Entries from September 2009

September 11, 2009

Accessioning ephemera

This story, about the clutter of News Corp related ephemera sitting in the hallowed main hall of the Smithsonian Castle (near where my relative, Robert Kennicott, once lived and worked), got a bit lost while I was away nattering about Mark Twain and Wagner. The flimsy  news peg for posting it here is the revelation that [...]

September 10, 2009

Bye bye, St. E’s

The lovely, sylvan west campus of St. Elizabeths, the historic hospital for the mentally ill that is one of Washington’s least-visited, but most beautiful places, is now a demolition site. Non-historic buildings are already coming down as the site is readied for the construction of a huge new home for the U.S. Coast Guard. Between [...]