August 29, 2015
(If we live with an open and grateful attitude, every
day will bring a gift. This is one of 365 gifts during the year I turned 70.)
 |
| Outside the Papermoon Diner in Baltimore |
How do you show foreign visitors quirky
Baltimore? It’s not difficult for David and me because quirky is a
magnet that pulls us toward it.
Today we showed our Belarus visitors, Regina and
Kate, the Bromo Tower and its inside-the-clock view. Then we had lunch
at the Papermoon Diner, walked around Hampden, stopped in at Gallery 788, and
saw Loring Cornish’s glass houses and then his gallery in Fells Point. On a
previous night we showed them the outside of AVAM, the American Visionary Art
Museum. Of course there is much more of quirky Baltimore than we have time to
show them...such as Graffiti Alley, many murals in the city, and John Wilkes
Booth’s grave site in Green Mount Cemetery which is adorned with many Lincoln pennies.
David and I enjoy introducing visitors to parts of
Baltimore that are not always part of a standard tour because, to us, it is the
real Baltimore…quirky people, places and things. All visitors see the tourist
harbor scene, which we love too, but we like to unfold other layers that define
the real city. This includes boarded houses and beggars at traffic lights
who walk among the cars waiting for the light to change—even a few panhandlers who hold
blank pieces of cardboard without a message, a new generic approach to asking
for handouts. People who get our tour will go home scratching their heads but
understanding that Baltimore is anything but generic.
My
gift today is sharing quirky.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You can find links to my other posts on this project here:
http://bjschupp.blogspot.com/2014/12/365-gifts.html
No comments:
Post a Comment
This space for your comments: