Portipont

The City That (still) Spits

2008-12-01T16:58:00.000-05:00

UPDATE

Latest spit (for the complete, ongoing list, see here):

12/01/08 8:41 am Saratoga Street at Howard, African American man, 30s, in an ollllllld white Honda. Another open-the-door-at-a-red-light-and-drop-one. The young woman beside him seemed to be unconcerned.
12/01/08 8:43 am Saratoga Street at Park Avenue, same as above.

The City That Spits

2008-11-20T09:28:00.004-05:00

The City of Firsts--true, but historical.
The City that Reads--hopeful, but not necessarily connected to reality; opens us up to "irony."
The City the Breeds--stop.
The Greatest City in America--well, um, I like it here, but...(see also: The City that Reads)

I propose a slogan for our Baltimore that is current, true, without the invitation to ridicule. Every day that I leave my house, I see at least one person spit. I have been known to spit, true, but I confine my spitting to those times when I am in my own yard and have gotten some nasty thing or other in my mouth. Spitting in public strikes me as an ancient habit, from the days when it was ok to throw soda cans and potato chips bags out the window of the Buick while driving down the avenue--from the days before that public service advertisement with the Native American on his horse, looking down into the river of trash, a tear in his eye. Certainly people spit in public in other cities, but I live in this one, and every day, I see at least one person spit. To wit:

12/01/08 8:41 am Saratoga Street at Howard, African American man, 30s, in an ollllllld white Honda. Another open-the-door-at-a-red-light-and-drop-one. The young woman beside him seemed to be unconcerned.
12/01/08 8:43 am Saratoga Street at Park Avenue, same as above.
The intervening days I spent, mostly, in Lima, Ohio, where, during my entire stay I saw exactly one person publicly expectorate.
11/21/08 2:43 pm Howard Street between Fayette and Baltimore. Some will argue that this does not count, and that today, so soon, is the long-awaited Day Without Spit, but: while I did not actually see it happen, I very nearly stepped in it, a vast, very fresh pool of it on the bricks. In lieu of a witnessed spitting today, I will give you a greatest hit from about a year ago. My wife, driving home, saw a woman on Howard Street near the light rail stop at Saratoga. At this stop there is a signpost, attached to which is a little cannister ashtray. The woman in question, holding a cigarette, took a big swig of mouthwash, and, from a distance of about four feet, expelled it, in a wide spray, in the direction of, but not necessarily into, the ashtray. Some mouthwash, made it in, I guess, but only incidentally.
11/20/08 Thursday: 12:06 pm Eutaw Street at Lexington Street, in the crosswalk in front of Lexington Market: 50s African American man, leaning forward on one foot, looking down, into the pavement.

11/20/08 Thursday: 8:54 am Howard and Fayette Streets, outside the McDonald's: 40s African American man. Big one, out into the street, with a splat audible over the sound of an approaching light rail train.

11/19/08 Wednesday: 9:13 am Howard and Saratoga Streets: late 20s white guy with his head shaved, professional appearance. Let fly in a long arc into the rising sun.
11/18/08 Tuesday: 3:52 pm Saratoga and Charles Streets: white woman in her 50s(?), slight, white-haired, rather eccentric/hip-looking in patched stockings and a floppy hat. Face twisiting, downward looking hock onto the sidewalk.
11/17/08 Monday: 9:23 am 33rd Street, near City College High School: African American man, 20s(?), driving a Buick (yes). Open door at stoplight, drop one onto the street. This seems to be the preferred method of spitting in Baltimore. It is also, incidentally, a favorite way to empty the car ashtray.

I will keep this running tab, updating it, and noting--should it ever come--the day I leave the house and do not see a single person spit.

Fell's Point (a lost-and found from two years ago...)

2008-11-20T08:20:00.000-05:00

Long ago here, in this space, I began writing about the neighborhood we lived in at the time. As with most things I begin, that subject--Locust Point--remains un-fully-examined. I am not going to write today about Locust Point. Today's Point is Fell's. From it one can see Locust, across the Northwest Branch of the Patapsco River. We visited it today, and stopped here:End of the Bond Street Wharf

For a little bit we sat here, watching the tug "Jupiter" from Philadelphia (built 1902) pull up, discharge two passengers, then pull away into the river. The harbor was awash in tugs today, and from all corners their whistles thick, ancient, wooly sounded. As we walked back up the wharf, the loud, clear whistle of the Domino Sugars factory began singing. A ship was unloading there, but it seemed that the whistle was a bit of play. It ruled the harbor, a blue jay on the highest branch.

Fell's Point is something like a Baltimore Georgetown. Which is to say it is nothing like Georgetown. Tourists go there, yes, and it has bars and a Ten Thousand Villages store, and some sketchy guys in the park, and yes, some of the bars cater to the backwards-hat-wearing fraternity Midlantic Man set (ask me about that demographic sometime), but it is still a pleasant place to spend a few hours, night or day.

"I Love Baltimore!"

2008-11-19T11:56:00.001-05:00

This story comes from the late Greg Riley. Hadn't seen him in years, then one night, we're in the Wharf Rat a bunch of us (the one on Ann Street, the old one, the one that serves beer in glasses), and Greg Riley comes up. We never spoke much at school, except on the soccer field. The Greenwaves then were like the Azzurri--a soap opera of talent and crisis. Some people liked Mr. Riley, some did not. I didn't know him well enough to judge.
At the bar that night, though, we traded Baltimore stories. He lived on the East Side, down around Canton or Highlandtown or Greektown someplace, in a building that once was a warehouse. Lotta those around here. He lived on the first floor, and had a little porch, or deck in the back. One day he and his girlfriend were going to grill some chicken. He got the grill set up on the deck, got it lit, and went inside to get the food ready to cook. He came out a few minutes later, and the grill was gone. He looked and looked for it, but no luck. Gone.
The next day, he told a neighbor about this. The neighbor laughed. He had seen a guy, pushing a flaming grill down the street, stopping every couple of seconds to wave and blow on his hands, saying "Ow! Ow! Ow!"

