Uncle Jack's Baltimore Blog

Ho Ho Ho

2011-12-16T06:15:00.000-05:00

Uncle Jack just realized that he hasn't posted a new blog entry for over three weeks and for this he apologizes to the patient band of faithful readers who have come to expect him to write something on a fairly regular basis.
He has no excuse other than sheer laziness. Unless it is lack of inspiration. He likes to find cheerful things to write about and that seems to get harder with every passing day.
First there was the whole ghastly "Black Friday" nonsense to kick off the formerly joyous Christmas Season. In the beginning it was three wise man from the east bearing gifts of gold and frankincense and myrhh and now it's frenzied shoppers fighting over plastic gew gaws from China in the aisles of Wal-Mart and Target. Where will it end.
Then came the exhumation and rise from the political graveyard of Professor Gingrich. Here, in Uncle Jack's estimation, is a real-life zombie who could, as president, do even more damage to the country than he did as speaker of the house in bygone days. Can we trust a man who managed to suck nearly two million dollars in lobbying fees out of Fannie Mae while damning the same agency out of the other side of his mouth?
And then there is Romney the "job creator" who amassed a large part of his fortune by buying failing companies, stripping them of their assets and firing the workers. These Republican front-runners are beginning to make the alleged illegal immigrant from Kenya who now occupies the White House look like a winner.
Uncle Jack didn't intend to turn this holiday blog into a political screed but that seems to be what he has done and he apologizes.
What he really intended to do is once again call attention to his new Amazon Kindle book which could provide a handy solution for folks who can't afford to send their friends gold, frankincense or myrhh this year. Uncle Jack's book is a great, cheap gift at only $4.99 and you don't have to have a Kindle gadget to read it. Just Google "Uncle Jack's Outer Banks" Kincle edition and click on the appropriate link to find out how to order it.
In the meantime Merry Christmas to all for whom that is the appropriate greeting and Happy Holidays to all others regardless of race, creed, ethnicity or political persuasion. Uncle Jack will be back on January 1 to wish you a Happy New Year, too.

"Tilt". One of the many unusual pictures in "Uncle Jack's Outer Banks" Kindle edition.

Fun at the Beach

2011-05-25T10:18:00.000-04:00

Wondering where Uncle Jack is? Go to http://www.obxconnection.com/blogs/blog_entry.aspx?BHID=1

Topping Off

2011-05-09T18:31:00.000-04:00

It has been a pretty interesting week in Baltimore so far and Uncle Jack has the pictures to prove it.

Uncle Jack mentioned last time that he wouldn't miss this ceremony for anything and he kept his promise by hiking over to the JHU campus this morning and taking it all in.

When the JHU Bluejay mascot shows up you know something important is going on. This was the first time Uncle Jack has ever been up close and personal with a bluejay. He isn't particularly bright as far as Uncle Jack could tell.

The librarian of the university was on hand to say a few well-chosen words about the new Brody Learning Commons before the final structural component was put into place, i.e., the "topping off".

After the head librarian had added his signature to the many already inscribed on the beam, three hard-hatted workmen guided the construction crane to the right spot and attached the beam for transport.

A lovely day for a topping off as you can tell by the azure sky. The journey was accompanied by the inspiring sounds of Richard Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" blaring from the loudspeaker system.

Two waiting riggers guide the beam to its final resting place. With the framework in place the remaining construction will take a little more than a year to complete. Stay tuned. Uncle Jack will be watching.

Several weeks ago, when Mrs. U.J. purchased the tickets, last Friday night seemed like a great time to go to Camden Yards and see the Orioles take on the Tampa Bay Rays whom they had trounced three times at the beginning of the season. The huge building to the left is a former warehouse of the B & O railroad which formerly occupied this space, known then and now as Camden Yards.

Grandma and granddaughter Isabella, a fanatical Oriole fan, enjoyed the first three innings from their front-row seats even though the Orioles fell behind, 3-0, in the first.

In the fourth inning it began to rain, hard enough to drive most fans in the open seats to cover (like Uncle Jack and company) but not hard enough for the umps to call the game. Actual puddles began to form in the infield so an army of groundskeepers ran out between every half-inning to dump sand in the wettest spots.

This got ridiculous after a while and the field became a quagmire. The Rays continued to add runs as the rain fell and eventually waded off with an 8-2 victory, sweeping the series and avenging their earlier losses. An altogether unsatisfactory evening at the old ballpark and quite probably Uncle Jack's last.

If you are truly desperate for something to read at work here's another chestnut exhumed from the archives:

Reincarnation

Uncle Jack was standing in line at the supermarket the other day with his week's supply of chicken necks and generic okra and while he was waiting he managed to sneak a peek at one of those tabloid newspapers they put near the checkout counter right by the chewing gum and the razor blades.
Uncle Jack would never actually buy one of those newspapers but every once in a while he likes to find out what the other half is reading about so he leafs through a Globe while he is waiting for the checkout girls to finish talking about what they did last night after the skating rink closed.
Anyway right on the front page they had this article about something called "reincarnation" which is a long word for how after you die you come back to earth and live another life all over again---usually pretty different from your first life. According to this article a lot of people really believe in reincarnation but Uncle Jack is not sure you can believe everything you read in those grocery store newspapers. For example, if Elizabeth Taylor really did all the things those newspapers said she did she would have to be about 95 years old and double-jointed, too.
The whole idea of reincarnation sounded pretty silly to Uncle Jack at first but the more he thought about it the better it sounded---especially when he compared it to some of the other possibilities. For one thing it is a lot better than believing that when you die you're dead and that's that. That does not appeal to Uncle Jack at all. Even on a bad day like when he runs out of Rebel Yell and he goes all the way up to the ABC store and it turns out to be Arbor Day or something and they are closed, he would like to believe that life is worth living.
Reincarnation also sounds a lot better than going to Heaven, too, if Heaven is anything like the way the Reverend Hokum described it when Uncle Jack was in Sunday School. The Lutheran Heaven didn't sound like the kind of place Uncle Jack would like to spend more than a day or two even if his room had a jacuzzi and remote control color TV.
Another reason he would not want to go to the Lutheran Heaven, though, is because that is where the Reverend Hokum probably wound up and if you want to know the truth he doesn't think the place could be big enough for both of them.
Anyway this article did get Uncle Jack thinking about what he would like to be if he did get another life to live over again which he doesn't think he will but then again he never thought he would get a chance to live on the Outer Banks either so you never know about these things.
He is pretty sure he would not like to come back to life and be a person all over again. For one thing he would have to go through junior high school again and he is not sure it would be worth it to have to do that. Uncle doesn't think it would be fair for anybody to have to be thirteen years old more than once.
Also if Uncle Jack came back as a person he could wind up living in some place like Toledo or Columbus where it would take him fifteen hours to get to the Outer Banks after he heard the bluefish were running and by the time he got here it would be too late.
Anyway Uncle Jack has thought about it a lot and he has decided that if he has to come back he would like to be a labrador retriever. He would like to belong to a nice retired Outer Banker who has a Grand Wagoneer and lets him ride in the front seat and goes fishing every day but never goes duck hunting and lets him have a little saucer of Rebel Yell once in a while.
That sounds a lot better than going to Heaven if you ask Uncle Jack.

Beautiful Baltimore Redux

2011-05-03T17:07:00.000-04:00

Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. took a walk this morning through the Guilford neighborhood across the street from their condo. Their destination was Sherwood Gardens, the incredible park maintained by Guilford residents for the enjoyment of the public and themselves. Each year at this time tens of thousands of tulips burst into full bloom creating one of the most amazing floral displays on the planet. Enjoy.
(Click on the pictures to enlarge).

This tree was in a yard in Guilford on the way to Sherwood Gardens.

As was this unknown bit of colorful ground cover.

Meanwhile back at the Johns Hopkins library worksite workers installed the first roof beams yesterdat just as Uncle Jack predicted a couple of days ago. Is he smart or what?

He wouldn't miss this for the world.

Baltimore the Beautiful

2011-05-01T12:13:00.000-04:00

Spring has sprung in Charm City. A few pictures are worth a lot of words.

A house on St. Paul street near Uncle Jack's condo.

Same house. More bushes.

The Johns Hopkins campus was in fine floral fettle for this weekend's Alumni gathering.

The JHU bluejay was all puffed up after the lacrosse team's win over Loyola Saturday afternoon.

This gigantic tent was the scene of some lavish alumni stroking over the weekend. Mayor Bloomberg of New York City is one of the alumni who have contributed many hundreds of millions of dollars to the school in recent years. Most of the students' $45,000 a year tuition money goes to pay for extravagances like this tent which make the alumni feel important and loved.

And here is where some of the alumni contributions are going. Steelworkers have taken over this phase of the construction of the Brodie Learning Commons next to the Eisenhower Library.

Same structure a few days later. It will provide the connecting link between the old building and the new.

The roof girders on the main building will probably come next. Stay tuned.

Uncle Jack didn't feel like writing anything this week so he drug this golden oldie out of the archives:

Tempis Fugits

As Uncle Jack grows older he is seized more and more often by uncontrollable fits of philosophizing. He never knows when these attacks will come and he is as helpless to stop them as an epileptic is to control his convulsions. Fortunately these spells of pontificating usually pass before he has time to bore more than a few close friends and relatives.
Uncle Jack has been afflicted most recently with deep thoughts about the nature of time. He has reached an age that enables him to confirm the widely held belief that time seems to speed up as one grows older. He has often heard this said by older persons, but older persons have told him so much that turned out to be wrong that he has never been sure he could believe anything they say.
But now he knows from his own experience that time does indeed pass more rapidly as one grows older. It took approximately 25 years for Uncle Jack to get from age l2 to age l8 but it took only about two weeks to get from his 50th birth to his 80th. At this rate he expects to turn 95 sometime around the middle of next week.
This amazing speeding up of time, which seems to be a fairly common experience of middle-aged people in our time-conscious society, can be scary enough to cause folks in Uncle Jack's age bracket to do some fairly weird things. Men and women who have been dutifully trudging down life's highway for half a century or so sometimes accidentally look up just long enough to see a tractor trailer with a skull and crossbones on it bearing down on them.
Some folks go trudging on and don't even try to get out of the way, and for the rest of us it's probably a good thing they don't. Others make some remarkable moves in an effort to dodge that truck, like the folks he met on the waterfront in Manteo last week.
This couple, on the early side of middle age, took their big leap about a year ago, divesting themselves of cars, televisions, lawnmowers and mortgages---all the encumbrances of solid middle-class existence. They used the proceeds from their years of straight-arrow effort to build themselves the pretty sailboat you may have seen at the Manteo dock last week.
They live on their boat now, going wherever they please whenever they please. Sooner or later, when their money runs out, they'll be back in the middle of the road with the rest of us, but what memories they'll have on those nights when there is nothing to watch on TV.
Uncle Jack must say, however, that he felt not even the slightest twinge of envy when the intrepid couple sailed off to New York City yesterday. Why anyone would voluntarily go to New York City when he could stay in Manteo is beyond his comprehension.
The other event of last week that seemed to trigger this fit of deep thinking was the sunset last Thursday evening. Uncle Jack will wisely refrain from attempting to describe that sunset; it was truly ineffable (a word he learned in high school knowing that some day it would come in handy). Suffice it to say that the sunset was so magnificent that it started Uncle Jack philosophizing so hard he thought he was going to have a stroke.
The message in all this, he thinks, is that as we trudge down life's highway we should not be afraid to look up once in while. We might see a big truck bearing down on us but on the other hand we might see a sunset that will knock our socks off.
Whew.
Whatever this is Uncle Jack hopes he will be over it soon.

H. L. Mencken on Kissing

2011-04-29T16:09:00.000-04:00

Mencken once joked that life would be perfect with a good sauce, a cocktail, and a
girl who kissed with her mouth open. Well, two out of three ain't bad.

Easter on the Outer Banks: A Roaring Good Time

2011-04-25T15:46:00.000-04:00

Seekers of a peaceful place to celebrate one of the highest holy days of the Christian calendar did not find it on the Outer Banks this weekend. The roads to and from the churches were clogged with what seemed like thousands of blatty motorcycles as the final few days of "Bike Week" happened to coincide with the three days of Easter this year. God and Mammon duked it out and Uncle Jack isn't sure who won.
Except for a quick trip to Manteo (which reverberated like the inside of a motor velodrome on Saturday afternoon) Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. stayed close to home in relatively peaceful South Nags Head and took several long beach walks while enjoying the balmy temperatures that prevailed most of the weekend. Tomorrow it's back to the peace and quiet of Baltimore where four persons were shot to death and one severely wounded by unknown assailants on Easter Sunday. Maybe the motorcycles weren't so bad.

Sunday afternoon in Sonag. Don't you wish you were here?

Nary a fish was caught but who could care on an afternoon like this?

This house at the head of Pelican Street in Sonag burned several weeks ago. Right now it's Motif #1 for amateur photographers like Uncle Jack. Will it still be here when he returns next month? Stay tuned.

The derelicts of Sea Gull Drive are still in place (sort of). Don't be surprised if they're back on the rental market shortly after beach renourishment is finished. The Lord works in mysterious ways, especially in the wonderful world of Outer Banks real estate.

The extraordinary height of this cottage near Sea Gull suggests just how much sand Mother Nature has removed from this section of beach. No doubt she is licking her chops in anticipation of all the fresh, new stuff she can started moving around after beach renourishment

Only certified rappelers and sky-divers are allowed to use this beach access walkway.

Hopefully beach renourishment will cover up this mess---for a little while anyway.

Sunrise in Sonag

2011-04-20T10:20:00.000-04:00

Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. are very happy to be in South Nags Head on this beautiful, balmy, sunny Wednesday morning. As the pictures show they were up before sunrise and took a walk on the beach up to the new Jennette's pier before breakfast (whole wheat everything bagels from the Nags Head outlet of New York Bagels, now open for the season at the Outer Banks Mall). There is a goodly crowd here in the run-up to Easter including a few hundred motorcycles left over from last weekend. Many businesses sport fancy "Welcome Bikers" banners which they one day may rue if the experience of other resort towns like Myrtle Beach is any guide.

6:20 The unspectacular adumbration of a rather puny sunrise to come. Taken from the beach at Whitecap Street in South Nags Head.

This is as exciting as it got this morning. Uncle Jack is spoiled.

At low tide the beach was wide and flat and great for walking. Looking north toward Jennette's Pier.

A measure of this winter's erosion. A root from what must have been a pretty substantial tree at one time.

Beach nourishment can't come too soon to the Comfort Inn South whose time has nearly run out.

The new 250-car parking lot at Jennette's Pier awaits paving which looks like it might begin today. The Grand Opening is only a month away now.

Sam and Omie's is ideally situated to attract pier-goers. Sigh.

This is a very sturdy-looking pier. Mother Nature has her work cut out for her if she plans to knock this one down.

Recent bulldozing helped to soften the sheer dropoff in front of these Sonag condos. The owners will no doubt welcome this summer's beach nourishment project no matter when it comes.

Ditto for these. Renters should have a great view of the proceedings from their oceanfront decks. Maybe next year they can sit on the new beach if it's still there.

The Humble Farmer Speaks

2011-04-18T10:23:00.000-04:00

Uncle Jack has a friend named Robert Skoglund who lives up in Maine and calls himself The Humble Farmer when he is doing his radio show or his TV show or giving speeches or writing his "Whine and Snivel Newsletter". Humble and Uncle Jack are in complete agreement about most matters political and economic and every once in a while he writes something that expresses Uncle Jack's views better than he could do it himself. He did it this morning in his Newsletter so Uncle Jack thought he would pass it along. He and Mrs. U.J. are leaving tomorrow morning for a week in Nags Head so he will have some pictures---maybe even a sunrise----later this week.

Humble Explains How it Works

We read in the newspaper about a No Labels political organization that describes itself as a grassroots group that aims to convince politicians to put aside their party affiliations and, instead, work together to address the country’s problems. Ho ho ho, thinks I. To begin with, in every country in every age there have really only been two political parties. One party, whatever it is called, is a collection of people who have banded together to support the financial interests of the wealthy merchant class. Back in the good old days, they bought slaves. Today it is only by keeping wages as low as possible that they can keep profits as high as possible. The other party, whatever it is called, consists of the millions of people who work for wages and the folks who work 18 hours a day to try to keep their little mom and pop stores afloat. These people have the same goals as the wealthy --- they also want their income to be as high as possible. So there is an inherent conflict of interest between these two groups when it comes to the bottom line, which is --- how do we divide up the amount of money that came into our collective till on this working day? The wealthy merchants have always had an advantage when it comes to getting more than their share of the money in the till because there are many ways to keep wages as low as possible. War is a sure-fire means of sucking the lifeblood out of the most prosperous society. Nothing makes the rich richer like a good meaningless war to “protect our freedom.” You can also create a recession and lots of unemployment. Unemployed people are more than willing to work for whatever scraps they can get. Because men are trying to feed hungry families, there is likely to be an increase in crime --- another win-win for the rich who own and service the privatized prisons. About the only way the working class can negotiate for better wages and working conditions is to band together into an organization which, in English, is called a union. Unfortunately for working people everywhere, management has whispered in the ears of millions of its employees, “If you have to work for me for three dollars an hour, why should your friends across the street be getting four?” How can management lose, when it can get 75 percent of an uninformed labor force to write letters to the editor that cry out for lower wages? “I work as hard as they do. Why should they get more than me? These are hard times. We all have to sacrifice.” When it is possible to get millions of working people in any country to honestly believe that they deserve lower wages, that country is in grave danger.

But back to the No Labels organization. When I read of any organization, the first thing I do is to Google around to find out who is behind that organization. In other words, which of the two so clearly delineated classes of people in any society is behind that particular organization: Who is going to get the money? Would you believe that the page that came up on Google belonged to Rush Limbaugh? And in the middle of that page is a big circle. And in the middle of that circle it says --- in capital letters, “No Brains. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE MONEY.”

(And so it goes)

+

FQF

2011-04-12T16:08:00.001-04:00

Uncle Jack is pleased to report that he and Mrs. U.J. have survived another French Quarter Festival and are safely back in Charm City. He uses the term "survived" advisedly because each year, as this magnificent free extravaganza of music and food grows larger (and they grow older) it has become a little more taxing and a little less enjoyable. As usual they heard a lot of music, much of it sublime and entirely too much of it wretched. And they feasted on a number of culinary delicacies that simply do not exist outside of New Orleans---mufulettas from the Central Grocery on Decatur Street, oyster po'boys from the Acme Oyster Bar, garlic soup and sweetbreads at Bayona, crayfish crepes from Muriel's on Jackson Square and pralines from Loretta in the French Market, all enhanced by that golden elixir known as Abita Amber beer. There was much to enjoy----vastly more than they could manage in the heat and crowds.

French Quarter Festival is one of America's greatest parties along with Jazz Fest and Mardi Gras, the major economic engines of the Big Easy. It is much more family oriented than the others and probably the only time of the year when baby strollers outnumber Harley Davidsons in the narrow streets of the Vieux Carre. An estimated half-million people attended this year's expanded four-day celebration and it seemed like twice that many to Uncle Jack. The weather man had predicted four straight days of uninterrupted heat and humidity with no hope of rain and that seemed to swell the crowd to unprecedented size. Getting from Point A to Point B became such a struggle at times that Point B completely lost its allure.

With all that they had a wonderful time and they are happy they went but whether they can save up the wherewithal, physical and fiscal, to do it again next year remains to be seen. They have already made their hotel reservations just in case.

A festively dressed couple enters Jackson Square, focal point of the FQF. Those parasols are de rigeur when the sky is cloudless and the temperature reaches 90. Parasol, after all, means "against the sun". Did you know that?

