What's in Dave's Head

Donna and I are fortunate to live so close to so many interesting, varied and fun places. From our home, half a tank of gas is more than enough for a day trip to Annapolis, Baltimore, or Washington, D.C. and back. Or you can visit Civil War battlefields, pre-Revolutionary towns, hiking trails, museums, parks, lakes and mountains.   A full tank of gas gets you to the beach and back, or to Philadelphia or New York. Donna at Carroll Creek, Frederick Frederick, Maryland is a beautiful 45-minute drive out I-70 from us. I grew up in Rockville, and Frederick was considered just a little farm town. Inhabitants were called “Frednecks.” I don’t think I ever went there until Donna and I decided recently to explore it. Painting on an outside building wall Market Street in downtown is an attractive collection of restaurants and eclectic shops and boutiques where you can buy everything from faux retro lunchboxes and signs (“If life gives you a lemon, you just tell that lemon ...

Harper’s Ferry, in West Virginia, is a study in confluence. The town is situated on a point at the joining of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers, and lies just where three states abut. The town’s history is a fascinating linkage between the American Revolution and the U.S. Civil War. Even the town today mixes government and private enterprise: There is a dividing line smack in the middle of town, one side of which is owned by the U.S. Park Service, the other by private land owners. But the most compelling story of Harper’s Ferry’s centrality to the mingling of powerful forces is its locus at the violent intersection of slavery, state’s rights, and human freedom. Donna and I made the beautiful, hour-long drive to Harper’s Ferry yesterday, out I-70 West and then Rte. 340 West. You wind along the Potomac River on Rte. 340 and in the space of five minutes you pass through Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia. The road is on a bluff and you can look down at the scores of brightly covere...

Events over the past 30 days – and reactions to them – have cast a light on simmering tensions over attitudes toward race and gender. On June 16, announcing his presidential bid, real-estate developer and TV celebrity Donald Trump criticized Mexico and immigrants who come to the U.S. illegally. "They're bringing drugs," he said. "They're bringing crime. They're rapists." On June 18, a gunman – allegedly one Dylan Roof – shot and killed nine black church members, including a state senator, at a Bible study in Charleston, South Carolina. On June 27, the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 ruling overturned state bans on gay marriage . And on July 8, a federal judge ruled to cancel the Washington Redskins’ trademark registration, stating the name denigrates Native Americans. The high court’s decision legitimizing intra-gender marriage (Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Alito and Thomas dissented) is, in my view, similar to the over...

Donna and I took off for the weekend, to one of my favorite places, Maryland’s Eastern Shore, known as The Land of Pleasant Living. From our home in Columbia, you cross three bridges along the way— the Severn River Bridge,   the 4.5-mile Chesapeake Bay Bridge, and finally the Kent Narrows Bridge, after which you are officially on the Eastern Shore. Each takes you further back in time, to a slower, less crowded, quieter place. It’s not the horse-and-buggy lifestyle of the Amish in Pennsylvania, but it’s certainly more serene than life in the midst of the Baltimore-Washington corridor. You are among farms that date to the 1600s and 1700s, flat horizons broken by lone, wood-frame houses and the occasional tree line. There are reminders of civilization: a cell tower here, a grain elevator there, and, increasingly, encroaching housing developments. When you go, pay attention to the names. The towns: Sudlersville, Galena, Snow Hill. The narrow strips of land between the scads of...

Saturday, March 14 was the annual St. Patrick’s Day pub crawl in Baltimore hosted by my daughter Eileen, her husband Andrew Swanekamp, and their friends Ryan and Eric Pfoutz. Our route map (doesn't help) We start the festivities with an Irish breakfast at the Swanekamps. Our group this year numbered 15. After a hearty breakfast and a toast to the patron saint of Ireland, our first stop was the same as last year—Cardinal Tavern, whose owner Larry always welcomes us with open arms (and why not?). As always, Eileen makes up detailed maps of our route for the day. Unfortunately, despite very clear directions, many of us are not capable of using the map to inform our walking. Most assuredly not after the intake of adult beverages. Still, we arrived at our destinations without losing anyone. Erin, Kate, Donna, Jack Cardinal makes a wonderful bloody Mary, the glass rimmed with salt and Old Bay, the tomato juice, worcestershire and Tabasco enriched by a generous pour...

As we approach St. Patrick’s Day, I thought I’d do a little digging into the making of saints. Legend has it that St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, was the first to explain the holy trinity with a shamrock, and that he drove the snakes from Ireland.   In fact, he was not born in Ireland. He was probably born in Wales or Britain. He was kidnapped by pirates as a boy and sold into slavery in Ireland. He escaped after about six years, and fled to France, where he joined a monastery and studied religion for years before returning to Ireland, where he converted many Pagans to Christianity. A link to an interesting website about St. Patrick is here . The making of saints According to Wikipedia, today there are 810 canonized Roman Catholic saints, from Abadiu of Antinoe to Zygmunt Gorazdowski. The road to sainthood begins with the   Congregation for the Causes of Saints ,   an administrative body of the Church that oversees the process that leads first...

Donna and Kate and I had dinner last night with our daughter Eileen and her husband Andrew at their apartment in Baltimore’s Brewer’s Hill neighborhood. Andrew’s parents, John and Diane, were there, as were Andrew’s aunt and uncle, Elaine and Dean. After much bourbon, followed by a spectacular lasagna dinner and much wine, Dean and I were talking about his work as an independent video producer. He was talking about work he recently did for a client, interviewing owners of car dealerships. Many car dealerships are family owned businesses and are passed from generation to generation. One of the things that struck Dean was the amount of community outreach many of these families do. It makes sense from a business standpoint: As you contribute to the community, you build your network of potential customers. But it’s much more than that. Many of these family businesses contribute to the community for the purpose of, well, contributing to the community. After taping an interview ...