This May be Interesting to Watch

With a tip of the cap to the News Journal editorial page, I point to a new web site: Delaware Public Notices. This is a page posted by the Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association to share Delaware government legal notices.

I'll be watching it to see how complete and timely it is, but I can see this as useful in several pursuits.

The head of the Press Association has a "Delaware Voice" column in the paper as well, explaining the thinking behind the new site. He explains that the site is in part a response to a proposal in the legislature last session to stop using newspaper classified sections for state government legal ads. He argues that not using newspaper ads would reduce public confidence.

By placing notices in newspapers, the state reassures the public that no backroom deals are being cut and no contracts are being awarded under the table. The newspapers can monitor that the government has followed the law in inviting bids on contracts or is notifying the public about major projects.

For now at least, ordinary residents are more likely to come across a notice that they were not actively seeking when it is published in a newspaper. On the Internet, most people only find what they are seeking.

I'm not sure I agree completely. I have not looked at the legals section of a newspaper in ages. I don't think most people do; only those who actively seek out the government public notices.

But I have no objection to maintaining the legal ads in print. The cost is not that huge. I am glad to see another outlet for information added, though. And I think we can trust the Press Association to do a thorough job.

Filed in:

• Delaware
• government

Sometimes We Forget...

We forget how nice our City of Lewes can be. This evening, I stumbled across a blog posting from August from "Number 4 of 5." The post, In the streets of Delaware, I swear, tells about a visit to Delaware's beaches by a family from, I think, the DC area.

They were bummed by the crowds on the beach, but charmed by Lewes.

We walked a round for a while, ate dinner on the harbor, bought homemade ice cream, etc. Basically all the things you should do while in a beach town.

There are pictures of the harbor, of the Zwannendael Museum, a labyrinth in the churchyard, and that odd kid-sized plastic pirate outside Kid's Ketch.

It's nice to read someone else's fresh reaction to our town. We know it is a lovely place, but we've gotten used to that fact. This small blog entry by someone I don't know has reminded me of why I fell in love with this place 20 years ago.

Filed in:

• Delaware
• lewes

Happy Blogsday, To Me

It was two years ago today that I started this Mike's Musings. When I set off on my narcissistic journey, I wasn't sure where it would lead. I'm still not sure, but I'm having fun with it, so I think I will carry on.

Last year at this time, I took a look back and found a variety of topics and styles of posting. I wonder if I've settled into any one in the year since then?

I do think I have become somewhat less political, at least on this blog. Over this past year, several overtly political blogs have babbled up in the Delaware blogosphere. While I enjoy politics,and have strong feelings about them, I've come to think that those feelings may not be the best thing for me to post about here; not least because I have made a conscious decision to be openly me on-line.

Also, there are others on both sides of the spectrum -- left and right -- who do a more complete job of plumbing the political depths than I could or would.

So, I have continued to catalogue my daily experiences and have moved more and more into photography.

I have also started playing with various forms of blog-metrics and I have been interested to note what some of my most popular blog entries have been this past year.

My experiences last fall with a blood clot, and its treatment, for example, have turned up repeatedly as entries that new readers have found.

Even more frequently read has been my entry on adding a Sirius Satellite radio to my Prius. I get a steady stream of hits from google searches like "sirius prius" or "sirius for prius."

One foray into local school board politics, at least as an observer, has also generated some traffic. We had some worries in the winter about the intentions of the Indian River School Board towards our daughters' school. I also found time to cover the legal questions around the District's handling of religion and diversity.

Some Other Favorites From the Past Year

• A trip to Niagara Falls
• A Theory of Relative Coolness
• Two Concert Posts: John Mayer and John Mayer/Sheryl Crow
• Delaware's Own Punkin' Chunkin' is Now and International Story
  
• Arts in Education in the News
• A Walk Around the Point
• Oh, How I Love That Crazy Internet
• Report from the Keys, Part 2: Being There
• Returning to an Old Favorite
  
• Music. Two Very Different Sorts.
  
• Vacation Report, Part 3: At The Tyler Place
• Imagine My Surprise

Finally, I've been playing around with some new technologies, new blog tools. I've been trying out different aspects of del.icio.us, for example, to enhance my blog-roll and add a new tag-roll. This is my test-bed for some of the sorts of social networking tools I'd like to bring to my web work at work. We shall see.

It has been fun writing this blog for the last two years. I think I'll dish up some Ice Cream and toast to the future.

Filed in:

• Blogging

Onward and Upward, Into Fifth Grade

And then it was Christina's turn to pose for her First Day of School photo.

