Music Hath Charms in Charm City

     Uncle Jack was lucky that the public schools of his home town, Ashland, Wisconsin, had a wonderful music program.  He started playing a little plastic instrument called a "Tonette" in the first grade, switched to the clarinet in the fourth grade and to the bass clarinet in the eighth grade.  The band instructor, a revered teacher named Ted Mesang who later became director of bands at Oregon State University and appeared on national TV conducting a massed band with about 400 players during the half-time program at the Rose Bowl, told Uncle Jack he had a chance to become the best bass clarinet player in the history of Ashland High School and that is what he did.  He even won a full-tuition scholarship to the University of Wisconsin in Madison on the strength of his superlative bass clarinet playing. (A full year's tuition was only $100 in those days but it seemed like a lot of money at the time, especially to his parents who belatedly learned that he had spent all his hard-earned tuition money on beer during his gala senior year).
     What he is really happy about, though, is that his experiences in the Ashland High School band turned him into a lifelong classical music lover. In spite of his scholarship he never was much of a musician but he made up for his almost total lack of innate musical ability by diligent practice so that when the time came he could play the right  notes at the right time, more or less. At the same time he learned to appreciate what real
musicians can do when they put their minds to it and he has spent countless hours listening to great players rendering the work of great composers.
     Lucky for him and for Mrs. U.J., who loves good music as much as he does, Baltimore has turned out to be a music lover's paradise.  The Baltimore Symphony is world class,  Johns Hopkins University sponsors the Shriver Hall Music Series which brings world-renowned musicians to the campus all year long, the Peabody Conservatory offers student concerts several times a week, and there are a host of other music venues offering occasional performances. It is not exaggerating to say that they could attend a different concert just about every day of the week all year long if they had the time and the stamina to do it, which they don't, unfortunately.
     One of their favorite musical outings is the Thursday Noon Concert Series at the Peabody Conservatory where advanced students perform in front of an audience as part of their training.  Each concert features a different musical family, e.g. strings, brass, woodwinds, voice, percussion. in various combinations.  Every one of the half-dozen concerts they have attended has been delightful and they continue to be amazed at the remarkable skills and talents of these young people who come to Peabody from all over the world to study with great teachers.
     Last Thursday's concert featured percussionists including marimba players, tympanists, snare and bass drummers and a host of others.  The final piece was a performance of "Musique de Table" by the contemporary Belgian composer Thierry de Mey which was one of the damndest things Uncle Jack has ever experienced.  The three Peabody students who performed it must be among a tiny handful of people in the world who have mastered its intricacies and they did it flawlessly.  If you have a few minutes to spare and have never seen "Musique de Table" performed,  Uncle Jack thinks you might enjoy looking at one of the several performances of this unusual work available on YouTube.  You can get to the right place by clicking on this link below. If this one doesn't work try another. Turn the sound up so you can hear it clearly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg4quXjmoaA

:      The leaves just keep getting prettier and prettier around the JHU campus.

                                                  Ditto.

Food for thought

    Uncle Jack starts almost every morning by reading the New York Times on line.  This is probably not a good thing to do because it almost always guarantees that he will be plunged into gloom even before he has had his bran flakes.  No other publication in the world does a better job of gathering the worst news from every corner of the world and presenting it to him in eminently readable form before breakfast.
     For many years the most distressing stories have come out of Iraq where we appear to be in the final stages (maybe) of our most colossal military fiasco since the Viet Nam war.  Now the spotlight has moved to Afghanistan where we are floundering around like the blind giant of myth, trying to swat pesky flies with a club more suited to breaking skulls.  The historical record shows that Afghanistan for centuries has defeated every effort by outside powers to impose their various conceptions of proper government on this wild and crazy part of the world.  But there we are (with the reluctant assistance of a few NATO "allies") trying to do the impossible, again at great cost in lives and treasure.
     Uncle Jack has probably read a million words about what we should or should not do in Afghanistan at this point but an op-ed piece in the Times this morning has helped to focus his thinking more than anything else he has read recently.  Read it and weep, and if you find it illuminating forward it to your congressman and senator and the president.  They will need all the good advice they can get on this one.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/opinion/29sebestyen.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

