Flowering Trees

Coming down to the South, we saw hundreds of flowering trees. The transformation from Winter to Spring took us only a few hours on a freeway. It will still be many days in Annapolis, Maryland before Spring begins with flowers.

Camillia

I found this lovely Camillia in my son's front yard. We could never grow a flower like this in Arizona where I lived for so many years. I had to come to Georgia to see such a beautiful flower. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Washington Monument with the Sun

I think the best place to take this photo would have been in the middle of a very busy Washington, D.C. street. But this one came out just fine. I have been taking all my photos with my iPhone 8 plus lately if you have been wondering about the various shots. It is certainly a lot more convenient to carry a smartphone than a camera. Especially one that weighs about ten pounds. There are a few shots I miss because of the limitations of the camera, but I make a lot more because I am carrying it everywhere I go. Oh, the building is the Smithsonian National History Museum.

The Glow from Annapolis

At first, I thought that this might be the rising moon, but closer inspection showed that it was banks of bright lights. It turns out to be the Naval Academy Football Stadium. But this turned out to be an unusual photo even knowing that it wasn't the moon rising.

The Promise of Early Spring

Due to a family emergency, we traveled from Annapolis, Maryland to Georgia. The trip was like seeing a time-lapse movie of the change of the seasons. By the time we got to Georgia, the temperatures were in the 70s and the trees were blooming and leafing out. The blue skies and balmy weather helped to ameliorate the serious reason we were there.

Swampy Reflections

Over the years, I have been fascinated with certain photographic views. One of these is the patterns made by light reflecting off of standing water. This pattern comes from a Florida swamp. Don't get the idea that my photos necessarily represent where I am located at any given time. I make it a habit of going back into my archives to find photos that I didn't use at the time. But if you see a number of photos from a specific location, you can assume I just made a trip to that location.

Duckweed

Many plants that are considered to be invasive weeds are beautiful. Duckweed is usually classified in the Lemnoideae family. Here is a description of the plant from Wikipedia: Lemnoideae:

These plants are very simple, lacking an obvious stem or leaves. The greater part of each plant is a small organized "thallus" or "frond" structure only a few cells thick, often with air pockets (aerenchyma) that allow it to float on or just under the water surface. Depending on the species, each plant may have no root or may have one or more simple rootlets.

Snow among the ruins 2

This is a smelter ruin in the Eureka Mining District of western Utah. It was a cloudy, cold day and the colors were subdued. The concrete building is so weathered that it looks like a natural outcrop of rock.

Benjamin Franklin in Front of the Trump Hotel

Washington, D.C. has a lot more statutes and such than we are used to in the west. We like to look at the statutes but many of them are of people we do not recognize. It was nice to see one for someone we did recognize. This particular statue was in front of the Trump Hotel.

The Steamboat

This is Elbaite with quartz and albite from the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History NMNH. It takes some imagination to call this mineral specimen "The Steamboat," but that is its name. The mineral collection at the National Museum is spectacular but not very large. I am guessing that most people want to see the Hope Diamond, but that is just one of many more beautiful and interesting minerals in the collection.

Batmobile

The Batmobile has gone through several iterations and will probably go through quite a few more. This is the classic one from the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. Quoting from the Museum website:

One of the most arresting renderings of the vigilante’s vehicle graced the eerie art-deco Gotham of Tim Burton’s 1989 film Batman. For the next three years, the full-scale Batmobile seen in that movie is on view at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, on loan from Warner Bros.
Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/what-batmobile-tells-us-about-american-dream-180967846/#ys7R3rceeq5BAa4l.99

Oscar the Grouch

The interesting thing about the National Museum of American History is the variety of the exhibits. Here is Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street. Sesame Street used to be a staple of TV fare, but I think that it is less accepted now. In the background is a recording from Mr. Rogers. They both represent a time that is long past with the intervention of the internet.

Espalier Prunning

Pruning fruit trees is an art. The method of pruning shown above is called "espalier pruning." By doing this, the gardener maximizes the space available, creates a decorative display and maximizes the amount of fruit produced in the space allocated. These espaliered trees were in a garden on the Mount Vernon estate in Virginia. Here is a link to an article about "How to Espalier Fruit Trees."

Mount Vernon, Virginia

Our short trip to Mount Vernon was accompanied by cold, rainy weather and about 20,000 of our closest friends. We went on Presidents Day when the entry was free. We had an interesting time with a Revolutionary War Era military display and a short tour of the mansion itself. Despite the appearance of this photo, the whole area was filled with people in lines waiting to see the attractions.