Christina began fifth grade today, moving up to the second floor of the Southern Delaware School of the Arts (SDSA).

Colleen started at Sussex Tech last week.

Karen is back to full-time at SDSA this year. She team-teaches, specializing in helping out special-ed kids. She had been part-time the last two years.

For Karen and I as a couple, this will be our ninth year as SDSA parents. It will be odd to go to school functions and now only see the parents of kids in Christina's class. We had gotten used to also seeing the parents of Colleen's class-mates; a group that is mostly our age. The folks we'll rub shoulders with now at assemblies and performances are mostly younger then we are.

One interesting note of newness for Christina: there is now a set of quadruplets in fifth grade with her. I assume they are split among the two fifth grade classes. Christina says some of them look alike, but others don't.

We were all excited to be fully back in the school year. Shoe was not too thrilled, though. He'll miss his human friends while we're away all day.

Filed in:

• family
• school

John Mayer and Sheryl Crow, 9/2/06, Tweeter Center, Camden, NJ

Karen and I took the girls to see John Mayer and Sheryl Crow at the Tweeter Center in Camden, New Jersey, on Saturday evening. The two are co-headlining on a tour this fall, with Mat Kearney
opening (at least at the show we saw).

This was intended to be the girls' first "rock concert," though Colleen will argue (endlessly, it turns out) that neither artist is at all "rock." She's 14. Nothing I have to say at this point in her life can ever be right, so I should just let that go.

In any case, Karen and I are John Mayer fans, and we like Sheryl Crow (even if she's not right in our musical wheelhouse). We had seen Mayer last fall, when he was out with his power trio. That show had shown us that John Mayer, while a respectable singer-songwriter dude, is also a funky, bluesy, jamming guitar player. It looks like his new release, Continuum, will be a blend of his two styles.

We booked a hotel room in New Jersey about 15 minutes from the Tweeter Center. I still like going to concerts, but I'm getting too old to make two-and-a-half-hour drives home after a show.

We got to the venue just before Mat Kearney started to play. He's pretty good. It must be tough to play to a mostly empty hall, with people wandering in, chatting, looking for friends, and generally not paying any attention. But he got through to those of us who were listening.

Sheryl Crow was next. She had a pair of guitarists, one of whom she traded bass-playing duty with, a keyboard player, a drummer, and a string quartet. A good, tight band. She played a nicely balanced set. She has plenty of hits and the crowd liked her. She has a very string voice and I heard no bad notes.

John Mayer has a larger band: drums, bass, two guitarists besides himself, keyboard, and two horn players. A very tight band.

One of his guitarists was a noticeably older man, Robbie McIntosh, who was clearly a seasoned pro. McIntosh was playing some really tasty slide guitar to compliment Mayer's funkier fingerpicking. I knew I had to look this guy up (he looked familiar) and I found that he's played with Paul McCartney's backing band and was a member of the Pretenders. I was also pleased to see, in his list of heroes, the writer PG Wodehouse, right there between Freddie King and Lightnin' Hopkins. You may have just won a new fan, Mr. McIntosh.

Mayer's set was great fun. That young man can play guitar. Now that he's freed himself from his commercial music niche, I think he's going to be fun to watch. He mixes singer/songwriter with blues and rock and hip-hop and is making something new. I like that.

I think the girls were impressed. Christina was getting weary. That's a late night for a ten-year-old. But Mayer's final encore was his early hit No Such Thing, which she's always liked. And Colleen will have to hold to her thesis that John Mayer ain't real Rock'n'Roll, but I think she enjoyed it.

So. A successful trip. And the girl's have now been to a "rock" concert.

Filed in:

• music
• concert
• mayer
• crow

Uh Oh! The Printed Press People Are Watching!

There's a story on Delaware political blogs in the News Journal today. JL Miller's article, Bloggers hope to generate Del. buzz, looks at the question of whether or not Delaware's political blogs -- right-leaning or left-leaning -- are likely to make a difference in any of Delaware's political races this fall.

It won't be for a lack of effort.

Filed in:

• Delaware
• blogging
• politics
• blog

Pastoral Interlude

After a stormy night (Tropical Storm Ernesto passed over us yesterday), here's a bit of an interlude from Patrick O'Brian's The Reverse of the Medal.

It is early in the 19th Century. Stephen Maturin has come down from London, where he found his wife had left him and the country, to visit his particular friend Jack Aubrey, Royal Navy Captain, at Jack's home in the country.

