This is Baltimore, vol.582 (A pictorial)

In and around this part of town--

Recent Sunday ramblings

Brunch today at Rocket to Venus, a hipster dive off the strip, or rather, off The Avenue, as it's called in Hampden.  For the eyes, tiny white hexagonal tiles on the floor and old silent Popeye cartoons projected on a screen as prelude to the football game that fortunately wasn't on til after I left.  For the ears, a diverse in the extreme mix ranging from Kiss to Blind Willie Johnson.  For the tastebuds and belly, two sunny-side-up eggs with scrapple and sausage gravy over white rice, washed down with pineapple juice and a maraschino cherry.  And down the street, some of Hampden's famous Christmas decorations.  This is Baltimore.

A few weeks earlier, I cruised up Howard Street to get to the BMA and stopped on one particular block to snap some seriously eye-catching street art (or graffiti, if you prefer).

Drove by today and found that the skull and the serial killer posters have  been completely black-washed.  Can only hope that the gramophone & boombox guys across the street don't meet the same fate.

The Baltimore Museum of Art recently re-opened their contemporary wing after months of closure.  Supposedly there were extensive renovations, but the layout of the rooms seems the same to me.  There's some new art, but much of it was there before.  They have, though, changed all of the interpretive/informative signage that accompanies the artwork, disappointingly so in most cases. Information that was previously enlightening is now mostly just dry detail.  Some is interesting, but there doesn't seem to be as much insight into the artworks offered now.  Which certainly doesn't detract from the art itself, though it does leave some of it less accessible.  One exception is a piece by Mark Rothko, the plaque for which includes a very instructional quote from the artist--

"The fact that people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions... the people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when painting them. And if you say you are moved only by their color relationships then you miss the point."

I unfortunately missed the point.  Though damned if those colors didn't move me.  As did these below by another artist, Clyfford Still, who said that "[if a] spectator... finds in [my pictures] an imagery unkind or unpleasant or evil, let him look to the state of his own soul".  --

But the piece that moves me most of all, the one I waited through the months of renovation to see again, is one that I've mentioned here before.  The Three Rings, by Henry Moore-- 

I took shot after shot of it this time, exploring it from as many angles as possible.

I am potentially a museum guard's worst nightmare.  It takes an immense amount of will-power to not only not touch this piece, but also to not crawl in and nestle inside it.

The first time I saw it, I was convinced that it was some highly polished, exotic, possibly petrified, wood. The texture and graining had to be wood. I was and am still amazed that the Rings are red soraya marble, found in Iran.

The exhibit in the yellow room beyond the Rings is titled Words Are Pictures Are Words. It's an interactive display intended to make viewers think about how the way that words are presented visually can affect how they're interpreted. A table with paper, stamps, and colored pencils provides the opportunity to add one's own word pictures on the wall. A few minutes of scribbling and I summed up the day thusly-- "Colors on the wall left me thoughtless. Words on the wall left me speechless". 



 

Random babblings: On corvids and connections

On a very November day, I wandered through a cemetery full of crows, thinking, thinking, thinking...

Greenmount Cemetery's located in one of the sketchier neighborhoods of Baltimore, but it's well worth venturing through the nearby streets for because it's one of the vastest, most gorgeous cemeteries I've ever visited.  I discovered it through the work of A. Aubrey Bodine, who photographed Baltimore and Maryland for 50 years for the Baltimore Sun.  Sounds completely trite to describe it this way, but really, the place is an oasis of rolling hills, lovely trees, and beautiful monuments in the middle of some serious urban decay.  Historically important, too, and not just for its notoriety as the final resting place of John Wilkes Booth.

 A fellow blogger, J., recently posted about a cemetery visit of her own.  I refer to her as a "fellow blogger", but is there more to it than that?  We first "met" through the blogosphere portion of the internet when she discovered my own blog and posted a comment asking me to get in touch with her via e-mail so that we could talk more in-depth.  I did and we began a correspondence about what the music we love means to us.  She shared very private details of her personal life with me and it felt like a bond was beginning to form.  Then we lost touch for a bit (my fault, through distraction and laziness).  Recently, we finally had the opportunity to meet "IRL", as the internet parlance goes.  It took place in a fair-sized group, though, and once we'd said hello and shared a hug, we each ended up talking to other people.  So what does that make us?  Fellow bloggers, acquaintances, friends...?  I'd like to be able to refer to her as the latter because I very much like what I know of her, but developing a deeper connection has eluded us.  But that doesn't mean the potential isn't there.  I think that, in this age of internet connection with folks who share interests but are strewn around the world, someone needs to come up with a new term for people who would likely be friends if only proximity allowed.  It's not like long-distance friendships with people one has barely, if ever, met are anything new.  Bookstores are full of collections of letters between literary and historical figures who shared ideas and emotional resonance through the written word because they were nations apart.  How is what happens all the time on Facebook and message boards any different?  Ok, yes, the communication you find on the internet these days is certainly probably much shallower than that of folks in those olden days (at least the ones whose letters made it into published books).  But are the relationships formed through such communication any less valid?