Now, this is an implausible story, I grant you. And, we were in a bar, both of us with a beer in hand. However--and I suspect that Baltimore is not the only city in America where this is true--living here makes this implausible story quite believable, particularly the part where someone sees a man pushing a flaming grill down the street and treats it as just one event in a normal day. As Mr Riley himself ended the story: "I love Baltimore!...Every day I see something completely ridiculous!"

Later that night, he said goodbye, got down on his hands and knees to pull a book out from under the jukebox (Anna Karenina? Tristram Shandy?), and left. Never saw him again.

South Baltimore Haircut

2008-11-19T11:31:00.002-05:00

I went to Joe yesterday (702 E. Fort Avenue, Regular Haircuts Only-No Appointments, 410-837-0469), because it has been too long since my last haircut: Beth has been threatening to cut off my "rat tail" for a couple of weeks, and because Joe charges 8 bucks. Sometimes (like yesterday), he cuts the front a little uneven, but so what. I think he does it because he thinks I am going to use Brylcreem to hold my part in place.
Every time I go, no matter where our talk begins, he ends up telling this story (if you know the white Baltimore accent, hear it strong in the words):

Lemme tell you somethin about how things is different now. I moved outta the neighborhood four years ago, so this was, what, five years ago? when we had a big snow, 20 inches. There were these young people, couple-a guys, on my street, they nehhhvvverrrr shoveled the walks. My daughter's lookin out the window and she yells to me "Hey, get the movie camera! Yer not gonna bleeve this!" And those kids, come out the house with snow shovels! Did they shovel the sidewalks? No. And this was a Monday...We watched them walk--then we followed them, cause we, y'know, wondered, all the way down to Mother's [a bar on Charles Street--p], where they shoveled the sidewalk in front of Mother's, so they could be sure and watch Monday Night Football in the bar! Can you bleeve it? It jus goes to show how things have changed.

Every time, my haircut comes with this story. Now knowing it, and having read, seen, heard enough things like this, you know a lot about what is going on in South Baltimore.

Blood and Gore on C-SPAN Radio

2007-07-24T12:41:00.002-04:00

I am uncomfortable calling it entertainment, because "entertainment" is almost perjorative. But not necessarily. Aeschylus is entertaining, as is/was Lenny Bruce.
I am uncomfortable being entertained by public evisceration, even when all the players concerned are wearing suits, but comeuppance is satisfying to most people below those possessing sight of the eternal.

The disparity:
Senator after Senator using words like incompetent, ashamed, deceived, credibility, astonished, appalling, and others, in addition to monosyllabic grunts of paralyzed surprise.

The Attorney General answering these withering questions with statements about how these issues are problems to be solved by hard work and dedication and attention to details--as if his job were simply a matter of tracking down various paperwork, and as if these Senators had not just keelhauled him, slowly, pausing at each barnacle to scrape a little extra skin off.

Port-i-pots

2007-07-24T12:18:00.000-04:00

I say that there is no occasion* for which a portable toilet is appropriate. If one finds that his event requires a portable toilet, one's event has become grossly unsustainable.

* Construction sites are not occasions or events. They are perhaps the only reasonable places one could find a portable toilet

City boy, country boy

2007-06-23T00:35:00.000-04:00

Baltimore June 2007

Gunpowder Falls

Education Today

2007-06-21T19:02:00.000-04:00

At the aquarium today, the following, between a middle-aged man and a boy, about 10:

Man: "Y'see? fish spend their whole lives in school...so, stay in school."
[pause]
Boy: "Yeah. I'm not a fish."

It's a Hot One Today

2007-06-21T12:04:00.000-04:00

Pretend you are naked. Not completely naked, but almost, and very weirdly so, and you are walking on a city sidewalk around noon while traffic is backed up because a bunch of guys are repaving the street. Now pretend that a guy in a Saturn with a baby in the back seat is looking at you, confused. What is the proper facial expression for you to have? Your choices are cliche, but so is walking around Baltimore airing out your buns, hon:
a) sheepish
b) proud
c) what the f*** are you lookin' at?

And of course, the answer is cliche, also. Is it always true that someone can be more menacing while semi- nude or nude than while fully clothed?

Yeah, so there he was, walking in front of my car as I waited to pull out of the Family Dollar parking lot (little baby swimming pool, 3 dollars). He was dark-skinned and "wearing" all black clothes, so at first I was confused. Went like this:
Hmm, a guy.
In a hood.
It's hot, though.
Wait. What's his hand doing?
Weird.
Is he wearing pantyhose?
Is that skin?
Is that like some kind of dark brown boxer brief? Like Marky-Mark?
No. Skin.
He's holding up his pants, with one hand, in front.
Barely. Those are definitely individual cheeks, there.
Not even a thong.
Don't look too closely.
He's looking at me.
He's still looking at me.

I realize that some of you will question my thought of a thong, but I challenge anyone, when faced with a bare bottom in broad daylight under circumstances like these, not to look for even a shred of fabric.

Today I learned that this same gentleman was at the same very busy intersection as my wife and a work compatriot of hers rode the #19 up Harford Road. You will understand my confusion when I heard this, because I saw our friend at about noon. My wife's bus passed the hot spot at about 5:15. Was he out, in the heat, showin' us sumpin', for five hours? Without drawing the attention of the local constabulary? Probably.

Thank you for waiting

2007-06-20T16:19:00.000-04:00

I had a few things to take care of there.
Where do I start? Any requests?
To judge both your seriousness and my relevance, I will not be posting any pictures of Theodore until I hear from 5 people on these pages.
What do you want to hear about?