The Law is an Ass, So Far

    Tragedy has visited Johns Hopkins University twice in the past month.  On the first occasion a male student killed a presumed burglar in his back yard near the campus with a samurai sword.  Then last week a female student was killed by a hit-and-run driver while crossing the street in front of  Uncle Jack's condo building. Both events cast a pall of gloom over the community but the second has also raised a storm of outrage as facts have emerged about the alleged driver, John Meighan, 39, who turned himself in to the police the day after the incident.  According to a report in the Baltimore Sun newspaper:
    Meighan already has 21 motor vehicle convictions on his record, including six for driving while intoxicated and two for driving under the influence. He was free on $100,000 bail before his arrest Saturday, awaiting a December trial on unrelated hit-and-run and DWI allegations from late July. He's also been convicted of escape for leaving an alcohol treatment facility while in custody in 2002.
    On the day of the accident several eyewitnesses reported to the police that Meighan's truck was being driven erratically  and at least one witness identified Meighan as the driver a couple of hours before the fatal accident. There were no witnesses to the accident itself so the authorities have not as yet been able to add manslaughter to the long list of offenses with which Meighan has been charged.
    Meighan is now locked up without bail while awaiting further disposition of his latest and most serious alleged crime.  Needless to say Baltimoreans are aghast and astonished at the failure of the judicial system to protect other drivers from a proven menace like Meighan.  Some observers fear that the lack of an eyewitness at the scene of the accident may allow him to escape serious punishment because the only evidence against him is circumstantial at this point.
    Readers may recall a similar tragedy in Kitty Hawk a few years ago when an oft-convicted drunken driver plowed into a Jeep at an intersection on the Bypass, killing four young women.  If Uncle Jack is not mistaken the driver is serving a life term in prison for that heinous offense.  Will some way be found to keep Meighan from driving again?  Lots of folks around here, including Uncle Jack, will be watching carefully as the wheels of  justice slowly grind through this sad case.  Stay tuned.

P.S. Readers who would like to be notified by email each time Uncle Jack posts a new blog entry should click on the "comment" button below and enter their email address (which will not be visible to anyone but him).  Thanks. (And don't miss the pictures below!)

    Sunset over Johns Hopkins Homestead Campus, from Uncle Jack's balcony, October 25

                                                           Ditto

                                                        And again

More Fall in Bawlmer

     This is Uncle Jack's first fall in Charm City and it has been a revelation.  For the first time in 40 years he doesn't have to drive out to the countryside to take in the splendor of Mother Nature's annual leaf-turning extravaganza.  All he has to do is go for a walk in the neighborhood which is what he and Mrs. U.J. did again this morning. The pictures below provide a small sample of what they saw but naturally they can't do justice to the actual scene.  For that you have to get in the car and drive to Baltimore.
     He confesses to being somewhat lackadaisical about posting new entries to his blog lately.  With so much going on in the culture department he has difficulty finding time to sit down and do his duty to his faithful readers who look for something new every day but seldom find it.  He has discovered that there is a mechanism built into the blogging apparatus that makes it possible for him to notify readers when a new entry has been posted.  If you would like to be added to the "notify" list he suggests that you use the "comment" button at the end of this blog entry.  Just put your email address in the space allotted for a comment and he will add you to the list. (Your email address will be visible only to him and he promises not to sell it to anybody). It could save some wear and tear on your mouse and he will feel less guilty about the infrequency of his postings. Thanks.

                                                   On the Johns Hopkins campus.

                                                   View from the back window toward Johns Hopkins

                                                                In Roland Park

   This ancient tree in Roland Park is almost leafless now making it possible to see the amazing array of   branches.  In person it is spectacular.

                                                  Typical street in Roland Park

                    A sidewalk carpet of fallen leaves.  Jackson Pollock would be envious.

    A typical house in Roland Park except that it is one of the few not hidden by trees

                                 Sunset from the balcony last night.

