Urban park trails

On Saturday August 13, I went with other OA members to the Carrie Murray Nature Center in Leakin Park. The weather mostly cooperated, as we had a lot of outdoor program for the Scouts who attended, but a bit of rain later in the day pushed us inside to the classroom.

Planning for the event had been tricky, as most Scout units do long term camping in June, July or August, and the OA national event SummitCorps also took a week out of the schedule, not to mention the planning time for it. Different stations had been proposed for the Expo in the city, and we ended up with Cooking, Camping Promotions, Leave No Trace, Pioneering, and my station on the Baltimore Historical Trails.

During a planning meeting the week before the event, I got a chance to check out the Nature Center and the surrounding woods, including taking a hike for about 45 minutes. There is a lot to see in the area, and while the trails are well-worn, there has been serious attention paid to maintaining them.

Photo 1 - the day's activities started with an opening ceremony by several Boy Scouts.




Photo 2 - The Scouts learned about the Baltimore Historical Trails and patches, but seemed just as interested in a map of the city from the 1950s. "You are here!"





Photo 3 - what would a Scout activity be without food? Joe Spellman cooked up the hot dogs.





Photo 4 - Nentico Lodge Chief Ryan Kivinski led the Scouts on a hike, passing by historic artifacts and the Orianda House in Leakin Park. It's a big park, but because we had a map, we did not get lost. No, really.





Photo 5 - Lodge Adviser Mike Parrish, Lodge Vice Chief Zach Dowell, and Lodge Chief Ryan Kivinski, left to right.





Photo 6 - the trail back to the parking lot by the tennis courts (Eagle Drive!). After the rain, note the puddle behind the water bar. A few of these need to have grade changes to the drainage goes off the trail.




Photo 7 - Photo mapping, afterwards, trying to get pictures into Google Earth. The pictures in the top row middle and right were rejected since they have too many "people" in them. The middle one I was able to crop and have accepted later.






Photo 8 - A screenshot from Google Maps, showing the expanse of trees in this park. Anyone notice the typo?





Till the next Scout event in the park!

Troop 174 Checks Out National Gaming Day

Post by Guest Authors - Boy Scouts Working on the Journalism Merit Badge.



Preliminary work on Journalism Merit Badge

Event:

National Gaming Day

November 13, 2010


Author (1) - Terrell

National Gaming Day was held on Saturday, November 13, 2010, for the youth and community to come together to play games at public libraries all over America. In Baltimore, children and youth volunteers who do community service played games at the Herring Run Branch of the Enoch Pratt Public Library, on Erdman Avenue in the Belair-Edison neighborhood.

The librarians put out fliers in the community and posted it online. Then, on Saturday, they put out board games for children and families to play, such as Candyland, Monopoly, Connect Four, Chess and Checkers. They also had computer games to play. They put up a screen in the children's section of the library, with a projector, so the kids could play Wii games, such as volleyball and bowling.

They also planned a matinee and popcorn. Some of the games used household materials. The children were stacking paper cups and plates as high as they could. You could hear a lot of laughter and see the cheerfulness.

Cheryl Dishon, children services specialist, said, "National Gaming Day through the American Libraries Association is an effort to connect communities with the educational, social and fun aspects of games and playing board games together." "We're trying to get our neighbors to come in and enjoy the library beyond just researching and looking for books to read."

Most people think of the library as a place for school or learning or information. This library is participating in National Gaming Day to bring more people in to the library to play games and get on the computer. At this library, you can play games in the library but you can't borrow them to take home. This library has movies that you can check out for seven days for $1.
Patricia McLaurin, a mother of two children, came to use the library to check out some books and movies, and saw that games were being played. She said her children had fun.

Also participating at the library was Jordan Bell, a seventh grader, who is doing community service by playing games with the kids.

Author (2) - Winston

The Belair-Edison neighborhood Herring Run branch library celebrates their annual National Gaming Day on November 13, 2010. Poonam Mukherjee, librarian team manager, likes National Gaming Day because it brings families together and encourages people to come again. The library provides games for patrons to play for free.

