Recently, the Maryland legislature passed a law that made a number of changes to vehicle registration in the state.  Most of it was fairly mundane, with changes to the fee structures and such, but one change stood out to me.  That was changed the requirements for historic vehicles, and I found it to be a bit short-sighted.  The memo that MVA put out about the changes…

This year, I spent my Thanksgiving on the road, volunteering my time and money for Commonwealth Coach & Trolley, a Roanoke-based museum that owns a collection of vintage vehicles, largely transit buses.  Along with Elyse, I serve on the museum's board of directors.  On this particular occasion, I was transporting a recent acquisition down to its permanent home in Roanoke.  This was a former WMATA unit, bus 6181, a…

Recently, District of Columbia delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton introduced a bill to Congress that would change some local officials' job titles in Washington, DC.  Specifically, it would redesignate the mayor as "governor", redesignate the DC Council as the "Legislative Assembly", redesignate the members of the DC Council as "representatives", and redesignate the chair of the council as "speaker".  This bill was introduced to show that the DC government is "prepared to make the transition from district to state."  Here is the press release that Norton's office put out:

On June 14, 2025, Baltimore held its Pride parade, which ran along Charles Street in the northern part of the city.  It was a very festive event, with an overarching message of love, equality, and inc...

If you've been looking for me on Flickr lately, you're not going to find me there anymore.  My account was recently removed from the platform for alleged violations of their terms of service and/or community guidelines.  I found out while I was out on Halloween, and spotted this in my email:

Recently, there was a lot of discussion in the news about the demolition of the East Wing of the White House, part of which was built in 1902, and part of which was built in 1942, in order to make way for the proposed White House State Ballroom.  My opinions on this entire project are mixed, and I suspect that most people are getting upset about the wrong things, and it also reveals a lot about how little people know about the White House. 

October 18, 2025 was the second time when "No Kings Day" events, demonstrating against the practices of the Trump administration, were held around the country.  This was the second No Kings Day event, after an earlier day of similar events in June (I discussed the No Kings event in Baltimore that day).  This event just happened to work out for me, as I had planned a trip to the Staunton area well in advance of my learning about this event, and it fell on the last day of my trip. 

Recently, I gave a refresh to the "Afton Mountain: Victim of Progress" photo set from 2003.  That's the original Afton Mountain photo set, when all of the buildings were still largely intact (compare to the later "Afton Mountain: A Modern Ruin" from 2011).  I gave a refresh to that set because I didn't like the photo processing work on those images, and thought that I could do it better in the here and now.