Thank You, Mike Castle

I am a little bit shocked tonight to see that Christine O'Donnell has defeated Mike Castle in the republican primary. Pundits will talk about what this means. I don't really care.

I do know that Mike Castle has been a leader in Delaware since I arrived in the First State. He was governor when I was a reporter and when I started working for the state. He's been our Congressman for a good long while. And, while I am a Democrat and might (might) have voted against him for Senate, I like Mike Castle and I am proud to have worked for him and to have known him in a minor way.

Mike Castle is a statesman. In a time of partisan divide, Mike Castle governed. In a time of anger and nastiness, Mike Castle led.

Christine O'Donnell is a joke and there is no way in hell I would ever vote for her for anything.

Now she faces Chris Coons in the general election.  Chris Coons has my vote. He has my support. He will have my energy and he will have large shoes to fill when he takes office after the general election.

More importantly, I want to thank Mike Castle for his outstanding service to the people of Delaware.

Mr. Castle, you have been an inspiration. Thank you.

"The Sound of Sunshine" in American Sign Language

This is charming: a music video of Michael Franti's new tune, The Sound of Sunshine, by the American Sign Language Community. (via Michael Franti's web site and twitter account)

Another Representative Paragraph

I've recently started reading Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, by Helen Simonson. I chose it based solely on its cover, of course. so far, it's been a fine book, worthy of one of my periodic representative paragraph posts.

The following is a part of a paragraph near the start of the story, as Major Pettigrew, a 60-ish widower is riding in the car of Mrs. Ali, a widow from the village with whom he seems to be falling in love. It's a rainy, gray day.

She laughed, and the Major turned his head to look out of the window at the fog-soaked hedges of the lanes. He was aware that he no longer felt chilled. The hedges, far from being grim and soggy were edged to the last leaf in drops like diamonds. The earth steamed and a horse under a tree shook its mane like a dog and bent to nibble freshly moistened dandelions. The car broke from the hedged land and crested the last rise of the hill, where the road widened. The town spread down the folded valley, opening out along the coastal plain. The sea lay gray and infinite beyond the sharp edge of the beach. In the sky, a rent in the fog let down pale shafts of sunlight to gleam on the water. It was as beautiful and absurd as an illustrated Victorian hymnal, lacking only a descending angel trailing putti and rose garlands. The little car picked up speed as it headed down and the Major felt that the afternoon was somehow already a success.

Who is Using #NetDE on Twitter?

The #NetDE hashtag has become all-O'Donnell all the time lately, or so it feels. And I find I recognize few of the people using it.

The hashtag #netDE was originally declared as a way to flag tweets of interest to Delawareans among the Delaware twitter-users. But now it seems to be spammed-up without-of-state partisans interested in the Delaware Senate primary; especially since the national (?) tea party people decided to get involved in Delaware politics.

So I decided to do a brief, unscientific study and see just who is it that is using the #NetDE hashtag of late.

My survey covers the 12 hours between 8:53 a.m. and 8:53 p.m., Sunday, September 5. That's only because I had cleared my #NetDE column on TweetDeck a bit before heading out into the sunshine around 9 this morning.

Over 40 percent of the people using the #NetDE tag during that period were from out of state.  They were tweeting from Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and "The U.S.A." A few others had no location listed, but didn't appear to be Delawareans.

The non-Delaware folks accounted for more than a third of the #NetDE tweets.

And all of the non-Delaware people were tweeting about politics, from the right-hand side. In fact, two-thirds of all #NetDE tweets during the period were political; only a few of them from the left.

And what can we conclude from this not-very rigorous, not particularly scientific survey?

Politics can be annoying.

A Nice Story, Well Told

Today's Wilmington News Journal includes a profile of my friend Kate Walker and her Sussex Dance Academy. Kate has taught dance to our daughters for the last 12 years and her story is a very cool one. I was very happy with the work done by reporter Kim Hoey, who I've known, though less well, even longer.

I will claim a little credit for this one. A News Journal editor tweeted a request for story ideas for their "Crossroads" section a while back. I responded with a story-pitch in the form of a series of 140-character messages. (There's something about that limitation that forces one to get to the point.)

The article chronicles Kate's early career as a nurse, her work as combination school nurse and dance teacher at the southern Delaware School of the Arts, and the founding and growth of the Sussex Dance Academy.

