Seven Foot Knoll Lighthouse, Baltimore

Part of the Historic Ships in Baltimore attraction is the Seven Foot Knoll Lighthouse (which is not a ship!).

Seven Foot Knoll Lighthouse, Baltimore

The lighthouse was built in 1856 to mark the entrances of the Patapsco River and Baltimore Harbor. To secure it in the middle of the water, local iron foundry Murray and Hazelehurst pre-fabricated a screwpile lighthouse. The screwpile design started in 1830s England, specifically for areas with strong currents or soft bottom soil (i.e. no rock foundation). Piles were screwed into the ground, secured with cement, and additionally secured with interconnecting iron tension rods. The piles were designed to hold the lighthouse structure nine feet above normal high tide.

Interconnected supports

The lighthouse was moved in 1988 to Pier 5 in Baltimore's Inner Harbor.

The building has three stories. The first was living quarters for the lighthouse keeper. This level still has some examples of the keepers' items as well as a map of the various lighthouses in Maryland.

Map of Maryland lighthouses

Bedroom

Keepers' Oath

The floor also has a display of various warship plaques given to the city over the years. When warships visited Baltimore, official welcoming ceremonies were held. Often, the ship's commander would give a plaque from the ship as a gift. Most of the plaques on display are from United States ships, though there are a few from Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany.

Warship plaques

Also on display is the ship's bell from the SS Danville. The Danville was a steam ship built in Baltimore that served to ferry passengers and cargo along the mid-Atlantic coast in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Bell from the Danville

An impressive model ship

The second floor was where the keepers did their work maintaining the beacon. The third floor houses the Fresnel lens and beacon lamps at a height of forty-two feet above the water (before the lighthouse was moved).

Climbing upstairs

Picture of the Fresnel lens

Fresnel lenses were created by French physicist Augustin Fresnel in 1822. Americans began using them in the 1850s, so this lighthouse was an early adopter.

The lighthouse walkway provides a beautiful view of the harbor and city of Baltimore.

Famous Domino Sugar plant in the distance

North east view from Pier 5

The downtown part of the Inner Harbor

Some of the cool ironwork

Visiting the lighthouse only costs a dollar and is included in the Historic Ships of Baltimore pass. We bought a pass, so the ships will start showing up soon on the blog.

Cute Kid Pix August 2018

More pictures that didn't make their own post...

We went to the library's Picturebook Parade with "fish" as the word of the week. The craft was an aquarium-like ocean picture with small fish, a dolphin, and a shark. We tried coloring the shark's mouth red but it looks like lipstick.

Gluing on the fish

Finished product

The next week, the theme was "vehicles." The craft was making a road with some cars on it. My son used chalk to draw the road lines, glue to attach the cars, and crayons to decorate the cars and the night sky.

Using chalk on the paper, not the carpet

Decorating the cars

Finished product

Appropriately enough, the word of the week during his birthday week was "party," and the craft was making hats! This craft included stickers and crayons, and a bit of string tying by parents. He wound up not wearing the hat for some reason.

Paw Patrol stickers on the crown!

Our son's birthday was in August, which meant we had several celebrations. We opened presents on the morning of his birthday with the immediate family.

Opening a gift

Yay Legos!

Yay Buzz Lightyear!

Trying out the Legos

Big sister helps out!

The weekend after, we had a party with local (and not so local) friends. The first step was the theme. Our son chose space. Then we had to find a cake. After rejecting a few awesome but overly-complicated designs, we went with rocket cupcakes, taken from Nerdy Nummies.

Assembling rockets

"I don't think I can fly to space in this!"

Finished product

Sugar cookies making a galaxy

The party was a lot of fun, with a wiffle ball game, a treasure hunt, and present opening. We were slackers on taking pictures (too busy enjoying life to photograph it), but we did get some snaps of the candle blow-out and some playing.

Ready to extinguish the fire

Time to blow

Opening presents with a cousin

Playing with an uncle

I volunteered at another Ravens pre-season game, this one against the Washington Redskins. It was fun though hot. When I left early in the fourth quarter, the Ravens were up 27-14. They eventually won 30-20.

The seat wasn't as good as last time, though the game was more exciting.

View from Row 34

Program and ticket

Book Review: Asterix and Obelix's Birthday The Golden Book by R. Goscinny and A. Uderzo

Asterix and Obelix's Birthday The Golden Book written by Rene Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, illustrated by Albert Uderzo

This Asterix story celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the first publication of an Asterix story in 1959. Rene Goscinny died in November 1977, but material that he had developed prior to his death has been included in this story.

The story starts with a look at what Asterix and Obelix would be like if they actually aged and were in their retirement years. It's a comic nightmare that soon ends as a dream sequence. Their Gaulish village sends Asterix and Obelix off on a boar hunt. Meanwhile, the villagers plan a birthday party for the two. Different people come up with different presents, including Laurensolivius's film treatment of their lives!

