A Windy Day in Lewes

flags
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie

I took a walk into Lewes on Saturday morning to drop a book at the library, deal with some banking, and shop for Karen's coming birthday.

It was such a pretty day, I wandered through Canalfront Park, where the wind whipped the flags into a staccatto flapping sound, backed by a clanking counterpoint of blocks knocking against the metal masts of sailboats in the harbor.

Behind it all was a complex chord created by the wind through the rigging on the Lightship Overfalls.

Why Are Mug Shots Always So... Off?

I keep noticing that the mug shots posted from time to time in the local papers are always somehow just "off."

This is a mug shot of a guy named Charles Willis and the police in Milford, Delaware, are looking for him. I know nothing about this guy, but his mug shot matches the off-centered-ness of many I've seen in the local press lately.

Why can't these mug shots be better centered? It's off-putting to see them this way.

6,000 Flickr Uploads

fishing
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie

I just noticed that this photo, which I took last week in Dover and only just uploaded this evening, is the 6,000th thing that I have uploaded to flickr.

Flickr has been a great boon to me. It has given me a visual artistic outlet that dovetails nicely with my writing outlet -- this blog. The two have fed each other.

So. In five years on flickr (give or take a week), I have uploaded 6,000 photos and videos.

That's a lot, I think.

Stickers, Stickers, Everywhere

You may have noticed a small red sticker has started turning up in my flickr photo stream lately. You may be wondering, "why?"

Well, here's why.

My friend Learon Dalby works in the Arkansas Geographic Information Office (AGIO). They developed a logo for their office a few years ago and recently had it printed onto stickers that they have started handing out to friends and fans and folks in general.

The logo, and the sticker, of course, include the motto "Putting Arkansas on the Map!" That led Learon to ask whether it might be possible to get Arkansas on the map in some other states too.

Discussion ensued which resulted in my firm stance AGIO could get pictures of the logo taken in all 50 states using various social media outlets and personal connections. I am also hoping to get a few from the territories.

So Learon has been handing out stickers to friends in other states and we are dutifully posing them with landmarks in our states and sharing the photos, and locations, back with Learon.

Expect them to appear on a map sometime soon. We're GIS geeks, this is what we do.

Shoveling the Driveway

shoveling the driveway
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie

We don't really get a lot of snow here in southern Delaware, so when we do, we get pretty excited about it. That's one reason why I was all revved-up about shoveling the driveway this morning. The other was that it gave me an excuse to try a time-lapse photo thingy.

When I first came out and took a picture from the garage door this morning, Barry, from across the street, asked whether I expected photography to melt the snow away. He's originally from York, PA, and snow is nothing too special for him.

I took a picture from the same spot every two passes across the driveway. I tried to remain consistent as to angle and aspect; I used Mary and Barry's dormer window, in the upper left, as a reference point.

This sequence starts at about 9:30 a.m. and runs until around 11:15 a.m. I took my time, enjoyed my coffee and came in at one point to take a phone call.

Fans? In January?

left behind
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie

Walking to the post office in Dover today, I went past Legislative Hall in Dover. Lying on the grass across from the Capitol Building were a pair of "lobbying fans" from a protest out there yesterday.

A group of workers -- union members in a variety of trades -- had turned out to urge the General Assembly to act to support job creation in Delaware. They were supported in part by the folks proposing a new horse-racing track and casino complex: DelPointe.

That project would require General Assembly action, and it would lead to jobs -- at least in the short and medium terms.

So the DelPointe folks brought hats and lobby fan signs to hand out. These fans are a long-standing tradition. They are cheap and easy to hand out and they function both as signs and, in warmer weather than we've had lately, as fans. They are handy when things get sticky in the heat of political debate.

It seemed odd to see them out there in January.

This demonstration also gave our Governor a leg-up to a great headline, by the way: Markell calms angry crowd of jobless.

