Photo-Haiku #1

Ocean Beach, Winter.
Three shells washed onto the sand.
Wind blows. Time passes.

Is It Something About Places Called Delaware?

My standing Google search for Delaware mentions turned up a posting from a blog called "I Live in Delaware County" today that had me fooled for a moment. I thought I'd discovered a new Delaware Blog.

The title -- Sounding off on "Sound Off" -- threw me off.

One of Delaware's two daily newspapers, the State News, features a regular "Sound Off" column in which readers can call in, anonymously, and comment. It's a good example of just how foolish you can be when you are speaking anonymously.

It turns out that the Daily Times in Delaware County features that same low level of public input. At least according to one Delaware County blogger:

Sound Off is supposed to be a part of the paper that gives a chance for the "people" to speak. The problem with that concept, however, is that the average person is completely stupid and misinformed and basically just wants to read their messages in the paper the next day.

That sounds so familiar, though I will admit that I haven't read the Sound Off column in the State News for years. I can't take it. I do still read some of the comments on the News Journal's web site, though it pains me.

Here's an example:

What a friggin moron. Gives a false name, most likely an undocumented alien, and a total moron to boot. Why is it that the second I read " a Georgetown man", did I suspect he was going to be hispanic. Go figure.

If nothing else, having a look at some of the comments in Delaware County's paper makes me feel a bit better: it's not just here.

Milestone

I rolled 66,666 miles on my Prius yesterday during the Commute from Hell. I knew I would. But I also knew that I was not going to want to try to catch the moment of sixes with my camera, given the weather and the state of the roads.

So, while I sat, stopped dead in traffic, south of Dover, I took a blurry shot of 66,652 miles. I figure we can all agree to mentally add 14 when we see this photo.

The Commute From Hell

Something bad happened on Route 1 where it crosses the St. Jones River this evening. As a result, my Dover to Lewes commute -- usually 45 minutes -- took about three and a quarter hours.

I knew it was going to be a slow ride when I was leaving Dover. There had been an inch or so of wet snow during the day. As the afternoon turned to evening, there was sleet and freezing rain. The roads were slick.

Coming up onto State Route 1 from Route 113, there were two spin-outs. It looked like some folks had tried to go too fast. By the time I passed the main entrance to the Dover Air Base, it was clear that things were slowing way down.

I was behind a tallish pick-up truck, so I couldn't see ahead. Soon we were nearly at a full stop. Half an hour, we had crept forward until I was at the big sweeping right-hand bend, just past the airbase. That gave me a view ahead. I could see flashers on the bridge and traffic just squeezing by in one lane.

An hour later, just as I was approaching the bridge, I found that the Fire Police were turning us back and sending us north again.

I made a pit stop near the base entrance -- bathroom, dinner, and a cup of coffee -- and compared notes with other roadfugees. A state commuter van-full of DelDOT folk had heard that it was a multi-car pile-up, with injuries and maybe a fatality. I hope not.

From there, I joined a slow crawl of commuters headed down Alternate 113 towards Little Heaven. When we rejoined the main highway, there was plenty of traffic. I couldn't tell whether the bridge had re-opened or not.

As I headed south, the road got less slick. It was clear that the weather down this way was more rain than snow for most of the day.

I walked into my house at about 7:45. I had left the office at 4:30.

Incorrect? Incorrect Like A Fox!

Like many other people in attendance at the Lewes Fire Hall the other night for a public meeting on the update of the Sussex County Comprehensive Land Use Plan, I was astounded by a claim made by Rich Collins, the sunnily optimistic conservative spokes-speaker of the pro-development lobby in Sussex County:

Mr. Collins, who also represents the Positive Growth Alliance, said the problem may be that Sussex County isn’t growing quickly enough. He based that on estimates that show the county population is rapidly growing older and the death rate is exceeding the birth rate. (From Sussex’s land future debated, by Michael Short, Sussex Post)

This report, while accurate, doesn't convey the full extent of what Mr. Collins claims. What he said was, "growth may not be our problem, maybe the lack of growth" is the problem.

If you listen to the county's MP3 of that part of the proceedings (About a minute or two in), you find Rich quoting from the latest Delaware Population Consortium population projections series. He points to the projected amount of population growth, which the Consortium reports in 5-year increments, and says, accurately, that the amount of new population added to the county is projected to drop from 17,867 new residents added between 2000 and 2005 to 12,055 new residents added between 2020 and 2025.

Mr. Collins' conclusion? "Now, I don't have my calculator, but thats, what, about a 33 percent decline in growth."

Rich is either very adept at math on the fly, or he did the calculations before-hand and his aw-shucks act is just that.

What those numbers represent is a 32.5 percent difference between the rate of growth over the last half-decade and the projected rate of growth 20 years from now. The difference is largely due to the fact that, as a retirement area, eastern Sussex County will continue to have a declining birth rate and a burgeoning death rate. That's just demographics. What will keep population change on the positive side will be continued strong migration into Sussex County.


