It's been a while. But I wanted to pop-in here to post a link to a new website I'm working on: dnrec.alpha.delaware.gov.
This is a new site that will eventually replace the website of the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC).
We're starting with an "alpha" site and launching it very quietly; we'll build the new site over time, taking proper time to edit our content and clear outdated content.
So, stop-in, have a look around, and use the "Your Thoughts" link to take our site survey.
I joined a guided walk from the St. Jones Center out to Kingston-Upon-Hull yesterday. It was a program of the Delaware National Estuarine Research Reserve (DNERR) and fit two goals for me related to physical health and mental - walking and taking lots of photos.
Kingston-Upon-Hull is a a decaying 17th-century building that has been a farmhouse, a tavern, a store, and a brothel. It marks the location of some of the earliest settlement in central Delaware and reminds us that waterways, in this case the St. Jones River, were once our highways.
Lewes City Councilwoman Barbara Vaughn has announced that she will not seek reelection this spring, ending her council career after four terms. I want to take a moment to say "thank you."
I've worked with Barbara on a variety of issues over the years. She's lately been the ex-officio member of the Lewes Planning Commission for the Council, providing us with regular updates and the council's perspective on issues that we discuss.
Barbara Vaughn is a very bright, kind, and dedicated woman. I've always been impressed by her willingness to give her time and energy to my City. This woman is in her 80s, and still going strong.
I will also note that Barbara Vaughn bears an uncanny resemblance to my Mom, Judy Mahaffie, another strong, kind, dedicated and bright 80-something. So working with Barbara has always felt somewhat... home-y.
I've been taking my new small video camera on my walks around Lewes. And I have been playing around with iMovie with the images I collected. Here are some of the results.
I went to Coast Day, at the University of Delaware's Lewes campus this afternoon. Coast Day is an annual open house at what we used to call "the College of Marine Studies," or CMS. The University has changed the school's name a few times now, and I've lost track of what it's meant to be called; for most people who've lived in Lewes awhile, though, "CMS" still works.
Coast Day is an open house for the researchers that has grown into an environmental and marine culture fair. Many state and local agencies have displays, as do local government and non-governmental organizations. There are boats and food and music and general science-themed fun. I like it and I like to photograph it.
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.
I spent part of Saturday afternoon walking around Killens Pond. Daughter #2 wanted to spend the day at Lake Forest High school, watching a high school swim meet (which her school won, I think). I decided to use that as an excuse to spend some time at Killens Pond State Park with my camera.
Afterwards, I spent some time at the new Kent County Library, working online via their free wifi (thanks, very much) until it was time to pick up my daughter again.
I found a transcript of Wednesday night's debate between Chris Coons and Christine O'Donnell at the University of Delaware and decided (of course) to make a series of word clouds.
For the two candidates, I left in their names, which appear at the start of each section of their comments in the transcript. I did so for artistic purposes.
If you haven't figured it out by now, I am voting for Chris Coons. I was leaning that way anyway; we've seen enough of Christine O'Donnell over the last two election cycles to know that she is not qualified.
elaware's newest Senator made his farewell speech on the floor of the US Senate today. Ted Kaufman was selected to take over for Joe Biden when he was elected Vice-President and has turned out to be what a Senator maybe should be, smart, experienced, and not worried about reelection. That last may be because he is a special case, but the results should tell us something.
It seemed a good excuse for a word cloud.
That, and I've been looking for a way to get that creepy looking guy's picture off the top of the page.
The Middletown Transcript has an obituary for Rusty Harvey today. I didn't know him personally, but I knew of him and I know enough about him to say that this is sad news. According to the paper, he died on Monday, at age 69.
Rusty Harvey was a leader of Delaware Wild Lands, "a private, non-profit tax-exempt organization dedicated to the conservation and preservation of natural areas through the acquisition and management of strategic parcels of land."
In my career in state government in Delaware, I've been involved in several agencies concerned with land preservation. "Rusty Harvey" is a name I heard from the very first. He was so established as a "name" in land preservation that I thought he was already long dead and simply being honored posthumously with tracts named for him as far back as the early 90s. I was a bit surprised when he was pointed out to me one day.
I'm sure there will be many more memorials and testaments in his memory as word gets around. But I thought I would note his passing for those of you who aren't from around these parts and might otherwise have missed the news.
I went all geeky for the Census. Not that that was really a change for me, of course. My default approach is geek-lite, as you well know.
In any case, in the run-up to Census Day (this past Thursday, in case you missed it), I ran a daily series of Census history tweets, reporting facts from each decennial Census and reporting on the counted populations of Delaware and the three Delaware counties.
A very cool by-product of all of this is a collection of links to scanned copies of the Delaware portions of historic Census publications back to 1790 (the first US Census).
These are fascinating glimpses into the official, and the bureaucratic, history of the nation. What was important? Who was counted, and how?
This exercise has helped me to better understand the joy that historians must feel in digging back into the past through documents and artifacts.
Our Governor here in Delaware, Jack Markell, has just launched his blog. He used the occasion of our recent doubled blizzard and the response and reaction from people within state government.
Last week, he had sent all state employees an e-mail thanking us for our work during the storm (no credit to me, the emergency personnel and the snow-plow folks are my heroes) and asking us for our stories of survival and assistance from or for our neighbors. He sent a follow-up today saying that he'd heard many stories that inspired him. he gave a few samples and then announced his blog.
As he explains in the first posting on his blog, much of what he heard back was about the sung and un-sung heroes among the state workforce.
For that reason, I’m launching my blog today and dedicating it to our very hardworking employees across Delaware. I’ll be sharing stories from citizens and colleagues about acts of bravery, as well as important issues that affect us all.
