Baltimore

I was a stranger in the city . . .

My buddy Chris called me the other night while I was lying on my hotel bed digesting seafood. I ate nothing but seafood while on the East Coast. It was so fresh and a Mid-Westerner forgets how much better fresh fish is. I have similar affections for Mexican food from locales where there is a real barrio.

Anyway, Chris said "you're traveling all over. This is like a real job, isn't it?" I'm helping another site that is currently in between counselors: assisting with interviewing, doing some training, and then orienting the new counselor a bit next week. The novelty of travel is beginning to wear off now after flight delays, time changes, early-bird flights out. It's good to be useful, though, and folks have been very hospitable, feedback for my training was good.

Baltimore has been hit with the poor economy and from the looks of it there may have been some issues when things were better. Caitlin assigned me the mission of finding Charm City Cakes (Ace of Cakes is the reality show), and when I asked around it turns out the location is a big fat secret. There is a false location on Google, but a picture on their web site said 30th street and a helpful check out girl suggested that I go to 30th via Highway 83, so I killed an afternoon driving around urban Baltimore. The 30th Street I found was in a pretty "downscale" neighborhood full of row houses, many of which were boarded up. Still there were people out pushing baby carriages and children running around. My social work street cred tells me that when kids are out it's likely to be pretty safe. Charm City cakes was nowhere to be found and I got good and lost a couple times. My blackberry has GPS and a map program, and so getting lost doesn't really carry the emotional punch that it used to. ("Oh my! I'm off my directions in a bad part of town, going in circles and my wife isn't here to blame!") I just hit the "update from here" button and I get new directions, also confusing, but somehow optimistic. The GPS is paying attention to me, at the very least. I was too busy driving in circles to get good photos of these neighborhoods but they were really interesting visually. Think of hundreds of identical 1920's row houses marching up either side of a narrow street, each porch a small variation on the theme, slight variations in trim, but overall a sense of geometric harmony just short of monotony. Some streets are boarded and sad, others show signs of life, care, and a sense of carrying on.
Baltimore's Inner Harbor is more polished, more of a destination, and I got out and ate some (guess what!) lunch at a seafood joint with a great view. I get the sense that on a sunny day this area might light up with people and events and be a very pleasant place to spend time.








I am interested in urban landscape and would like to get a better view of the industrial part of the harbor. It makes me think of T.S. Eliot.












Gulls are, of course, ubiquitous.















In my pursuit of signs, I found this amusing. I was feeling okay about my life, but had I been feeling otherwise, I suspect I could have availed myself. . . .











I'm not absolutely certain of this, but I think this little person in the cross walk identifies where some poor soul got squished. He's made out of the same stuff the crosswalk lines are made of, and I saw a couple of these. Someone was a bit too far from the life ring, I suspect.

I'm going back next week. I'm now a jaded traveler, making love to my electronic devices in the relative safety of the travelers' zone, all of us vetted by TSA, hermetically sealed off from danger, at the mercy of whatever pilot refuses his jet, the latest storm, the recycled air of the pressurized cabins where every sneeze reminds you that we're all recycling each others respiratory minutiae.

Chris asked me if I was lonely, and until he asked I really wasn't. I like some time by myself and I don't mind finding things to do alone for a while. Right now I'm glad to have spent the night cuddled with Robyn, to have hung out with Caitlin and Walker, to have had my early morning with Tye the wonder dog, always ready for his morning love and his slimy dog toy. Back in my own life ring.