The only things we bought last week at the DC Big Flea were very, very small. Jen stopped at a vendor who had vast plastic trays of postcards arranged on a table, categorized by location, and her eagle eye found the county my parents live in almost immediately. She picked up a small sheaf of cards and two immediately caught her attention: the church across the street from my parents’ house, and a shot of Main street in their town.
Lousy camerphone image, sorry
The helpful vendor dated them for us sometime between 1901 and 1908, when they were known as “souvenir cards”. At that time the USPS still prohibited private companies from calling them post cards, and the sender could only include a short message on the front side. In 1908 the prohibition was struck down, and anyone could publish post cards with the familiar divided back.
These two were printed in Germany, a sign of their quality, and have the location printed in script on the front (I’ve removed it to protect the innocent). At the time, it cost one US Cent to mail.
I would give anything to go back in time to turn the camera about 120° to the left for a shot of my folks’ house.
In old historical plane news, The Swamp Ghost, a B-17E sitting in a marsh in Papua New Guinea since 1942, is in the middle of a legal dispute between the PNG government and the American businessman who claims the salvage rights. In the 1960’s, the U.S. Government relinquished all rights to any crashed or abandoned military equipment, excluding underwater wrecks, placing this airframe into a curious limbo. Other wrecks have been “salvaged” from PNG and restored to flying status, but for some reason the removal of this particular B-17 got people upset.
I’ve seen pictures of this plane before in its original location, but wasn’t aware it’s been moved—it’s sitting on a dock, disassembled, awaiting the resolution of the legal dispute. From what I can tell, PNG isn’t letting it leave, and most likely it will stay there (unless they ship it to the states for a restoration, which I doubt they have money for).
In any case, stay tuned for more airplane pictures this weekend…details to come.
There’s a certain scent in the air today. It’s something I associate with the age of ten or eleven, when I lived in a big house in the Connecticut woods and spent most of my time outside exploring. At the time I had a fascination with hunting, the army, the woods, and survival in the elements, so I built forts and bunkers and tree stands with my buddies, who shared the same interests I did (and who also lived on multi-acre plots of land like us.)
We’d stay out in the woods until the sun got low and filtered through the low-hanging leaves, and the temperature would drop, bringing out a particular earthy fragrance from the forest floor: The rich, loamy smell of leaves, heated and cooled, mixed with rich, moist earth, and a touch of fresh-cut grass, signalling the shortening days and cooler nights of fall just around the corner. It usually meant we were wearing jackets and jeans instead of shorts, school was back in session (so we were ducking schoolwork as long as we could) and we stayed out of the wetlands so we wouldn’t freeze as the sun went down.
Around the time dusk fell and we smelled woodsmoke through the trees, which meant that parents were home and settling in for the evening, we’d gather up our gear and say our goodbyes, then scatter our separate ways on well-worn paths through the forest. Days like this make me think of that brief, magical time of my life when afternoons lasted forever, Intellivision was my religion, Duran Duran were the biggest thing on the radio, my three best friends lived within walking distance, and the world was ours to explore.
Yesterday I had the lucky fortune to wander around a Baltimore landmark I’ve always wondered about but never been inside: The Crown Cork & Seal factory on the city’s east side. I was searching for a vendor to drop off a package, and it took me some careful moseying around the property to find them.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have a whole lot of time to explore or shoot photos, but certain parts of the sprawling complex have a Children of Men/Full Metal Jacket-type feel to them: ancient brick buildings, soaring courtyards filled with years of debris and trash, along with the odd shopping cart or plastic storage bin.
After being shuttered in 1956 when management moved the company headquarters to Philadelphia, the 15-acre site lay empty (as far as I can tell; information online is sketchy at best) until recently. Now it looks like the property has been split up into separate rentable buildings under the care of a management company.
At some point, I’d love to go back and spend a day shooting everything I saw.
Bush Aide: Military Could Go Into Pakistan.
So, let me break this down a little here. Our president, whose approval numbers are in the dumper, but who still controls the Senate, has a plan to make America love him again: He’s thinking about going into Pakistan to get Bin Laden because Musharraf hasn’t done so.
I can’t think of a more misguided foreign policy that that, other than, perhaps, just nuking Russia for the hell of it. Pakistan is already a pretty shaky ally, and Musharraf by all accounts is walking a thin line between secular progress and another Islamic state. (Remember, Pakistan and India have been lobbing ‘test nukes’ at each other for ten years, and Pakistan is also pretty cozy with China.) What our government still hasn’t grasped is the fact that things aren’t black and white like they insist on believing—and why their policy in Iraq has gone so badly. A thousand years of tribal, ethnic, and religious quarrels between hundreds of separate groups is not going to miraculously work itself out after the tanks enter town and everyone gets a Hershey bar.