I could write paragraph after paragraph about my war against the passionflowers, but that's a short hop from extended riffs on why I like kitties. I could rip off Beth and begin a new feature called "Streets That I Hate," but that would be stealing. I could list for you all the items in my collection of junk I confiscated from fourth graders this year--but shouldn't I have given that stuff back? I could write about the guy on Harford Road earlier today with a fur hood and a bare ass, and I probably will, but someone has to ask for it first--and I've got a pretty good idea who that's going to be. Instead of outright theft of my wife's ideas, I could add a new feature where I retell her bus stories (which are better than mine, anyway) in my own words. That way I could make stuff up and it wouldn't really be lying. But, since this is Baltimore (see also: fur hood; bare ass), I won't need to make a single thing up.

I am, as you have noticed, stalling for time. I have a feeling that I will have time to think of something...

Where? When May I Have It? May I Eat It, Too?

2006-10-12T22:48:00.000-04:00

Field Trip

2006-09-29T22:04:00.000-04:00

Fourth Grade Goes to Fort McHenry

Major League Debut

2006-09-24T13:03:00.000-04:00

In answer to the question "who will Theodore root for?", we have said that he will hope for a well-played game. Last night's Orioles/Twins matchup was not exactly well-played (three errors between them, some boneheaded baserunning, some bad pitching), it was interesting (lead changes, a triple, and some National League style hit-and-run plays, stolen base attempts--successful and not).

Theodore saw Torii Hunter hit a 2-run home run to break a 4-4 tie. He danced to "Thank God I'm A Country Boy" for the first time.

He received his first lesson in keeping score.

Biennial Cri de Coeur

2006-09-12T09:17:00.000-04:00

Hurricane Katrina and our government's failure over it gave me a new, crystal answer to people who ask me why I became a teacher--specifically why I became a teacher in a Baltimore City public school. I tell them that I do not want any of my kids to drown in an attic. I don't want any of my kids' grandparents to drown in an attic. I don't want any of my kids to grow up to be suckered by people whose sense of worth depends upon them being suckers for their entire lives.
I thought at first that this space would be a place to write things about teaching: anecdotes, thoughts, all that. I wished to avoid political statements and opinions, because there is too much of that already, and because I have this problem with my own words. I see them written, and I am ashamed by their dullness. But so much of teaching is political, that every time I sat down to write about the antics of nine year-olds, the words began to shade farther and farther into the consequences of our idiotic education policies.
Then came Theodore, and this space became a place to write things about him and put up photographs for friends and family. But weeks go by without my having put things here, because every day I become more acutely aware that the future of this smiling little boy is bound up with the things our government does today. Blunty, I don't want him to drown in an attic. I don't want him to grow up a sucker. I don't want him to be drafted into a war created not by Islamic terrorists but by incompetent Americans three years before he was born. I don't want him killed or maimed in a calamity built on the muddy ground of a stupid idealist's vanity.
So I write this--because if we cannot learn from the mistakes we have made the past few years, what's to keep any of us from drowning in an attic?
The world really is made in words first, and there is no surer way to guarantee that this conflict turn into some sort of worldwide calamity than to keep talking about it as if it already is. Mr. Bush seems to need it to be true, desperately to need it be true. His administration has been one long exercise bent on proving that if you say something enough times it becomes real, and I suppose that in some ways we are living with the proof that he is correct to believe this.
Immediately after September 11, 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke on the subject of terrorism, saying that it was a blight on civilization, and one that we had tolerated for too long. If I remember correctly, his tone--which in matters of state rhetoric is nearly as important as the words--was one of deep reflection, not the sword-rattling self righteousness that very soon replaced it. At that time, listening to Secretary Powell, I understood him, and even told friends whose opinions of me I care about, that if the Administration 'got this right' I might even think about voting for them next time.
Alas.
There really is no more dangerous a person in the world than an idealist. An idealist is willing to sacrifice real things for imaginary ones, and had better have a firm grasp on the difference between the two if he is going to administer a sane government. It's one thing to write books like Albert Camus, but there were reasons that Albert Camus never ran France.
This is not World War II, or even III or IV, as I have heard some too-clever people argue about. Islamic terrorists are not Nazis or Fascists. Where are our Victory Gardens? Our rubber drives? Gasoline cards? The sort of retarded rhetoric of our president that is meant by turns to inspire, cajole, frighten and insult us, if it is not wedded to the sort of real sacrifice of real things for real things, is the cheapest kind of devaluation of our language. Vice-President Cheney got some press a while back for being quoted by Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill as having said that 'Reagan taught us that deficits don't matter.' What an elegant metaphor for those whose thoughts about fiscal policy apply equally well to their ideas about language and truth.
Remember the Clinton impeachment? Remember the Congressmen and Senators standing on the East Steps speechifying in voices a good octave below their normal tones about "The Rule of Law" and "Truth" and "The Justice System" and the forsaken "American People"? It was clear then that impeaching the president was a chance to justify themselves, whose lives previously had been woefully unimportant. What a shame it was, that such talent had heretofore been wasted on the mere, uninteresting, less-than-noble business of governing. Here, finally was Their Finest Hour--the one they had been born to live, the one that their destiny had led them to.
If last night's presidential address was not a variation on that theme, what was it?
Can we please have a president who is not trying to be Winston Churchill? It is not something that one can be by trying on like an expensive suit. Not one of us has that much money, and the attempt just gets people killed.
And even after all of that--no catharsis. I am still utterly disgusted.
Today is election day. I will vote.

2006-09-06T22:09:00.000-04:00

In matters of policy where lives will necessarily be lost, when one reaches that point where the most compelling argument in favor of continuing the policy is so that those already dead shan't have died in vain--hasn't one also reached the point where policy has failed, the dead have already died in vain, and argument is a mask for lies?

What, really, compels us now?

Emergency Vehicle

2006-09-03T09:34:00.000-04:00

Leaving the barber shop (actually a national hair-cutting chain establishment in a strip mall: my regular barber Joe Verdi was closed for some reason) yesterday I noticed that an old guy was standing beside the car parked beside mine. He had gray-to-white hair, combed neatly, he wore a plain white sweatshirt (I didn't see whether it was ironed) and old guy blue jeans, the color that only old guys and eleven year-old girls wear. I don't know whether these were ironed, either, but I imagine that they were. A couple of rows over in the parking lot a policeman was driving out toward the street with a couple of his lights flashing. He did not seem to be in a hurry, until he got to the lot exit, when he started up the siren and peeled off south on Harford Road. The two of us, the old guy and me, watched this, standing next to our respective driver's-side doors, in the light mist of Ernesto.

