Happy Birthday, Mike's Musings!

This blog started one year ago today. I began, as one does, with a test post. I also tested uploading a picture (this was well before I discovered Flickr), linked to an odd story I found out on the web, and late that night discovered that I’d chosen a name too much in haste.

Over the past year I’ve had a great deal of fun with this thing. I have reviewed books and movies and blogged about music. I have tracked and memorialized old friends. I have touched on issues, both local and national. I have lamented lamentable events such as the tsunami and the recent hurricane.

I’ve explored my family history. And reported on family present. I have given weather reports. I have given travelogues.

I have become a braggart.

I have bragged about my car, bragged about my kids and the neat things they do, and bragged about my work. I have (painfully) documented a year’s worth of health and dental woes. I find that bragging about forbearance helps me bear up in the face of things that otherwise scare me.

Behind all of it is the patience and love of my wonderful wife, Karen. It is her considered opinion that I spend too much time on line. She’s right of course, and I will try to mend my ways.

As soon as I finish this post!

I Know it Seems Odd, But I'm Proud of This

Today, I took this collection of used syringes back to the pharmacy for proper disposal. These were the syringes I used to give myself injections of one of the drugs my doctor had me on in the first phase of my treatment for my Blood Clot. I'm done with that now and on a daily pill.

I really didn't think I would be able to give myself shots, but I could. I know it's not much, but I'm proud to have overcome my needle-phobia.

Which Worker's Rights?

Someone paid for a pro-union message to be flown over the Delaware beaches on Labor Day week-end. No one specified spell-checking, though.

The banner reads "ABC 7 DESPARATE TO DESTROY WORKER'S RIGHTS." (And no, I have not changed anything. Click-though to the larger size to check my reading of this.)

We assume this refers to Channel 7, which is the ABC affiliate in the Washington, DC, television market. Many of the people on the beaches of Delaware on a holiday week-end would be from the DC area.

The effect is spoiled, though, by a glaring misspelling and a misplaced apostrophe. Karen was the first to notice that they had mangled "desperate" into "desparate." It was Dad, I think, who caught the wandering apostrophe.

Unless it is the copy editor whose rights are threatened?

Is It Time to Redefine Labor Day?

There's an editorial in today's New York Times (A Day On [Reg. Req.]) that suggests we change Labor Day from a day off to a day on, a day on which we work as communities on projects that benefit our communities, those less fortunate, or he nation as a whole.

It may be time to recycle the idea of Labor Day. Instead of a day off, perhaps it should become a day on, a day devoted, across the nation, to helping out - a day, in fact, of national service. Many Americans already volunteer their time in good causes. But what was lost with the sacrifice we were never asked to make after 9/11 was a sense of collective effort, the awareness that this was something we were all in together. That feeling makes a difference, and it helps us to make a difference. Labor Day is now just a pause at summer's end. Perhaps we can turn it into something more important.

The editors suggest, rightly I think, that this would be a sizable departure from our current take on Labor Day which, for most, is a day to "take the day off and consider ourselves entitled to do so."

They also suggest, less strongly, that their idea may conflict with the original intent of the holiday to celebrate unions and the labor movement. I think that a day of community work, properly organized, would be entirely within the spirit of the original labor movement; working together, we are stronger. Working together, we are a community.

I think this is a great idea.

Watching News Coverage from New Orleans

The CNN reporter is wearing a bullet-proof vest. How did we get to this point?

I've Been Here

This is a photo that I found in one of the fascinating collections of pictures from the group of network administrators at direcNIC.com who stayed in New Orleans to keep their company's web-hosting systems up and running. They have also been blogging their experience and have attracted thousands of readers and comments.

This shot struck me and I had to post it because the fire that's burning is just behind Mother's Restaurant, the first place Karen and I visited when we went to New Orleans six years or so ago. That's Mother's there, on the corner. It's a cramped little deli that served (and I hope will serve again) a sloppy mess of a sandwich called a Po'Boy. I admit that food is my weakness; this place impressed me.

Off to the right, just out of the picture, is a large, newer hotel (I can't remember which) in which Karen and I stayed for that week-end. Straight ahead, down the street, is the French Quarter.

I've been heartbroken by what I've seen and read out of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. We've donated to the Red Cross and our prayers have gone out. This photo brought me back to my few visits to New Orleans; with Karen and for a conference. My sadness deepens.

It's Time to Donate

Please consider donating to the American Red Cross to help folks recover from Hurricane Katrina.

I've been astounded by what I'm seeing on television from the Gulf Coast. Our southern neighbors have been hit hard by what may be the worst natural disaster in our history.

What frustrates me is the sense that we're only seeing part of the story. I don't think the media is hiding anything. I think this story is so huge that they can't get their cameras, microphones, and talking heads really around it.

I wish I could do more to help. My friend Dorothy's husband is a linesman and he's already down south helping out. I see stories of young folks spending a few days helping with the relief effort. I guess my health, at this time, is such that I shouldn't even consider it, but I'm sorry that I can't head south to help out too.

But I can donate. And so can you.

Our Old House

Karen and I bought this house a year or so into our marriage back in the late 1980s. It was our first house and the first home Colleen came back to as a baby. We sold it when we were getting ready to expand our family and add Christina.

This is a sweet little place. Two bedrooms and a bath and a half. It sits about a block from the main business district of Lewes, Delaware, and just down the street from Town Hall. I stopped to take this picture on my way into a Town Council meeting this evening.

We bought this house from a nice gay couple who had done some admirable fixing-up. I am a terrible householder and did not live up to their standards, though I didn't destroy it.

It has sold at least once since we sold it back in the 1990s. I think the last sale was for about twice what we sold it for. I asked the real estate agent whether we couldn't get a percentage of that sale, but he said no. It was worth asking.

The place has been painted to bring out that red trim lately, and the trees and bushes are so much larger. On the right there is a lovely Japanese Maple. It was only half that size when we were there. I loved that tree and am pleased to have a similar tree at the new place.

It's nice to stop by and look the old place over, from time to time.

Moving Day for Jazzy

This evening, we moved Jazzy to his new home at Serenity Acres. He's lived at the Milton Equestrian Center for many years, so we were concerned that the move might be troubling, but he seems to have handled it well.

Jazzy trailers well. He was once a racehorse, so he may have gotten used to it.

Milton Equestrian Center is down-sizing, so we needed a new spot for Jazzy. Serenity Acres is a lovely small farm nearby that has a handful of horses, at least one of whom Jazzy knows from sharing a stable in the past.

I have a good feeling about the place and I think it will work our well for Jazzy and for Colleen.

"Even flesh-eating ghouls, it seems, want to be on TV"

No matter what you do, the zombies will absorb you.

According to a story in the Daily Texan -- Zombies descend upon Erwin Center -- a group of college kids dressed up as zombies invaded the American Idol auditions under way in Austin.

Their goal? Apparently it was good-natured consciousness-raising. The young man who organized the zombie-ing is quoted as saying it was to "raise awareness about the brain-melting nature of television by pretending ... to be a zombie, and terrorizing throngs of vapid pop-star hopefuls at the 'American Idol' auditions."

But the American Idol producers are good at what they do; they had spotted the on-line postings used to organize the invasion.

The coordinating producer is quoted as saying, "we've been on 24-hour zombie watch. We thought it would be fun to have them on the show."

So, out came the release forms, and the zombies were absorbed.