Delaware's Unique Border

A blog called Strange Maps has started looking at Delaware's rather unique border. There are two posts, so far. It's interesting to see the various oddities of my state's boundary discussed by an "outsider." I advise bringing along a pinch of salt to take when you read the Strange Maps posts, there are a few very minor mistakes.

My day-job involves mapping, geospatial data, and working with things like the border in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software. I also work closely with my friend Sandy Schenck of the Delaware Geological Survey. Sandy's first job, many years ago, was finding and maintaining the 179 stone boundary monuments that mark the Delaware border. He wrote a wonderful monograph on the boundary. That's my authoritative source on these issues.

The images I've used in this post, by the way, were created using the Delaware Data Mapping and Integration Lab -- The DataMIL -- which provides a digital base map of Delaware, replacing the old paper topographic map series with a more frequently updated, web-based, topo map.

The first Strange Maps post is Where Delaware Met Pennsylvania (1): the Twelve Mile Circle. It looks at the odd border issues caused by the decree in colonial times that a circle with a radius of 12 miles, centered on the town of New Castle, be used as a boundary.

Strange Maps describes this as "the only US boundary that’s a true arc." That's sort-of true; it's the only one that is circular. It is not, in fact, a true arc. The chain used to measure the 12 miles and so to survey that part of the boundary, had to be stretched out over and over again. The links started to stretch, just a bit, throwing off the measurements. Somewhere along the line, the surveyors got themselves a fresh chain, at least once.

The result is a boundary that is a compound of degraded arc sections. Subtle, and maybe even silly. But true.

Strange Maps also points out that the boundary was described as everything within the 12 miles up to the shoreline of what is now New Jersey. The result of that, and of a 1930s Supreme Court decision, has been that the state boundary is, in fact, the mean-low water line as it existed in 1934. There are places where the shoreline on the Jersey side has filled-in and moved out, by accretion, to where it now lies within Delaware.

We try not to point this out too explicitly; it upsets our neighbors in New Jersey. That, and the fact that Delaware regulates what happens over the river bottom, which has so far stymied a proposed Liquid Natural Gas terminal in the Camden area.

The second "Where Delaware Met Pennsylvania" post looks at the "Wedge". This is a wedge-shaped bit of land that for a time was not in Delaware, not in Pennsylvania, and not in Maryland. It was another anomaly caused by the 12-mile circle and by a disconnect between what 17th-Century cartography expected to find and what 17th-Century surveying actually did find.

It's that bit beneath that "shelf" where the three states meet. Just above Newark.

I understand that it was briefly a haven for outlaws, who would flee there because no lawmen had jurisdiction. At least, until the states got together and decided to make it part of Delaware.

This almost forgotten bit of history lives on in some of the place names north of Newark like "Top of the Wedge" or "Wedge Hills."

These are just a few of the many strange truths about the Delaware border. For example, many of us in Delaware actually live east of the Mason-Dixon line. They drew our western boundary before turning west to create the part of the line that they are most known for.

Also, the Delaware boundary is the only one in the marked, in part, with boundary monuments made of stone from a different country. Mason and Dixon used a "light buff oolitic limestone cut on the Isle of Portland, Dorsetshire, England" to mark parts of the line.

The Delaware Geological Survey maintains a database of the boundary markers, some of which can be visited.

Can I Have One? Please?

Here's what greeted me when I left my office building at lunch today: a purple, three-wheeled, all-electric vehicle. I had to check it out.

The Myers Motors NmG is technically a motorcycle, but drives like a car. It is said to have a range of around 30 miles and an ability to go up to 70 miles per hour. NmG? Stands for "No More Gas."

The car was in Dover, visiting from its home in Ohio for a meeting of the Governor's Energy Advisory Council. They wanted hear a bit more about it, apparently.

Poking around on-line this evening, I find that the NmG is a resurrection of the Corbin Motors Sparrow. A few hundred were built out in California in the early part of this century, but company didn't make it.

Now, apparently sensing a renewed market opportunity, the Myers folks have bought out the Sparrow and redesigned/re-designated it as the NmG.

This thing looks very cool. It is a single-seater, but looks comfortable and has a cargo capacity of one shopping cart-full. I was intrigued by a set of golf-ball-style dimples on the backs of the front wheel covers and on the back of the vehicle itself. I assume they perform some aerodynamic function.

A range of 30 miles is not quite enough for my life in Delaware, but if I lived and worked in the same city, I can see this as a perfect commute-car. I can also see it as a courier car in a city.

I am tempted, though.

I've long wanted an electric car. I bought my first gas/electric hybrid Prius in 2001. I'm now on my second Prius.

I love my Prius, but there's still a spot in my imagination for a completely electric vehicle.

