A space for reflection
If you’re interested in Pittsburgh, the blog Father Pitt offers a wide-ranging collection of photographs of my hometown.
The author remains anonymous, but the site is maintained with care and updated regularly. Each photo is accompanied by thoughtful descriptions, and the entire collection is released to the public domain under a CC0 dedication—making it both a visual resource and a gift to the community.
The George Peabody Library in Baltimore is one of the most beautiful libraries I’ve ever stepped into. Walking through its doors feels like entering a cathedral of books — the kind of place that instantly slows you down and makes you look up.
It wasn’t always part of Johns Hopkins University. The library began as the library of the Peabody Institute of the City of Baltimore, founded in 1857 when Massachusetts-born philanthropist George Peabody dedicated the institute to the people of Baltimore in gratitude for their “kindness and hospitality.” Today, it’s part of the Special Collections Department of the Sheridan Libraries at Johns Hopkins, still serving the public as Peabody intended.
The building, which opened in 1878, was designed by Baltimore architect Edmund G. Lind, working with the Peabody Institute’s first provost, Dr. Nathaniel H. Morison. The moment you enter the stack room, your eyes are drawn upward to five tiers of intricate cast-iron balconies, all leading to a skylight 61 feet above. The ironwork, crafted by the Bartlett-Robbins Company, has the kind of fine detail you don’t see much anymore.
The library holds 300,000 volumes, mostly from the 19th century, covering everything from religion and British art to American history, literature, the history of science, and tales of exploration and travel. It’s easy to imagine 19th-century scholars hunched over these very books.
Between 2002 and 2004, the library underwent a $1 million restoration, and it still feels lovingly cared for. Best of all, it’s free and open to the public. If you find yourself in Baltimore, make time for it. It’s not just a place to see books — it’s a place to feel them, to stand in the quiet and be surrounded by the beauty of knowledge made visible.
The George Peabody Library, in keeping with Peabody’s original gift, is free and open to the public.
Sources: Johns Hopkins University | Wikipedia
The Washington Monument honors George Washington (1732–1799), the nation’s first president, and stands at the heart of the U.S. capital. Designed by Robert Mills and completed under the direction of Lt. Col. Thomas Lincoln Casey and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, it is built in the form of an Egyptian obelisk, evoking the timelessness of ancient civilizations. When it was completed in 1884, at 555 feet, 5 1/8 inches (169 meters), it was the tallest structure in the world, holding that title until the Eiffel Tower surpassed it in 1889.
The geometric layout of Washington, D.C., designed by Pierre L’Enfant, reserved a prominent site for a monument to Washington at the intersection of lines radiating south from the White House and west from the Capitol. In 1833, the Washington National Monument Society formed to fund and build a memorial “unparalleled in the world.” After a decade of fundraising and design competitions, the Society selected Robert Mills’ ambitious 1845 plan: a 600-foot obelisk surrounded by thirty 100-foot columns.
Construction began on July 4, 1848, with a cornerstone-laying ceremony attended by President James K. Polk, Dolley Madison, Eliza Hamilton, George Washington Parke Custis, and future presidents Buchanan, Lincoln, and Johnson. By 1854, the monument had reached 156 feet before work stalled due to political infighting and lack of funds.
In 1876, Congress assumed responsibility for completing the monument. Casey’s first priority was strengthening the foundation, which took four years. Matching the original stone proved difficult—three different quarries ultimately supplied stone, resulting in the color variations visible today. The final height was set at 555 feet, ten times the base width, and Mills’ elaborate colonnade was abandoned in favor of a simple, clean obelisk form.
The monument was dedicated on February 21, 1885, one day before Washington’s birthday. Inscriptions on the aluminum cap commemorate key dates and individuals involved, with the east face bearing the Latin phrase Laus Deo (“Praise be to God”). The public first accessed the monument in 1886 via an iron staircase; a public elevator was added in 1888. Today, 193 commemorative stones from states, cities, civic groups, and foreign nations line the interior walls, including a marble slab from the Parthenon inscribed in Greek.
The steam elevator was replaced by an electric model in 1901. The National Park Service assumed jurisdiction in 1933. Major restorations occurred in 1934, 1964, 1998–2001, 2011–2014 (after earthquake damage), and 2016–2019 (elevator modernization).
The Washington Monument is open daily from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., except on December 25 and July 4, and one day each month for maintenance. Timed reservations are required, available online or in person at the Washington Monument Lodge on 15th Street. The nearest Metro stations are Federal Triangle and Smithsonian.