In fact, if you look at the whole of the Consortium's projections, you see that Sussex County is expected to grow by almost 73,000 people between now and 2030. That's a 40 percent growth in population and equal to moving all of the current population of Wilmington, plus a few neighborhoods worth of Elsmere, into Sussex.

I hesitated to write about this. I'm employed by the State Planning Office, which is often at odds with Mr. Collins. I would have let it go had it not made it into the news reports. My motivation to address this is mostly because I also serve as the secretary of the Delaware Population Consortium and take some pride in the work that that group does. I feel a responsibility to step in when it looks like the Consortium's projections are being mis-used.

Mr. Collins may simply be mistaken; he may simply not understand the data he is looking at. But I don't think so. I think Rich is trying to muddy the discussion and sow seeds of doubt about the extent of the problem facing Sussex County.

Searching for Bay Ice and Finding, Again, a White Deer

As we went through another in a string of very cold days today, I started wondering whether there might be ice anywhere in the Delaware Bay. Driving up and down the state this week, I have seen ice on the ponds and some of the slower rivers. And there were ice chunks in the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal.

So I decided to pay another visit to the point at Cape Henlopen and take a look.

I found some ice; thin floes blown ashore on the inside curve of the point. The ice was a few inches thick, and spread out into the shallowest part of the bay, towards the lighthouse.

I also found the white deer that I'd spotted on my last trip to Cape Henlopen Park.

This time I got a clearer photo of the deer's head, which is brown. That suggests that this is a deer in moult, and not an albino, as I had first thought. In fact, this may be another animal entirely.

In any case, it was fun to see this. I just wish my camera was better suited to long-range telephoto work.

Evidence That There Is Hope

We spent this morning at the Indian River School District Spelling Bee where Christina was a contestant in the fifth grade division. She was one of the top four spellers in fifth grade at the Southern Delaware School of the Arts and so was sent to the District-wide contest as one of the representatives of her school.

I was loosely familiar with this event. Christina's older sister Colleen was a contestant herself one year.

Christina did well; she lasted past the preliminary rounds but stumbled on a word that, without the pressure of competition, she would have spelled correctly. She came out into the audience to sit with us and spelled almost every subsequent word in the contest correctly in a whispered aside to her mother and me.

An SDSA classmate of Christina's was the winner. He was a strong speller, though the young man who placed second seemed the more confident. I think that confidence proved to be his downfall. Almost all the others took advantage of their right to write down the word to see the spelling before answering to the judges. This kid never touched pencil to paper; in each round he simply paused in thought and then spelled his words. I believe the lack of the letter he dropped from "influence" would have been obvious to him had he written it out first.

I was pleased to see that the final five spellers were all boys. It may be an erroneous stereotype, but I would have expected the girls to be the better spellers. I'm glad I was proven wrong.

(Some of) What I Like About snow

We got a moderate amount of snow in Delaware this week. It was very cold, so our snow was wonderfully fluffy. We're more used to heavy wet snow.

Not this time. This week's snow was more like what they see well up north. As a result, our scant two inches gave us maximum visual pleasure.

We have gotten so little snow of late that it doesn't take much to satisfy my snowfall jones. For a while.

Brief Praise for a Few Politicians

I've noticed two neat news briefs out on the web that give me some hope for our political class.

Let's Talk
Out west in Utah, a state representative has a wiki site up to bring the grass-roots folks into the legislative discussion. Politicopia uses wiki pages to allow for pro and con discussions of bills before the Utah legislature. It's getting some national attention; I found it via the NCSL blog The Thicket.

Representative Steve Urquhart says the idea started to develop some years ago:

Because I wanted to change the fact that people-related-to-me often outnumbered people-not-related-to-me at town meetings, I invited my constituents to join me in a hayfield for hot-air balloon rides and donuts.

That didn't really get him any more input, but he kept thinking about ways to get more feedback from folks. A chain of friends, contacts, brainstorming and lucky breaks eventually led to the use of a wiki site to allow for community discussions of bills and issues.

I think this bears watching. And maybe adopting. Rep. Urquhart's blog is worth a look as well.

Does He Have a Prayer?
Presidential handicappers aren't too sanguine about Mike Huckabee's chances to get the Republican Party's nomination for President, but I like the guy. I have several colleagues in the GIS world who worked in his government in Arkansas and report that he is practical, no-nonsense sort. In the several interviews I've heard, Mr. Huckabee sounds like a decent and smart guy.

I found more evidence in a posting on the Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire blog: Huckabee: Families, Not Schools, Should Teach Prayer.

The family that prays together doesn’t have to worry about the absence of government-mandated prayer in public schools, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee told a group of reporters today.

