Musical Morning

I've taken the morning off from work today to await the arrival of the Piano repair man.

Karen and I have my grandmother's old baby grand piano in the next room, and it needs work.

When my grandmother passed away many years ago, the piano went to my older sister's house. She was the only one with kids at the time, and we all thought that that made sense. About ten years ago, when none of her kids showed a strong desire to play piano, it came to Karen and I mostly on the strength of the fact that Karen is an actual musician.

It's a lovely old instrument, but we think it needs some serious attention. It dates back to around 1900 and was once outfitted with a player-piano mechanism.

My father grew up with this piano in his living room in the 1930s and 40s, but he didn't take to it.

I remember sitting at it in the 1970s in my grandmother's house as a kid, experimenting with different combinations of notes and being endlessly fascinated with the sustain pedal. How many notes could I get to sound at the same time? It made a grand sound.

So I am waiting here for the man who can look it over and tell us what needs to be done to bring this wonderful old instrument to life.

On a slightly related note, I've added a new section to the sidebar here. I have been playing around with the Pandora music site lately. They now make available snippets of code to add links from weblogs to the "stations" that Pandora users can create.

It stuck it below the Blogroll. Have a look and let me know what you think.

13 Curves Road

13 Curves Road
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie.

This morning I took a drive down 13 Curves Road, which runs from Primehook Road to Cods Road, east of Delaware Route One and southeast of Milford. I counted 20 curves, but maybe I was counting bends that don't really qualify as curves.

Minor Irritant #324

Who-ever had the book I'm currently reading before me was a smoker.

I'm just about to finish The Pale Horseman, part of Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Stories series. It's a fine example of British historical fiction, mining the rich past of the British Islands and their centuries of war and conquest. I'm quite enjoying it.

I'm a dedicated patron of the Lewes Public Library. I visit every week or so, peruse the new releases, choose two (judged usually by their cover, to be honest), and take them home for evenings of escapist literature, or grand drama, or modern, post-modern, or whatever, reading.

Sometimes, though, my visits to the worlds in these novels are colored by the smell of stale tobacco. When someone has had a book before me and has smoked his or her way through it, I can tell. It's not on every page, but every once in a while I open to a page that the last reader exhaled a lung-full of used Marlboro onto.

It's kind of a drag.

So Long, Al. You've Got Work; So Write

Al Mascitti is leaving the News Journal to become a radio talk show host. He's been trying out the talk show format for a while and, from all the reports I've read, he likes it and is pretty good at it.

I'm going to miss his writing. Al's not someone I always agreed with, but he can write and he does "acerbic columnist" rather well.

My problem is that I'm not usually able to listen to WDEL; I'm a down-stater and not generally able to listen to talk radio at the office.

I'm hoping that Al will take up blogging. He wrote a few blog entries as a News Journal columnist on the News Journal web site. But it was infrequent and the newspaper's blog set-up was not the best.

I checked this afternoon, and found that mascitti.blogspot.com is already taken. It looks like almascitti.blogspot.com is available.

There are other blogging systems, of course. I'm just trying to start the conversation.

Morning Sun. Kitts Hummock.

Because I felt like having a pretty picture on-line.

I Concur

The News Journal editorial writers have weighed-in on the Indian River School Board prayer issue in an editorial today: Indian River insists on expounding Christian faith in public forums

It can be legitimately argued that a Christian prayer before a board meeting of exclusively Christian members is a personal right. But those members represent a cross-section of taxpayers and parents, not all of whom are Christians. How can the board honestly represent those constituents and publicly preach their own religion in tax-supported schools?

And We Wondered Why the Indian River School District Has Money Problems

From today's News Journal: Indian River refuses deal on prayer.

The story is about a proposed settlement of a lawsuit brought by a parent in the District who felt unwelcome, as a Jew, based on the pervasive Christian-ness of the District and its tendency to start almost everything with aggressively Christian prayer.

The Board had a chance to settle out of court and put the case behind them. They didn't.