George Washington Planted this Tree

On a visit to Mount Vernon recently, we saw this huge Tulip Poplar tree that was reported to have been planted by George Washington in 1785. Here is a quote from MountVernon.org about the tree planting:

On January 12, 1785, Washington recorded in his diary, “Road to my Mill Swamp, where my Dogue run hands were at work & to other places in search of the sorts of trees and shrubs I shall want for my walks, groves, & wildernesses.” On his first tree-tagging trip he found elm, ash, maple, poplar, sassafras, dogwood, fringe and redbud trees. From January of 1785 until the middle of 1786, his diaries are full of his plant explorations and details of his landscaping accomplishments. He planted aspen trees along the serpentine avenues, dogwood, maple, poplar, and mulberry in the shrubberies, and wagon-loads of Virginia pine in the wilderness areas. Washington’s excitement with his progress is evident in his diary entries, and with great satisfaction he recorded on March 3, 1785, “Employed myself the greatest part of the day in pruning and shaping the young plantation of Tree & Shrubs.”

The tree is tagged with a metal plate with the note that the tree was planted by George Washington. 

A Cloudy, Foggy Day in Washington, DC

We haven't been too lucky yet with our weather while here on the East Coast. Washington, D.C. has been no exception. It has either been windy and cold or raining and cold. This was an accidental shot and entirely unplanned. I had no idea I would get this perspective of the U.S. Capital and the other buildings.

Nauvoo Temple Sunstone

This is an original Sunstone from the Nauvoo Temple. Here is a brief explanation of the temple from the Church History Museum in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The walls of the temple featured 30 pilasters, each with a moonstone at the base and a sunstone at the top. A sunstone served as the capital, or head, of each pilaster. A star stone was placed above each sunstone. The order of the stones recalled the woman described in Revelation 12, “clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars” (Rev. 12:1). When the original temple was under construction, the New York Spectator published the following review of the temple sunstones in an article about Nauvoo: “On the top, not far from fifty feet high, is an ideal representation of the rising sun, which is a monstrous prominent stone face, the features of which are colossal and singularly expressive. . . . These all stand out on the stone boldly. Their finish is admirable and as complete as any of the best specimens of chiseling on the Girard College at Philadelphia.”

 Continuing:

The first sunstone was installed on September 23, 1844.7 The original sunstones were actually two pieces of stone. The lower, face portion was carved from one piece of limestone, and the trumpets from another. The sunstones were six feet high and six feet six inches wide at the top.

This is one of the amazing artifacts in the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

The Famous Apple II Computer

Who would have imagined that the Apple II computer would start one of the world's richest companies? In addition, who would imagine that the Apple II computer would be on display in the
Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History NMNH in Washington, D.C. What this does is make me think I am getting really old, if the things I used when I was an adult with a family are now museum pieces. I am still typing away on an Apple computer and probably this one will be in a museum someday also.

Tucson Ring Meteorite

Tucson Ring Meteorites

There are two meteorites in this photo. One is the famous Tucson Ring Meteorite and the other is it companion slab. Quoting from Marment Meteorites:

Two masses of the Tucson meteorite were found in 1850, but native people must have known about these masses of iron for centuries before that. One was the ring-shaped Irwin-Ainsa mass, the second the paired, bean-shaped, Carleton mass. The meteorites consist of 92% iron with 8% silicate inclusions, which is very high for an iron meteorite. Tucson may be the result of an impact between an iron asteroid and a stony asteroid. The parent body of the Tucson meteorite cooled rapidly, so there is no Widmanstätten pattern present. The Tucson meteorite is classified as an ungrouped ataxite iron with silicate inclusions.

Each of the Tucson masses has its unique history. The first recovered and the larger of the two is the 688 kg ring-shaped mass, also called the Ring or Signet, Ainsa and Irwin-Ainsa Meteorite at various times in history: The earliest account of the meteorites is by a Sonoran official, Jose Francisco Velasco, who says several iron masses were found between Tucson and Tubac, in Puerto de los Muchachos and at the foot of Sierra de la Madera. One mass, he said, was taken to Tucson. Later, the second known mass, Carleton, was also transported from the mountains to Tucson. Both masses had been used as anvils in blacksmith shops.The Mexican troops left Tucson in 1856, leaving behind the famous meteorites. In 1860, the Smithsonian Institution asked Lieutenant Irwin, an army physician and amateur naturalist in the area, to go to Tucson to recover the Tucson Ring meteorite. He found it, pulled it out of the ground, and entrusted it to a man who was to go to the coast and deliver it by ship to the museum. The man carried out his mission, but told the Smithsonian that his great-grandfather had discovered the meteorite. The family name, Ainsa, was given to the meteorite. Irwin attempted for many years to re-establish the truth before the deception was finally recognized.

