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Last month was there was this heatwave that has now been noted as The Hottest July on Record Ever. It affected many countries all over the world. Even where I live there were days when the heat went as high as 95 degrees Fahrenheit.
It got so hot that one day I decided to make my first return trip to North Beach in two years. I also decided to devote an episode to my ongoing web series The Baltimore-Washington, DC That Tourists Rarely See to that small beach town on the Chesapeake Bay. You can now view it on TikTok, Clapper, Instagram, and YouTube.
You can also watch a playlist of previous episodes in my ongoing series below.
I also shot a few still photos while I was there because it was lovely outside even if it was very hot and humid outside. I really liked the cloud formation in the next picture below.
Here’s a faraway shot of a boat on the Chesapeake Bay.
North Beach now has a Little Free Library box, which is convenient if you forget to bring a book to the beach.
Here’s a butterfly on one of the flowers that were growing on the edge of a local resident’s property.
The last two photos are of some dollhouse furniture that I shot at the Bayside History Museum.
Drone disguised as hummingbird captures incredible footage of monarch butterfly swarm.
Yes, giant technicolor squirrels actually roam the forests of southern India.
Major beer company begins using biodegradable 6-pack rings that feed fish.
Impossibly tiny doodles fill sketchbook pages with surreal optical illusions.
Japanese artist transforms old Amazon cardboard boxes into amazing sculptures.
A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement.
How a former neo-Nazi makes amends for the past.
Watch a rare film featuring Monet, Renoir, Rodin, and Degas.
A few weeks ago I decided to go to the Tidal Basin in Washington, DC in order to check out the cherry blossom trees in full bloom. I decided to go downtown despite the fact that The National Cherry Blossom Festival have been cancelled for the second year in a row so the cherry blossom trees are the only attractions these days. But I still remember what happened last year when people still converged on the Tidal Basin without wearing masks or practicing social distancing. The city officials have since mandated mask-wearing when going out anywhere and President Joe Biden has issued an executive order requiring masks on all federally property so I felt comfortable with taking a risk. I had wanted to go on Holy Thursday since it’s during the week (I thought there would be fewer people during the week than on the weekend, especially since the coming weekend was both Easter Weekend and the end of the Passover season) but it kept on raining off and on throughout the day.
I was also in a good mood to check out some springtime scenery because my $1,400 COVID-19 stimulus check from the federal government had just arrived so I had some extra money in my pocket.
Good Friday was sunny but it was cold. (The temperature rose no higher than 40 degrees F.) I thought it would be a good day to go out because I expected fewer people due to the cold. I arrived before lunchtime and I was proven right. I walked around a little bit until I found a bench to sit on. I ate the lunch that I carried with me from home then I started to walk along the Tidal Basin. I took a few pictures of the blooming cherry blossoms.
The Jefferson Memorial is still there alongside the blooming cherry blossom trees.
I noticed that the outside of the Jefferson Memorial was undergoing some king of a renovation.
At one point I walked over to the Flower Library where I saw a variety of tulips in full bloom.
At first the crowds weren’t too bad but then more people began to converge on the Tidal Basin. My body was becoming stiff due in large part to the cold. (Like I wrote earlier, the temperature didn’t rise above the low 40’s.) I was frustrated because I have memories of the past when I used to be able to walk around the Tidal Basin with no problem at all. (Although even back then periodically I took sitting breaks.) Even though the vast majority of people were wearing masks, I was beginning to feel wary of the whole scene. I took a couple of people at people checking out the cherry blossoms and the Flower Library.
I had brought my two small Disney Nuimos with me. I decided to carry them in a recycled plastic grocery store bag. I had the idea of taking some really cool pictures of Stitch and Angel climbing around on the cherry blossom trees. What I didn’t realize was that the plastic bag had developed hole in the bottom and Stitch fell out. I merrily continued to walk in the cold with two stiffening legs while being blissfully unaware of what happened. It wasn’t until I saw Angel fall out of the bag and on the ground that I realized what had happened. The side seam of the bag was completely torn and Stitch was completely gone.
I put Angel in my purse and I tried backtracking to where I had gone before in the hopes of finding Stitch. But I was starting to deal with my increasingly stiff legs and hoards of people converging on the Tidal Basin. I was so physically exhausted that I decided to give up on finding Stitch and just head home. After all I received my stimulus check so I had the option of buying a new Stitch Nuimos. The one thing I learned from this recent adventure is that, from now on, I will carry my Nuimos in cloth bags only because they are sturdier than plastic bags and I would rather not lose any more Nuimos since they tend to be a bit on the expensive side. (Disney Nuimos costs $17.99 each and their outfits start at $12.99.)