Part of the crowd listening to the New Orleans All-Stars and Pete Fountain give out with some rousing dixieland on the main stage in Jackson Square. Pete is 80 this year and has suffered several strokes in addition to losing everything to Hurricane Katrina but he can still play and obviously loves FQF.

A portable police observation tower looms over the crowd in front of St. Louis Cathedral. It wasn't needed for the very orderly FQF crowd.

One of the not-so-good bands that play on streetcorners all over the Quarter hoping for tips.

As usual the balconies along the Rue Chartres were bedecked with plants and flowers. They have to be watered several times a day which makes for hazardous walking below.

The mighty Mississippi was nearly at flood stage trying to accommodate all the snow melt from regions as far afield as Montana and North Dakota. The breeze off the river was almost like air conditioning for overheated festival-goers who flocked to the "Moonwalk", the promenade along the river named for mayor "Moon" Landrieu, father of the present mayor Mitch Landrieu and his sister, senator Mary Landrieu. Politics seems to run in the family.

One of the many art works that brighten the old French Market in the Quarter which has undergone major rejuvenation in recent years.

This lovely bas-relief celebrates the Old Market when it was a major source of fresh fruits and vegetables, fish and oysters. Today it more resembles a bazaar in the Middle East with table after table of imported schlock.

This young woman danced frenetically in the blazing sun in front of the Southern Syncopaters jazz band for nearly two hours. The Department of Energy should be investigating her as a possible alternative energy source. Uncle Jack would love to know what was in that gallon jug she sipped from between every number.

Meanwhile, back at the Johns Hopkins library building site, the work goes on. At this point it is beginning to resemble a modern-day Stonehenge.

FQF

2011-04-12T16:04:00.000-04:00

A portable police observation tower looms over the crowd in front of St. Louis Cathedral. It wasn't needed for the very orderly FQF crowd.

One of the not-so-good bands that play on streetcorners all over the Quarter hoping for tips.

As usual the balconies along the Rue Chartres were bedecked with plants and flowers. They have to be watered several times a day which makes for hazardous walking below.

One of the many art works that brighten the old French Market in the Quarter which has undergone major rejuvenation in recent years.

Meanwhile, back at the Johns Hopkings library building site, the work goes on. At this point it is beginning to resemble a modern-day Stonehenge.

When will it end?

2011-04-05T17:52:00.000-04:00

Mother Nature threw Baltimore another curve this morning. Yesterday (Monday) was a flawless summery day---perfect for the Oriole's home opener which drew 45,000 deliriously happy fans to Camden Yards to watch their new heroes stomp Detroit 5-1 for their fourth consecutive win. Sometime in the middle of the night a storm swept through Charm City with winds that shook Uncle Jack's 15-story condo building and driving rain that splattered the windows and woke him out of a sound sleep. By dawn the temperature was back down in the low 40's, the wind continued unabated and a fine drizzle continued to fall until late in the afternoon. Uncle Jack found little consolation in the fact that something very similar happened on the Outer Banks yesterday. Enough already.
Other than taking the Mini in for an oil change there were no cultural activities on his calendar for today so he had time to root around in the archives for a while and find an ancient column somewhat appropriate for the season, to wit:

March Madness

Uncle Jack will bet that he is not the only person on the
Outer Banks who is glad that March---the longest March in the
history of weather---is finally over. Coming on the heels of
what had to be one of the worst Februarys ever, this March
was nasty enough to make even Canadians grumble.
As usual there was something bad about March besides the
weather, to wit: the NCAA basketball tournament which never
fails to turn Uncle Jack into a quivering pudding of guilt as
he wastes hour after hour watching sweaty young men in short
pants engage in ferocious dunk-to-dunk combat in an effort to
establish the supremacy of their respective "institutions of
higher learning" as colleges and universities are still
laughingly referred to in some circles.
Each year the spectacle gets a little harder for Uncle
Jack to enjoy even though he knows he is watching some of the
finest amateur athletes that money can buy---many of whom will
soon be earning more money in one week than he has amassed in
his virtuous lifetime of incessant toil. (If they are not already
getting it under the table, stuffed into their capacious Nikes
by greedy agents and overzealous alumni).
If Uncle Jack sounds jealous it is for good reason because
he knows full well that had he been born 40 years later he,
too, might have a shoe contract to fall back on in his old age.
It is an incontrovertible fact (anybody who might have
controverted it is already dead) that at one time Uncle Jack
owned the deadliest two-hand setshot ever seen in northern
Wisconsin. He stood at the threshhold of fame and fortune but
only briefly because unbeknownst to him in a gym in faraway
Indiana Oscar Robertson had invented the one-hand jumper and
rendered Uncle Jack obsolete overnight.
But that was long ago and Uncle Jack has long since
adjusted to the fact that he will never amount to anything.
His problem with the NCAA tournament, that which causes him
to writhe in his Barcalounger, his hair shirt soaked with
the sweat of guilt, is his knowledge that the whole thing
has become such an embarrassing travesty in the name of
higher education.
Colleges and universities, many of them actually worthy
of the name, have been sucked into the sordid business of
recruiting and maintaining semi-professional teams of so-called
"student athletes", most of whom never see a diploma much less
earn one. (A few probably couldn't read it if they did get one).
The reason for all this chicanery, of course, is money--vast
amounts of money derived primarily from lucrative TV contracts.
College basketball sells products---with a vengeance as any
frazzled survivor of "March Madness" can tell you.
For this reason even prestigious universities like Duke
and Stanford are willing to prostitute themselves to hucksters
and world-class windbags like Dick Vitale, who has single-
mouthedly done more to turn off intelligent basketball fans
than anyone he can think of.
Uncle Jack is not kidding when he says that if anything
ever goes wrong with his "mute" switch he will never watch
another basketball game on ESPN.

Anyway March and the NCAA tournament are over and now
Uncle Jack can look forward to doing his taxes. This is something
that always makes him angry but at least he won't feel guilty
and he doesn't have to listen to Dick Vitale while he does it.

Coming soon to a beach near you? The Nags Head Town Council is threatening to start beach renourishment by mid-June and continue through the summer. They say it's the only way to save our beautiful beaches. If this reminds you of the reasoning behind the My Lai massacre you could be right.

Culture redux

2011-04-03T21:24:00.000-04:00

Uncle Jack and Mrs. U. J. returned to Charm City from a respite in Nags Head ten days ago and immediately resumed their spring round of cultural activities. (The calendar says it's spring but apparently nobody has told Mother Nature who continues to torture Baltimoreans with freezing temperatures and the occasional snow flurry even after the forsythias and dogwoods have bloomed).
The first of two Baltimore Symphony concerts they attended last week featured a 29 year old pianist named Orion Weiss who was unknown to Uncle Jack but not to regular BSO patrons who were present twelve years ago when Weiss, who was then a 17-year-old high school student in Cleveland, was called in on 24 hours notice to substitute for the world-renowned pianist Andre Watts who cancelled out of a performance of Shostakovitch's second piano concerto. Orion aced it and the event gave his career a huge boost and since his graduation from Juilliard four years later he has been in great demand as a soloist with orchestras all over the world.
The second BSO concert last Thursday evening was even more heartwarming. It featured several dozen Baltimore public school kids who participate in the BSO's "OrchKids" program. They joined the orchestra on stage for a performance of a specially commissioned composition based on the Pied Piper story. They did a wonderful job and it must have been the thrill of their young lifetimes for these budding musicians. No doubt the BSO management hopes they will all grow up to be season ticket holders.
Sandwiched between the two BSO concerts they enjoyed a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony by a local group called the Concert Artists of Baltimore. Somebody once made a list of ten things every person should be lucky enough to do before dying and one of them is to hear Beethoven's Ninth performed by first-rate musicians and now Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. have had that inspiring pleasure. (He is not ready to die yet, though----not until he has achieved his lifetime goal of making 50 free throws in a row).
They almost missed a third concert on Friday when the Vinca Quartet got caught in a horrendous traffic jam while driving down I-95 from New York City. They arrived a few minutes late and breathless but they regained their composure and played quartets by Bartok and Beethoven beautifully. Three of the four members of the group are young ladies of such surpassing beauty that one wonders how they ever found time to practice back in their high school and college days.
Two not-very-good plays rounded out their cultural activities for the week unless one is broadminded enough to include watching the Orioles play baseball as a form of high culture. Uncle Jack is happy to report that the Birds are off to a splendid start under their new manager, Buck Showalter, winning their first three games against the Tampa Bay Lizards in convincing fashion. Reality will probably set in soon enough. The home opener is tomorrow against the Detroit Tigers.

They are counting the days until their departure for New Orleans to attend the French Quarter Festival for the umpteenth time next Thursday. Uncle Jack is going to enjoy this one like it could be his last because when you get to his age it might very well be. That folding chair he hauls all over the Quarter for three days gets heavier every year.

We took a stroll through the neighborhood this afternoon and found this tree abloom in the park across the street. Soon there will be hundreds more.

These are a few of the 80,000 tulips that have been planted in nearby Sherwood Gardens, waiting to burst into bloom sometime toward the end of the month. Google Sherwood Gardens for the full story on this incredible free park maintained by residents who live in the Guilford neighborhood of Baltimore.

This forsythia decided not to wait for the tulips before showing off.

Tremendous progress has been made on the Johns Hopkins library addition since ground was broken back in September of last year. We think this latest batch of columns may support the roof but that remains to be seen.

The facade at this level will be all glass. Installing it should be an interesting process to watch.

Kelly's Parade

2011-03-21T09:58:00.000-04:00

Uncle Jack can't remember the last time he was in town for Kelly's St. Patrick's Day parade but it must have been at least 20 years ago which would have made it the first or second one. He never would have guessed then that it would grow from such humble beginnings (two or three fire trucks and Kelly riding in a green convertible) into the extravaganza he watched in awe as it rumbled down the beach road yesterday afternoon. As promised he took some pictures but the Sony's battery went dead very early on so he missed some great photo ops later on. The Outer Banks Voice's crack photographer was better prepared as you can see by going to http://outerbanksvoice.com/2011/03/20/photos-st-patricks-parade-is-a-grand-celebration/#more-29311 The whole thing was a hoot and he thanks Mike Kelly for making it all possible.

Part of the Town of Duck's bloodhound investigative unit. Why does the Town of Duck have a bloodhound investigative unit? Presumably because they have more money than they know what to do with, sort of like Dare County.

Uncle Jack believes this may have been part of the crack South Nags Head White Trash Drill Team but he's not sure.

Here they are from the front. A very impressive organization, ready to defend South Nags Head from all intruders with the possible exception of Mother Nature.

A harbinger of a big bash to come this summer; Nags Head's 50th Birthday Party. Stay tuned.

Sunrise in Sonag

2011-03-19T10:08:00.000-04:00

It's been a long time since Uncle Jack last took a picture of the sunrise from the beach in South Nags Head but here is proof that he did it this morning. It was already sixty degrees F at 7 a.m. and that helped. Looks like good weather for Kelly's annual St. Patrick's Day parade tomorrow so he will try to get out there and capture some of the excitement with his little Sony Cybershot. Stay tuned.

7 a.m.

7:10. Right on schedule.

Mrs. U.J.'s azalea bush is in bloom with dozens of buds waiting for the next warm day to pop out. It was 70 F in Nags Head on Friday.

Jennette's pier house is an imposing structure which looks to Uncle Jack like it is daring Mother Nature to take her best shot.

The windmills were spinning like crazy in a light breeze on Friday.

Ciao.

Such a week!

2011-03-14T16:20:00.001-04:00

   How much culture can one old retired person absorb in a single week? Uncle Jack was put to the test this past week and he seems to have survived unscathed in mind and body. It started on Monday with a tour of several historical parts of the Johns Hopkins Medical Center, one of the world's greatest centers of medical research and treatment for over a century. Some of the original 1889 buildings are still in use, perfectly preserved in their original state, and provide a link to the pioneering efforts of the founding doctors (see picture below). The highlight of the visit for Uncle Jack was meeting Dr. Patrick C. Walsh, retired director of the James Buchanan Brady (aka "Diamond Jim") Urological Institute who literally "wrote the book" on prostate cancer. Lucky for Uncle Jack he read "the book" ten years ago when he was diagnosed with stage one cancer of the prostate and had to decide what to do about it. Thanks to Dr. Walsh's advice he decided to do nothing other than start a strategy of "watchful waiting", thus avoiding potentially harmful surgery that might have made the last ten years of his life a lot less enjoyable than they have been. It was a thrill to have a chance to thank him in person. (Dr. Walsh explained that the Brady Institute was named for the flamboyant "Diamond Jim" after he made a huge monetary contribution to the hospital following his successful treatment for prostate cancer back in the 1920's. Contrast that with Al Capone's gift of three dogwood trees to Union Memorial Hospital after they treated him for syphilis.)
   On Wednesday night Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. attended a fascinating two-hour lecture on the architecture of Baltimore by a young Johns Hopkins professor whose name he forgets. (He forgets almost everything these days)They have been doing a lot of exploring around the city on their own over the past couple of years and it was interesting to learn about how some of the extraordinary buildings they have visited fit into the history of the city.
   Thursday's free noontime concert at the Peabody Conservatory was exceptionally enjoyable because it featured "ancient" music of the 17th and early 18th centuries played on period instruments by some very talented student musicians. (When was the last time you ever heard somebody play a theorbo?)
   Friday night's Baltimore Symphony concert featured music of Ireland replete with step dancers and Irish tenors singing "Danny Boy" and whatnot. Uncle Jack stayed home, drank a Guinness and watched basketball on his 52 inch you-know-what and Mrs. U.J. said he missed a great concert. (And she missed a great basketball game in which the Miami Heat cooked the L.A. Lakers).
   Saturday afternoon's concert at Evergreen Museum unexpectedly turned out to be the highlight of the week. It featured a young Colombian harpist named Edmar Castaneda whom Uncle Jack had never heard of but who has now entered his personal pantheon of great musicians---not just great jazz musicians but musicians, period. Rarely has he heard such an electrifying performance on any instrument let alone the Colombian harp. If you ever get a chance to hear him play don't miss it. Here's a small sample from Google that really doesn't do him justice. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGhgdynmtZo
   Yesterday afternoon's concert by the excellent Peabody Symphony was not too shabby either. Any program that includes both Beethoven's Emperor piano concerto and Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, both extremely well played, is not to be missed. At $8 a ticket for seniors this is another excellent reason for music lovers to live in Baltimore.
   Uncle Jack somehow found time to watch some college hoops over the weekend, as much as he abhors the rotten business it has become. He suffered a bit from ambivalence as he watched Duke carve up Maryland but he hasn't lived here long enough to get very upset about it. More important, he returned to the hardwood himself last week after finally getting his pass to JHU's magnificent O'Connor Recreation Center across the street from his condo. He was a bit rusty at first and could hardly lift his arms the day after his first outing but this morning he was back in the groove and popping three-pointers with gay abandon. Mrs. U.J. went swimming in one of the two gorgeous pools which she pretty much had to herself for half an hour. Too bad the students are too busy studying to use these opulent facilities.

Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. are off to Nags Head again on Wednesday 3/16 for a week of sun and fun. He promises pictures.

The "Big Four" of Johns Hopkins medicine: William Welch, William Halsted, William Osler and Howard Kelly, portrayed by John Singer Sargent in London in 1905. For more information about these incredible men go to http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/about/history/history5.html Find out which one was a drug addict.

The Johns Hopkins library addition grew to eye level this week in spite of some inclement weather that shut everything down for a day.

The mammoth construction crane has now been incorporated into the structure. One of these days it will have to go or this is going to be a very funny looking building.

Cold comfort

2011-03-06T09:17:00.000-05:00

   Uncle Jack came down with one of the worst colds of his entire life earlier this week and he is still trying to shake it off. He is gradually learning that the older a person gets the longer it takes to recover from whatever ails him, and he also learned that it is not a good idea to babysit with a two-year-old who is spraying toxic germs and viruses in all directions no matter how cute and lovable he is.
   He did take some comfort from the fact that his cold kept him inside and gave him even more time than usual to sit in his barcalounger and read which is one of his favorite pastimes. He needed some extra time because one of the latest books he acquired is a huge collection of letters written by H. L. Mencken, the Sage of Baltimore, who is one of his favorite defunct writers. He found this book in the sale bin at the Dare County library in Manteo a couple of weeks ago along with another Mencken book that had apparently belonged to the late Huntington Cairns of Southern Shores who was a friend of Mencken's. In fact, several of the letters in the collection were from Mencken to Cairns back in the 1920's when they were friends.
   After the death of Mr. Cairns, who was a distinguished art historian and director of the National Gallery in Washington for many years, his personal effects were sold at auction from his beachfront home in Southern Shores and the two Mencken books somehow found their way to the shelves of the county library back in 1990 where they remained, uncirculated, until Uncle Jack bought them.
   If anyone in Dare county had actually read them they might have been removed from circulation a long time ago because one of Mencken's favorite punching bags was Christianity, and for that matter all organized religions and their preposterous belief systems. He would have had a field day with a controversy now raging among evangelical Christians over the writings of a pastor named Rob Bell who
turned up in the New York Times yesterday, to wit:

In a book to be published this month, the pastor, Rob Bell, known for his provocative views and appeal among the young, describes as “misguided and toxic” the dogma that “a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better.”

   This was one of the biblical tenets that Uncle Jack had a hard time with back when he was studying Christianity under the tutelage of the Reverend John A. Houkom at Nidaros Lutheran Church in Ashland, Wisconsin so many years ago so he can readily understand why Pastor Bell might be having trouble getting his head around it. It is probably comforting to his critics to believe that he will surely burn in hell for his heresy.
   Anyway this whole episode reminded Uncle Jack of a piece he wrote many years ago for the Outer Banks Current which he has dredged up from the archives, to wit:

The Lord Moveth in Mysterious Ways

This week started out like it was going to be Uncle Jack's lucky week. On Monday he got this very nice letter from the Reverend Ewing who is the minister of the Church by Mail in Atlanta, Georgia.
His letter was mixed in with a lot of catalogs from people who want Uncle Jack to buy truffles and smoked almonds and yachts and stuff like that but it really stood out and caught his eye because right on the front of the envelope it said "Dear Jesus, I pray that you will bless this home, Spiritually, Physically and Financially" and on the back it said "Bless the hands that open this sacred faith letter that can change their lives and give them the Desires of their Hearts," and all of this was underlined with a yellow magic marker so you could hardly miss it.
Uncle Jack could hardly get the Reverend Ewing's letter open because his hands were shaking so hard, just like they were when he got the letter from the Readers Digest last year that said he might already be a millionaire. He did finally get it open and the letter turned out to be more exciting than the envelope.
In the letter the Reverend Ewing said he felt the Holy Spirit leading him to pray for somebody at Uncle Jack's address and he said "Do you need help???? Do you need a continuous flow of money blessings?" and then he said he would send Uncle Jack a very nice Prosperity Cross that he could wear around his neck or put in his tackle box or whatever he wanted to do with it ABSOLUTELY FREE!!
Uncle Jack thought this was pretty amazing because he could not figure out how the Reverend Ewing, who lives way down in Atlanta, Georgia, could have found out that Uncle Jack is going to need a continuous flow of money blessings for the next 36 months which is how long it is going to take him to make the payments on the new secondhand Jeep he just bought.
Uncle Jack is pretty sure it was not just a coincidence that the Reverend Ewing's letter and the payment book from the bank came in the very same mail so you can bet he did not waste any time sending off for his free Prosperity Cross which he hopes will get here pretty quick because his first payment is due in about two weeks and also his Jeep could use a new stereo tape deck if you want to know the truth.
The only thing that worries Uncle Jack a tiny bit is that the Reverend Ewing's letter was addressed to "Boxholder, Rural Route 2, Nags Head, N.C." and Uncle Jack actually lives on Route l so he is wondering if maybe somebody else was supposed to get the Prosperity Cross.
If Uncle Jack did get somebody else's letter by mistake he will be glad to split the money blessings with them when they come but in the meantime he is just going to take for granted that the Lord really does move in mysterious ways just like the Reverend Hokum always said he did.

