Yea, I love moving to a new city and exploring, and Baltimore looked more interesting than most when I spent a week there. If you are unfamiliar with Atlas Obscura you should look up their recommendations for weird things to do in Baltimore, or whatever city you visit. That’s how I found the abandoned shopping mall/open air drug market there and the doll head trail in Atlanta, among many others. And You’ve probably heard this suggestion so much that you’ve hardened your heart against it, but you’ve really, truly, absolutely got to see The Wire.
"There are long stretches of Baltimore where that cavalry is nowhere in sight, and left to utter ruin..."
This is a complicated metaphor, fraught even — and dripping from many other pens, I'd be moved to a hearty "fuck off, colonizer." But given your experiences living in NYC & DC, I feel you have full grasp of the painful ironies of the phrase. With the infusions of white capital, the gentrification starts & the Black residents & other POC move away — and before long no one except the richest can afford to in that neighborhood or city.
So "stretches of sketch" (in your nimble phrase that made my morning) seem to me the signs of a healthy city, perhaps counter-intuitively.
It's end of season madness here at the world's largest online Nursery. We always have a significant amount of unsold merchandise that we either have to throw away or , ideally, donate to a worthy cause. Every year we send five or six semi truck loads
out to various organizations.
Community Gardens are amazing places and it is privilege to be able to help.
The best programs are the
ones that augment the gardening process with the food prep and storage classes. The people that run those programs are so upbeat and you know that they are really making a difference in people's lives.
I love to see rando buckets full of flowers in interesting places.
Reach out when you're ready to start landscaping- One of my degrees is in landscape design and I hardly get to use it.
I have lived in nearby Columbia for 35 years and I do love Baltimore. I have spent a of of time there for work and pleasure. It has changed in those years, and mostly not for the better, but the people there do not give up. I recommend Dan Rodricks in The Sun. I enjoy showing visitors things that are unique to Baltimore (Babe Ruth house, B&O museum, Shot tower, Visionary Are Museum, painted screens).
The spousette and I were there for a conference—hers—at the tail end of the Before Time: we arrived on the same day that the first case of covid19 was reported in the city. We stayed at the conference venue, a hotel overlooking Camden Yards, and since my own days were free, I spent it ambling around town, my first time there in thirty-five years. On one afternoon I went looking for Poe’s grave in a nearby churchyard and absent-mindedly overshot it by a few blocks. I finally reversed my course at a vast derelict building adorned with a four year-old sign announcing its availability for sale by the General Services Administration: it was the former “Metro West” offices of Social Security, constructed, occupied and abandoned all in the course of forty years.
My former employer maintains offices in Baltimore, but the brutes at the front desk refused to let me into one of the buildings (the near-twin of our century-old San Francisco digs), and the sister facility across the street has been turned into condominiums.
Find time to visit the National Aquarium, and also look into the “American Visionary Art Museum,” among the damnedest collections of outsider art I’ve ever seen.
Glad you're exploring Baltimore. Your charming teenager in black and white and a fez put me in mind of Marcel Marceau and a U. Utah Phillips drollery, "Don't remember the face, but the fez is familiar."
This just in: "...just some cool spots between long stretches of sketch." That's in, it's it, it's happening, now, wow! Life could be described like that, if you were a jazz musician getting by, or Jack on the road again.
So glad you're discovering enjoyments in your new home —
Yea, I love moving to a new city and exploring, and Baltimore looked more interesting than most when I spent a week there. If you are unfamiliar with Atlas Obscura you should look up their recommendations for weird things to do in Baltimore, or whatever city you visit. That’s how I found the abandoned shopping mall/open air drug market there and the doll head trail in Atlanta, among many others. And You’ve probably heard this suggestion so much that you’ve hardened your heart against it, but you’ve really, truly, absolutely got to see The Wire.
"There are long stretches of Baltimore where that cavalry is nowhere in sight, and left to utter ruin..."
This is a complicated metaphor, fraught even — and dripping from many other pens, I'd be moved to a hearty "fuck off, colonizer." But given your experiences living in NYC & DC, I feel you have full grasp of the painful ironies of the phrase. With the infusions of white capital, the gentrification starts & the Black residents & other POC move away — and before long no one except the richest can afford to in that neighborhood or city.
So "stretches of sketch" (in your nimble phrase that made my morning) seem to me the signs of a healthy city, perhaps counter-intuitively.
It's end of season madness here at the world's largest online Nursery. We always have a significant amount of unsold merchandise that we either have to throw away or , ideally, donate to a worthy cause. Every year we send five or six semi truck loads
out to various organizations.
Community Gardens are amazing places and it is privilege to be able to help.
The best programs are the
ones that augment the gardening process with the food prep and storage classes. The people that run those programs are so upbeat and you know that they are really making a difference in people's lives.
I love to see rando buckets full of flowers in interesting places.
Reach out when you're ready to start landscaping- One of my degrees is in landscape design and I hardly get to use it.
Glad you are settling in and having the enriching experience of new horizons, vibes and culture :)
I have lived in nearby Columbia for 35 years and I do love Baltimore. I have spent a of of time there for work and pleasure. It has changed in those years, and mostly not for the better, but the people there do not give up. I recommend Dan Rodricks in The Sun. I enjoy showing visitors things that are unique to Baltimore (Babe Ruth house, B&O museum, Shot tower, Visionary Are Museum, painted screens).
The spousette and I were there for a conference—hers—at the tail end of the Before Time: we arrived on the same day that the first case of covid19 was reported in the city. We stayed at the conference venue, a hotel overlooking Camden Yards, and since my own days were free, I spent it ambling around town, my first time there in thirty-five years. On one afternoon I went looking for Poe’s grave in a nearby churchyard and absent-mindedly overshot it by a few blocks. I finally reversed my course at a vast derelict building adorned with a four year-old sign announcing its availability for sale by the General Services Administration: it was the former “Metro West” offices of Social Security, constructed, occupied and abandoned all in the course of forty years.
My former employer maintains offices in Baltimore, but the brutes at the front desk refused to let me into one of the buildings (the near-twin of our century-old San Francisco digs), and the sister facility across the street has been turned into condominiums.
Find time to visit the National Aquarium, and also look into the “American Visionary Art Museum,” among the damnedest collections of outsider art I’ve ever seen.
Glad you're exploring Baltimore. Your charming teenager in black and white and a fez put me in mind of Marcel Marceau and a U. Utah Phillips drollery, "Don't remember the face, but the fez is familiar."
This just in: "...just some cool spots between long stretches of sketch." That's in, it's it, it's happening, now, wow! Life could be described like that, if you were a jazz musician getting by, or Jack on the road again.