... her studios continue to grow, even in a struggling economy, because of the "mom and pop" atmosphere, she said. Students and parents at Sussex Dance say they feel like they are part of a family -- a family with a mother who can be a bit pushy.

There are also quotes from Miriah Hearn and Kole Lofton, two young adults who I watched grow up at that studio and local schools, who credit Kate with helping them find their course in life.

Kate has helped our girls as well, and I'm very happy to see her get some news coverage.

I was a bit surprised to see a photo of Nova Gaffney identified as "Christina Mahaffie." And to see the photo of Christina labeled "Morgan Brower." (At least in the on-line version)

I've requested a correction. We'll see.

Elm Tree Update

The elm comes down
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie

A crew had begun taking down the large old elm on Legislative Mall today when I walked out to get some lunch.

Most of the branches had been removed. Large section so trunk were being piled on a trailer and smaller branches were being fed to a grinder as I walked past.

I did not have a chance to check it out when I left for the day, but I expect to see just a smear on the grass when I arrive in dover tomorrow.

Lo, How the Mighty are Fallen...

elm tree 1
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie

This huge old elm tree on Legislative Mall, in Dover, will be coming down this week. The tree has stood out on the mall for at least a century. That's Delaware's capitol building (Legislative Hall) in the background.

The tree's decline has been obvious to those of us who work around the mall for some time. It apparently has succumbed to bacterial leaf scorch.

A crew will take it down at some point this week. I hope to be able to watch it and say goodbye.

This is What We Should Remember Today

I Wonder: Who Will Be Her d'Entremont?

We dropped our eldest daughter off at Villanova University this week. She's now doing her freshman orientation and we are reorienting ourselves to a house with only one teen daughter.

The drop-off was a two day affair. We moved her into the dorm on Wednesday and came back Thursday for welcome events, meetings with advisors and other activities.

When we arrived, we were greeted by a "Welcome Class of 2014" painted onto a grassy hillside. And we had two hours to admire it as we waited in one of about six long lines of cars for our turn dropping all of her stuff at the dorm.

Freshmen at Villanova mostly live in a group of dorms at the south end of campus. There are more than 1,600 in the class of 2014 and logistically, move-in day was quite a challenge. I think the school handled  it well and the cadre of students on hand to direct traffic, check us in, and help schlep all the kids' stuff into the dorms did great work. But it was a long, tiring day.

The second day we did some dorm-room fine-tuning and heard welcome speeches from various levels of university administration. We navigated the bookstore hurricane together and eventually hugged our daughter goodbye so she could start the next chapter of her adventure.

I have to admit that I am jealous. I have been throughout the process of visiting schools, applying and choosing one. Our daughter's next four years look exciting and fun.

The whole thing has had be thinking back 30 years to when I started school. I remember my first day in Foss Hall, at Colby College. I looked into a neighboring room and saw a large, bearded fellow drinking a beer and reading a comic book. He looked up reached out a fresh can of beer to me. That's when I knew I would be happy there.

That was Mark d'Entremont. He welcomed me into his group of friends and has been a pal ever since. I don't expect my daughter to find a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon anytime soon; it's not that sort of a school and times have changed. But I hope she finds her own d'Entrement, a Todd, a Katy, and a Laurellie.

I hope she finds the sort of friends I was blessed with. Friends to stretch her, challenge her and help her become the amazing young lady I have seen deep inside.

New Branches in the Family Tree

I have discovered another ancestral home that now serves as part of an historic site: Huguenot Street in New Paltz, New York. This is the Freer-Low House where a ninth great-grandfather, Hugo Freer, once lived.

Regular visitors to this blog will have noticed my genealogy hobby and my pride in Mahaffie family history.  I have written a few times about The Mahaffie House, now a museum in Olathe, Kansas.  It was home to my great-great-grandparents JB Mahaffie and Lucinda Henderson who were among the first settlers of that town.

But that was in the mid-1800s. Hugo Freer came to the New York colony sometime before 1677 as part of a wave of religious refugees -- Huguenots -- who had fled France, stayed for a time in Germany, and eventually came to the colonies. Hugo Freer was one of a group of twelve men (the "Duzine") who purchased land from the local Esopus tribe and received a patent to settle the town of New Paltz in the 1670s.