The simple idea that the leadership of this country is even considering entering another country and destabilizing the government there—can anybody say Cambodia?—makes me shudder. I hope to god the commanding generals find their balls and talk some sense into the cowboys in the White House.
Also, why isn’t this the top headline in today’s news? Seriously, in about 30-point type?
I got an email a few days ago from a friend who recommended me for a teaching job at a local college. I don’t have a lot of the details yet, but the position involves teaching courses within Adobe’s design suite, which is right up my alley. The idea of teaching got me excited, because I really enjoy it, and it’s something I’ve been thinking about doing (without actually knowing how to go about it) for a long time.
I got a taste for it back in 1999 when I was working for a web development shop and we were finishing up a custom-built content management system for a local weekly magazine, which had no previous presence on the web. After I’d designed and built the front end for the website, I realized we were going to need to train the print-based staff how to move their workflow to the web. I spent a long week organizing, designing and building an interactive training course for the staff, including some of the first rudimentary programming I’d ever done.
After I got it finished, I showed it to my bosses and they nodded their heads blankly. I found out at that point there was no plan in place for setting up the training courses—they hadn’t set aside a room, I had no provision for computers, and we didn’t even have enough tables.
Working quickly, I scrounged up eight Macs (their production workflow was Mac-based), a conference room, a crateful of keyboards, mice, and network cables, and put together a networked classroom in one afternoon. My company hadn’t made provisions for food, so I organized morning coffee and snacks, as well as lunch deliveries for the break.
The training course itself went off without a hitch—after all that preparation I was feeling very confident, and after jitters at the beginnning my delivery smoothed out and my breathing returned to normal. The staff was trained properly, and they still use the CMS we built to this day.
Fast forward eight (!?!!) years to this email: I knew I had a good copy of the training course archived somewhere, so I went back through my disc catalog to find the best copy and spent a half-hour cleaning up the pages and relinking the scripts on my webserver. I was, and still am, proud of that course, because I put the entire thing together myself, and used the experience to get over my fear of speaking and teaching in front of a group. I found, as the days went on, that I actually liked it, and that I had a talent for finding different ways to explain a concept until everyone understood it.
This experience made it easier to agree to teach a flex design class at MICA a few years ago, which went off pretty well as far as I could tell. While I had some problems feeling qualified to teach a design class while I was employed as an artist at a videogame developer, I felt good about the design problem I created and better about some of the solutions the students came up with.
I followed up with the contact yesterday, linking to the class pages and my resume, and crossed my fingers. This morning I got a very positive response and an invitation to the senior thesis opening where I’ll be able to meet the contact face to face. While I’m told the money isn’t huge (but, then, when did anyone ever get rich as a teacher?) I’m excited to dip my feet back in the water—I’m looking forward to widening my horizons.
The Lockard Tour Van is back in town after a whirlwind three-night limited engagement to support Annie, who kind of got her diploma Saturday morning, and all I can say is that I’m still tired. Our first stop was Ashland, Ohio, to prepare for the graduation ceremony, and as we loaded up the van we were given our itinerary, typed neatly on a single sheet of paper. To the hour, our schedule was outlined in Times New Roman to keep the caravan on track, and even though it was handy to have, we used it to poke fun at Jen’s dad good-naturedly throughout the trip.
Despite some last-minute drama, the graduation went off without a hitch, and even though the threat of rain loomed, it turned out to be a beautiful day. We shared a late lunch with Jen’s aunt and then passed out back at the hotel to sleep off the carbohydrates. Before venturing out for a late dinner, we hijacked Jen’s father into a visit to the CHEESEBARN, an inexplicably-named highway attraction up the road from our hotel. Unfortunately, the CHEESEBARN was closed and we weren’t able to explore its wonders in detail.
However, we did stop for a picture out front.
Then we enjoyed a prolonged tour of the seedier side of Mansfield, OH, looking for somewhere other than a Perkins to eat dinner; the directions given were, shall we say, vague, and it took a while to get oriented until we found an Olive Garden to stop at.
Sunday morning we were under strict orders to be loaded and ready by 8:30, because the day was tightly planned: we were stopping in to visit with Jen’s great aunt, who is in a retirement home, and then on to visit her mother’s gravesite. Her great aunt is still sharp and funny, and we were presently joined by a group of cousins who helped us take over the entire front room of the facility.
