Weird Western Maryland

Photo courtesy Dana M.Bridges. In my first post, a few days ago , I shared the official, university-approved, one-page summary of my Weird Western Maryland sabbatical project. I will spare you the entirety of the complete five-page, 2,400-word proposal that wound its way through the coils and recesses of Frostburg State University , but I do want to share its final paragraph: When this project is published, I hope to dedicate it to the memory of one of my former Frostburg State students, Dave Knotts, who was 30 when he died in a hunting accident in January 2020. He loved talking to me about this sort of thing, and I vividly remember his telling me, with great animation, about a supposedly ever-fresh bloodstain on the centuries-old floor of the Tomlinson Inn in Garrett County, which he was shown as a teenager. Dave himself thought it was probably groundwater seepage, but as he warmed to his story, he almost convinced himself otherwise. I hope these topics energize my future students ...

The author, not a genius, at the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills, N.C. Photo by Sydney Duncan. Birmingham (Ala.) Black Barons T-shirt from the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo.    Welcome to my Fall 2021 sabbatical project! My home institution, Frostburg State University , has granted me time off from teaching and administration to pursue one of my favorite topics more or less full time until mid-January 2022. Below is the complete one-page summary of my project, the one approved this past winter by my (in sequence) department faculty, department chair, dean, university faculty, provost and president. I thank all of them for their support. == “One-page summary of the purpose, goals, and objectives of the Sabbatical/Professional Leave.” Submitted by Andy Duncan in Fall 2020 for a Fall 2021 Sabbatical. I propose to use my sabbatical to start turning my 14 years of habitual note-taking into a readable, comprehensive guide to what, for l...