Uncle Jack only got over to the construction site once this week because of his cold and he can hardly wait to see what has happened in the days since these pictures were taken. All this black plywood is very mysterious.

Who knows what all this scaffolding is for. He can only hope that somebody knows.

A billion here, a billion there

2011-02-28T10:43:00.000-05:00

   Uncle Jack has been reading a lot lately about how the new Republican members of the House of Representatives are determined to reduce the federal deficit by cutting or eliminating many government programs. They want to eliminate all funding for National Public Radio, for example, which would mean that Uncle Jack would have to get along without Morning Edition and All Things Considered and all the other good programs he listens to on NPR which is just about the only station an intelligent person can listen to any more without suffering severe brain damage.
   Even worse, though, is how they want to cut back or eliminate many programs that are aimed at helping poor people and especially the 25% of American children who are growing up in poverty. These Republicans seem to have signed on to Social Darwinism as their guiding philosophy when it comes to what to do about the least fortunate members of our society. It's sink or swim for them.
   The military budget, of course, is off limits. The Defense Department eats up half our wealth every year and we are fighting two wars simultaneously "off the books". No room for cuts or savings there according to our politicians---and not just Republicans. If a Democrat has a defense-related industry in his district it's untouchable no matter whether it's expendable or not.
   Anyway Uncle Jack must have been thinking about this many years ago when he was still writing columns for the Outer Banks Current because he ran across this one deep in the archives:

   No, Virginia

   Uncle Jack came mighty close to cancelling his subscription
to the Norfolk paper last week. There was so much bad news in
the front section on Wednesday that he could hardly pull himself
together enough to read Hints from Heloise.
  On the front page it said that the state senators in Virginia
are going to raise the tax on spiritual beverages by 33%. Uncle
Jack isn't good enough at arithmetic to figure out exactly how
much that is but he knows it's a lot.
   The higher prices in the Virginia ABC stores are not going
to hurt Uncle Jack personally because he never goes up to
Virginia if he can help it, but he does feel sorry for all the
people who live up there. For one thing those legislators call
this a "luxury tax" which means that the citizens of Virginia
are being led down the trail to oblivion by people who don't
know the difference between a luxury and a necessity.
   Senators who think bourbon belongs in the same category as
perfume and jewelry need to be watched very carefully. They
are obviously not to be trusted.
   Also in that same paper last week Uncle Jack read that the
big U.S. Navy warehouse in Norfolk is missing about $l80 million
worth of stuff that is either lost or stolen. Nobody knows how
much is lost and how much is stolen because they only have 3500
people keeping track of it and that isn't nearly enough people
according to the admiral who runs the place.
   This admiral doesn't think it was all stolen because he had
one of his lieutenant commanders figure out that each one of
those 3500 employees would have had to steal $50,000 worth of
stuff before it could add up to $l80 million and he thought
that was unlikely even though the government seems to pay twice
as much for everything as anybody else does.
   Some congressmen came down from Washington to do one of those
televised "investigations" that congressmen love to do during
election years. You can add the cost of the investigation to
the losses they had at the warehouse last year.
   One good thing came out of the investigation, though, that
might save some money over the long haul. One of the congressmen
was surprised to learn that the employees' parking lot was right
next to the warehouse and he wondered if that didn't make it
pretty easy for dishonest employees to steal things like
lightbulbs and typewriters and small ships and other stuff they
could hide in their cars.
   The admiral said he never thought of that but he would
certainly have one of his lieutenant commanders look into the
matter and find out if it would be a good idea to build a fence
around the warehouse and make the employees park on the other
side of it. Uncle Jack can remember the old days when you had
to be fairly smart to be an admiral.
   About a year from now Uncle Jack will probably read in the
paper that the Navy has given a contract to somebody for $l0
million to build a picket fence around the warehouse. The next
thing he will read is that somebody stole half the pickets before
the fence got built so the Navy had to give the contractor
another $5 million to finish the job. If anybody asks you how
the Pentagon can manage to spend over $300 billion every year
on "defense", that's how they do it.

On Wisconsin?

2011-02-25T11:36:00.001-05:00

   As faithful readers know Uncle Jack is a native of Wisconsin so they would not be surprised that he is concerned about the news out of Madison where he matriculated at the university back in the first ice age. He learned many things while he was there, most of them having to do with beer, but by far the most important course he took was called "A History of Trade Unionism in the United States". Of all the experiences he has had in his long life that was probably the one that did the most to turn him into the unrepentant pinko, lefty liberal he remains today.
   He wishes that everybody could read professor Selig Perlman's book of the same name because they would have a much better understanding of the events transpiring in Wisconsin right now. Life was hell for many workingmen (and working women and working children) in the U.S. before unions became strong enough to stand up to the worst exploitative excesses of the corporations. Only by banding together in unions could workers hope to improve their miserable situations by collectively demanding change. Most of the good things that have happened for American workers over the past century have resulted from union activity.
   Uncle Jack is proud to say that historically Wisconsin has been in the forefront of legislation to improve the lot of working people and he is distressed to see that Wisconsin voters have seen fit to elect as their governor a man who seems hell bent on crushing the last vestiges of unionism in the state with the help of extreme right-wing groups funded by ultra-wealthy corporate backers. If they succeed look for more of the Wal-Mart approach to cutting labor costs----low wages, poor or no benefits, lots of part-time employees lusting after the pathetic jobs of the full-timers who are too cowed to complain---and no unions. Not a pretty picture but all too accurate in our high-unemployment economy.
   This isn't the first time Wisconsin voters have shot themselves in the foot, of course. They gave the country Senator Joseph McCarthy a half-century ago and we're still recovering from that. Perhaps the time will come when Governor Walker will be lumped together with McCarthy as one of the biggest mistakes Wisconsin voters ever made.

   The news from Baltimore is substantially better. The winter is progressing mildly-----no big blizzards like we had had by this time last year---and temperatures warm enough most of the time to permit an occasional walk through the JHU campus where the new library addition is taking shape at a rapid pace.
He hopes the workers over there are unionized and making decent wages because they deserve it. Working construction out of doors in the winter is not a walk in the park---even when the winter is mild.

   Uncle Jack found time this week to put the finishing touches on a website advertising the fact that his and Mrs. U.J.'s house in Nags Head will be available for rental this summer. Interested parties can see it by clicking on this link:   http://unclejackshouse.blogspot.com/

   Once again he has dug deep into the archives to resurrect a piece he wrote a long time ago about music in his old public high school. He hopes the cost cutters haven't wrecked what was once a wonderful program because kids today deserve it just as much as he did.

   The Music Man

   Sometime during all that hoopty-doo before the Super Bowl
Uncle Jack saw a show on TV about a high school band in New
Jersey that was so good they were invited to march in the
Super Bowl parade. He didn't get all the details about it because
his eyes tend to glaze over when he sees too much stuff about
the Super Bowl but he remembers this band's nickname---The Big
Green Machine---because they had it painted on the side of their
bass drum which was so big it took two people to carry it and
two more to play it.
   They showed pictures of this band marching around on a
football field and doing a lot of fancy stuff. There must have
been 200 kids in the band, not counting all the cute girls who
waved flags and twirled batons and tried very hard to look sexy
like the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.
   They also showed these kids washing thousands of cars at
shopping malls in New Jersey to earn enough money to go to the
Super Bowl.
   This story was actually even more boring than most of the
stuff they put on TV about the Super Bowl but it did remind
Uncle Jack of the time when he played in his school band so
it wasn't completely worthless.
   Uncle Jack went to a rinkey-dink lttle high school up in
northern Wisconsin that didn't have as many students in it all
together as they had saxaphone players in the The Big Green
Machine. His high school band never had a nickname which is
a good thing because it probably would have been something really
stupid. Uncle Jack's high school football team was called the
"Purgolders" because the school colors were purple and gold.
They were not very good at thinking up nicknames when Uncle
Jack was in high school, maybe because it was too cold.
   Uncle Jack's high school band never got invited to go anywhere
which was a good thing, too, because nobody had to wash cars
to raise money and that gave everybody more time to practice.
You had to practice a lot because if you didn't you couldn't
stay in the band.
   Everybody in Uncle Jack's high school wanted to be in the
band even more than they wanted to be on the football team.
Uncle Jack himself never went out for football because he was
afraid he would hurt his fingers and not be able to play his
clarinet. (Also his mother would not let him go out for football
because he was six feet tall and weighed about 74 pounds but
that is another story).
   The reason everybody wanted to be in the band was that they
liked and admired the band director so much. He was one of the
most inspiring teachers in northern Wisconsn at that time.
Uncle Jack is not going to mention his name because you probably
never heard of him even though he did become quite famous in
band circles after he got fired from his job in Uncle Jack's
high school.
   Why did this revered teacher and all-around impressive person
get fired from Uncle Jack's high school? The board of education
did not like him because (l) he did not want his band to waste
a lot of time marching in football games where the instruments
could get rained on, (2) he thought he should be able to go
into a tavern and have a glass of beer just like any other grown-
up person even though he was a teacher, and (3) he got caught
fooling around with the choir director.
   Anyway Uncle Jack was lucky that the band director didn't
get fired until after he graduated from high school because
the band director was the most important teacher he ever had
in all the 25 or 30 years he spent going to school with the
possible exception of Mrs. Stonebreaker in the fourth grade
who taught him to hold his pencil right.
   He was so important because he taught Uncle Jack about the
music of Beethoven and Mozart and Schubert and Bach and the
other great composers. That was the kind of music Uncle Jack's
high school band played.
   He feels sorry for those kids in the Big Green Machine band
because all they got to do is march around and wash cars and
   go to the Super Bowl. They got cheated.
   Uncle Jack knows.

The library project seems to have entered a new phase. Lots of scaffolding has been erected on top of the concrete slabs poured in the last couple of weeks. It looks like a huge erector set at the moment.

The earth movers are digging big new holes around the periphery of the south wall but it's not clear yet what is going to happen there.

Vestiges of last week's snow still remain but today's 60+ temperature and rain short make short work of it.

Fun City

2011-02-20T12:41:00.001-05:00

   Uncle Jack's cup ranneth over this week what with the springlike weather and a surfeit of first-class cultural activities. The thermometer actually reached 70 F on Friday which made his morning walk through the Johns Hopkins campus even more enjoyable than usual----and not just because so many of the co-eds had shed their winter garb. He has a lot of sympathy for the male students on days like this because it must be very hard to concentrate on dull stuff like math and physics.
   Friday night's concert by the Baltimore Symphony was enjoyable as always but particularly so because the first piece on the program was Rossini's Overture to William Tell which has had special meaning for him ever since he was a kid. Aged persons like himself will remember (if they ever knew) that William Tell was the theme music for the Lone Ranger radio program to which he listened faithfully every weekday afternoon for many years. It was the first piece of classical music he ever heard and he is sure it helped to turn him into a lifelong lover of same. Who could not love that blood-stirring finale to which accompaniment the Masked Man and Tonto galloped off into the sunset after each thrilling episode.
   Saturday afternoon he and Mrs. Uncle Jack repaired to the Everyman Theater a few blocks down Charles Street where they enjoyed an excellent performance of an intriguing play called "Shooting Star" by the prolific American playwright Steven Dietz. It's a 90 minute one-acter in which the two characters, a man and a woman who were lovers a long time ago, are forced to spend many hours together in the waiting room of a snowed-in airport. Uncle Jack remembered to put his hearing aids in so he could hear every word of the dialogue and he can tell you it was very clever and he understood it all which is more than he can say about the Harold Pinter play he went to last week.

This afternoon he and Mrs. U.J. will stroll over to the Mattin Center on the JHU campus to hear the Johns Hopkins orchestra, a group of students, faculty and alumni, in concert. They went last year to this same annual concert and were blown away by the quality of the music. They will be playing Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring" which he dearly loves and he knows he will enjoy it even though the high temperature is back down to 40 today. You can't have everything but you can come close when you live in Charm City.

This is how one part of the worksite looked three weeks ago.

The same corner yesterday. These guys have not been sitting around like they are in this picture. (It's lunch time obviously).

Another part of the site back on January 31 before Uncle Jack left for Nags Head.

And how it looked yesterday. Only a year-and-a-half to go now.

In the beginning......six months ago.

Home again?

2011-02-17T17:23:00.001-05:00

   Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. are back in Baltimore again after an enjoyable ten-day sojourn in Nags Head during which they experienced just about every kind of weather one could reasonably expect on the Outer Banks at this time of year. There were no freakishly warm days like the one he remembers from back in the 70's when the temperature reached 80 one day and all the migratory waterfowl got so excited they started heading north en masse. They probably got as far north as D.C. before they all realized their mistake and turned around because they were back Roanoke Sound the next day. Geese are not noted for their intellect so it shouldn't have been surprising to see them do something really stupid like that. At least they didn't have to pay for gas.
   Last week was mostly rainy, cold and windy except when it was snowing, none of which was conducive to favorite outdoor activities like walking on the beach. This was not entirely bad because they were down there to work on getting their house ready to rent this summer and there is nothing like nasty weather to discourage frivolous pursuits. There is still a lot to do so they will be going back to Nags Head in a week or so. They have already spent so much time down there this year that they are not sure which place to call home at this point----South Nags Head or Charm City. This is not exactly what you could call a serious problem he would be the first to admit.
   They got back to Bawlmer on Tuesday and plunged almost immediately back into the cultural swim by going to the Center Theater downtown to see a performance of Harold Pinter's enigmatic 1965 play called "The Homecoming" which Uncle Jack thought was pretty funny for a tragedy. Pinter got the Nobel Prize in literature a few years back so he must be a very important playwright but Uncle Jack has to confess that he has never understood anything the man wrote. Lucky for him you don't have to understand his plays to enjoy them so it wasn't a total loss.
   Tomorrow night it's the symphony (mostly Chopin) and Saturday afternoon another play, this time at the Everyman Theater down the street a few blocks. On Sunday he will rest his brain lest it become overheated and cause a stroke or worse.
   By popular request Uncle Jack has reached deep into the archives for another piece he wrote so long ago that by his reckoning very few people who read it originally could still be alive. It came to mind as he watched the snow melt last week.

   Ditches

   Uncle Jack has been thinking a lot lately about ditches.
This is not something he would normally think about very much
but with all the water standing around everywhere in Nags Head
after the big rain last week and everybody talking about drainage
all the time he could not help remembering the ditches of his
childhood.
   When Uncle Jack was a kid ditches were just about the number
one source of entertainment in his neighborhood, especially
in the spring when the snow started to melt. Uncle Jack should
back up and explain that he grew up in a small town in northern
Wisconsin near the Arctic Circle where it started snowing right
after Labor Day and it kept right on snowing right up to Memorial
Day.
   During that time, known as "winter", shoveling snow was the
number one source of recreation. Nobody in Uncle Jack's home
town ever went skiing or anything like that because they were
always too tired from shoveling snow.
   In the spring, which usually came around the first week of
June and lasted about four or five days, the sun would come
out and the temperature would go way up to 35 degrees above
zero and the snow would start to melt. This is where the ditches
came in. Uncle Jack's home town did not have too much in the
way of culture but it did have wonderful ditches. During the
spring when the snow was melting people would refer to Uncle
Jack's home town as the Venice of Northern Wisconsin and they
were not exaggerating very much either.
   Uncle Jack can still remember how the old people would stand
out by the ditches in front of their houses when the water was
running good and they would nod to each other and smile and
say things like "By golly, Lars, she's really running good today,
ain't she". People really knew how to appreciate a good ditch
in those days, that's for sure.
   The old people would watch Uncle Jack and the other kids
playing in the ditches just the way they did when they were
kids and they would say things like "Watch out you don't get
sucked into the culvert" just like their mothers and fathers
used to say to them. As far as Uncle Jack knows, nobody in his
neighborhood ever actually got sucked into the culvert but he
thinks that could be what happened to Dorothy Magnuson's cat
in the spring of '39.
   Building dams in the ditches and flooding the street was
one thing Uncle Jack and his friends used to do but racing boats
was more fun and you did not get yelled at by the old people
as much, either, when you raced boats. Uncle Jack and his friends
would make boats out of chunks of wood or whatever
and then they would see whose boat could get from Seventh Street
to the culvert first.
   This was how they got to practice some of the skills they
would need when they grew up such as how to cheat and get away
with it and how to win an argument even when you know you are
wrong.
   On the first Saturday of spring (which was also the last
Saturday of spring) Uncle Jack and his friends would have the
Big Culvert Race which was where everybody let their boats get
sucked into the culvert and then they would jump on their
bicycles and ride down to where the culvert emptied out through
a big pipe right into Lake Superior. Then they would sit there
and wait to see whose boat came out first and you can probably
imagine how exciting that was.
   Uncle Jack is not going to tell you some of the things he
saw that came out of that pipe and went right into Lake Superior
because you might be eating lunch or something. He will say
that after he saw what came out of that pipe he could never
get up much enthusiasm for swimming in Lake Superior and it
wasn't because it never completely thawed out, either.
   But mostly Uncle Jack has very fond memories of the ditches
he played in and he would like to tell all the people in Nags
Head who have a lot of water standing in their yards that they
should not be afraid of ditches. He knows from experience that
ditches are not only useful for getting the water out of your
yard but they are also a good source of wholesome, inexpensive
entertainment for the whole family and something the community
can be proud of.
   But watch out you don't get sucked into the culvert.

This was a pretty blizzard while it lasted. The snow fell Wednesday night and was gone by Thursday night.

Uncle Jack didn't have to brush the snow off the Mini---it melted before he could find the broom.

Monday, the day before they had to leave, was actually almost pleasant. They walked toward Jennette's Pier, which looks like it is on track to open as scheduled in May, but had to turn around before they got there. Needless to say they had the beach to themselves. Most people are not quite as dumb as geese. Click the picture to enlarge it and you might be able to see the pier.

Winter at the Beach

2011-02-07T12:04:00.000-05:00

   Weatherwise it's not all that great in Nags Head right now but it's warmer than Charm City and snowless so it's nice to be here. Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. arrived in the rain and fog on Saturday, enjoyed a sunny day yesterday and are coping with an 80% chance of rain today. Who knows what tomorrow may bring in addition to Uncle Jack's trip to the dentist to have an errant crown replaced. In the meantime "Let them eat soup" as the French lady once said. (The crown fell off while he was sleeping but with the grace of the Good Fairy he didn't swallow it),
   He and Mrs. U.J. will be busy for the next week getting their Nags Head house ready for rental this summer. They have had a wonderful year-round tenant for the past couple of years but hated not being able to use the house whenever they wanted to during the off season. Uncle Jack is working on a descriptive website for the house but in the meantime if you are interested in a moderately priced rental just a block from the ocean (one mile south of Jennette's pier in upper South Nags Head) please let him know by emailing to
jsandberg3143@gmail.com
and he will be happy to tell you all about it.
   The Super Bowl (except for the half-time nonsense) was enjoyable and a win-win contest for Uncle Jack. He is a Cheesehead by birth so he was happy the Packers prevailed but he lived in Pittsburgh during the Steelers' glory years so he wouldn't have minded if they had pulled it out at the last second in true Steeler fashion. Next year it's the Ravens for sure, right after the Orioles clinch the World Series.
   Here's another hoary offering from the archive for all the unemployed persons who have plenty of time to read these days for which Uncle Jack is truly sorry. He wishes he could offer you a job instead but he doesn't even have one himself anymore.