Sources: National Park Service | Wikipedia | National Park Foundation | Classical Inquiries
Abram Enzel was born in Częstochowa, Poland, on June 18, 1916, to Chaim and Faigle Enzel. Chaim worked as a kosher butcher. They had five children — three boys and two girls — with Abram as the firstborn. In 1939, there were 28,500 Jews living in Częstochowa, about 124 miles (200 km) southeast of Warsaw.
The Germans entered Częstochowa on Sunday, September 3, 1939, and persecution of its Jews began immediately. More than 300 Jews were killed the following day, in what became known as “Bloody Monday.” On December 25, 1939, a second pogrom took place, and the Great Synagogue was set on fire. The family survived both pogroms.
On the morning after Yom Kippur in September 1942, Abram was separated from his family. One brother, Nathan, had previously been taken by the Germans to a concentration camp. The rest of Abram’s family was gassed and cremated three days later in Treblinka.
Abram was sent to work in a munitions plant operated by HASAG (Hugo Schneider Aktiengesellschaft-Metalwarenfabrik, Leipzig), one of the largest German industrial companies using concentration camp prisoners to manufacture armaments. HASAG was the third largest such company after I.G. Farben and the Hermann Göring Werke. It operated four camps in Częstochowa, the largest of which — HASAG-Apparatebau — held 7,000 Jewish prisoners. The wages of these forced laborers were paid directly to the SS. Those unfit for work were killed under the policy of Vernichtung durch Arbeit (“extermination through work”). From July 1944 to early 1945, HASAG moved most of its equipment and Jewish workers to Germany. No HASAG personnel were tried by the Allies at Nuremberg.
In 1944, Abram was transferred from HASAG to Gross-Rosen, then to Flossenbürg, and finally to Dachau. One of his most haunting memories was the transfer from Flossenbürg to Dachau with 500 prisoners. In a 1973 Pittsburgh Press interview, Abram recalled: “They made us march at first. But later they herded us like cattle on some old freight cars.” Only 18 of the 500 survived to reach Dachau — Abram among them.
On April 29, 1945, the 42nd and 45th Infantry Divisions and the 20th Armored Division of the U.S. Army liberated Dachau. The next day, Adolf Hitler committed suicide. Abram weighed just 78 pounds at liberation, compared to a healthy 130 pounds before the war.
By June 1946, 2,167 Jews had returned to Częstochowa, but Abram chose not to. He recovered in Germany, ran a grocery store in Bayreuth, and emigrated to the United States in 1951, settling in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
In Pittsburgh, Abram met Dora Weiss, a survivor from Munkács, Czechoslovakia (now Mukačevo, Ukraine). Her parents were murdered in Auschwitz. They married on June 8, 1952, and had one son, David, born January 21, 1955.
Dora died of cancer on July 30, 1958, at age 35. Abram never remarried. He worked at H.J. Heinz before joining the Concordia Club, where he rose from busboy to maître d’. He considered his 30 years there the happiest of his life.
David moved to Washington, D.C., in 1979. Abram retired in 1981 and soon followed. He died on May 10, 1994, in Washington, the capital of the country that had liberated him.
Abram’s oral history is available from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the American Jewish Committee Oral History Collection at the New York Public Library, part of the Dorot Jewish Division’s archive of over 6,000 hours of interviews.
Between 1968 and 1971, Pan American World Airways issued over 93,000 “First Moon Flights” Club cards to those eager to make a reservation for the first commercial flight to the Moon. The cards were free. I was a proud member.
The Club originated from a waiting list that is said to have started in 1964, when Gerhard Pistor, an Austrian journalist, went to a Viennese travel agency requesting a flight to the Moon. The agency forwarded his request to Pan Am, which accepted the reservation two weeks later and replied that the first flight was expected to depart in 2000.
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human to step foot on the moon.
On September 9, 1969, the United States Postal Service issued a 10 cent postage stamp showing an astronaut walking on the surface of the moon. It was called the “First Man on the Moon” postage stamp. According to the National Postal Museum, the stamp was made from the same master die that the astronauts took with them to the moon. Additionally, it was the largest stamp the United States had issued up to that point.
Pan Am sent members of the “First Moon Flights” Club “First Day of Issue” envelopes. I was excited to get mine and have kept it all this time. I now doubt I will make it to the moon. But it was an exciting thought.
Unfortunately, Pan Am did not survive. It went bankrupt in 1991.
The residence of the United States Ambassador to Paris is at 41 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in the 8th arrondissement. It is known as the Hôtel de Pontalba. It was built by Louis Visconti for the New Orleans–born Baroness Micaela Almonester de Pontalba between 1842 and 1855. Edmond James de Rothschild acquired the building in 1876.
