Eighth Golf Game in 2007

Christina and I played 18 holes of practice/instructional golf this afternoon at the Midway Par 3 course, just outside of Lewes. It was her idea; I'm glad she suggested it.


View Larger Map

Midway is a great place to learn to play. It was where my friend Andy took me some years ago to get me started, and it was the first place I took both Colleen and Christina. Christina has played with me twice before. She's starting to get the basic idea. Now all she needs is more practice.

Because we were in practice and teaching mode, I didn't keep score. It was just as well; I'm rusty, not having played since we were in Vermont.

"Hello, Daily Delaware"

The person (or persons) blogging on Daily Kos as Delaware Dem has started a new, Kos-style Delaware political blog: Daily Delaware.

This should be interesting.

I've been toying with going back to more political content here, but I can't find much interest in myself to write about political things. It may be that we're too far from the actual primaries. And yet, I'm growing sick of the partisan bickering that has taken over so much of the political blogosphere in Delaware of late.

There's still a sense of camaraderie among the red and blue bloggers in the First State, but I'm seeing cracks. It feels like we're starting to stray from examining and solving problems towards "gotcha-style" stories and name-calling. Maybe I don't trust myself to rise above it?

In any case, I do take an interest in what's being said, even if I'm reluctant to wade-in very much myself. So I'll add Daily Delaware to my blog-roll and to my Google Reader and see what develops.

A Season Ends

This evening, we attended the final show of the 2007 season of the Rehoboth Summer Children's Theatre. We saw a delightful performance of their version of The Wizard of Oz.

It was a special occasion for a few reasons. Not only was it the last night of the Theatre's 26th season in Rehoboth, but it was also the final performance in the basement Fellowship Hall of Epworth United Methodist Church on Baltimore Avenue in Rehoboth Beach. The Epworth congregation is building a new sanctuary, pre-school and other facilities just outside of Rehoboth, off Route One. It's likely that the Theatre will move many of their performances there next summer, though they are still looking for space within Rehoboth; they'd like to maintain some ties to their history in the beach block.

And we were treated to a rare performance by both of the founders of the Rehoboth Summer Children's Theatre: Steve and Elise Seyfried, who founded the Theatre in 1982. Because the young actress who usually performs this show with Steve has headed back to college, Elise (who co-wrote the play and originated the RSCT version of Dorothy) joined her husband on stage.

Coincidentally, the Wizard of Oz was the first show performed by the two Seyfrieds when they started the Theatre.

They still get to play together this way every once in a while; it's always fun to see. Steve and Elise have an ease, a rapport, a spark that only comes from sharing a life, raising a family, and nurturing a theater together.

The experience left Karen and I reminiscing. We've known Steve and Elise as summer friends for some 15 years (maybe more). We first saw them perform together when Elsie was pregnant with her youngest child; Julie, a delightful young lady and good friend of our youngest. I spent about a decade on the Theatre's Board of Trustees. And I still maintain the Theatre web site as a favor to Steve.

We're sad to see them pack up their stage and head home to the Philly area, but we're glad we know them and their impressive kids. Remind me to tell you some time about the Chamber Music Festival Elise and her oldest son founded some years ago here in Lewes.

Random Images, and Music

Here's a neat art project: a randomized music video that draws imagery from the whole of flickr.

The fellow who created ASTRONAUT -- Felix Jung -- has taken a music track by a friend and used keywords based on the lyrics to fetch semi-random images from flickr, based on tags given to those images. He has built a web-movie, using Flash, that incorporates those images into a simple music video of the song.

Flickr users can add tags to their images as a way to organize them or categorize them. For example, I have quite a few photos tagged with "Vermont." There are even more tagged "Vermont" by other users. Using tags, I can quickly see all of my Vermont photos or look at photos of Vermont from other users.

Felix Jung has taken this a step further, as he explains in his post about this project:

Each time the Flash file is loaded, new images are randomly pulled from Flickr. I've hard-coded 53 keywords at set points in the song, and when the page is first loaded... calls are made out to Flickr to retrieve these keywords. With each call, I vary the parameters a little bit.

The song includes either the word or the concept "distant" towards its end. Jung has taken that as a keyword and called flickr photos tagged with "distant." There are 4,664 photos so-tagged as I write this morning. The parameters Jung refers to are changing ways to randomly sort and select from the found images. That way, different images are chosen each time the movie is played. This morning, my playing of it turned up this image.

It's a simple thing, but makes nice use of the many images that flickr users are adding to the public face of flickr each day.

We sometimes forget about the potential for the web to be a global, interactive, collaborative marketplace of ideas. We add content -- through blogging or posting photos, sound or video -- partly to satisfy our egos and be "published." But we also should remember that we are adding small bits to something larger that grows in ways we cannot forsee.

This is what is at the heart of the philosophy of the Creative Commons.

At least part of our pleasure in this Internet thing should be to see to what unexpected use other folks put our creations.

Reaching the Edge of the Place

Last night I drove to the edge of the continent and had to turn around and head back inland.

I was driving in to Rehoboth Beach to pick up Colleen, who had attended a show at the Rehoboth Summer Children's' Theatre. Rather than try to make what can be a difficult left from Rehoboth Avenue, the resort's main drag, I followed that road to its end at the boardwalk and made the circle around the Rehoboth Bandstand.


