“Dayhoff Westminster Soundtrack:” Kevin Dayhoff – “Soundtrack Division of Old Silent Movies” - https://kevindayhoff.blogspot.com/ combined with “Dayhoff Westminster” – Writer, artist, fire and police chaplain. For art, writing and travel see https://kevindayhoffart.blogspot.com/ Authority Caroline Babylon, Treasurer
Journalist @baltimoresun writer artist runner #amwriting Chaplain PIO #partylikeajournalist
Journalist @baltimoresun writer artist runner #amwriting Md Troopers Assoc #20 & Westminster Md Fire Dept Chaplain PIO #partylikeajournalist
Showing posts with label OTA FBG 20100625. Show all posts
Showing posts with label OTA FBG 20100625. Show all posts
A brief tour of the art exhibition displayed by “Off Track Art.”
Or … Becki Maurio sings “Downtown”
March 27, 2009 by Kevin Dayhoff
Becki Maurio sings the Petula Clark hit, “Downtown,” originally released in November 1964.
The song was written by Tony Hatch and was inspired by a trip he had made to New York City.
On Friday, March 27, 2009 Ms. Maurio had “Off Track Art” studio duty for the shift following mine. We chatted briefly…
While Ms. Maurio and I were discussing the success of the arts and cultural venues in downtown Westminster in general and that of Off Track Arts specifically, she, all of the sudden broke in song.
I kid you not. Well, roll tape…
“Off Track Art” is an artists’ collective and gallery located in the historic Liberty Building at 11 Liberty Street – next to the railroad tracks, off of the Sentinel parking lot at the corner of West Main St and MD 27-Liberty St - in downtown Westminster, Maryland. We are dedicated to advancing the arts in Westminster as well as the careers, ideas, and artistic visions of its members.
Artists featured: Vestal Abbott, Sarah Abel DeLuca, Melinda Byrd, Christina Collins-Smith, Kevin Dayhoff, Mary Decker, Gail Elwell, Judy Goodyear, Charlotte Lasio, Becki Maurio, Wasyl Palijczuk, Howard Riopelle, Cathy Sawdey, Bob Sapora, Gordon Wickes, Vladimir Tzenov, Linda Van Hart, Robert Waddell, Susan Williamson and Pamela Zappardino.
Starring Mr. Moose, Susan Williamson and Uncle Kevin Dayhoff
On the essay evolutionary scale, this essay is a monkey on roller skates. The monkey may or may not be wearing a pink tutu - this is for you to decide.
As the February 1, 2009 Off Track Art co-op meeting came to a close, Uncle Kevin, Mr. Moose and Mrs. Williamson began a lively conversation… about purpose and the meaning of life…
The purpose of life is to discuss fragmentary patchworks of autochthonous and foreign elements as juxtaposed by the undeniable command mortality of insignificant self-inflicted syntactic semiotic economics which sometimes may cause irreproducible results unless there is a pre-emptive digital fallibility matrix which would require an integrated third-generational triangulated refinement of indefinite managerial potential.
As we wax philosophic with metaphysical postulations, incomplete aphorisms and inconsistent sophism that allows one, more and more sure, that the only true thing about anything is nothing.
Now I know you believe you understand what you think I just said but I am sure that you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
Special Thanks to David Sylvian – Orpheus and Frank Sinatra
Uncle Kevin’s columns and articles appear in The Tentacle - www.thetentacle.com; the Westminster Eagle and The Sunday Carroll Eagle – in the Sunday Carroll County section of the Baltimore Sun. www.explorecarroll.com Kevin Dayhoff writes from Westminster Maryland USA.
On September 17, 2008, Mr. Moose had the occasion to attend a community event which was held at the Carroll County Career and Technology Center in Westminster, MD.
It was there that he had the good fortune to run across two beautiful women:
Pam Zappardino and Susan Williamson.
And there is nothing that Mr. Moose likes better than the attention of beautiful women.
Mr. Moose was in heaven.