There were board games such as the most popular "Wits & Wagers" family game, video games like Nintendo Wii sports and PC games. It is called National Gaming Day because it is being held across the country, including Herring Run and Edmonson branches of the Pratt library, according to Poonam Mukherjee of Enoch Pratt.

Game players included youth from elementary to middle schoolers. Some sponsors for National Gaming Day are Demco, which sponsored the video games, and North Star games, which sponsored the board games. North Star gave out over 1500 game kits throughout the United States libraries.





Playing Wii at Herring Run library on National Gaming Day




Poonam Mukherjee (Library Team Manager ) and Cheryl Dishon (Children's Services Specialist) of the Herring Run Branch




Screen shot of the event invitation


Thanks to Ms. Jean, Ms. Pauline and Mr. Jim

A large bottle of water, please, very, very large.

We drink "city water" at our house, the kind the comes from the tap, and is collected, prepared, stored and delivered by the City of Baltimore. Years ago as a junior high student, or maybe elementary school age, I toured the Montebello Filtration Plant in northeast Baltimore, one of 2 water supply operations run by the municipal government. There, supplies from one of 2 reservoirs, or in times of extreme drought, river water from the Susquehanna some 50 miles away, is treated. The growing population, and shrinking "woods" around the reservoirs, adds to the risk of contaminants, as does the aging infrastructure.

I'm happy with the water quality, drinking it from the faucet, cooking and cleaning with it on a daily basis. When I get the water bill, I just pay it. At times, literature comes with the bill, either news the government wants to pass on, or this quarter, news that must pass on. Before that, here's a tangential web page showing our water consumption, if not the cost:

http://www.editgrid.com/user/jspath55/SPATH-HOME-WATER-USE

It's about a year out of date as I write this, but since I have the recent bills in a folder, I'll get it updated shortly. I hope.

Anyway, the 1-page insert talked about the fact that the city was being required to make improvements by the federal government (the EPA, where I once worked), and the state was involved as well (MDE; I worked there too). I had to re-read it to understand the background. EPA wants the city to cover the "finished" water reservoirs, for health and safety reasons. Sounds reasonable, until one thinks about the domed stadiums that were trendy for a few decades, starting I think with the Houston Astrodome in the mid-1960s. On another tangent, Google is celebrating the 25th anniversary of "Bucky Balls", one of the inventions of Buckminster Fuller, the man behind the geodesic dome.

The finished water is just one of the storage phases between the uncovered reservoirs and the covered conduits that deliver the liquid over hundreds of miles to homes and businesses. I recall flocculation and settling tanks, under roof, from my tour decades ago, and have seen new structures spring up as the technology and population have changed. We drove around Lake Montebello many times, and Druid Lake on the west side of the city is a landmark near the zoo. Those are uncovered, but I'm not sure if they're the target of this latest regulation. Five locations are listed as needing new covers, with Ashburton, Guilford and Towson the others beside the 2 sites I mentioned.

Searching online, with the keywords "EPA maintains that the city failed to comply with LT2", I found 2 hits, one on a Baltimore City site, and one for Anne Arundel County (with the latter including a PDF file with a scanned image of the letter for some reason).

• http://www.baltimorecity.gov/Government/AgenciesDepartments/PublicWorks/PublicNotices/PublicNotification.aspx
• http://www.aacounty.org/DPW/Resources/DrinkingWater_20100810.pdf

What caught my eye, probably, was the suggestion that nothing is wrong, but that one part of the government disagrees with another part, or parts. The EPA says the city missed a deadline. The city says that the state order to them was tardy. It sounds like the penalty for missing the deadline is that the public notice needed to be mailed out.

I particularly liked that the notice included a sentence starting with "Please share this information with all the other people who drink this water...". So I am!

Geocoding note. Of the 5 lakes or reservoirs listed, I found Panoramio photos nearly only 3 of them. Sounds like a hike plan to get shots of the other 2. Here they are, if you want to armchair travel to them:

1. Lake Montebello
2. Druid Hill Lake
3. Lake Ashburton - 39 19 14.63 N 76 40 12.02 W
4. Guilford Reservoir
5. Towson Reservoir - 39 23 35.67 N 76 35 27.40 W

For the missing two, copy and paste the latitude/longitude pair into maps.google.com.