View Larger Map

It's a route I've taken hundreds of times in the last twenty years. For some reason, though, last night it felt clearly like I was just reaching the end of the continental US and had to turn around because I could go no farther.

It was startling to see that spot in a different clarity for a moment.

Count Me in the "Reader" Column

The AP is reporting a poll that found that a quarter of US adults read no books in the last year.

The survey reveals a nation whose book readers, on the whole, can hardly be called ravenous. The typical person claimed to have read four books in the last year -- half read more and half read fewer. Excluding those who hadn't read any, the usual number read was seven.

That's not good. In an era in which we worry about our nation falling behind others economically, this slide away from knowledge and culture can only hurt us.

I am a reader. It is an activity that has given me joy, comfort, knowledge, and peace for almost 40 years now. (Assuming I date the start of my reading to around First Grade.) And I am probably ravenous reader. I probably average about one book each week.

It works for me.

The Costs of Education

We're just about to head back into the school year here in Delaware. I know some other folks around the nation are already into their 2007/2008 school year. Two timely headlines caught my eyes yesterday. Here are two facts to bear in mind about the re-start of school.

The News Journal ran a story yesterday (Teachers spend out of pocket on kids) on the costs borne by teachers as they prepare for the first day of school.

Teachers nationally spend an average of $475 of their own money on classroom supplies and materials each year, according to a study prepared by Quality Education Data Inc. for the last school year.

Meanwhile, the Marketing to Moms Coalition has released a report (Back to School 2007 [WORD]) that found that parents are also slapping down some cash at this time of the year.

"School Age Moms" (mothers with children aged 7-12) will spend nearly $450.00 on average on Back to School 2007. School Age Moms with two children between 7 and 12 will spend nearly $600.00.

As a parent of school-age kids, and as the spouse of a teacher (and friend to other teachers and parents), I can attest to the truth of each of these reports.

LabraCockerSpeagledors!

My brother Matt and his family have adopted a cute puppy. This is a photo of Lynn, Shelby and Grace with their new pet. Matt is off to the left with his camera.

The puppy is a mix of Lab, Cocker Spaniel, and Beagle; a Labracockerspeagledor.

Our neighbor's son brought his family and their dog, who is busy with nine (yes, nine) puppies, for a visit to Lewes this past week-end. Each of my girls had a friend over on Friday evening when we discovered a yard full of puppies next door. Immediately there was a yard filled with girls cuddling puppies.

We were sorely tempted, but ours is not the sort of life into which one should bring a young puppy. Karen and I both commute 45 minutes in different directions, the girls have school, and their evenings are filled all week long. We are not set up to properly raise a puppy. They are damn cute, though.

So we called around. My brother Matt and his wife Lynn had been toying with the idea of a dog . They've been spending some vacation time down in Bethany. When Karen called to suggest a puppy, they were immediately interested.

We set up a family visit to the puppy yard. Matt and Lynn and their girls came up Sunday along with my folks. Another brother, Bob, was in town as well. He and his wife Karen are experienced dog-raisers. So they came along with their two sons. At last we had more people than puppies.

It didn't take long for Lynn to find the puppy that fit her; Grace and Shelby agreed and the deal was done.

We stayed around a bit longer to allow Todd (the puppies' human) to share some basic puppy info with Matt. E-mail addresses were exchanged.

Some tears of farewell were shed, but they were shed by the humans. The puppies were all too tuckered out. They lay down in the grass where-ever they happened to be playing and went right to sleep.

Seagull + Apple Core

"Mine!"



"Mine, Mine, Mine, Mine, Mine!"



"Just which part of 'Mine!' did you not understand, pal?"

Sometimes Jon Stewart Isn't Funny

Last night on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart interviewed author Stephen Hayes who has just published a biography of Vice President Dick Cheney and is an admirer of the Vice President. He makes an argument that Mr. Cheney is a straight-shooter and the kind of honest leader America needs more of. (I don't know how to avoid this awkward sentence ending)

Jon Stewart, as most folks know, is not an admirer of the Vice President. For most of the interview, he maintained his usual act of the polite, but sarcastic skeptic. Towards the end, though, when he asked why Cheney and the Bush team as a whole insists on attacking and denigrating those who question their war, rather than engaging in open and honest debate, Stewart drops his act and speaks from the heart.

"...stop making the rest of us feel like idiots when we question their strategy in the war on terror..."

"They've seemingly gone out of their way to belittle people..."

"They keep saying that we don't understand the nature of this war. And critics keep saying 'we understand the nature of it; you've been doing it wrong.'"

"I think there is a real feeling in this country that your patriotism has been questioned by people in very high-level positions. Not fringe people."

By this point Stewart is simply speaking as himself. At the end, he makes an attempt to return to his usual persona and goes out of his way to thank Hayes for his appearance.

Media Matters has more on this interview. There were several issues involved and they have more details on some of the personal attacks that Jon Stewart has faced.

But to me, this is one of those wonderful moments when John Stewart drops his clown act (which I like) and speaks with devastating honesty. He did it when he nailed Crossfire back in 2004.

I realize that the Daily Show satire is informative and affective, but I'd like to see him speak this way more often.