Posts like this in which I pose so many questions make me feel like that character from Sex and the City, the writer chick.  Someone please tell me it doesn't really come across that way...

Annoying that the crow photos didn't come out as well as I would've liked.  They were everywhere.  Couldn't get near them on foot, but was pleasantly surprised as I was leaving by the way that several of them perched on headstones right next to the lane seemed completely undisturbed when I brought the car to a stop and rolled down the window to capture some shots.  Huge buggers.  Hard not to think of Poe's raven, even though it's not likely that piece was inspired by Baltimore's birds.

In other news, I still cannot get this song out of my head. Not sure why, but it somehow seemed especially fitting today.


 

Random babblings: Abandoned but found

So I learned over the course of this past winter that my old place along the river up in West Va is now off-limits.  The land was apparently acquired by a local rafting outfitter-- On the plus side, they cleaned up the burned-out trailer and  garbage along the riverbank.  On the negative, though, they also put up a passel of 'no trespassing' signs all over the place, including at the beginning of the dirt road that heads upstream. But never fear, I've found a new spot.  Same river, different state.  And closer to home, to boot.  And just as solitary,  despite it being adjacent to one of the most popular parks in the area. 

Ma Nature was in a mercurial mood this spring day.  A gloomy, chilly overcast in the morning suddenly began alternating with teasing patches of blue sky as the wind blew banks of clouds from west to east.  One such patch was overhead as I drove down the road and through the tunnel under the railroad tracks, splashing through puddles left by a just-passed rain shower.  There's enough graffiti in the tunnel that it's a surprise the old farm farther down the road hasn't been taken over by the marauding vandals.  Apparently the locked gate and all of the CSX and NPS property signs are enough to keep them out.  Either that, or it's just too far a walk for them beyond that gate.  Their loss, my gain.  

The old farm gate, not the newer Park Service one at the beginning of the road

My guess is that the old homestead is used for Boy Scout campouts-- There are a couple of porta-johns up near the empty, locked house, and the first time I wandered back and found the place there was actually a portable sink nearby.  One of the old barns, a shed-style structure open on both ends, has been maintained by the NPS for storage of picnic tables and such.  On a day like today, the shed makes a perfect spot to sit and smoke and ruminate.  It looks out on the old house on one side, and an almost-collapsed livestock barn and empty cornfields on the other.

What is it that draws me to spots like this? It's more than just the solitude, certainly. That's something that can be found fairly easily-- along a trail in the woods, in a kayak in the middle of the river, in my car flying down a country road, hell, at home in my apartment if I'm desperate enough. But there's something to these abandoned places that were once lived in, an inexplicable something that I find comforting despite the eeriness of their emptiness. It has to do with the history of them, I think, and the time period in which they were inhabited. It's an easily romanticized time, that era that ended six or more decades ago, a time that was in many ways more full of hardship than now, but is always cast with a nostalgic glow of authenticity and simplicity that so often seems lacking these days.  It was a time when one of the most important things people strove for was survival-- not just day-to-day, but of the spirit.  Something that I have a hard time finding in the crowded hustle of today's society. 



One of the first times I visited this place, I was stopped on the way in by a young park ranger who first informed me that "this is Park Service property", which didn't fool me for a minute, and then warned that the nearby woods were full of hunters. Which also didn't faze me, seeing as how hunting is illegal on Park Service property, but random wandering isn't. I played dumb and stayed at the car, though, pretending that I had just been looking for a quiet  place to sit and read and didn't realize that there was anything worthwhile back there. Today, though, I was caught all the way back at the farm when a pair of rangers drove back to check the place out. Dark clouds had rolled in again and I was just heading back to the road when they pulled up next to me and the older of them very courteously explained that they were looking for "sheds" and had noticed the turkey feather on the dashboard of my car back out by the gate. He asked if I was looking for feathers and I realized that "sheds" was a reference to feathers and probably, in their lingo, a sign of poachers. I grinned at him and said that, no, I was just looking for a place with no other people around. He smiled back and apologized for interrupting me in that pursuit, then they drove on down to the barns. He must've taken me at my word, because when they passed again on their way out, as the rain began falling, they waved and kept going. Which was fine. A lonesome walk in the rain ain't ever a bad thing.