   Proud to be a Quitter

   Uncle Jack read in the paper where Americans are smoking fewer cigarettes than ever before which makes him very happy but he finds it hard to believe when he sees all the cigarette butts in his parking lot every day. It seems like most of the people who are still smoking still think the world is their ashtray just like Uncle Jack did when he was a smoker.
   The paper said that even though the cigarette companies spend over a billion dollars a year on advertising they have only managed to hook about one out of every three grown-ups on cigarettes. That is pretty amazing when you consider how many of those dollars are aimed at trying to convince children that they are never going to amount to much if they do not have at least one cigarette going at all times.
   Most of the people who don't smoke must have a hard time understanding why smokers smoke when even the dumb smokers who never finished high school must have heard by now that smoking is bad for their health.
   Some of the non-smokers probably tried to learn how to smoke when they were young but it made them sick right off the bat instead of having to wait thirty years to get lung cancer. They were lucky.
   Uncle Jack does not smoke but it isn't hard for him to understand why people do smoke even though they know it makes them cough and it stinks up their clothes and it is costing them a fortune.Uncle Jack knows why they smoke because a long time ago he used to smoke, too, and he can still remember what it was like. For ten years he started every day with a cigarette and ended every day with a cigarette and in between he smoked at least twenty more, two or three of which he really enjoyed.
   This is not something Uncle Jack is proud of. It is not easy to admit that he was a slave but for ten years Uncle Jack belonged to the Marlboro Man. He crawled along in the dust behind the Marlboro Man all those years and the Marlboro Man would never even let him ride his horse, much less introduce him to any pretty girls.
   One day Uncle Jack really got fed up with the Marlboro Man and he decided he would never smoke a cigarette again. He knows exactly when this was because it was on the very day his only begotten son was born. (Uncle Jack has always had a flair for the dramatic).
   Actually Uncle Jack had tried to quit smoking many times before but the Marlboro Man wouldn't let him. This time, though, Uncle Jack had help from Bob Newhart.
   Back in the old days before he got rich and famous doing TV sitcoms Bob Newhart was a stand-up comedian who did funny skits where he would pretend he was talking on the phone to somebody. In one of those skits he pretended to be a high pressure salesman in England who was talking to Sir Walter Raleigh.
   Raleigh has just discovered tobacco in America and he is trying to convince this salesman that there is big money to be made in something called "cigarettes". He tries to describe over the phone what tobacco is and how you make cigarettes and what you are supposed to do with them and it goes something like this:
   "So you take this weed and you let it dry out and then you crumble it up and wrap it in a little paper tube," the salesman says. "O.K. Walt, baby, I follow you so far but then what?"
   "You put the little tube of tobacco in your mouth and set fire to it?" he says, beginning to laugh uncontrollably. After he recovers he says, "And then what do you do, Walt?"
   "You ...you...breathe the smoke into your lungs?!! Walt, baby, you've got to be kidding!!"
   Anyway Uncle Jack has not smoked a cigarette since November 2, l96l and he cannot even begin to figure out how much money he has not spent on cigarettes in that time but it must have
been enough to pay for all the bourbon he has consumed in the same period. We are talking real money here.
   He would like to conclude by saying that he would be happy to serve as an inspiration to anybody who would would like to quit smoking but doesn't think he can. If somebody as inherently spineless as Uncle Jack can quit, he is sure that anybody can.
   And if all else fails he will let you borrow his Bob Newhart record.

Looking north toward Jennette's Pier from Whitecap Street Saturday afternoon February 5.

Same view 24 hours later. What a difference a day makes.

Neither snow nor rain nor dark of night.......

2011-01-31T17:02:00.001-05:00

   .....shall stay Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. from their dogged pursuit of all things cultural. He is pleased to report that last Thursday evening's concert by the Baltimore Symphony was not cancelled on account of snow (unlike almost every other event in the region) and they were among the handful of the faithful who were able to mush on over to the Meyerhoff to hear a terrific concert featuring a young artist named Augustin Hadelich who played the heck out of Brahms's only violin concerto and then favored us steadfast concert-goers with a dazzling performance of one of Paganini's show-off pieces for unaccompanied violin. A night to remember for sure.
   The roads were clear enough by Saturday to venture downtown to the fabulous Landmark Theater (how many movie theaters do you know that have a full bar?) where the sleeper movie of the year was playing----namely "The King's Speech". It took guts to make a movie about a king's speech impediment but it turned out well enough to rake in a dozen Oscar nominations and will fight it out for top honors with "The Facebook" which is also a first-rate flick.
   Sunday afternoon they were lucky enough to find a parking place among the snowdrifts just a block from the Fell's Point Corner Theater where they saw an excellent performance of a play called "Mauritius" which is about the unlikely subject of stamp-collecting. Actually it is about human foibles like greed and avarice in the context of what seems on the surface to be a rather benign activity but it made for a really gripping play even though nobody was shot or stabbed and there were no explosions or car chases.
   Uncle Jack exhumed another chestnut from the archives this morning and has attached it below for those who may be snowbound and unable to reach the library this week.

   Clothes Make the Man?

Sometimes Uncle Jack wonders why he never amounted to anything
even though he is a high school graduate and also enjoyed many
other advantages including a nagging mother.
   Here he is entering the stage of advanced decrepitude with
hardly enough money to buy a bloodworm when the spots are running
and all around him he sees people half his age pulling $20,000
boats behind their $40,000 4WD pick-up trucks and living in
$400,000 houses and going off on vacations to places Mrs.
Stonebreaker never even mentioned in geography class.
   Uncle Jack knew he must have done something wrong somewhere
along the way but he didn't know what it was until last week
when he read this article in the paper about clothes.
   This article had a lot of good advice in it for people who
want to amount to something and it is too bad Uncle Jack didn't
read it 45 years ago because he might have been a success today
instead of not having two nickels to rub together.
   This is one thing Uncle Jack did not know:
   "For any kind of business career, one needs, at minimum,
three good suits. They do not have to be tailor-made, but you
should go to some trouble to make sure they fit. If you can
find a good custom tailor who will do alterations, it's worth
the time and effort."
   You can see what Uncle Jack was up against right there because
he can tell you he has never owned more than one suit at a time
in his whole life and he has never owned a suit that fit.
   Every suit Uncle Jack ever bought from J.C. Penney or Sears
Roebuck seemed to fit o.k. when he was standing in front of
those triple mirrors in the store but as soon as he got home
and he bent over to get a beer out of the bottom shelf of the
refrigerator his suit would try to cut off his arm at the armpit.

   Also it would always turn out that the pants were too long
and Uncle Jack could not afford to go to a tailor so he would
fix the cuffs with paper clips.
   According to this article you cannot make a very good
impression in most business circles if you go around with paper
clips holding up your cuffs.
   "Shirts should be white or plain light blue; cotton is best.
They should not have contrasting collars, oddly shaped collars,
or French cuffs."
   Uncle Jack was glad to read that about shirts because shirts
were one thing he thought he did right. Most of the time he
wears a light blue shirt made of l00 per cent cotton that does
not have any strange kind of collar or cuffs.
   Wearing the right kind of shirt does not seem to have done
him any good in the business world, though, and he would hate
to think it was just because his light blue l00 per cent cotton
shirt has "I Got Crabs at Austin Fish Company" written on the
front.
   "Shoes should be simple, too. Plain black lace-up shoes
without fancy stitching or thick soles are all one needs; and
they should be meticulously polished."
   Uncle Jack really goofed when it comes to shoes because he
usually wears plastic shower clogs from Taiwan except when he
is going out to a fancy restaurant like Sam and Omie's he puts
on his fake Nike running shoes from the shoe department at Ace
Hardware. Neither one of them takes a very good shine, either.
   Most of the time, though, he goes barefoot and the newspaper
article says this is definitely not the way to get ahead unless
you are Jimmy Buffett.
   "If you want to get ahead you should dress for success. To
my knowledge nobody objects to a dark blue suit, a plain shirt
and a dark tie."
   If you want to know the truth Uncle Jack is not so sure he
wants to be a success any more since he read that article in
the newspaper.
   If the price of success is having to wear a dark blue suit,
a dark tie, and black leather shoes all the time he thinks maybe
there is something to be said for being a failure.

Much has happened since Uncle Jack last visited the Johns Hopkins library worksite more than two weeks ago. Lots of concrete has been poured for one thing and much of the sub-surface early work has now been obscured by this slab.

It looks like the dirt floor in the background is also being prepared for another layer of concrete. It can't be much fun working outside like this when the temperature never gets above freezing. Sleet and freezing rain are forecast for tonight and tomorrow. That should add to the fun.

Uncle Jack's admiration for architects, engineers and builders has blossomed since he started watching this project take shape a few months ago.

Hunkered down in Bawlmer

2011-01-27T11:24:00.002-05:00

   Yesterday morning's light snowfall was only a harbinger of the storm to come a few hours later in the day. A full scale blizzard blew in to snarl the afternoon rush hour traffic and it kept up for several hours, accompanied by thunder and lightning, and has left Charm City more or less paralyzed this morning. Thousands of people have no power, all the schools are closed---including Johns Hopkins---and automobile traffic is almost non-existent during the morning rush hour. This is not a problem for Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. because they are well-supplied with food and drink but they do have tickets to tonight's concert by the Baltimore symphony which will present a challenge if it isn't cancelled. Stay tuned.

   Uncle Jack did another trawl through the archives and came up with this chestnut he wrote a few years back.

   From the Mailbag

Dear Uncle Jack,
   Next week I start my first job as a schoolteacher and I'm really looking forward to it because I love children and I want to do good things that will make the world a better place to live in. But I am also a little bit scared and I know you used to be a teacher so I was wondering if you had any good advice for a beginner.
   Nervous Nellie
   New Jersey

Dear Nellie,
   It is too late for Uncle Jack to give you the advice he always gives young people who want to be schoolteachers which is the same advice his Aunt Esther used to give him back when he wanted
to be a teacher which was "Don't be a fool."
   But even if it was not too late and he did give you that advice you would probably not pay any attention just like Uncle Jack did not pay any attention to his Aunt Esther even though he knew that she knew an awful lot about schoolteaching after doing it for 30 years.
   Anyway you sound like the kind of person who has not gone into schoolteaching just for the money and prestige so Uncle Jack is glad he did not have a chance to talk you out of it. Somebody has to teach the children so it might as well be persons like yourself who actually like children and want to make the world a better place for them instead of witches like his old fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Stonebreaker. Maybe someday the Japanese or Bill Gates or somebody will come up with a computer robot (Mr. Chips?) who can take attendance and make up the cafeteria list and teach children how to do the train problems and all the vital things that teachers do but in the meantime human beings have to do it and he is glad that you are willing to put your head in the noose.
   As for advice to a beginner he has been racking his brain to try to come up with something helpful but all he could think of was the following:
   (a) On opening day count the number of children in your class and if you have more than 20 children go right to the principal's office and tell him he has made a mistake and he cannot expect you to teach more than 20 small children at one time and do a good job.
   When he gets through telling you where you can go you should ignore what he told you and go straight to the superintendent of schools instead. If he will not listen to you either you should go right
to the chairman of the school board and tell him your class is too big and the principal and superintendent should be fired because they won't do anything about it. This will establish you right off as a dedicated teacher who wants the best for her children and the school board will probably give you a big raise.
   (b) If they make you teach your class anyway, even though it has 38 children and 24 of them are insane, remember not to hit the children, even in self-defense. Hitting children is illegal in many states and it is also dangerous because you never know when a lawyer might be hiding under your desk.
   (c) Also never hug the children even if they surprise you and do something really nice which makes you feel like you want to hug them. Nowadays if a child goes home and tells his mother
or father (or both if by some chance they actually live together) that his teacher hugged him the parent might not understand and even if the parent does understand the lawyer under your desk may not understand so either way you are safer not hugging the children.
   (d) Stay out of the teachers' room at all times, especially if it does not have any windows which is usually the case. You will be depressed enough already without having to listen to the morbid conversations of experienced teachers and also you could be overcome by cottage cheese and yogurt fumes and die in there.
   Seriously, schoolteaching is only about 90 percent as bad as Uncle Jack has made it out to be and he is actually glad that he was a schoolteacher for a while because it did a lot for his self-respect. Someday when you have to quit teaching and go into some disreputable line of work like picture framing or selling timeshares in order to make a living you will be able to say, "I am not all bad. I was a schoolteacher once."
   Also as long as you are a schoolteacher you can count on getting a good night's sleep every night because you will be too tired to do anything else. Uncle Jack knows.

Doesn't this look like fun? (From the Baltimore Sun this morning)

Stormy weather

2011-01-26T11:00:00.002-05:00

   Snow is falling in Charm City this morning along with occasional sleet and freezing rain making the streets even more hazardous than they usually are. Uncle Jack read in the paper yesterday that Baltimore is one of the most dangerous cities in the U.S. for pedestrians and he can believe it. You have to be extra careful when crossing the street here because some of the potholes are deep enough to swallow the unwary.
   Uncle Jack was sorry to read about the passing of Jack Lalanne, the fitness fanatic who is credited by many with starting the current fitness/exercise/nutrition craze many years ago. Through his TV programs, books and magazine articles he preached the health benefits of rigorous exercise and proper diet and he "walked the walk" by personally engaging in many hours of strenuous workouts every day and sticking to a diet that would probably discourage most people from eating at all. He was 96 when he died of pneumonia last week so it might appear that he knew what he was doing.
   But then again maybe not. Uncle Jack's fabled Aunt Esther never exercised at all as far as he knows and she ate whatever she wanted whenever she wanted it and was famous in her family for her lethal "Texas Longhorn" cocktails which she served at every gathering of the tribe. She was rarely sick and lived alone and cared for herself right up until the day she died of heart failure just five days short of 100.
The same could be said of the lifestyle of the late Queen Mother Elizabeth of England who was never known to frequent the Royal Gym, ate like a Queen and was known for her fondness for gin in all its delectable forms. She died in 2002, still going strong, at the age of 102, having outlived both of her brothers.
   Uncle Jack is not sure what to make of all this but at the very least he is not going to worry too much about being snowed in today and not getting his usual walk.

   In his last entry he reprinted a piece from his extensive archives about a trip he and Mrs. U.J. made to Ireland a few years back. Here's another installment in case you are snowed in, too, and have nothing better to do than read old travelogues:



   Galway

   Uncle Jack is happy to report that he is back from Ireland in one piece and also that he had a terrific time while he was over there. If you want to know the truth he had such a good time that he feels a little bit guilty telling about it because he knows that many people have never had a chance to go to Ireland and if he says too much about how wonderful Ireland is they might get jealous. This is why he has decided to devote only his next twenty columns to his trip to Ireland even though he could probably spend the rest of his life talking about it to anybody who would listen.
   He has to confess right off that he failed miserably when it came to visiting pubs. He was hoping he could get to every pub in Ireland while he was there but even though he tried hard he could not even get to all the pubs in Galway which is where he and Mrs. Uncle Jack stayed most of the time. In fact he did not even get to all the pubs in downtown Galway much less the suburbs. Trying to visit all the pubs in Ireland is about as hopeless as trying to visit all the T-shirt shops on the Outer Banks---by the time you get to the last one another 200 have opened up.
   The first pub Uncle Jack went into was right across the street from the bus depot in Galway and he could hardly believe what he saw when he went in there. The whole place was decorated with Budweiser banners and Bud Light signs and they even had Bud on draft. At first he thought he was suffering from some extreme form of jet lag and he was back in New York or something but it was real.
   Needless to say he got out of there fast and into the pub next door which was very reassuring; as soon as he walked into O'Flaherty's he knew he was really in Ireland. For one thing everybody in there was drinking Guinness stout and if they had any Budweiser on the premises they were keeping it a secret. This is where Uncle Jack had his first pint of Guinness and he could tell right away why it is Ireland's national drink and also its major export. He could say a lot more about Guinness and he probably will.
   O'Flaherty's at first looks a little like those fake American pubs you find in fancy shopping malls because it is full of dark wood panelling and old wooden tables and chairs and lots of "antiques" all over the place. Halfway through Uncle Jack's first pint he realized that the antiques in O'Flaherty's were just the things they furnished the place with back in l849 when it opened and they have been in continuous use ever since. One of the wall decorations was an ornate timetable for the brand new Galway-Dublin train service which had just started in l849 and which probably did more to change Galway than anything since the Norman invasion in the l2th century.
   For one thing the railroad started bringing in tourists and l50 years later the tourists are pouring into Galway by train, plane, car, bus, bicycle and on foot in such numbers that they threaten to destroy the old Galway more completely than all the invading armies of foreigners have managed to do in the past eight centuries.
   Uncle Jack could not help noticing the similarities between Galway and the Outer Banks every time he walked into the center of town where the streets were laid out during the middle ages, primarily for pedestrians and the occasional horse but which now have to carry a load of foot, car, bus and truck traffic that is almost laughable unless you are stuck in it.
   He read in the paper that Galway is one of the fastest growing cities in all of Europe and he can believe it. The sound he heard most often in Galway was not the lilting tones of the Irish flute but rather the raucous chattering of jackhammers tearing down the quaint but dreadfully inefficient old stone buildings that still make up most of the city center.
   The other side of the coin (and coin of the realm is what it is all about) is that along with the tourists comes prosperity for a lot of people---everybody from the jackhammer jockies to the people who pay them to tear down the old and put up the new. Progress has come to Galway and just like on the Outer Banks it is very much a mixed blessing if you ask Uncle Jack.

View from Uncle Jack's back window this morning---two inches on the ground already and much more to come as the day progresses.

"Home" Again

2011-01-24T12:01:00.000-05:00

   After two delightful weeks in his own house in Nags Head Uncle Jack is finding himself a bit conflicted as to where "home" is these days. He loves Baltimore but he never stopped loving Nags Head when he moved to Charm City so maybe he should just think of both of them as home and consider himself lucky. This is not exactly the worst dilemma that could befall a person.
   Actually the dilemma that befell him yesterday afternoon was worse. He had to choose between going to the symphony at 3 p.m. or staying home and watching the Packers and Bears on his 52-inch, flatscreen, HDTV you-know-what. It was a tough decision but he has to say the Baltimore Symphony did a terrific job on Shostakovitch's monumental fifth symphony and he did get to watch the Steelers beat the Jets later on and that was probably as much excitement as he could handle in one day anyway.
   It is very cold in Baltimore---so cold that he and Mrs. U.J. had to do their daily walk inside the palatial Towson Town mall this morning. The owners open the place up for walkers at 7:30 a.m. which is long before the stores open. Either they are being very civic-minded or they are hoping the walkers will throw off enough heat to cut down on their electric bill. Either way it's a great amenity for penurious, exercise-seeking old people like Uncle Jack, especially the third floor where Victoria's Secret has some very inspiring window displays.
   He would like to thank all those readers who have taken time to comment on his Baltimore Blog over the last couple of years. There is supposed to be some way for him to respond to comments but he still
hasn't been able to figure out how to do it so he hopes this blanket response will at least serve as an apology for not responding in a timely fashion. He does enjoy reading your comments and he thanks you again for sending them.
   A number of readers have suggested that if he doesn't have anything new to say, which seems to be happening a lot lately, that he go back in the archives and pull out something that hasn't seen the light of day for several years. He has been thinking a lot about Ireland lately because of its economic problems which are even worse than ours in some ways. The last time he was in Ireland several years ago the country was in the midst of a boom that threatened to wreck the country in much the same way that prosperity has changed the Outer Banks so radically. This column was written at that time and my how it brings back memories.