At the very end of his life, Hugo Freer replaced his original wood home with the stone structure that stands today. He died in 1698. The house passed through various family members and served different functions before being purchased by the Huguenot Historical Society in 1955 and made part of the Huguenot Street Historic District of New Paltz.

"My great-grandmother, of French Huguenot ancestry"
I am related to Hugo Freer through my maternal grandmother, Isabel Cooper Mahaffie, another frequent subject of this blog. Towards the end of her life, she had inventoried her home (filled with a wonderful collection of treasures and art).  Reading through that inventory the other day, I found her reference to "an especially fine small colonial covered pitcher with the dragon finial, which belonged to Joanna Freer, my great-grandmother, of French Huguenot ancestry."

That led me to renew genealogical searching along that branch of the family tree, which had been stopped at Joanna Freer and her husband, Nathan Myers.  The renewed searching led me to a new treasure trove,  the Freer-Low Family Association, which provided six more generations of family, back to Hugo Freer (who appears in some records as "Hugo Freer Patentee").

So now, allowing for possible error over more than 300 years, the generations look like this:

1. Hugo Freer and Marie de la Haye
2. Hugo Freer, Sr., and Maria LeRoy
3. Simon Freer and Marytjen Vanbommell
4. Zimeon Freer and Catrina Vanbenschoten
5. Simeon Freer and Anna Maria DuBois
6. Elias Freer and Arreantje Veley (Viele?)
7. Joanna (Johanna?) Freer and Nathan Meyers
8. Isabella Meyers and Thomas Cooper
9. James Cooper and Honora Henry
10. Isabel Cooper and Charles D. Mahaffie, Sr.
11. Charles D. Mahaffie, Jr. and Judith Farrar (my parents)

And, because I keep all these records on geni.com, additional connections are made as data in other family trees is compared to data from my tree. The Freer-Low Family Association records start with Hugo the Patentee, but geni connections suggest at least another five generations back in time.

And so I am once again happily wandering among my ancestors in the near and distant past.

A Representative Paragraph

Every once in a while, I like to post here a representative paragraph from a book I'm reading. Usually, it's from a favorite author and this one is no exception.

I'm just finishing the novel Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman. I've read it before. It was worth another look. here's part of why:

It is a small world. You do not have to live in it particularly long to learn that for yourself. There is a theory that, in the whole world, there are only five hundred real people (the cast, as it were; all the rest of the people in the world, the theory suggests, are extras) and what is more, they all know each other. And it's true, or true as far as it goes. In reality the world is made of thousands upon thousands of groups of about five hundred people, all of whom will spend their lives bumping into each other, trying to avoid each other, and discovering each other in the same unlikely teashop in Vancouver. There is an unavoidability to this process. It's not even coincidence. It's just the way the world works, with no regard for individuals or for propriety.

Body Language

Media Matters for America posted this video of a wanna-be Breitbart trying for some ambush video and failing. What caught my eye was the very obvious and repeated hand-to-mouth gesturing, which I understand is one of the "tells" that someone is lying.

Echoes From the Past: The Season at New London, 1909

I go on occasional kicks of historical and genealogical searching. This is part of my hobby of maintaining an extensive family tree at geni.com that encompasses my Mahaffie, Farrar, Cooper, Becker, Kelly, Bartlett, Williams, Redmond, and Harrison heritage. (To name just a few generations)

This morning, while searching among the New York Times' archives, I came across a society-page article from 1909 that likely mentions my paternal grandmother. It doesn't add anything to my genealogical knowledge, and the Isabel Cooper mentioned may not be my grandmother, but the time and place are right and the subject matter is charming in any case.

The article, Midshipmen Give a Tea at New London (PDF), is from July 18, 1909. It details the summer social scene at the Hotel Griswold, on Eastern Point near New London, Connecticut, which lies across either Long Island Sound or Block Island Sound (depending on how you look at it) from the easternmost tip of Long Island.

New York City, in the days before air conditioning, could be a lousy place to be in the summers. Those who could adjourned to beaches and mountains for much of the summer. Resorts became centers of summer social activity and newspapers reported on the comings and goings and recreational doings of society. It was, I think, somewhat like our present fascination with the personal lives of television, movie and music stars -- except much more G-rated.

