Historic News

Trying to write my thoughts down quickly.  I just heard that the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has ruled in favor of same-sex marriages.  The joy I feel is too immense to be captured.

We've been watching the rulings on the SCOTUS live blog for the last two weeks, waiting to see if they would rule on it or not.  And finally, this morning in a 5-4 vote it was determined that the 14th Amendment included same-sex marriages - or, as I like to call them, Marriages.

This means that my sister and her fiancée can get married in their home state.  They can move to any other state in the United States and still have the same rights and protections.  If my sister gets a work assignment in England, her WIFE can go with her without any additional hassle or red tape.

Halloween Weekend in Baltimore

I was finally able to visit Westminster Hall Burying Ground and Catacombs, where Edgar Allan Poe is buried.  Every Halloween, Westminster Hall holds a celebration that allows visitors to tour the church, catacombs, and graveyard after dark.  This year it happened to be on Sunday, October 30th from 6 - 9pm and I was lucky enough to attend.

My friend, N, went with me and we stood in line for about an hour and a half before we were able to gain entrance.  I wasn't very impressed by the entertainment inside the church and we missed a lot of the other events (i.e. a reading of the Tell-Tale Heart in the Graveyard) while we were in line.  But occasionally an Edgar Allan Poe impersonator would entertain the people in line (he also gave a reading inside the hall).  The tour guides gave a lot of detailed information and entertaining stories about the residents.  I didn't realize that the church had been built after the fact, which is how the "catacombs" were created. I've driven by Poe's grave several times and I always note it to visitors, but I hadn't actually gone to the church or the site.

There was something very thrilling about being in the graveyard.  People were waiting in line while we roamed amongst the dead under the stars.  "Edgar" would walk around the graveyard, from time to time, and talk to people gawking at his grave.  It was a little bit spooky, a lot of fun, and absolutely perfect for Halloween.

NaNo Ideas

I saw a commercial last night that really made me think about NaNo.  It was the new Playstation 3 "Michael" Commercial for their Long Live Play advertising campaign.  In the commercial, soldiers from Call of Duty make a hasty escape to a medieval looking tavern filled with other characters from Playstation 3 games.  Each of them describes a situation when they felt they were down and out and Michael stepped into "help" them out.  At the end, they salute "Michael" and the camera pans out to show several other gamers photos on the walls of this place. 

It really made me think of Jasper Fforde and his novels where literary characters can interact with each other in the BookWorld.  Here are several game characters hanging out in a bar saluting their player that controls them through the different levels of their respective games.  It has the same reverence that one would attribute to a deity or to the reader in Fforde's novels.  (Though, in Fforde's novels it's the author that controls the actions of the characters and the readers are merely the audience to the production.  But a reader could influence the way a character appears, as noted in the most recent novel that Harry Potter will forever look like Daniel Radcliffe because that's how the readers imagine him.)



from sharenator.com

 Cleolinda jones has a similar congregation in her Secret Life of Dolls and I sincerely wish I had that level of creativity.  I know I've written on this theme in previous NaNo's but it is incredibly seductive to this literary fangirl.  Who wouldn't want to put his or her favorite characters in a room together and see what happens?  Think about Murder by Death or certain commercials for television line-ups.   Even the recent season finale of Doctor Who with the whole history of time happening at once was a similar idea.  (Winston Churchill as Caesar and Charles Dickens writing Christmas specials for TV!!)

Randomness

This morning, while searching through Etsy for possible co-worker Christmas gift ideas, I came across a Halloween costume (A Roman Toga) that brought up a neglected memory for me.

Picture this:  Little Town, Havre de Grace, 1993, seventh grade social studies class with Mr. Ewart.  We were studying the Ancient Greek and Roman Civilizations and were present projects to the class.  Some people made traditional Greek or Italian foods for mass consumption, some made dioramas, others present special reports on aspects of these ancient lives.  I decided to focus on the clothing, for some reason.  I wasn't exactly fashion conscious in those days, and not much better now, so I'm not sure why I picked this one.  Except that possibly it had the chance I would get to dress in a costume.

I remember that Mom was very helpful in putting together my presentation.  We went to the library together and she helped me to do some of my first major research as a student.  We found this amazing book that gave detailed descriptions of how the articles of clothing were shaped and then worn.  Because the measurements for these garments would have required a lot of fabric and extra help in displaying them to the class, it was decided that it would be easier for me to show the proper way to wear a Palla (or a Pallium for the men) if I made Barbie sized costumes.

Mom did a great job putting together a Tunic for my Derek Rocker Barbie doll and a Stola for my Dana Rocker Barbie Doll.  We wrapped a gold colored ribbon around the torso of the Dana Doll and mom used gold colored cross-stitch floss as the closures on the Stola.  Our research told us that the color, purple, was an indicator of royalty or at least the very wealthy so we chose that for the Palla and Pallium.  They were made out of felt and wrapped very easily around the dolls.  Then mom cut out little shoes, using a tan color felt, and sewed them to the feet of the dolls using the gold-colored floss so they looked like sandals.

I kept those dolls in those costumes for a very long time and tried to incorporate them into the story lines my sister and I would create.  I kind of wish I had them today or at the very least a picture of them.  I remember them being so detailed and cool.  I wish I had these memories of my mother more readily available.