   Ireland

   Memories of Uncle Jack's big trip to Ireland are fading
fast now that he is back working for a living again so he thought
he would get a few down on paper before they are gone forever.

May l7: Visited "Famine l50", a traveling exhibit commemorating
the l50th anniversary of the Great Famine of l846 which resulted
in the deaths of more than one million Irish people and the
emigration of a million more---many of them to the U.S. The
exhibit was on display at "Leisureland", an amusement complex
in a summer resort near Galway and was one of the few cultural
events in Ireland this year not sponsored by Budweiser or
McDonalds.

May l8: Dinner at the Oyster Room of the Great Southern Hotel,
one of Galway's leading restaurants since l849. "Buffalo Wings"
one of six starters on the menu. International cuisine at its
finest.

May 20: First day in rental car. Thirty miles outside of Galway
Uncle Jack attempts to widen stone bridge with his Opel to make
way for oncoming eighteen wheeler. He predicts that one day
in the near future two German tour buses will reach that bridge
at the same time, wedge themselves together and bring traffic
to a complete halt all over Ireland.

May 2l: Uncle Jack and Mrs. Uncle Jack wait patiently as mother
goat finishes feeding her kid in the middle of the road near
Belmullet. Other stops caused by flocks of sheep, herds of
cattle, and oncoming vehicles which had to back up to the nearest
wide place in the road. (Uncle Jack never could find reverse
gear in that Opel). He could not help thinking that this is
all very quaint but if Ireland wants to get serious about
accommodating tourists they are going to have to tear down
about a million miles of stone fences, widen all the roads to
at least six lanes and keep those animals penned up where they
belong. "Quaint" is going to have to go.

May 21: Lunch at Ashford Castle, ancestral home of the Guinness
beer family and now an 85-room luxury hotel frequented by the
likes of President Reagan, Teddy Kennedy, Joan Baez and Woody
and Mia. Mrs. Uncle Jack had a "Ceaser" salad while Uncle Jack
munched a "ham and chesse" sandwich. The familiar menu misspellings
make them momentarily homesick for the Outer Banks.

May 22: Visited the Gallarus Oratory, a l300 year old stone
church overlooking the ocean near Dingle. After thirteen
centuries of battering by some of the worst weather in the world
it is still completely intact and does not leak a drop no matter
how hard it rains. Uncle Jack was thinking there might be a
few clues here for the builders who are working on that federally
financed project to design hurricane-proof structures
up in Southern Shores. Junket to Ireland anyone?

May 23: Dinner at Moran's Oyster House near Galway where the
Moran family has been in the oyster business for over 200 years
in the same location. Unfortunately oysters were out of season
but Uncle Jack's corned beef sandwich was extraordinary.

May 24: Spotted basketball hoop fastened to the wall of a
l4th century stone tower. Boy with fuchsia hair and ring in
nose
practicing rebounds. With satellite TV covering the countryside
Irish children can find their role models where they will,
apparently---even in the NBA.

May 28: With fear and trembling Uncle Jack returns battered
rental car expecting to have to fork over the $l00 deductible
for damage inflicted during his bridge-widening efforts. Lucky
for him the Budget Rental man was unable to distinguish Uncle
Jack's dent from all the others decorating the left side of
his Opel and Uncle Jack was not about to point it out to him.
If they would widen the roads over there this sort of thing
would not happen if you ask him. So much for moral dilemmas.

May 30: Took the train to Dublin. The only civilized way to
travel if you ask Uncle Jack. Fortunately farmers have learned
that train does not stop for sheep on track. One-fourth of all
Irish people live in Dublin and Uncle Jack would guess that
at any given time half of them are stalled in traffic which
could only be described as world-class. Unable to breathe diesel
fumes Uncle Jack stays in the pub at Wynn's hotel for two days
while Mrs. Uncle Jack sightsees for him. Her description of
the Book of Kells in Trinity College also breathtaking.

June 5: Back to U.S. via Aer Lingus. Had last Guinness with
lunch on plane. Two hours to kill in Kennedy airport where
bars serve only Miller Lite and Heineken. Two Heinekens: $9.00.
Home sweet home. Alas.

Back to Bawlmer

2011-01-20T16:10:00.000-05:00

Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. are reaching the end of their mid-winter sojourn in South Nags Head and they are pleased to report that it was quite enjoyable in spite of freezing temperatures, incessant rain, relentless wind and overcast skies. Fortunately he had an excellent book to read which he mentioned in his last blog entry, namely Simon Winchester's newest opus, "Atlantic". It's a terrific book containing everything you could possibly want to know about the Atlantic Ocean and for the moment at least Uncle Jack is feeling very well informed about his favorite body of water. He was pleased to note that our own David Stick was one of his sources in the shipwreck department.
He is also happy to report that the sun did shine briefly yesterday afternoon which sent him and Mrs. U.J. at a brisk trot up to the beach where he took the pictures below---the only ones in his Sony after 12 days at the beach. Tomorrow it's back up 95 to Charm City where an unknown quantity of snow is expected to fall tonight, possibly followed by sleet or freezing rain. They can hardly wait.

Looking north toward Jennette's Pier from Whitecap street in South Nags Head. The seagulls are resting after hours of diving on schools of rockfish off shore. The sand is nearly as firm as a concrete sidewalk making walking a pleasure.

One of the joys of oceanfront home ownership.

Happy New Year

2011-01-13T11:10:00.000-05:00

Uncle Jack is happy to report that both he and Mrs. U. J. are alive and well and enjoying a lengthy sojourn in South Nags Head in spite of the fact that it is too cold to leave the house. They have been here for almost a week but still haven't set foot on the beach where icy winds take all the fun of walking. A warming trend is predicted for the weekend (it could get up to 50F) but until then they will stay inside by the fireplace and catch up on their reading.
They did get to Manteo Monday and visited Manteo Booksellers where Uncle Jack was delighted to discover that Steve had a copy of a book that he has been wanting to read ever since he first heard about it, namely Simon Winchester's "Atlantic" which, as you might expect, is about the Atlantic Ocean which has played such a major role in the history of the Outer Banks. He has greatly enjoyed every Simon Winchester book he has ever read and this one promises to be no exception. It's a doorstop of a book so it will keep him enjoyably and profitably occupied for a long time no matter which way the temperature goes.

Recent sunset in Bawlmer.

Anyway Uncle Jack will be back with some beach pictures in a few days if the temp goes up, the wind goes down and the sun continues to shine. In the meantime a belated Happy New Year to all members of the tiny band of diehard readers who check in from time to time to seek proof that he is still alive. He appreciates your efforts and hopes to continue to appear in this space from time to time when the spirit moves.

Progress continues on the Johns Hopkins library addition. Concrete walls and support beams were poured last week. Working outside like this in freezing temperatures can't be much fun but they're getting her done in spite of the cold.

Happy Holidays

2010-12-22T10:35:00.000-05:00

   Uncle Jack wrote one of those letters to put in with his Christmas cards this year and here
it is:

   We are very happy to report that 2010 has confirmed the rightness of our move to Baltimore
two years ago. The longer we live in this delightful city the more we love it. Our condo across
the street from Johns Hopkins University is happily located close to most of the cultural
institutions we frequent such as Symphony Hall, Peabody Conservatory, Shriver Concert Hall
and the Charles Theater, the best art movie house in the city.
   We have been exploring Charm City’s many fascinating neighborhoods, mostly on foot,
and have joined Baltimore Heritage, a group dedicated to preservation of landmark homes and
buildings in the city. Recently we both became docents at Evergreen House, one of the fabled
residences of Baltimore’s incredibly wealthy (B and O Railroad stock, primarily) Garrett family.
Evergreen is a 44 room mansion housing a spectacular collection of rare books, maps and
paintings which was left to Johns Hopkins University by Ambassador John Work Garrett upon
his death in 1942. Naturally we both feel right at home there.
   Persistent robust health on both our parts facilitated a fair amount of travel including
New Orleans in April for the French Quarter Festival; Indian River, Florida in May to visit
friends; Minnesota and Wisconsin in June to celebrate Jack’s 80th birthday in the bosom of
his remaining family; Camden, Maine in August with visits en route with friends in Seaside
Park, N.J., (no, not Snookie) ; Portland, Maine and Old Bennington, Vt. This trip also included a
stopover in Fitchburg, Mass. to visit Jack’s adorable great-granddaughter, Sweet Adeline Van
Hazinga, age 2, and her parents, Andy and Liz (who are expecting great-grandchild number two
early in 2011).
   Washington, D.C. is only a short train ride away ($7.00 round-trip for seniors) so we took in
several excellent plays at the Kennedy Center and also visited the new Newseum (fabulous)
in the company of Jack’s daughter Emily who came out from California in August. A visit from
Jack’s son Eric and family from Los Angeles in June prompted two more trips to D.C. during
which most of the usual tourist meccas (The Mall, National Museum, Air and Space Center,
etc.) received a dash-through.
   We managed to squeeze in several trips to Nags Head during the year. In February we
escaped to the beach just ahead of the second big blizzard in a week which left Baltimore
buried under nearly six feet of snow for weeks. It was nostalgia time for Jack who grew up in
northern Wisconsin where such weather extremes are commonplace.
Sue’s three grandchildren (Isabella, 6; Sophia 5; and Michael, 2) are a constant source of
delight. They live just ten minutes away with their mom and dad, Colleen and Ed Sabatino.
Sue’s Baltimore family grew by one earlier this year with the arrival of her artist daughter, Katie,
who is home after several years in South Africa and now lives just a few blocks from us in
Charles Village. She is recuperating nicely from brain surgery in August.
   We both joined the Mencken Society last year and Jack has volunteered to set up and
maintain a Mencken Society page on Facebook. F.B. members can check it out by typing
Mencken Society into the F.B. search bar. Jack is also doing a very occasional blog called
Uncle Jack’s Baltimore Blog which is mostly about their adventures in Charm City. .
Our address is 1 East University Parkway, #705, Baltimore, MD 21218
email jsandberg3143@gmail.com

Happy Holidays to All.

Work continues on the JHU library project in spite of the frigid temperatures of the past few weeks. This is the way it looked on December 20.

We visited Baltimore's Museum of Industry last week. It's full of interesting memorabilia from the time when Charm City was a major industrial center. Those days are long gone (as they are in almost every other city in the northeast) but the museum is first rate.

This handsome Tudor mansion was once part of the Evergreen estate where we are now docents. The house was intended to be the residence of a Garrett family member but he died of cancer before he and his new bride could move in. It is now part of the Loyola University campus next door to Evergreen House. Google "Evergreen House" to get an idea of how the other half lived in Baltimore during the gilded age.

Big doings at the JHU library construction site

2010-11-25T11:39:00.000-05:00

Uncle Jack's last post presented a brief pictorial history of the progress so far of the men and machines who are building the new Brody Learning Commons adjacent to the Eisenhower Library on the Johns Hopkins campus. A major development occurred a few days ago which he deems worthy of special attention. He has been waiting for this shoe to drop for months and the fact that it finally has indicates that some serious new work on the building is about to begin.

Uncle Jack was baffled a couple of weeks ago when workmen poured this concrete slab on the upper level of the construction site. He was unable to discern any possible use for it given its size and location.

Now he knows. It was the base for an enormous construction crane that was assembled with help of a very large portable crane last Thursday.

Here the portable crane is lifting the operator's cabin into place on the top of the tower. Several very brave men are up there bolting things together in a nasty wind.

Up goes another piece. This was a fascinating process to watch. (This photo was taken from the comfort of Uncle Jack's living room so you can get an idea of how far he has to walk to the construction site).

And here is the completely assembled crane ready to go to work. Assembly took only one working day which Uncle Jack thought was amazing.

Meanwhile, down in the hole, infrastructure work goes on. Horizontal pipe has been laid and covered and the first stage of piping for wastewater collection has been installed in a couple of places. Every day it gets a little more complicated and he still has no idea how they will get that big shovel out of the hole when the time comes.

All around the campus and the neighborhood in general leaves are turning and presenting beautiful bursts of color everywhere.

These trees are in Uncle Jack's backyard, so to speak.

And these are on the JHU campus. (top photo). The mural is painted on the side of DiPasquale's Italian grocery, a fixture in the Highlandtown district of Baltimore since 1914. A culinary treasure.

Sunset a couple of days ago. There have been some beauties lately. Happy Thanksgiving to all.

A Library Grows in Baltimore

2010-11-11T17:40:00.001-05:00

Nearly every morning Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. start the day with a brisk walk through the beautiful Johns Hopkins University campus right across Charles Street from their apartment. One day back in July they encountered something new as they climbed the hill toward the Milton Eisenhower Library---a sign announcing the forthcoming construction of a large addition to the library to be called the Brody Learning Commons. Chain link and plastic fencing was already in place to keep students and gawkers like Uncle Jack out of trouble and earthmoving equipment was already at work. Uncle Jack took some pictures that day and has continued to take pictures at intervals ever since. He hopes to live long enough to follow the construction process with his camera until the building opens for business sometime in 2012 if all goes well. It's fascinating to watch a major building project like this unfold and he marvels at the ability of the engineers in charge to plan every last detail in advance and then make it happen in the correct sequence. Look for another set of pictures in a couple of months. (Click to enlarge the pictures).

The existing Eisenhower library (Milton was Ike's brother and president of Johns Hopkins after WWII) is at the extreme right of the architect's drawing---with the arch. The new building will be attached to the old but will mostly be underground.

One lonely shovel has begun the noisy task of knocking down an existing reinforced concrete wall. Students and faculty are already complaining about the racket but they ain't heard nothing yet. This was taken on July 27, 2010.

A month later a lot more equipment is on hand, a lot of earth has been moved and a drill is making holes for steel pilings. It will drill a lot of holes in the next few weeks, hopefully in all the right places.

Meanwhile work proceeds at another level with much moving of earth and installation of infrastructure like stormwater drainpipes.

Down in the hole another section of concrete wall is hammered into submission and the amount of machinery on the premises continues to grow.

Two months after construction began the first retaining walls are beginning to appear but there's a lot more dirt to be moved as you will see.

On the upper level the drill is making big holes for big pipes and more retaining walls are under construction.

The big hole gets deeper every day and the retaining walls follow suit. Enormous amounts of dirt have been hauled away in trucks but there is much more to come.

While the diggers have been digging other workmen have been drilling holes in the retaining walls and somehow dragging what look like electrical cables into the space. Where they come from is a mystery to Uncle Jack. The last of the reinforced concrete walls lies in pieces at the left. This picture was taken on October 8.

On the upper level preparations are made to pour concrete into this hole full of rebar. What it's for is anybody's guess.

After the pour. The first of many thousands of cubic feet of concrete that will go into the new building before it's finished. This picture was taken on November 10.

The pit as of November 11. How will they get that big shovel out of the hole when the time comes? Stay tuned.

Glorious Fall on the Outer Banks

2010-11-01T17:33:00.000-04:00

Uncle Jack has always thought that October was prime time on the Outer Banks and his recent two-week sojourn in Nags Head did nothing to change his mind. The last two weeks were about as perfect weatherwise as one could hope for in these troubled meteorological times and he and Mrs. U.J. enjoyed almost every minute of their stay, the exception being their disappointment in the hushpuppies at Darrell's which didn't seem to be quite as delectable as he remembered them. (They will try again on their next visit---a hushpuppy is a terrible thing to waste). Baltimore has its charms (they wouldn't call it Charm City otherwise) but there's no place he would rather be in the month of October than the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
While they mostly hung around home and walked on the beach they did make a few excursions and took a few pictures, a few samples of which you will find below. Click on the pictures to make them larger if you wish.

The Currituck Lighthouse-Whalehead Club area has metamorphosed into a major (and lovely) tourist attraction since the last time we visited a few years ago. The Wildlife Museum was closed on the Sunday we were there but the entire outdoor complex is visually pleasing and the late-October crowd was thin enough to allow visitors to enjoy it. Deer no longer wander the lighthouse grounds but it's probably just as well, both for them and their tormenters. The keepers' houses, one of which is shown above, have been lovingly restored and the landscaping around them is a treat for the eyes.

It was a great day to climb to the observation deck from which a great view of the rampant over-development of the northern Outer Banks may be had. Uncle Jack's acute acrophobia saved him from that prospect but he later saw an aerial photograph by Eve Turek at Yellowhouse Gallery that covers the same ground. Unbelievable.

An oasis of peace and quiet at the foot of the lighthouse. That's the old keeper's house, now a gift shop, almost hidden in the lush vegetation.

We saw this woman swimming on our first beachwalk in Sonag. She was only one of many intrepid swimmers as it turned out.

Jennette's Pier is coming along nicely. The wind generators have been operating just long enough to produce the first complaints from nearby residents about how much noise they make when spinning at full speed. Sigh.

Two new structures have appeared at the base of the pier. The one on the left will be a bath house for users of the public beach and the other is a pumphouse for pushing wastewater across the street to a new disposal plant out in back of Sam and Omie's somewhere. There is a very impressive website about the Jennette's Pier project if you want to learn more. Google Jennette's Pier.

The condemned row of derelict houses fronting what used to be Seagull Drive remain in place. You could perhaps call them the Unpainted Aristocracy if the name were not already taken.

This "planter" might turn up on Craig's List one day.

The beach in South Nags Head was extremely wide during our entire visit. A great time to try to sell oceanfront property to the unwary.

What could be more fun than a trip to Ocracoke on a gorgeous fall day when you don't have to wait in line for the ferry for two hours?

A great place to sit in the sun for a couple of hours. The docks on Silver Lake never seem to change very much.

The venerable Island Inn was sold at a foreclosure auction the day before our visit but Uncle Jack doesn't know who bought it or for how much. Many island residents fear that it may be torn down.

From a distance Bodie Island lighthouse looks a bit fuzzy these days.

Up close you can see the scaffolding required for the two-year preservation project now underway. Your tax dollars at work in a worthy cause.

The gigantic wind-blown dune that nearly engulfed the old lifesaving station at Oregon Inlet a year ago has been removed and the building extensively refurbished. It belongs to the North Carolina Aquariums now but Uncle Jack is not sure what they have in mind for it.

Uncle Jack never did manage to get up early enough to take a picture of the sunrise but he thought this sunset over Sonag was rather pretty.

Bopping around Baltimore

2010-10-14T17:39:00.002-04:00

Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. have been taking advantage of a spate of perfect fall weather to explore some parts of Charm City that have eluded them until now. Even though they have lived in Baltimore for almost two years now they realize they have hardly begun to to get acquainted with this fascinating city. With the help of a growing library of books about Baltimore, past and present, they are learning more about the its history and at the same time scoping out future walking trips. They will be spending the next couple of weeks in Nags Head but stay tuned for further adventures in the Monumental City when they return.

Union Square, a once-lovely neighborhood a few blocks west of downtown, was one of our recent destinations, primarily because it was for most of his life the home of Henry L. Mencken , the Sage of Baltimore. The rowhouse at 1524 Hollins Street (above) is where he lived with his brother, August, after the untimely death of his wife, Sara, after only five blissful years of marriage. The house is now owned by the city but is kept up by a group of people dedicated to the preservation of this historic house which is opened a couple of times a year for meetings of the Mencken Society, of which we are proud members.

Mencken is memorialized by this mosaic on the exterior wall of the Hollins Street Market only a few blocks from his house. This is one of a series of mosaics done by a group of students from the neighborhood junior high school. The Hollins Street Market is purported to be the oldest of the several public markets still operating which date back to the early 19th century. Unfortunately the neighborhood is not quite as elegant as it was in Mencken's time. Even he began to complain about the deterioration that had set in during World War II when thousands of unlettered people began to pour into Baltimore from the hills of Virginia and West Virginia to work in the factories. Today the lovely park across from Mencken's house shows obvious signs of neglect and some of the nearby neighborhoods are among the city's diciest. Sic transit.