The book is an entertaining tribute to the pair of adventurers but not a great adventure in and of itself. There's a lot of mock art, like a statue of Obelix as Rodin's The Thinker and one of the village ladies as Mona Lisa, an interesting and different thing for an Asterix comic.

Recommended for Asterix fans--you need to have a little background to appreciate this.

Movie Review: Annihilation (2018)

Annihilation (2018) written and directed by Alex Garland based on the novel by Jeff VanderMeer

Lena (Natalie Portman) is a biology professor whose missing husband Kane (Oscar Isaac) inexplicably turns up. He's a military man who disappeared while on a secret assignment a year ago. He just shows up at their home and is very disoriented and uncommunicative. She discovers he's bleeding and calls the paramedics. The ambulance trip to the hospital is hijacked by big black government cars. Turns out Kane was part of a government investigation of The Shimmer, a zone of reality distortion that has been slowly spreading outward from a meteorite that crashed into an isolated lighthouse. The government hushed it up and has been sending teams in to investigate for three years. No one has ever come back. Until Kane. He's in a comatose state. Lena meets a group of scientists (all female) who are about to go in for another try at discovering what is going on. Lena joins the group in hopes of finding answers about her husband's condition.

Well, they discover a lot more questions before there are any answers. The Shimmer contains a lot of beautiful and semi-explanable phenomenon. It also has a lot of dangerous, seemingly-crossbred animals in it. The more the team discovers, the less they understand and the more they are freaked out. The group does slowly fall apart and the suspense is in whether Lena will be able to find out what happened to her husband and how she can help him. If she can even make it back out.

The movie is slow and thoughtful, with some very intense action and horror moments. It touches on themes of identity, evolution, and the need to know versus the need to survive. I like how the film doesn't provide any pat answers. It lets viewers work out a reasonable theory as the characters struggle to do the same. The actors do a good job selling both the wonder and the horror of the situation.

On the other hand, I did catch myself wondering why they don't just turn back several times. The characters deal with the issue in a semi-believable way, but what about all the other expeditions? Shouldn't some group have gone in for just an hour or a day and come back with at least some information? Lena's group does run across some information from her husband's group, but what about other groups who have gone in? The movie isn't as convincing as it could be.

The movie is from the same writer/director of Ex Machina and definitely shares many similarities. I think Ex Machina is the better film. Even so, how much you like it will help you gage whether you'll like this film or not.

Recommended for those interested in a bit of a challenge.

Parental Warning: This movie is a fairly hard R rating. There's plenty of profanity and some intense and gory images. Also, two characters have sex without nudity but they are also married to others.

Cherry Crest Adventure Farm--Part II

A continuation of yesterpost...

The guy in Cherry Crest Adventure Farm's chick barn recommended we go see the pig races. He said it was the best show on the farm. We headed over, not realizing it was a ten to fifteen minute walk with the kids.

Country Pig Race

Picture of the track

The audience was divided into different colored sections to root for one of the four pigs in each race. For every race, the organizer would pick one kid from the crowd to be the main cheerleader. That kid stood up front and saw the race up close. The kid won a prize too, depending on how the pig did. The preschooler was selected for the final race and got a third-place prize--a Cherry Crest Adventure Farm Pencil!

One race

Kid who won a pig's nose

Our son cheering on the red pig

The caller cheering on all the pigs

Winning a prize

Just beyond the pig barn was a display of tractors, some dating back to the early 1900s.

A big traction

Smaller, more modern tractor

Even further beyond was the country road carts, pedal cars that went along a dirt track. My son and I sat in back where we pedaled and steered. Meanwhile, the other kids sat in front and enjoyed the ride (and being front-seat drivers).

Rolling tubes by the road carts

Ready to launch

I had the steering job

Coming up the road

Having fun riding around

Finishing the race

The straw bale tower was fun to climb. It was five or six stacks high. Unfortunately we did not take a wide-shot picture showing how high up we were. So the pictures are not as impressive as they could have been. We'll do better next time.

Our gang at the top of the heap

This far side of the farm had donkeys who ate feed from our hands. The preschooler was interested but too nervous to feed them on his own.

Feeding donkeys

More of the same

Getting by with a little help from his friends

Walking back to the first part of the farm, we found their web site.

Searching the web

Ready to switch to a more challenging web--web 2.0?

A trickier site

Rain started coming down as the older kids got off the web. The light rain quickly got heavy and turned into a downpour. We sheltered under a canopy for about ten minutes as the storm spent itself. When it was done, we used up the last of our animal food on the goats.

Out of the rain and back on the job

Coaxing a goat out of the barn

Not sure he wants any

We were highly satisfied and a bit wiped out by that point, so we headed back to our van and back to our hotel. It was a fun adventure.

Topiary at the exit!