This? This is Just Cool

Originally uploaded by chelajanenoto.

Wandering along in Flickr, and we find...

This is John Wesley Powell

Powell was the second Director of the US Geological Survey; he served in that post from 1881 to 1894. Before that he was an explorer and an emissary to the Native American nations.

This image is from an on-line collection of photos from the vaults of the USGS. There are some fascinating shots in there.

I've felt a connection to Powell since the Fall of 2003 when a team I was working with won the John Wesley Powell Award (PDF) from USGS, in recognition of our work on the Delaware DataMIL which was, briefly, on the cutting edge of on-line geospatial data.

We're not quite at the cutting edge anymore; things move fast in this on-line world. We'll get back out there. Eventually.

Where Have I Been?

I have been right here, in front of my laptop, cursing Comcast for lapses in our broadband signal every evening this week.

I did manage to get an e-mail off to them last night. They replied this morning:

We are currently experiencing an outage in your area. We apologize for this inconvenience and are working toward a resolution as quickly as we can.

Faster, people. Faster!

On Second Street

This is the main street of Lewes, Delaware. It's about three blocks of shops, restaurants, small bars and my friend Amy's bakery and coffee roastery.

That's the Rose and Crown across the way, there in the Walsh Building. It's modeled after a traditional English pub. It reflects our ties with Lewes, in England (our sister city, I think).

Second Street represents that small-town, mixed-use ideal that planners are trying to regain. Those are apartments and offices upstairs from the restaurants and retail. It is possible to live on this street and work here, eat here, and get a cafe mocha too.

I had the pleasure of living in a small apartment above a store down at the other end of the street in the year before Karen and I got married. When we maried, we moved into an apartment above a store the next street over.

I do sometimes regret that my State job, in Dover, keeps me from spending my days here. When Cafe Azafran installs their WiFi system, I may try to establish a Lewes branch of the State Planning Office.

Just a thought.....

Remembering A Neighbor

This is Mary Vessels Memorial Park, a pocket park nestled between Second Street and Front Street in Downtown Lewes.


This is where you wander to sit and eat your King's Ice Cream when the porch in front of King's is too full on soft summer evenings.

Mary Vessels lived in the old Hall House across from our first house, on East Third Street in Downtown Lewes. We knew her for several years in the early 90's. She was a pleasant woman and a good neighbor. She passed away unexpectedly, and too young, at about the time that we had our first child and started looking for a larger home and ended up settling further towards the edge of town.

The Park was named in her honor a short time later.

A great pleasure of life in a town like Lewes is that every spot has history, people, and memories tied to it. As the people of the town, we're the links between those places and their stories. It's our responsibility to keep those memories alive; to keep the town connected to its past.

Feeling Blue? Why Not Go Purple?

They are repainting the Harvard House, in Downtown Lewes.

This is an historic (more or less) Victorian, next to the Buttery Restaurant on Savannah Road. Several years back it stopped being a residence and became an office. It was painted that nice blue you see up there where "Harvard House" is written.

It looks like it is changing hands and is being repainted purple; the purple you see up at the top.

My own jury is out on that color.

Reaching Out to Those Who Need It?

Originally uploaded by mmahaffie.

Karen was the first one to spot this. The sign in front of the Baptist Church at the entrance to our part of town now seems to announce that the church has started offering services at 2 in the morning.

My first thought was, "what a great outreach to those who stay out late drinking in the bars of Lewes on Saturday nights. Just think how many conversions and life-changes this new set of services may bring, as lost souls stumble in in the wee small hours?"

But Karen, ever thorough, read on and claims that the next line of text suggests that rather than offering 2:00 a.m. services, the church is telling us that it now offers two AM services -- 8:30 and 11:00.

I don't know; 2:00 a.m. services may be just the thing we need.

Can I Get a Wake-Up Call?

Today we got a letter from the Lewes Board of Public Works, the elected body responsible for lights, water and sewer services here in the first town in the first state.

Connectiv Power Delivery, with the permission of The City of Lewes, has scheduled a power outage of the Lewes tap for April 18, 2005, from Midnight to approximately 5:00 a.m. (rain date April 19th) to relocate Connectiv's electric transmission pole on Savannah Road near Quaker Road.

There's more, of course (Police are ready, Fire Department and 911 Centers notified, etc.) but that sentence is the meat of the thing: Midnight to just before dawn, on a Monday morning, no power.

Okay. I understand that every once in a while we have to do without for a bit to make it possible to maintain the infrastructure we depend on. But midnight to dawn on a Monday morning? Why not Friday night to Saturday morning? Why not Saturday afternoon?

A great many of the folks in this town are retired, but Karen and I have to get up on Monday mornings. In fact, she usually gets up first, at around 5:00 a.m. Then I get up. Then she gets the girls up. Then we eat breakfast and head out for work and school.

It all starts with an alarm clock.

A modern, electric alarm clock.

I guess what we'll do is leave all the lights, and radios, turned on when we go to bed. Or, more likely, we'll get up at about 11:45 Sunday night and turn them on. Then we'll lie awake hoping they get the power back on by 5:00, which is when we need to get started.

Of course Murphy's Law suggests two possible outcomes.

1. The Connectiv crew is quick and, just as we hit deep-REM sleep at about 3:00 a.m., the lights and radios come blasting on, terrifying the cats who spring from the bed using our arms or faces as a handy, soft launching pads into which to sink their claws, and leaving us groping for the lights that blind us; or
2. The Connectiv crew hits unforeseen snags and the power is still out at 8:00 a.m. when we slowly emerge from our deep, refreshing slumbers only to realize that we're hopelessly late, we'll never make to work on time, we'll lose our jobs, and our girls will never, ever get to Harvard.

Or maybe it'll be fine. But, still... Midnight to dawn on a Monday morning?

Post-Vacation Thoughts #3

When we landed in the Bahamas, we were at a very tourist-y port, Nassau; a place that derives most of its economic activity from tourism. When we left the ship we were almost immediately accosted from all sides by friendly people who simply wanted to sell us something; some service (hair braiding), some craft, some transportation, or some essential commodity (like bottled water).

We come from a tourist area. We live in the eastern part of Sussex County, which also derives much of its economic vitality from its tourist season. So why don’t we, here in coastal Sussex, take such direct entrepreneurial action? Why not wait at the end of Rehoboth Avenue for the buses from the Park-n-Ride with handicrafts, bottled water, beach chairs and Pedi cabs?

I’m tempted to say “licensing,” but many of the entrepreneurs we saw in Nassauappeared to be working within an organized, perhaps government licensed, structure. Some were outside that structure and had a more fly-by-night attitude, but most were working within either a traditional or a government-mandated structure that seemed to function fairly well.

Maybe it is the case that such direct, clear appeals to basic needs are outside of what are the accepted norms of politeness in this country. We perceive ourselves to be more restrained and so we invent more restraints on trade, on public displays of affection, and on our approach to selling stuff.

We’re no less interested in selling stuff; we just have some cultural need to always look like we’re not selling stuff.

A Spray of Some Sort of Flower

A Spray of Some Sort of Flower,
originally uploaded by mmahaffie.

This is another image from our trip. I have created an account on Flickr to post some photos when I feel I have good ones. I'll let that be where I publish the "arty" shots.

Of course I will continue to post shots here for story-telling purposes and will cross-post from time to time.

In this case, who can tell me what this flower is? I haven't a clue.