Wednesday, September 23, 2020

Fairmount Water Works, Philadelphia, Philadelphia County

Autumn returns to Pennsylvania! It's my favorite time of year, and I hope that the weather will be nice enough to let us all get out and enjoy it.

As I mentioned in the post about Hilda Doolittle, my birthday was at the beginning of September and I spent part of it collecting markers for this blog. There was one in particular that I wanted to get while we were in Philadelphia, and it was a bit of a haphazard drive to find it (fortunately, I myself was not doing the driving). See, I got pictures of today's subject a few years ago, before I started this project, but the marker isn't located in quite the same spot so I never saw it. I couldn't very well write about the marker without a photo of the marker, so I needed to find it!

Although I had the information from the PHMC website about its location, we were still just slightly surprised to come across the marker. We were stopped at a red light, so Kevin urged me to get out of the car quickly to snap the photo. I managed to do so, probably to the utter confusion of the twenty or so people who were in the vicinity (assuming, that is, that they noticed me at all), and today's blog post thus became feasible. Remember, kids, don't try this at home, because I have no idea what I'm doing.

Wednesday, September 9, 2020

Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), Bethlehem, Northampton County

I'm celebrating two birthdays this week, after a fashion. One is my own; we spent the day at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, which is currently hosting Madame Tussaud's wax figures of the Presidents (yes, all of them) as well as some other historic notables. This is a limited engagement, with restricted entrance due to you-know-what, and will only run until January 3rd of next year. I very much encourage my readers to go if you have the opportunity, because it was really awesome! We also spent part of the day running around gathering markers for this blog, because that's what we do when we go somewhere.

The other birthday takes place tomorrow. Poetry enthusiasts (like my friend Rachel, who first mentioned today's subject to me a few years ago) may already be aware that tomorrow will be the 134th birthday of one of the most unique voices of the 20th century.