Before the world went into its COVID-imposed lockdown, I discovered, quite by chance, while reading about Mary Ann Hall, that a photograph of my great-great-grandfather’s gravesite in Washington, DC’s Congressional Cemetery is on Wikipedia. No one but me would care that, in the background of the photo, is the gravesite of William Gardner, but it’sContinue reading “The Grave of a 19th-Century Astronomer”
Tag Archives: Washington
Revisiting the Washington That Never Was
You haven’t lived until you’ve digitally clipped mid-19th-century cursive from a scan of a faded and dirty print. This is B.F. Smith’s landscape of Washington, showing projected improvements in the capital city — the Washington Monument, a stone bridge across the Washington City Canal — from 1852. I found this on the Library of CongressContinue reading “Revisiting the Washington That Never Was”
Opening Day
In honor of Opening Day, I’ve changed my desktop background at the office (which was the Rock of Cashel in Ireland) to this image of Swampoodle Grounds, a 19th-century baseball field that, as you can see, was quite close to the Capitol Building, roughly (about a block away) from where Union Station stands now. Here,Continue reading “Opening Day”
On Allyn’s Adventures at the Rally For Sanity
Along with well over 200,000 other people, I attended the Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear on the National Mall in Washington, DC yesterday. Jon Stewart announced about two months ago, after Glenn Beck’s “Rally to Restore Honor,” that he was going to hold his own rally on the National Mall, the Rally to RestoreContinue reading “On Allyn’s Adventures at the Rally For Sanity”
On Going to See Elbow
So, almost two weeks ago, I went to see Elbow in concert. Elbow, for people coming late to my life, is the Mancunian band who won the Mercury Prize last year for their fourth album, The Seldom Seen Kid, followed by two Ivor Novello Awards for “One Day Like This” and “Grounds for Divorce.” TheirContinue reading “On Going to See Elbow”