I Just Hope the House Doesn't Sink

I started a new approach to exercise today: swimming. And I have learned that I have some way to go before I can call myself a strong swimmer.

At the start of the new year, I made a promise to myself to make the lifestyle changes it will take to get into better shape. I've not made a resolution to lose weight; I think it more useful to resolve to change the way I do things in a way that may result in weight loss.

I started strong, adopting healthier eating habits and increasing my levels of activity. My sciatic troubles, though, have reduced the activity side of that equation. I just can't stay on my feet as long as I'd like. At least, not yet.

Instead of my habitual walking lunches, therefore, I've decided to jump into the 8-lanes and try swimming for exercise at the Dover YMCA. I've been a member for years and I've tried to get into the weight room for the treadmills or the weight machines at least a few lunches each week.

Today, I took the the pool-exit from the locker room and joined the ranks of the swimmers.

Not without trepidation, though. The pool is a whole new place, with its own rules and traditions. I was ever so slightly worried that I might offend the regulars.

In the locker room, I ran into two older gentlemen who I have often seen at that time of the day, coming out of the pool while I get ready for the weight room. Today, I asked them for any tips on the etiquette of the lane-swimming set. They were most helpful, outlining the "way to be" in the lane-pool in a few short suggestions.

And they were inspiring. One of these fellows is probably in his 70's. He suggested picking a number of laps and keeping that number in mind. Start slow. Rest when you have to. But keep going. Eventually, that number will increase. He had just finished 70 laps, he said.

So I, like fool, started fast, going right into a lap of my old head-up, life-guard style Australian crawl. Too fast. I slowed down a bit, mixing in a slow breast-stroke, some relaxed back-stroke, and a sidestroke.

I swam for 20 minutes. My arms felt like lead. My legs were tired and my heart rate was elevated. But I was able to get some exercise without aggravating my sciatic nerve.

And I didn't drown. That's important.

If Ya Can't Beat 'Em?

Delaware's public discourse is increasingly moving into the world of blogs.

Kent County realtor Phil McGinnis has started a blog called Kent Delaware Land Use Issues. He's used his first post to posit some arguments against the subdivision moratorium enacted last week by the Kent County Levy Court.

I imagine that he noticed the effectiveness of blogs in the recent election, which brought new Levy Court Commissioners into office with a mandate to do something about the pace of growth in the county.

Have You Noticed All The Hype About "Second Life?"

This guy has. He's created Get a First Life to mock the hugely successful Second Life, in which players lead a whole new "virtual life."

It's just comedy, but I think it serves as a gentle reminder that we do have a life in the real world, and we do need to pay attention to it.

MOTnewbie has a thoughtful take on the same sort of thing today.

I've expressed my appreciation of Delaware's growing blogosphere, and I stand by that appreciation. But I also think we should remember to play active roles in our actual lives -- the Delaware-osphere -- as well.

Gus Gets Elected

I was pleased to see (on First State Politics) that WG Edmanson has won the special election for the 5th District seat on Kent County's Levy Court.

I ran into Mr. Edmanson at Spence's Bazaar back the end of October. I was charmed by his choice to campaign at that flea market so I stopped to chat and ended up using this photo in part of a post on the fall election.

Someone told me that Mr. Edmanson goes by "Gus." I have no idea whether that's true or not, but it worked for my headline, so I decided to go with it.

At that point, Gus was running for the at-large seat. He lost that election, but decided to run again for the seat left vacant by Don Blakey's win in a race for a seat in the General Assembly.

Of course, I also have a photo of Mr. Blakey (with his lovely wife Dolores) from Returns Day. I got to know both Blakeys years ago when we performed together in a community theater production of Big River.

It was fun to watch his run for General Assembly and great to see him celebrate the victory at Returns Day. I saw him again a few days later coming in the front door of Legislative Hall to check out his new office.

It's funny how these things line up sometimes.

Snow at Last!

It snowed in Lewes, Delaware, this morning. Unless I'm forgetting something, this is the first snow we've seen this season. And it wasn't much, just a healthy flurry of big, fluffy flakes. And we're still within about a week of seeing mid-January temperatures in the mid- to upper-sixties. Odd weather.

It has been a strange winter. Our temperatures have been above normal, and much of the rest of the nation is seeing devastating ice-storms, which may be a result of higher winter temperatures. I believe that colder temps would have made much of that mass of ice simply snow instead, which the American heartland can deal with rather well.

I should say that this is not the first snow I've seen this winter. There were some flakes mixed-in with a very cold rain up in Dover on Thursday. And I understand there were flakes in the skies of New Castle County this week.

