The Dunn Family Blog

When I'm Sixty-Four

2011-09-17T19:28:00.000-04:00

<br>http://youtu.be/ldIfhc1pJpk

And I made it! Too bad Lennon and Harrison didn't. Paul and Ringo got there before me, though. I remember when it sounded remote ("many years from now"), but at least I'M not losing my hair.

Day Seven: Coco Trees a Prey

2011-08-27T22:53:00.001-04:00

A winding-down day, much of it spent following the progress of Hurricane Irene, and planning our return around its course and timing. A little more exploring of the resort and a lot of relaxing. I didn't take any video. The high point of the day was that the dog got out while Tam was taking trash out. He ran off and started chasing a service guy working on cleaning one of the other cabins. Coco chased him up the steps of another cabin, but did not follow up the steps. He had "treed" his prey and waited for the hunter to arrive. When Tam was not appreciative he came back to our cabin on his own. Tam apologized to the treed ~~raccoon~~ service guy.

The Day 6 Video

2011-08-26T23:12:00.001-04:00

Today's drama mostly came from boarding the dog for the first time. Visits to the Idlewild Park and Fort Ligonier. More extended comments later. Here's the video:

Day 5's Video

2011-08-26T21:44:00.000-04:00

Day 5 (yesterday) was a quiet one. Mostly Wildside (an arcade/entertainment area) and minigolf with Sarah. Here's the video:

The Day 3 Video

2011-08-26T10:03:00.000-04:00

Here's the Day 3 Video. Though it was uploaded out of order, I have tampered with the space-time continuum so that it appears in its proper order.

Day Five

2011-08-25T22:04:00.000-04:00

Our Internet has returned. Today was a quiet one; it rained all morning; in the afternoon Sarah spent time at the Wildside, basically an arcade and entertainment center, and we picked up some groceries at the WalMart in Uniontown. Tomorrow will be much more active.

Earthquakes, Hurricanes, WiFi Issues and the Milky Way

2011-08-24T21:46:00.001-04:00

Jeez. Leave home for the week and Washington has 1) an earthquake yesterday.We hope the house is intact, since they're going to have 2) a major hurricane on the day we drive back, to demolish whatever survives. (Just kidding, I hope.)

I'm assiduously making movies of each day of our vacation, but yesterday and today it has turned out that "Free WiFi" meant "once in a while," and since YouTube uploads of long videos can take hours (the WiFi's not that fast, either), I may not upload any more videos till we get home, unless the WiFi comes back on. How am I posting this? Well, I'm -- well, I'm using a method that is probably legal but not kosher entirely, so I won't say anymore. Bandwidth is, however, limited.

I did want to get one story on the record before the memories fade. Sarah has become a fan of astronomy, one of my enthusiasms around her age as well. But she's grwing up in the suburbs of Washington, DC. So last night after dark we drove to a dark spot (the driveway into Fort Necessity National Battlefield), and despite provoking the curiosity of a park ranger, showed her the stars unimpeded by urban light pollution. For the first time in her eleven years, she saw the Milky Way. She was stunned and awed and thankful, and it really makes you realize what we have lost with our city lights. She thanked me more than for all the things we've spent lots of money to do. For her, seeing something I could see from my front yard in my childhood was a greater revelation than anything. My God, what have we done?

Today was hanging out; she did a horseback ride, miniature golf, and saw the resort's rather uninspired "zoo," which provoked some cynical comments.

Days One and Two: The Movie

2011-08-23T09:55:00.000-04:00

Video from days one and two of the vacation:

Day Two

2011-08-23T00:36:00.002-04:00

Day Two: Sarah's spa experience; Fort Necessity; Braddock's Grave; the search for a supermarket. Video is uploading V e r y S l o w l y to YouTube; I'll post it here tomorrow.

On the Road Again: Vacation 2011, Day One

2011-08-21T22:29:00.002-04:00

It's our first night of our 2011 vacation. We;re rentiuging a condo/cabin on the grounds of the Nemacolin Woodlands Resort in western Pennsylvania, just down the road from Washington's Fort Necessity. We're tired and worn out so videos etc. will wait a day or so. I did use Twitter a bit from my phone but only did three tweets. Edited t remove typos introduced by my fat fingers on a phone keyboard, they were:

9:30 AM. Car loaded and ready to roll. Dog has the most luggage but did not help pack or load. Slacker.

Out of driveway 9:34 AM. Willie. Nelson singing "On the road again" on stereo.

5 pm At Nemacolin Highlands Resort since about 2:30. Morwe n Dunn blog. All is well despite initial problem with the Wifi.

Nothing earthshaking there. Traveling with the dog limits options for lunch and dinner, so it was drive-thrugh MacDonalds for lunch in Cumberland, MD, and carry-out pizza for dinner. Once we stock the kitchen we''ll have more options. Still, travel with a neurotic dog has its downsides.

"Gotcha Day" Celebrations and a Video

2011-07-02T23:52:00.001-04:00

Today, as I already noted, was out 10th celebration of "Gotcha" Day. Sarah, now 11 and ready to begin Middle School in September, joined us at the Sackler and Freer Galleries of the Smithsonian to look at Chinese art, then we went home and watched the videos of our original meeting, and then went out to one of her favorite Chinese restaurants, the Hong Kong Palace.

"Gotcha" Day, Ten Years Later

2011-07-02T00:22:00.003-04:00

Ten years ago today, at about 1 pm China time (about 1 am DC time) in the Beijing Meeting Room of the Grand Sun City Hotel in Changsha, Hunan, China, Tam and I met our daughter for the first time. Chang Xiao Chao, then 14 months old, is now Sarah Grace Dunn, 11 and off to Middle School in September.

The official adoption took place in Chinese government offices the next day, and her American citizenship dates from her first setting foot in the US (in LA, unfortunately), but July 2 will always be "Gotcha" Day, the day we were united with her. Along with her birthday, it's a key date we celebrate, and the 10th anniversary is particularly meaningful.

"Who are these strange-looking people?":

Homage to Harryhausen: All the Great Monsters in One Clip

2011-07-01T01:34:00.001-04:00

I'm so glad I found this on the weekend the latest Transformers movie opens since it reminds us of the days before CGI, when we had to live with stop-motion animation of rubber creatures: AND WE LOVED IT.