I think this is a great thing. The Governor already has a twitter account (@governormarkell) and is perfectly up-front with the fact that he splits the posting duties with a few members of his staff; tweets that end with *B are from Brian Selander and those that end with *F are from Felicia Pullam. Both Brian and Felicia, by the way, maintain their own very interesting and useful twitter accounts.
I will assume that posts on this new blog are probably a team effort as well. That doesn't mean they are any less the thoughts of Governor Markell; it is, after all, his blog. And knowing him just a little, as I am happy to say that I do, I would not be at all surprised if he did a lot of the writing himself.
In any case, this is another source of information from our Governor. That is a good thing.
We've had a bit of snow around here. It started snowing late yesterday afternoon and continued pretty steadily until around 7 this evening. Along the way, we think it changed over to rain for a little bit overnight last night. But most of it was heavy snow and high winds.
Our Saturday was blizzardy and wild.
This was mid-afternoon when the white-out was at its height. I took this video from the garage door, without venturing out. The girls asked me to leave the driveway alone until they can get out and romp in it tomorrow.
A bit later I went out in the back yard to check the heat pump. There I found drifts up over my knees.
This has been a rare sort of a storm for us. We don't usually get this much snow and I don't recall ever seeing "Blizzard Warning" on the evening newscast before. Also unprecedented was the order from Governor Markell last night through most of today banning all but essential folks from driving.
As a state, we hunkered down and waited it out, except for emergency crews, snowplow drivers and National Guard troops who were out helping the few morons who did try to drive -- and moving folks whose power died get to shelters.
We're suffering a bit from cabin fever, but here in Lewes, we've been lucky. we kept our power all day (but for one 10-second blip). We lost the cable for a short time, but had lots of Lucy and other favorites stored up on the TiVo.
Tomorrow, it's snow shovels and aching muscles for all!
Snow is still pouring down on us here in Lewes. We're probably up to 4 or 5 inches by now. So how to spend a snowy afternoon? Why not try out a video editing software tool?
This is video from our front yard, taken around 3:00 p.m. And this is my first-ever attempt at video editing. Be kind.
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.
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.
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.
We're just emerging from three days or so of nasty, wet weather. The remnants of Hurricane/Topical Storm Ida arrived Wednesday night and combined with a bit of a nor'easter to kick the crap out of the shoreline for a few days.
Thursday was a mess, with high winds and steady rains. Both lasted well into Thursday night.
That afternoon, we pulled up the web-video from the DelDOT traffic camera looking on the approaches to the Indian River Inlet bridge. You could see waves washing across a flat where a dune used to stand and onto the highway. Route 1 between Bethany and Dewey has been closed since.
By bedtime Thursday, both of our daughters' school had called to say there'd be no school on Friday. It blew and rained for most of Friday as well. This morning, Saturday, the wind was finally gone and the rain had faded to a day-long, gray mist.
This afternoon I took a drive around the bays and back north to check on my parents' beach house in North Bethany. It weathered the storm admirably. The beach was gone, however.
I took a short video to show what the beach looks like now. This is from the beach crossover at Bethany Village. There's about a four foot drop down to the "beach" and the waves are washing up almost to that sand face. At high tide, it looks like they lap against the remains of the dune.
The dune, which was fairly new, worked well and protected the houses as it was designed. The new dunes in Bethany proper also served well. There had been complains about these dunes, that they blocked the view from the boardwalk.
I think folks are now realizing that the fact that there is still a boardwalk is due at least in part to this new dune.
I was pleased to hear Delaware's Elections Commissioner, Elaine Manlove, on NPR's all Things Considered this evening. She was part of a story on efforts to improve voter registration, nation-wide.
In Delaware, a new system suggests one possible way forward. At the Delaware Department of Motor Vehicles, the system registers voters almost automatically when residents apply for new driver's licenses or update their old ones.
NPR describes Delaware's approach as "pretty much on the cutting edge." Ms. Manlove, who is a very nice lady, by the way, is recorded trying out the system.
"And it's done — it's on its way to elections," Manlove says. "And then the elections office in Sussex is getting this as we speak, and they can process it."
That's pretty cool. Of course, it does depend on people being in the DMV to register. Meanwhile, the DMV folks are doing a better job of making it possible to not be at the DMV every year. Which is nice.
The NPR story goes on to talk about proposals that the government take more of an initiative in registering voters instead of depending on voters to register themselves.
That may generate some opposition from those who distrust government automatically. But at least people are thinking about improving the system. It's a start.
There's been a fair amount of military activity around life lately. There was a "welcome home" ceremony outside my office this afternoon for the 261st Signal Brigade. This is the Delaware National Guard unit that includes our State's Attorney General Beau Biden, son of Vice President Joe Biden.
There was a "send off" ceremony for the 361st almost exactly a year ago. In that case, VP candidate Joe Biden spoke. Today he was back as the sitting Vice President. In both cases, that meant a strong Secret Service presence and security details. Things were a bit more intense this time around.
Meanwhile, last week, my parents hosted my father's cousin Mary Frances and elements of her family for a few days for the burial, at Arlington National Cemetery, of her husband. He was John Dunn, a retired colonel who served, to great distinction, in World War II and in Korea.
Colonel Dunn was a remarkable man, and a great hero. His memory is sacred to the many soldiers who survived a Korean prisoner of war camp thanks in part to his leadership.
His burial was suitably impressive; I'm sorry I was not able to go. My brother John, who was there, summed it up well in a tweet he posted afterwards:
Full honors military service at Arlington today: horse-drawn caisson, band, bugler, 3-volley salute, honor guard, flag ceremony, plus mass
Karen and I had dinner with my folks last night. They regaled us with the story of the Arlington ceremony and the honors to Colonel Dunn. I was thinking about that as I watched the welcome home for the Delaware National Guard troops today.
elaware's newest Senator made his 