As I returned to the Greenbelt Metro I saw that someone had started a Little Free Pantry, which is based on the Little Free Library, except it deals with food and toiletries instead of books.
A few years ago I did an animation called The March of Liberty. I made it during the weekly animation meetup that used to be held at the then-called Makerspace 125 (which later changed its name to Greenbelt Makerspace before it closed its doors for good back in 2019). Here’s the original animation below.
You can read my original post about the making of that animation right here. In any case I decided to enter it into the 2017 Light City festival in Baltimore after I saw on Facebook a call for entries of short films that would be shown on the giant screen during that festival. It was accepted and I made the trip where I sat in the cold spring night for two hours until my animation was finally shown. At that point I decided to pull out my smartphone and record myself reacting to seeing my own animation on the big screen.
The following day I uploaded it on to YouTube and I wrote this blog post about my excitement of seeing my own animation being shown on a big screen. I also remember posting the link on social media so my friends could see it. Phil Shapiro, one of my friends who is also my former housemate (he moved out shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic arrived) was the one person who was most impressed by my reaction video. In fact, he would mention it to me every now and then about how he loved the excitement I showed in that video.
I was flattered that he was such a fan of my reaction video, even though what I did was no different than the hundreds of other reaction videos that one can find on YouTube. The reaction video was originally pioneered by a YouTuber known as nuttymadam3575, who was such a major fan of the Twilight books that she used to record her reactions to seeing trailers to the movie adaptations of those books, such as this one where she reacted to an online trailer for an upcoming movie that was based on the final book in the Twilight series, Breaking Dawn, which went viral back in 2011.
Phil was really amazed by my own reaction video so I was flattered that someone had loved one of my videos that much, even though I had literally filmed my reaction on the fly with absolutely no preparation whatsoever. I was very spontaneous when I recorded my reaction to seeing The March of Liberty on the giant screen. He kept on saying that he loved it even after I had moved on from what I did at Light City.
A few days ago I got an email from Phil saying that he was giving a virtual presentation to the New Tech Meetup of Central Pennsylvania on something that he’s currently trying to pioneer. Feeling inspired by both the Little Free Library and the fact that many movie theaters across the United States have closed down due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, he had an idea of doing something called a Little Free Movie Theater. Basically it would be an outdoor film festival that would focus on video work done by local filmmakers. This Little Free Movie Theater would be shown on the side of a building and admission would be free to the general public. He attempted to do this recently and his talk was on what his experiences were and what mistakes he made along the way.
A few weeks before his talk I got an email from Phil where he was expressing his desire to make his idea of a Little Free Movie Theater become a reality. He suggested that I email an acquaintance of mine who is involved in a nonprofit public access television organization about his idea because he needed some help. I sent an email but I never heard back from that acquaintance. When I heard about Phil’s upcoming talk with the Central Pennsylvania group, I decided to sign up for it just so I could hear him speak about it.
Last night I saw Phil give a virtual slideshow called Beyond Little Free Libraries: The Little Free Movie Theater, which anyone can now access right here. When he got to the second slide, he used my Light City reaction video as an example and he admitted that my reaction video gave him the inspiration to consider starting The Little Free Movie Theater because he was so amazed by my reaction video that he wanted to give others in the community the chance for them to see their work being shown on an outdoor screen.
I was pretty speechless. Here I was thinking that I had made a quick video where I reacted to seeing my own animation that I thought was basically a throwaway video that I only made because I wanted a memento of that amazing highlight of my life that I could go back and view if I ever started to doubt myself as a creative person. I honestly thought that only those who knew me personally would ever want to see it. I never realized that my video had inspired Phil to come up with something like The Little Free Movie Theater. As the third slide (which came after the one that had featured my reaction video) stated:
Consider – as a result of the pandemic, many movie theaters have closed.
Maybe we need to re-invent the movie theater on the micro level – with more of a focus on showcasing local creativity.