I make associations. I thought, "Older man, neatly dressed but in the odd way some older men have of dressing; not tall, maybe Navy, probably not Marines; conservative, maybe Republican--we're close to the County; favors law enforcement; maybe an FDNYPD Never Forget sticker on the back of his Buick...this was running through my head as he said:

"Does he have to take a sh*t?"

I turned to look at him and laughed.

"They do that, y'know."

Then he walked off toward the Dollar Tree.

Six Months

2006-08-01T22:27:00.000-04:00

A cliche it certainly is when I say that time passes quickly yet I cannot really remember what life was like before Theodore arrived. But look at this face:

The Last Toothless Grin

When all we do all day long is smile and laugh, sometimes the originality of language suffers. He has a tooth now, so until he's 94, putting his dental work into the glass on the nightstand, this will be the last anyone sees of a mouth empty of teeth.

We celebrated the day with a picnic at Fort McHenry--sitting on the blanket, telling jokes to each other, playing catch...

Fort McHenry, Baltimore

And then there's this little bit of nonsense:

The Future

Lab Assistant

2006-07-19T23:05:00.000-04:00

I hesitate to show this photograph in public, because some of you know, or will guess, what it is we are looking at in the scope. I cannot resist, however, showing off my little science pal, whose lab duties include--but are not limited to--flipping the pages of the phone book, pounding my glasses on the table six or seven times, smiling at his mother, grasping for the microscope, the sharp glass slide, the hot lamp, my coffee...all of it.
We found what we were looking for, but we still don't know what it is. Nothing "in the literature". We wait for culture results.

Thinking at the Baltimore Museum of Art

2006-07-17T18:30:00.000-04:00

Matisse, Picasso, and Rodin all made the infant "A" list. Rembrandt's portrait of his son Titus riveted us both for several minutes, as did Gaugin's Woman of the Mango.
Motherwell made him cry.
Then we went out to the sculptures and had a bottle of milk under the wisteria.

Credit Union

2006-07-16T21:59:00.000-04:00

One waits at the Credit Union. An older man takes your name, then asks again, then asks how do you spell it. Then he asks what your business is today, then asks again, then looks at you skeptically. He writes this down. Then you wait.
I sit down next to a man, older, who is probably a cop. It's a city credit union, so most of us here are cops or teachers. Next to him is another cop--confirmed when he makes a quick call to someone to talk about the information he sent on to Homicide about that guy, and he's waiting to hear back.
We sit, waiting.
From somewhere a boy, nine or ten, is now sitting on the far side, beside the telephoning policeman, whom he asks a long series of interesting questions about sports, money, his family, his profession.

"How old are you?"
"Forty-nine."

"How old were you when you were younger?"

The three of us, older, laugh gently, remembering and trying to remember.

Five Months Today

2006-06-29T23:39:00.000-04:00

...or is it 21 weeks and four days? When do we stop using weeks and start using months? Theodore would not tell me. He did, however, do some things with me to celebrate.

some crying

some playing in the running water

some eating--boiled pears and rice cereal

and some walking around

There was also some wrestling and a couple of naps. We pulled some weeds around the zinnias and four o'clocks. We said hello to Marmelade, the orange cat. We went really fast around the house in the little red stroller.

The Three Month Mark

2006-05-13T22:25:00.000-04:00

What are you reading these days?

2006-04-08T18:31:00.000-04:00

We're reading Middlemarch.

2006-03-13T23:21:00.000-05:00

Beard-Stroking Internet Fun

2006-03-09T23:19:00.000-05:00

So, what has happened in the world that has caused seven people to land here in the last couple of days after searching various engines for some combination of "carrot", "stick", "donkey", and "dangling"? I recall a similar thing happening right after I wrote this. The searchers that last time were all from Great Britain or Germany, and all came knocking in the space of two or three days. This time around, I have been visited by folks from some disparate places as:

Florida International University, Miami
Peterborough Regional College, Reading, England
Detroit
Dallas
Australia
Utica, New York
and
William Beaumont Hospital, Detroit

Is NPR mis-using the term again? Was there some sort of Correspondence Course homework assignment? Why this confluence?

A picture I am glad I did take

2006-03-04T22:29:00.000-05:00

Can you come up with a story for this?

Pictures I wish I had taken

2006-03-04T22:14:00.000-05:00

There are many more than I can remember, but this is one:

On Belair Road a few blocks north of here there is a senior citizen day center called Paradise. Beth and I were walking one October Saturday--without the camera, carelessly--soon after we moved up here, to get a look at the neighborhood. This day center is a one-story storefront place, looks like it was built sometime between 1955 and 1972, with a big glass window angled a little inward from the street toward the glass front door. The inner workings of the place are concealed behind an off-white curtain. On the inside of the big window are several narrow, full length glass shelves. On the shelves this Saturday were lots of little plastic and plush Halloween souvenirs: black kitties, pumpkins, little tulle bags of candy, etc..., all spaced neatly and fairly wide apart--a lonely distance from one another--and on the window itself was a banner reading "Welcome To Paradise".

Do you have a photograph you wish you had taken?

2006-03-02T22:16:00.000-05:00

Ika?

Or toro?

So, what can I expect from this toilet?

2006-03-02T20:40:00.000-05:00

I don't know what you look for in a toilet figuratively, but this is pretty literal.

I wonder about the "quotes", but I am crystal clear about the action on this sucker.

Although, I could see a reasonable person standing there, in need, reading this and wondering whether this model worked with gravity or against it.

I mean, I've seen enough fighter pilot movies that the words "eject" and "seat" indicate an upward trajectory.

