What Are You Looking For?

I have a few different ways to track visitors to this site. I'm not too obsessive about it, but I enjoy knowing what's brought people here.

Over the long term, I find I get a steady stream of people looking for information on getting rid of a blood clot. Installing satellite radio in a Prius is also popular as are Delaware's boundary monuments.

And I see seasonal patterns as well.

In the last two weeks, for example, there has been interest in the Fourth of July in Bethany Beach. Since June 22, fifty-eight of Mike's Musings visits were generated by web searches for some combination of Bethany Beach, Fourth of July, fireworks, and parade. That's 23.6 percent of all searches that led to the blog. ("Bethany Beach Fireworks" is the champ.)

There has also been a steady stream of visitors looking for information about the Tyler Place, in Vermont. I've posted reports from there the last several summers, and they are being found by folks researching their own trips, it seems.

We've stopped visiting the Tyler Place, but not because we don't love it. After nine summers, Colleen has aged-out of the Tyler kids' programs. It was time to make room for these other folks. I hope our reports and pictures help them get ready. But we do miss it terribly.

Half a Year of Reading

We're at the end of June, the (more or less) halfway point of the year. This seems a good time to look back over my 2008 Reading Log for a bit of literatural accounting. I read 31 books in the 181 days between January 1 and June 29. That's an average of one book each 5.8 days. (Yes, I know it sounds like bragging, but I'm being anal about this stuff this year.)

Most of the books I read, 27 of them, were from the Lewes Library. Only four were books I own; most of those were gifts. I like my small-town library.

Twenty-eight were fiction. Two were standard non-fiction and one was a book of essays. I enjoy the escape of diving into a fictional landscape. I have always read more of fiction than any other category.

Seventeen were set in the United States and nine were set in the United Kingdom. One was set partially in India and one in Roman Britain.

I read two books set around the US Civil War. Two were mysteries. And two were fantasy. Fourteen were historical fiction.

Delaware Candidates' Web Sites In Focus

The politics-watching blog Political Realm takes a look this week at the campaign web sites of Delaware Senator Joe Biden and his republican challenger, Christine O'Donnell.

The entry is part of the site's "Web Grades" series, which has been looking at campaign sites since spring of 2007 when they reviewed the sites of the many contenders in the presidential primaries. Interestingly, those reviews, more than a year ago, gave top marks to the web sites of John McCain on the republican side and John Edwards and Barack Obama on the democratic side. Maybe there's something to this internet thing after all?

When I started reading this entry I found myself worried that Ms. O'Donnell, demonstrably younger and therefore potentially more hip than Senator Biden, would take the prize for best campaign web site. But I was pleased to find that the Biden site took the prize with a grade of B to Ms. O'Donnell's D-minus.

Neither site includes a campaign blog, which the Political Realm folks called a disappointment. Both had multimedia content, though Sen. Biden's site was considered stronger and more complete. The Biden site also outshone the O'Donnell site in social-network features.

One might question the objectivity of the Political Realm reviewers; they do not claim to be a non-partisan site. However, despite the fact that I am proudly-partisan myself, I do think they take an even-handed approach to reviewing political web sites. They are reviewing the sites themselves and not the candidates. And the criteria do appear to have more to do with communication and interaction than with policy or position.

These Birds Have Flown

The mourning dove who nested this spring in one of our hanging plants has left for the summer, taking her chick with her.

The dove appeared in the hanging basket back in May. She was well-hidden while the flowers were alive. When the flowers died -- I didn't want to water them with the nest in there -- she lost her camouflage. At that point, we could see that she had two eggs to hatch.

In the last week or so, a chick appeared and started to put on weight. We watched it carefully. It didn't take long before it was ready to head out. Now our birds are gone.

We found the second egg, unhatched, in the nest. We're not sure why this egg didn't make it. Maybe it wasn't properly fertilized? An unfortunate mutation? Whatever it is, we have to assume that nature knows what it is doing.

This is Just Sad

The Washington Post has a story this morning on the increase in hate-group and white-power activity in response to the candidacy of Barack Obama. In Hate Groups' Newest Target, the Post reports that hate and white supremacist web sites are seeing more traffic and are giving the credit to Sen. Obama.

"I haven't seen this much anger in a long, long time," said Billy Roper, a 36-year-old who runs a group called White Revolution in Russellville, Ark. "Nothing has awakened normally complacent white Americans more than the prospect of America having an overtly nonwhite president."

I'd like to pause here, if I may, and marvel at the idea that someone can be "overtly non-white." Should he be more covert about his racial background? Would it be okay if Barack Obama tried to "pass" for white? I shake my head in disgust, but I have to admit I'm fascinated by the lengths folks will go to, and the pretzilization of the language that they will employ, to try to make a hateful point without seeming hateful.

The story notes the many hate-filled smears that have been floated on-line about Sen. Obama. There's no need to catalog them here, though I should note that they do turn up in the Delaware blogosphere from time to time.

On a positive note (though the term feels wrong in this context), the Post story does point out that the hate groups are also angry with John McCain "for his moderate views on immigration and his willingness to stick with the Iraq war."

And, the Post reports, they have a slight hope for a President Obama because, they feel, that could galvanize the hate groups into action and help them elect a president of their own (like David Duke, who ran for president in 1988 and got less than 1% of the vote). Or, they say, an Obama victory could be the final blow.

