Hundreds of stones upon the ground formed a spiral path.  I found it at the Goldwell Open Air Museum in Rhyolite, Nevada.  Although it was in the midst of modern sculptures in a desert setting, it had no title or artist associated with it.  But I knew what it was; a place to walk and meditate.

I know that meditation, ideally, is about dismissing all thoughts from one’s mind and focusing on the here and now.  Given the disorder which is my mind, if I can get it to focus on only one thing, I’m doing well.

Bob and I came to the open air museum three days into our Death Valley vacation.  Before I left on the trip, I was plagued with worries about mortality and whether my existence on this earth has any meaning.  I highly recommend a drastic change of scene, if you can afford it, to chase away the mid-life angst I was feeling.  In particular, the works at the open air museum invigorated my mind and energized my mood.  The only question was, how could I keep this feeling with me when I traveled home at the end of vacation?

I stepped into the spiral and started to focus on one thought at a time.  In a way, I was making a request to the universe.  Please help me to accept life and its inevitable end.  Help me to appreciate the moment that I am in.  I repeated these two things as I strode the circle, looking down at the many stones on either side of the path.  Then I began to think of all the times in the recent past that I have felt as good about myself and about life as I did at that moment: finding the Hoodoo Marker, researching the Garden of Almanalogy, playing music with my friends.

I reached the center of the spiral, and looked up toward the sky, but nothing came to me at that moment.  So, I started winding back out of the spiral and as I did, noticed the variety of size, shape, and color of the stones.  There’s a place for everyone in this world, and no need for everyone to be the same.  I picked one of the stones to represent myself, and reached down to touch it with loving kindness.  The last thought that came to me in the circle is that I should seek out, as often as possible, those people, places, and things that make me feel happy to be alive.

Not long after this trip, I had another opportunity to follow the wacky side of life that I love so well.  I don’t know when or if I’ll get that story up on this blog, but if I do, at least you’ll know why I do what I do.

All that’s left of the Garden of Almanalogy and Astrometry is a two and a half foot concrete post with tiny mosaic tiles that trace the numbers 7, 13, 28 91.  In its day, the Garden, located in Northwest Washington, D.C.,  featured concrete sculptures and wooden placards demonstrating the concepts of a 13-month calendar that the Garden’s creator proposed.  Thirty-three years after Walter Rothe’s death, the Garden of Almanalogy and Astrometry (also known as The Calendarium) has nearly faded from local memory.

However, the current resident of the house on MacArthur Boulevard still gets the occasional question about the house which she bought ten years ago from an owner who told her nothing of its history.  After she moved in, passers-by began telling her what they remembered of the “Calendar House,” as it was known.  Still, no one had ever told her of the name of the man who was obsessed with calendar reform until I emailed her recently with my curious request.  I had found a reference to the Garden in an old guide book called Amazing America by Jane and Michael Stern, and wondered if there was anything left of it.  Taran Z kindly gave me a tour of the house, which is now home to her photographic studio (http://www.taranzstudio.com/).  We determined that the numbers on the post related to Rothe’s proposed  calendar: 7 days in a week, 13 months in a year, 28 days in a month, and 91 days in a quarter.

In 1947, confounded by the difficulty of knowing what day of the week a particular date would be, Rothe decided to fix the problem himself.  He came up with a 13-month calendar in which each month had exactly 28 days.  The 13th month would fall in the middle of summer, and be called “Solarius.”  Sundays would always be either the 7th, 14th, 21st, or 28th of the month.  But that only added up to 364 days.  No problem…Rothe added a 365th day, not part of any week or month, that would begin each New Year: Earth Orbit Day.  Every four years, another “extra” day would be added to the calendar called “Quadrennial Day.”  Another extra day would need to be added every 3,323 years.  But other than that, he dubbed his calendar “perfect.”

In 1954, Rothe’s “Universal Calendar” was one of several proposals before the United Nations in its search for a common calendar for all nations to use.  The debate was postponed at the request of the United States, representing the views of religious groups.  Christians, Jews, and other religions that observe the Sabbath every seven days, objected to any calendar that would disrupt the cycle, which the undated 365th day on Rothe’s calendar most certainly did.  The discussion at the U.N. was never resumed.  Rothe never lost faith in his calendar, and continued to promote it until his death in 1976.  He appeared on “To Tell the Truth” in 1964, and it is rumored that Einstein visited him at his home.