In July of 1909, the midshipmen of the warship Tonopah gave an afternoon tea for the guests of the Hotel Griswold "and to a large number of those who make up the summer colony at Eastern Point." It is described as "the red letter day of the season.

The afterdack (sic) of the warships (sic) had been polished until it was as smooth as a ballroom floor and under the gaily colored awnings and flags the young people danced the afternoon away to the music of the Hotel Griswold Orchestra, while the chaperons looked on, nodding approval at the pretty picture.

Along with tea with the Navy, there were tennis tournaments and amateur theatricals. The young woman who may have been my grandmother is listed among the doubles players, paired with a Miss Van Vleck.

Isabel Cooper is also listed as portraying Mrs. Muriel Crosby in a comic opera composed by an Arthur E. Cushman to be sung in the hotel on August 6.

It is called "The Tourists" and the songs are to include only the most popular airs of the day. The first act shows the lawn of the Griswold, with Summer girls flitting about. The second shifts the players to the Prada in Cuba, and this setting gives the actors a chance to wear picturesque costumes, and the men a chance to look mildly ferocious.

The article includes a lengthy listing of who has arrived, who has taken a cottage, and which yachts are in the harbor.

And, in a nod to the latest technology, there is a paragraph of "automobile arrivals" at the hotel. There were four Packards, and one each of Mathewson, Stevens-Duryea, Columbia, Chalmer's Detroit, Stearns, Buick, Hotchkiss, Palmer-Singer, and Winton. Of this random sampling of early automobile makes, I recognize only two.

I am not certain that the "Miss Isabel Cooper" mentioned here is in fact the Isabel Ruth Cooper who later married Charles Delahunt Mahaffie, Sr. and raised Charles Junior (my father). But I think it may be.

My grandmother would have been just a month shy of 17 years old in July of 1909. She was raised in New York and may have summered in Connecticut. She was, by all accounts, a beautiful young woman, and artist and later a model.

She briefly attended Bryn Mawr, near Philadelphia, before starting a professional career as an illustrator that found her, starting at age 25, painting tropical fish and fauna as part of a series of scientific expeditions.

I can see her taking part in the summer social scene of New London in 1909; a slim, athletic young woman dancing with midshipmen, playing tennis and performing for other guests. She would have taken it all in with a detached, amused, but friendly air, storing the experience among her catalog of people and places and ways of living that molded the fascinating and broadly interested older woman that I knew, all too briefly.

A Second Year of Driving Data

My little blue Scion xD turned two years old on Friday; I took delivery of the car on July 23 of 2008. I filled the tank this evening. It was my 58th fill-up since July 24 of last year, which makes this a good time to look at a bit of data.

I drove 16,700 miles between July 24 of 2009 and July 24 of this year. That's a bit more than the first year. I averaged almost 288 miles per tank, less than in year one. I used more gas -- 519.8 gallons -- and averaged 8.96 gallons per fill-up.

That gas cost me $1,349, an average of $23.27 per tank. Gas cost less in year two than in year one, though, when I averaged more than $30 per tank.

I averaged 32.13 miles per gallon over the year. That's a bit less than my years one average (32.19) and less than my two-year average of 32.2 mpg.

Heat Got You down?

We're expecting highs around 100 today and a heat index well above that. The elderly and the infirm are concerns for officialdom. Libraries are designated cooling zones. Most of us plan to hide inside with our air-conditioners. seems like a good time to look back to February of this year.

Local Politics: The Gloves? They Are Off

My neighbors here in the Lewes area will probably already have seen this, but for the rest of you, who maybe don't habitually follow Sussex County politics, here's an interesting moment and reaction from our County Council this week.

As Cape Gazette reporter Ron MacArthur wrote in his On the Circle blog, a Lewes woman had a bit of a run-in with some of the council members at their weekly meeting on Tuesday. Dixie Boucher, an active citizen, had come before Council to try to find out the status of proposed changes to the manufactured housing codes that she helped to write.

[She] blasted county council in one of the most tersely worded criticisms I’ve heard recently. She used words and phrases like “total lack of concern,” “abhorrent” and “detrimental” in her dissertation on the ills of county government.

