Merry Christmas

Where to start, where to start. The good news or the bad news. Ok, let's start on a positive note! The tree/christmas column is up and looks lovely thanks to Allie's decorating effots and George's keen eye for detail. What a pair these two are :) Look for one face peeking out mid-tree left, and one face at lower-tree right.

OK, let's step back a week or so. You remember the water supply pipe saga? If not, scroll down first. So recently there was this:

(Snow-covered Camden Yards from my office window)

A nice dusting, pretty layer of white, and bitter, bitter cold for a few days.

After the thaw there was this:

(Sunrise on George's walk)

An hour later, on my way to work, during the thaw there was also:

See the guy with the FLAME THROWER? Yeah, he's trying to thaw out the PVC pipes so the neighborhood's water will flow again. No, Baltimore, the PVC pipes weren't a good idea, but yes, that is a very cool flame thrower.

Later, the pipes looked more like this:

(yes, that's water spraying forth as evidence of the newly flowing water post-freeze. brilliant.)

So what do you do if you are Baltimore and you're having an as of yet unpublicized water-crisis in an oft visited neighborhood? Your streets are ripped apart, your water has ceased to flow (and then has flowed too freely), and the weather promises to get colder and colder? You've been at it for months, apparently asked DC for help (or they were just lost), so what else is there? That's right, if you want to spend gobs of money but actually get the work done...

Look at the license plate...that's right, call the Jersey boys and quit messing around. There are a dozen of these Jersey trucks around now and funny enough, they've gone from holes in the ground to new pipe laid, holes being covered, and PVC being disassembled. Sure, there's a bunch more to go, but the reinforcements have arrived and the war looks winnable. The troops have rallied and they're taking the hill.

Why do I chronicle inept municipal work? It's both the exhorbitant taxes that go toward shoddy service and the fact that little disasters like these are so common across the city that no one even notices and no one seems to talk about it. Sure, there are worse things going on on a daily basis in Baltimore, but that's not an excuse to stop talking about everything else that challenges city life.