At the Lewes Christmas Parade

2011 Lewes Christmas Parade, a set on Flickr.

Last night we watched the annual Lewes Christmas Parade. It's one of the biggest and best parades in our little city. We'd missed it for some years due to scheduling conflicts with the Sussex Ballet's Nutcracker. This year's Nutcracker will come later in the month, so we were able to spend a pleasant, though cold, few hours watching classic cars, fire trucks, church groups, dogs, boats, businesses, politicians, beauty queens, and a marching band file by on Savannah Road.

Dancing at the Sea Witch Festival

5 who dance and 5 who want to dance, a photo by mmahaffie on Flickr.

Christina and her corps-mates from the Sussex Dance Academy gave a dance exhibition this morning at the Rehoboth Beach Bandstand. It was part of the Sea Witch festival. There were other dance schools, a choral group and a magician.

That's our lovely daughter there, second from the right. I liked the way the five dancers are matched by five little girls who dream of dancing in this shot.

It was a good morning for photography. I captured a container ship and what I think was a dredge platform for my Distant Ships collection. I took pictures of pumpkins,  costumes, benches and beaches. And more.

Then we all trooped off for lunch at Nicola's.

Coast Day, 2011 - A Photoset

I went to Coast Day, at the University of Delaware's Lewes campus this afternoon. Coast Day is an annual open house at what we used to call "the College of Marine Studies," or CMS. The University has changed the school's name a few times now, and I've lost track of what it's meant to be called; for most people who've lived in Lewes awhile, though, "CMS" still works.

Coast Day is an open house for the researchers that has grown into an environmental and marine culture fair. Many state and local agencies have displays, as do local government and non-governmental organizations. There are boats and food and music and general science-themed fun. I like it and I like to photograph it.

A Fine Brunch by the Wissahickon

valley run 1, a photo by mmahaffie on Flickr.

We were at Villanova University this weekend visiting Daughter #1 for parents' weekend. We watched football, met her friends, bought things with big blue Vs on them at the bookstore, and laughed at the best in improv comedy. And we had a fine brunch today at the Valley Run Inn.

23 Years Ago...

mimosas soon, a photo by mmahaffie on Flickr.

Karen and I were wed on this date (9/10) 23 years ago. We spent the first night of our marriage in Baltimore and then flew to Switzerland for a hot air balloon tour.

This bottle of champaign was waiting for us after our first landing after a long, bouncy, dragging landing in a Swiss field.

I'm Reading O'Brian Again

I do this every few years; I start reading Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series again. I ran out of library books to read during the pass-by of Hurricane Irene in late August so I went to my personal collection and grabbed Master and Commander. Again.

It may be the start of another run through the whole 20-book series. Maybe. Last time, it was May to October of 2006. That has been the only time I have read through the series start-to-finish. I've read most of the novels in the series at least twice, but usually in a disconnected, non-sequential way.

I enjoy sea-stories and stories from the Napoleonic wars. But what I love most about these books is the language. Writing like this:

...it would have been difficult to imagine a pleasanter way of spending the late summer than sailing than sailing across the whole width of the Mediterranean as fast as the sloop could fly. She flew a good deal faster now that Jack had hit upon her happiest trim, restowing her hold to bring her by the stern and restoring her masts to the rake her Spanish builders had intended. What is more, the brothers Sponge, with a dozen of the Sophie's swimmers under their instruction, had spent every moment of the long calms in Greek waters (their native element) scraping her bottom; and Stephen could remember an evening when he had sat there in the warm, deepening twilight, watching the sea; it had barely a ruffle on its surface, and yet the Sophie picked up enough moving air with her topgallants to draw a long, straight whispering furrow across the water, a line brilliant with unearthly phosphorescence, visible for a quart of a mile behind her. Days and nights of unbelievable purity. Nights when the steady Ionian breeze rounded the square mainsail -- not a brace to be touched, watch relieving watch -- and he and Jack on deck, sawing away, sawing away, lost in their music , until the falling dew untuned their strings. And days when the perfection of dawn was so great , the emptiness so entire, that men were almost afraid to speak.

I marked this passage as I read by it the other day and thought it might make a good blog post. In searching back through this blog for previous O'Brian posts I realized I've done this kind of post a few times before.

I finished Master and Commander yesterday. The library is closed, so I moved on to Post Captain, the second in the series. I don't know if this is the start of another run through all 20 novels. That would probably carry me into January.

A Near Miss?

the neighbor's garage, a photo by mmahaffie on Flickr.

Our next door neighbor's garage door took a mighty wrench at some point during the storm. another neighbor, across the street from this one, lost the top of a large tree as well.

The working theory around our cul-de-sac is that both were caused by the storm cell that spawned the tornado that hit Nassau station, northwest of us -- or maybe by the tornado itself.

We Survived Hurricane Irene

It's a wet, blustery Sunday morning here in Lewes and we're approaching the endgame of Hurricane Irene. Bottom line: we're just fine.

The storm has moved inland in New York state at this point and is down to Tropical Storm strength. It was a Category 1 Hurricane when it passed east of Delaware overnight. I think the worst of the wind and rain for us was later afternoon and early evening of Saturday.

We had a scare when a storm cell that appears to have spawned a tornado passed just overhead of our neighborhood. we'd had warning from local television and spent a few minutes down in the basement.

The twister apparently touched-down about three miles to our west and damaged a number of houses, at least one of them seriously. as of now, I have heard no reports of injuries or deaths in Delaware from this storm.

We spent the rest of the night on the main floor, closer to the basement, camped-out in the living room.

I took a quick look around the house this morning and so far just a small tree is down in the side yard. It may be savable.

Somewhere in this picture....

...may be my grandfather, my great grandfather or my great grandmother.

This is a photo of Anadarko Township, Oklahoma, in its early days in August of 1901. It is from the Today's Document blog from the National Archives.  Anadarko is in Kiowa County, southwest of Oklahoma city. It lies about 50 miles from Hobart, where my great grandfather George Mahaffie was homesteading with his wife Mollie and their four children. They had moved to Oklahoma from Kansas sometime between 1889 and 1900.

George and Mollie would have been 40 years old in August of 1901. My grandfather, Charles, would have been 16. His elder sister, Rose, would have been 18. Younger brother Bart would have been 11 and the baby, Beatty, 1 year old.

It is possible that George may have taken Mollie or one or more of his children east for the lumber auction pictured here. If nothing else, it provides a clear picture of the landscape and environment that helped form my grandfather.

At The Delaware State Fair

My new office is sharing a booth at the 2011 Delaware State Fair with the Public Service Commission (PSC). We're both part of the Department of State for Delaware. As the new Deputy Director at the GIC, I thought I should lead by example and take a healthy number of shifts at the booth. I've been taking pictures when I can.