Ray Harryhausen may not be a household name among the masses, but it certainly is among animators: in the Disney/Pixar classic Monsters, Inc. the fancy restaurant is called "Harry Hausen's." Harryahausen is, apparently, still alive at age 91, according to the Wikipedia link just given and the official website here.

If you grew up in the fifties or even the sixties you saw Earth vs. the Flying Saucers or The Seventh Voyage of Sindbad (dueling skeletons!) or various movies in which the rubber monsters were more credible than in those Japanese Godzilla flicks, you know Harryhausen's work if you don't know his name. Somebody's put together the ultimate tribute critter mashup.

I'm Baaack ....

2011-06-27T01:01:00.000-04:00

Do the title in your best Schwarzeneger/Terminator. With our decision to include Sarah's face more often it becomes much easier to put our pics and videos here and elsewhere. I also have left this site latent too long. It's summer. There will be a vacation, though destination still being determined since our plans to go to Joplin were, literally, blown away. We'd be in the way out there. But if you come here you'll find me here a lot more often. Stay tuned.

Coco at Mason Neck

2011-06-26T23:29:00.000-04:00

A very good early summer day with family and dog along the Potomac:

Sarah Moves on to Middle School

2011-06-26T23:26:00.001-04:00

Highlights of Sarah's "graduation" (promotion/awards ceremony) at the end of fifth grade: the end of elementary school and on to Middle School! She won a music award, a citizenship award, and a medal for overall conduct and such.

About a Picture Policy Change

2011-06-26T23:13:00.000-04:00

When I first started posting to this blog and YouTube five or six years ago, I was extremely cautious about showing Sarah's face on public Internet sites like the blog. I kept all but the most anonymous YouTube videos private, and though I invited many relatives, back then only Tam's sister and one or two cousins ever made use of it: they were uncomfortable with the password protection or whatever.

But Sarah isn't six anymore, and while there are still plenty of dangerous folks out there, she'll be in Middle School in September and has some rights to decide her own levels of privacy. All but the most private videos will now be public, which allows me to embed them here, post them to Facebook, and all that. I will not embarrass her, but I will no longer hide her pretty face from the world. Videos to follow.

The Brower Kids' TV Debut

2011-06-26T11:37:00.003-04:00

My cousin Shannon's kids, Daniel, Bailey, and Emma, who lost their Dad recently on top of the tornado, adopt a puppy left homeless by the storm, and get their TV debut on a Springfield, MO station:

The Joplin Tornado

2011-06-17T00:36:00.000-04:00

A day after my last post, the Joplin tornado struck. Since then my cousin Mike Bower has died of a stroke at the age of 42, leaving three kids; my old church and school are destroyed and my town has become famous for all the wrong reasons. My cousin Shannon passed on this link:

My Dad's 100th Birthday

2011-05-21T23:46:00.001-04:00

My Dad, Howard C. Dunn, May 21, 1911-May 12, 1976, would have been 100 today had he lived. I've already posted on Facebook but will do a longer post here sometime soon.

Christmas 2010

2010-12-24T02:51:00.003-05:00

I imagine most of you reading this blog already are on our e-mail or Facebook lists, but for any who aren't, you can read our Christmas letter here.

Holidays

2010-12-12T01:02:00.001-05:00

I'll be blogging again over the holidays. It's just that we're so busy, occasional Facebook is all I've had time for.

The Wired Family Room

2010-10-24T22:10:00.002-04:00

I was talking about technology earlier. I looked up from my computer and saw the accompanying view: four screens on for a three-person family. The TV is presumably on for the dog. So I pulled out my phone (fifth screen) and took the picture. I put it immediately on Facebook but, for old times' sake, put it here as well.

A Farewell and a Reunion

2010-10-24T17:42:00.004-04:00

Remember the movie The Big Chill? This weekend was something like that. One of my oldest friends, Bruce Carter, a friend since undergraduate days, died on Columbus day. Bruce, an avid athlete in great shape, died of a massive heart attack, totally unexpected, so it was a shock to those of us in a lot worse shape than he.

The memorial service was this weekend in his native Bristol, PA., north of Philadelphia. Many old friends, including some who live nearby but I never see and others farther afield, gathered to remember and tell stories. I told the story of how we once traded Bruce's dog for car repairs, a story I must record here sometime soon.

It was an emotional day, full of memories. And after many tales of long ago road trips, the drive up and back (though Tam drove) left us drained, so today is a crash day.

Sometimes when I remember the 1960s and 1970s, it seems pretty recent. Then I look up and see my daughter and her friend playing "Super Mario Strikers" on the Wii on a wide screen TVm and remember how fascinating "Pong" seemed when it was introduced. I love the resources technology makes available and the force multiplier effect, but sometimes I do feel my age.

Anniversary Weekend

2010-10-04T19:21:00.000-04:00

This past weekend was our 17th wedding anniversary, and on Saturday we went over to St. Michaels, Maryland, on the Eastern Shore of Chesapeake Bay. Sarah hadn't seen the Eastern Shore before, and we had a good crabcake lunch and a wonderful day in the Bay air.

We were, however, sorry to see so many people out with their dogs; if Coco could tolerate the presence of other dogs, he could have gone with us. But he can't, so he didn't.

Home Again

2010-08-29T22:18:00.002-04:00

Well, our little odyssey is over, and we're back home. I'll try to reflect on it over the next few days.

Actually, I guess I shouldn't call it an odyssey. It didn't take 10 years, there was no 10 years of war beforehand, we didn't encounter a cyclops, a sea monster, a whirlpool, lotus eaters, nor were we turned into pigs even once. And since the dog went with us, we didn't even have the only-his-faithful-dog-recognized-him bit.

Yesterday we made the trip from Pigeon Forge to Roanoke, today, Roanoke home. We had few major adventures. More to come though.

Days Five through Seven

2010-08-27T23:23:00.001-04:00

I've been remiss about posting, but then, I didn't have much to report. Let me first give you a brief précis of the last couple of days. Today (day 7) I missed the main event, so I hope Tam and/or Sarah will fill the gap. Tam, in fact, has already posted on day 7 before I got to days five and six.

Day Five: August 25. When last I left our little adventure, we'd decided to bug out of Franklin for Asheville due to poor Wi-Fi. We did so, but intending to spend the day around Franklin before going, and letting Sarah do gem-hunting (a local activity which allows kids to get very muddy). In the morning, we went to downtown Franklin so Sarah could visit Ruby City, which is to your usual rock shop what Tiffany is to the jewelry counter at Wal-Mart. I visited the town bookstore, and Tam a gourmet kitchen shop she'd liked two years ago. Apparently small towns in Western North Carolina carry things you can't find in Metropolitan Washington, DC.