A free baby picture for those who supply alternative titles for this post.

Old Field Succession

2006-03-02T20:33:00.000-05:00

The barn is white with a slate-green roof. The hayloft window has dark streaks flowing down the outside, pointing and fading away just above the big barn doors below. The roof is beam-broken, saddlebacked. The vane stands atop one of the onion-dome roof vents. This vent, on the broken roof, tilts severely but easily. The vane points ever up to the above. No longer does it register horizontal, earthly weather. It responds to another, constant climate.
Starlings nest in the barn, its only inhabitants. When the barn was new the ancestors of these birds, a handfull or two, lived in Central Park--brought there because a man from Northumberland once wished to torment the King of England, and because a poet wrote it down.
They swirl around the broken barn, wonderful, unwanted birds.

Governed productivity has migrated from this place: it is no longer a farm. The fields now grow cedars in the open, sumac umbrellas, brambles and little pines. A parcel has been squared off and inexpensive homes built, with vinyl siding and vinyl windows and white aluminum carports, but these are far from the barn, and there are hundreds more acres left alone. An old small cemetery, with no more than twenty inhabitants, sits hard by the highway: a square of memory surrounded by wire pasture fence.

Theodore Jasper

2006-02-03T11:29:00.000-05:00

My long absences from this documentary usually spring from the time I spend writing lesson plans, making "process charts", grading papers--all that. Being locked in a 25x35-foot room for 8 hours a day with nine year-olds is not conducive to blogorrhea. Is there a cute techneologism for internet constipation?

Anyway--the picture above is of the little project my wife and I have been working on since Sunday. My wife has been working for a little longer than that. Heretofore I have avoided three subjects on these pages: politics, kittens (except for that one--reminds me: anyone want a kitten? We still have two of them...), and babies. This little man is so damn fascinating, though, that I might start posting nothing but baby pictures, fifty times a day. What would you rather look at, pictures of decayed industrial structures, pictures of sheep in tracksuits, or pictures of a baby?

Farewell, Locust Point--Part Next

2005-12-18T18:23:00.000-05:00

Domino Sugars bulk storage, February, dusk

There was always an industrial hum and whir around this building. Fans, up at the prow, to keep the sugar cool and dry, combined their sound with the throb of the factory a little closer to the water--you can see its stack rising behind. There was never anyone around here, a very lonely and dry place: weeds, empty asphalt, train tracks through gray gravel. Those streetlights, shining, on nothing in particular, I suppose for security purposes.

Assembly

2005-12-15T21:45:00.000-05:00

Carrot and Stick

2005-11-20T20:59:00.000-05:00

Which is it? The one on the left, or the one on the right?
I hear the phrase used many times a week, and almost universally the speaker means it in the sense of the picture on the right--beating the donkey with the stick and offering it a carrot in order to get it to move.
Isn't the left-hand picture more elegant? Doesn't it make more sense, really? Isn't the object to get the donkey to move? I agree that the people who refer to carrots as rewards and sticks as punishments are consistent in their logic, but I think that they have imported a foriegn meaning to the original sense of "carrot and stick."

Of course I have no proof that I know the original sense, but let's look at the internal evidence of the phrase itself:

1) We talk about "the carrot and the stick." Is this not an apparatus? A carrot to reward and stick to punish are separate things, the operation of one independent of the other.

2) Which brings up a question? Why do we need to beat the animal at all? Won't it be lured forward by the promise of the carrot? As long as the carrot is just out of reach, the donkey will continue walking, in anticipation of reaching it. The stick-as-fishing-pole, with a carrot dangling tantalizingly out of reach, provides the sort of continuous promise of reward the situation calls for.

3) Can one person both beat the rump with a stick and feed carrots up front? Perhaps by holding a stick with a carrot dangling from it, as in the first picture, while simultaneously beating the animal's behind with another stick, would work--but then we're both violating elegance and returning to the question of why we need to beat the creature in the first place.

4) Although it is a donkey, and stubborn--which is probably why people assume we have to beat it to get it to move--there is no more guarantee that the animal will move with beatings than it will without them. We have the carrot, after all.

5) Someone could argue that the permanent withholding of the carrot will eventually result in the donkey stopping out of frustration. Then, beatings would have to be administered or the carrot given to the donkey. Fair enough--give the donkey the carrot. Then put another one on the string and start the process over. This is no different from the feeding of the carrot-as-reward--there are still no beatings necessary, and I would be willing to bet that we save money on carrots.

6) Yes, of course the dangling carrot method is manipulative. You might even try to tell me that the reward-carrot/punishment-stick method is more honest or some such nonsense, but this will remain a difference of opinion between us. Sure, I prefer a little quiet manipulation to violence. I prefer not to beat my donkey.

7) And then there is the self-sufficient--and almost pastoral--beauty of the dangling carrot method. The fragmentation of effort, the modern specialization required to mount the reward-carrot/punishment-stick method really turns me off.

8) But enough of opinions. Which is the correct meaning of the phrase, "carrot and stick"?

True Grit, Baltimore Style

2005-11-19T23:54:00.000-05:00

Get a little closer.

Closer...

There. Run your hand over it. Feel the different grain sizes as some of them rub off and fall to the sidewalk below. Like sandstone. Notice that it looks like it has been painted, or even colored by a dye mixed into the stuff when they were applying it to the house.

It is Formstone. I have seen some of the houses in Locust Point (and in other neighborhoods) covered with Permastone, but in Baltimore, Formstone seems to be the word of choice, no matter what brand the substance actually is.

Judging by the number of rowhouses around town whose owners are electing to strip the Formstone off, the question "Why would anyone put that stuff over perfectly good brick?" is more than a rhetorical one. Apparently, the answer, in the 1930's, 40's and 50's was, "Because the bricks of these old rowhouses are poorly-made, porous things that let the rain soak in." I suppose that too much economy has moved through the marketplace for the people who made their fortunes slathering Formstone up to be the same now making fortunes stripping it off.

