The Tree-Shaker Machinery...

...Out at the Christmas Tree Farm.



David C. shakes needles from a fresh-cut tree. With a special guest appearance by Sammy C. cutting branches from another fellow's tree.

Christmas Tree? Up.

We chose our Christmas Tree last weekend, out at the Sposato tree farm, near Milton. It's where we've gotten our tree for several years now. It's a nice place and a favorite of lots of local folks. Every time we stop by, we see more people we know.

The girls were busy getting ready for the Nutcracker, so Karen and I made the tree trip. We brought along her sister, Michele, who was in town for the show.

We found this year's tree way off in a far corner of the farm, where few tree-hunters had been and the selection was still wide. Our young friend David pointed us in that direction, and we thank him for it.

David's girlfriend recruited him to appear in the party scene for our nutcracker (a small crowd of adults is always needed to stand around in the background) and I got to know him during rehearsals. Nice kid.

I went back this afternoon to collect the tree. David cut down the tree for me, ran it through the tree-shaker machinery -- to get rid of dead needles and bugs and things -- and baled it. He helped me pop it onto the car and I drove cautiously home.

I set the tree up this afternoon in the corner of the new room. The cats were fascinated.

We'll decorate it tomorrow evening.

Really High-Level Etiquette

President-Elect Obama and VP-Elect Biden met today in Chicago with former VP Al Gore. I'm sure there's a great deal of important news related to this meeting.

But that's not what this post is about. This post is about a basic question that troubles me as I look at this picture.

When a group of people this powerful gets together, which one drinks from the water glass first? The most important person? Or the least?

A Long Weekend Onstage

It has been a busy few days. All four of us were on-stage together over the weekend in the Sussex Ballet production of The Nutcracker. This entailed dress and tech rehearsals on Wednesday and Thursday evenings and performances on Friday and Saturday evenings and on Sunday afternoon. Those rehearsals were long and tiring, but performances are great fun.

Christina, who is becoming a very good dancer, took the lead role of Clara for the Friday and Saturday performances. She did a lovely job. Colleen is a seasoned and dependable member of the corps de ballet and took some featured spots on Friday and Saturday. On Sunday, Colleen danced the solo "Arabian" dance and hit an absolute home-run. We were terribly proud of both our girls.

It's a great treat, by the way, to watch your daughters perform from on-stage with them. I had to be careful, at times, to keep from getting too misty-eyed. Wouldn't have worked for the minor character I played.

And it is fascinating to watch a Ballet from backstage. What is carefully choreographed grace and beauty on-stage is equally carefully choreographed chaos offstage.

Above all, it was great fun to get to know better a wonderful group of young people; some of them we've known since they were toddlers, others we have just met. All of them are great kids.

So I am tired, but happy.

Remembering Odetta

The folksinger Odetta has passed away. I only got to see her perform live one time. It was back in the first Bush administration. Odetta performed at an outdoor show on the University of Delaware College of Marine Studies campus in Lewes. She introduced the song "Rock-a-Bye Baby" as one that could be sung not only as a lullaby but also as an indictment. And she did so, dedicating the song to, and the indictment against, Bush Sr. It was a memorable show.

I Am a Huge Geek #25

I have added a smaller version of the Feully "signature" banner (above) to the left-hand column of the blog. Fuelly is a social-media site designed to allow users to track their fuel economy over time, share that information, and trade fuel-saving ideas.

I've added every fill-up of my Scion to a Fuelly profile since I started driving it in July. Over 18 fill-ups, I'm averaging 32.5 miles per gallon. My best performance has been almost 36 mpg, back in the summer. I go about 300 miles between fill-ups.

As noted above, I am a huge geek.

...That Couldn't be Beat

We went to Bethesda, Maryland, for a Thanksgiving Dinner with my family. We alternate where we eat turkey each year, but always manage to spend time with my clan and with Karen's.

My folks hosted all seven of their kids, their seven sons- and daughters-in-law, fifteen of their seventeen grand-kids, and my brother Matt's in-laws. That's thirty-three people, including my Mom and Dad.

Everyone brings something. We had two turkeys, white potatoes mashed and sweet potatoes too. There were two kinds of stuffing. There were veggies and gravies and many, many desserts.

We had a tub of sodas and a tub of beer. I took responsibility for bringing the beer; I started with a mixed case of Dogfish Head beers and added another mixed case of other non-mainstream beers.

We arrived early and had a chance to admire the old family dining room (seen here backwards) before it filled with people. There were several different tables set up, from the long dining table of my childhood, to the round gate-leg table in the sun-room.

Soon the family started to filter in. My nieces and nephews range in age from their mid-thirties down to first grade. We have golden-haired little princesses and cow-licked rambunctious boys. We have dancers and swimmers and ball-players. We have aspiring writers, musicians, actors, and activists.

Among my siblings and their spouses are lawyers, librarians, and managers; teachers, writers, artists, accountants and librarians. We are all readers and talkers. It is never quiet when the Mahaffies gather.

We ate. We talked. We laughed and we shared. Eventually, we started to disperse. As we did, teams of kids gathered and stowed the folding chairs. We paired-up to move tables back into place. A brother started a first-load in the dish-washer. By bed-time the old family home was put back together and tolerably clean.