Falltimore

     After a brace of dismal, rainy days over the weekend fall has broken out all over Baltimore (which could just as appropriately be call Tree City as Charm City).  It's a bit early in the cycle but lots of leaves have begun to turn  and many more have fallen, making walking a bit hazardous in many areas.  Nevertheless Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. set forth bravely this balmy afternoon for a stroll to Sherwood Gardens, as can be deduced from the pictures below.
     The fall cultural season is also getting underway, too, and they have been doing their best to keep up.  Last Thursday's free noontime concert at the Peabody Conservatory was delightful, featuring some very talented voice students singing a wide variety of music from Italian opera to Schubert lieder to songs by Richard Strauss.  The highlight of the concert for Uncle Jack was the amusing Largo al Factotum from Rossini's Barber of Seville sung with great enthusiasm by a barrel-chested baritone named Kangho Lee accompanied at the piano by Younggun Kim. Judging from the names of some of the other performers (Mika Sasaki,  Kanyoung Yoo, Emily Sanchez, Solon Mainguene, Margarita Loukachkina) Peabody has a substantial contingent of students from other countries in its roster---as does the rest of Johns Hopkins University.
     The Belcea Quartet opened the 44th season for the Shriver Hall Concert Series and Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. were happy to join the capacity crowd in this beautiful hall on the JHU campus only a ten-minute walk from their condo.  Future concerts in this series will feature illustrious performers like Midori, Emanuel Ax, the Juilliard Quartet, and Yefim Bronfman at prices that make their great music accessible even to impecunious retirees like you-know-who.
     Tonight it's a lecture by Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of the great oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, who will no doubt take listeners' minds off the current troubles in Iraq and Afghanistan by describing the many ways mankind is screwing up the oceans of the world.  Sigh.

                                                           Tree on Greenway in Guilford.

                                       Fall blooms in Sherwood Gardens in Guilford.

                                                                           Ditto

                                                    Another tree on Greenway.
      

When the Outer Banks was Utopia.

     On a recent trip to his former home on the Outer Banks of North Carolina Uncle Jack retrieved from his garage a  box of old papers that he hadn't looked at for many years.  It turned out to be a collection of odd printed material that he has never been able to throw away and after sorting through it he has decided that he will just have to hang on to it a bit longer.  One of the gems in this strange assortment of stuff was an excerpt from a novel entitled "Roanoke: or Where is Utopia" by C.H. Wiley, published in Sartain's Union Magazine of Literature and Art, Vol. 4 No. 3, March 1849.  
     Calvin Henderson Wiley, the author, was born in Guilford County, N.C. in 1819 and graduated from the University of N.C. in 1840.  He was editor of the Oxford, S.C. Mercury for a few years, served in the N.C. legislature, and was a licensed Presbyterian minister. He was the author of several books in addition to Roanoke. He remained a bachelor until the age of  43 but made up for lost time by fathering seven children.
     Where he got his information about the denizens of the Outer Banks nearly two centuries ago is a mystery to Uncle Jack but if he is correct they were a remarkable group indeed. Some of their salient characteristics have survived through the generations and are quite noticeable in more than a few of today's "Bankers" as you will see.  There is food for thought in this piece, and not just in the section on wife-swapping. 