Anyway, since most places (with the exception of Ruby City, which invited us to bring Coco in) aren't dog friendly, at each spot one of us had to stay outside with the dog. During the gourmet kitchen shop phase, it was I. Franklin has old-fashioned benches in front of the Main Street businesses, so I sat on one, with my cane (from my surgery, but still occasionally useful) and Coco. This being a small southern town I naturally nodded or spoke to most passersby. We have begun to learn that if Coco is being held, he is less likely to try to attack every passing person. So I held him tight. Many people addressed him ("Hello, puppy." Or in one case. "Hi, stubby puppy." When Sarah heard this she started calling him "stubby puppy.") He was pretty stoic, not barking at nearly as many people as usual.

Along the way I suddenly had an epiphany: while I still think like I did at 35 or 45, I've actually become the white-haired old guy sitting on a Main Street bench in a small Southern town, with his hound dog, leaning on his cane and making pleasantries with the locals. I'm just one stop shy of settin' and whittlin' on the front steps of the courthouse.

The next step was to be the gem mining. Sarah did it first when she was three or four and again two years ago and loves it. She likes the "seeded" buckets that guarantee you'll find pretty semi=precious stones but also won't likely produce the rubies and sapphires that really are found there. The Sheffield Mine where we'd been before still has the best reputation so we set out, but with us having lefgt our Franklin hotel I figured we'd just keep the dog on the sidelines since there was nowhere for me to stay with him. When we got there, we were greeted by a great, friendly, tongue hanging out happy-to-see-us southern coonhound (He was eager to meet Coco; Coco was eager to attack him) and a "No dogs allowed" sign. After trying to think of ways to square the circle (I go back to town while they stay at the mine? I sit with Coco in either a brutally hot car for several hours or one in which we run the air and use up a full tank of gas,

Assured we would go to the Gatlinburg Aquarium, Sarah acceded to the idea we just couldn't make the mining work.

So day five ended driving to Asheville, checking in, and Sarah spending time in the pool. Nobody took any video.

Day 6: August 26. Asheville and the park We took the Blue Ridge Parkway towards Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We picked up a picnic lunch but, thrown off the parkway by repair work from a storm, we found a barbecue place in Waynesville and bought that two. Once in the park we had a picnuc lunch (with the BBQ; the rest is spoiled now). On to New Found Gap on the state line. Lots of pictures and the video is up.

Day 7: August 27. Over the mountains to Tennessee, to Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. Tam's post on the Aquarium visit will have to serve since I was waiting in the hotel with the dog. They were profligate in their photography and we'll produce a movie from their clips and stills.

A Note on the YouTube videos: As you may recall, I didn't upload the two part Day Four video from Franklin because of the poor Internet connection. Last night in Asheville I tried three more times without suceess, though Part Two went up without a glitch, as did yesterday's Day Six video. Tonight, in Pigeon Forge, I finally got Part One of Day 4 to upload. So on YouTube (where they're displayed, like this blog, newest first) the order is from oldest to newest Day Four Part Two/ Day Six/ Day Four Part One. (There is no Day Five.)

Ripley's Aquarium in Gatlinburg

2010-08-27T22:15:00.008-04:00

Friday night, Aug. 27, Pigeon Forge: First, the picture at left: This is one reason I find it hard to blog! We are settled into the Quality Inn Parkway, after a great late afternoon visit by Sarah and me to Ripley's Aquarium in Gatlinburg, a special request of Sarah's for the last several days of vacation. Mike volunteered to stay in the hotel room with Coco, and let Sarah and me go see it.

I did not know what to expect, since we know and like the Baltimore and Virginia Aquariums so much. And although the Ripley's Aquarium is in the Volunteer State, it ranks right up there with the two coastal ones. We were so impressed! A huge glass column of silvery lookdown fish greets you at the entrance, then you are drawn through a course that features a huge open pool of swimming sharks, including sand sharks, hammerheads and sawtooths, various small and enormous stingrays, then separate areas devoted to coastal fish and ecosystems, seahorses, dragon fish, and garden eels. Other exhibits include huge Japanese crabs, whose claws can extend several feet, pirhanas, etc.

The highlight of the whole place is the acryllic tunnel that allows you to walk below the sealife, while it swims around and above you. It is an amazing experience! The hammerhead sharks eerily lounge langorously across the top of the tunnel, while you gaze at them from below. Just amazing. Really it filled me with wonder and joy at the marvelous color and diversity of sea life, what amazing life it is. It was a real joy to be there and to share it with Sarah. She took literally hundreds of pictures, while I videotaped it extensively, in order to show Mike. We will put some of it on our family You tube for friends and family viewing.

Day Four: Great Day, Lousy Evening

2010-08-24T22:45:00.013-04:00

Today was a great day, the best yet. I use "day," however, not in the sense "24 hour period" but in the sense "not night." The evening has been frustrating, enough to make us change plans.

The day is well documented in a video that will take up two parts on YouTube even though their limit is now 15 minutes instead of 10. The bad news is that as I write this it's not yet on YouTube, for the reason the evening was a disappointment.

The day was a great deep draught of lakes and mountains and waterfalls and really helped fill my Scotch-Irish need for mountain and glen; we started with the Cullasaja Gorge with its multiple waterfalls, including one you can walk behind and one you can drive behind; then over Wayah Gap to Nantahala Lake and down Nantahala Gorge with lots of whitewater rafters (stopping at a little stream called Patton's Run where Sarah seemed to really enjoy it: very reminiscent of an Ozark stream). Then along Fontana Lake (above picture) to Fontana Dam, a TVA dam which is said to be the highest dam in the east, giving us a chance to explain the TVA to Sarah. (She likes Alabama's "Song of the South" which includes a line that roughly goes, "Papa got a job with the TVA; we bought a washing machine and then a Chevrolet," so we had a point of reference.) (By rhe way, what do the Tea Partiers who call Obama a socialist think of the TVA, anyway? Would they sell it off? De-electrify the South?)

It was a good day, but the evening was not. Around 7 or so as I was working on the day's videos and Sarah was watching video cartoons online, both our computers lost Internet. The whole hotel had. We were down for an hour or more, sporadic at best for an hour or two more. Though we're up and stable again, when I tried to upload to YouTube a file that should upload in under 30 minutes said it would take 190, or over three hours. So I stopped the upload.

