Good Morning Baltimore!

Today I was in Baltimore for some training and had the opportunity to visit the old Customs House, which is an architectural jewel from the early 1900s.  I took some pictures of the paintings and other pretty things in what was once the great hall where ship captains would come to present their manifests and declare their cargo, which I promise to put up soon (tomorrow), so check this space again.  Tonight, however, I need to catch up on some sleep.

On a slightly related note, when I mentioned that I would be spending the day in Baltimore, one friend remarked "Don't get shot!"  I didn't, but today someone else did.  What's particularly disconcerting is that on our way to the customs house we saw helicopters hovering over a neighborhood off to the east - I'm almost certain that this is what they were watching.  Creepy!

EDIT (Saturday): Here are the pictures from the Customs House that I promised.

The Baltimore Customs House is a large building from the early 1900s (under construction from 1903 to 1907) in fine Beaux-Arts style.  In the early 1900s the United States was beginning to wake up to its role as a great power, and so all along the East Coast monumental customs houses like this one were constructed, so as to impress the European captains who would put in with goods from Europe.  The great powers of Europe had at the time a tendency (which some believe European nations still possess) to look down on the United States as provincial and backward.  Beautiful customs houses was one way the US attempted to remedy that (another was hosting massive public events like the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, more commonly know as the Chicago World's Fair).

Most of the Customs House is now office space (it is no longer used as a customs house - that stuff goes on at the sea- and airport - but the main receiving hall, where those captains would come to declare what they had on their ships, has been preserved, although it was carpeted at some point).  Nevertheless, it is gorgeous.

Stepping through the tall, hardwood doors, the first thing that strikes you is the monumental scale of the room.  With the ceiling easily forty feet above the floor, this room was obviously designed to impress.  And because the ceiling is so high up curiosity naturally gets the better of you, so you look up...

...and see this...

...and this (click it to enlarge if it's not clear).  This is the central portion of the mural which is partially visible in the photo above this one.  All the painting was done by Francis David Millet, who (I was told) also did the paintings in the Wisconsin State Capitol, although I can find no corroboration of this assertion.  Millet was a talented Classicist and was friends with Augustus Saint-Gaudens (known as a sculptor).  Reading through his Wikipedia entry suggests that he was quite an interesting guy, apart from being a talented painter.  As I browsed, I came across this photo of Millet in his studio:

Guess what he's painting?  That's right - the ceiling for the Customs House!

Painting is not the only interesting feature in this jewel box of a room.  There's excellent Beaux-Arts metalwork reminiscent of the monumental style in banks that existed around the same time:

There's also exquisite plasterwork and molding surrounding those paintings, the likes of which you don't often see in this country:

Now, all this beauty has to be tempered with a bit of tragedy - isn't that always the case - and although you'd think that this room being closed to the public and unused is tragedy is enough, there's another unpleasant twist of fate associated with this room.  Millet wasn't active for much longer after he painted this room.  Why?  Because he was on the Titanic when it sank in 1912, and was one of the 1,517 people who drowned as a result.  And look what he put above the door that leads to the rest of the Customs House:

Look familiar?  It does look like the Titanic, doesn't it.  But if you were paying attention to my chronology, you have by now realized that although it appears to be the Titanic, it can't be, because the Titanic sank on its maiden voyage in 1912, and this building was finished in 1907.  It's not the Titanic, but it's another ill-fated ocean liner much like it.  Clever readers will know that several ships fit that description, among them Titanic's sister ship, Britanic, but it didn't exist before 1907 either.  It is in fact the Lusitania, which at the time of the painting was the largest ship in the world, and a pinnacle of engineering.  Millet had painted ships throughout history all around the room (you can see two of them at the top of the picture), ending with the most modern example, Lusitania, above this door.  What's tragic is that Millet died aboard a similar ship in 1912, and three years later Lusitania was torpedoed by a German U-boat off the coast of Ireland and sank in just eighteen minutes, killing 1,198 of the 1,959 passengers and crew.  This was one of the factors which eventually dragged the United States into war against some of the very European powers the Customs House had been built to impress.

Funny how these things happen, isn't it?

Duly Noted

The charismatic and funny woman who runs the training program I was at today (and will be at tomorrow and Thursday) released us two and a half hours early, so I toddled smugly home and went to get some groceries.

"What are these?" the cashier asked me as she picked up the cloudy plastic bag containing four vaguely round doughy things and appraised it quizzically.

"They're bagels," I said.

Silence.

"Fifty-nine cents a piece," I added.

She scanned them through.

Apparently, bagels are something of an exotic item in these parts.

Workin' 9 to 5

...or, actually, 8 to 4:30.  But never mind the specifics - I'm a member of the work world now!  I get a paycheck now!  I have a desk, and a phone, and a computer!  Of course, I can't get on the computer yet because I'm not in the system yet (which means no e-mail), but I'm sure I'll find something to do!  Why sure, I'd be happy to read the org chart, the Who's Who PowerPoint, the daily briefing, and a few other things - hand them over!

Two hours later: I'm boooored.