Every neighborhood has “hidden figures,” people whose creative talents are insufficiently appreciated.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1CpmhjyyaXF8wsokAvoc3llf2FAhFuqD5KOKzhQ7mQ6M/edit#slide=id.p3
Anyway, I would suggest viewing his slides for more information about The Little Free Movie Theater (including the equipment he used for his prototype, what he thought worked, and what mistakes he made). Last night I found out that I had become a catalyst for someone else’s idea that he’s trying to make a reality. It’s too soon to know if this Little Free Movie Theater idea will actually take off or not but I’m pretty flattered that one of my videos had provided such an inspiration. It all goes to show that sometimes you can be an influence on other people without even trying.
I once had a housemate named Phil Shapiro who’s really a big open source enthusiast. One of his biggest passions is taking an old computer, installing Linux Mint and other free open source applications on it, and giving it to a low-income family. He’s been doing it for many years. In fact, The Washington Post once did an article about him.
Shortly before he moved into my house he became concerned about me taking my MacBook out in public because he said that there’s a chance that it can be swiped by someone no matter how many precautions I take. He decided to give me an old Dell Inspiron laptop with Linux Mint installed on it. He encouraged me to use it when going out in public. He even had the idea that I take the Linux laptop to the local library, patrons would see me openly using Linux and people would be curious and maybe they would want to use Linux themselves. (Of course this was before the Coronavirus pandemic arrived.)
This Dell Inspiron was a bit on the bulky side compared with my MacBook. But the one thing that was bad about it was that it didn’t have a functioning battery. I learned about this the hard way when I had participated in the Greenbelt Spring Maker Festival in 2018. I originally intended to use the Dell laptop to show a continuous slideshow of my drawings and paintings. I assembled the slideshow in iMovie on the Mac, exported out as a video, then ported over to the Dell laptop. It worked fine on the Linux side. I went through the effort of charging the battery on the Dell laptop the night before.
On the day of the festival, I brought my Dell laptop to set up at my table only to learn, to my horror, that the battery did not work at all. I had indicated in my application that I wouldn’t need a power outlet because I had assumed that I would use the laptop battery, which was completely nonfunctional. I was unable to find an empty power outlet that was close to my table so I had to quickly drive home, pick up my MacBook, and use that for the slideshow.
Phil later admitted that he routinely buys laptops with dead batteries because the prices are so cheap. I wished that he had warned me about this before the festival.
In any case I ended up rarely using that laptop because not all places with public wifi have power outlets available to hook the laptop with using the power cord.
Recently I was doing some spring cleaning when I found that laptop. By then I had forgotten about that laptop because I have a MacBook and a Kano laptop that has Windows 10 installed. I realized that I really didn’t need a third laptop. I briefly thought about selling it but then I remembered that dead battery and I knew that it would be a hard computer to sell. I tried booting it up and it went to the Linux Mint opening screen then just froze. In fact I tried booting it twice with the same result. I have no idea what was going on since the computer had loaded Linux Mint fine in the past.
So I had a computer that was unsellable because of a dead battery and having trouble with booting up. Yet I really wanted to get rid of it.
So I came up with an idea. There’s a Little Free Library box in Roosevelt Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. That town was originally founded during the Great Depression as an experiment in cooperative living. You can look up Greenbelt’s history on the Wikipedia for more details but the people who live there have a certain mindset where you try to avoid throwing away anything as much as possible. In addition, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is located in Greenbelt and many residents are employed there.
So I gathered up the laptop, put it in a cloth bag, wrote a note, and attached it to the bag. Then I left it at the Little Free Library box.
The note I wrote had this explanation.
Free PC Laptop. Has Linux Mint installed but Windows can always be re-installed. Has a power cord but the battery is dead so you’ll need to plug it into an outlet. Free to a good home!
I was curious to see if anyone would take it. I left the laptop there then went back home. Twenty-four hours later I returned to the same Little Free Library box only to find that someone had taken it. So that laptop now has a new home and I have one less item cluttering up my home. I am totally happy!
Last year someone in my neighborhood had set up a Little Free Library next to one of the bus stops. This year someone had added a community herb garden where anyone can feel free to pick the flowers and herbs that were grown. I finally got around to taking a photo last month when the weather was still relatively mild so I could photograph the garden in all of its green glory.
On March 29, 2020 friend of mine had sent me where he said that someone in Takoma Park was looking for art supplies because she was starting a free art supply box called the Takoma Art Library that was modeled after the Little Free Library except this box would be full of art supplies that anyone can take and use in his/her creative projects. I was in the process of decluttering my home since we were encouraged to stay home. I was going to gradually gather excess art supplies that I really don’t need any longer and donate them.