 I took this photo in the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History NMNH.

Aquamarine Self Portrait

This is an accidental self-portrait (selfie) standing in front of the Dom Pedro aquamarine in the
Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History NMNH. Here is a Wikipedia description of the aquamarine.

The Dom Pedro aquamarine is the world's largest cut aquamarine gem. It was cut from a crystal originally weighing approximately 100 pounds (45 kg) and measuring more than 3 feet (0.91 m) in length. The stone was mined in Pedra Azul, in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil around 1980, and named after the Brazilian emperors Pedro I and Pedro II. The blue-green gemstone was cut by Bernd Munsteiner into an obelisk form weighing 10,363 carats. The finished dimensions measure 14 inches (36 cm) tall by 4 inches (10 cm) wide. The jewel was donated to the Smithsonian Institution by Jane Mitchell and Jeffery Bland. It is housed in the National Museum of Natural History's Janet Annenberg Hooker Hall of Geology.

Old Genealogists Never Die

If you were digitizing old records for more than eight hours a day, you would not think this was funny.

Return to the Endless Summer

Sorry about the reflection. This is a nostalgic return to the Endless Summer movie with an original poster in the National Museum of American History. The strange costume on the right with the violin is the original outfit worn by Lindsey Sterling for her Crystallize video on YouTube.com. Her violin has had better days but it did make her a lot of money. The dulcimer is from Jeanne Richie.

Very Remarkable Swordfish Skeleton

Another visit to Washington, D.C. resulted in a tramp through the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History NMNH, We saw a lot of remarkable things but this was the strangest. These are mostly the bones of a swordfish. Very remarkable.

Hemmings or Campeche Chair

This chair in the Hammond-Harwood House in Annapolis, Maryland is said to have been made by the enslaved John Hemmings for Thomas Jefferson. Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the chair.

The mahogany Campeachy chair that Hemmings fashioned for Jefferson between 1809 and 1819 was sold to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation in 1970.[7] Hemmings created this chair for Jefferson after Jefferson, wanting a chair in this style made popular in New Orleans and unable to procure one, described the chair's design to Hemmings. Jefferson finally received a chair in 1818, after Hemmings had made his own version, but Hemmings quickly created at least two more chairs later with the actual chair as a model.[3] At least one attributed to Hemmings still exists.

It appears to be very similar to The furniture attributed to Hemmings. 

A Colonial Window Door

This window is actually a door. From the outside of the house, where it was pouring rain, it would look just like a door into the house. But on the inside, it was disguised as a window to give an illusion of symmetry with a real window on the same side of the room. This is the Hammon-Harwood House in Annapolis, Maryland. Here is an explanation from the Wikipedia article about this house.

The Hammond–Harwood House is a five-part brick house with a five-bay two-story central block, two-story end wings and one-story connecting hyphens on either side. The central block has a shallow hipped roof. The wings project toward the street with three-sided hipped-roof bays. The hyphens are rendered as a blind arcade, with the central bay a door opening with a pediment above. There is little decoration, with plain rubbed brick flat arches over the windows. Ornament is confined to the central bay, whose door is framed by engaged Ionic columns and topped by a fanlight. Above the door the second floor window is framed with a surround and entablature. 

The interior presents the appearance of symmetry where it is in fact not symmetrical, using false doors where necessary to maintain the illusion. The main rooms are the first-floor dining room and the second-floor ballroom immediately above, at the rear of the house overlooking the garden. The dining room features an opening, centered in the facade, that is treated as a door on the outside and as a window on the inside.

Because of the rain, you will have to wait for any photos of the exterior. 

Iconic Spinning Wheel

If there is one object that is most commonly associated with early American history, it is the spinning wheel. I am guessing that there are not many people left in the United States that even know the use of this device. Spinning wheels were first used almost 3000 years ago and it wasn't until the late 1800s that they were replaced by the loss of the home industry of spinning and weaving. Here is a link to the Wikipedia article on Spinning Wheels.

Oysters on the Half Shell

We are not fond of oysters. These aren't real. They are an exhibit in the houe/museum called the Hammond-Harwood House in Annapolis, Maryland. Maybe they are real and are just petrified. Anyway, there are a lot of places to see and more museums that you can see in your lifetime.

Formal Dining Room in the Hammond-Harwood House, Annapolis, Maryland

Here is what Wikipedia: Hammond-Harwood House has to say about this house:

The house ranks architecturally with many of the great mansions built in the late Colonial period; however, it is the only house directly inspired from a plate in Palladio’s, I Quattro Libri dell’Architettura. It is arguably the most exquisite house remaining from the Colonial period in America.