Mr. MacArthur's post title -- "Just answer her question" -- tells the story. They didn't answer, apparently. Instead, Council member Sam Wilson (pictured above), never afraid to say what he's thinking, blasted her back.

Ron MacArthur doesn't give many details, but you get a pretty good sense of what must have been said from a letter to the editor from Ms Boucher that appeared in today's edition of the Gazette.

Her letter is titled "Everybody came here from somewhere." I include it below because the letters to the Cape Gazette don't get their own pages, or persistent URLs, on the paper's web site.

I often hear grumbling when, as “locals” call us,” transplants “ speak up with regards to issues affecting the county as well as the state. It is as if we do not exist.  We, appear to have no rights, and according to a statement by Councilman Sam Wilson at a recent council meeting, “People come here and they want more services and more government. I tell them to go home and then they come back and be glad to live in Sussex County.”

No surprise, but once again Mr. Wilson, you could not be more wrong. We “transplants” in most cases aren’t looking for more government; we just want the government, like your Sussex County Council, to be responsible in its conduct of county business. We want the council to hear what all the citizens say and want for Sussex County. And we want you and the other council members, Vance Phillips and Michael Vincent, to understand that an awful lot of the voters in this county, “locals and transplants alike,” are fed up with your “good old boy” attitude. It is not cute and it is not quaint and it is not good for Sussex County.

And by the way, I dislike the term “transplant.” We are citizens of this county and we pay taxes and spend our money and should have the same rights as “locals” do. Everybody, transplants and locals alike, came from somewhere. You didn’t just grow out of the dirt, did you?  And the reason you hear more from the eastern side of the county is because that is where most of the development is occurring, thanks to those who continue to approve it regardless of concerns about the effects.

Frankly, if the three primarily western council members are removed, it would be a blessing to the entire county and that is in reference to Sam Wilson, Vance Phillips and Michael Vincent. You all need to go.

I guess Sam Wilson isn't the only one around here willing to speak their mind.

At a Jack Johnson Concert

I heard a story on NPR the other day that outlined the lag in the concert business this summer. Ticket sales are down and some shows and even some tours have been cancelled.

Ironically, this year has been my family's busiest concert year in some time.

Karen, the girls, and I cruised down to Virginia Beach on Friday for a Jack Johnson concert. The opening acts were ALO and G Love. It was a great show.

We were all four of us already Jack Johnson fans. The concert cemented that for us and gave us a good introduction to ALO and G Love. 

Jack Johnson uses his tour to connect people with his All At Once social action network, and with local non-profits who are invited to take part in the "village green" that he establishes outside each show. We chatted with folks from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and Food & Water Watch before the show.

By the way, we read that Johnson has dedicated all of his profit from this tour to charity. I think that's pretty cool.

Gordon Sumner and the Royal Philharmonic!

Karen and I had the great pleasure of seeing Mr. Sumner, known professionally as Sting, perform with an orchestra last night in Camden, New Jersey. He was quite good.

We had traveled up to Radnor, Pennsylvania, yesterday morning to collect Christina from Cabrini College. She has just finished two weeks of ballet classes at Philadelphia's The Rock School, which houses its summer students at Cabrini. We packed her out and Colleen drove her home, while Karen and I checked-in to a hotel and got ready for the show.

We parked at Penn's Landing and took the RiverLink ferry across the Delaware River to the Camden waterfront and the Susquehanna Bank Center. That's a nice way to get to the show, though there was a loud, annoying, preppy dude yelling that we all had to sing a Sting song on the way across the Delaware River.

"It's a tradition," he yelled.

I always thought traditions were things that happened without someone yelling that you have to do it. But, in any case, he gave the rest of us something to bond around: "That guy is a boob." "Yeah, he is..."

Sting performed with a 45-piece orchestra, members of the Royal Philharmonic. He had his own percussionists, a bass player, a guitarist and a back-up singer. His music lends itself well to orchestration; it sounded wonderful.

Great Wisdom From Freddie Maugatai

The Discovery Channel program Deadliest Catch has been outstanding this season. I've been a fan for several years, but this year has been remarkable; not least for the story line involving the death of Captain Phil Harris.

I noted Captain Harris' passing back in February. At the time, I wondered how the show would handle his death. In the event, it has been one of the main story arcs for the season and has produced one of the best, most touching scenes in the show.