During the German occupation of France, the mansion, then owned by Baron Maurice de Rothschild, was requisitioned as an officers’ club for the Luftwaffe. After the war, it was rented out to the British Royal Air Force Club, and then to the United States.
In 1948, the American government purchased the building, primarily for the United States Information Service. These offices were moved to the Hôtel Talleyrand as restoration was completed in 1971 during the tenure of Ambassador Arthur K. Watson. The building then became the official residence of the ambassador. This magnificent structure has only been the Ambassador’s residence for a little more than fifty years.
Jim Hill is a Chicago photographer worth getting to know. He became fascinated by Chicago’s nighttime alleys and back streets during the pandemic:
I submerged myself in studies of how artificial lights penetrate the darkness of an urban environment. That darkness provided me comfort and cover from the events going on around me. The artificial lights transformed what is bland and ugly in the daylight into a beautiful hidden world, which is visible to those willing to risk the unknown, the shadows.
During the pandemic, fear and death seemed to permeate everything. Roaming forgotten places in the darkness to capture the hope of the light allowed me to confront the panic around me and gave me the strength to carry on. Ultimately, my work is about confronting fear and finding the beauty, which can emerge from the unknown, the darkness.
You can follow Jim Hill’s thought provoking photographs on Flickr and Instagram.
The Neon Museum in Las Vegas features signs from old casinos and other businesses displayed outdoors on a 2.27 acre campus. The Neon Museum has an outdoor exhibition space known as the Neon Boneyard. Boneyard is traditionally the name for an area where items no longer in use are stored.
Efforts to establish a neon sign museum date to the late 1980s, but stalled due to a lack of resources. On September 18, 1996, the Las Vegas City Council voted to fund such a project, to be known as the Neon Museum. The organization started out by re-installing old signage in downtown Las Vegas, to attract more visitors to the area.
Young Electric Sign Company (YESCO) had manufactured many neon signs in the city, and the company had a storage site for old signs which would eventually become part of the Neon Museum collection. In 2000, as YESCO prepared to close its storage lot, the city provided the museum with land to start its own. Tours of the new site, known as the Neon Boneyard, began in 2001, by appointment only.
The lobby of the former La Concha Motel, located on the Las Vegas Strip, was donated to the museum and moved there in 2006, eventually becoming its visitor center. Construction to convert the lobby began in May 2011, and the museum officially opened to the general public on October 27, 2012, eliminating the appointment system.
Each of the more than 250 signs in the Neon Museum’s collection offers a unique story about the personalities who created it, what inspired it, where and when it was made, and the role it played in Las Vegas’ distinctive history.
The Museum has announced plans for relocation and expansion in downtown Las Vegas’ Art District. The plan is to nearly triple the size of its current location. Currently, only 35 percent of the museum’s collection is visible to the public.
The Neon Museum is located at 770 Las Vegas Blvd. N, Las Vegas NV, 89101. You can buy tickets here.
Sources: The Neon Museum | Wikipedia
I’ve had the pleasure of visiting Berlin twice. The first time was in the early 1980s and the second time in 2018. The transformation was dramatic.
I visited Berlin in the early 1980s. Berlin was then a divided city. I stayed in the Western zone near the Kurfurstendamm, which at the time was the heart of Berlin. I took a one day bus tour to the East. We crossed through Checkpoint Charlie. The bus was thoroughly searched by East German border guards. In contrast, the American military just let us pass freely.
The West was vibrant with shops, restaurants and people everywhere, In contrast, buildings in the East still showed signs of the bombing it received in the war. There were Soviet style memorials throughout East Berlin.
Our East German guide was openly dispirited and seemed to be reciting a script he was told to speak, especially when he spoke of “warm relations” with the then Soviet Union. At the end of the day, I was glad to be back in the West where I felt free and comfortable.
In 2018, I went back to Berlin to see an undivided, transformed and reinvented Berlin. The German capital was still under construction 73 years after the end of WWII. I stayed near the Kurfurstendamm so I could compare my experience today with the early 1980s. My hotel — Pension Peters — is a small owner-managed hotel, where I felt more like a temporary resident in a nice Berlin neighborhood rather than a tourist.
I saw the transformation of Berlin immediately. The Kurfurstendamm is no longer the center of town. The heart of Berlin today is in the former East, which was a shambles when I was last there. The Kurfurstendamm is now a nice shopping street in lovely Berlin neighborhood called City West but is no longer the heart of the capital.
In 2018, Checkpoint Charlie was now nothing more than a tourist attraction with actor guards who, for a few Euros, will pose with you for a nice picture. There was even a “Checkpoint Charlie” McDonald’s across the street. It certainly no longer inspires fear.
The heart of Berlin is dominated by the Brandenburg Gate and government buildings, including the embassies of the four former occupying powers: the United States, Great Britain, France and Russia.