A story in this month's "Urbanite" magazine featured this magnificent building on Baltimore's east side which has recently been rehabilitated and is now the headquarters of a non-profit social work organization called Humanim. Built in 1887 it was the main building of the American Brewing Company, then the largest brewery in the city. It closed during prohibition but under new ownership beer was brewed here into the 1960's when it closed and began a long slide toward near oblivion. Preservationists managed to assemble a $26 million fund to restore it with the hope that it will serve as a catalyst for redevelopment of what had become one of the worst neighborhoods in the city.

We were fortunate to meet the maintenance supervisor who proudly took us on a grand tour of the five-story main building. The view from the roof in all directions is fantastic. That's downtown in the distance, about a ten minute drive from the brewery.

It's even closer to the Johns Hopkins Medical Center which is actually within walking distance to the south. You wouldn't want to walk there today but the time may come when this is once again a safe and attractive area to live in.

Looking northwest it becomes obvious that there is a lot more of Baltimore to explore. Unfortunately a large segment of the population has fled to the suburbs so many of the buildings in this picture stand empty in various states of disrepair.

Looking north toward Johns Hopkins University and Uncle Jack's neighborhood called Charles Village.

On the day we visited Mencken's house we had lunch on a park bench in Federal Hill overlooking the harbor where we were treated to the sight of a two-masted sailboat coming in under sail. That's the National Aquarium right behind it.

We also walked around in Seton Hill, an almost perfectly preserved enclave of early 19th century homes and other buildings just north of downtown on Paca Street. This was the home of Mother Elizabeth Seton who became the first American saint in the Roman Catholic Church for her lifetime of work on behalf of others. Along with her chapel nearby it is the anchor for this lovely neighborhood.

This plaque in front of the house tells a bit about her career and about the house as well. Click to enlarge.

These beautifully restored rowhouses are typical of many in the elegant Seton Hill neighborhood.

This amazing trompe l'oiel painting adorns a house in the Butchers Hill neighborhood north of Fells Point which has also undergone extensive renewal in recent years. Once the home of several slaughterhouses it is now a highly desirable place for urban homesteaders to buy and fix up houses, partly because it adjoins Patterson Park, a huge and well-kept city recreational area and also because it is close to downtown.

These twin houses are next door to the one with the mural. The one on the left has been re-sided with an imitation rock product called Formstone which has been the bane of preservationists all over the city because of its phoniness. These workers houses would have sold for perhaps $500 a hundred years ago but after renovation and modernization they bring tidy sums now, even after the collapse of the housing market.

This massive Greek Orthodox church built of stone occupies most of a square block in Butchers Hill which has been home for many ethnic groups over the centuries.

This elegant dwelling is one of the largest in Butchers Hill. It, too, has been elegantly restored and has a fine view of Patterson Park and the harbor beyond.

Rainy day in Charm City

2010-09-28T13:02:00.001-04:00

What to do on a rainy Monday in Bawlmer? Not a problem if you like museums. Bawlmer has enough interesting museums to divert ennui from now 'til Armageddon (which actually may not be too long the way things are going). Every guide book touts the B & O Railroad Museum as perhaps the world's finest so it has been high on Uncle Jack's list of places to visit on rainy days ever since they moved here almost two years ago. Yesterday he and Mrs. U.J. drove over there and they are here to tell you that it is one fine museum.
When the B & O started up in Baltimore in 1827 it was America' s first railroad. It grew to be a colossus before the decline of U.S. railroads began after WW II when the interstate highway system boosted the fortunes of freight-hauling truckers and the airlines wrecked the passenger business. Today the B & O Railroad is but a memory but those memories are in good hands at the museum.

This beautifully preserved roundhouse is only one of several buildings and outdoor displays that make up the whole 100 acre facility.

Imagine the consternation when, in 2004, a 28-inch snowfall accompanied by high winds caused the roof to collapse and damage many of the meticulously restored engines and other displays in the roundhouse. The roof has been completely rebuilt using modern engineering techniques and all but a couple of the displays have been restored. Train buffs from all over the country contributed to the expensive repairs. The new roof easily withstood last winter's massive snowfalls.

A comely tourist provides scale for this picture of the largest steam locomotive in the collection. These behemoths were able to haul enormous loads of freight, including coal, over the steep grades of the Appalachians and to and from the midwest. The magnificence of this machinery can only be experienced up close which is something the museum makes possible through a network of ramps and walkways.

A view of the engineer's compartment of a steam locomotive. Almost as bewildering as the cockpit of a modern airliner.

A few of the ancient steam locomotives used in the early days of the B & O. They supplanted the horses that pulled the trains in the earliest days.

Some were rolling works of art.

Peter Cooper's "Tom Thumb" was built in Canton, the neighborhood last explored by U.J. and Mrs. U.J., three years after the founding of the B & O. Cooper got very rich on the success of the railroads and so did a lot of early Baltimore investors. Railroad stock was the place to be in the early 19th century.

This '37 Buick was converted for use by track inspectors.

The larger and most elegant part of this passenger car was for white travelers only. All others were confined to the small compartment in the foreground in front of the baggage section. Jim Crow rode many a train in the south right into the 60's.

The museum sports two wonderful model train layouts. This picture shows the former site of Camden Station and its switching yards, now the site of Orioles Park at Camden Yards, the neatest baseball park in all the world. The big red brick warehouse still stands and provides offices and other amenities for the team.

The first B &O office building was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1904 along with dozens of other buildings. The replacement still stands in all its opulence even though it houses other companies now. U.J. and Mrs. U.J. had lunch in the B & O Cafe in this building. It was not nearly as impressive as the chandelier.

Beautiful Bawlmer

2010-09-21T16:30:00.001-04:00

   A number of their acquaintances told Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. that a day trip to Rehoboth Beach on a golden Saturday in September would be foolish in the extreme so they have postponed that outing until some as yet unselected weekday later in the fall. Apparently the traffic woes of the Delaware beaches, including the gridlock-prone Bay Bridge, are infinitely worse than those of the Outer Banks at this stage of their development. Proximity to the D.C.-Baltimore colossus is not an unalloyed blessing except for over-the-top monstrosities like Ocean City which welcomes all comers.
   So they used their sunny Saturday for further exploration, on foot, of another of Baltimore's charming neighborhoods called Canton which was once a bustling waterfront hub of all kinds of manufacturing including shipbuilding, canning and beer-brewing. Like so many of Charm City's waterfront neighborhoods it has metamorphosed into a fairly upscale residential area whose residents have found proximity to the water to be an irresistible drawing card. Forty years ago one could buy a decent house in Canton for practically nothing but not any more as the pictures suggest.

   Click on the pictures to make them larger.

Many of Canton's old warehouses and factories have been expensively recycled into lavish apartments and condos with magnificent views of the Outer Harbor. Fort McHenry is directly across the river from Canton. Downtown Baltimore can be seen in the distance, reachable by water taxi or bus or bicycle in only a few minutes.

Wealthy Cantonese can park their boats right in the front yard. Isn't that nice?

The boatless enjoy another form of recreation on the waterfront---fishing for perch and bluefish as well as crabbing. This brick promenade continues along the waterfront for eight miles, all the way to downtown.

The cute little sailboat in the center foreground was visiting from New Bern, N.C. last Saturday.

This historical marker in O'Donnell Square offers a thumbnail sketch of the town. It was also the home of the American Can Company which produced zillions of cans well into the 20th century, many of which were used to can Chesapeake Bay oysters, when Chesapeake Bay still had oysters.

Captain John O'Donnell lords it over his eponymous square in the heart of Canton. He named the town for his favorite port in China whence he imported very profitable goods. George Washington was one of his favorite customers. The square is surrounded with well-preserved old rowhouses, many of which have been converted into funky saloons and upscale restaurants.

These modern rowhouses try to imitate the charm of the warehouse conversions and to a great extent succeed.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, work continues on the new JHU library. Today was dirt removal day with two frontloaders and a couple of mechanical shovels loading a steady stream of dumptrucks. Uncle Jack could watch this stuff all day.

Sherwood Gardens Revisited

2010-09-17T16:44:00.000-04:00

   Weather permitting Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. try to start out each day with a long walk through the neighborhood. Unlike Nags Head where their only decision was whether to walk north toward Jennette's pier or south toward the Outer Banks pier their Baltimore domicile offers them a host of choices. The Johns Hopkins Homewood Campus across the street covers many acres of interesting terrain all connected by winding brick pathways which are a joy to walk on. The campus alone provides miles of scenic perambulation complete with aerobic challenges and interesting stuff to look at like the construction site for the new Brody library (see below).
   The upscale neighborhood called Guilford just to the north of their condo building offers something completely different---miles of sidewalks fronting magnificent mansions surrounded by elegant landscaping. This morning they chose Guilford for their walk and aimed for the lovely park named Sherwood Gardens which the well-heeled residents of Guilford maintain at their own cost year-round. The garden is most spectacular in the spring when tens of thousands of tulips blossom but it looks pretty even in September as the pictures show.
   Tomorrow they plan to take a day trip to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware to check things out. Stay tuned.

Sherwood Gardens

Ditto

Ditto again.

And again.

As Count Basie often said, "One more time"

Anybody know what these are?

The end.

Organized chaos.

Monthly update

2010-09-16T13:19:00.000-04:00

   Once again Uncle Jack must beg the forgiveness of that hardy band of readers who continue to look for something in this space every day while the perpetrator dawdles. He knows it has been a month since he last blogged but the pictures show that he and Mrs. U.J. have not been entirely idle during that time. Nor have the Orioles who have risen from the dead under their new manager, Buck Showalter, and have actually won more games than they have lost in the past 30 days. Oh joy.
   In addition to traveling they have enjoyed a number of other activities in recent weeks including "Mencken Day" last Saturday celebrating the Sage of Baltimore's birthday which included a delightful talk by the esteemed author and critic Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post. Uncle Jack bought a book of Yardley's columns for the Post titled "Monday Morning Quarterback" which he has greatly enjoyed reading. Yardley is a worthy successor to Mencken in the acerbity department and he has a wicked sense of humor to boot.
   Now that the stupefying heat of summer has moved out they have resumed exploring various nooks and crannies of Charm City on foot. Most recently they visited "Old Town" which still retains a sizable number of 18th and early 19th century buildings including the famous "Shot Tower", a couple of delicatessens and a very old synagogue-museum dating back to the time when it was an enclave of Jewish immigrants. Baltimore is full of charming old neighborhoods like this and they look forward to continuing their explorations through the fall.

Their annual visit to Camden was delightful in spite of the unbelievable heat which curtailed physical activity like the long walks they usually take while there. They were forced to spend inordinate amounts of time sitting under a ceiling fan in their marginally cooler living room watching the passing parade of yachts. This monstrosity called "Copasetic" passed by on the way to sea just before Hurricane Earl was supposed to arrive. She's for sale, by the way. $22.8 million is what the owner has in mind if you're looking to buy a bigger boat (120 feet long, five levels of luxury).

A windjammer arrives for what was to be Camden's annual Windjammer Weekend. The event had to be truncated by the impending arrival of Earl but as it turned out the anti-hurricane precautions were unnecessary as Earl passed by far offshore. Sound familiar to Outer Banks readers?

This "Observatory" high on a hill overlooking the harbor in Portland, Maine provides a stunning view. It was built in 1807 by an entrepreneur who kept a lookout for incoming ships and then notified the owners of their arrival. The climb to the top was a challenge for both Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. but it was worth the effort for the view of the Portland area which is topographically fascinating.

Winded tourists at the top of the observatory with their guide and host, Gigi Guyton and the entrance to Portland harbor in the distant background.

They stopped to admire this picturesque but non-functional covered bridge somewhere in southern Vermont on their way home. Anything that will make a tourist stop and perhaps buy something is fair game.

The view from Hogback Mountain overlook which encompasses parts of four states was enough to stop them.

They enjoyed lagniappe in the form of this snazzy bike parked at the overlook. In the gift shop one could purchase a gallon jug of pure Vermont maple syrup for a mere 60 bucks----more than a lifetime supply for Uncle Jack who doesn't eat that many pancakes any more.

Building of the new library annex at Johns Hopkins is proceeding apace. Uncle Jack plans, lord willing, to compile a pictorial record of this project over the next couple of years. He can only hope that somebody over there knows what they are doing because it is bewildering to him.

Another view of the big dig. Each one of those machines probably does the work of 25 men which doesn't help the unemployment situation.

Go Orioles

2010-08-18T10:24:00.000-04:00

One of the main reasons why Uncle Jack has not been blogging much lately is that he doesn't have time and one of the main reasons he doesn't have time is that he spends so much of it watching the Baltimore Orioles play baseball. This may come as a surprise to some of his readers who might remember a piece he wrote about baseball a few years ago, to wit:

Dear Uncle Jack,
I have wanted to ask you a question about baseball for a long time but I had to wait for my husband to die, which he did, thank goodness, during a doubleheader last Saturday afternoon. If you want to know the truth he was dead for four hours before I even noticed which did not surprise me because every time he turned on the TV to watch a baseball game he would fall asleep immediately and he would not wake up again until it was over.
Except when I would try to sneak in and change the channel to Miami Vice or something he would open one eye and mumble "gottawatchaballgame" and as soon as I switched back to the game he would fall asleep again.
Needless to say I was forced to endure a lot of baseball during the 35 years we were married and my question to you is this: How could there be such a thing as insomnia in the world as long as there is baseball on TV? I would rather watch two communists play chess than have to sit there while a bunch of overpaid slobs stand around and scratch themselves and spit and wait for something exciting to happen which hardly ever does except when some bimbo runs on the field and starts taking off her clothes.
So if you are so smart maybe you can tell me what is so great about baseball that they have to put six games on TV every night.

Baseball Widow
Southern Shores

Dear Widow,
Uncle Jack's heart goes out to your departed husband who must have suffered greatly during his long and unfortunate marriage to such a sarcastic person as yourself. It is fairly obvious to Uncle Jack that you have not even tried to learn enough about the great game of baseball so that you too could understand and appreciate it as much as your late husband did.
Take the spitting, for example. If you gave your husband a chance he could have opened your eyes to the wonderful world of spitting in which there is never a dull moment if you know what to watch for. He could have told you about the various types of chewing tobacco which produce the almost infinite variety of spitting styles which trained observers like Uncle Jack and your late husband could use to glean valuable information as the game proceeded.
For example, Uncle Jack can tell you almost to the minute when a manager is going to change pitchers just by the amount of tobacco juice running down his chin. And if they have a good cameraman who knows how to move in close to the cheek area Uncle Jack can tell you if the manager is working on a gob of real Red Man or just some wimp-type chew that comes in little packets like Lipton's tea and tastes like Wrigley's spearmint.
And he can tell you it makes a lot of difference over a whole season if the manager is a real man who can handle a real chew or if he is some kind of sissy who goes for one of the designer brands. This is not something you can hide from your players for very long, especially when they are sober.
And there is a lot more to baseball than just spitting, too. If you know the game you can tell what kind of underwear a pitcher is wearing just by the way he handles himself on the mound.
Anyway there is a lot more Uncle Jack could tell you about baseball if he had time such as "hitting the cut-off man" which is so important that if a player cannot learn to do it right he might as well quit baseball and go into real estate just like everybody else.

Sportingly,
Uncle Jack

*********
   Well Uncle Jack can tell you that he is not the same person any more who wrote that sarcastic article about the beautiful game of baseball, especially as it is played by the Baltimore Orioles. Ever since he moved to Baltimore last year and got his new 72 inch Samsung high definition TV and started watching the Orioles his life has taken on a whole new dimension. He has pretty much given up reading which is no great loss because everything he has been reading lately is so depressing.
   It is true that the Orioles are undeniably the worst team in all of baseball and you would think that Uncle Jack would find that depressing, too. But he doesn't. During the first half of the season when they lost almost every game he had a lot of fun trying to predict what kind of bonehead plays they would make to lose each game and it never bothered him that they hardly ever won. With his big TV he had a perfect view of all the action and when the Orioles players would make a spectacular boo-boo he would get to see it a half-dozen times from every angle on the replays and this helped a lot to take his mind off the unemployment situation and the war in Afghanistan and other depressing things like that.
   And now the Orioles have a new manager who must be using the right chew because the Orioles have suddenly begun winning more games than they lose which is also a lot of fun to watch. Now Uncle Jack gets to guess which of the Orioles players will come through with the big clutch hit to win the game in the 12th inning or whatever and that is much more enjoyable than what he had to do before.
   Anyway Uncle Jack apologizes for not writing more blogs but now you know the main reason why. Go Orioles.

Cool Campus

2010-07-27T12:31:00.000-04:00

   Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. have been pretty much holed up in their air-conditioned condo for the past couple of weeks but a change in the weather has allowed them to get out in the early morning for their usual brisk walks through the neighborhood. Yesterday they hiked through the tree-lined streets of Guilford, the exceedingly upscale residential area just north of their condo, and this morning they returned to the Johns Hopkins Homewood campus across the street, their favorite exercise venue.
   The campus is quiet during the summer break except for the sounds of heavy construction equipment at the site of the new addition to the Eisenhower library and a couple of gangs of workers putting the finishing touches on the renovation of Gilman Hall, the oldest building on campus, which has been underway for the past two years. They had the wide, brick and marble walkways pretty much to themselves except for the arrival of several busloads of young lacrosse players from area schools who are participating in a summer camp. Johns Hopkins is a perennial collegiate lacrosse powerhouse and this is no doubt one way to get a look at prospective recruits.
   The highlight of their morning was a visit to the newly renovated interior of Gilman Hall which they have been eagerly awaiting ever since their arrival in Baltimore a year and a half ago. It was not a disappointment as the pictures below suggest.

Sherwood Gardens in Guilford is as lovely as ever in spite of weeks of extreme heat and drought. The park has an extensive underground irrigation system that keeps everything pretty

. The new library addition threatens to eclipse the old building next door which is one of the least distinguished buildings on campus in Uncle Jack's estimation.

Right now, though, it's just a hole in the ground which keeps getting bigger every day.

The stained glass windows in the Hutzler Reading Room, now completely refurbished, are the pride and joy of Gilman Hall. Mr. King was a 19th century Baltimore businessman who made a ton of money and then devoted the last 25 years of his life to the fledgling Johns Hopkins University.

The Gutenberg window, one of nineteen that provide light and beauty to the reading room (where Uncle Jack plans to spend more than a few of his waking hours henceforth, proudly wearing the Johns Hopkins T-shirt he purchased at a yard sale for fifty cents. (Considerably less than the cost of tuition).

The view from the nineteen windows will not make it easy for scholars to concentrate on their studies.

Eat your heart out Oxbridge.

Lacrosse crossing.

The Sands of Time (past)

2010-07-24T16:18:00.001-04:00

As the Nags Head and Dare County commissioners continue their dogged pursuit of many millions of dollars to heap sand upon dwindling beaches it might be instructive to look back at previous costly efforts to stop the ocean in its tracks. When Uncle Jack lived in South Nags Head from 1992 until he moved to Baltimore last year he wandered the beach frequently, taking pictures of whatever was going on at the time. Thousands of these pictures still reside on the hard drive of his current laptop which from time to time he attempts to purge to make room for new pictures of the wonders of Charm City. The pictures below are a few that he ran across recently which record various episodes of expensive futility as mere mortals struggled to prevent Mother Nature from removing man-made structures that were impinging on her beaches.