And so it was.  So it is with most first days working for the government, I imagine.  I did eventually make it into the computer system (it took until 3), but I still don't have e-mail.  Never mind - I'll be somewhere else for the next three days getting trained, and everything should be in order by the time I get back on Friday.  One would hope.

There's really not much to say, so instead of blathering I'll head to bed to get some much-needed rest.  But before I go, a fun fact - did you know that the federal government still uses Microsoft XP?  It's true, and they'll probably use it until it becomes unusable - none of this "upgrade every time something new comes down the pike" business.  Microsoft XP on a desktop - I feel like I'm an undergrad again!

EDIT (Tuesday afternoon): Unless you've been talking to me recently about my YouTube explorations, you may not have figured out why I titled this post in this manner (that is, why I didn't write "working" as I normally would).  This is because I've been on a musical kick; see below.  Should I be embarrassed that I actually like this stuff?

Introducing Church Reviews

 One of the most exciting things about moving to a new city for someone like me is the opportunity to try out new churches.  When I say that, I means "parishes within a given religion" (papistry, in my case), not different religions.  In Chicago I would have had to try different religions in order to sample different churches since there was only one Catholic church within any sort of reasonable distance from my apartment - a church, I feel bound to add, with which I was quite satisfied.  But now that I'm in Washington, I get to start over, looking for a new church.  This time, thanks to functioning public transportation and the far higher degree of walkability (new word) Washington possesses, I've got lots of options.  Just go to Google Maps and put in "Catholic churches near Washington DC" and quite a few pop up.  For someone who grew up in a city with a Catholic church count in the single digits, all those possibilities are tantalizing in ways you non-practicing people probably can't imagine.

What's also interesting is that, given Washington's age, many of these churches have had time to develop coherent identities.  For example, St. Patrick's (where Teddy Kennedy used to go to Mass) is the Irish church, Holy Rosary serves the Italian community, St. Mary Mother of God has a Tridentine Mass (Latin) at 9 on Sunday mornings and a Mass in Cantonese at 11:30.  St. Stephen Martyr's 1:00pm Mass on Sunday afternoon is devoted to the Filipino community and, taking the cake for most diverse, is Sacred Heart (Sagrado Corazon) in Columbia Heights, which has nine Masses each weekend: two in English, five in Spanish, one in Vietnamese, and one in Haitian (which I presume means Haitian Creole, a variant of French).  And, of course, there's always the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle if you're feeling grandiose, or the Basilica of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, if you're feeling even more grandiose (it's the largest Catholic church in the country, and also the tallest building in the District of Columbia - take that, National Cathedral!).  There are enough churches to keep me going for months!

I don't currently intend to visit every Catholic church in the District, although that might be a fun project for later, for the simple reason that I'm just looking for something I can go to on a weekly basis that I will enjoy (as much as one can enjoy church, anyhow); I'm not interested in trekking out to the far reaches of the district for the sake of visiting a church I don't intend to go to regularly (so Anacostia and the far northwest and northeast are out).  But there are at least half a dozen churches I could feasibly walk to, and quite a few more that I could easily get to with the aid of the Metro.  So I intend to do some exploring.  To supplement my own memory I intend to write up reviews of each church, so I can remember which one had the gorgeous interior, which the talented choir, and which the most convenient location (I'll also be able to remember which had the blowhard priest, the horrible modern/folksy music, or - God forbid - acoustic tile ceiling).  I'll score four different categories - Aesthetics, Music, Liturgy, and Location - on five-point scales, then add up the points.  To be fair, I'll probably go to each church a couple of times (that is, to a couple of different Masses) to give different musicians and priests a chance, unless the location or aesthetics rule the church out after the first try.  And I'll chronicle everything here so you, readers, can follow along with my rather odd adventures.

Welcome to My Apartment

I've delayed posting for a couple of days because I wanted to have all I needed to make today's post.  Even so, I'm not going to cover everything, because I've still got organizing to do, but I thought it was high time to introduce my readers to my apartment, since I've been talking about it so much.

Apartment, readers; readers, apartment.

I suppose I should start with a blueprint because, typical of me, I have one.

You'll notice that the text in this picture is backwards; this is because I had to flip the image I acquired from my building's website to show how my apartment is actually laid out - the way this looks with the text flipped is the mirror opposite of my apartment, but this is the right way around.  In this picture up is south, but I didn't think rotating it 180 degrees was really necessary.  The entrance is in the upper right, and the balcony in the lower right.  That boxy thing above the balcony's right side is an air-conditioning/heating unit (as is the boxy thing at the bottom of the dining room), above which is a window (no window in the dining room, alas).  Above the balcony on the left is the sliding door, and the portion of wall to the right of the dining room is window.  Incidentally, that's also where I'm sitting right now, because my desk looks out that window.  The living room window is big and square, but the desk window is tall and thin; I'd be tempted to nickname them Abbott and Costello if I could only remember which of them was which (answer: Abbott's the fat one, but Costello was no taller than his counterpart, so the comparison doesn't really work.  Oh, well.).  And just to settle any questions, the accent wall I painted last weekend is the wall that faces the balcony - that is, the wall whose other side is in the dressing room and bathroom.