The newspaper reports that the protest had gotten a bit heated when the Governor stepped-in and stepped-up:

The rally ended after Gov. Jack Markell, scheduled for an appearance a few feet away, climbed onto the front of a state police SUV to address the crowd through a megaphone, promising to work to bring jobs to Delaware.

Nice press if you can get it.

What's for Lunch?

I have a new obsessive compulsive symptom habit: cellphone photos of lunch-specials chalk boards.

I work in downtown Dover, Delaware -- a really pretty city. I like to walk uptown at lunchtime and usually will get lunch from one of several places along Loockerman Street, the main commercial street.

A few weeks ago, a coworker asked me to let her know what the soups were for that day at 33 West, a very popular eatery (my favorite, in fact). I was thumb-typing the  list of soups into my cellphone to send to her when I thought, "why not put this out via twitter? There may be other folks trying to decide what to have for lunch." So I tweeted the soups and lunch specials.

I did that a time or two more before I realized that it would be easier to simply snap a cellphone photo of the specials board and post/tweet that.

So began an occasional habit. On those days when I do walk up town, I stop to snap the specials boards of the two lunch places that routinely have them -- 33 West and the Dover Newsstand.

The Newsstand, it should be noted, does post its specials each day on its web site. That's a good practice, though I think it would make sense for restaurants to routinely post their own specials to their own twitter accounts. Twitter is a "push" medium; it goes out to all who subscribe (or follow re-tweeters), while a web site is a static thing and of no use unless someone is specifically looking for it.

So, if you are in Dover and wondering what to have for lunch, I invite you to check my twitter-stream. It won't be every day, but on many days, I'll post links to pictures of the chalkboards that will tell you what's for lunch.

It Seems Possible That I Could Look Dignified

My brother John has turned up a small collection of pictures of our grandfather in the online collection of the Library of Congress.

Our father's father, Charles Delahunt Mahaffie Sr., was a member of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) from 1930 to 1955 (he was appointed by President Hoover). At some point during that time, I believe, he sat for this portrait. I think he would have been in his late forties or in  his fifties here.

He's very dignified in this photo, and in all others that I've seen. Perhaps there's hope for me?

Of course, my grandfather was a really remarkable man. He was born in 1884 in Olathe Kansas, but moved to Oklahoma as a homesteader as a boy. He graduated from Kingfisher College in 1905 and went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. After practicing law for a few years, he came to Washington DC and worked for several agencies before becoming an ICC commissioner.

He also married Isabel Ruth Cooper and fathered my Dad, for which I am most grateful.

Food for a Rainy, Snowy Day

With Delaware forecast to get a winter storm of biblical proportions (did they have snow in the Bible?), I thought today would be a good day for a crockpot meal. Thus, we have Crockpot Experiment #219.

This morning I started what I hope to be a tasty, hearty dinner. I documented the steps both in the slideshow above and in a series of tweets (#crockpot219).

This one includes potatoes, beef (browned with spices and garlic), peas, sweet corn, condensed french onion soup, and an old beer from the back of the fridge. I'll try to add updates when it is un-crockpotted later this evening.

Update: We ate this at about 6 pm, over bismati rice. I paired it with a recent Yuengling lager. It went over well, though Colleen disapproves of the peas. It had thickened nicely; browning the meat with flour seemed to help. (8:30 p.m.)

Furthur, On Up The Road

I went up to Asbury Park yesterday to see Furthur, the new band put together by Bob Weir and Phil Lesh, of the Grateful Dead. My golf-buddy Andy came along for the ride. He's not a deadhead, but is not unaware of the music and was open to a new adventure. We had good seats and were well-placed for photography. I had fun with my camera.

The key to this band is the addition of guitarist John Kadlecik, until recently the "Jerry" specialist in the highly-regarded Dark Star Orchestra. Kadlecik plays and sings enough like Jerry Garcia to bring Phil's bass and Bobby's wonderfully complex rhythm guitar into a focus that dead fans will instantly recognize. But he does not come off as a Garcia imitator. That's a good thing.

The setlist is evidence of Kadlecik's influence. I don't think I've ever heard The Golden Road to Unlimited Devotion played live, but it was part of last night's show as was Viola Lee Blues. Both were outstanding.

The sound in the Asbury Park Convention Hall was pretty terrible. It's really just a concrete box and probably better-suited to the pro-wrestling and roller-derby that the beer-selling lady told me are common events there. The sound was muddy and the vocals, particularly Bob Weir's, were hard to pick up. In Bobby's case, I think there was a microphone problem.

The short video below (a bit of Althea) will give you some idea of the sound. Though, in fairness, this was taken with my digital camera.



I bought the insta-CD of the show (soundboard?) and listened to some of it today. The sound on that recording is very good (though the Bobby mic is low). There's a version (audience recording?) on the bt.etree archive of the show (thanks to @nemski for the tip). For deadheads wondering what is possible, post-Jerry, this is worth a listen.

We Tagged A Tree

we tagged a tree
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie

On Saturday, we made our annual trip to the tree farm to tag a Christmas tree. We broke a long-standing tradition, though, by finding the right tree for all four of us almost instantly. Usually, tree-tagging involves a drawn-out series of suggested trees that, for one reason or another, are not approved by the whole committee.

Not this year, this year, we had only a few candidates, all of which all of us liked. Until we found this one, tagged it, paid for it, and went off for a pleasant lunch.

Such a Busy Week

This week has been Geography Awareness Week and Wednesday was GIS Day. It was a busy week for me, in my role as GIS Coordinator for Delaware.

On Wednesday, I volunteered as part of a large group of GIS professionals working with groups of fifth-grade students attending a geography field day at the Air Mobility Command Museum at Dover Air Force Base.

A real hit was a new event for this year; a Geography Game Show presented by visiting artist Neal Nichols, Jr. He drew a large wall-map of the United States, by hand, used it as a fun teaching tool.

I took lots of photos of the kids, and had time to get some shots of the museum as well.

On Thursday, I spent the day at the University of Delaware for a Geospatial Research Day event in which there was a selection of presentations on research, using GIS and geospatial data, throughout the University. I took notes using twitter and turned those into the word cloud posted here.

I also wrote these events up for the DGDC News blog, which is a new blog I've been writing as a communications tool for the Delaware Geographic Data Committee. Between that and the NSGIC News blog that I try to keep up with for the national GIS coordination group, I've had less energy to write here.

It's been a busy, busy week. But fun. And interesting. And fulfilling.

Blast from the Past

My friend Barney Krucoff knocked me back into the past a bit this weekend when he e-mailed me a link to a photo of the two of us back in the mid 1970s. This is from a reunion site for Camp Waredaca, where I was a camper from about the age of 8 through 14, which is I think the age I am here. I'm guessing this is from the summer of 1976.

That's me on the far left, with Barney in the middle. On the far right is Mark Binder, now a writer and storyteller in Rhode Island. I remember Mark more as a friend from high school than as a summer camp friend. We're still connected via Facebook and got together for Dogfish beers this summer in Rehoboth.

Barney Krucoff is now the GIS Coordinator for the District of Columbia. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC) which is where we got to know each other as adults. We'd already made the Waredaca connection. He tells me that one of his kids found this while Googling the family name.

The Waredaca reunion site led me to a Shutterfly set of Waredaca pictures in which I spent at least an hour this morning, wading through the past.

There were no other pictures of me, but there were shots of kids I half-remember from my childhood. There was the pond we swam in, the cabins and tents we lived in, and the morning flag-raising ceremony that started the camp day.

I spotted guys I vaguely remembered hanging out with, and girls on whom I'm certain I had crushes.

And that one cowboy-ish counselor who used to always say, "We've got it to do, so let's do it, to it."

Urban Planning, Parks and Their Impacts on Planned and Un-Planned Pedestrian Peregrination

I try to walk, when I can, for exercise and as a way to get out and photograph things. I live in one of the most beautiful, historic, small towns on the east coast -- Lewes -- and work in one of the more picturesque, historic, state capitols -- Dover. Both are in Delaware, for those of you in other places.