Phil had just suffered a massive stroke and been rushed off to the hospital. One son went with him and the other, the eldest, Josh, stayed behind on the boat to take care of the family business.

The scene I wanted to highlight finds Josh sitting in the wheelhouse uncertain whether he should stay with the boat or go to be with his father. Freddie Maugatai, a Samoan and a long-time and model deckhand, speaking in broken English, encourages Josh to go to his father's side and leave the crab fishing behind for a bit.

Season every year... crab every year. Dad? No.

The crab is always catch... we make money every year. But we cannot catch a dad every year.

I strongly recommend you watch the video. I've just quoted the small bit the touched me most deeply.

Personal Traditions: How My Family Celebrates July 4

I've been blogging since late 2004 and taking and posting digital photos since early 2005. So I have about a half-decade of documenting my life now on-line. This morning, I thought I'd take a look at how we -- the Lovely Karen and I and our girls -- celebrate the Fourth of July.

Most years, we spend the Fourth with elements of my family at my folks' place in North Bethany. We often attend the Bethany Beach July 4 Parade, we always lounge on the beach, eat great food and watch Bethany's fireworks show from the beach north of town.

2005
This was the first full year of my flickr/blogger obsession and the July Fourth celebration was just the sort of material I needed. I wrote a longish post about it that simply detailed what is our usual approach:

We spent the fourth with my folks, one of my brothers, and some family friends at Bethany Beach. We went to the Bethany Beach Fourth of July Parade, where I took a mess of photos. We spent the afternoon on the beach at North Bethany. We had a traditional meal of Burgers and Dogs, and eventually went down to the beach to watch the fireworks.

2006
Our 2006 Fourth was much the same. We always enjoy the Nur Temple Little-Car Shriners who turn parts of the Bethany Parade into a little Daytona .500. Later, the weather gave us some headaches:

... we waited for the sun to set and the Bethany fireworks to start. Unfortunately, a large thunderstorm rolled in and put paid to the fireworks show. So we sat and watched lightning from the living room.

2007
We broke tradition somewhat in 2007. Daughter #1 was finishing a lacrosse camp in Westminster, Maryland on July 4 so I spent the day driving out to pick her up and we joined the family for dinner later in North Bethany.

The Fourth was a Saturday that year so I spent the Friday night, after work, in a hotel partway between work and Westminster and finished the trip in the morning. I had stopped in northern New Castle County after work for a partial round of golf with my friend Sandy. The drive out to Westminster took me through some places I had not been before, including a lovely ride through Gunpowder Falls State Park.

2008
We were back to our normal Fourth of July activities in 2008. The parade included lots of politicians. And, oddly, Santa Claus.

We had a primary for the Democratic nomination for Governor that year and I was torn, since both John Carney, then the Lt. Governor, and Jack Markell, then State Treasurer, are great guys. I could cheerfully have supported either of them.

Ultimately, Jack Markell took the nomination and won the Governorship. He's been doing a great job, I think. John Carney is now running for Congress, where he would be a real asset.

2009
The parade was on July 3 in 2009. There were somewhat fewer politicians in the parade, because the elections were over. But this parade is a regular stop for some of our leading elected folks. Tom Carper, now our Senator, is one. I got a sweet shot of him greeting a young constituent.

Since the parade was not on the fourth, Andy and I had a chance to play golf on the morning of the fourth. We played Ocean Resorts, outside of Ocean City. We were back on the beach with our families for an afternoon of sun, dinner, and fireworks.

Somewhere in the last few years, we've added Andy and Lynne and their girls to our Fourth of July gatherings. They fit right in and add a new dimension to the holiday.

2010
This year Andy and I played our golf on the Third. And we included daughter #1's young man, who is visiting from out of state. He's a fine golfer and a good kid. He passed the test of golf-with-the-girlfriend's-dad with flying colors. Not that it was really a test; I just wanted to play some golf.

We're headed out to North Bethany for beach/burgers/fireworks soon. The parade will be tomorrow, for some reason, so I'm not sure if we'll see that this year.

Meanwhile, daughter #1 is starting a new tradition by crafting festive desserts for the family gathering. Among them is this Fourth of July tart which she photographed for me with her cellphone.