                                                                  Chapter II


                                                      The Arabs of North Carolina


     The sand bar which stretches along the coast of North Carolina separates the ocean from a succession of sounds, the largest and most beautiful of which are those well known by the names of Albermarle, Pamlico and Currituck.  East of these inland seas is the bar, a waste and barren region, in some places bleak and wild as the deserts of Africa, and strangely in keeping with the majesty of that mighty deep whose awful grandeur is enhanced by the silence and desolation that reign along its borders.
     Even here, in this dreary, naked and sterile region, are the haunts and homes of men, a race who have never been classified by science, and who, though sometimes called Arabs, belong neither to the savage nor civilized state of society.  They are generally a motley collection of idle, roving, harmless creatures, leading an easy, indolent life, free alike from the cruel, murderous and plundering propensities of barbarians and the more christian vices of polished communities.  In the curious and beautiful little lakes of clear fresh water that gleam like mirrors in their arid and wild domain, myriads of fish abound; wild ducks, wild geese, and other sea fowls in countless thousands cover the waters, and on these, which are easily taken, they chiefly live.
     In former times, however, they had another source of subsistence;  a source from which they drew their main supplies of money, goods and groceries. They followed the occupation of wreckers; a business whose prosperity was attested by the long dark line of keels, hulks and dismantled vessels that covered the shore. It would seem that this fraternity would have found sufficient employment in the unavoidable casualties of the winds ad waves on this disastrous and melancholy coast; but population and competition increased, and the cunning of man was sometimes employed to add to the natural horrors of the dreaded region.
     The public were not concerned in these wicked tricks, and rude as it was, it would not have countenanced them; but those who used them were secret in their operations, and as it happens in all communities, would often be respected for wealth which they had obtained by disreputable means.  Thefts, of course, were common, and stranded cargoes rapidly diminished from the time they were landed on the beach, till the time of sale; still the crews were always saved and treated with a kindness and attention that often attached them to the Bankers.
     Neither their goods nor their wives were held altogether in common by those people, but while they were profusely generous  and hospitable, they entertained peculiar notions upon the subject of matrimony and the virtues it inculcates.  Polygamy was not allowed, but in its stead there was a prevalent custom much more convenient to the Bankers and better suited to the changing tastes of men.  The women were treated kindly as equals, but every man was considered as having the right to sell or swap his wife whenever he chose, and in this business there was a constant and lively trade.
     Modern improvements, arts and wants have found their way among the Bankers; and it is not to be supposed that the description herein given would at present suit them.  There was a time, however, a period not remote, when unfettered by the fluctuations of trade, the rise and fall of dynasties and the irregularity of the seasons, they led a careless, indolent and happy life, strangers alike to the sweltering hosts of summer and the snows of winter.  Without fear of pride, malice or ambition, abundantly and easily supplied with food and caring little for clothing, their existence had many charms for them and would not be without its attractions in the view of a certain class of philosophers and philanthropists.  Some of these had cast their eyes upon this country in former times, and from them it received the appellation of Utopia; a name which perhaps it merited as well as did the the famous island of Sir Thomas More.


Editor's note:  And then they built the bridge.

Send not to ask for whom Nobel tolls....

     There are Nobel Prizes and there are Nobel Prizes, apparently.  Everybody in Bawlmer, to which Uncle Jack  has returned after a pleasant week on the Outer Banks, is delighted by the fact that a Johns Hopkins professor named Carol Greider shared this year's prize in medicine while in Washington (just 35 miles down the road) everybody (well maybe not everybody) seems to be in a snit because President Obama was awarded the Peace prize.  While the latter seemed a bit premature to Uncle Jack he thinks he can understand where the Norwegians were coming from after eight years of  Bush's war in Iraq.  Some commentators seem to believe that it was despicable for the president to accept the award, which he did in an extremely self-effacing manner, but for the life of him Uncle Jack cannot understand why.  If he had refused it his critics would probably be jumping all over him for being an ingrate.

    Besides the recent samurai sword slaying of an alleged burglar by a Johns Hopkins student, Charm City has been in the news recently for yet another odd reason.  Two persons presenting themselves as a prostitute and her pimp visited an office of the organization known as ACORN (Association for Community Organizations) ostensibly seeking help in setting up a cathouse and shielding the profits from taxation.  Apparently the two female ACORN employees were several marbles short of a counter-top because they did attempt to offer assistance while their blundering was being digitally recorded by the phony supplicants.  The bumbling employees were promptly fired but the event was a public relations disaster for ACORN which has been a target of conservative critics for many years.

     While Uncle Jack has no axe to grind for ACORN, especially in this instance, he cannot help but notice the irony in the fact that if the two perpetrators of the hoax had gone to any number of legitimate law offices in Baltimore looking for advice on how to avoid paying income taxes they would have been welcomed with open arms and charged upwards of $400 an hour for the privilege.  They could have filmed the entire session in technicolor and nobody would have raised an eyebrow.

     A propos of  Uncle Jack's recent blog on the hazards of  football (with an assist by the Sage of Bawlmer himself) he recommends this week's issue of  the New Yorker magazine which contains an excellent article by Malcolm Gladwell on---what else---the hazards of football.  Recent research has shed more light on the kinds of brain damage suffered by football players as a result of repeated blows to the head which are all but unavoidable in the game.  This article is a real downer so if you are a diehard football fan you might want to think twice before reading it.