Driving on to the gravesite, we passed fields that had been flooded in January of 2005 (we were some of the last cars allowed in before the state troopers shut the highway down that night), through the sleepy, worn-down town, and up the hill to where her marker sat in bright afternoon sunshine. The family had about ten minutes alone with her before a gaggle of extended family arrived, and then we stood around and caught up with folks we hadn’t seen in two years.
And then, it was time to load up the van and get on the road. The trip back was uneventful, apart from everyone in the van (including driver) dozing off after lunch at the Sonic, and we were treated to a tour of the rolling hills of West Virginia and miles of empty countryside until we made it back to town last night. And I’ll be damned if Jen’s Dad didn’t get us home a half-hour ahead of schedule.
The peeling wall of a gun battery in Golden Gate National Recreation Area. This place reminded me of the old batteries on the North Jersey shore by my grandmother’s house, and the photos I’ve seen of the prewar fortifications in the Philippines. This kind of stuff fascinates me for reasons I can’t explain; I like the idea of modern concrete castles and huge guns on disappearing carriages guarding the city from attack by sea.
I’m sorry for the extended absence; between a nasty stomach virus (the 8-20 day kind) and a healthy pile of work, I was a pretty quiet boy last week. I’m pressed for time this morning, so any update is going to have to wait until this afternoon, unfortunately.
I leave you here with a picture of my father-in-law’s new posessions: a stack of airplane magazines from the late 30’s, featuring vivid color covers, bare-knuckled serial tales of air pirates, dogfights, and adventure, balsa wood kit plans, and grainy pictures of exotic airplanes. Simply beautiful.
Via a circuitous route, I found this article on the NYT last night: Flying Behemoth May Find Its Way Home. Some background:
Glenn L. Martin was an early aviation pioneer, a contemporary (and one-time partner of) the Wright Brothers, who started out building trainers for the US Army Air Corps, and later several successful bomber designs used by the Army and the US Postal Service. Starting out in Cleveland, he bought a huge parcel of land in Middle River, Maryland, and moved the company there in 1929. The Martin company became known for its bombers, and, more visibly, its flying boats, including one version of the famous China Clipper, which flew the San Francisco to Manila route before World War Two.
During the war, they designed and built several medium bombers (the infamous B-26 and its lesser-known British-used cousin, the Baltimore) and flying boats (the PBM Mariner, and the JRM Mars), and after the war the company enjoyed fewer successes in a consolidating marketplace. After Martin’s death in 1955, the company ended production of airplanes in 1960 to focus on missiles, and after few mergers in the 60’s, the company became Lockheed Martin. Production on missiles was already happening elsewhere, and employment at the Baltimore aircraft plants was scaled back dramatically from a wartime high of 53,000.
This story circles back to a famous plane Martin built during the war, though: The JRM Mars, originally conceived in 1935 as a “battleship of the sky”, was designed with a 200′ wingspan—greater than a 747. The first model was built and flown through the early years of the war until the Navy realized that huge armed seaplanes were more of a target than an offensive weapon. However, they recognized a need for a long distance cargo carrier, and in 1944 they requested 20 Mars flying boats. The Martin company redesigned the plane for its new role and began production. After the surrender of Japan in 1945, they scaled back the order and six planes were eventually built. They were christened with exotic names: Two Hawaiis (the first was destroyed in a fire in 1945), the Caroline, the Marianas, the Phillippine, and the Marshall. The Marshall was lost off Hawaii in 1950, but the remaining Mars boats served the Navy until 1954, when they were retired and sold for scrap metal.
They were then bought by an enterprising Canadian pilot in 1959, who converted them for use as water bombers on the Pacific coast. The Marianas Mars was converted first, and had a few successful months before it was crashed by an overzealous pilot in 1960. The Caroline Mars was converted next, but unfortunately was lost in a winter storm in 1962. The remaining two boats have remained in trouble-free service in British Columbia since then.
However, the 60-year-old planes have gotten more expensive to run, and their owner has put them up for sale. Several interested parties have expressed interest, including the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola, and a consortium of Baltimore businessmen and avaition historians.
Personally, I’d love it if they were able to exhibit one here in Maryland, but I’d be afraid they’d have to keep it outside in the elements where it could decay in the weather. Pensacola is too far away but much more temperate, and the scope of the museum down there ensures the plane’s future preservation. A happy middle ground: The Udvar-Hazy museum out by Dulles—there’s plenty of room there, and the Smithsonian takes good care of its planes.
More reading:
Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Company, from the Maryland Online Encyclopedia
Martin Aircraft History, The Maryland Aviation Museum
The Martin Flying Boats, Vectorsite