But then the next day the governor of Maryland issued an executive order requiring people to stay home and to not make any trips unless it was necessary (basically to get food and medicine). While we had been under a stay home order for the past few weeks, this new executive order had the force of law. Anyone caught making a trip that wasn’t considered essential would face either jail time or a stiff fine.
Since dropping off art supplies somewhere would not be considered an essential trip, I had to quickly gather whatever excess art supplies I had lying around at home and get going before the new executive order would take effect at 8 p.m. that night.
So I arrived at the Takoma Art Library where I quickly dropped off the supplies.
Afterwards I decided to head into downtown Takoma Park where I would walk around for a bit. I shot a window display of a store that’s now closed because it’s not considered to be an essential business.
Everywhere I walked there were signs from stores indicating that they were closed and signs from restaurants and bars giving information on its takeout and delivery options (since in-person dining has been banned).
I walked past the Roscoe the Rooster memorial where someone had put a face mask and a rubber glove on the chicken statue.
There were some people walking around that day but the streets of Takoma Park were mostly empty, just like nearly everywhere else since the Coronavirus struck. Afterwards I decided to leave that area.
I went to Wegmans near Landover because I needed to pick up a few items and I felt like eating one of its packaged sushi meals for dinner. Wegmans has long had a variety of self-service hot and cold bars where people can purchase freshly made salads, chicken wings, soup, various types of Chinese and Mexican meals, spaghetti, and more. Except when I arrived I saw that Wegmans had shut all of it down due to the Coronavirus.
Wegmans also have a self-service bulk bin where people can pick up candy, nuts, and other types of edible goodies. Wegmans have also closed that done as well.
I saw the effects of several weeks of constant panic buying. There were plenty of half-empty shelves as people were buying tons of food faster than Wegmans can restock.
At least the sushi area had packaged sushi available for takeout, so it was all good.
I had quite a day on March 10, 2020. It was the early days of the Coronavirus, before nearly everything had shut down. I was scheduled to go on a job interview at Dupont Circle but I also wanted to go to the joint meeting of the Prince George’s and Montgomery County chapters of the Poor People’s Campaign that was scheduled at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Rockville. This meeting started at 6:30 pm and my job interview was in the early afternoon. So I decided to drive my car to the Rockville Metro station so I could go to Dupont Circle (where the job interview was held) while also be able to make it to the meeting without having to slog through the notoriously horrible rush hour traffic on the Capital Beltway.
I did the job interview thing, took a few photos of the area, and ate an early dinner at a local Panera Bread before I hopped on the Metro to Rockville. From there it was only a 10-minute commute to the church, which was pretty nice.
Here are a few shots of the church with the Poor People’s Campaign banners.
We basically discussed the upcoming March on Washington, which is scheduled to be held on June 20, 2020. (We held the meeting before the Coronavirus became a major pandemic and everything began to shut down. That March on Washington is still on as of this writing.) The meeting ended with a tribute to a member of both the Poor People’s Campaign and the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Rockville named Alonzo Smith, who passed away just a few days ago from leukemia. I saw Alonzo a couple of times at various Poor People’s Campaign events but I didn’t know him very well. I’m sorry that he didn’t live a little while longer so I could not only have gotten to know him better but also so he could’ve had a chance to participate in the March on Washington.
Someone performed a Bob Dylan song as a tribute to Alonzo at the end of the meeting. Here’s the video I shot of that performance.
As I was walking back to the car after the meeting ended, I noticed that the UU Congregation of Rockville had its own Little Free Library.
Since that meeting the national Poor People’s Campaign has decided to hold its big March on Washington as a digital-only event due to the Coronavirus pandemic. This should be interesting. Only time will tell whether having a digital-only event will be as noticeable and effective as having an actual protest on the Mall. But desperate times call for desperate measures so I think the Poor People’s Campaign made the right decision to try this digital protest experiment as a way of protecting vulnerable people from getting seriously ill and possibly dying.
Husband spends two years planting thousands of flowers for his blind wife to smell.
Pathological power: the danger of governments led by narcissist and psychopaths.
Why the floppy disk is still used today.
Meet the Jew who built 5,300 schools for black children in the 1900s Deep South.
Brooklyn-based artist Bisa Butler uses African fabrics to form quilted portraits of black figures.
Artist uses 100,000 banned books to build a full-sized Parthenon at historic Nazi book burning site.
