brainsplotch

Okay friends, readers, countrymen (and non-countrymen), this should be it for Baltimore posts. I absolutely need to get this written and out there before my short-term memory goes on the blink. So let me talk about some highlights from Tuesday, October 21. With many of the Baltimore museums closed on Monday and Tuesday, I decided I'd have to find something else to do. I saw something on my phone about Billie Holiday murals in the city (as Billie Holiday, though born in Philadelphia, grew up in Baltimore--and had a difficult childhood to say the least). So I ventured out to find these murals, headed east on Pratt Street and then north on Caroline Street. I walked and walked, headed away from the "touristy" area until I came upon the short and utterly nondescript Billie Holiday Court, which seemed little more than a gray, weedy alley with no murals to speak of. "What the hell?" I consulted with my trusty Galaxy S22 and discovered to my chagrin that I went to the e...

When I left off, it was Monday and I had bought my brand new Orioles hat at the Camden Yards shop. At this point, I was ready to head back to the hotel after all the walking I'd done. So I trudged back, bought a coffee from the Starbucks on Presidents Street across from the Marriott, and rested in our 23rd floor hotel room. (I need to make a correction from my previous post: I did not, in fact, get coffee prior to my excursion because the order ahead didn't seem to be working on the app and heaven forbid I should actually have to go IN the Starbucks to order. And yes, it's also incredibly lame that I'm addicted to a corporate chain like Starbucks in the first place. I will own this terrible personality flaw).  I spent the afternoon alternating between napping and reading the new book about Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run album ( Tonight in Jungleland ). Here's another digression: the Marriott is on Aliceanna Street. Aliceanna has to rank as one of my favorite s...

I left off with our first day in Baltimore, so I'd better get back to this before I forget what we did. Sunday morning, we had some time to kill before L's conference began at 2:00 PM, so we walked from our Marriott Waterfront hotel to the Walters Art Museum, about 1.5 miles. One never knows quite what to expect on a long walk in a city they've never been to, and Baltimore's reputation isn't that great, but the walk was just fine. (And as it turns out, our time in Baltimore was quite pleasant. I try hard not to allow the reputation of a city color the way I approach it as a visitor. Baltimore and St. Louis, two cities that are perceived as "dangerous," have actually become two of my favorite places). The Walters Art Museum has, as of our visit (and this writing), a fascinating temporary exhibition on ancient Egyptian animal mummies. Little did I know that Egyptians wrapped such animals as tilapia and crocodiles into mummies. The mummies are elaborately wra...

We landed at Thurgood Marshall Airport and "ubered" to the city at about noon. Unbeknownst (?) to our driver, the Baltimore Marathon was taking place at the same time, so the middle of downtown was blocked off and traffic was gridlocked. The upside was we were able to see much more of Baltimore than we otherwise would have had we been able to drive directly to our hotel on the harbor. For example, I can tell you that the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) has a large campus. It probably took us almost two hours to finally arrive at the hotel. Thankfully, we were able to check in and relax in our room a bit, which we desperately needed after our adventures since 5 AM. So after watching Fulham lose to Arsenal on the television in our room, we went out in search for food. We found some at Kneads Bakeshop. It's a spacious place with deli sandwiches, coffee, and scruptious pastries. After eating for the first time since Detroit Metro Airport, we ventured along the harbor...

We took the Michigan Flyer bus to DTW. It was the first time we'd ever done that. Besides having to get up at the ungodly time of 4:45 AM to get to the bus stop in East Lansing, it was pleasant. More later...

I'm watching the Major League Baseball playoffs as I write this (Los Angeles Dodgers vs. Cincinnati Reds in the National League wildcard series), but it's the rare time recently that I have had a baseball game on.  The sports that I have enjoyed in the past just don't excite me much these days. Maybe my break from baseball has to do with my favorite team, the Tigers, being essentially unwatchable for the last month or so of the season (though they did actually beat the Cleveland Guardians today in the first game of their playoff series. So maybe there is life in them yet). Football--or as the rest of the world outside of the U.S. knows it--"American football," hasn't grabbed me either. What it really comes down to is this: I am increasingly reluctant to sit down and watch a game that takes 3 1/2 hours to play with almost constant commercial interruptions. Over the last three years, in a change that has been gradual, my sport of choice is Premier League footbal...