A crew of guys would show up, with a mixer, some buckets, big rolls of chicken wire or steel mesh, trowels and shaping tools, dye and some scaffolding. They'd nail the mesh to the bricks and apply coats of the Formstone mix. Into the final coat they would carve and shape rectangles with relief suggesting cut stone. Then they would paint these rectangles colors: gray-blue, gray-orange, gray, gray-yellow.

As with Medieval and Renaisance guilds and studios, the artisans are anonymous. They affixed this plate to the outside of what, in later years, would be our house for a time.

Are there archives of the Formstone Corporation? Is there, somewhere, an invoice for the work done at 1463 Towson Street? Are the names of the men (presumably) who did the work on the paper?

How long will it be until someone has this Formstone removed to expose the brick beneath?

Nature is already at work, with the accompanying half-assed efforts of man to counteract that work.

Kittens

2005-11-16T22:23:00.000-05:00

These little ones are looking for a home. They would like to live in our home, but our own cat has a few things to say about it. Anyone out there want a kitten? Drop me a line.

Farewell, Locust Point

2005-11-02T23:02:00.000-05:00

Towson Street, looking North

Or, This One's for Mr. Afflerbach
Or, Where Was I?

We lived in Locust Point for 13 months. Didn't even scratch the surface in a neighborhood where you have to be able to point to your great-grandmother's house from your porch to be considered a long-time resident. In the days before our move we did manage to have a few conversations with neigbors we had never spoken to--the odd freedom of near leave-taking...
There was the hairy guy who walked his scruffy dog past the church every morning and evening. He paused as I came down the moving truck ramp.
"Y'movin', huh?"
"Yeah"
"To the County?"
By which he means Baltimore County. The County is where you move to when you are fed up with city life. The County is where you go to when you've made it. The County--the east part of it, anyway--is where you go is you if you are white and you want more white neighbors. This last thing surely my hairy neighbor didn't mean, since Locust Pint is one of the whitest neighborhoods I have ever seen, much less lived in. When he said that about moving to the County, I felt a little indignance rise up:
"No, we're staying in the city--up Belair Road"
"So, almost the County, then"
Whatever. He was pleasant, though, when I explained that we were moving away precisely because we have not "made it", that we would love to stay in Locust Point but we couldn't afford to buy a house in it. He said:
"Yeah, if I told you how much I paid for my place 15 years ago, you'd cry--an' then a few months ago the guy buys the house next to me for four hundred fifty grand. Four hundred fifty grand! To get a neighbor like me!"
He shook his head. He wouldn't pay $450,000 for house next door to himself. I mean, with cash like that, move to the County!

We will miss the place. The photograph above is of a cargo ship at the end of our street one cool Saturday morning. I will miss seeing ships at the end of the street.

This back-ward looking toward the old neighborhood will be in several parts. Part Two will include some of the grit that makes Baltimore gritty.

Summer Ends

2005-08-24T23:33:00.000-04:00

Room 202, empty now but soon very full

2005-08-24T23:29:00.000-04:00

Found Literature, or, Pants Meat Transcended

2005-08-23T11:25:00.000-04:00

A shameful thing it is to derive pleasure from the story of another's suffering. Perhaps it's even worse to try to defend this pleasure-taking as a sort of aesthetic appreciation for the syntax of the narrative.

So the story related at the website provided below--with many thanks to Susanna's Superior Search Engineering--makes me reflect on my own care for my fellow citizens, because there is something wonderful about it, as art. Artless art. Inspired artlessness. I could go on and on ad nauseam about what I find so perfect about it, but I will simply let it speak for itself. It began life as a comment upon Pants Meat--there is mention of meat down someone's pants (try to find it!)--but the story so transcends that subject as to warrant its own place in the pantheon...

See the story here:

Set Kenneth Gene Lett Free

...and contemplate your sins.

Pants Meat

2005-08-23T00:16:00.000-04:00

There are those--I live with one--who will be scandalized by this, but I am moved to record a phenomenon that threatens to survive only in one-paragraph police blotter items in tiny local papers and in ephemeral beer-aided conversations between friends. I am talking about the theft of meat by stuffing it down one's pants. I suppose that South Baltimore and Northern Anne Arundel County, in the State of Maryland, is an area not entirely unique in any repsect, and so this post is not only a getting-it-all-down-before-I-forget-it, but also a Call For Papers: Do you have any examples of this sort of criminal, hilarious behavior? Variations of it (see The Shrimp Guy, below*)? Share them, lest these stories be lost in the mists of oral tradition.

Every effort has been made to recall the facts of each incident. However, since most written record of these thefts went out with the recycling long ago, the editors claim no strict adherence to absolute truth. The humor inherent in each situation has been the driving force behind its preservation in memory, so perhaps truth has been sacrificed (but just a little) for the sake of a funny story.

#1--(three, maybe four years ago) A man is stopped at the door of a Severna Park supermarket by store employees, where it is "determined" that he has stuffed several steaks down his pants. The man is arrested.

#2--(a couple of years ago) Two guys are chased out of a supermarket in Severna Park by a store employee who sees them stuffing meat down their pants. Halfway across the parking lot, one of the guys draws a gun and waves it, running, at the employee, yelling "Is this stuff worth your family's lives? [sic]"

#3--(also a couple of years ago) A woman in extra-large sweatpants is stopped in a Washington, D.C. store by an employee who sees her stuffing meat down those sweats. She becomes really defensive, and then, exasperated by the employee's persistence, heaves a great sigh, pulls out the many meat packages, and throws them onto the floor. So there. Take that.

#4--(last year) We actually witnessed this one. A long-sought and transcendant experience. A scrawny young man is confronted by the Locust Point Shoppers Food security guard as he approaches the exit. She has seen him stuff, or suspects him to have stuffed, meat down his pants. He makes a break for the door, but the guard, a sizable woman not to be messed with, grabs him by the shirt, which the meat guy, about to cry (and nearly knocking over my cantaloupe-seeking wife), twists out of. He runs, minus shirt and meat (which came flying loose during his escape maneuver), out the door, leaving the guard holding a sweaty shirt, smiling, surrounded by celophane-wrapped steaks littering the floor.