Stephen takes the overnight coach and is let out, just before dawn, at a small ale-house from which he will walk overland the rest of the way.

For the first mile his road was a lane between high banks and hedges, with woods on the left hand and fields on the right - well sprung with wheat and hay - and the banks were starred all along with primroses, while the hedges had scores of very small cheerful talkative early birds, particularly goldfinches in their most brilliant plumage; and in the hay a corncrake was already calling. Then when the flat land began to rise and fall this lane branched out into two paths, the one carrying on over a broad pasture - a single piece of fifty or even sixty acres with some colts in it - and the other, now little more than a trace, leading down among the trees. Stephen followed the second; it was steep going, encumbered with brambles and dead bracken on the edge of the wood and farther down with fallen branches and a dead tree or two, but near the bottom he came to a ruined keeper's cottage standing on a grassy plat, its turf kept short by the rabbits that fled away at his approach. The cottage had lost its roof long since and it was filled tight with lilac, not yet in bloom, while nettle and elder had overwhelmed the outbuilding behind; but there was still a stone bench by the door, and Stephen sat upon it, leaning against the wall. Down here in the hollow the night had not yet yielded, and there was still a green twilight. An ancient wood: the slope was too great and the ground too broken for it ever to have been cut or tended and the trees were still part of the primaeval forest; vast shapeless oaks, often hollow and useless for timber, held out their arms and their young fresh green leaves almost to the middle of the clearing, held them out with never a tremor, for down here the air was so still that gossamer floated with never a tremor at all. Still and silent: although far-off blackbirds could be heard away on the edge of the wood and although the stream at the bottom murmured perpetually the combe was filled with a living silence.

Filed in:

• o'brian
• writing
• novel
• maturin

It Does Appear That We Have Become a Very Litigious Society

The dueling Yellow Pages both arrived within a few days of each other recently; the Yellow Book and the Verizon Yellow Pages.

Both are slavered with ads, of course, but one had a 3-by-3-inch square refrigerator magnet loose-glued to its cover. It features a smiling Kelly Gelof under the large red question -- INJURED? -- and phone numbers for several offices of the law firm Tunnell & Raysor.

I can't blame Tunnell & Raysor for advertising their services. And there's nothing at all wrong with the services they offer. I just can't help wondering what tale our refrigerator magnets tell about us.

Toilet fouled? Here's the plumber's number.

Lights flickering? Call the electrician?

Flue feeling sooty? Dial-a-chimney sweep.

Auto accident? Wrongful death? Personal injury? Call Kelly!

Filed in:

• advertising
• legal

More Blog Updates

I'm home from work today, at least for part of the day. With Colleen already in school, and Karen at pre-school-year in-service days at her school, we are left with Christina, who doesn't start her school year until next week and is too young to stay at home alone all day. Several days this week, she stayed with a somewhat older friend, but that friend started Academic Challenge today and so is off at Delaware Tech for the day.

So I have taken a vacation day. I'll drag poor Christina into the office at mid-day, though. I have a meeting that I can't miss. So we'll hit Dover for some shopping, a lunch in the "big city," my meeting, and whatever else strikes our fancy this afternoon.

Meanwhile, I have an hour free to play with Blogger and other toys.

I have added another link-roll to the sidebar. Recent Items of Interest is a short list of things I've found on-line that I wanted to highlight, but may not have a chance to blog about.

I have also added two links to my on-line photo collections. One is to my main flickr page which has my photos listed. The other is to the mapped presentation.

I imagine that this sort of fiddling, and golf, and photo-wandering, are what my retirement may be like.

Filed in:

• blogging
• tags
• links

Blogroll Changes

I've been meaning to make some changes to how I maintain and publish my blogroll. I finally went for it this evening.

I have been using BlogRolling, which is a handy little service. I found it limiting though. I wanted to start classifying blogs and linking to them by type. That would have required the paid upgrade on BlogRolling. Sometimes I'm just cheap.

Meanwhile, I've been playing more and more with del.icio.us and getting excited about "tagging." There are some easy little javascript ways to post lists of tagged items from del.icio.us to your blog.

This evening, I went through my blogroll and tagged all of the blogs I link to with appropriate tags that let me create collections of Blogs in General, Delaware News Blogs, and political blogs On the Left and On the Right.

I think almost everything I had listed is still there. I did drop a few that are dormant or have lost my interest. Notably I have left Delaware Views Journal off the list. This blog is remarkable for never having had any content at all. I got tired of waiting.

Have a look. Let me know if anything looks wrong.

Filed in:

• blogging