Rather than his convoluted calendar theory, it is the Garden that interests me most.  What must his neighbors have thought when he erected large concrete structures in his side yard with the numbers 7, 14, 21, and 28 and the slogan “Sundays Forever”?  Did they object to the 8-foot arch which honored Orbit Day, inscribed with the message “Climax Day after orbiting 687,803, 131 miles in 365 days at 66,000 m.p.h.”?  It would seem not.  I found several newspaper articles between 1955 and 1981 for which Rothe was interviewed, and none of them mentioned any conflict with the neighbors over his elaborate calendarium.

The Garden was actually located in two places over its approximately fifteen-year history.  It was created at Rothe’s home on MacArthur Boulevard in the Palisades area of Northwest Washington.  Later, he moved about a mile away to the Spring Valley neighborhood near American University, taking his sculptures with him.  A recent correspondence with the owner of the second property indicates that by 1989 (when he acquired it), there was nothing left of the Garden of Almanalogy.  It’s a pity that no one saw its value as a folk environment, and tried to save it.  I’m sure the American Visionary Art Museum would have loved to have had the sculptures, if it had existed back then.

A couple of interesting side notes to this story.  One of the articles about the Garden was written in 1966 by ace Washington reporter Carl Bernstein.  He moved on to more serious journalism after that, I’ve heard.  Another article was written in 1972 by Washington Post writer, Henry Allen.  It is this article that amuses me the most.  If you read between the lines, Walter Rothe comes across a quite a piece of work.  Speaking of the MacArthur Boulevard house, Allen writes:  “He has lived there for 30 years, since his German-born wife returned to Germany at the beginning of World War II.”  Maybe I’m being unfair, but I have to wonder how bad things were between them if she wanted to return to Germany during the height of Nazi power.  Later in the article, it is mentioned that “After he gets the world to adopt one calendar, he’d like to devise one religion for everyone.  ‘I don’t see why it can’t be done,’ he says.”

References:

Bernstein, Carl.  “Universal Calendar Lets Time Fly in Formation.”  Washington Post, Times Herald, October 30, 1966.

Allen, Henry.  “Hail Solarius!”  Washington Post, Times Herald, May 12, 1972.

Stern, Jane and Michael.  Amazing America.  New York : Random House, c1978.

This is my response to the 25 things challenge.  It was originally posted on Facebook, but I removed it during the Facebook Terms of Service shit storm of February 2009.  Since then, I’ve decided to use Facebook only for social networking.  Any of my creative output, such as photos or writing, will go on my own web sites, or on Flickr, where they respect their users’ intellectual property.  Occasionally, I will post links on Facebook.

I enjoyed writing my 25 things, and truly enjoyed reading other people’s 25 things.  That’s not narcissistic (as some newspaper stories about the trend alleged).  It’s a way to connect with people who are interesting.  As far as relationships go, the rest is up to us to follow through on.  A social networking site can’t do that for us.

Here are the rules:  “Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.”

1. I love tea. I hardly ever drink coffee. I love tea so much that I coined the phrase, “Tea…the other brown drink.” Yeah, that was me.

2. I avoid wearing light blue shirts or blouses because they remind me of the uniform I wore for eight years in Catholic school. Needless to say, saddle shoes are totally out of the question.

3. I went to the first 15 years of the Clifftop old-time music festival, and then got completely burnt out on the festival camping. I miss the people, the music, and the dancing, but not enough to camp there.

4. A few years ago, I finally found a sweet man who is at least as smart, if not smarter, than me. So, I married him.

5. I got married for the first time the day after I turned 52. Better late than never.

6. I have two black and white cats. One is named after the late, great Dave Grant. The other is not.

7. I was in Washington, D.C. working on Capitol Hill, on September 11, 2001. Ever since then, I always make sure I have comfortable shoes with me at work, so I can walk the ten miles home in an emergency, if I have to.

8. I learned Appalachian clogging in 1980, and picked up the banjo in 1986. Now I’m learning to play the ukulele.

9. I have three sisters and two brothers. I’m the third.

10. I had never heard of the Weekly World News until my younger sister was in it for teaching Bible study in the nude.

11. Most of my life, I haven’t worn make-up. I guess I’m more interested in cosmology than cosmetics. However, I have begun to wear a little lipstick now and then, because I am tired of seeing photographs of myself in which I look like I don’t have any lips.