I know that I have neglected at least one other local Pants Meat incident, but I do not trust my memory enough to reconstruct it. Others must. I will also request opinions on the following question: since in most cases the meat is recovered, how do you, gentle readers, feel about a "Half-Price! Pants Meat" bin?

*A friend of ours once worked in the D.A.'s office in the Bronx. She tells the story of a regular customer of the Bronx criminal justice system who would steal shrimp. He'd go up to a seafood counter and order a pound, or more, of raw shrimp, and as soon as the clerk would hand him the bag of little guys he'd bolt out the door. Usually he would get caught. On one occasion, a policeman saw him tearing down the street, bag of shrimp in hand, and gave chase. The Shrimp Guy ducked into a medical clinic or some sort of office and ran through the maze of cubicles and exam rooms to the bathroom. The policeman found him there, on the floor, furiously dumping the shrimp down a toilet, trying vainly to flush the evidence. Busted! Nothing down the pants, but I like the story.

Good Idea?

2005-08-22T14:58:00.000-04:00

Charles Street, Baltimore, 9:05 am

Anachrony 2, or, Harper's Ferry on a Very Hot Day

2005-08-18T22:26:00.000-04:00

Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, is in a very beautiful place. For you who have never been there, where the Shenandoah mixes with the Potomac--the place where they have for eons, judging by the height and steepness of the cliffs--the steepness of the rock and the tenacity of the trees and the two rivers meeting, all overshadow the sights and sounds of the highway across the Shenandoah from the town.
The town itself has the strangeness of a museum where people also live and work. The historical strictures and monuments and National Park Service signs sharing space with tchochke stores and "No Trespassing" and handmade "This Is Private Property" signs leaves me feeling a little uneasy. The natural world upon which the town is built, though, more than makes up for the weirdness.
The historical instruction of the place is worthwhile. The little fire engine house where Colonel Lee captured John Brown after a long firefight is a good place. One can go inside the undecorated brick rooms, free from information plaques, sit on an old wooden bench in the coolness, and think about what Brown must have been thinking.
Just across the street from this little building is the monument whose photograph leads this post. It is called the Heyward Shepherd Monument, and many people have argued about it.
What do you think about it?

Round Here--Part Three: An Incident I Remember

2005-08-17T21:37:00.000-04:00

The girls of Towson Street and environs grow up fast. The middle schoolers cuss on the street, worse than I do now, in private, when I am drunk and talking about the Administration. They smoke, in that disturbing, histrionic way children handle cigarettes. Their mothers smoke, too, and I suppose the kids learn the mannerisms in part from the elders. Isn't much of smoking done for emphasis anyway? Nothing like waving around a bundle of leaves on fire to make sure people understand that you really mean this.
One night we were walking back home down Fort Avenue, and a group of the girls was flitting about the steps of Good Counsel, smoking and cussing. Not the usual conversational South Baltimore cussing, but a harder, meaner, direct cussing. They were cussing at (with? against?--prepositions are the most difficult thing, apparently, for foreign speakers to learn in English.) an older man taken to drink too much and sit on the bus stop bench. An American Flag was involved. I don't know where the girls had gotten it, but each one took a turn treating it roughly: jamming it into the yew planter on the corner, jabbing it with a cigarette, threatening to throw it into the street...and all the while the old guy on the bench across the street sat there in a writhing conniption, yelling in a cigarette-burned voice that "you goddamn girls should know better...have some goddamn respect...OH! GOD! Why are doing this?..." All the while the girls were running around, each one with some new idea of an outrage to inflict on the flag in order to torture this man. Also all the while, of course, they were yelling back at him with obscenity-littered explosions, waving their cigarettes in the air. It looked and felt like a variation of the LP cover of the copy of the Symphonie Fantastique we had when I was little. Hieronymus Bosch would have done something really nifty with the scene.
This was, if I recall correctly, a school night.

Contemplate That Which Is Before You

2005-08-14T14:34:00.000-04:00

Our Lady of Good Counsel steps, August, 2005

Mass is at 11:30.

Violet

2005-08-12T11:51:00.000-04:00

Sheep, Howard County Fair, 2005

For Photo Friday.

Round here--Part Two: signs of life

2005-08-12T01:46:00.000-04:00

Locust Point still works. From most places in the neighborhood one can see the big blue port cranes, cargo ship superstructures rising above the rooftops, the stacks of the sugar factory. It's not a loud place, but is filled with sounds. Sounds and smells.

The smells one smells here:

The deep yet sharp odor of molasses from the Domino Sugars plant. This is a fun field trip--out to the factory to see what sugar boat's in town, to see where it's from. This week it's the Shinyo Challenge (27,940 dwt/mt).

The city-harbor smell of salt water and diesel fuel.

An occasional gas leak.

Fried bar food. Many bars here.

On a typical day and night, I hear these sounds in the neighborhood:

Starlings

State Police helicopter on its way to or from the Shock-Trauma unit

The brrr-be-beep of those cell phones with the walkie-talkie function--often at night, in the hands of young men in baggy denim shorts, t-shirts and backwards caps.

Ships' horns out in the harbor--also usually at night. Few sounds can compete with this for goosebump-inducing thrill. Sitting in bed, reading about North American forests, or Willa Cather stories, and in through the window comes the broooo, broooo, broooooooo--news from some faraway place. A friend recently asked us how it is that we have lived here for a whole year and have not jumped aboard stowaways for Cathay or the South Seas. I don't know. The holds of the ships are full of cheap TVs and cars, but late at night one drifts into romance.

Train sounds. A close second to the ships'. They couple and uncouple in the yards a couple of blocks away; they blow their whistles before crossing that industrial end of Andre Street; they hum in their diesel constancy.