Worse, another guest said she'd had trouble her first two days here, but no more trouble till tonight, and suggested she'd had trouble with connectivity here before.

The Internet is too mluch a part of us — this blog, our videos, researching where to eat, GoogleEarth — that we feel any unreliability is, in the 21st century, what an air conditioning failure would have been in the last. It's not management's fault if it happens rarely, but if it happens a lot it suggests stinting on the bandwidth or needing a new Internet Service Provider. Anyway, on a one-week vacation a single night's major inconvenience is enough to make us move. Instead of staying four days here, we're cutting it off after two. We're returning to our nice hotel in Asheville from Sunday night.

I didn't name our hotel yet because I believe they are trying to fix it. But I don't want to risk staying if this happens often.

And yes, I can acceas the Internet on my Smartphone. But I can't blog on the tiny keyboard (my fat fingers find Tam's netbook hard to manage), and besides, WiFi is advertised as part of the deal.

.

Days Two and Three: Coco Gets Crazier

2010-08-23T23:51:00.004-04:00

So far I've done better at getting video up at YouTube than blogging here; but then, Tam and Sarah's intents to blog haven't produced a post yet. So let me catch up a bit. The videos are at YouTube, though the most video-ready moments of the trip have been missed, the bear cub I mentioned on day one, and another bear-related story for later in this post.

Yesterday, day two, was the second day of travel down, and again mostly engaged in burning miles. When we weren't on the Interstates however, Sarah began to understand the appeal (and variety) of old roads, as we went through the towns of Southwest Virginia, ranging from industrial and railroad towns that were long strips of trailer parks with double-wides, to charming towns like Abingdon, where the State Theater of Virginia is located and there's a flourishing artistic community. Otherwise we cut across northeastern Tennessee via the Tri-Cities and the new (well, we first used it two years ago, so still new to us) I-16, down to Asheville.

It was a nice hotel, a Comfort Suites, and dog-friendly as well. But we've discovered that many pet-friendly places put all the pet rooms in a single corridor. In Asheville, as in Roanoke, there was a dog in the room across the hall. Actually, in Asheville apparently two, crated, and while never actually seen, clearly of the small, shrill, yippy persuasion. When they started out, Coco responded with wild barking and a furious attempt to go through the door. Fortunately the desk clerk actually found this amusing, but I think he was off duty when it started up again around dawn. Tam and I thought we were off-duty too, being sound asleep, until our dachshund went off.

Now, this was not the first problem of the day. In the afternoon, Sarah wanted to swim in the pool and since the night before we'd had no time and the next few days would be poolless, we decided Tam would watch her while I either stayed with the dog in the room , or walked him outside. We tried the latter first, but when he saw them going to the pool but me pulling him the other way he started barking, leaping about madly, and trying to bite through his leash.

You see, Coco tolerates me. He understands that during the school year, I'm home on Fridays and no one else is, so I'm his sofa/food source, but when either Sarah or Tam is available, I'm dog food. He's a ladies' dog; I'm the only adult male he doesn't act like he wants to dismember, and he's not much better with males Sarah's age. We think his bark is worse than his bite, but don't plan to test it.

As for other dogs, forget it. Though we met Coco at an adoption fair where he was around a lot of other dogs, as he was at his (brief) foster home, he has challenged other dogs at every opportunity, not just on his home turf but in public places. At the vet's to get checked out for the trip he tried to go after a Rottweiler; once at Great Falls he tried to go after a pair of mastiffs; he's also confronted a German Shepherd. That any of these dogs could snap him in two with one bite seems to elude him; dachshunds, or at least Coco, seem unaware that they're five inches tall. Of course, they were bred to go after European badgers, so perhaps foolhardy courage against impossible odds is in their DNA.

We've already decided we need to get him a chain-based leash. Two of the three we brought on vacation are partly chewed through by day three.

But this maniacal hound of hell is not the homebound Coco. He's a sweet, loving, totally loyal ultimate cuteness, so long as no other dogs, or adult males other than me, or most females for that matter, enter his field of vision. (My physical therapist after my surgery came to our house three times a week for three weeks and he went berserk every time.)

Of course, we decided to get him obedience training. We even paid for the course. Then I broke my hip.

Anyway, we need to keep him fairly sequestered, so logistics are a problem. Day three (today if I post this by midnight: anyway, Monday, August 23, was spent mostly in Cherokee, NC. I'll post more on it later, though, except for this one story alluded to earlier: our second missed video moment. Sarah and I were shopping while Tam had Coco duty; we'd just switched shifts She was walking him when they came upon one of many bear sculptures in Cherokee (like a number of places they encourage artists to address a common theme: Norfolk does mermaids, Winchester, apples, and Cherokee, bears.

Well, as Tam tells it (I hope she'll tell it herself here), Coco saw one of these bear statues, and started barking and growling at it, all the while with his tail between his legs. He wasn't, apparently, trying to attack this bigger challenger.

But what kind of hound dog doesn't know a statue from a real animal?

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Roanoke: Day One

2010-08-21T20:35:00.002-04:00

Day one of the 2010 vacation was mostly a driving day, pushing to Roanoke, VA. The dog behaved well in the car, but not so much around other people and, particularly, other dogs. Though we did end up taking the Interstate the last 75 miles or so of the 250 mile trip, we also did one stretch of Skyline Drive.

And what surely was the high point of the day came on Skyline Drive, when we came upon a black bear cub playing by the side of the road. Despite having three cameras, plus three phones that take pictures as well (also a Nintendo DSi) for a total of at least seven photographic devices (not counting the webcams), of course none of us got a picture. Wed didn't linger because we assumed Mama bear was somewhere nearby.

Besides not getting much sleep last night, I find that my surgeon was right and I need to move around every hour or so; long stretches in the car are uncomfortable.

More as we have something to report; Tam and Sarah say they want to post too, so keep watching this space.

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Counting Down to Vacation

2010-08-19T20:28:00.008-04:00

Saturday we leave on a delayed and truncated vacation, giving the family some much-earned respite in a difficult summer largely devoted to Tam and Sarah having to nurse me through my broken hip, surgery, and convalescence. (And Tam settling into a new job: same organization but new department.)

Instead of two weeks driving across country to Missouri and back in July, we're making do with a one week trip to the Great Smokies in August. And because we're insane, we're doing it with Coco, our dog. That means not a lot of eating in restaurants; lots of picnics, drive-through, carry-out, or delivery to the hotel. We might save money.

