Maryland Daily Photo Every Week Day a New Picture from MD

Here’s a sunset shot of the building where yesterday’s post came from.  These pics also have a secondary purpose of welcoming some MDP friends to their new home in the building on top of which these shots were taken.

Here’s another one.  MDP had some friends in town when this sculpture was being erected and they witnessed this thing being hauled down the street but could not figure out what it should be.   Then they came across it a few days later after it had been placed here and it all made sense.  Well… it made more sense.

Sorry for the poor quality of this picture.  These sculptures came from a park in the middle of a new apartment community in Silver Spring.   For some reason developers seem to be all about placing new sculpture in front of their properties.  We’ll explore this phenomenon for a few posts.

We are posting a special shot today from last year’s Chompy, the Discovery Channel shark that takes over their headquarters building during shark week.   They have announced that chompy won’t be coming out this year.   So that new zoom lens I bought is now totally worthless.

I said before that I’d offer you a reminder that this Sunday marks the start of shark week.  Chompy is ready!

The picture above comes from contributing photographer, Royela, who was walking through Silver Spring at night and thought the statue of Norman Lane would make a good MDP post. I think she’s right.

Norman Lane was  homeless man who, in a strange twist, became beloved by his neighbors.   He was so well regarded, and so frequently found downtown, that locals affectionately began to refer to him as the Mayor of Silver Spring.   Today, this statue sits near an alley that has been named mayor lane, in his honor.   I can do little justice to the man’s story as I know nothing that I haven’t read or heard from others.

For that reason, I made a trip to photograph the statue in the daytime and to try to give you a better understanding of Norman by showing you the plaque below his statue.

As you can see, the years since 1991 haven’t treated that plaque very well.

I can offer another picture of the statue that I took in the daylight, and a few links to some other sources of information.

This article has a section about the artist behind the bust and tells a bit of the story of Norman giving flowers to local ladies.  http://silverspringhistory.homestead.com/ArtistsEye.html

The downtown silver spring organization has a summary of the statue as well  http://www.silverspringdowntown.com/go/the-mayor

When I first started MDP, I thought  this guy was one of the things that I could reliably feature on the site. However, as soon as MDP came into being, the shark disappeared.

If you aren’t sure where this is, it’s the headquarters for the Discovery Channel in Silver Spring.  When they take out the inflatable shark and make him look like he’s swimming through the building, it can mean only one thing: Shark Week is near.  One of the Silver Spring community blogs that I follow has named him “Chompy” and I have to follow suit because I think it is a great name.

I’ll post more pictures when shark week is closer, as it thing this should be satisfactory for now.

Of course, if you are the guy whose window now looks at the back of an inflatable shark, you would probably find this completely unsatisfactory.

A few years back, the Silver Spring B&O station was lovingly rebuilt by members of the community of Silver Spring.  It is not the first station on this site, but is still an important piece of the area’s history.    It was built in 1945, served as a B&O station, and Amtrak station, and as a MARC commuter rail station.   

I like this picture because the large building behind it is just one of the many that have been built and are being built around that area.   When communities are growing and are finding more wealth and progressing forward, it’s good to see that people can care enough to set aside some pieces of history like Acorn Park and like this station, so that we can enjoy the (in this case moderately) old as well as the new.  

This is the top of a giant Acorn.   Not a real acorn from a really large tree, but a fake acorn atop a gazebo in Silver Spring.   Why an Acorn?  Well I don’t know that.  But the park in which is resides and which is named after the gazebo has another unique feature to it…. the actual Silver Spring.  Though many people want to call it Silver Springs, there is actually only one spring.  Either way, the story goes:  when Francis Preston Blair was riding out of DC with his daughter, she fell off her horse and saw a beautiful spring. (those who have seen the PBS history of Silver Spring documentary have seen a historical reinactment of this event)  The spring looked shiny like it had silver in it.  Blair became so enfatuated with the location, he made it is summer home two years later.  The acorn shaped Gazebo was installed by blair as something in which he and his family could sit and enjoy the view of the nearby spring.  Here’s a shot of the full gazebo: acorn-cropped.jpg

Here is a statue which you may recognize if you have taken a trip here since I last talked about the National Park Seminary.  Reconstuction of the Seminary is well under way and these statues, which line the newly refurbished parking area behind Main, have been cleaned.