Tracking the News Journal's Sprawl Series

The News Journal has begun a five-day series of articles examining the issues around growth and sprawl in Delaware. The headline of today's inaugural article, Runaway development overwhelming Delaware, gives you an idea of their thesis for the stories.

I'm hoping that this series will spark some useful discussion of the issue on-line. Some of that has already begun, with dt, of delathought, offering some proposals today.

I plan to track the series, and reactions to it that I can find, via del.icio.us. I've set up a tag-link page to track all items that I have tagged as "barrish-article." Cris Barrish is the reporter who has taken the lead on this series, so I think of the whole thing as Cris' article.

I'll be interested to see how much discussion this sparks.

Memory: Maine, Midwinter

Spring is here, days are brighter and warmer, and yet I found myself recently thinking back to a midwinter week-end in the early 1980'’s when I was a college student in Maine.

A group of us from Colby College took a week-end trip from Waterville, on the Kennebec River in central Maine, to Kezar Lake, in the west of the state. We held a gathering at the summer cottage of one of our classmates.

I don'’t recall whether there was much snow on the ground, though there must have been some. I do know that the lake was well-frozen; the experience that has stayed with me was out on the ice in a deep, dark night.

We arrived in the evening, made food, ate, then went for a night-time wander around the mostly empty summer cottage community.

We walked among scattered cottages to a small community center.

We played a loose game of bowling on the single lane in the community center. I remember that bowling lane as an alley of sharp white pine, with pins at one end and a ball at the other. We set the pins by hand, then stood back as Mark, the best bowler among us, rolled strikes. The echoing rumble and crash, surrounded by winter quiet, was wonderful.

We walked back on the lake. The ice was irregular and ridged, with snow banks and drifts. Several of us carried large-battery flashlights. It felt to me, a relative southerner, like an arctic expedition.

As we neared the wooded shoreline, we stumbled over a snowdrift and onto a cleared, level ring of smooth ice that someone had groomed for skating. In our boots and heavy coats, taken by surprise, we slipped and stumbled. Someone dropped a flashlight that spun across the ice, its beam flashing crazy patterns through our group.

Someone, I think it was Laur, lay sprawled in the center of the ring on her back, looking up.

"“Whoa! Guys, check this out!"”

We joined her. Lying on that flat ice, looking up, I didn't see trees or horizon or other folks. I saw sky. Clear, deep, star-filled sky.

Suddenly, the ice at my back felt ever so slightly curved. Just for a moment, I sensed the motion of the planet through that starry blackness.

I knew, of course, about planets and orbits and the universe. But it was that night on the ice in Maine that I understood at a deeper level that I am on the surface of a ball of earth and water moving through space.

That comes back to me now and again, whatever the season, whatever the weather.

It's good to remember where you are.

I Hope the General Assembly Passes This Legislation

My State Senator, Gary Simpson, has introduced a bill to name a local nature preserve after an old friend. Senate Bill 268 would name a nature preserve of 599 acres on Angola Neck the "Til Purnell Nature Preserve" to honor a woman I've known for almost as long as I've lived in Delaware.

I have shared in the past my great respect for Til and for her husband Skipper. I think that this act by the legislature would be a fitting tribute.

I was interested to see that Senate Bill 268 quotes (apparently verbatim) the Cape Gazette article about Til that I linked to in my post about her in July of 2005. I don't know that I've ever seen a bill that is mostly text from a newspaper story.

Unusual, but I think it works in this context.

Some of What We Found at the Botanical Gardens

I got a few decent shots from my brief wander through the Botanical Gardens in Washington DC the other day. I put 13 of them together into a Flickr Set.

I'm particularly proud of this one. I need my friend Sandy to explain to me just what flowers these are, though, before I can add that information here.

Update: Sandy tells me that this is one of the Phalaenopsis genus of orchids.

Here's an Idea I'd Like Delaware to Consider

In New York, it looks like drivers of low-emission, clean, fuel efficient cars are going to get a discount on tolls. A story on timesunion.com ( Green' cars worth greenbacks on Thruway) says that the state of New York will issue Green Transponders to cars that meet certain efficiency standards and that those transponders will mean discounts on tolls on the New York Thruway. My Prius and I would like that idea to spread.