Indonesian blogger Dino, newly arrived to study at the University of Delaware, saw what seems like his first snowflakes on Thursday in Newark:

It was beautiful seeing the tiny white snow flake falling from the sky. I tried to take picture of it but my camera can’t capture the tiny white snow flake in the air. It’s too bad because I want to show it to my family in Indonesia.

I did manage to capture a few flakes in a photo this morning. But that may just be because they were the very large, slow-moving sort.

The two snow shots I posted this morning, by the way, are the first photographs that I have posted on-line since January 5. That's a long dry spell for me. My lower back problems, and the resulting sciatic pain, have kept me from my habitual wandering-with-camera walks around Lewes and Dover. I haven't even really felt like photo-exploring from behind the wheel of my Prius, either.

I need to get past that.

The snow fell here between about 8:00 and 8:30 a.m.. As I write this, a bit past nine, the skies are bright and sunny, though a cold wind is blowing.

Bragging About My Niece

I have a large family. I am one of seven siblings. Each of us is married with at least two kids. I have nieces and nephews ranging in age from their 30s to their halcyon pre-school days.

I like to brag about them almost as much as I like to brag about Colleen and Christina. You may remember my posts about my nephew Nick and his appearance in the movie Rent.

Today, my sister-in-law Jane sent a link to an article on the web site of Walt Whitman High School about the freshman members of Whitman's swimming team, including our niece Jenna.

The story (Talented freshmen swimmers bring promise to team) starts with a fanciful retelling of the day when a very young Jenna came face to face with destiny:

When six year-old Jenna Mahaffie saw the Merrimack Swim Team after practice, holding their bathing caps and goggles as water dripped off their bodies onto the pavement, she felt an instant connection. What began as a playful visit to the pool turned into something more for Mahaffie, as she decided then and there to join the swim team, marking the beginning of her competitive swimming career.

To her credit, Jenna calls this "exaggerated" and laughs at it. Good for her.

The story goes on to discuss how Jenna is part of a contingent of young swimmers adding strength to Whitman's swim team. She's rather a good swimmer.

It was something of a trip down memory lane for me to read this. I graduated from Whitman in 1980, a few years after Jenna's Dad, my brother Jim. And I swam at Merrimack as a kid. I even attended a few swim team practices there, though that clearly wasn't my sport. (I wonder what was?)

I occurred to me, as well, that Jenna reminds me of a swimmer I knew when I was at Whitman. Shelley was a swimmer and lived next door to a surfer we knew named Murray. One of the guys in my band, the Ramblin' Beach Guys, had kind of a crush on Shelley, so we wrote a doo-wop song called "I'm in Love with Murray's Neighbor."

It was our only sort-of hit. Not that we ever recorded it, or that it was ever heard very widely.

So now, there's Jenna; another Mahaffie wandering the halls of Walt Whitman High.

Echos of A Delaware Story

I've stayed mostly out of the Representative Atkins story, but I can't help noticing that it is starting to spread.

I think it is appropriate that the aspect of this story that has spread most is the backlash against Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) after they issued a statement supporting Ocean City Maryland police who apparently released a driver they considered too impaired to continue driving without charges.

I note that they did not let him get back behind the wheel. That's important.

On Saturday, January 13, DelawareLiberal posted the story on DailyKos. He was interested in getting the word out beyond the Delmarva Peninsula. I haven't found any blog postings that credit that DailyKos posting as a source, but I'm seeing the story elsewhere.

The story was also on the Libertarian Reason Magazine's Hit & Run blog on Saturday. Reason editor Randy Balko, a FoxNews.Com columnist, wrote MADD at Drunk Drivers, but Not Influential Ones, in which he questions MADD's motives in taking the position they took. In this he is supported by his commenters, who almost unanimously are angry at MADD.

(As I'm working on this, I see that Hube, at Rhodey, has picked up on the Reason post. And so has DelawareLiberal.)

Balko credits a DUI lawyer named Lawrence Taylor as his source. In a post on his DUI Blog on January 12 (OK to Let .14% Driver Go -- If He's Politician), Taylor wrote:

MADD has apparently developed a separate standard for politicians and police in its War on Drunk Driving.

Taylor, it is worth pointing out, spends most of his time on "Bad Drunk Driving Laws, False Evidence and a Fading Constitution." At least, that's the subtitle of his blog.

In a post on January 6, he wrote:

For many years now I've written and lectured extensively on drunk driving litigation --on the science of blood and breath alcohol analysis, the flaws in breathalyzers, the ineffectiveness of field sobriety testing. In recent years, however, my focus has increasingly shifted to the gradual erosion of constitutional rights in DUI cases.

Taylor is not the only DUI lawyer to chime in.

