A Near Miss?

the neighbor's garage, a photo by mmahaffie on Flickr.

Our next door neighbor's garage door took a mighty wrench at some point during the storm. another neighbor, across the street from this one, lost the top of a large tree as well.

The working theory around our cul-de-sac is that both were caused by the storm cell that spawned the tornado that hit Nassau station, northwest of us -- or maybe by the tornado itself.

We Survived Hurricane Irene

It's a wet, blustery Sunday morning here in Lewes and we're approaching the endgame of Hurricane Irene. Bottom line: we're just fine.

The storm has moved inland in New York state at this point and is down to Tropical Storm strength. It was a Category 1 Hurricane when it passed east of Delaware overnight. I think the worst of the wind and rain for us was later afternoon and early evening of Saturday.

We had a scare when a storm cell that appears to have spawned a tornado passed just overhead of our neighborhood. we'd had warning from local television and spent a few minutes down in the basement.

The twister apparently touched-down about three miles to our west and damaged a number of houses, at least one of them seriously. as of now, I have heard no reports of injuries or deaths in Delaware from this storm.

We spent the rest of the night on the main floor, closer to the basement, camped-out in the living room.

I took a quick look around the house this morning and so far just a small tree is down in the side yard. It may be savable.

Somewhere in this picture....

...may be my grandfather, my great grandfather or my great grandmother.

This is a photo of Anadarko Township, Oklahoma, in its early days in August of 1901. It is from the Today's Document blog from the National Archives.  Anadarko is in Kiowa County, southwest of Oklahoma city. It lies about 50 miles from Hobart, where my great grandfather George Mahaffie was homesteading with his wife Mollie and their four children. They had moved to Oklahoma from Kansas sometime between 1889 and 1900.

George and Mollie would have been 40 years old in August of 1901. My grandfather, Charles, would have been 16. His elder sister, Rose, would have been 18. Younger brother Bart would have been 11 and the baby, Beatty, 1 year old.

It is possible that George may have taken Mollie or one or more of his children east for the lumber auction pictured here. If nothing else, it provides a clear picture of the landscape and environment that helped form my grandfather.

At The Delaware State Fair

My new office is sharing a booth at the 2011 Delaware State Fair with the Public Service Commission (PSC). We're both part of the Department of State for Delaware. As the new Deputy Director at the GIC, I thought I should lead by example and take a healthy number of shifts at the booth. I've been taking pictures when I can.

Down at the Harbor on a Summer's Evening

"The best looking couple in Lewes (this weekend)"

The best looking couple...
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie

I have no idea who these two people are. I ran across them while I was wading in the shallows of Delaware Bay along Lewes Beach today.

The gentleman said, "wanna take a picture of the best looking couple in Lewes this weekend?" Putting aside for a moment the fact that the best-looking couple would have to, by definition, include the Lovely Karen, I said, "sure," and snapped this picture.

They thought I must be a newspaper photographer, because they asked about where the picture would appear. I promised them that I would post it with this title so they could google it and find themselves.

And so, I did.

...So Far

Just for fun, I ran the RSS from the blog through Wordle to see what the word cloud of recent posts looks like. Recent travel and Census stuff seem to predominate.

We're Missing a Tourism Opportunity: Water Baseball

Water baseball [Men playing baseball in
surf.] 27 July 1914 (LOC)
Originally uploaded by
The Library of Congress

The Library of Commerce photo stream in the Flickr commons includes a few intriguing, if faded, images of men playing baseball in the surf sometime in 1914. We should investigate this as a tourist activity/draw for Delaware beaches. The Division of State Parks could organize leagues. But I imagine the outfielders would have to be fairly tall.

Stuck in the Middle With (897,933 of) You

Census Bureau Director Robert Groves was out in the tiny village of Plato, Missouri, yesterday to unveil a National Geodetic Survey disc commemorating Plato as the new national center of population.

The Census Bureau calculates the center of population after each census as "the place where an imaginary, flat, weightless and rigid map of the United States would balance perfectly if all residents were of identical weight." The center of population has moved slowly west and south from Kent County, Maryland, in 1790 to Missouri.

The Census Bureau also calculates the center of population for each state. In 2010, the center of population for the 897,934 of us counted in Delaware was northeast of Smyrna, along Route 9.

Walking Up A Pair of Waterfall-Filled Gorges

I had a day to kill in Ithaca, New York, this weekend. Daughter #1 had a day of training scheduled the day after pick-up from Villanova. We drove straight from Radnor in PA to Ithaca on Friday and I spent Saturday wandering around two of New York's Waterfall-themed state parks.

First up was Taughannock Falls State Park, north of Ithaca and above Cayuga Lake.


Just south of Ithaca, and distressingly close to a Home Depot and other big-box retail, is Buttermilk Falls State Park.