The Power Of An Image

Using an old advertisement for Marsh Stencil and Ink to showcase where we are today

At an early age, imagery and experience begin to shape the rest of our lives. One of the fond memories I have growing up involves working and playing down at my grandfather's crab house in Wenona, MD. After we fished the floats (soft crabs shed their hard shell), we would then have to clean the soft crabs and prepare them to be shipped out.

So many times I would look at the wax boxes for shipping along with stencils that had to be applied and was always curious about how it all worked. Not that it was anything complicated but maybe it was at that moment when the seed had to have been planted to thoroughly enjoy branding and entrepreneurship. As soon as the family name went on the wax boxes with the Marsh Stencil and ink brush, it was one of the final processes before the crabs could be driven to market and the watermen would finally get paid for their week of hard work.

When I found this old advertisment in a design magazine, all I could think of was how proud I was to see those stencils being applied to wax boxes to ship our freshly caught seafood. It would make me damn proud to have my grandfather still around to see the work I do today and to let him know how much I appreciate the value of hard work and the smell of salty air by the sea. Would be great to enjoy a puff on a cigar together and watch all the watermen coming in out of the harbor at the back of the crab house and just talk about anything. Thanks for the memories Pop Pop.

Check out the video below about Alan Parks from Tangier Island, VA. Nuthin' better than a good ol' tide wooder accent and hearing talk about the bay.

Found this photo on flickr of the old family crabhouse in Wenona, MD. Wish I could go back in time...

How To Ruin Our National Anthem, Just Ask The Fray

If there is one thing that will unite many Americans instantly, it is when the Star Spangled Banner is sung at an event. With all the hacks that have been butchering this great song of late, such as The Fray, why don't you learn a history lesson and see exactly where it stems from. Better yet, why don't ya read below from the song lyrics and understand the story as told and written by Francis Scott Key during the bombardment of Fort McHenry in the Baltimore harbor in 1814. Please leave the song alone and sing it the correct way with absolute bravado and reverence for our country.

Cover Sheet for the Star Spangled Banner lyrics

"O! say can you see by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country, should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation.
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the Heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!"

The Fray butchering the National Anthem from Presswire on yahoo

Here is how the Star Spangled Banner should be sung