We'll be carrying two laptops, a netbook, and two smartphones so we should be pretty well wired and equipped to post to the blog, Flicker, and YouTube. Tam wants to blog more, and Sarah wants to try it, so you may see both of them here. The Flickr and YouTube accounts, because they show Sarah's face, are family-and-friends only, and while we've invited many to join our list few have, but the invitation is still open. (Either post a comment in the comments box (click on "Comment" below) or send me an E-mail.) We may also do short posts on Facebook from time to time, though we'll keep our main posts here. Though I have a dormant Twitter account I don't tweet: too talkative for that. Can't keep to 140 characters. (My work blog, the MEI Editor's Blog, does feed post titles to the MEI Twitter feed.) Besides YouTube videos we might try a podcast our two.

So do drop by.

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On the Road with Coco

2010-07-31T22:10:00.001-04:00

The summer that disappeared is proceeding apace with tomorrow being the first of August. Plans for a two week driving vacation to Missouri in July were vetoed by my broken hip and the doctors saying I couldn't drive so far so soon (they're right: I need to stretch my legs frequently). We're going down to the Great Smokeys for a week in August instead, and will try for Missouri later, perhaps over the holidays.

We are, wisely or unwisely, thinking of taking the dog along on the trip to the mountains, and to try out the feasibility, we're doing an overnight tonight in Winchester, VA, only 75 miles or so from home (in case we had to bail). We're at a Comfort Inn; our usual Hampton Inns don't take pets. So far, it's working. He gets upset when one of us isn't with him, but is enjoying the outdoor time. A video of the day, or parts of it, is on the private YouTube channel.

More blogging coming, I hope.

A Missing Month

2010-07-05T21:45:00.006-04:00

On the night of June 1/2, taking out the recycling, I fell and broke my left hip. On June 3, I had full hip replacement surgery, so I now have a bionic butt, so to speak. A month later, I'm still on a cane, just beginning to ease back into going to the office. The Journal will go to press a couple of weeks late for the first time in my tenure. My backlog is proliferating. I've lost a month of my life

My family has been magnificent. They have supported me, nursed me, put up with me. My boss and staff have been supportive as well, so far, but there's a lot of catchup to do. Today I found myself snapping at Sarah, who after all is enjoying summer vacation, and realized I had my priorities wrong: family is more important than work; it's my family that sustained me through this nightmare.

Until June 3, I had spent only one night in a hospital as a patient: when my tonsils were out at age four. I've only broken two little toes and cracked a rib: never a broken bone of bigger import. I was expecting to have a hernia fixed this summer, perhaps in late June, had all this not happened, but that would not have even required an overnight in the hospital. Then, suddenly, a broken hip, major hip replacement surgery.

Our original vacation plans were for an ambitious driving trip to Missouri the last two weeks of July. We were even planning to take the dog. That's gone with the wind now; maybe something could happen in August if I work like hell all July, but the long trip is probably put off till some future point. I can't do long driving without frequent stops due to worries about clotting, the doctors say; I don't have the stamina rebuilt yet anyway.

Now that I have a titanium butt, I can sit and blog more readily; perhaps I'll be posting here more often. I hope so. I've been forcibly reminded what's important.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Recycling Bin

2010-06-04T15:09:00.001-04:00

For now, I'll use the same post I posted on the work blog:

In case you've been wondering where I've been: on Tuesday night while taking out the recycling, I fell and hit my driveway. Hard. An ambulance ride later I learn I have a broken hip. Yep, the thighbone was no longer connected to the hipbone. After two immobilized days, l had a hip replacement yesterday. So I'll be having even more fun at airport security from here on out.

I'm still in the hospital, and my first priority is the summer issue of the Journal, but on the other hand, I'm going to be immobilized for a while, so when I can I'll resume regular posting, perhaps later today.

Sorry if there are typos. Blame the painkillers.

Memorial Day Weekend 2010

2010-05-29T01:08:00.002-04:00

It's not just about the beach. Not with two live wars. For my ancestors who fought in most of America's wars, my friends who served in Vietnam, Desert Storm, Iraq and Afghanistan, and especially those who didn't make it home, ave atque vale.

The Space Station, the Shuttle, Venus and the Moon

2010-05-15T22:12:00.003-04:00

In 1957, a month after I turned 10, I watched the launch vehicle of Sputnik I go by in orbit (the satellite itself wasn't visible 5to the naked eye, but the booster remained in orbit too). Though I didn't become a father till past 50, tonight I took my daughter out to watch the moon and Venus in conjunction, as well as the International Space Station passing by the moon and Venus with the Shuttle Atlantis in pursuit, on Atlantis' last mission.

Three quarters successful. In the 15 minutes between the ISS' passage and the pursuing Atlantis' scheduled arrival, some light clouds rolled in near the horizon, and whereas ISS went up to 52 degrees elevation, Atlantis was much lower down and so we didn't see the shuttle, but she did see the station sail past Venus and a crescent moon lit by earthshine. Cool.

Mother's Day Weekend

2010-05-09T19:18:00.001-04:00

A fairly quiet Mother's Day weekend. Everybody was tired. Saturday was an errand-running day; Sunday included a Mother's Day brunch at our local Indian restaurant, and not much else.

Baltimore Again

2010-05-01T22:38:00.001-04:00

A great, warm day. Almost summery. We went to Baltimore. Rejoined the Aquarium. Visited the much hyped jellyfish exhibit. (Fascinating, if a little smaller than some of the TV ads had implied.) I took 19 video clips. Sarah took 184. I will put this together evenutally, but since Sarah may have essentially videotaped the whole aquarium, it isn't going to work as a ten minute YouTube.

Tomorrow, we're going to try to get the dog out somewhere, which has not worked as well as we might have wished.

The 10th Birthday Adventure

2010-04-18T22:06:00.011-04:00

Beginning April 9 and ending earlier today we have been engaged in the week-plus-long celebration of Sarah's 10th birthday. (I know, the cake is short a couple of candles. She said not to put any more on.)

I've posted to Facebook a couple of times, to update folks, but I should record the fuller version here for posterity.

