Pic(k) of the Week: Silage-ing at Stillpoint

For alliterative fancy, I might say, "silage-ing at Stillpoint." For agricultural precision, I'll say, "baling hay."

Stillpoint Farm is a working farm in Mount Airy, Maryland, USA. It comprises horse stables, an apiary, a Leicester Longwool sheep ranch, a hopyard, and the first farm-brewery to open in the state of Maryland: Milkhouse Brewery.

Since 2012, Maryland has awarded Class 8 Manufacturing licenses to farm breweries, under provisions that some of the ingredients, used it its beer, be grown on the farm. The first to receive the license was Milkhouse Brewery, then, with an acre of hops under cultivation.

I took this photo back on 19 May 2012. Today —a blast-from-the-past and at the half-way point for the year 2020— it's the Pic(k) of the Week.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Ahhh!

Ahhh!

An innocent time before coronavirus: no social-distancing, no masks. But cold beers on hot days.

And street festivals.

Photo taken during the East Atlanta Strut, in the East Atlanta Village neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia, USA, on 28 September 2019.

One doubts if the coronavirus will permit this year's festivities. One hopes, though.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Turtle and amberwings, down by the lakeside

Two dragonflies flit dangerously close to a turtle...or, from the turtle's perspective, deliciously close.

• Turtle: northern map turtle (Graptemys geographica)
• Dragonflies: eastern amberwings (Perithemis tenera)

Down by Avondale Lake, in the (small) city of Avondale Estates, Georgia, USA, on 5 June 2020.

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Georgia's open for (brewery) business

Brewery taprooms are once again open for business in the state of Georgia.

As of 1 June 2020, Georgia governor Brian Kemp has allowed bars and nightclubs, relaxing the coronavirus shutdown. In order to reopen, bars and nightclubs will need to meet 39 mandatory measures to "ensure patron well-being." Among those measures are

• screenings for employees
• limiting the number of people in the building (25 people or not more than 35% of total occupancy)
• regular and thorough sanitizing
• only serving drinks to seated patrons
• limiting party sizes to six people
• limiting the ability for congregating.

Pictured: "Patio, Pints & Food Truck," a signboard for Wild Heaven Beer, a 'craft' brewery in Avondale Estates, Georgia, USA.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Downtown Atlanta

An 'iconic' view of downtown Atlanta, Georgia, USA: looking west from the Jackson Street Bridge. The cable-television series Walking Dead popularized this vista, if in a digitally altered form. Pandemically-reduced traffic during April and May of this year produced an eerily similar vista.

The local-traffic Jackson Street Bridge crosses over two large highways —the Downtown Connector (I-85/I-75) and Freedom Parkway. It reconnects two neighborhoods that had been sundered by the construction of the roads in the 1960s/70s.

• The Old Fourth Ward sits to the north (right in the photo).
• Sweet Auburn —the birthplace of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.— lies just to the south (left in the photo).

Like most larger American cities, Atlanta (37th most populous, with 507,00 residents) has a skyscraped downtown cityscape.

• The skyscraper at the far right (north) is SunTrust Plaza —28th-tallest in the world.
• To its left is the Atlanta Marriott Marquis —aka the Pregnant Building.
• In the middle, the column-shaped skyscraper (with an antenna) is the Westin Peachtree Plaza.
• The 2nd skyscraper from the left is 191 Peachtree Tower.
• The Georgia-Pacific Tower is to the far left.

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