I haven't seen a lot of Colonial Era houses or one that allowed visitors. 

Rosetta Stone

This replica of the Rosetta Stone is in the National Cryptologic Museum near NSA (National Security Agency) Headquarters at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland. It is a free private museum and is extremely interesting and quite busy. The original Rosetta Stone is in the British Museum. I was surprised at how large it is. Here is a description from Wikipedia: Rosetta Stone.

The Rosetta Stone is 1,123 millimetres (3 ft 8 in) high at its highest point, 757 mm (2 ft 5.8 in) wide, and 284 mm (11 in) thick. It weighs approximately 760 kilograms (1,680 lb). It bears three inscriptions: the top register in Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the second in the Egyptian Demotic script, and the third in Ancient Greek. The front surface is polished and the inscriptions lightly incised on it; the sides of the stone are smoothed, but the back is only roughly worked, presumably because this would have not been visible when it was erected.

I have read about the Rosetta Stone since I was very young and have been interested in breaking codes and old languages. Of course, this interest ended up by getting a Masters Degree in Linguistics and being in the Military Intelligence branch in the Army, but I am still interested. If you don't know about the Rosetta Stone, here is another quote from Wikipedia.

The Rosetta Stone is a granodiorite stele, found in 1799, inscribed with three versions of a decree issued at Memphis, Egypt in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The top and middle texts are in Ancient Egyptian using hieroglyphic script and Demotic script, respectively, while the bottom is in Ancient Greek. As the decree has only minor differences between the three versions, the Rosetta Stone proved to be the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Oh, the Museum had a first edition copy of Jean-François Champollion's book about the decipherment of Egyptian Hieroglyphics. 

CHAMPOLLION, Jean François, Jacques Joseph CHAMPOLLION-FIGEAC, and Olivier Charles Camille Emmanuel de ROUGÉ. 1844. Monuments de l'Égypte et de la Nubie. Notices descriptives conformes aux manuscrits autographes rédigés sur les lieux par Champollion le jeune. [tom. 1 edited by J.J. Champollion-Figeac; tom. 2 by Viscount O.C.C.E. de Rougé.].

Hammond-Harwood House, Annapolis, Maryland

Annapolis, Maryland receives slightly over 47" of rain on the average every year. I think a lot of it fell on the day this photo was taken. We had a very interesting tour of the Hammond Harwood House. Here is a brief introduction to the house from Wikipedia: Hammond-Harwood House.

The Hammond–Harwood House is a historic house museum at 19 Maryland Avenue in Annapolis, Maryland, USA. Built in 1774, is one of the premier colonial houses remaining in America from the British colonial period (1607–1776). It is the only existing work of colonial academic architecture that was principally designed from a plate in Andrea Palladio’s I Quattro Libri dell’Architettura (The Four Books of Architecture) (1570). The house was designed by the architect William Buckland in 1773–74 for wealthy farmer Matthias Hammond of Anne Arundel County, Maryland. It was modeled on the design of the Villa Pisani in Montagnana, Italy, in Book II, Chapter XIV of I Quattro Libri dell’Achitettura. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960, and is now managed by a non-profit organization as a museum.

We thoroughly enjoyed our tour even though we had to walk in the rain to get from our parking spot to the house. 

Cray XMP-24

A Cray XMP-24 Super Computer from 1983 to 1993. Back in 1987 this same model of computer leased from five years cost $8.2 million. The computers sold for $10.5 million along with eight DD-49 1.2 GB drives for an additional $1 million. See Wikipedia: Cray X-MP. An iPhone 8 plus can have 256 GB of storage and has 64 bit architecture and costs less than $900. The speed of this Cray computer was measured in MegaFlops or millions of operations per second. The new iMac Pro with 18 cores runs at from 9 to 18 TeraFlops. A fully configured iMac Pro costs about $14,000, a real deal if you compare it to the Cray.  Oh by the way, the fully configured iMac comes with 4 Terabytes of storage.

Cycad

This is not a palm tree or even related to a palm tree. This is a cycad. Here is an explanation about what they are from Wikipedia: Cycad:

Cycads /ˈsaɪkædz/ are seed plants with a long fossil history that were formerly more abundant and more diverse than they are today. They typically have a stout and woody (ligneous) trunk with a crown of large, hard and stiff, evergreen leaves. They usually have pinnate leaves. The individual plants are either all male or all female (dioecious). Cycads vary in size from having trunks only a few centimeters to several meters tall. They typically grow very slowly and live very long, with some specimens known to be as much as 1,000 years old. Because of their superficial resemblance, they are sometimes mistaken for palms or ferns, but they are not closely related to either group. 

