Yesterday’s eerily foggy and rainy weather gave way to abundant sunshine this morning, and the Baltimore Block was there to greet the day in fashion. Done up in our finest new clothes, we cleared the cobwebs off our lonely bicycles and made our way to the Abbey Burger Bistro for some early morning footie. The Bistro, which is home to both the Charm City Gooners and one of the most extensive burger menus in town (plus some of the more intriguing milkshakes including the Berger Shake – ingredients = berger cookies, vanilla ice cream, stoli vanilla and godiva liquer), was surprisingly full for the 830 AM kickoff, and the Arsenal supporters left happy after a convincing 3 x 0 victory over an ambitious Aston Villa side who is poised to qualify for next year’s UEFA Champions League.
Per the suggestion of the matron of the Baltimore Block, we next headed to Spoons for a bite to eat. Fueled by coffee, Guinni (see this), bagels, and parfait, we made our way to Fort McHenry. The blue sky looks expansive from the Fort’s grounds, especially on a cloudless day like today. Some interesting tidbits about the Fort which we learned from the informative displays on site include that there are debates among historians as to whether Francis Scott Key, a lawyer (and amateur poet) from Georgetown who was sent to negotiate the release of the town physician of Upper Marlboro, Maryland who had been imprisoned as retribution for local resistance to the British Army, could have possibly seen the gargantuan (30 ft x 42 ft) American flag being raised after the day-long bombardment that he described so eloquently. The Fort has undergone many transformations throughout its history, and was the site of a Confederate prison camp during the Civil War that briefly housed Key’s grandson, a prominent Southern sympathizer in a town which had its fair share of them. The guns which had prevented the British from launching an amphibious assault to take the fort were even turned on the city itself during the Civil War. Although part of the fort’s grounds remains closed for construction, the site remains a must-see for history enthusiasts like myself.
What remains to be seen, however, is whether the Port of Baltimore, which lies just across the water from the Fort, can be resuscitated as a result of a new deal whereby the Maryland Transportation Authority leasing part of the port to a private company. The logic behind the deal, besides the temporary bump in construction-related jobs that the state expects the deal to generate, is that the private firm, Ports of America Group, will be better equipped (i.e. has the capital) to modernize the port in anticipation of the widening of the Panama Canal, expected to be completed in 2014, and the resulting increase in freight volumes. There are already rumblings of discontent at the privatization of a state resource, and it will be interesting to track this story as it plays out over the next 5-10 years.
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