  

    

October in Nags Head

     Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. are enjoying a visit to Nags Head this week.  October has always been their favorite time of the year on the Outer Banks and they have been blessed with perfect weather ever since they arrived on Wednesday.  The 59th annual Nags Head Surf Fishing Tournament has been in full swing since Thursday and it brought back memories of when Uncle Jack once served as a judge in that venerable contest many years ago. He wrote about his experience at the time and this is what he said:


                                    It's Nice to be a Judge

If you ask Uncle Jack, one of the best things about living in a country like the U.S.A. is that almost everybody has a chance to be somebody when he grows up. You do not have to be born rich and you do not have to have a father who is a county commissioner or some other important person like that.
All you have to do is go to school and pay attention to the teachers and learn how to do those arithmetic problems where the trains start out from different places and also memorize the capitals of all the states and if you can do this you are sure to be a success. And if you can hang around long enough to graduate from high school there is almost no limit on how far you can go. Uncle Jack knows.
He has been thinking a lot this week about how lucky he was to be born in the U.S.A. because something happened to him this week that would never happen to an ordinary run-of-the-mill person like himself in most other countries. What happened was that Uncle Jack was picked to be a judge of the Nags Head Surf Fishing Tournament which starts on Thursday and goes until Saturday.
In case you do not know what this means he will explain that the judges are the people who drive up and down the beach for two days, picking up dead fish and measuring them so the scorers can figure out who won the tournament.
He should not have to tell you that this is a very important job and not everybody can get to be a judge. For one thing you have to be highly respected in your community and for another thing you have to own a four-wheel-drive vehicle. Uncle Jack is not sure which is more important but he can tell you that as soon as he bought his new secondhand Jeep they picked him to be a judge, no questions asked.
Anyway this is the highest honor Uncle Jack has ever had and he can hardly believe what has happened. Who can believe that an ordinary, average child of poor parents, born in the north woods of Wisconsin, thousands of miles from the nearest ocean, would one day grow up to become a judge of the oldest, largest and finest surf fishing tournament in Dare County?
If you ask Uncle Jack this is real proof that the American Way of Life is working just the way the Founding Fathers hoped it would.
Uncle Jack is not taking this honor lightly, either. He is doing his best to get ready so he will be able to do a good job of judging. For one thing he has sworn off all spiritual beverages until after the judging is finished because he knows how hard it is to measure fish accurately when your hands are shaking or when you have impaired your faculties with foreign substances such as Scotch whiskey.              
He knows he has to measure every fish very carefully because the outcome of the whole tournament could rest on how well he does his measuring. Also he knows he could be assaulted by some irate fisherman if he does it wrong.
Uncle Jack knows that different kinds of fish get different numbers of points so he is studying hard to learn the various kinds of fish so he does not make any mistakes that way. Yesterday he finally mastered most of the main differences between the tarpon and the flounder and he plans to keep studying right up to the time he has to start judging.
Uncle Jack does want to warn all the contestants about the new state law that says you cannot drink beer or any other spiritual beverages in a motor vehicle even when the motor vehicle is on the beach and not on a highway. He wants all the contestants to know that he is planning to keep a sharp eye out for anybody who breaks this law and he will not hesitate to report them to the police. As far as Uncle Jack is concerned beer-drinking has no place in the Nags Head Surf Fishing Tournament anyway and he knows the vast majority of the club members will back him up on that.

      The new Jennette's pier is coming along nicely. Workers were on the job even on Saturday when Uncle Jack took these pictures.  The red crane is riding on a temporary pier that will be removed after construction is completed. (Click on the pictures for larger views).

                                                  
       The permanent (hopefully) concrete pilings of the new pier can be seen here.  Mother Nature will determine how permanent they are but they look formidable.

      
 The pile-driving device is being lifted into position in this rather blurry picture.  Presumably neighbors have grown accustomed to the constant banging by now.

    
There is some talk of replenishing the beach in the vicinity of the pier but nothing has happened yet.  The last attempt to replenish the beach just south of the pier with sand from Roanoke Sound was an expensive disaster of which no sign remains, fortunately.

                                    
       Remember Papagayo and Quagmire's?  Rumor has it that these new condos that replaced the old Croatan Inn buildings are not moving very rapidly in today's economic climate and that the project is in trouble financially. There didn't seem to be much going on around here when Uncle Jack took the picture on Thursday.

                      
      Ditto for this brand new condo development on the Beach Road at the former site of the old Wright Brothers motel.  A third large development on the sound side in Nags Head south of the Tanger outlet mall is apparently in similar straits.  Too many condos and too few buyers who can get financing.  Very sad.