The actual birthday weekend began with Friday the 9th, the day before her birthday, since her school was closed for the week after Easter (and I work from home on Fridays). So it was an old-fashioned "Daddy day." She had asked for lunch at La Madeleine, which I had promised to accommodate, except our local branch was closed for technical reasons. (Oven or refrigeration I would assume.) So instead we at Moe's Mexican semi-fast food, and then went to a local music store because one of her requests was a keyboard. Though we were prepared to order online, in fact she found one she liked within our budget, so we bought it on the spot. We also visited Best Buy for a video game and a DVD, and Tam gave her clothes.

Friday evening was a standard evening at home, but Saturday was entirely her call. She wanted to go to the Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons, MD, one of her favorite museums on sea life. We did so (Sarah and Tam trying to see a snake swimming under the boardwalk in pic at right), had barbecue for First Lunch and crabcakes for Second Lunch (sort of high tea: when we're on the road and there's good food to be had, we do not limit stops). Sarah used to order chicken fingers at the crab place. Now she likes crabcakes. A sign of maturity, but of course it costs more.

We went on down to Point Lookout, where the Potomac flows into Chesapeake bay, and collected seashells along the bay (the final picture below), then returned to Virginia, stopped at Hard Times Cafe for carryout chili (another specific request), and headed home.

On Sunday it was quieter; we took the dog for a walk mostly, though we did get lunch at La Madeleine, which had reopened since Friday, thus crossing that request off the list. And then we did the big dinner she had requested: Peking Gourmet, a very upmarket Chinese place in our neighborhood. (In the link you can see the many pictures on the walls: this was a big hangout for the George H.W. Bush (Bush 41) Administration, but also draws lots of other celebrities. We knew we'd never get it on Saturday (the actual birthday), so we did it on Sunday. Mom and Dad splurged for Peking Duck, the specialty; Sarah had a Singapore noodle dish.

That was the actual birthday weekend. But she had also asked for a small sleepover with some of her best friends, and since one of them was in California on the actual birthday weekend, we put it on the following weekend, this one. Her friends — Elizabeth and Katerhine — got together at 6:30 yesterday and finally dispersed at noon today. They may have slept in there somewhere. Despite a TV, a laptop with Internet, and a Wii with three controllers and several games, we did get at least one "Mom, Dad, we don't have anything to do." All requested snacks and stuff were provided. Late at night they started on ghost stories. They were up long past Tam and a bit past me, but were still up by 9:30 or so on Sunday.

So there. You only turn ten once, and while this one has left the budget a bit thin till payday, I think we delivered in style. Every requested meal and venue, within reason and budget.

Ten years. In July we'll have been her parents for nine. And in only eight, she'll be going to college. A watershed has been passed. She's not a little kid anymore.

I feel old. But then, I'm 62, and most of my contemporaries were doing this in their early 30s. So I guess I am old.

Into Spring: The Dog is Crazy but the Snow is Gone

2010-03-24T21:11:00.002-04:00

After the record-breaking snows of winter, which amounted to 57 inches at National Airport and 62 inches at Dulles, spring is welcome relief. Last weekend was in the low 70s, sunny, no humidity. So we took the family — dog and all — to Great Falls.

Coco is mostly a very sweet dog. He loves human contact, whines when we go to work, is pretty gentle except when protecting a bone. But Great Falls this weekend was dog walking central: everybody was out, and so Coco, who is none too tolerant of other dogs, simply went completely Incredible Hulk on us. Violent conniptions, trying to chew through his leash, etc. Even a proffered hot dog did not assuage him. Among those he sought to challenge were two enormous mastiffs who could have swallowed him whole without stopping to chew. For his safety and ours, we departed quickly. This is not a good augury: he hates to be home alone, but if he's going to melt down in public if other dogs are present, we can't take him on our day trips on weekends. He needs some dachshund school.

Other news: Tam is shifting jobs, still within AFA, but moving from the magazine to the membership side; we hope it will be a good move. My job has been crazy due to deadlines and staff transitions, but as we come into spring I hope to blog more.

Also: Sarah has her own computer now. The hand-me-down Windows ME computer I had given her a couple of years ago isn't good for much more than a paperweight these days, so we bought her her own Dell laptop for schoolwork and other things. Mostly she watches video on it, but that's okay if homework is done.

I really do intend to spend more time here.

Relaxed

2010-03-10T00:58:00.003-05:00

May everyone be this relaxed.

A Thaw from The Long Winter Silence

2010-03-06T23:53:00.007-05:00

It's been such a godawful winter — Washington broke all existing snowfall records with something like 56 or 58 inches (and that's at the airport, where the measurements are usually lower than places farther from the river), mostly in three big storms of about two feet each. Work's been stressful, we've been dealing with some (non-serious) medical issues, and the snows were horrendous. I've dropped out of sight on this blog.

Today was still chilly and breezy, but it's March, it was at least sunny, and a lot of people were on the road. I think we all are hungry for spring. Left, Coco and Mom feeling good about things at Jammin Joe's BBQ, a barbecue joint with only outdoor tables.

More soon, but we're coming back, and I don't plan to ignore this blog so much.

The Snow is Several Dachshunds Deep

2010-02-07T21:34:00.001-05:00

We' ve now had a near record snowfall that seems to be in the 20 to 25 inch range over most of the area, up to 30 in places. It's the second huge fall of the season and the fourth or fifth overall. When did we become Buffalo?

At left, Coco contemplating the wall of snow where we're shoveling out the driveway. This snow is several dachshunds deep.

Both our jobs follow the Federal government, which has already announced it's closed on Monday. So, of course, are the schools. Our neighborhood has not yet seen a plow, though we did get the driveway clear with the help of friends. But till the streets are plowed, we aren't going far.

Snowed In: Again

2010-01-30T17:48:00.003-05:00

Three to six inches of snow today. Nothing like the two feet dropped on us December 19, but till it stops and we can dig the cars out, it's kind of annoying. Also since it's a Saturday, our usual errand-running day, lots of stuff didn't get done. And we'll have to dig out tomorrow.

It's been a rough winter and it's still not February.

Sarah's new friend Elizabeth, who lives around the corner, spent much of the day over here and they plan a sleepover tonight, making a virtue of necessity. The dog kept whining to go out, but once he sampled the temperaturers (some wind chills in the single digits) he thought better of it. Dachshunds are built a bit too close to the ground to enjoy a snowfall.

Cross-Post: Stone Pasha and the Khedive Isma‘il's Yanks and Rebs

2010-01-29T21:18:00.002-05:00

I rarely cross-post from my Middle East blog, but I thought some readers of the family blog, especially Civil War buffs, might find this interesting.