12. Until I got on Facebook, I thought my name was unique. Then I got a friend request from someone named Julie Mangin. I checked her friend list, and she had another Julie Mangin already on it. Every once in a while my FB feed says something like, “Julie Mangin is a fan of KFC chicken,” and I think “how do they know?” before remembering it’s the OTHER Julie Mangin.

13. My niece and I share a birthday. On my wedding day, she went into labor and had to leave fifteen minutes before the ceremony began. If her daughter had been born a day earlier, all three of us would have had the same birthday.

14. I have souvenir plates from the Maryland amusement park, The Enchanted Forest, which I sell on eBay.

15. I’ve always wanted to do something on stage in the Galax band contest that would cause the Moose Lodge to create another contest rule. It would be referred to as the “Julie Rule.”

16. Every weekday, I read the Washington Post comics section on the subway in the morning. If I have time, I do the sudoku, too.

17. I’m thinking of retiring in a couple of years.

18. I’m the first person to win a prize in the Washington Post’s Style Invitational contest for an entry that they deemed too vulgar to print. Gene Weingarten called it, “a hilarious entry too revolting to be published on any planet inhabited by sentient beings.” I didn’t think it was that bad.

19. I used to be known as the Clog Mogul of D.C., but I always preferred to be called an impresario.

20. I have the world’s largest collection of Mark Eden Bust Developers. They are among the many tacky treasures I collect.

21. I have had one of my photographs published in People Magazine.

22. If I could start my own religion, I’d make Girl Scout Thin Mints the communion wafer. I would encourage meditation while listening to Uncle Bunt Stephens play “Candy Girl.” One of the sacraments would involve crabs, fresh tomatoes, corn on the cob, and beer.

23. I used to smoke a pack and a half of cigarettes a day until the late 1970s. I quit because I was struggling through music school, and I needed to drop the smoke breaks to get more study and practice time in.

24. When I was in my 20s, I learned to drive a motorcycle. On the first day of driving class, I kick-started my motorcycle in gear, launched myself six feet in the air, and landed on all fours. On the last day, I got the highest score on the driving test. The instructor called me his most improved student.

25. I received a masters degree in library science about 25 years ago, and started working as a librarian. Now, I’m a web developer who writes dynamic pages in PHP/MySQL. What the hell happened?

A rough pillar of stone stands by the side of U.S. Route 1 in Kingsville, Maryland, just north of Baltimore.  On the side facing the road, there is an inscription:

This stone is in place of a double poplar tree, a boundary of expectation francis freedom alias young’s escape and the second boundary of onion’s prospect hill, the latter now owned by Edward Day.  Cursed be he that removeth his neighbor’s landmark and all the people shall say amen. Deuteronomy chap 27 verse 17

The inclusion of the quote from the Bible led to this boundary stone to be known as “The Hoodoo Marker.”

I first heard of the Hoodoo Marker through the web site roadsideamerica.com, which lists roadside attractions and sites of interest throughout the U.S.  I was browsing it to find places in my home state of Maryland to visit.  The entry incorrectly listed it as being in Bel Air, Maryland, and called it a “Tantalizing El Dorado,” because they had failed to locate it after two attempts.  It also contained the note, “Hexed to constrain removal.”  I found this comment irresistible.  I decided to find the Hoodoo Marker for myself, and with a combination of Internet searching and old-fashioned legwork, I succeeded.

I was unsure at first if I would be able to find it, but thought it would be a good test of my research skills to try.  I liked the spookiness of someone putting a Biblical warning on a property marker. But if the Hoodoo Marker was close the road in 1938, what would happen if they decided to widen U.S. 1?  On the other hand, I sensed that something used in a legal document such as a deed couldn’t easily be removed.

Searching on the phrase “Hoodoo Marker,” I found the full text online of a W.P.A. guide from 1938, U.S. One: Maine to Florida.  The story below, which I later found to be partly incorrect, told the following story:

This ancient marker, much used by surveyors, is a rough shaft about nine feet high; only the side bearing the inscriptions is smooth. The dark stone, hard as flint, and now painted white on its face, is close to the road, though owing to a fill the top of the stone is now at the road level. The stone, thought to be at least 150 yrs. old, is probably a relic of a lifetime of quarreling between brothers, John and Edward Day. The only near reconciliation of the men occurred when Edward was supposed to be on his deathbed and his pastor, shocked by the idea of one of the brothers going to death with the breach unhealed, persuaded John to enter the sick man’s bedroom. He thought his efforts had been successful until John was about to leave. Edward called him back for a last word, “John, if I die this is a go; if I get well it’s all off.” He recovered and the brothers died enemies.