Greta Thunberg isn’t the only young climate activist you need to know.
If Germany atoned for the Holocaust, the US can pay reparations for slavery.
I ended up spending a lot of time in Southern Maryland during the latter phase of this project that I was working on for the Census Bureau as part of the preparations for next year’s 2020 census. I’ve especially got to know La Plata Plaza really well because I kept on going there to rest before I either went on my next assignment or make the nearly 90-minute commute back home. (La Plata Plaza is a typical shopping center that has a Target, Safeway, Panera Bread, Dairy Queen, and a few other chain fast food outlets. It basically has the same stores/restaurants that the shopping malls and shopping centers closer to my home have.)
I also had my share of drama ranging from a broken down car in hot 95-degree weather and being threatened with getting shot to driving my car into a grassy dip so I couldn’t move the car either forward or backward. At least Cobb Island was relatively drama-free but it was still a long trip to get there.
On September 18 I was sent to La Plata yet again where I worked a few of what the Census Bureau called blocks (but these “blocks” are really rural farmlands where each house is literally a mile or more apart) near the La Plata Plaza. On the last assignment I got my first taste of how the U.S. doesn’t have full cell phone coverage everywhere.
I was relying on my phone’s Google Maps app to get around since I didn’t know the La Plata area too well. I discovered that driving on the highway was no big deal. But once you get off the highway and on a side road, it’s a different story. The further you get on a side road, the more likely your cell phone signal will completely drop.
So here I was trying to get to a rural area and I couldn’t get there because I couldn’t use Google Maps because I had no cell phone signal. I decided to just give up and drive back home early.
I decided to come up with Plan B, which used to be a common way of getting directions online back in the 1990’s and 2000’s before GPS became so prevalent. I went to my personal laptop, logged into Google Maps online, looked up the address of the first house I needed to visit, then printed out the directions on paper.
On the following day, September 19, I was prepared. I decided to drive down to La Plata early and chill out in the downtown area before trying that rural area located about 10 miles away once again. I took some photos while I walked around the area.
I initially arrived at the La Plata Train Station Museum, which is only open during certain days in the summer. Based on the size of the building, I don’t think it’s a very large museum.
I just walked around the area and shot some more photos. The weather was warm and sunny. While it was in the high 80’s, the humidity was relatively low so it was very pleasant to walk outside.
I walked past the Island Music Company, which sells all kinds of musical instruments. It has a really cool mural painted on the side.
I saw several Little Free Library boxes that were set up by the local Rotary Club.
I brought a bagged lunch with me on this trip. I sat on this teal-colored bench while I ate my lunch, which was outside of this building that will be the future location of a restaurant that will open sometime in the future.
After I finished eating lunch I walked around some more. I was suddenly in the mood for some dessert so I decided to check out the Charles Street Bakery.
I ordered this cupcake that had this really pretty floral design on top. I couldn’t resist photographing that cupcake from all angles before I ate it. The cupcake had a chocolate bottom and it tasted delicious.
The Charles Street Bakery had all kinds of scrumptious goodies ranging from cakes to pies to cookies to pastries. If it weren’t for the fact that it was still relatively warm outside and I had to worry about keeping baked goods in a warm car, I would have purchased a cake or pie.
The decor of the bakery was very homey and inviting.
Once I left the bakery I used the printed instructions to get to the rural area that I needed to go. Once again I lost my cell phone signal. I ended up relying on an already downloaded map on my work computer in order to get around and work the other houses that were in my assigned area. I had to literally focus on which roads I turned on so I could easily get back on the highway once I finished my work. I managed to complete the job and maneuver my way back to Route 301 without a working cell phone.
I returned to La Plata Plaza just so I could take a break and transmit my work back to the Census Bureau servers. I only had one assignment so I thought I would be going home but when I transmitted my completed work, I got another assignment immediately, which surprised me. It was to an area that was located just five miles away from La Plata Plaza and it was near the College of Southern Maryland.
Since my next assignment was so close, I decided to work on it that day. I also figured that since the area was near a college I would be more likely to maintain cell phone coverage. I was right about that because I only lost my cell phone signal once and that was at a house that was furthest away from the college and it happened to be the last house I needed to work before I could close out that assignment. Getting back to Route 301 was also relatively easy because I soon got my cell phone signal back when I left that house.
That unexpected surprise assignment was the last assignment of the day so I could make the long trip back home.
Sagittarius Dolly 
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