A Day at the Museum(s): Rodin and the Underground

Drove to Philly through the snow yesterday for a visit to the Rodin Museum and a Poe-related twilight tour at Laurel Hill Cemetery.  It had just begun snowing when I left and the drive up was fun for watching the flakes swirl in paisley patterns across the roads, and for zooming along I-95 past Baltimore only to find that the city skyline had disappeared behind a wall of foggy clouds. 

Danaid - The Source

The Awakening


How does this appear to you?  As peaceful repose?  Erotic abandon?  She was originally intended to be part of Rodin's masterwork, The Gates of Hell, but ended up being sculpted life-size on her own.  Seen whole, the tension in her pose becomes apparent and she takes on a much different meaning.  Rodin named her The Martyr.

A few more images here.

Arrived at the tiny Rodin Museum with nary a flake in the overcast Philly sky, but after my half-hour wander-through found that flurries had begun.  By the time I grabbed something to eat, the snow was again swirling and gathering on the roadways and getting to the cemetery was sketchy.  So very worthwhile, though, as the Underground Museum (as Laurel Hill is called) is truly one of the most fantastic cemeteries I’ve been to.  Built on the grounds of what were once three estates on the border of Philly, it’s a city unto itself, with boulevards lined by family plots and obelisks for skyscrapers.  The Poe connections mentioned on the tour - graves of people he’d known and/or worked with during his short time in Philly - were really unnecessary.  Seeing the place in the snow was reason enough to be there.  The lights of downtown Philly reflected between the cloudy sky and the snowy ground to create a rosy-golden glow in the air that contrasted with the dark grey and white-shrouded monuments.  Unfortunately, it was both too dark and too cold to attempt photos, so the best I can do to convey the beauty of the place is a handful of shots from past rainy-day visits.

The day began early and ended very late and, despite the snow-extended driving time, was full in a way that makes it feel long in a satisfying way.  Which, unfortunately, will make today feel lethargic and brief in comparison.  Always a trade-off...

Tour de Greater Homewood/Jack Yates Memorial bike ride

Today was a gorgeous day for a bike ride, so that's exactly what 40 (edit: 80!) or so Baltimoreans (and wanna-be B'moreans like me) did.  But this ride wasn't to be only for fun, as it also commemorated cycling enthusiast and community activist, Jack Yates, who was killed in a hit-and-run collision with a truck earlier this summer.  So with dual purpose, we set out from Gordon Plaza at the University of Baltimore and headed off into the hilly streets of northern Charm City.  There were so many places and things that I wanted to snag photos of, but there's no way I could've kept up with the group if I'd stopped that much.  Hopefully what I did capture will give some idea of the great time had by all.  

The guys of the North Baltimore Bicycle Brigade put together a terrific route that headed first up towards and through Charles Village, along a short stretch of gritty Greenmount Ave, around Venable Park, back over and up the killer hill on Charles past Loyola College, and into the beautiful, park-like neighborhood of Springlake Way. 

After a break to enjoy the scenery and annoy the residents, we cut over to Roland Park for a cruise up and down Roland Avenue, before heading down for a short run along the Jones Falls Trail and a stop to pay homage at the site of Jack's accident. 

At the corner of Lafayette and Maryland Avenues, everyone stopped to raise their bikes in a moment of silence honoring Jack.  The ghost bike placed in his memory is a moving sight, but even more sobering were the remnants of a bicycle-shaped police chalk line designating where he was hit and dragged around the corner.  It was a sad reminder that no cyclist is immune to tragedy, no matter how experienced a rider they may be.  No amount of vigilance and alertness will save you, no rights to the road provided by law will protect you, when things just plain go wrong between a motor vehicle and a bike. 

But on a day like today, with a glorious blue sky and warm sunshine, it's best not to dwell for too long on solemn thoughts.  It's so much better to pedal along with a bunch of friendly folks on a relaxed ride, celebrating the freedom of being on a bike, in the memory of a man who did so much for this part of the city.

Here's to you, Jack.  I never met you, but I'm glad to know that you were here for at least a while...   

Click here for more of my photos from the ride.  Also check out a brief but very cool video by Liam, here. 

Gwynns Falls pictorial

I've been back to the Gwynns Falls Trail since my first experience of it, and can now give a much clearer, more convincing case for how terrific a trail it is.  These photos were taken on two different rides, which accounts for the variance from overcast, cloudy sky to clear, sunny blue.  The other contrasts displayed in this series of photos are what make this trail so very cool.

Beginning in the neighborhood of Dickeyville, at the top of Leakin Park, and heading down through Gwynns Falls Park, the Carroll-Camden Industrial Area, Westport, and ending at Middle Branch Park.

View the whole series here.