A challenge I have, though, is familiarity. In nearly five years as a photo-hobbyist, I have walked and photographed almost all of Lewes (586 photos, so far) and Dover (737 photos). Those totals, by the way, are only those I deemed worthy of uploading to flickr.

So I am happy to report that a change in Lewes' layout has helped me change the way I look at, and photograph, the town. Lewes has recently completed and opened the Canalfront Park, the redevelopment of a rusty boatyard and adjacent state boat launching ramp into a very nice park.

This has given me new things to photograph. And it has changed the way I walk through town.

It used to be the case that when I walked into town I would walk down Second Street (our main commercial street) from Savannah Road towards the Historic Society Complex to the northwest. And so I came upon, and often photographed, St. Peter's church from its northeast corner, as at left.

Now, however, I find that I walk up to the Canal, first, wind my way through the park, and circle around to walk back up Second Street from Historic Society Complex. So I now approach, and photograph, the church from the northwest, as at right.

Of course, I could have, and probably should have, made the change on my own. But we are creatures of habit. It took a change in urban planning to nudge me just slightly off course.

It has given me a whole new perspective.

At the Craft Fair

Karen and I went downtown today to wander around the annual Craft Fair hosted by the Lewes Historical Society.

The day started out overcast and wet, but the rain held off enough for us to have a pleasant walk into town.

The Craft Fair was scattered around the Historical Society grounds in a variety of tents and pavilions. There were painters and jewelry-makers and weavers and glass artists and metal-workers and everything in between.

The bluegrass band Bitter Creek were there. They have a very tight, very pleasant sound. They added a nice touch to the day.

And they were an inspiration to at least one other artist.

I was pleased to see the glass artist Justin Cavagnaro was there. I have admired his work for a while, particularly his glass-headed golf putters, one of which I photographed in 2007 at the Bethany Beach Boardwalk Arts Festival.

It was a great way to spend a morning, and we both came away with ideas for Christmas gifts that we'll have to follow-up on at a later, more discreet, date.

A Barn in the Spotlight

This old barn, at the intersection of Clay Road and kings Highway, outside of Lewes, Delaware, has been much in focus lately. It is on a tract of land that is proposed to be turned into a regional shopping center.

This proposal is strongly opposed by most people in the Lewes area. It's an unpopular place for a shopping center and, I think, a bad idea from an economics standpoint -- we don't need more shopping and this could threaten existing retail outlets.

As a result of all the concern, I think, I've noticed a strong increase in people stopping along the road to take its picture.

Now, I note, local painter Kim Klabe is talking about making it the subject of one of her canvases:

...just in case the developers win and the barn gets torn down. Saw it from a different angle the other morning and had one of those AAAAAhhhhhh, look at that...moments.

It's a pretty barn. I'd like to see what Kim does with it.

When the development plan for that property first came forward, the developers talked about saving the barn and turning it into a restaurant. I thought that was a good idea. They've since backed away from that idea.

That's a shame.

Bi-Coastal Reflections

A Californian photo-a-day blogger is vacationing in South Bethany, a few miles down the coast from us here in Lewes. He's posted a very nice photo of a sunrise over the Atlantic (Sunset in Reverse - South Bethany beach, Delaware), with commentary about how odd it is to see the sun come up over the ocean, as opposed to watching it go down.

This is my very first East Coast sunrise at a beach - a thrilling experience to see the sun coming up from the ocean and not at all too early to see (6:13 am). I wonder if there is a green flash right before the sun comes up.

It reminded me of my feelings watching sunsets in Hawaii, and thinking it odd that the sun should disappear into the water like that.

Age is Different in Different Ages

I spotted this interesting photo on the old-photo blog Shorpy the other day and it has stayed in the back of my mind. I realized why today, during a meeting of the Delaware Population Consortium.

The picture was posted by a reader called Dana and it includes some of his or her forbears. It is from 1902 and includes four generations of a family. From the left, Great-grandmother at 65 years, Grandmother at 47 years, baby at six months, and Mom at age 19 years.