30 years ago

1981

• Guess Jeans is founded
• Bertucci's First Brick Oven Pizzeria is opened
• Sandwich World is renamed Quizno's after a merger
• White Marsh Mall opens its doors to customers
• Wild Country reopened as Wild World under new ownership - currently Six Flag's America

June 12, 2981

• Clash of the Titans is released in theatres
• Raider of the Lost Ark is released in theatres

August 1, 1981 - MTV debuts
October 15, 1981 - Evil Dead is released in theatres

Patterson Park

User: Iracaz (From Wikipedia.org)

This past weekend I had a date that went quite well.  It started at one of my favorite Baltimore restaurants, The Paper Moon Diner, and then meandered its way over to Patterson Park.

This is yet another area, where I live, that has gone unexplored even though I've lived here for years.  I'd always heard about the Pagoda (my friend, A, incorporates it into her fantasy wedding planning) but had never actually been there.  I can see now why she would want to include this in her plans.  It incorporates at least two important things in her life thus far: teaching English in China and her love of the city of Baltimore.

The Pagoda was built during the Victorian Era and it's easy to see that influence in the architecture and design.  I do wonder though, how ladies with larger dresses than we currently wear made it up and down those narrow stairs with people moving in the opposite direction.  Though I would guess that's what the landings are for; allowing people to climb one set of stairs without traffic.  But modern culture is less polite.  I was surprised to learn that Hamstead Hill, where the Pagoda stands, was integral in the Battle of Baltimore during the War of 1812.  This was the same battle that inspired Francis Scott Key to write "The Star-Spangled Banner," our national anthem.

Growing up in Havre de Grace, I know about the War of 1812.  It was the source for the story about our town "hero," John O'Neil.  Aside from the Revolutionary War, which had George Washington sleeping everywhere and the Marquis de Lafayette naming our small town, the War of 1812 was the next most important thing we were taught in school.  So to see cannons, restored and standing, on Hampstead Hill immediately made me think of the cannon behind our Concord Point Lighthouse which John O'Neil used to defend the town against the British.

All in all, it was a very interesting day and I'm sorry that I hadn't visited the area sooner.  Perhaps my next stop should be Ft. McHenry...

Dymaxion Map

On a Wikipedia Binge today I discovered this:

It really caught my attention because the continents as I know them are almost unrecognizable, at first glance, in this arrangement.  I am so used to seeing them on a flat map in a classroom or office.  But this really gave me a different perspective on the placement of the land masses and how human beings may have migrated across them.  It also gives an accurate portrayal of the continents and their size in relation to one another.

AIDS/HIV Vaccine

Coming into work this morning I heard a most uplifting broadcast.  It wasn't the host or the demeanor of the guest, but the subject matter that lifted my spirits.  It was Maryland Morning with Shelia Kast on my local NPR station and she was interviewing Dr. Robert Gallo from the Institute of Human Virology (IHV is part of the University of Maryland School of Medicine).  According to the interview, $23.4 million dollars has been awarded to the Institute in a research grant.

I wasn't consciously aware that there was this type of research was happening, but it makes sense that there would be a search for a vaccine.  I was very excited because I understood a lot of what Dr. Gallo was talking about in his interview.  For example:  Gallo talked about the problems with creating a vaccine for HIV/AIDS; it's not safe to use a live stain of the virus like one would use in MMR shots, and a dead strain of the virus like Salk used for the Polio Vaccine doesn't carry the needed protein to prevent HIV/AIDS.  I knew about Jonas Salk and the Polio Vaccine mostly because I'd read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot a few months ago.

If these clinical trials and further research prove successful, it is possible we'll have an AIDS/HIV vaccine in the not so distant future.  When I read Skloot's book and learned of the importance of the Polio Vaccine that we now take for granted, I couldn't imagine how the general populace must have felt when the discovery was announced.  If the IHV is successful in their efforts, I won't have to imagine it at all.  I keep thinking about my dad's friend, that I met on my Ireland Trip, and her stories about her time in Africa; the devastation of AIDS/HIV and Malaria in Africa is unbelievable.  And this radio broadcast made me think of those people and what this will mean for the world.  It was a ray of hope and positivity in my day.

A New Decade?

Last night, my sister called me around 10:00pm.  She said that the President was going to make an announcement and the press was pretty sure it was the death of Osama Bin Laden.  I was already in bed at the time and didn't feel like going out to the living room to watch something I would undoubtedly see on TV for the next three weeks.  I know it probably sounds unpatriotic, but I honestly didn't think it was that big a deal to drag myself out of bed after I'd been fighting sleep for several hours.  If I remember correctly, she said she thought it would be an historic moment (and for those that remember 9/11 it is) and I said that I didn't think it was something to celebrate as, undoubtedly, someone else would rise up to fill his shoes.

Thinking about it today, I have to maintain that feeling.  It's kind of like fighting the Hydra; cut off one of its heads and three grow back in its place.  We're not dealing with a typical army/enemy country, we're dealing with religious fervor and that is much harder to quell.  There will be some kind of threat to the US to retaliate for this death.

People are celebrating this death the way the British People celebrated the wedding of their Prince.  It sickens me a little.  Part of me is glad that we can close this chapter in our history and hopefully move on from it stronger than we were before.  I remember what it was like on September 11th and I can imagine that this is a huge relief to the survivors and the families of those killed during the attacks.  But I can't get over the fact that, as a country, we're celebrating a death.