Parallel Construction

I'm not an obsessed railway enthusiast, a trainspotter, but the associated sights and sounds always command my attention. Serpentine tracks help shape our piano footprint and from my new, blessedly quiet (thank you Chris and Robin) second floor Ashland Avenue carriage house digs (an accessory to the now-attached Victorian jewel box built as a police station), I've got a front row seat to trains snaking by four blocks up, past rows in repose and large lots bordered with bunting staking our claim. How I wish they could already stop in EBDI-land, and were maglevs, whizzing by at warp speeds so common in Japan, capable of rocketing us to daily jobs in D.C. and Phillie and even NYC, but no matter - they still confirm the sloganed scrim stating "My New East Side is Innovative" or "Vital" or "Exciting" and so on.

But my favorite is "My New East Side is The Future" and even without bullet trains, we are still boldly bound in the right direction. So was the police officer on his horse this morning, trotting beneath my perch as Amtrak ambled by. Other than his uniform and the street furniture and cars, etc., it could have been 1890 and he and his mount could have just emerged from this carriage house. It reminded me that as a preservationist, I am particularly proud to be part of the driving force committed to carrying this neighborhood's rich and proud past into the future.

New Lease On Life

Twenty-seven years ago today at Johns Hopkins Hospital, after six weeks of lingering, my mother lost her eight year struggle. I visited her almost daily until the end, but with no budget for parking, I often wound up depositing my car on Madison Street.

I'm hypersensitive to color - I see hairs of difference between hues - but the houses I passed and parked in front of always seemed the exact same, appropriate to my mood, lifeless shade of grey, no matter how and when the sun settled upon them. In the ensuing years, they still appeared drained of color every time I encountered them. And I say this as a person who never met a house she didn't like.

Five years ago, when my niece was treated and cured of a rare disease at Hopkins, I had another two-month round of daily sightings. The EBDI project had just come alive with plans to slay these blocks of boarded-up buildings. Ask me what I do for a living, and for decades I've unceasingly defined myself as an historic preservationist, but knowing there wasn't must else to be done, I put my professional opinion in stasis. I didn't watch. I just didn't want to know. And when I needed to know, it was OK. I pay no mind to those who think I've lost my mind, my ideals, my standards, my soul.

Today, as I ponder my mother's all-too-short life and my niece's miraculously normal one, I think about the life and near death, and then again, life, of one of Baltimore's great neighborhoods, and how grateful I am to be alive to participate in its rebirth.