Travels with Tutu

As you may have noticed, I haven't been blogging too much this past week.  We are on our semi-annual trip south to visit with relatives in the DC/Baltimore area.   We are having great fun and helping Mom with things it is getting harder for her to do.  She could do them, but why should she when she has able-bodied kids and inlaws to help.  So the roses are planted (she only has 61 in amongst the too many to count irises!), the computer is connecting to the internet again (it does help to turn on the modem), the window fans will get installed later this week, and Mom is now the proud holder of her very own Public Library Card!!!  She hadn't been to the library in almost 10 years, and was quite impressed with the assortment of services available.  She is not a big reader, but did pull several "this looks interesting" items off the shelf.

I spent yesterday afternoon at the Hampton National Historic Site just north of Baltimore.

  As a teenaged "senior" Girl Scout, I spent many a saturday working there as a docent about 50 years ago.  The park service has done an extensive restoration since I was last there, and I was blown away again by the beauty of this house.  Admission is free, so if you're ever in the Baltimore area, it is worth checking out.  It's just off the beltway so you can easily make it a stop on you way to or from DC.  And they have a sweet gift shop with some interesting books!

Today, I am off to my sister Cheli's for a huge book exchange.  It will be great to see her.  Stayed tuned for the list of goodies.

Hidden in Plain View Thursdays

Baltimore Harbor, A Picture History

Welcome to the weekly feature where we use Random.org to pick a book from our library shelves (real or virtual) and bring it out into daylight.  To join in, pick a random book from your library and tell us:

• title, author, #of pages, edition, (tags, and collections if LT)
  
• why that book is in your library, (how and when you acquired the book)
• whether you've read it or not
• if so did you like it and why;
• if not, do you plan to read it?

Be sure to leave us a link to your post so we can compare notes.

This week we went to page 11, book #85 of the collection "Your Library' in LibraryThing. These are books we physically own.  Our book of the week is one that I love to browse through, and often leave on the coffee table when we have guests.  I'm a native Balmoron, so Baltimore Harbor, a Picture History, by Robert Keith, was a book we couldn't pass up.  It is a paperback edition, 168 pages from Johns Hopkins University press that we found on the sale table at B&N two years ago when we were in Baltimore to celebrate some family event or other.

It's chock full of great old photos of early Baltimore clippers, fire engines, tugs, ferries, and cool skyline sights I remember from my early early childhood having lived in South Baltimore less than 1/2 mile from the harbor.  No I can't say I've read it all the way through, but yes, I've browsed it and waxed nostalgic several times.

Don't you love books that recall your childhood?  Especially ones like this that bring back the same kind of feelings you get when looking through a family photo album or scrapbook.

Does your hometown have a pitcher book? (That's how they say it in Ballmur hon!)  Tell us about it.