Cycads are gymnosperms (naked seeded), meaning their unfertilized seeds are open to the air to be directly fertilized by pollination, as contrasted with angiosperms, which have enclosed seeds with more complex fertilization arrangements. Cycads have very specialized pollinators, usually a specific species of beetle. They have been reported to fix nitrogen in association with various cyanobacteria living in the roots (the "coralloid" roots). These photosynthetic bacteria produce a neurotoxin called BMAA that is found in the seeds of cycads. This neurotoxin may enter a human food chain as the cycad seeds may be eaten directly as a source of flour by humans or by wild or feral animals such as bats, and humans may eat these animals. It is hypothesized that this is a source of some neurological diseases in humans.

Winter in Washington

It was unbelievably cold and windy, but the skies were clear and the light was bright and cheerful. I am beginning to wonder what the East Coast looks like with leaves on the trees, but I have been here and lived here long enough that I should know. Washington DC is a great place for photos and I should have plenty of opportunities to take some interesting views.

Amazing Ship Models

The Naval Academy Museum in Annapolis, Maryland has one of the largest collections of ship models in the world. The models date back over 300 years. The time and the work necessary to construct such a model are unimaginable. The detail is incredible and the number of models and the history associated with each of the ships is overwhelming. If you like museums, this is the place to go for naval history in the United States.

Enigma Machine

I  have read about these machines from World War II since I was very young, but I had never seen one until I visited the U.S. Naval Academy Museum in Annapolis, Maryland. I first read about this machine in a book I got about 50 years ago.

Kahn, David. The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing. New York: Macmillan, 1967.

It appears from searching on WorldCat.org that the book is rather rare. There is a second edition that is available but used copies of the first edition are listed at over $50 on Amazon. Here is a short summary of the Enigma Machine from Wikipedia:

The Enigma machines were a series of electro-mechanical rotor cipher machines developed and used in the early- to mid-20th century to protect commercial, diplomatic and military communication. Enigma was invented by the German engineer Arthur Scherbius at the end of World War I. Early models were used commercially from the early 1920s, and adopted by military and government services of several countries, most notably Nazi Germany before and during World War II. Several different Enigma models were produced, but the German military models, having a plugboard, were the most complex. Japanese and Italian models were also in use.

I understand that there are a number of examples on display at the U.S. National Cryptologic Museum here in Maryland and I hope to visit that museum soon. 

The USS Hartford Helm

This is the Hartford Helm. A helm is a tiller or wheel and any associated equipment for steering a ship or boat. Here is a description of the USS Hartford from a Wikipedia article:

The USS Hartford, a sloop-of-war, steamer, was the first ship of the United States Navy named for Hartford, the capital of Connecticut. Hartford served in several prominent campaigns in the American Civil War as the flagship of David G. Farragut, most notably the Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864. She survived until 1956, when she sank awaiting restoration at Norfolk, Virginia.

This helm was salvaged from the ship and is on exhibit in the U.S. Naval Academy Museum in Annapolis, Maryland. 

The A A Michelson Speed of Light Experiment

Albert A. Michelson (1852-1931) was known for his experiments for measuring the speed of light. Here is a short summary of what he did from The University of Chicago.

A master at the art of measurement, Michelson devised experiments noted for their simplicity. Thus measurements of the velocity of light used a rapidly rotating, multifaceted mirror to reflect a beam of light. When the speed was correctly adjusted, light reflected from the rotating mirror struck a mirror held in a fixed position and returned to strike the next face on the spinning mirror. The time needed for the next face to rotate into position to precisely reflect the light was the time required for the light to travel the known distance to the stationary mirror and back. His earliest attempts, made with materials costing barely ten dollars, measured the speed of light at 186,508 miles per second, or within two hundred miles of the actual value.

Above is one of the mirrors used by Michelson. Michelson attended the Naval Academy and the apparatus is in the Naval Academy Museum.  Here is a link to a short biography of Michelson from the Wikipedia article about his life.

One Million Dollars

On a recent visit to the United States Bureau of Engraving and Printing, we saw this pile of $10 bills making up a million dollars.

Annapolis Sunrise

We begin work at the Maryland State Archives at 7:00 am and this coincides with the sunrise. This is first spectacular sunrise we have seen so far. You can see the sun just coming up over the horizon. This cannot be a common occurrence here. It was very cold also, by the way. 

Isn't the Canyon Grand?

I decided it was time to get back to photos of the Grand Canyon where I have been up and down and around since I was very young. I love the views, but I love more the hikes. I will always regret the fact that I haven't been there more times. I will try to go there a few more times before I get too old to do anything.