"Maybe people see him in office, and it's like: 'That's it. It's just too late. Look at what's happened now. We've endured all these defeats, and we've still got a multicultural society.' And then there's just no future for our viewpoint."

I think the white-supremacist movement is behind the times by a generation or two, frankly. The United States is already, and has long been, a multicultural society. It is what makes us strong. A President Obama would not be the end of "white-power," it would be the period at the end of the sentence that summarizes the historical footnote that was the white-power movement.

New Blog (and New Radio Station?) in Delaware

I just stumbled across a new Delaware blog -- WKNZ - Z88.7fm, Harrington, DE -- which will chronicle the effort of a group of local Christian folk to build and run a "25,000 watt HD Christian radio station."

The blog appeared June 10 after the group got its FCC construction permit. That alone took 10 years; the FCC is a slow beast. How long the next steps will take is uncertain, but the permit itself is a large step forward:

We are humbled, blown-away, and a little over whelmed, but after nearly 10 years, the FCC has finally given us the approval to begin building a very powerful Christian radio station on 88.7fm in Delaware. The tower will be in Harrington and the studios in Milton, DE (at least that was the plan 10 years ago!). We are currently in the process of dusting off those plans. Lots has changed in 10 years!

The blog-writers are Bill, Andy, and Elbert (with an "E"). I think Bill is likely Bill Sammons, who I used to know in conjunction with the Delmarva Poultry Industry and who I recall was leading an effort to found a Christian station some years back. I assume this is he and this will be that station, but I don't always pay as close attention as I should and so may be completely wrong.

There's a survey up now, looking for input on what sorts of things to program. I think I'll take it. I'm not particularly Christian, though the Lovely Karen is a woman of faith and we have friends among the Christians, but I applaud diversity on the airwaves. And I don't think we should automatically assume that a Christian radio station will automatically hew to the worst extremes of the "christian right."

The musical choices could be interesting. I'll make the argument, for example, in favor of playing some of the Grateful Dead catalogue. Seriously. One of the things that fascinates me about the Dead's music is the widespread use of the Bible as lyrical source material and inspiration. And their deep exploration into folk music and folk traditions included mining a vein of moral stories and cautionary tales that could fit in the new station's format.

That's my view, anyway.

Mazeltov! Mama Bird!

We have a baby. The dove that has nested in one of the hanging plants outside our front door has at least one chick.

There were two eggs, though, and we're not sure what has become of the other. It could be that it hasn't hatched, or the chick is well-hidden by Mom. Or maybe that egg just didn't make it. Nature.

Fourth Golf Game of 2008

I played an early morning round of golf on the Sunday of my Boston visit. It was another very hot day, so I was glad to start my round at 6:40 a.m.

I had done a Google search of the Newton area on Saturday and found a few courses. I chose Newton Commonwealth because it was quite nearby and looked like an inexpensive public municipal course.

Newton Commonwealth started in the late 1890s as a 9-hole course. by the 1920s, it was an 18-hole course and had been redesigned by the golf architect Donald Ross. In the 1970s, as the Chestnut Hill Country Club, the course got into financial trouble and was bought by the City of Newton to keep the land from development.


View Larger Map

The course is a par-70 that straddles a valley with a small stream running across it. The 18 holes take you up-hill, across the stream, through several undulations and along the edges of a hill then back down again before repeating the same twice on the second nine holes. There are several short but very tricky par-3 holes that feature steep drops to small greens. The distance is easy; the risks, though, are great.

I played with a young man named Jason, his brother Brad, and their friend Brit. Jason is a New Yorker who met and married a local girl and settled in Newton to raise a family. Brad and Brit still live in New York City and were up for a visit. They were nice young men and fun to play with.

I started the round with my usual self-deprecation and an appeal to their sense of humor. And, of course, immediately sent a modest but straight drive up the center of the fairway, pitched onto the green and two-putted for par. That undercut my warnings about the state of my play. So when I then played hole number two poorly, it made me feel that much worse.

In the end, I carded a 104. I had a few pars and a few modest blow-ups. It was great fun to play a brand new (to me) course. The courses around here are mostly quite flat; any hills must be added. So it is great fun to play a hilly course. And I enjoy meeting new people.

Another Word Cloud

I wanted to try another of these wordle word-clouds. This one is a cloud of the tags I use in del.icio.us. A more practical and clickable version of this has long lived at the lowest left-hand spot on this blog, of course, but I think this gives an accurate picture of what my focus is when I browse the web and mark things for further use.

I search mostly for items of and about Delaware. Many of these I find in my work for state government; I track land-use issues among county and municipal governments. Many of these I mark for inclusion on various pages of my office's web site; we use items relating to land-use planning, about proposals reviewed under the PLUS Process, on the US Census, and about the use and sharing of geospatial data (GIS stuff). I've also used del.icio.us tags to supplement an aggregation of state GIS coordination RSS feeds that I help maintain for the National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC).

I still want to take another crack at a family-tree wordle. The one I did the other night was just a selection from among the Mahaffies on my tree. I'm trying to figure out a way to extract all 1,700 of the people on my family tree and make a wordle from that last.

Very Many Mahaffies

There's a neat light java tool out there called Wordle which creates colorful word-clouds. They are not the sort of thing that you can use for navigation, but they are loads of fun. 

I have created a few, including this one based on a bunch of names from my family tree. Have a browse through the gallery and see if you aren't tempted to make one yourself.