I Am the Work

The current header banners come from photographs taken at the National Arboretum, an amazing tract of 446 acres tucked in between New York Avenue and Bladensburg Road in Northeast DC.

The front page image is the top of what I think must be a beehive coke oven. You can see four or five of them from New York Avenue on the Arboretum grounds, but there is an abysmal lack of information on them, almost as though they have disowned them. Perhaps there is not enough money in the budget to prepare the site for visitors, so they just pretend they don’t exist. Beehive Coke Oven Dome

The image of the occulus, the small white opening in the bricks, is a view of the inside of the oven dome.  Coke Oven Occulus

The water reflection on the header above comes from the pool surrounding the visitors center. I remember it being a koy pond in the past, although I’m not sure there were any fish in it that day. Reflections

The “Roman ruins” are, as many of you would guess, the tops of the old Capitol columns installed there. The pavillion where they stand, like a roofless temple, has a powerful, unique energy. There are very few places like it outside of the classical Mediterranean world. Old Capitol Columns

And I didn’t even get into some of the stunning plantings they have there, mostly because it was February when I took these shots. If you are at all interested in seeing this place, I suggest you make it sooner rather than later, since, as it always happens, the government tends to view agricultural spending–and thereby, public parks–as highly optional. (Except for big subsidy bills, of course.) The Arboretum has often been threatened with mortal budget cuts — it wouldn’t surprise me if the Parks Service had to one day sell off some of this land.