Anyhow, today I wanted to introduce you to the living room (living room, readers; readers, living room), because I've spent the past two days decorating it (along with the usual docket of cleaning, organizing, and running errands).  In the past "decorating" for me has primarily meant "putting things on the walls" because furniture has always been provided (dorms and furnished apartment), but although I have to supply my own furniture here, putting things on the walls has actually become more important because I have so little furniture to begin with - with bare walls I feel like I'm living in a super-sized shoebox.  But with things on the walls, it's much more homey.

As you can guess, my decorating is no minor affair, so without further ado, my two newly-decorated walls:

This is the brown accent wall over which I labored so hard on Saturday, and again yesterday.  At floor level you can see the makeshift couch I've put together (six layers of cloth, and it's actually pretty comfortable).  To the left is the one shelf my landlady left in the place (she took down three more above it, which makes about as much sense as...well, never mind).  You can also see that the stuff on this wall has given me a little trouble - I woke up to find two of the maps and one of the pictures on the floor because I hadn't secured them enough (I'm using masking tape, because it's what I have and it's usually gentle on paint and paper alike, but too little and things end up on the floor).  As you can see, Southeast Asia doesn't want to stay on the wall (Taiwan wants its independence), so I'll have to re-tape it in a bit.  None of the six big maps are ones that I've displayed before, so they'll have to be beaten into submission.  Interestingly, the post-World War II World and Africa are the only ones which haven't given me trouble - 1950s Germany and Middle Asia were both on the floor this morning.  (Blow this picture up to see more detail.)

Here's today's effort, the wall to the right of the accent wall, or to the left as you enter the room from the foyer (are you referring back to that blueprint?)  There are fewer small things on this wall because I used most of them up on the accent wall yesterday, but that's just as well, because smaller things mean more work.  Spain, the Heavens, and the world at night are all reappearing after a successful stint in Chicago, but the United States is new (I didn't display it in Chicago because it's so big) and I've retired my old map of Italy, which was falling apart, and replaced it with a Traveler's Guide to Italy version.  Normally I shy away from "traveler's guide to" maps (I have one of the British Isles which I don't like at all), but this one is actually quite well done.  Italy's just so photogenic.

Once I've cleaned up the remaining rooms in my little kingdom I'll have pictures for you (don't you want to see the Black Hole of Calcutta?), but in the meantime, it's back to cleaning and organizing for me!

Security!

I spent the majority of today at the National Archives (above) as a favor for my mother.  She's been doing genealogical research on our family for several years now and needed some post-Civil War pension records which are kept at the archives' central repository here in DC.  Applications for widows' pensions are actually a great source of genealogical information because the widows had to prove who they were and provide lots of information about their marriage, their husband, dependant children, financial circumstances, and so on.  Not all of the documents have survived, of course (one file had been attacked by mice at some point in its existence - what else would take neat semi-circular bites out of the binding?), but I've got somewhere in the neighborhood of three hundred pages of records to send back to Wisconsin.  I'll make a trip to the post office tomorrow.

One of the most noticeable features of the research wing of the archives, which is completely separate from the wing open to tourists, where you can see the original Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence, is the security.  In the past things have been stolen from the National Archives (!), and they don't intend to let it happen again.  All the public areas are under surveillance, there are guards posted at the doors, and every piece of paper you bring in or out is checked to make sure it isn't a document, or that you aren't concealing a document in a sheaf of papers.  This means that every single one of those two-hundred-some pages I printed was scrutinized by a security guard on my way out of the building, and I had to leave most of my things in a locker, because such commonplace items as notebooks aren't allowed in the reading rooms (because one could slip a document inside it).  This did not, however, prevent the security guard from upending my notebook (which had spent the day in a locker, remember) and scrutinizing the scraps of paper which fell out of it (old note of mine - shopping lists, for example).

Now, I understand completely why they do this, and they don't have any reason to trust me, even though I've been cleared to work for the government (more I will not say, except that I have been investigated and found harmless).  But since I signed on to this whole coming-to-Washington-and-working-for-the-government thing, I've been investigated not just by my employer, but also by the real estate agency through which I found my apartment and the co-op which administers it.  Verizon performed a credit check to determine - well, I don't know what, actually; were that many people defaulting on their internet payments or something? - and security at the archives goes through every scrap of paper I bring out, even though my copies of original document were cleared by an archivist before I left the reading room and placed in a locked bag so security wouldn't need to go through them.  I've been background investigated, credit checked, photographed, fingerprinted, carded, badged, scrutinized, interviews, and passed through electromagnetic scanners.  I know and understand why all this has to be done (except for Verizon), but when I think about it too much I begin to feel like a piece of meat being examined for imperfections before it can be packed up and sent to a supermarket, where it will be bought, broiled, and served with twice-baked potatoes and root vegetables.

I suppose the key is to just not think about it.  And not buy potatoes.