This is part of the 50-foot wide, 10-15 foot high berm that was built the entire length of Nags Head in 2004 after Hurricane Isabel tore things up rather badly in September 2003. FEMA contributed about $3 million to the ill-conceived project with another roughly $2 million added by state and local treasuries. Thousands of truckloads of sand were hauled to the beaches from borrow pits in Currituck county. While it was officially described as "compatible" with the existing sand Uncle Jack found this to be a dubious claim inasmuch as much of the stuff looked and acted more like clay than sand. In any case it soon washed away so it didn't really matter in the long run---or the short run either for that matter. The chief beneficiaries of this largess were a few oceanfront property owners who were able to avoid the cost of bulldozing for a year or two and the dozens of dumptruck owners from all over northeastern North Carolina for whom the year 2004 brought an unprecedented bonanza.

Subsequent storms chopped away at the berm and removed most of it in short order. Actually the berm project was done in two phases. Work started at the southern end of South Nags Head in the spring of 2004 and then stopped for several months for the tourist and turtle-nesting seasons. By the time berm-building resumed in November much of what had been done in the spring had already vanished.

Heavy equipment owners and operators did well, too, as did the engineering company that planned and executed the debacle.

This section of the berm at Seagull Drive was to have protected the newly constructed post-Isabel street
at the left. Subsequent storms took it all away in a relatively short time.

Seagull Drive after the temporary road and its protective berm washed away. Back to square one. All the cottages in this picture are condemned and awaiting removal or demolition at this date.

These two pictures chronicle the Town of Nags Head's expensive but ultimately futile effort to stop the ocean from claiming Surfside Drive in South Nags Head. Successive walls of massive sandbags were erected only to be knocked down and overwashed by storms, leaving the beach in dreadful condition as shown here. Eventually the town gave up and cleaned up the mess, revealing a wide and natural beach under all the detritus.

Will a $32 million beach renourishment project be enough to save these houses from the wrath of Mother Nature? Stay tuned.

Nice while it lasted.

2010-07-08T15:47:00.000-04:00

If there has ever been a more perfect July 4 weekend on the Outer Banks Uncle Jack missed it. Packing the Mini and leaving Nags Head on Monday the 5th was almost as hard as giving up bourbon a few years ago. He and Mrs. Uncle Jack got in some lovely walks on the beach after the excruciating heat went away in the middle of the week and he took a few pictures, some of which appear below:

One morning thousands of minnows like these were washed up on the beach for miles. Who knows why?

This house near the 20 mile post has been derelict and blocking the beach for years. Looks like it's about to be moved. Which reminds Uncle Jack that "Sal de Mer", the subject of his last blog, was torn down back in May, not moved to a new location. Would that the same will happen soon to some of the other wrecked houses in South Nags Head.

Like these fronting the former Seagull Drive. What a mess.

Another view of the unsightly and dangerous wreckage of Seagull Drive.

The new Jennette's Pier is coming along. Nearly half of the temporary "work pier" has been removed, revealing what the finished structure will look like. Three wind turbines are in place and ready to generate electricity when the time comes.

The magnificent pier house looks very much like a traditional Nags Head cottage. The whole thing is a serious challenge to Mother Nature who managed to wreck several previous iterations of this pier. Hopefully she will lay off until after the grand opening next year.

Adieu Finisterre

2010-06-30T12:03:00.001-04:00

   Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. fled the unseasonable heat and humidity of Bawlmer a couple of days ago and are presently ensconced in their former home on James Street in South Nags Head where the temperature has dropped precipitously into the low 80's after a front passed through last evening. This morning's walk on the beach was totally delightful.
   The neighborhood is not quite the same as it was the last time they were here in April. Conspicuously absent is the oceanfront house known originally as Finisterre and more recently as Sal de Mer. When they bought their house in 1994 Finisterre occupied the beachfront lot on the south side of James Street with one other house between it and us. At that time it was protected by a substantial dune at least 30 feet wide. A smaller 1950 vintage flat-top across the street was similarly situated.
   Subsequent northeasters chopped away at the dune, narrowing it substantially before the arrival of Hurricane Dennis in 1999 which obliterated the flat-top and did some serious damage to Finisterre as well. The owner gamely put it back together and tried to replace the vanished dune with huge sandbags as well as a the bulldozed faux dune pictured below (which disappeared in the next storm).
   Uncle Jack is not sure of the exact sequence of events but at some time between Dennis and Isabel (or perhaps after Isabel in September 2003) Finisterre changed hands and the new owner renamed the battered house Sal de Mer. In any case Isabel really did a number on the unlucky building, tearing off the front deck, sending the brick fireplace crashing to the beach and washing away the driveway and parking slab.
   The new owner struggled to stay ahead of Mother Nature's depredations but after subsequent storms kept tearing up the place, necessitating expensive repairs every year, he threw in the towel a year or so ago and the very silly bank that held the large loan on the place had to take it back. They put it up for auction but apparently couldn't find anybody foolish enough to buy it. And now it is gone. Was it moved in one piece or was it torn down? Stay tuned while Uncle Jack investigates.
   Uncle Jack chatted a number of times with the last owner of Sal de Mer, a very nice man who dearly loved his house. Apparently nobody told him when he bought it that it had already been moved back 90 feet from its original location and that the house across the street had been destroyed in a storm years earlier. Such is the allure of living oceanfront that it might not have made any difference even he had dealt with an honest real estate agent.

Finisterre's front deck after Isabel.

Finisterre post-Isabel. Note new steps replacing wrecked deck. They, too, washed away after a later storm along with the huge faux dune and the sandbags beneath it. Mother Nature is relentless.

Sal de Mer last February, looking very vulnerable.

With Sal de Mer gone this house (right in front of Uncle Jack's old house) takes pride of place as the only oceanfront house on James Street. A dubious distinction but it comes with a terrific view and a much wider beach.

.

Can you spell "octogenarian"?

2010-06-25T13:31:00.000-04:00

Uncle Jack can. Now that he is one he thought the least he could do was to learn how to spell it. So far it doesn't seem a whole lot different from being a septuagenarian but that could change without notice if he falls down or has a stroke or one of those other ills that flesh is heir to as the bard put it. Will he live to become a nonagenarian? Stay tuned.
   Anyway he would like to thank all those faithful readers who sent him birthday greetings last week when he was up in Minnesota. He couldn't read them until yesterday when he got back to Baltimore because his parsimonious brother still has dial-up ($9 a month for 58 minutes) so Uncle Jack's laptop didn't work up there. Your kind thoughts were worth waiting for, though, and he thanks you again.
   It was fun to be back on his home turf for a week, surrounded by family and stuffing himself with the food and drink of his childhood----potato sausage, Swedish rye bread, bruna bonor (look it up) and Leinenkugel's Old Style Lager, the beer that has helped to make high school tolerable for generations of northern Wisconsin youth.
   The temperature exceeded 90 every day he was in Brainerd, Minnesota and to his further consternation Mother Nature (or perhaps God) sent a tornado to destroy the town of Wadena, only 60 miles away just after he arrived. He hoped to find relief from the heat and humidity back in Bawlmer but today, Friday the 25th of June, is the fifth consecutive day of sweltering, rainless weather with temperatures approaching 100. With any luck he and Mrs. U.J. will be able to escape to Nags Head next week where it won't be so miserable. (?)

Old and Happy

2010-06-01T10:44:00.000-04:00

   Uncle Jack just noticed that two weeks have passed since he last blogged. "Time flies when you're having fun" it is said, and if a recent scientific study got it right this is especially true for older folks like himself. According to the scientists there is strong evidence that once a person gets past 50 he tends to get happier with each passing year right up to the time he croaks---barring serious illness or some other idiosyncratic factor that might affect the psyche of any particular individual. He got this good news from an article in the New York Times this morning, a link to which he has provided below for anybody who would like to read the whole thing. It's a pleasant change from reading about the oil spill catastrophe.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/health/research/01happy.html?ref=todayspaper

   The scientists could shed no light on why people should get happier as they grow older but Uncle Jack can offer some purely anecdotal evidence that might help. For one thing he doesn't have to go to work any more. This has freed up a lot of time for him to do the things he really likes to do, like reading, for example, and watching the Orioles on his 52 inch, high definition you-know-what, even
though they are the worst team in baseball at the present time. Being in a position to do almost nothing that you don't want to do can contribute greatly to your sense of well-being. A little red wine every day doesn't hurt either. Uncle Jack knows.
   Anyway he just wanted to let his dwindling cohort of readers know that he is in fine fettle and too busy doing nothing to sit down and write a blog very often, for which he apologizes. His only begotten son Eric and family will be visiting all next week from Los Angeles which means at least a couple of trips to our nation's capital among other sightseeing. There should be a blog in there somewhere so look for something in a couple of weeks if you are so inclined.

This picture turned up on Facebook a couple of days ago. Uncle Jack can really identify with that frog.

Indian Rocks Rocks

2010-05-18T12:11:00.000-04:00

   Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. spent a few more days at the beach last week but in Florida for a change. Some dear friends who recently moved to Indian Rocks Beach near St. Petersburg invited them to come down and see their new house so they did. It's a beautiful house with palm trees all over the place and a lovely view of the water out back, beyond the swimming pool and jacuzzi and the boat dock. This is a setting for Florida living at its most luxurious and they look forward to returning often and staying longer. According to their hosts it seldom snows in IRB which is a big point in its favor if you ask Uncle Jack.
   Indian Rocks Beach is part of a chain of barrier islands that runs for hundreds of miles down Florida's heavily developed west coast. For reasons of history and topography it is much less awful than many Gulf resort towns like Clearwater immediately to the north where skyscraping condos and big box shopping centers have taken over. Even on the coveted gulf-front lots smallish cottages and old-fashioned two and three-story condos vastly outnumber the new and the tall. For anyone contemplating a non-glitzy Florida getaway next winter Uncle Jack suggests that you check out Indian Rocks Beach. Nice town.
   Needless to say the residents of IRB and all the nearby towns were anxiously seeking news about the oil scourge that is steadily moving east through the gulf. Whether or not it will impact the local beaches is a moot point at this stage but it is horrible to contemplate nonetheless. Cries of "Drill baby drill" have been blessedly muted in Florida since the big blowout.
   The formerly white sand beaches of IRB have been renourished a couple of times since 1991, a fact that is obvious to an experienced beach-watcher like Uncle Jack. The beach is wide at the moment and quite o.k. for all normal beach activities even though the powdery sand has been replaced by a kind of gray, finely ground shell gravel barged in from a dredging project somewhere in the vicinity. The cement-like stuff packs hard enough to resemble a sidewalk at low tide which permits bicycling along the water's edge---another strong argument for the efficacy of beach renourishment.

View from the back window of our friends' house in Indian Rocks Beach. They are currently trying to decide what kind of vessel will grace their boat lift.

Pool and jacuzzi. Uncle Jack was tempted to jump.

Tourists living the high life in Florida.

Tourists in front of the Salvador Dali museum in St. Petersburg. Dali was one of the great wackos of the 20th century but he did paint some fascinating pictures, many of which are housed in this building. It will be soon replaced by another much grander structure now under construction nearby.

Top picture shows the entrance to the great pier at St. Petersburg, a true temple of commerce of the junkiest kind. Unlike Jennette's Pier it has no redeeming features if you ask Uncle Jack. Bottom pic shows the approaches to the pier house. Only in Florida. Or maybe California.

Large-billed panhandler seeks food from our host.

On the Beach

2010-04-25T16:22:00.000-04:00

Sunday was a windy but sunny and warm day in Nags Head so Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. grabbed the Sony and went forth to visit some of their favorite beachwalking haunts. Some of the results are presented herewith.

This cottage just north of Surfside Drive in South Nags Head was knocked slightly askew by a storm this winter. Worth Hare movers of Elizabeth City plucked it off the beach and moved it back a bit and it looks like it will get a new set of pilings where it now sits. This strategic retreat might give it a few more years of life. Who knows.

The former location next door to another house that is now the sole remaining occupant of this section of the public beach. A massive sandbag wall has helped it survive for the past several years.

. The Worth Hare company has probably moved more houses on the Outer Banks than all the other housemovers put together. It's a fascinating process to watch, especially when that rabbit really hunkers down and pulls..

Battered Seagull Drive has been prepared to receive a gravel surface which will enable owners and renters to reach the houses on the left this summer. A dozen or so houses on the right are condemned and awaiting demolition or removal which will probably occur sometime around the time hell freezes over if previous experience with such structures is our guide.

The new gravel street will not be the first "fix" for Seagull Drive. Shortly after Hurricane Isabel, using FEMA funds, the town built a new "temporary" street (shown here on the left) as well as a huge berm of trucked-in sand to protect it. The whole works washed away in a relatively short time suggesting that "temporary" is the operative word for structures on the ocean front. The cottages on the right are the condemned buildings shown in the previous picture.

No sandbags or bulldozers needed here. The expansive beach in front of the "historic" cottages of Nags Head demonstrates the virtue of "retreat" as a way of coping with erosion. The older cottages in this picture have been moved back several times (often by Worth Hare) on their lots which were platted from the water to the Beach Road. Unfortunately most of South Nags Head was chopped up into smaller lots in such a way that retreat is seldom possible, hence the large number of cottages that are "trapped" at the ocean front.

The iconic Buchanan cottage, largest and grandest of all the houses in the historic district of Nags Head, is on the market for $3 million. It was built in 1934 and only recently moved back to what will possibly be its final resting place close to the Beach Road. President Franklin D. Roosevelt once lunched here while in town to attend a performance of the "Lost Colony". Google "Buchanan Cottage" for further information and pictures of the interior.

Fun in the Sun

2010-04-24T10:31:00.000-04:00

Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. are enjoying a tranquil week in Nags Head along with several thousand motorcycle enthusiasts. He has turned his new hearing aid way down so the noise is not as bad as it could have been. Between the bikes on the Bypass and the bulldozers on the beach maybe "tranquil" is not exactly the right word to describe the Outer Banks right now but they are having a good time anyway. All too soon they will have to return to the peace and quiet of Baltimore (which is marred only by the occasional gunshot and police siren) so they are enjoying their stay at the beach as much as they can under the circumstances

. Construction of the new Jennette's pier is proceeding apace. The pier house looks like it will be a formidable structure in its own right. It is beginning to remind Uncle Jack of the grand West Pier at Brighton on the south coast of England, pictures of which he has provided below. After seeing the fate of the Brighton pier he can't help wondering if the new Jennette's pier might not be the wisest use of public funds given Mother Nature's implacable tendency to obliterate man-made structures placed too close to the sea no matter what they are made of. Time will tell as it did in Brighton.

Brighton West Pier just after it opened in 1899. Victorian hubris at its zenith.

This is what was left when Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. visited Brighton a few years ago. It cost more to remove the wreckage than it did to build it in the first place.

There's not much sand sculpture to be found in April but this would stand out at any time of the year. This is probably the only kind of building at the seashore that makes any sense.

A modern day Sisyphus at work in the shadow of the troubled Comfort Inn South which has survived another winter on the edge of catastrophe. It's a happy time for the 'dozer operators who are working from dawn to dusk to stave off the inevitable---at top dollar.

Your better class of bikers dine at Sam and Omie's. The rest are at Hooters.

Saturday morning about a zillion cormorants like these flew north past James street in South Nags Head. Ten minutes later another flock of similar size flew south past the same spot. Does anyone understand cormorant behavior?

Mea Culpa Redux

2010-04-15T15:58:00.000-04:00

Uncle Jack discovered this morning that more than a month has flown by since he last blogged. An apology to his faithful core (corps, corpse?) of readers is long overdue once again. He still doesn't have anything particularly interesting to say but he did want to let you know that as he closes in on his 80th birthday in June he is in good health and enjoying life to the hilt. He and Mrs. U.J. have gone to numerous concerts and plays during the past month and he can tell you he has enjoyed them more than ever since he got his new hearing aid. He still doesn't understand how a little gadget you can stick in your ear could cost as much as a 52 inch, flat-screen, high definition you-know-what but it did. Unfortunately after wearing it for a month he has discovered he can't get along without it so he will just have to get over the outrageous cost which, of course, is not covered by his medical insurance.
Quite a while ago they planned to spend next week in Nags Head only to learn recently that their visit will coincide with "Bike Week" which will surely put some mileage on his new hearing aid. He heard a rumor that now that Myrtle Beach has put out the unwelcome sign to bikers there may be as many as 35,000 of them descending, unmuffled, on the Outer Banks for an entire week instead of just a weekend. Time to buy some stock in Hooters, for whom the recession would seem to be over.
The Orioles are off to a great start----one win to 8 losses--- but when you have a 52 inch flat-screen you-know-what to watch them on it's still fun. Sort of.

Watergate, as seen from Kennedy Center where UJ and Mrs. UJ recently saw a terrific play by Terrence McNally called "Lisbon Traviata". It was here that the Republicans began their long slide into the mucky political swamp in which they now find themselves. "Rove, Rove, Rove Your Boat" has supplanted "We'll Take the High Road" as the Grand Old Party's theme song.

Spring has sprung in Charm City. Two days of 90 degree weather last week caused an explosion among the cherry trees, dogwoods, tulips, etc. The 6.5 feet of snow that fell a couple of months ago has disappeared, leaving a fresh crop of monster potholes in its wake.

The oldest railroad station in the U.S., now a B. & O. museum in Ellicott City, a charming old mill town just a few miles up the Patapsco River from Baltimore.

Almost all the buildings in Ellicott City are made of thick granite so they have been almost impossible to tear down. They are now occupied by a thriving collection of antique shops, restaurants and other tourist-friendly businesses. Some of these structures date back to the 18th century. Charming town.even though traffic on the main street is horrendous.

This passenger car dates back to the days when the B & O's trains were pulled by mules. Many of the great Baltimore fortunes derive from the folks who owned stock in those days and hung on to it.

Best job in Baltimore?

2010-03-12T10:53:00.000-05:00

Thursday was a gorgeous spring day in Charm City---perfect for a stroll through the Inner Harbor followed by lunch at the American Visionary Art Museum's amazing restaurant. (Which included a hard-earned bottle of superb Victory Pilsner from Downingtown, Pa.) While wandering around the harbor Uncle Jack came upon two city employees hard at work removing trash from the waters adjacent to the walkways. (Other larger and more mechanized trash removers operate in the open harbor). Their combined efforts are needed year-round to keep the picturesque harbor from completely filling up with detritus inasmuch as it receives the outflow from several polluted rivers which empty into it 24 hours a day. Even with all the city's pollution control efforts the harbor gets extremely ripe during the summer months and has been known to give off exceedingly unpleasant odors. Not so yesterday when working conditions on the water were idyllic as the picture suggests.
If you haven't done it already, take a minute to get acquainted with the Humble Farmer's website. He will put you on his mailing list if you like and let you know when he has posted a new set of rants. Funny man and serious, too. Click on the link. http://www.thehumblefarmer.com/ThisWeek.html

Death and Taxes

2010-03-08T17:33:00.000-05:00

   Uncle Jack is working on his taxes this week so he is not in a very good mood. He has already done enough preliminary number crunching to know approximately how much he is going to have to fork over to the IRS and the Maryland treasury and it is just as depressing this time as it was last year. He knows that paying taxes is a duty of all citizens in a democracy but he can't help thinking that his taxes, which seem so burdensome to him, will not be enough to keep the government behemoth fed for even a nanosecond. His check, with which he could have gone out to Best Buy and bought something nice to stimulate the economy, will vanish into the government money pit, never to be seen again. Eventually it might help to cover a tiny part of the annual subsidy payment to a corporate farm in Iowa or some such but he will never know.
   At the local level he has discovered that his real estate tax on his diminutive condo in Baltimore is more than twice as high as the combined city and county tax on his house in Nags Head which is worth twice as much as the condo. He is not sure exactly where all his Baltimore tax money goes but he suspects that endlessly repairing broken 200-year-old water mains eats up a lot of it along with filling potholes in the 200-year-old streets. Removing 6.5 feet of snow from said streets this winter must have drained the treasury at least as much as the usual graft and corruption which is as much a part of the local political scene as it is in most other big cities.
   Uncle Jack was delighted to receive a number of cheery comments this week from readers who had patiently waited for him to return from his self-imposed hiatus from blogging. One comment on his "Aorta" blog was particularly heartwarming, to wit: "You'll be dead within a year. Your BP will spike at some point brought on by stress or surprise and then you'll take a dirt nap". Uncle Jack had been ruefully contemplating the possibility that he might have to live out his final days in a nursing home or on life support in an intensive care facility somewhere but now, thanks to "Anonymous" he can look forward to a quick and dirty demise.
P.S. If anybody knows "Anonymous" try to get him or her some help, ASAP.

