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To Colorize or Not!

15 Tuesday Jun 2010

Posted by Ronald Parks in general, HISTORY, POLITICS, science, Uncategorized, water

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Baltimore, engineering, FILTRATION, HISTORY, POLITICS, science, water





When I first started scanning Lantern slides and glass plate negatives, I played around with my new scanner software and saw that I could add color to old photos. As I’ve been going through and cleaning out some old files, I came across the above pictures. When I first colored them I thought it was pretty neat that this could be done, now I’m not too sure if it should be? I really like the old B&W movies from when I was a child. When they started to colorize them, I thought, How odd is that? What do you think? The colors that I used were based on the old lithograph colors used in reports, to match those and not so much as what the colors should really be.

When the Borg first arrived

10 Monday May 2010

Posted by Ronald Parks in general, Health, HISTORY, POLITICS, science, Uncategorized, water

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April 16, 1957 – Letter: Very unusual letter written to the Bureau of Water Supply from a John M. Noon:

            Without [asservity] possibly ‘asperity’, animosity or acrimony, or reservation, I am writing you again about the Prudence and Elmtree site of reservoir…the work of the world is governed by cold hard facts…these men worked in very bad weather…curtailment of work now…I am of the belief the work will continue, not because of the Governor or the Mayor’s efforts to keep Maryland beautiful, but in spite of this fact.

            I would be in your office now…in my 70th year…unmarried and pensioned.

            Also I believe with Tolstoy, the Russian socialist and writer, that time rectifies evil and resistance is useless, because truth is inexorable and governed by laws of nature and conditions create problems that men must solve for his survival, not to mention, salvation. Christianity may have helped but it is not too much in evidence, as all the old evils still persist. If this work is finished, I must point out the four open holes…filled with water from the rains…children 3-16 roam this area and are endangered by this fact, be it accident or design, they are a menace…never ending brush fires. Fire apparatus are denied access…an accident could be disastrous, as all these war housing units have not the usual rubber insulation on the wiring.

            I am firmly convinced all the travail in this region stems from the same source, the attitude of the officials toward the area as being the jungles populated by backward hill people and “dumb pollocks”. They have their faults but neither makes it a practice to deny their children the right to a happy childhood, to fortified against the vicissitudes of existence when they must be self sustaining. These hill people are not particularly friendly to anyone, even their benefactors, or themselves…the parents are not at the moment, the concern, but to practically disenfranchise the youngsters to the point they will eventually become public charges or inmates of mental hospitals because of harassment, and neglect makes bad economics, if nothing else.

            Of course it is the law of the pack rat to rag the stranger. All the foreign born coming here at the turn of the century suffered this ignominy – – and one “bloody blooming Finny” son of a bitch who was with Kipling in Sudan in the 80s as linguist-interpreter, who had an American born son in 1888, who can get up on his one good leg and “give them hell” and it wasn’t Harrigan, it was me.

Fluoridation of the drinking water

13 Thursday Dec 2007

Posted by Ronald Parks in Health, HISTORY, science, Uncategorized, water

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fluoride, Health, HISTORY, science, water

I found this in a 1953 letter from Edward Hopkins (Baltimore City Water Engineer) to a Mrs. Cobb, in New Jersey:

    “Fluoridation of the Baltimore water began on November 26, 1952. Fluoridation of the supply was ordered by the Mayor and confirmed by vote of the City Council. The subsequent injunction to restrain the City from applying fluoridation was dismissed, on the grounds that this action would not interfere with religious beliefs, and that it was within the jurisdiction of the Mayor and City Council to proceed.”

Upon some research I found why it was against religious beliefs. The documentation is fairly long so I placed it on my History page for anyone who would like to comment.

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