day of rest

Mars Hill Pentecostal Church, opened July 8, 1973, Founder and Pastor Elder Olin Williams

Baltimore, Maryland

view from the Crescent, Amtrak's passenger train, passing through.

Poplar Grove

satisfaction guaranteed

Today's WaPo has a news story, a column and an editorial dealing with the temporary resolution of Roy L. Pearson Jr. v . Soo Chung et al, a case in which a D.C administrative law judge sought $54,000,000 from the neighborhood cleaners that lost his pants.

ruins

I hate the way the New Year is recognized. Goofy glasses, stilts and balloons, clowns, silly hats, football, television. The passing of a year is weighty. So much left undone. I wish we could sit quietly, in conversation, contemplation and meditation. Say goodbye, say hello.

Phone home

This is Raymond Bibb, long time Woolen Mills resident, died in 1999. Raymond's parents were Martha V. Baltimore and C.M. Bibb. I need help finding Raymond's daughter. Please ask her to call home.

cats and dogs Ecclesiasticus

Woke up this morning, the street full of cars, an estate sale on Woolen Mills Road. None of the neighbors had mentioned it to me, indeed, none of the neighbors were on hand, the notification went out via Internet.

Professional Personal Property Liquidation

What constitutes a life? Oh! Sadness beyond expression. I suppose it's the job of the Liquidator to drop a neutron bomb, separate out all the organic material and personal ephemera. Pack the living past in garbage bags for immediate disposal.
Leave behind the ashtrays, silver service, tools, furniture, Life magazines, all the collectible items that could have come from anywhere, from any old person's house.

What constitutes a life? We struggle to look back in time, to save shards of an era and a neighborhood that possessed a sense of community beyond anything we will know.
Blessedly the Liquidators missed a few items. One of them, a "certificate of longevity" issued to the beautiful Edna, three days after her 109th birthday, April 2, 1999.
The other, Louise's 1931 high school yearbook.

And some there be, which have no memorial;
who are perished, as though they
had never been; and are become as though
they had never been born;
and their children after them.

Sirach 44:9

bodhi tree

poised on the ridgetop, parked under a load of excrement, sitting beneath a tree, a moment of awareness

where are they now?

I made the picture but lost the names. Failure to memorize, failure to annotate.
This photo dates from 1977, taken outside the Superdome
Where are these guys? Are they still musicians?
Did they survive the water, the wind, the twenty-eight intervening years?

snow creek

The Virginia Highlands festival photography juror liked the image above. Receiving words of encouragement is a rare and wonderful thing.