It has stayed in my mind because I am 47 years old this year. But That Grandmother looks more elderly than I do or than any of my contemporaries. and Great-grandma looks much older than folks I know who are now in their 70s and 80s.

At the meeting of the Delaware Population Consortium today, we were reviewing population projections for the state out to the year 2040, when we predict a much older population. We talked about how many people will be around 100 years old and speculated that at some point the age of retirement -- the age that we think of as "old" -- will have to go up.

Looking back at this picture, I realize that at different times in history, the stages of life -- youth, middle age, old age -- come at different ages.

The College Tours Continue

We're in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, this morning, getting ready to stop in at Cabrini College to collect Christina. She's just finished two weeks at The Rock School, an intensive ballet program in downtown Philadelphia which houses its students on main-line college campuses like Cabrini.

We took yesterday for a pair of college campus tours with Colleen. We started the day at Villanova, just down the way from Cabrini, and finished up at Lehigh, about an hour north of there, in Bethlehem.

They are both very nice schools. Both are largely gothic, architecturally, so I was in Dad-with-camera-heaven. It made one of the young tour guides nervous. She felt she was going to have to wait for me each time I became fascinated with a steeple or a hilltop view. I assured her I could catch up and that the tour was for my daughter -- not me.

The photo above right is from one of the libraries at Lehigh. It is, I believe, a "quiet room" there. I loved that room; three stories of open shelves with spiral stairs and an amazing sky-light, stained-glass, dome.

Time will tell if either school appealed to Colleen enough to want to apply. I liked them both. These campus tours are bittersweet for me; I realize what a great opportunity college can be and how much more is offered these days. And I realize how much more I might have gotten from my college experience had I been a bit more mature.

At Villanova, our guide pointed out an archway where it is said that you can hear a whisper in one side of the arch around on the other; sound is carried along a carved-out channel. Two kids in the group decided to try it out, but it didn't work -- both were listening neither was whispering.

At Lehigh, we came upon the university's wrestling team. They were manhandling their wrestling mats into a rented truck parked facing up a steep grade. The mats didn't quite fit. I have my doubts that that exercise ended well.

Lehigh is built on the side of a small mountain. There are many steps and inclines. But also great views. If nothing else, students there have no trouble staying in shape.

At the Chautauqua Tent Show

I'm spending most of my evenings this weekend in downtown Lewes serving as master of ceremonies for the 11th Annual Chautauqua Tent Show. The Chautauqua is a project of the state's Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs and the Lewes Historical Society and is focused on major historical figures. Actors portraying PT Barnum, Frederick Douglas, William Shakespeare, David Douglas, The Lone Ranger, and Annie Oakley present lectures throughout the week under a smallish big-top tent. There are also afternoon family activities each day. The evenings start with music groups each evening at 6, followed by the main act at 7. The photo at right is the group Slyte of Hand, from Sunday evening.

My job is fairly simple. I thank the Delaware Humanities forum and other sponsors and funding agencies. I tout the door-prize drawing. I thank the organizing committee. I point out the restrooms. And I introduce the performers. While they are on-stage, I can wander around with my camera (as I tend to do). I have started a photo set, but so far have only posted shots from Sunday.

Monday night's show was interrupted by a heavy downpour that suggested one of the windy, heavy, thunderstorms we've been getting late. It was nasty-looking enough that organizers stopped the opening band and moved everyone into the Zwaanendael Museum (we were in a tent just outside). We split the audience into two groups; the band played acoustically upstairs while Frederick Douglas spoke to a group on the main floor. After a while, Mr. Douglas moved upstairs and the band moved back to the tent, as the storm had moved on. It was a little crazy, but I think it worked.

Tonight, there's a concert by the US Navy Commodores, part of the 2009 Lewes Summer Concert Series. so, while there will be the usual afternoon family activities, there won't be an evening show. But I'll be back before the mic on Wednesday with my notes, my smile, and my camera.