Trucks. At the end of our street is an operation called Perishable Deliveries, Incorporated. Often at night we hear the trucks, a low rumble way down the block, slowly and ominously heading our way. I suppose that either these trucks are quite full of perishable deliverables, or that there is some sort of speed restriction on this residential street that causes them to drive so slowly, but the effect is sometimes actually frightening, like some enormous, dark thing is coming this way, bringing destruction and horror with it. Our cat certainly thinks this when the truck passes.

The Department of Public Works guys who show up on the block every couple of weeks to fix this or that. Usually one or two do the actual work, and the other three or four stand around and offer advice on how to do the work, how to live, how to love. One day it was an older guy cussing out a younger one for thinking he knew everything. "Stan' back, evrybody, cuz GOD's talkin! He knows ALL! GOD's gonna tell us the thing! Ha!" Etc..., for about a half an hour, while the younger guy fiddled with a handicapped parking sign outside our front window.

Domestic disputes ("F#ck you, you f#ckin drug dealer! I'm f#ckin callin the f#ckin cops, that's it. You f#ckin blew it! You tell that assh#le that the f#ckin both of you are goin' t' f#ckin jail!" Etc...); drug-induced breakdowns; kids arguing in the alley.

Dogs

Round here--Part One of a Few: The Silo

2005-08-10T00:50:00.000-04:00

My temptation is to turn every first thing into some sort of manifesto, but that is tedious, and sometimes I try not to be tedious, and I began posting things here in a vague way with vague ideas etc etc etc...but tonight I figure I would just begin with the neighborhood.
Baltimore is neighborhoods. I have lived in other cities, and some (Pittsburgh particularly) are neighborhoods in ways similar to Baltimore--unlike the city where I grew up, San Jose, which has maybe two, three neighborhoods people know the names of. Did you know that San Jose is the third-largest city in California? Mm hmm.

Baltimore is neighborhoods, and the one we live in right now is Locust Point, formerly Whetstone Point.

Allegedly, heroin is a problem down here. One night over pints at J. Patrick's down on Andre a longtime local praised the neighborhood like this: "Yeah, you could leave your front door unlocked--I wouldn't--but you could if you wanted to. All our druggies have jobs, so they don't need to steal for money..."

The tallest structure here is this: In 2001 it closed for good. Archer Daniels Midland owned and operated it, until the pier leading from it to the water collapsed. There was some argument over who should fix the pier, and ADM figured it was cheaper just to walk away. Now a developer (notice the crane jutting up from the middle of the silo complex) is turning it into a shopping mall and condos or some such thing. If you were to look out from our bedroom, you would see this:

The people who are trying to turn this former grain storage facility into living space hollowed out the silo complex in order to build a parking garage in the middle. There was half-joking talk in the neighborhood of a six foot deep tide of rats flooding the streets when the work began--but only half-joking, as you might imagine. A sort of vermin-gallows humor. No such thing happened, probably to the disappointment of some of the old-timers in the neighborhood. They would have appreciated the irony and the spectacle, if not the actual rats.
A statistic floating around a couple of years ago informed us that there were five rats for every man, woman, and child in Baltimore. Beth, of course, wondered, "What happens if you move? Do you get to keep your five rats? Or do you leave them for someone new moving to the city? Who watches your rats when you go on vacation?" Etc.

Surrounding this building is the development of several brand new blocks of townhouses, priced these days over 500 Grand. Most of them were sold, of course, before the graders had even smoothed out the industrial vacant lot dirt. I would guess that before each one is actually occupied by people, it will have been sold two or three times, and each seller will have made a killing.
Father Ray, priest at Our Lady of Good Counsel, talking about these new homes and their certain effect on the values of existing homes here, said once, "It's the end of Locust Point as we know it."

Even this neighborhood has neighborhoods. A couple of weeks after we moved in, we stopped a couple of doors down to exchange greetings with some neighbors. There were two older women, an older man, and a younger family--man, woman, toddler (I did not ask them about their 15 rats), all out on the stoop.
"Hi, hon. I'm Peachy."
"My name's Dolores, but nobody calls me that. Everybody calls me Dickie."
The older man remained quiet and nodded.
The young father introduced himself, his wife, and their child. I asked if he lived here. He answered, "No, we live over on Richardson. We're just visiting."
Richardson is the very next street over.
Many of the homes in Locust Point have never been sold.

Complexity

2005-08-09T21:14:00.000-04:00

Sequoia Sempervirens

For Photo Friday. Beth took this one.

Anachrony

2005-08-05T17:01:00.000-04:00

Hickory Street, Baltimore

Somber

2005-08-03T15:22:00.000-04:00

Memorial to the Citizens of the District of Columbia who Served their Country in the World War

There is shade under it.

Silky

2005-07-20T12:01:00.000-04:00

For Photo Friday. Thanks to the good people over at Slimbolala for opening up little In-Ter-Net windows like this one for this new teacher trying to figure out what to do with his first summer vacation.

Think of the feeling in your fingers when you peel one that is almost a little too ripe...

2005-06-28T23:46:00.000-04:00

Tiles--Manhattan, March 2002

Backlog

2005-06-28T12:26:00.000-04:00

Lots of little things I have scattered around here...some old photographs and things, like this one, that I will post in no particular order. Maybe a reflection of my mood at the moment of posting, but I wouldn't even bet on that much.

Pimlico eight. Three Dollars. Box the three and the seven.

2005-06-28T11:07:00.000-04:00

Nobska Point, September 1999

Monument Street, Saturday

2005-03-12T21:19:00.000-05:00

Walking south on St. Paul street I noticed two little boys in puffy coats and cornrows cross on their way down Monument Street. They disappeared around the corner of the headquarters of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. They were maybe seven years old. When I reached that corner a few moments later and looked down the hill, the boys were lying down on the sunny sidewalk, laughing and rolling down the concrete hill like my sister and I used to do down grassy slopes.

Welcome

2005-03-07T05:48:00.000-05:00

To begin with...