On the streets of Baltimore, it is getting harder and harder to hear the holler of arabbers. These street vendors, peddling produce and seafood on horse-drawn carriages, have been a part of Baltimore life for decades. But with less than a dozen arabbers on the street today, along with new city regulations on their horses and the potential loss of the stables they use, the cries of the arabber may be a thing of the past.
The word "arab" was British slang for homeless youth. While no one is sure how this term translated to describing street vendors in Baltimore, the word conveys the transience of arabbers' lives.
For African Americans, arabbing is a tradition that started after the Civil War, when jobs that offered independence for African American men were hard to find. Selling food from a cart was one of the few self-sufficient trades. Yet arabbing didn't become a distinctly African American trade until World War II, when industrial jobs opened up for white vendors.
"Today, they are living history, a reminder of Baltimore's past and the fact that horses built our cities and did the work that is now being done by machines. They are a reminder of a different time when people helped people," says Scott Kecken, who directed the 2004 documentary We Are Arabbers. ... Read More →
My day began like many others since I joined the National Trust - board a plane for another city, actually leave and arrive on time (not the norm), rent a car and soon find myself driving out of a city and across the plains and sprawl of middle America. This time briefly passing through Chicago en route to Plano, Illinois, the location of one of the world's most famous and influential modernist icons - Mies van der Rohe's vacation home for Edith Farnsworth. I arrived on time at 1pm for a day of project review with the new Site Director, Whitney French.
Oktoberfest is a long-running tradition even in New Orleans, which retains a substantial number of descendants of the hard-working German immigrants who found New Orleans a friendly port in the storm of political turmoil in the 19th century. Today, New Orleans’ German culture is threatened again by the construction of a mega-complex envisioned for the Veterans Administration and the Louisiana State University medical system. It would replace is the 1940s-era hospital shown at right, which the Veterans Administration will abandon in favor of building a new facility possibly in the Mid-City National Register Historic District of New Orleans. This hospital has not been opened since Hurricane Katrina.
Deutsches Haus, today’s German cultural society in New Orleans, and a tattered but intact neighborhood are at ground-zero of the VA-LSU development. It is one of many buildings threatened by the city's plans. We will see how this all plays out, as federal and state forces couple with the city to carry out the 21st century version of urban renewal to clear neighborhoods for development.
![[10 on Tuesday] Rest](http://media-cache-ec4.pinimg.com/192x/c8/b2/34/c8b2343eebdadef03b6eb19f12cfdefb.jpg "[10 on Tuesday] Rest")
![[10 on Tuesday] One](http://media-cache-ec3.pinimg.com/192x/ec/73/c3/ec73c3a63b3b7579697bf4862329e2ad.jpg "[10 on Tuesday] One")