Berlin is no longer occupied but the former occupiers are nearby as if to say: “We are watching.” Each of the four embassies has a rich history.
The Soviet Union was first of the four major occupiers to move into a post-War embassy in Berlin. The Russian Embassy in Berlin was closed in 1941 when the two countries went to war. Its reconstruction was the first project of the post-war years in the East Berlin. The embassy’s official grand opening was held on the national holiday of the former USSR, on November 7, 1951. It’s Europe’s largest embassy which sends a message all by itself. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, it became the Russian Embassy. (See also Rick Steves Berlin (p. 105). Avalon Publishing. Kindle Edition.)
The United Kingdom (UK) came next. The UK’s impressive new embassy was opened by Queen Elizabeth II on July 18, 2000.
France occupied its new embassy in October 2002. However, France formally opened it on January 23, 2003. That date was chosen as it was the 40th anniversary of the Élysée Treaty between Germany and France, declaring friendship between France and the former West Germany. French President Jacques Chirac presided. Marking the occasion, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and President Chirac issued a declaration affirming Franco-German friendship and their joint determination to “re-found Europe”.
The United States was the last of the four major occupiers to move into a post-War embassy in Berlin. The history of the U.S. Embassy in Berlin is especially complicated. During WWII, the U.S. Embassy in Berlin was severely damaged by Allied bombing. After the war, the embassy ended up just barely inside East Berlin in divided Berlin’s Soviet zone, straddling the demarcation between the Soviet and American sectors.
The Berlin Wall made the site of the former U.S. Embassy, still owned by the U.S. government, an inaccessible vacant lot. It was part of the security zone separating east and west Berliners. In 1967, the East German government demolished the ruins of the US Embassy building. However, the site became accessible after the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989. Even so, it remained a vacant lot until the 2004 groundbreaking for construction of a brand new U.S. Embassy. The newly constructed embassy opened on July 4, 2008.
The Brandenburg Gate is nearby. This is the center of Berlin. Since the 18th Century, the Brandenburg Gate has been a site for major historical events and today is an important symbol of the history of Europe and Germany.
Also nearby — and not to be missed — is Germany’s parliament — the Reichstag — which was opened in 1894 and remained in service until 1933, when it was severely damaged after being set on fire. The Reichstag fire occurred one month after Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. After World War II, the building fell into disuse; the parliament of the German Democratic Republic (the Volkskammer) met in the Palast der Republik in East Berlin, while the parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany (the Bundestag) met in the Bundeshaus in Bonn.
The building was not properly restored until after German reunification on October 3, 1990. And what a glorious restoration it was. The German government chose British architect Norman Foster to lead the effort. Foster constructed is a large glass dome atop the Reichstag with a 360 degree view of the surrounding Berlin cityscape. The debating chamber of the Bundestag, the German parliament, can be seen below. A mirrored cone in the center of the dome directs sunlight into the building, and so that visitors can see the working of the chamber. The dome is open to the public and can be reached by climbing two steel, spiraling ramps that are reminiscent of a double helix. The Dome sends a message that the people are above the government, as was not the case during the Nazi era. After its completion in 1999, it once again became the meeting place of the German parliament: the modern Bundestag. The views are impressive. Entry is free but advance registration is required.
I also enjoyed visiting:
Germany is creatively and thoughtfully reinventing its capital city. The transformation since the end of WWII is astounding. In the following video, you can see how Berlin looked after the Red Army occupied the German capital.
I thoroughly enjoyed my visit and hope to return to see more of Berlin and how it evolves. If you visit Berlin, these videos are worth watching before your visit.
Stacey Kent is an American jazz singer with a glorious voice. She was born in 1965 in New Jersey and is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College. Her paternal grandfather was a Russian who grew up in France. He later moved to the United States where he taught Kent French. Once she learned French, it was the only language she spoke with her grandfather. Kent travelled to England after college to study music in London, where she met saxophonist Jim Tomlinson, whom she married in 1991.
Kent may be better known in France than in the United States. Her album Raconte-moi was recorded in French and became the second best selling French language album worldwide in 2010.
Kent has also faced serious health challenges. In a 2004 interview with Robert Kaiser of The Washington Post, Kent recounted that she’s been in comas three times caused by brainstem encephalitis:
Each time, baffled doctors were not certain they could bring her back. The last coma was in 1999, and Tomlinson nursed her through it. On doctors’ advice, he brought records to her hospital room. When she awoke he was playing Mildred Bailey, one of the great jazz singers of the ’30s. “There’s just so much emotion in that voice,” Kent says. “It’s a cry - even when she’s singing a happy song.”