By searching some of the properties named on the inscription, I discovered that the Maryland Historical Society had a manuscript collection (The King Family Papers, MS. 519) with Edward Day’s name in it.  Among the items listed in the online finding aid, was this intriguing one:

137. Photograph of an old boundary stone standing on the eastern side of the Bel Air Road. n.d.  12 x 20.5 cm.

Could this be a photograph of the Hoodoo Marker?  Only one way to find out…a road trip to Baltimore!  Luckily, I live only about 30 miles south.

At the Maryland Historical Society library, I viewed the collection, sure enough, there was the photograph of a man standing next to a tall stone with the exact inscription on it still quite legible.  I also found that the stone had nothing to do with a quarrel between Edward Day and his brother, although I’m sure that there was animosity there.  Apparently, Day was a mean old cuss, judging from the notation on the back of the photo, which reads in part:

It is related that Underwood Guyton, a shoemaker of Upper Falls, was present when a boy, at the setting-up of this boundary stone, and that he was caughed [sic] and thrashed by Mr. Day to make him remember the event.  This was in accordance with immemmorial [sic] custom.

The Hoodoo Marker was probably set up in 1810 by Edward Day to assert where he believed that the corners of three properties (called “Expectation,” “Young’s Escape,” and “Onion’s Prospect Hill”) met.  His neighbor, Thomas Todd, didn’t agree, and it went to court with Edward Day and Thomas Kell against Todd.  Todd apparently prevailed, because on March 14, 1814, an agreement was signed by the parties wherein the boundary stone was to be moved, and Todd’s legal expenses were to be paid by Day and Kell.

Another Internet find was a web page describing sites of interest around Kingsville, Maryland, which included a photograph of the Hoodoo Marker, and the statement, “This ‘curse’, taken from Deuteronomy, seems to have prevented the stone from being moved to this day.”  It was then that I realized that the Hoodoo Marker was not lost, that it was still in place, and also that nobody but the WPA guide, Roadside America, and I call it “The Hoodoo Marker.”  This site also gave a precise location for the stone.  So, after reading the fascinating historical materials about it, I drove another 20 miles North to see the actual Hoodoo Marker.

Later that day, I turned into the driveway of the Celebrie Veterinary Hospital.  Immediately after leaving the road, the elevation dropped about ten feet to get to the parking lot.  As soon as I turned toward the road, I could see a tall rough stone next to the guard rail.  If I hadn’t known to go to the vet clinic property to see the Hoodoo Marker, I would have driven right by it on the road without seeing it, hidden as it was by the guard rail.

Sadly, the inscription is now barely readable, and everything starting with Edward Day’s name is below ground level.  In the years to come, I’m afraid that people will forget the stone entirely.  It will look like just another rock, and may someday be removed because they can’t read the curse at the very bottom.  I walked around the Hoodoo Marker and took several photographs.  I hope that by posting this story, the Hoodoo Marker will not sink into obscurity.

I would like to acknowledge the invaluable assistance of the friendly and helpful staff at the Maryland Historical Society, and my wonderful husband Bob Cantor who willingly accompanies me on my adventures.

This is a report of a trip I took to Crumpton, Maryland, on July 16, 2003. I’m going to try to get back there soon.

This is the $5 yard, meaning that the minimum bid for anything is $5. You can’t see it in this picture, but the items in this category covered about two football fields of space. I know what you are thinking, “you mean, I could have that porch glider for only $5?” Well, only if no one else wants it.

This tacky treasure was found in the barn, where the minimum bid is $10. I would have loved to have this faded print of a 19th century ballet theme, in a 1950s era “modern” frame. An extra bonus is the glitter someone put on the tutus of all the dancers, plus the male lead’s costume.

The $20 yard had nicer furniture, art, and crafts. Some of the items were not old; a few artists brought in their work to try to sell it by auction.

If an item isn’t about to sell, and there isn’t a prospective buyer guarding it, you can have fun with them.

After the auctioneer passed, and the winners and the pickers had done their work, the $5 yard looked desolate.

The only problem with the auction is that it is so huge. There were a few things that I might have liked to acquire, but I could tell that it would have been hours before the auctioneer would get to them. You can’t just take them up to the register like you can in an antique store.

Some day, I’ll go there when I’ve got time to spend all day. Who knows what I’ll find at Dixon’s Furniture Auction!