Oblivious to the world around them; what followed was an existential, intellectual, yet nevertheless innocent ménage a trios. A homage to an otherwise innocent “Viskningar och rop.”
It was if the room was empty and they were bystanders in a detached indifference to the community theatre that surrounded them.
There was no cognitive recognition of a fundamental need to provide the evening with an additional meaning. They simply understood their roles…
They were drawn to each other from across the table.
They talked and talked.
They laughed together.
They danced and drank together.
And when the evening was over, they simply drifted into the night.
On March 25, 2008 I happened to be in the right place at the right time as a Maryland Midland train traveled through Westminster.
I quickly parked the truck and grabbed my camera.
One of my fondest memories of growing up in Westminster is the railroad. Over fifty years later I still live within easy earshot of the train whistle as the train chugs its way through town.
The railroad in town is interwoven throughout much of the fabric of Westminster history.
After the Civil War, Westminster’s (Carroll County, Maryland,) economy began to get away from the wagon stop, barroom, and hotelier business and began its journey to being a regional mercantile center, where the unfinished goods were brought to town and exchanged for finished goods and a great deal of capital began to accumulate and concentrate in town.
Westminster was not always a mercantile powerhouse, as noted by Joseph D. Brooks, the mayor of Westminster from 1892 to 1895 when he gave an address on the county birthday, January 19, 1923.
“During (the decades before and after Carroll become a county in 1837) Westminster, the meeting place of the Germans and English, remained dormant. Their ideas of living were different and there was no real work to build a town of any consequence,” said Mayor Brooks.
He continued by observing that “The town owes its growth to three things, all of which happened in spite of its residents. The building of the Baltimore pike, the central location in the county, which made it the county seat, and the construction of the Western Maryland Railroad. In strictly turnpike days it was a wagon hamlet filled with barrooms and all that accompanied them.”
In the period after the American Civil War to the turn of the century in 1900 was witness to a great expansion of the industrial, commercial and employment base in Westminster which was partially fueled by the arrival of the railroad in 1861.
One of the first meetings to bring the railroad to town occurred at the Court House on April 7, 1847.
It would take another 14 years of studies, resolutions, commissions, and committees to get the railroad to town.
During the Battle of Gettysburg, July 1-3, 1863, Westminster and the railroad played a pivotal role in the outcome of the battle.
Immediately after Union General Meade replaced General Hooker on June 28, 1863, (George Gordon Meade, portrait by Mathew Brady.) one of the first decisions he made was to use the Western Maryland Railroad from Baltimore to Westminster, for secure communications and as a main supply line, according to information found in “Just South of Gettysburg,” by Frederick Shriver Klein, W. Harold Redcay and G. Thomas LeGore.
Many of the newer folks in Carroll County might be interested to know that for almost 100 years, from 1861 to 1960, a portion of the economic vitality of downtown Westminster was fueled by a thriving passenger rail service, this necessitated building a first rate freight and passenger station in downtown Westminster.
December 1896 was a time of great excitement in downtown Westminster. It was in that time period that the “new” Westminster Train Station was completed.
The previous wooden station was literally loaded on to a train car and transported to New Windsor.
In the late 1800s and well into the 1900s, the passenger rail service brought folks from Washington, D.C., Hagerstown and Baltimore to shop and spend leisurely summer excursions in Westminster.
The passenger train service was discontinued on October 3, 1960, when it could no longer compete with the same service that was provided by buses.
Unfortunately, the Westminster Train Station was lost to history when it was unceremoniously torn down in 1961 and turned into a parking lot.
Kevin Dayhoff writes from Westminster Maryland USA.
Uncle Kevin’s columns and articles appear in The Tentacle - www.thetentacle.com; the Westminster Eagle and The Sunday Carroll Eagle – in the Sunday Carroll County section of the Baltimore Sun. www.explorecarroll.com
E-mail him at: kevindayhoff AT gmail.com
“When I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I'm only really alive when I'm writing.” Tennessee Williams