Traveling

I've been on the road a lot lately, and I'm just about to head out again. I've had little time for blogging, I'm afraid.

This past week I was at a conference of the National States Geographic Information Council, NSGIC, in Annapolis. This is a group that meets all day and into the evening, with few breaks and little time to play on-line. Exhausting.

We spent much of Wednesday in Washington DC, where we hosted a legislative breakfast of national groups interested in the use of Geospatial data. Several of us visited our Congressional delegations to talk about policy issues related to geospatial data.

My friend Sandy Schenck, of the Delaware Geological Survey, and I had a quick meeting with a staff member in Senator Carper's office. We also had a little time to wander around Capitol Hill.


It was a very cold, but pretty, day. I took several shots of the Capitol and some of other sites around that area. Several colleagues and I wandered through the National Botanical Gardens, a green-house complex just across the way from the Capitol. I have a few shots from that visit that I still need to crop, balance and post.

Soon, I hope.

For now, Karen and the girls and I are headed south to Virginia for the evening for a birthday party for Karen's uncle.

Springtime?

This was our tree yesterday, starting to blossom. Spring started this afternoon, though there's snow and cold rain in the forecast tonight.

The tree started to pop early, fooled by an over-warm stretch a week or so back. Now we're cold again.

I hope things settle down soon.

More Bragging

Sorry. Can't be helped.

I had great fun earlier this week learning a new software plug-in to the GIS software we use at work. It lets me export some of the geospatial data we publish at the Office of State Planning Coordination to a format that opens using the free Google Earth browser.

I have posted Google Earth versions of the Delaware Municipal Boundaries, the State Strategies, and the PLUS Project areas.

It really doesn't take much to make me happy.

Out Cedar Neck

This morning was dry and crisply clear, though windy. I took a detour out Slaughter Neck to Slaughter Beach, and then back to the highway by way of Cedar Neck. This was another part of my on-going "east of Route 1" photo project.

I found shipping out in the Bay off the mouth of the Mispillion River. I found unique signage in Slaughter Beach. I think I took a photo of the Mispillion Light.

The church above was on the way back in, just before I got to the highway east of Milford. There was something about the tree, the simple small church building, and the white picket fence that called to my camera.

Things Change. Fast.

The moon is just past full tonight. I noticed this as I was driving Colleen back from her dance class.

I realized that is was exactly a month ago that I was rolling along those same roads enjoying the moon shine on newly fallen snow.

Tonight, the moon was shining through not-quite bare tree branches and onto snow-free fields. The temperature, even after dark, was still in the low 70's and the trees are starting to show buds.

It's only been a month, but at this time of the year the weather changes fast.

Bragging: On Mapping

I've always wanted to mess around with Google Maps and create my own little mash-up. This week-end, I finally made a start, albeit a modest one.

For some years now, I've been running a small web site for the Rehoboth Summer Children's Theatre, a non-profit theater company that produces hilarious two-person children's plays, usually based on classic fairy tales.

This week-end I started putting together the 2006 edition of the Theatre's web site. Today I had some time to register the site to use the Google API and start trying to add a map of the Theatre performance locations. I read through the documentation, explored several tutorial sites, sweated through false-starts and errors and came up with what I think is a neat little map, integrated into the Theatre Site page.

I'm terribly pleased with myself. Now that the ice is broken, I'll have to think of some other fun maps to add.

Working on Second Street

Lewes' main commercial street, Second Street, is undergoing an extreme makeover. This will look great when it is done, but it was a mess today as I walked around town. The wind was up and dust and grit were blowing everywhere.

I took the day off today and had a massage. I met my co-workers at lunchtime for a farewell lunch for Ann Marie Townshend, who is leaving us to become the planning director for the City of Dover.

The sun was out, so I took some time to wander around my city and take some pictures. It's hard to go far in Lewes without finding something fun to photograph.

Let's face it, we live in a lovely little town.

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.