A good point. And:

Huckabee said he never could understand why so many people “railed against (the absence of) prayer in schools when they didn’t even pray at home.”

Governor Huckabee was formerly a Southern Baptist Minister.

Wanted (Desperately): A Sense of Humor

I've been missing Molly Ivans, and I didn't even know it.

America needs to lighten-up. We take ourselves far too seriously. We're losing the ability to laugh at ourselves, and we need that ability, lest we forget how truly foolish we all are.

Attack of the Cartoon Goofies
A guerrilla marketing campaign for a TV cartoon paralyzed parts of Boston this week. As part of a marketing campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force, panels of LED pixels portraying a pair of pusillanimous characters from the cartoon were placed around several cities over the last few weeks. Flickr-user xjohnpaulx found them in Philadelphia earlier this month. Only in Boston was this seen as a possible terrorist attack.

From the close-up photos of one of the devices that I've seen, it should have been pretty obvious that these aren't any sort of bomb. But I suppose someone spotted one, thought it suspicious, and called the authorities.

And if anything is clear these days, we take stuff terribly seriously.

The devices were blown up. The two young men who put them up were arrested, charged, and released on bail. Luckily, they see the humor. They refused to talk with reporters about anything but the history of hair styles. Watch the second video in this link. It's worth it.

Politician, Stifle Thyself
Can Joe Biden be elected president? He's certainly qualified, but some people are worried about his electability. Other people hate him with an astoundingly unreasoning passion.

Senator Biden got in all sorts of trouble this week; as far as I can tell it was because he speaks like me. Joe Biden forgot to measure, focus-group-test, and vet his words before he made what he thought was a flattering remark about Barak Obama.

I can understand how those words could be construed as insulting, but their intention was so incredibly clearly not insulting. Senator Obama didn't seem insulted.

But our political culture demands that we take any utterance at its worst, with no sense of humor whatever.

This is Where I Miss Molly Ivans
Molly Ivans was as sharp a political observer as this nation has ever seen. Her columns, looking at the wonderful world of Texas politics and later at the odd reality of national politics, were biting, but funny.

Back in 1993, she wrote a column (The Fun's in the Fight) in which she encourages activists to keep their sense of fun as they fight for their causes. She tells about great characters and how they spiced up their times. She describes the reaction of Austin progressives to a march by bussed-in KKK folks (Mass mooning).

So keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.

We need to find this spirit again.

When the Music Hits Me Just Right

I had another one of those great runs of music today. There are times when, as I flip around among my favorite channels on the satellite radio in my car, I find song after song that I love. And occasionally, something new and delightful.

This evening was like that. Song after song after song. And then David Dye, of the World Cafe, presented me with Josh Ritter's Girl in the War.

I know I've heard music from this guy before, and I remember thinking him pleasant, but I hadn't heard this song.

He has a pleasant nice voice, accompanied by delicate acoustic guitar picking. It was the lyrics that hit me:

Peter said to Paul you know all those words we wrote
Are just the rules of the game and the rules are the first to go
But now talking to God is Laurel begging Hardy for a gun
I got a girl in the war man I wonder what it is we done

And

Paul said to Peter you got to rock yourself a little harder
Pretend the dove from above is a dragon and your feet are on fire
But I got a girl in the war Paul her eyes are like champagne
They sparkle bubble over and in the morning all you got is rain

Peter and Paul (the Apostles?) seem to be discussing great metaphysical issues, but keep coming back to "I got a girl in the war." That does two things. It brings us back to what's most important on a basic, personal level. And it spins the old war-time, homefront cliche from the "girl back home" to the "girl in the war."

Looking into this song this evening led me to a video (quicktime) of Ritter performing this song at a Center for American Progress event last fall.

"I came 2000 miles to play you this song," he says. "I meant to write about this country, and it came out sounding like a love song."

Our Land Is a Bit Less Delmarvalous Today

Scorchy Tawes has died. He was 86.

For years, Scorchy was a local television personality; the kind you are proud to have on your set.

He produced and narrated human interest and nature stories for WBOC television, out of Salisbury. His stories were folksy and sappy. He focused on the small joys of small town life. And on the grand beauty of the Delmarva Peninsula. He talked about "wandering this delmarvalous land of ours."

When he retired they tried to replace him, but the new guy, though competent, just wasn't Scorchy.

Scorchy did a story on the Lovely Karen once. It was back when she was working as a music therapist at Stockley Center. She had a bell choir of made up of some of her clients and Scorchy came in to film them playing Christmas carols. It was sweet.

There's irony in the timing of Scorchy's death. He'll be upstaged in the news cycle by the death of Barbaro. But he would have been all over that story; it's just the sort of story that he loved.

Rest in Peace Scorchy Tawes. You helped define life in Southern Delaware and the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

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.