Aorta be ashamed of myself.

2010-02-26T11:46:00.000-05:00

   Uncle Jack's "hit counter" indicates that there are still a few steadfast readers out there looking in vain every day for some sign that he is still on the planet. He apologizes for being so dilatory but as he grows older he feels less inclined to sit at his computer and pontificate when he could be reclining in his barcalounger sipping tea and reading a good book like the one he is enjoying at the moment. It's called "Wits and Sages" and it was published in 1986 by the Johns Hopkins Press. It's a fascinating study of a dozen or so of America's most popular and influential newspaper columnists (e.g. Russell Baker, David Broder, Erma Bombeck, Ellen Goodman, George Will, Mike Royko) all of whom were interviewed at length by the author. What makes the book even more special is that it was written by Uncle Jack's neighbor, Neil Grauer, who lives down at the end of the hall. One of these days he is going to get up the courage to invite Mr. Grauer to dinner so he can drop a hint to keep Uncle Jack in mind if he ever decides to do another book about newspaper columnists.
   Uncle Jack mentioned back in January that he had an MRI on his heart to follow up on an echocardiogram that gave some indication that his aorta was somewhat dilated. He finally got the scoop from his new cardiologist this week about what the MRI showed and he can tell you there is good news and bad news. The bad news is that the MRI confirmed that Uncle Jack's aorta is indeed dilated but the good news is that it isn't a serious problem as long as his blood pressure stays normal. The best news of all, though, is that if Uncle Jack's aorta does pop he will die almost instantly which is not a bad way to go if you ask him. Now all he has to worry about is whether his prostate cancer metastasizes before his aorta gives out.
   The last few weeks have been somewhat trying on the medical front. In rapid succession he had to cope with a sinus infection, an ear infection and an abscessed molar, all of which may have been products of the same bug. Dr. Ausband neatly plucked the aching tooth from his lower right jaw, leaving a cavernous void which Uncle Jack has been compulsively exploring with his tongue ever since. He looks forward to many hours of this new and relatively inexpensive form of entertainment.
   He is scheduled to pick up his new hearing aid on Monday next. Stay tuned.

Keeping an Eye on Dare County

2010-02-04T10:28:00.001-05:00

While waiting for Uncle Jack to get off his butt and write another blog entry his readers (if he still has any) would do well to acquaint themselves with Ray Midgett's current blog, Eye on Dare. It is entertaining as well as informative and should be must reading for anybody who has an interest in the present and future of Dare County. Check it out while Uncle Jack takes another nap.

http://eyeondare.blogspot.com/2010/02/time-to-get-to-work.html

Vintage Outer Banks pictures

2010-01-22T17:59:00.000-05:00

Uncle Jack discovered Outer Banks Vintage Scrapbook on Facebook the other day and he hasn't had time for anything else since. Fascinating pictures. Check it out at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&gid=233505839903

Football highlights

2010-01-18T11:53:00.000-05:00

   Uncle Jack spent most of the weekend watching NFL playoff games. As a bona fide high school graduate he is not proud of wasting so much time this way but has to confess that the presence of a 52 inch Samsung flat screen HDTV in his living room has had a powerful impact on his behavior. Being able to see every aspect of the game up close in sharp detail and repeated a half-dozen times from different angles is a temptation he simply cannot resist. Twelve hours after the last game ended Sunday night he can barely recall who played whom but he can tell you he enjoyed every minute of his descent into what Mencken would have called "boobosity" (or worse).
   Brain damage is not confined to the playing field on occasions like this. Uncle Jack has never suffered a real concussion but after being beaten about the head by commercials for the better part of two days he thinks he knows how it must feel. He herewith nominates the inventor of the TV mute switch for the next Nobel Peace Prize.
   He is not sure if NFL games are broadcast anywhere else in the world but he couldn't help wondering what people in other countries might conclude about us after watching a game or two. He made a short list of reasonable conclusions they might come to, to wit:

l. We love violence. Not only is professional football one of the most brutal spectacles in all of "sport", but the enthusiastic response of "fans" (short for fanatics, remember) to particularly egregious examples of mayhem is scary. Observing the intrinsic barbarity of the game itself coupled with endless commercials for violent movies and TV shows, a non-American viewer might reasonably conclude that we get our kicks from something more than just champagne.

2. American advertisers are apparently allowed to lie through their teeth. Every purveyor of automobile insurance cannot offer the lowest rates, but they all say they do. (Uncle Jack once took the Geico test and found that if he switched from U.S.A.A. to Geico his insurance would cost nearly $400 more). Not every cellphone company can offer the best nationwide service but they all claim to. All but one are lying. Did Howard Stern " change radio forever"? Come on.

3. We will apparently eat anything if it's cheap enough and somebody else will cook it for us. Most of the products offered by the likes of Taco Bell, Domino's, Pizza Hut, Burger King, Subway and McDonalds are positively revolting to a health foodie like Uncle Jack. Judging from the popularity of American fast food in other countries, however, his opinion is not universally shared.

   Uncle Jack was happy to learn that thanks to "Pepsi Throwback" he can once again rot his teeth will real sugar instead of corn syrup should he choose to do so. He was also delighted to find out that if he ever needs to pull a large paper mache boulder out of his yard all he needs is a GMC pickup. Presumably the Ford-150 (best-selling pickup for 33 years) is not up to the job. Will Uncle Jack ever "taste greatness" in a can of Miller Lite? Will anybody?.

   Three more games to go. He wouldn't miss them for anything.

Fun at the hospital

2010-01-15T18:41:00.000-05:00

   Uncle Jack had his annual heart check-up a couple of weeks ago, his first at Johns Hopkins Medical Center after seven trips to see a couple of different cardiologists at Duke. It was the Duke doctors who first diagnosed his heart condition as something called "cardiomyopathy" which he understands to be a kind of umbrella term for situations in which the heart is not pumping a normal amount of blood into the arteries.
   Uncle Jack's problem was revealed by the first of numerous "echocardiograms" (one each year for the past eight) and his condition has been monitored by use of that device ever since. He has been taking a couple of medications during this time, getting regular exercise and eating sensibly and the "echos" have consistently shown improvement in his heart function, much to his delight.
   An echocardiogram is a fairly simple procedure involving a technician with cold fingers moving a small transponder around from one place to another on the subject's chest and back to obtain a computerized picture of what is going on in the heart area. It's "quick and dirty" but it usually provides a sufficient amount of information for the cardiologist to tell what's going on in there.
   His new doctor, a distinguished heart surgeon named Stuart Russell, was not entirely satisfied with his last "echo", however, so he set Uncle Jack up for an MRI which would give him a much clearer picture of his heart and surrounding tissue. He reported to the MRI facility in the old Johns Hopkins Hospital building at 5 p.m. last evening and at the ripe old age of 79 underwent his first bout of Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
   It was a trip. By the time it was over he felt like he had just appeared in an episode of "Star Wars", surrounded as he was by some of the most exotic machinery he has ever interacted with. The MRI machine is essentially a big round magnet into which he was rolled on a flat platform after being strapped in and hooked up to a dozen wires. Inside the magnet his face was perhaps two inches from the top surface which at first produced strong feelings of claustrophobia which he dealt with by shutting his eyes and keeping them shut for most of the half-hour it took to complete the procedure.
   "Take a breath and hold it--------now breathe." This mantra, repeated dozens of times by the technician, became exceedingly boring after the first five minutes but the machine itself provided some entertainment by emitting a variety of honks, squeaks, buzzes, hums and clicks as it did its expensive thing. As one would expect from the best hospital in the U.S. the entire procedure from scheduling to completion was carried out with a high level of professionalism. The scan was scheduled for 5:30 p.m. and that is precisely the time he was rolled into the monster machine. Lucky for Uncle Jack this splendid hospital is only ten minutes by Mini from his condo which will come in handy when he gets the bill and suffers his first heart attack.

Farewell to Jewel Boxes

2010-01-11T20:41:00.000-05:00

   Every once in a while Uncle Jack does something so brilliant that he feels compelled to share it with his readers. This time he trained his razor-sharp mind, honed to a fine point by his four long years in Ashland, Wisconsin High School whence he graduated in 1948, to the knotty problem of what to do with his collection of 300+ classical and jazz CDs now that he has moved from a fairly large house into a much smaller condo. Nearly all of his CDs were housed in those infamous plastic containers known as "jewel boxes" which he has long despised for their tendency to fall apart in his hands every time he tries to open one..
   He packed them into three large boxes for the trip from Nags Head to Baltimore where they have been taking up entirely too much space on the floor in his livingroom/diningroom/office. A couple of weeks ago, prompted by the acquisition of a new CD player, he decided it was time to get them off the floor and into some kind of organized storage where he could quickly find the CD he wanted to listen to. But how and where?
   At this point he did the "something brilliant" mentioned above---he Googled "CD storage". The 49,700,000 responses suggested that lots of people out there in cyberspace have been thinking about CD storage for a long time and it became quickly obvious that many music lovers shared his disgust with the clunky "jewel boxes" and had devised numerous ways to get rid of them.
   By far the most popular solution was a derivative of the old-fashioned photo album, adapted to hold CDs in pockets instead of photos. They come in all sizes and shapes and degrees of elegance so a bit of hands-on investigation was required. One trip to Uncle Jack's neighborhood Target was all it took. He found a well-made (in China of course), compact album for a mere $19.50 that would accommodate 150 of his disks with room in the pockets for all the printed material from the jewel boxes. He bought two of them and in a frenzy of activity the next morning transferred his entire CD collection into two handy pouches where they are at his fingertips at all times and take up less than a tenth of the space required by the wretched jewel boxes.
   After two weeks of experience with his new system he is pleased to report that no unforeseen problems have appeared and he can unreservedly recommend this splendid solution to the problem of economical, space-saving, convenient, efficient CD storage. He is so proud of himself he can hardly stand it.

Follow me....

2010-01-07T12:11:00.000-05:00

I have been trying to figure out how Twitter works without much success. However it appears that if you can find baltimoreoracle's Twitter page you can become a "follower" which seems to have all kinds of benefits like you will be notified when new tweets appear and you can easily exchange personal messages with me (not too personal, hopefully ) and probably a lot of other good things, too.

So far baltimoreoracle has 5 followers. You can be one, too, by clicking on this link: http://twitter.com/baltimoreoracle

In the meantime he will be mixing the Kool-Aid.

Maybe this will work.

2010-01-06T15:05:00.000-05:00

Having trouble finding baltimoreoracle (formerly Uncle Jack) on Twitter? Try clicking on this and see where it gets you. http://twitter.com/baltimoreoracle

The birdies go tweet, tweet, tweet....

2010-01-06T10:54:00.000-05:00

   Shame on Uncle Jack for not at least letting his few remaining readers know that he is alive and on the planet once in a while. If truth be told he is in somewhat of a quandary regarding his blog. Since moving to Baltimore he seems to have much less time on his hands due to the many distractions of city life, accompanied by a shrinking inclination to sit down at his computer and blog when there are so many other interesting things to do---like watching the Ravens on his new 52 inch you-know-what. Perhaps, after 25 years of column-writing and 5 years of more-or-less dutiful blogging he has grown weary of this self-imposed task.
   In any case he hates to just shut off the spigot and completely lose touch with those faithful readers who have professed interest in what he has to say no matter where he says it from and no matter how seldom. For this reason he is proposing to switch from blog to Twitter for a while to see how that goes. He doesn't have a clue as to how Twitter works at this point but he is going to give it a try. If you would like to participate in this adventure go to Twitter and search for baltimoreoracle (his Twitter name) and see what happens. This could be the beginning of something wonderful. Or not.

Blizzard in Bawlmer

2009-12-20T11:34:00.000-05:00

   Uncle Jack feels like he is back in northern Wisconsin again after yesterday's blizzard dumped two feet of snow on Charm City and environs. He has to say that blizzards can be beautiful when observed from the comfort of a 7th floor apartment by someone who doesn't have to go anywhere and who doesn't have to look forward to many hours of shoveling snow after the stuff stops falling. So far the only real consequence of the storm is that his Sunday New York Times is now over three hours late and he is in danger of going into withdrawal any moment.
   While he gazes at the beauty of the new-fallen snow beneath his living room window a crew of 700 snow-shovelers is working frantically to clear two feet of snow from the seats and playing field of M & T Bank stadium downtown so the Ravens and the Bears can play iceball this afternoon. The kick-off has been moved back from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. to give the sweepers and shovelers a little more time to work so most of the game will be played under lights in sub-freezing temperatures. Sound like fun?
   This has been a bad month for persons of Swedish descent like Uncle Jack. First the news about Tiger Woods's multiple infidelities which came as a shock to all of us who know that he is married to a lovely Swedish woman named Elin Nordegren. Uncle Jack's paternal grandmother's name was Elin so he felt personally violated by Tiger's unconscionable treatment of a fellow Scandinavian. As a gesture of protest he promises that he will never buy another $20,000 Tag Heuer watch as long as he lives.
   As though the Woods caper were not enough the poobahs at General Motors announced yesterday that they are shutting down the Saab Motor Company for good, having been unable to sell the brand to any other automaker. As a former Saab owner Uncle Jack would like to extend his condolences to the clever trolls of Trollhatten, Sweden who have been making these wonderful cars for many decades and who might have continued to do so if they had not been gobbled up by the GM monster. Uncle Jack has many Saab stories to tell, like the night his brand new Saab caught fire on the way home from the dealer, but he will save them for another time.
   Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. will now wish everyone a Merry Christmas, or if that is not appropriate, at least a Happy New Year before they go into hiding for the next week or so.

View from the seventh floor, Saturday noon. About six inches had fallen by this time.

Ditto Sunday morning after the snow had stopped falling. The sun was blinding.

Walking down the middle of a busy street is usually hazardous but not during a blizzard.

The Ravens play the Bears here at 4 p.m. Sunday. Maybe.

Lucky for Uncle Jack the Mini spent the night in a warm, dry garage.

Blizzards can be fun, too.

Busy, Busy, Busy

2009-12-15T12:14:00.000-05:00

   Once again Uncle Jack apologizes to all those faithful readers who have been clicking in vain for the past several days while nothing new appeared in this space. It isn't as though he hasn't had anything to write about. It has been another fun-packed week for sure but the doing has left little time and energy for the reporting.
   The highlight of last week was his first cultural excursion to D.C. which is something he and Mrs. U.J. have been talking about doing ever since they got to Baltimore. Trains leave from nearby Penn Station every 45 minutes or so and the 40 minute ride costs senior citizens a mere $7.00 round-trip, making trips to our nation's capital both convenient and cost-effective.
   A play at the Kennedy Center was the catalyst for this adventure. Called "August: Osage County" it's a sad but also very funny examination of an extremely dysfunctional family whose members gather at the homeplace for the funeral of their patriarch. The part of the deceased's surviving wife is played by 82-year-old actress Estelle Parsons who is on stage for hours, yelling and stomping around like the lunatic she portrays. She gives an incredible performance and one can only wonder how, at her age, she can do it twice on Matinee day which this happened to be. Steroids perhaps. Or geritol.
   Neither Uncle Jack nor Mrs. U.J. had seen Union Station since its massive renovation of a few years back and he can tell you they were impressed. When it was built a century ago it was the largest building in the country and one of the most ornate. It languished after World War II when trains went out of favor but in its reincarnation you can almost imagine the grandeur of rail travel at its finest back in the first half of the twentieth century. Even the restaurants are first rate which is not usually the case in train stations these days.
   Look for another blog entry in a week or so if you are so inclined. Happy shopping.

Part of the vaulted interior of Union Station in D.C. The building contains over 130 stores and restaurants and appears to be thriving as a shopping destination as well as a train depot.

The sign says that this Christmas tree is a gift of the country of Norway. Uncle Jack is not sure what we have done for Norway lately but it is certainly a lovely tree.

Union Station's exterior. The Plaza in front of it is about to receive a multi-million dollar reworking, too.

One of the interior hallways in the magnificent Kennedy Center.

This gentleman performed a rhapsody by Johannes Brahms at a concert of Christmas music Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. attended last week.

And here's a picture of Brahms himself at the piano. Amazing.

Still here

2009-12-07T19:13:00.000-05:00

Shame on Uncle Jack for not at least letting his readers (are there any left?) know that he has not yet shuffled off his mortal coil---just incredibly busy since returning from Nags Head last week. He still doesn't have time to write a proper blog entry but here are a few last pictures from the beach in Sonag (and elsewhere) that might help pass the time. It's time to watch the Ravens stomp the Packers into the snow up in Green Bay.

Sunrise from the deck one day last week. Uncle Jack is getting too old to walk down to the beach at 6 a.m. any more. It was still worth getting up for, though. Not many things are.

This pool at a Sonag development whose name Uncle Jack can't remember at the moment (Dunes South maybe?) has withstood many a storm over the past 25 years but not this one.

For sure.

Unusual doubledecker stairway shows how much sand gets pushed around during storms in Sonag. It's a bonanza for carpenters who don't have houses to build at the moment. Every cloud........

Chez Schneck, a few doors south of the Outer Banks pier, survived thanks to the massive dune built up over the past couple of years by judicious use of sand-fencing. Time to start all over. Get to work Polly.

The old Lifesaving Station at Oregon Inlet is looking better than it has for years. All the ancillary structures built by the Coast Guard have been removed and new shingles applied to the original building. Anybody know what the plans are for this marvelous survivor of countless storms over the past 100+ years?

More storm pics from South Nags Head

2009-11-25T10:34:00.001-05:00

The weather in Nags Head has been wretched for the past couple of days but the sun made a brief appearance this morning, allowing Uncle Jack to continue his post-Ida explorations of his old neighborhood---South Nags Head, N.C. This morning's perambulations took him to a couple of perennial trouble spots---the Comfort Inn South and its neighbors, and the Sea Gull Drive area near the 20 milepost---both of which were particularly hard hit by last week's storm.. The pictures tell the story.

The Comfort Inn South lost its walkway to the beach as well as a lot of new decking installed after other storms in recent years. There have been no cars in the parking lot all week so Uncle Jack presumes it is closed until necessary repairs can be made.

The Yachtsman Condos are two doors south of the Comfort Inn. Owners will have to get along without their swimming pool for a while as this sign suggests.

And this is the reason why.

(Top picture). The Diamond Shoals condo development next door to the Comfort Inn took its usual hit. Management wasted no time in trucking in new sand to replace at least some of what washed away last week. The swimming pool is long gone.
(Bottom). A hotel can't get much more oceanfront than this.

Longtime readers will remember that a large house called Gray Eagle (later Kuckoo's Nest) stood in front of the house in the foreground until a couple of years ago when it was moved back across the beach road. Looks like it may be time to call the movers again. (Looking south from Seagull Drive)

All but a short stub of Seagull Drive washed away again last week. It has been rebuilt a couple of times since Isabel but town officials will no doubt think twice before spending any more money on it given that the cottages on the right are now sitting in the water most of the time. Are they finished as rental houses? Don't bet on it.

High but not dry.