Three Pumpkins

Three Pumpkins
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie.

Colleen's, mine, and Christina's. What you'll see at our house this evening.

Karl Rover

Karl Rover
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie.

Rehoboth Beach, Off Season

Christina is playing with the Youth Bell Choir at Epworth United Methodist Church, in Rehoboth Beach. As a result, I have about 45 minutes of free time in Rehoboth each Thursday evening and have started collecting off-season, beach at evening photos.

Your Chance to Vote for One of Our Own

Congratulations to Carl Giffels, of Rehoboth Beach, who is one of the finalists for the October 17 edition of the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest (Contest #23). Voting is open now.

Contest #23 features two butterflies on a branch, talking. One is a traditional monarch-type butterfly. The other has wings inspired by Mondrian.

Mr. Giffels' caption is

It's not traditional, but I find it attracts a more mature type of female.

I'm jealous. I've entered a caption in almost every contest. I haven't made the finals yet.

We Won't See Much More of This for a Few Months

This is the tree in our side yard last Sunday at about noon. The leaves were just starting to turn. Now, with a northeast storm and the remains of a hurricane converging off the coast of the Delmarva peninsula, we've had just about enough wind and rain to strip many of these leaves away. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think we'll see much fall foliage on this one this year.

In the spring, this tree will put out a multitude of purple buds along its branches for the space of a week or so. It is briefly glorious.

I have no idea what this tree is called in polite society. We call it the purple tree and we are rather fond of it.

Update: Progress at Woods of Mahaffie

I was pleased to see a comment today from the Realtor developing the Kansas neighborhood I posted about back in March, the Woods of Mahaffie. This is the new development bearing my family name that is going up in Olathe, Kansas, where my geat-great-grandparents ran an Inn and Stagecoach Shop that is now a county historic site.

The Realtor took exception to the characterization of the plot map as "kinda cookie-cutter." That was the reaction of some of my land use planner colleagues.

The comment led me back to the Woods of Mahaffie web site where I was pleased to see that roads are in place, models have been put in, and lots are starting to sell. The plot map has been prettied-up and there are now pictures of the neighborhood's progress. Scroll down for the pictures and be sure to click the link for the larger format plot map.

It's not really that bad-looking a neighborhood. It looks like it ties into the developments around it and would be a walkable part of the community.

I joked in March about getting my family to buy up the lots. I still think at least one of us should invest. I was rather tempted by Lot 16.

I guess I'd need to do the due diligence and find out what the market in Olathe looks like, long-term, before investing. I doubt we'd be able to get the girls to agree to a move out to Kansas, but maybe Karen and I could retire there. I doubt they have hurricanes, northeast storms, or other coastal flooding threats.

Wisdom From Tom Starnes

Tom Starnes is a retired United Methodist Minister who lives in Rehoboth Beach and attends the Church that Karen attends. He served briefly as an interim minister there and occasionally returns to the pulpit on a fill-in basis. I know him mostly from fellowship golf outings, social occasions, and as a minister whose sermon style and substance Karen respects.

Tom is also a member of the News Journal newspaper's Community Advisory Board. He had a "Community View" column in this morning's paper, Aging brings realization that truth often straddles the line, that caught my eye and confirms Karen's opinion.

Tom starts with the biblical story in which a judgmental crowd is dispersed by Jesus with the admonition, "let he who is without sin cast the first stone." It's certainly a story we've heard before, whether we are Christians or not. Tom focuses, though, on a detail that is not a part of our collective awareness. He quotes the disciple John: "They went away, one by one, beginning with the eldest."

Tom's point is that as we get older, we become more aware of our own faults and more aware that the world is not a place of black and white, pure good and evil, or perfectly clear situations. There are shadings.

Age does this -- to most of us, anyway. It opens us up to new truths and experiences, making us less judgmental and less sure of some of our cherished opinions.

In a few short paragraphs, Tom Starnes applies this wisdom to a gentle admonition of the President over the nomination of Harriet Miers. He applies it to the question of gay rights. He uses it to warn us to soften our cherished opinions with a pinch of self-doubt.

This, I think, is the nugget:

...for most of us, as the years pile up we come to understand that more often than not, truth isn't out there at either extreme. It's generally found somewhere in the middle.

I keep thinking of this as I read the varied opinions and counter-opinions of blog writers in Delaware and around the world. So many of us are so tightly tied to what we think that we fail to test, to probe, to question our certainties.

The truth is often in the middle. If we continue to use only language that precludes the existence of a middle, we may never speak it.

Art in Motion

An artist named ChiaNi, who posts some of her work on Flickr, has been working on a series called Mona Lisa step by step.

It is based on her recreation of the Mona Lisa, using her own face. ChiaNi paints on a digital canvas, combining digital photos and mouse-strokes in PhotoShop.

She most often creates self-portraits in a variety of styles.

I recommend having a look at the slideshow version of her Mona Lisa series. Set the timing to 1 or 2 seconds. It's rather cool.

On the Road Today

Some days, the roads of Delaware have so much to offer, if you keep your eyes open. (Don't tell me these roads aint got no heart, you just have to look around.) Today was one of those days for me.

This motorcycle/monkey combination, for example, was at a small shopping center off Route 10 near Dover Air Force Base.

It seems like there must be some reason for this, but I can't figure it out.

Meanwhile, out on Route 10, I found a dedicated young pooch acting as co-pilot in this car.

There were actually two of these guys, the other one ducked down just before I got my camera up.

Finally, on my way home, I spent some time behind this van.

I found myself singing the rest of the way home:

Oooohhhhh....
Who lives in a pineapple
Under the sea?

Could it be, SpongeBob Square Van?

Too Many Meanings

This morning, I stopped by the Beebe Hospital off-site lab to get a vial or two of blood drawn. I get blood tests every month to make sure that my blood's clotting properties are what my doctor wants them to be as we treat my blood clot problem. This is minor, health maintenance stuff.

This morning, as I sat waiting for the technician to (delicately) shove a needle into my artery, I found myself looking around at a collection of Halloween decorations. The room was tricked-out with a cardboard skeleton and a mess of fake spider-web, complete with tiny plastic spiders, tacked up in several corners. There may have been paper pumpkins and black cat cut-outs pinned to the walls as well. I was only there a moment or two and don't clearly recall.

It got me thinking (as I tend to do). My health issues are not dire; I'm responding well to treatment. But I know there are folks dealing with serious health problems who must frequent that place. Are Halloween skeletons really as light-hearted in that office as they are in others?

I'm fairly certain I saw no cardboard tombstones tacked to the walls, thank goodness. That would be a bit too close for comfort.