                                              

But hope springs eternal in the developer's heart, apparently.  These are under construction on the old Sea Holly Square shopping center property across from the Ramada Inn in Nags Head which has stood empty since the shopping center was torn down quite a few years ago.

                    Here's a front viewof one of the two new buildings. Uncle Jack is not sure what this is going to be but  the occupants will have a great view of the Ramada parking lot for sure.

Mencken on College Football

          College football season is in full bloom again and no doubt H.L. Mencken is fuming in his grave. This is what he said about it in "Minority Report", published in 1956:

           College football would be much more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if the trustees played.  There would be a great increase in broken arms, legs and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the loss to humanity.


          Obviously Mencken's view of college football was indeed a minority opinion and the excesses of the sport have continued to grow to monstrous proportions since his time.  They have also moved downward into the high schools and even elementary schools, all with the encouragement and support of parents and school administrators. Back in the days when he was a newspaper columnist Uncle Jack got so exercised about this that he devoted an entire column to it, to wit:


                                                            Football Hurts

Uncle Jack read in the paper a while back that a Bishop of the Catholic church up in Virginia wants the schools in his diocese to stop having football teams. The paper said this Bishop was very upset because a student in one of his schools got killed playing football against another high school team. He said he thought a game that kills and injures kids the way football does might not be such a good game for schools to sponsor.
A few days later Uncle Jack started seeing "Letters to the Editor" in that paper from people who thought this Bishop must be some kind of communist or maybe even a liberal for saying that high schools would be better off without football teams.
Some of the people who wrote those letters must have been high school graduates, too, because they used "logic" to prove that the Bishop must have been playing without a helmet or something.
"More people get killed in automobile accidents than in football games", they said, "so why doesn't he tell people to stop driving cars, too?"
When Uncle Jack studied philosophy in high school they called this the reductio ad absurdum and it was guaranteed to knock the wind out of your opponent's sails---especially if he wasn't too bright.
Actually Uncle Jack thinks the Bishop is right that too many kids are getting badly hurt playing football even though only a few get killed or paralyzed for life each season. But he doesn't think that even a Bishop can make football go away just by ordering it to stop any more than he can get rid of drug abuse or prohibition by ordering them to stop.
Uncle Jack knows how important football is because he is a victim of football. In fact it would not be exaggerating to say that his entire life has been scarred by football.
This is true even though Uncle Jack never played football because his mother wouldn't let him.
When Uncle Jack wanted to go out for football in high school she "put her foot down" as they used to say. "After all the money I have spent feeding you twelve times a day for the past fifteen years I'm not about to let you get yourself killed playing football," she said in no uncertain terms. "If you go out for football I will stop baking Swedish rye bread on Saturdays," she  threatened. 
Uncle Jack's mother knew that he had an Achilles stomach.
The humiliation of not being allowed to go out for football was almost more than Uncle Jack could bear throughout his otherwise distinguished high school career. While all his friends hobbled around on twisted knees and showed off their broken noses to the girls, all Uncle Jack could do was hide in the house and play jacks with his sister and eat homemade Swedish rye bread.
He is sure the main reason he has never amounted to anything in life is that he never got to play football in high school. Anyway this is how he found out how important football is and how hard it would be to try to get rid of it even if you were a Bishop.
It might be possible, Uncle Jack thinks, to get kids to stop trying to hurt each other when they play football. That's something most of them don't really want to do anyway, but they think they have to because that's what the college and professional players do on television.
All it would take is a few mothers like Uncle Jack's to go and watch at games and at practices. When they see a coach yelling and screaming at kids and telling them to go out there and hurt somebody they could hit him over the head with their umbrellas.
Maybe that Bishop ought to get an umbrella and do the same thing.
                         










































            

Sunday Fun in Fell's Point. Ole!

     Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. don't ordinarily seek out crowds, especially during swine flu season, but they couldn't resist joining the horde of  funseekers who descended on Baltimore's oldest neighborhood yesterday for the second day of the 43rd annual Fell's Point Festival of Fun.   As far as Uncle Jack could tell the crowd actually outnumbered the vendors,  some of whom may actually have made enough money to cover their entry fees. The big winner is likely to be Preservation Society of Federal Hill and Fell's Point who sponsor this enjoyable event as a fundraiser and then do good things with the money they raise. The weather was flawless both days which must have brought joy to the hearts of the organizers because this was no small undertaking, rivaling ArtScape in its size and scope if not in its pre-event hype.  
           "Art" is not yet synonymous with "digital photography" at this event but the number of erstwhile photographers displaying their wares seemed  to exceed that of any other category of artistic production by a wide margin.  Uncle Jack suspects that world demand for amateurish photos of  dogs, kittens and landscapes will fall far short of supply in the foreseeable future and there will be a ruthless winnowing of would-be artists in the photographic field.
          The burgeoning Latino population of  Fell's Point was well represented on the day by numerous food stalls and a lively outpouring of music and dance from a band stand on Broadway which drew the largest crowd of any attraction at the Festival.  Upper Fell's Point has been the destination for a large fraction of Baltimore's Hispanic population which is now estimated to be around 50,000.  In previous centuries it was the first home for many immigrant groups including the Irish and Eastern Europeans.

Cobblestoned Thames Street (pronounced Tems by the gentry) presented difficulties for the spiked-heel crowd. 

                                             Even the Loch Raven Pipers had to tread carefully.

                             Punch and Judy put on a great show.  An early form of cage fighting

                           If you couldn't find something to eat at this stand you weren't hungry.

                                      
                                                                  Here's the menu.

                                                  Coming soon--- McDonald's tortillas!!

                                                     The oldest house in Baltimore.

                                                              A typical Fell's Point store.

         On-street parking is always a problem in Fell's Point but during Festival Weekend it's ridiculous. 

Mencken on Money and Meds

     Money is at least fifty times as valuable to a sick man as to a well man.  This is not because the rich patient gets better medication than the poor man;  in many cases, in fact, he gets worse.  His advantage lies in the fact that he can be more comfortable when laid up, and has nothing save his actual illness to worry him.  (Minority Report: H. L. Mencken's Notebooks, 1956)


     This observation is especially a propos at a time like this when working people are being urged to stay home if they show any signs of impending swine flu such as sniffles, coughs, headaches and what have you that in normal times they would ignore.  But for many folks who don't get paid if they don't work, staying home is not an option and they must live with whatever guilt feelings they might have about exposing their co-workers to possible harm.  How nice it would be to be rich and able to indulge oneself in illness whenever one chooses without worrying about where the next car payment will come from.  Uncle Jack knows what this might be like, not because he is rich but because he is retired and he doesn't have to go to work at all, sick or well.   There is much to be said for retirement as long as you don't run out of moncy.

                                                                    Mencken at work.

A Stroll in Baltimore's Bolton Hill

One sunny day in May Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. took their daily walk through a lovely neighborhood just north of downtown called Bolton Hill. From its beginnings back in the late 18th and early 19th centuries Bolton Hill has been an upscale enclave for the monied class who could afford to build large, expensive townhouses designed by the leading architects of the time. While many of them have been converted into small apartment houses the neighborhood retains much of its old charm and elegance. A lot of wealthy people still live in Bolton Hill but the population now includes students from nearby universities, professional people of all kinds who enjoy a very short commute to downtown, and the occasional non-residebt predator. Bolton Hill is almost completely residential with only one restaurant and one sedate bar within its bounds. Lots of churches, though, some of which are architecturally stunning. Many small parks, too, which make walking in the neighborhood a delightful pastime---especially in broad daylight.
Bolton Hill is attractive in many ways but it lacks too many of the amenities Uncle Jack most enjoys in Charles Village, like having Johns Hopkins next door along with Eddie's Supermarket, the Orient Express take-out, Waverly Market, the Normal bookstore and leafy Guilford to walk in. It's a nice place to visit, but.......

Bolton Hill's row houses are a bit classier than most in the city.

This foot scraper has no doubt removed a lot of mud from shoes since 1754.

This atypical mid-eighteenth century house is one of the neighborhood's oldest.

Francis Scott Key is remembered by this elegant monument in Eutaw Place.

These odd structures are in a park near the Key monument. Does anyone know what they are, or were?

The Methodist Church parsonage is one of the wackier structures in Bolton Hill.

Have a narrow lot? Build a narrow house.

The old Masonic Temple looks a little sturdier.

Anybody remember Garry Moore? He lived in Bolton Hill and so did F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Woodrow Wilson when he was a student at Johns Hopkins.