A New Photo Project

I've wandered into a new photo project: Exploring the small roads east of Route 1/Route 113.

I've started taking short side trips down the roads that lead off of my commute route between Lewes and Dover and over to the Delaware Bay or the marshes along the Bay.

There are some great things to see.

Knowledge, Openness, Responsibility, Civility

Adena Schutzberg's All Points Blog pointed me today to an entry at TechDirt (The Internet May Be A Different World, But It Still Maps To Home) that suggests that knowing each others' locations makes for more civil blog commenting.

Topix.net has started plotting commenter's locations, and offers a map of commenting activity. I think this is cool on several levels, but I was interested in the effect adding very basic location information seems to have had.

Since adding the user's location to each post, we've noticed a marked lift in the overall tone of the conversations. To be sure, there is still a lot of heat, but it seems like naming the town that someone is posting from has helped humanize some threads. It's not just a flamewar with faceless forum handles, there's a real person on the other end of the keyboard, they actually live somewhere.

I have been thinking about the issue of on-line civility lately.

Delaware blogger Delathought recently announced that he (or she?) was shutting down, in part because "Now that I've established a pattern of behavior, people are making arguments based on what I've said previously, and so I have to go."

In the discussion that followed, I mentioned my misgivings about trying to maintain an on-line presence under a "nom-de-blog." I was reminded that almost every time I've written, broadcasted, or blogged under an assumed identity, I've ended up not liking who I became. I'm convinced that being on-line as myself, entirely in the open, requires me to maintain a certain level of civility and responsibility. I think my output is worth a bit more for that.

Delathought has returned to blogging, by the way. We don't yet know the name behind the screen-name.

What Day Is It Today?

At lunch today I stopped by the Safeway in Dover for a salad. I like their selection; they always seem to have plenty of sunflower seeds and I really like sunflower seeds on my salads.

But that's not the point of this post.

The cash register in the Deli section was not open, so I wandered down the front of the store to the "12 Items or Less" Express Check-Out. I was annoyed to find a long line.

But when I looked along the line, ahead of me and behind, I saw almost all men. Men sheepishly holding bouquets, boxes of chocolates, and cards for Valentines Day.

"Gentlemen," I wanted to say, "we must learn to plan ahead!"

Snowy Fields, Full Moon

This evening I noticed anew a phenomenon that I always enjoyed when I lived in the frozen north.

We didn't have nearly as much snow as others in the northeast had this past weekend, but we got enough to cover the fields. Tonight there are a few high clouds, but the skies are clear enough for a nearly full moon to shine down and reflect a silver glow off the new snow.

When I lived in Maine, I used to love the clear nights that sometimes followed a heavy snow. When the moon was full, or full enough, and the skies clear, and the snow unbroken, the night had a special luminance.

It was nice to see it again, if only for one night.

Michelle Kwan is My Hero

Michelle Kwan pulled out of the Turin Olympics today. She had a groin pull and decided that she would not be able to compete at full strength. Other skaters in the past have kept competing with injuries of this sort.

Rather than struggle on in pursuit of her last shot at a gold medal, however, Ms. Kwan decided to do what is best for the US Olympic Team.

"This injury prevents me from skating my best, and I've said all along that if I couldn't skate to the level that I expected from myself, I'd withdraw from the team."

That, my friends, is class.

It's About Time

Snow Pole
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie.

We were terribly disappointed not to see the forecast of a day of snow come true yesterday, but the wet did turn to snow overnight. This morning we woke to a well-blown inch or so of snow.

It's not much; nothing like the foot or so our northern neighbors are dealing with, but at least we have some real winter this winter.

We can hunker down to watch the Winter Olympics today. Pop some corn. Set some logs a-blaze. Fire up the crock-pot for a slow-cooked dinner later on.

Cold, Wet, 5K

Despite the cold and rain, Karen, Christina and I took part in a 5K charity race this morning down by Ocean View. It was an event by the Seashore Striders, meant to raise money for the "Steel the Show" steel-drum group of the Southern Delaware School of the Arts.

We weren't there to win. The organizers offered a 1-mile fun-walk. We opted to go the 5 kilometers, though we planned to mostly walk it. We all did a bit of light jogging as well.

Karen likes to speed-walk these things. Christina was jogging and walking by turns. I was mostly walking, and stopping to take a few photos. I wasn't the last person back to the finish line, but it was close.

Christina was the fastest in her age group.

It was cold. It was raining, though it wasn't the steady, cold disappointingly-not-snow rain that we endured all afternoon. We all were limping around the house this evening. Well. I was. Karen may have been. Christina is a kid. And limber. She'll probably happily be doing splits tomorrow morning.

I Should Have Known

The weather service and the goofball TV Meteorologists have let us down again. Their predicted day-o-snow has been a day-o-cold-cold-rain. They say it will turn to rain overnight. We'll see.

Waiting for Snow

After a let-down of a winter, they tell us we may see a real winter storm in the mid-Atlantic this week-end. We live right on the coast and so may see less snow here at home than in the rest of Delaware, but we'll wait. We'll watch. We'll probably end up shovelling as well. We hope.

Oh, How I Love That Crazy Internet

My brother John has found a recording of a song co-written by our grandfather, Redmond Farrar, on iTunes. It is the song I'll Have Vanilla, part of a collection of recordings by Eddie Cantor. Of course I have purchased a copy.

Our mother's father made his living in a variety of jobs in the straight economy, but he was also an active jazzman in the 1920's and 30's. He wrote the music for a variety of jazz popular songs. He wrote with other musicians and lyricists and helped create songs like I'll Have Vanilla, which is a family favorite; Loving You, recorded by Adrian Schubert'’s Dance Orchestra in 1929; and I'll Keep Warm All Winter, published in 1934. I think that last one was also recorded by Eddie Cantor, but I'm not sure.

I love I'll Have Vanilla partly for its quirky jazzy little melody, one of the first things I learned to pick out on a piano and later a guitar, but also for its goofy lyrics. For example:

You can shake
That milkshake
'Till the cow starts to scream.
But I'll wait
For a plate
Of vanilla ice cream.

Mom tells us, and Dad backs her up, that there was a song in the Redmond Farrar output called We Feed the Baby Garlic So We Can Find It In The Dark. I haven't found it, but I haven't given up yet. For a variety of reasons not much of my grandfather's music was been saved and handed down. We have inherited a love for the stuff, however.

In fact, John has inspired me to throw out a fresh Google net to see what turns up.

I've found versions of the Eddie Cantor I'll Have Vanilla for sale on several music services. The sheet music is part of a collection called "80 Years Of Popular Music - The Twenties." I think John already owns this book.

I also found the Cantor recording on Last.fm and used it to establish an "I'll Have Vanilla" station on the music service Pandora, which uses the "Music Genome Project" to associate different songs with each other based on their characteristics. This has given me music from Danny Kaye, Squirell Nut Zippers, Gary Pucket and the Union Gap, and Screamin' Jay Hawkins, so far. I've added some of these to my Pandora Favorites page.

Maybe my favorite find this evening is a Barbershop Quartet version of I'll Have Vanilla from a group called Yesteryear. It's on a collection of recordings called Let The Rest Of The World Go By. Please listen to a clip of Eddie Cantor singing the song before you listen to the clip available from this group. Please.