This is going to be one of my "And now for something completely different" posts. I've mentioned an interest in military history and you know my interest in Egypt. This post combines the two.

At left, Brigadier General Charles Pomeroy Stone of the Union Army, early in the US Civil War. Below, Lieutenant General Charles Pomeroy Stone (Stone Pasha) during his 13-year tenure (1871-1883) as Chief of Staff of the Egyptian Army under the Khedives Isma‘il and Tawfiq.

Probably relatively few Americans, other than Civil War buffs and historians interested in 19th century Egyptian history, are aware of Isma‘il's recruitment of a number of American officers, both former Union and former Confederate, in the years after the American Civil War.

It's not hard to understand why the Khedive was interested in Americans. He hoped to keep up the expansionist policies of his predecessors Muhammad ‘Ali Pasha and Ibrahim Pasha, especially in the Sudan; the country was already incurring large debts in Europe, that would ultimately lead to a British (unofficial but de facto) protectorate, and therefore France and Britain were not a good source of military advice since you don't want your potential colonizers to have intimate knowledge of your military. The United States, on the other hand, had no visible interests in the Middle East (except for Christian missions) in those days.

And having just fought the bloodiest war in its history (which proved a temporary boon to Egypt since Southern US cotton was blockaded from the world market), the US also was a source of experienced and underemployed military officers. To the Egyptians, which army they had served in was moot. It would be nice to say it was moot to the Americans as well, but there was one notorious shootout in Alexandria between ex-Rebs and ex-Yanks.

According to the most detailed study of the Americans who served in Egypt, William B. Hesseltine and Hazel C. Wolf's The Blue and the Gray on the Nile (University of Chicago Press, 1961; still some copies listed on Amazon), around 50 Americans eventually were recruited for Egyptian service. A few of them were prominent enough that the average Civil War buff may know them, among them Stone (more on whom in a moment); Henry Sibley, inventor of the Sibley tent and who, as a colonel, led the Confederate invasion of New Mexico until defeated at Glorieta; William W. Loring, who reached Corps command in the Confederate Army; and a few others. Some would make their name in Egyptian service, however, notably Charles Chaillé-Long, who only rose to be a captain in the Union Army, but achieved lasting fame as an explorer of sub-Saharan Africa, serving under Gordon in Equatoria, then exploring the great lakes (he was the second explorer to visit Lake Victoria), and writing a number of books. (Though I suspect Central Africa: Naked Truths of Naked People would not be given that title today.)

Many prominent ex-Confederate generals reportedly considered Egyptian service, among them P.G.T. Beauregard and Joseph Johnston, but didn't go. William Tecumseh Sherman, General in Chief of the US Army in the late 186os (under the Presidency of his close friend and predecessor, U.S. Grant), encouraged the Egyptian adventure and even released some serving officers to participate.

The driving force of this whole adventure was Thaddeus P. Mott. Before the Civil War he had lived in Constantinople, was a favorite at the Ottoman Sultan's court, married a Turkish wife and was reportedly quite at home in the East. He went home to serve in the Civil War, rose to colonel in the Union Army, then returned to Turkey after the war. There he met the Khedive Isma‘il and soon found himself in Egyptian service in time for the grand opening of the Suez Canal. He became Khedivial chamberlain and went to the US to recruit for the Egyptian Army.

Which brings us back to Charles Pomeroy Stone. Stone had been badly treated by the Army and the political authorities, so much so that later some would refer to him as an "American Dreyfus" for his alleged culpability in the military disaster that was the Battle of Ball's Bluff, up the Potomac from Washington, on October 21, 1861.

Stone's war started well: a West Pointer and a Mexican War veteran, he was considered a favorite of General-in-Chief Winfield Scott. He famously secured the City of Washington before President Lincoln's arrival, and helped set up its defenses.

But Stone was no politician, and he fell out with two key figures from his home state: Massachusetts Governor John Andrew and Senator Charles Sumner, both Radical Republicans and abolitionists. The exact details are not so important as that he made powerful political enemies early on, but among the charges were that he returned runaway slaves in Maryland. But Maryland was a Union state which had slavery, and its law required that, as did Federal law.

In October, with George McClellan having replaced Scott, Stone was given command of a "Corps of Observation" and sent up the Potomac to observe the fords of the river. He was ordered to make a "demonstration" against Leesburg, Virginia.

Stone held a position south of Leesburg and sent half his force, under Colonel Edward Baker, to the north to make a landing and push towards Leesburg from the river. Now, Colonel Baker was also a sitting United States Senator from Oregon. (Yes, a sitting Senator was commanding an Army regiment.) But Colonel/Senator Baker had friends in high places. He'd started out as a lawyer in Springfield, Illinois, and had worked with a chap called Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln's son Eddie's full name was Edward Baker Lincoln. Is a picture starting to emerge?

Now it's important to realize that, though ultimate command was his, General Stone was not present at the Battle of Ball's Bluff. Baker was the senior officer on the scene. If you go to the Battlefield today, you will find it still fairly unspoiled (though a Leesburg subdivision is creeping closer) and what you see is this: a steep bluff over the Potomac which required men to physically haul cannon up the cliff face while making an opposed landing on a hostile shore with a river at their back. My nine-year-old daughter has commented that that makes no sense. She's quite right. One look at the position should have been enough to warn off anyone over age nine. Let's see: steep bluffs we had to climb and drag our cannons up, check; superior enemy forces to our front, check; river at our back and no retreat possible, check; let's attack.

At first things seemed to go all right, and then the Confederates noticed the Union troops were there. The Confederate commander was Nathan "Shanks" Evans, who had a reputation (whether justified or not) for sometimes going into battle drunk, but given the situation at Ball's Bluff, that was no impediment to victory.

In the heated battle that followed, the Union troops found themselves pushed off the steep bluff, some falling to the river below. It's said that for a day or two bodies were washing up on the bridges of Georgetown. During the battle, Senator Baker made his only good career move of the day: he got himself killed, heroically of course. (I'm sure the image at right is highly accurate historically.)

Now, here's a powerful Republican senator and old personal friend of Lincoln (despite his actually having beaten Lincoln for a nomination in earlier years). He has proceeded to die a martyr's death. The war was only some six months old at this point and the carnage to come was only beginning. Somebody had to take the blame.

And it wasn't going to be the ruling party's newly martyred Senator/General.