As the only out-of-state guests, we spent the night at Mom and Dad's. After a pleasantly quiet breakfast, we drove to Karen's sister's house where we ate left-overs with her parents and some of that side of our family. We watched our great-nephew and his half-brother play video games and wrestle good-naturedly. We got to play scrabble with my Mother-in-Law; she is the Michael Jordan of scrabble.

As dusk fell, we were headed back east across the Bay Bridge. Back to our cats. It was a fine Thanksgiving holiday.

Time Travel: Remembering The Razz

An odd confluence of letters in my RSS reader led me to search this evening for a band I followed as a youngster back in Washington DC. This week's Monday Music entry on the NPR Monitor Mix blog included a video from the Nazz (Tod Rundgren's old group).

Seeing that "a-z-z" reminded me of The Razz, a DC band from back in the late 1970s. The Razz were a hard-rock band -- almost punk -- that played a snarling form of power pop. They put out a series of singles and an extended play (EP) single. I may still have several of these buried somewhere in my archive.

The group included Tommy Keene, who went on to a recording career starting in the 1980s. According to Wikipedia, his music is critically acclaimed but commercially ignored.

I insulted Mr. Keene one evening at a bar in Northern Virginia. I didn't mean to insult him. A group of us were there to see The Razz; we were fans. I was at the time a rhythm guitarist in a high-school garage band (The Ramblin' Beach Guys) and I was impressed by Keene's guitar playing. The group's other guitarist, Bill Craig, was playing a more obvious "lead guitar" role and I approached Keene during a break to tell him how cool it was to see a fellow rhythm guitarist (I was pretty young). He was not amused; he played parts just as complex as the other fellow, he was just less showy. That was my first lesson in the potential complexity in rock music.

That was one of two Razz shows that I remember specifically. I expect I probably also saw them play at the old Psychadeli at some point, but I'm not sure.

The other show that I remember clearly was a concert in November of 1978 at the University of Maryland Student Union. The Razz opened for Rockpile (Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe). Several of my bandmates and I got there very early and snagged a table at the very front of the hall. It was one of those great moments in youth when you are part of just the music you want to hear.

In looking around the web this evening, I also found that some of The Razz folks, including singer Michael Reidy, have recently been performing as The Howling Mad. Thirty years ago, I recall being told that Michael Reidy was a graphic designer and had done the artwork for The Razz' posters and record sleeves. In retrospect, I think it is the case that his graphic work, along with his group's music, influenced my tastes as a young man and is with me today.

Nutcracker Time!

It's just about that time of year again; time for traditional holiday shows. Among them is the Nutcracker, which has become a large part of our family life for a few years.

Our Nutcracker odyssey goes back at least to 2003. The girls are part of the Sussex Ballet and have also done the Nutcracker at the Southern Delaware School of the Arts. In 2004, they took to the streets of Lewes in Nutcracker costumes for the City's Christmas Parade. In 2006, we made it A Family Affair when Karen and I took on roles as extra adults in the party scene that starts the show. Last year, I took the part of Drosselmeyer, the kindly old coot who brings an enchanted nutcracker to the party.

This year, Christina is featured as Clara, the young girl at the center of the story. And Colleen is the lead dancer in the dance of the flutes for several performances and is the solo dancer in the Arabian dance.

Karen, as always, plays the part of the lovely, tall brunette in the green dress.

The shows are set for Friday and Saturday, December 5 and 6, in the evening, and an afternoon matinée on Sunday, December 7. We're using the theater at Cape Henlopen High school, just outside of Lewes. Tickets are $16 general admission; $12 for seniors and students. You should call (302) 645-7855 for your tickets.

GIS Day

I spent Wednesday morning at the Air Mobility Command Museum at Dover Air Force Base. Wednesday was GIS Day, a day intended to celebrate the role of GIS data and tools in many aspects of modern life.

I was one of many volunteers from the Delaware GIS community hosting fifth graders from three Delaware schools for a GIS Day field trip at the museum. We squired them through a series of learning stations including activities teaching about maps and map data, weather emergencies and emergency preparedness, and using GPS to help locate accident victims.

As a centerpiece, we had the Earth Balloon from the Delaware Children's Museum. This is a 19-foot inflatable globe into which kids can enter with an instructor to see all manner of geography from the inside.

Wednesday evening, the event was open to the public. I had to miss that; I had a Lewes Planning Commission meeting that night. It wasn't the only GIS day event; the City of Dover GIS folks hosted an for city staff to demonstrate the ,many uses of the technology in the capitol city.

I spent my Wednesday morning with 14 fifth graders from McVey Elementary School, in Newark, a very nice bunch of kids. Fifth grade is an interesting age. We had little tiny kids and boys who had shot up above their classmates and whose voices have dropped an octave. There were young ladies of great self-possession with bright, inquiring minds. They worked well together. They listened. They were a pleasure to work with.

I was also very pleased with the work done by the folks who created the event, led by Megan Nehrbas, of Sussex County government, with help from Miriam Pomilio, of the Delaware Geological Survey. They have created a new educational resource that I hope will continue in the years to come.