Atlanta attorney George C. Creal Jr. had the story on his DUI Weblog on January 11 in a posting titled "Benefit of Clergy? Ocean City Delaware Cops let drunk Republican Legislator Go!" I note that Mr. Creal has not picked up on the fact that Ocean City is in Maryland, and not Delaware.

Mr. Creal says, of the Ocean City Police Department:

It is waging a public relations campaign to explain to the public that field sobriety evaluations are relative and not pass/fail. This is testimony that you would never hear on the witness stand from a police officer and should provide excellent fodder for able DUI attorneys in the area.

What I don't understand is Mr. Creal's reference to "Benefit of Clergy."

On Sunday, January 14, Chicagoan Mark Draughn picked up the story from the Reason Hit & Run blog and wrote Not So MADD About Some People... on his WindyPundit blog. Here is another blogger, by the way, who missed the "across state lines nature" of the story. (Please, people, we don't want Ocean City. Maryland can keep it.)

It has been fascinating to watch this story unfold. It was Delaware bloggers who stayed on it and forced the traditional media to pay attention. That's good, as I think this is not an issue that should be swept aside. On the other hand, I think some folks have gone too far in using this to hammer Representative Atkins. He has issues to deal with, to be sure, but the more important aspect is the notion that some drivers get breaks that others do not.

Also, as in most stories of this sort, the real questions arise from the participants' reactions to, and efforts to manage, the story.

Meanwhile, Jud Bennett sent an e-mail to his extensive Coastal Conservative e-mail list yesterday asking for a pause in the invective:

The story seems to have taken on a life of its own with no end in sight and has turned into one of the most vicious, malicious, and cruel witch hunts in the history of the State of Delaware.

I'm not sure that this e-mail was intended to serve as a "Jud's Rant." As of this writing (10:25 a.m., 1/15/07), it has not been added in the traditional Jud's Rant spot on First State Politics. It was, however, appropriated by Dan Gaffney and posted on the WGMD blog. I don't know whether this was Jud's intention or not.

I can't fully disagree with Jud, but I think Hube puts it well in his comment this morning on the WGMD blog:

Yes, there has been ridiculous speculation and hyperbole about Atkins; however, the anger amongst the laymen results in knowing that if this was THEM, they’d have been arrested, lost their license, and would now have a record.

Finally, let me point to a MySpace posting (of all places) for one of the most thoughtful reactions
I've seen to this story.

RudeBwoy381 is a 25-year newspaper editor in Georgetown. He says:

The singular focus on Atkins' particular case, however, obscures a larger and more-dangerous problem, in Delaware and, really, all over the place.

DUI is practically a sport in Delaware. Start thinking of people you know who have a DUI on their record.. the list is probably longer than you think.

He suggests that bars be provided with Breathalyzers and that they take the lead on keeping drunks out of their cars. That might help. He goes further, though, and points to a larger problem of our perception of alcohol:

This is what truly bothers me: from the time you are young, it is beat into your head that alcohol is not really a drug. Remember MADD presentations in elementary school? They always talked about "drugs and alcohol." Drugs and alcohol?

Think about what this means. Reasonable, educated people are coming into classrooms and telling your children that alcohol is somehow separate from other drugs. So is it any surprise that kids aren't that concerned about drinking? Look at some of these MySpace surveys that ask when you took your first alcoholic drink. I didn't until I was 18, and I think I held out the longest of anyone whose survey I read, besides possibly my sister, and I'm not even sure about that.

He concludes:

With all of the damage that alcohol does to people, how can it be the least-regulated drug in the world?

RudeBwoy381, please move your writings to a platform less odious than MySpace. I'd like to read you more.

I Find This Very Sad

A lawyer from Maryland has written a column for today's News Journal criticizing Delaware's efforts to preserve open space and encourage "New Urban" and village-style development.

In his column (If you want green space, buy your own), Thomas Beach argues against state efforts to purchase the development rights of farmlands by saying that the price is not high enough and "because the farmer uses up the money and then is stuck with a farm."

While I'm sure this may sometimes be the case, I think this oversimplifies things. The prices are negotiated and based on fair market appraisals. And the goal of the state's Farmland Preservation Program is to maintain the agricultural sector of the economy as much, if not more than, to maintain open space.

Mr. Beach also scoffs at the idea of village-style development, saying that people prefer to live on large lots in large houses.

It seems the only people who choose to live in cities are a few yuppies and the elderly who may need public transportation and easy access to services.

This statement seems absurd, if not insulting and condescending.

But here is the part that stood out for me:

Except for my time in the Army, I haven't done any serious walking since I turned 16 and got my driver's license. I have never ridden a bus or subway and don't ever plan to.

I find that simply sad.