The subtitle of this story (Hymn-singing crowd praises Jesus after board's decision) gives me a notion that the District is probably going to lose this one in court.

I hope the plaintiffs take the win and pass on any punitive monetary award. I wouldn't mind seeing the Board settle down on the religion thing. I'd rather that they not have to face figuring where to save a huge chunk of money to pay off damages.

I'm Torn

I'm torn between agreeing with an editorial in the February 24, 2006 Cape Gazette and deploring a ... deplorable factual error in that editorial.

The editorial, What Would Jesus Do?, speaks to the issue of the Lewes-Rehoboth Association of Churches deciding to not allow non-Christian congregations to be part of the Association. The editorial writers note that it is the case that the group is an association of "churches" and that that does indeed suggest limiting itself to Christian denominations.

At the same time, the editorial suggests that a more inclusive association, including all faiths, might be more useful. I have to agree. I was applauding the editorial all the way through to its end, but I had to take exception to the final thought in the final line.

The community is fortunate to have an association that knits us together beyond the segregation of Sunday morning. However, many would like an outreach effort that is all inclusive so we can move closer to that ideal expressed by the founders in the Pledge of Allegiance: "“One nation under God."

I agree with the sentiment. I don't want to argue about the "under God" thing. What bothers me is the sloppy assertion that Pledge was an expression of the founders and that they included "under God."

The founders were the folks in the late 1700's who led the Revolution, crafted the Declaration oindependencece, and drafted the US Constitution.

The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892, by socialist author and Baptist minister Francis Bellamy. It was officially recognized by the Congress in 1942. The phrase "under God" wasn't added until 1954.

Again, I don't disagree with the sentiment of the editorial. And I don't want to argue about God in the Pledge. What bugs me is the inaccuracy and sloppiness of the end of this editorial.

I love the Cape Gazette. It does a great job of covering the area in which we live. But editorial standards are slipping. Good journalism is accurate and timely and well-written.

It should at least be grammatically correct. Lately, we've seen more and more grammatical errors. It should at least be factually correct. In this case, it is not.

Side Note: Here's a link to the editorial page itself. I'd have linked to this from the title of the editorial, but links to the Gazette web site don't persist. Next Tuesday, a different editorial will be at that link.

Here's a Cool Idea: PARK(ing)

One of the great frustrations of urban life, especially in the fast-urbanizing areas of recent growth (such as we have around parts of Delaware), is the lack of parks. We have open space, but it tends to be farm fields which are nice to look at, but not places where one can sit and enjoy nature. Lewes has wonderful parks, but Lewes is an old place, a real town.

For the newer urbanized areas, here's a cool idea. A web site called PARK(ing) offers the idea of erecting a temporary pocket park in a parking space.

We identified a site in an area of downtown San Francisco that is underserved by public outdoor space and is in an ideal, sunny location between the hours of noon and 2 p.m. There we installed a small, temporary public park that provided nature, seating, and shade.

Our goal was to transform a parking spot into a PARK(ing) space, thereby temporarily expanding the public realm and improving the quality of urban human habitat, at least until the meter ran out.

I like this idea.

Hooray!

We got a letter today letting us know that Colleen's name came up in the lottery used by Sussex Technical High School to select in-coming ninth-grade students for next year. She's in.

Colleen really wanted to get into Tech. Most of her friends are planning to attend there, and she'd like to continue with them.

Karen and I are quite pleased as well. Despite starting life as a Technical Vocational School, Sussex Tech has become one of the better academic high schools in our area.

Part of the reason for this, I think, is that the technical school districts are county-wide. There's one in all three of Delaware's Counties. And the school is well-funded. The tech districts collect school taxes from the whole of the county and (if I understand this correctly) can change their tax rate without referenda.

Sussex Tech's reputation, and the occasional problems of the other high schools in the County, has meant that in recent years there's been a strong demand for places at the school. That has led to the institution of a lottery system. Younger siblings of current students get a free pass.

At least three of Colleen's best friends got that free pass, so we were worried about her not getting in via the lottery. But she did. Yay.