Sykesville, the little town where I live, got its start with water mills for flour and lumber. Fire and flood put an end to that but in 1894 the state opened a lunatic asylum here.
This was the biggest employer until the '80s when most of the hospital shut down. Maryland has been trying with almost no success to find new enterprises for its 600-acre campus.
Today downtown has a feed store, a distillery, three saloons, two creameries and -- very unusually for such a small place -- a bookstore. All very small businesses.
Over by the hospital there's a county lockup, a drug treatment center that looks more like the prison than the prison does and a huge building with a sign you can see from the highway: Northrop Grumman.
While it's not exactly a state secret what goes on there the company does not advertise it and nobody in town seems to know. I asked the mayor. He didn't know. I asked the man who runs the town museum. He didn't know. I asked te head of maintenance at the lunatic asylum next-door. He didn't know.
Visitors are discouraged:
When the building opened in 1997 it was announced that the company would work with electronic sensors whatever that means. Here's what it means now.
So it's still lunatics.
As the United States prepares to leave Afghanistan in defeat, it's worth asking ,was it reasonable to think that $10 trillion was sufficient to support a military operation in a country with 25 million people. One might have thought that was more than enough, but when you're spending $1 billion on mind reading and rail guns, $10 trillion doesn't go that far.
It looks a nice little place, though I suppose you had more fun while in Hawai.
ReplyDeleteSykesville bills itself as 'the coolest small town in America,' which it isn't. It's a bedroom community for the National Security Agency. Most of my neighbors have security clearances.
ReplyDeleteNice enough people on the street but scary. The other day I met the NSA director of suppressing democracies in his office. A pleasant young man
Well, cushy jobs with little oversight, you must feel like in a tiny Washington.
ReplyDeleteWithout traffic, crime, shopping, restaurants, social life. The big day here is Wednesday with the hay auction in the morning and bingo at the volunteer firemen's hall in the evening.
ReplyDelete