place. 

What suprised me was the proximity of the cemetery to what I thought was an office complex.   I knew they were building nearby and I knew that this cemetery might have been in the way of that building.   

So I checked out the scene.  It turns out that the cemetery is today surrounded on three sides by parking lots and on one side by an offramp.    As you can see above, it is fairly well isolated from most lines of sight to the new construction around it.    However, as you can see below, it’s very close to a brand new building   

By yesterday morning, the snow had been done falling for about 24 hours.  Of course, I had to go to work, but I didn’t have any issues with it since the streets outside my house were fine.  The streets on major and minor roads in most places were fine.  That is, until I arrived in Howard County.   Many of my coworkers coming frome Anne Arundel and from Baltimore Counties also commented that the roads are just terrible in Howard.  

I’m not talking about side streets either. How could busy roads not have a final run with the plow after an entire day? 

Many appologists claim that the use of the roads compacts the snow and prevents its removal.  Which is not an argument, but rather an excuse.  More timely removal of snow and proper use of salt would have prevented this compacting.   How do these people think it’s done in neighboring counties?  It is not magic.

It would also appear as though sand was being used as a substitute for salt. Sand works great for traction on ice, but it won’t melt anything.  As a result, many of the busiest roads were just lined with compacted brown snow.   

I’ve lived in three counties in this state and worked in another two and this is the worst job of snow removal I’ve encountered anywhere.   It’s just poor.

Part of my job involves looking over the checks that my employer writes.  A short while ago I came across a mysterious vendor.  When I researched what this vendor did, I was shocked and amused. 

It turns out that there is a company out there that will chase geese off of your property.   When I found out about it, I thought it was very odd.  However, the very next day, I was driving to work and was stopped at an off-ramp by a family of geese crossing in front of my car.  Since then, my eyes have been opened. 

There are more geese than you would ever believe hanging out all over central Maryland.   These geese represent a threat to many of the finely manicured entrances to the generically designed office parks of the area.  As many of them are chased off of private property, they find homes in public spaces.  Centennial park is definitely home to many of Maryland’s displaced geese.   Here we see them enjoying a fall day with one of the human visitors to their home. 

As I promised back in July, when I first went there, I have returned to Centennial park to witness the leaves change color.  Sadly I didn’t get to take too many pictures of the fall leaves this year.  I took a trip in the middle of the fall, and I returned to four days of steady rain.   This past weekend I had earmarked time on both Saturday and Sunday for trips along the Potomac to take pictures of the leaves, but the cloudy skies and the rain stopped me.   So today’s picture is MDP’s official fall souvenir. 

Near yesterday’s gas station is Merriweather Post Pavillion.  It is an open air music venue with seating close to the stage under cover and open field areas behind.   For people from central and western and possibly all of Maryland, this venue is the closest one for them to see many big name acts.  However, it’s just a little bit tinier than its counterpart in Virginia, and as thus Marylanders are too often forced to see musical acts on the other side of the Potomac.   

I think it’s one of the nicer places to see a show, especially becasue the seating area is fairly large.  However, there’s another catch.  It’s in Columbia, so there are restrictions on the time of night that you can still play loud music.  In fact I once went to see a band, which was the last of three playing that day.  After sitting through two long sets of other bands, the main act only had 50 minutes on the stage before the show had to end. 

We are looking at the pavilion from the very back of the venue.   I’ve never been too sure where these sculptures came from.