And Stone, remember, had powerful enemies. The Radical Republican-controlled Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, a Congressional watchdog, called hearings.

Ball's Bluff was a disaster, and professional officers naturally may expect a disaster on their watch, even if due to a subordinate's incomprehensible decisions, to affect their career. But Ball's Bluff didn't just tarnish Stone's career. Amid charges of suspicious links with Confederates (his wife's father had been a roommate of Jeff Davis at West Point or something like that, but of course Jefferson Davis had later been the US Secretary of War) and hints of treason, Stone was arrested and confined to prison.

That was in January of 1862. He served in various fort-prisons until August when, no charges ever having been filed against him or specified, he was released. No apologies, explanations, or charges were ever forthcoming.

Of course his military career in US service was over. So when the war ended, he was looking for a way to vindicate is reputation. And Mott showed up, recruiting for the Khedive.

Stone became Chief of Staff of the Egyptian Army in 1871 and served in that post until 1883, serving Isma‘il and, from 1879, his son and successor Tawfiq. He built up a general staff (though it drastically countered the traditional command structure of Egyptian military forces) and also participated in some campaigns.

Most of the Americans did not stay as long as Stone Pasha. Ultimately, when Colonel ‘Urabi's revolt broke out in 1882, Stone stayed with the Khedive in Alexandria though his wife and children were in Cairo.

The British intervention ended the ‘Urabi revolt, but also brought new masters to Egypt. Frustrated by the emerging British protectorate-in-all-but-name, Stone finally stepped down in 1883.

His reputation seemingly redeemed in his homeland, Stone later directed the construction of the base on which the Statue of Liberty stands in New York harbor.

Since I've shown the US and Egyptian photos of Stone above, it is perhaps appropriate to do the same for one of his Confederate analogs: General William "Old Blizzards" Loring, one of the more senior Confederates in Egyptian service (probably the most senior since he'd held Corps command in the CSA), first as a Confederate General, then as Loring Pasha, variously Inspector General of the Egyptian Infantry, chief of Coastal Defenses, and a field commander. (You may note the empty sleeve in both pictures: he lost his left arm in Mexico City in his first war. For those of you reading this outside the US or Mexico, the US-Mexican war of 1846-48 was the training ground for a lot of Civil War generals, then junior company and field officers for the most part.)

There's a fan site for Old Blizzards in fact, with the motto "Three Flags, Four Continents" (the flags are the US, the Confederacy, and Egypt, though they (correctly for the era) use the Turkish flag. I think the continents are North America, Europe, Asia and Africa).

The name "Old Blizzards" comes from the early days of the Civil War when, opposing George McClellan in what was to become West Virginia, he supposedly gave the battle cry, "Give them blizzards, boys! Give them blizzards!" (Wouldn't have worked in Egypt, I fear.)

The site says he's the only one of the Americans who actually commanded Egyptian troops, but I'm not certain about that as some of the other Americans went on Egyptian operations from Sudan to the Indian Ocean.

One Month of These Big, Brown Eyes

2010-01-15T20:08:00.004-05:00

We've had Coco for a month now. One month of looking at those big, brown eyes and trying not to give him hamburger.
Resist that, if you can.

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Coco: The Official Portrait

2010-01-04T20:59:00.005-05:00

Sarah spent some time taking pictures of Coco tonight with her camera. This is the best by far. Handsome fellow, isn't he?

Our Holidays

2010-01-02T20:12:00.005-05:00

Here's Tam, Coco and Sarah on December 28; Sarah's face as usual is not shown on the blog. And below that, our tree this year.

After the arrival of Coco, we were hit over the weekend before Christmas by the huge snowfall that whacked the whole east coast: 18 to 20 inches in much of the area. One of the worst in memory. Why is it when we get our usual four inch snowfalls lots of people show up wanting to shovel the driveway, but when we get two feet, no one comes? It took us two days to dig ourselves out.

Anyway, Tam's sister Kate came in from Michigan for Christmas, with her friend Brenda and Brenda's two daughters. On Christmas Eve, a beautiful sunny day but with still plenty of snow on the ground, we all did Mount Vernon. Crowds weren't bad and Sarah finally got the tour of the interior of the mansion, which included the usually closed third floor. Everybody then retreated to our house and went out for a nice Thai dinner.

Kate spent Christmas day with us. Limited gift exchanges because Sarah had already got her Wii and lots of dog-related things, and the loss of the weekend before to the snow meant that some gifts were picked up after Christmas.

The day after Christmas we joined Kate and Brenda and the girls for a nighttime tour of the monuments. It was a cold night, but I think Sarah was pleased to see stuff she's more used to seeing in the daytime.

I had the week off between Christmas and New Year's, though I did continue blogging about Christmas in the Middle East (see previous post and links). It gave Coco lots of time to get used to us, Sarah lots of time to bond with him (though as I said previously they pretty much mind-melded right away). Now we're in a bitter cold and high wind pattern, but dry. Back to work and school on Monday.

On the whole a quiet holiday once Kate left; low-key Christmas dinner; low-key New Year's as well.

I really hope to get back to family blogging more regularly in 2010.

Christmas in the Middle East: Posts on my MEI Blog

2010-01-02T20:11:00.001-05:00

On my Middle East Institute Editor's Blog, I've been blogging a lot about Christmas in the Middle East with music videos, commentary, folklore etc. You can read all the Christmas posts collected at this link.

A post about our holidays, with pics, is coming later tonight.

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Coco's First Night

2009-12-15T23:24:00.003-05:00

Coco's ours. Actually, I think we're his. He arrived about 6:45 this evening. A little initial confusion, nervousness, etc. when the adoption lady left. Sarah was worried about how long it might take him to bond with us. Days? Weeks?

Bond? More like a Vulcan mind-meld. After less than five hours. He's sleeping next to her in her bed. And revenge for all those nights when she'd come into our bed because of a thunderstorm or whatever: he's crowding her, chasing rabbits ("Dad, do their legs move in their sleep?") etc. He disdains his doggie bed: he wants direct human contact. She went to bed at 10 (late for most nine year olds but actually early for nightowl Sarah).

These two are already best friends. I don't know what happens when she goes to school and Tam and I go to work tomorrow.

His photos don't do him justice. He's a beautiful shade of reddish brown, velvety coat. A bit scrawny — wasn't apparently raised very comfortably, but he and his brother were dropped off at a shelter in Charlottesville. (The Northern Virginia foster group we got him from referred to this as "southwestern Virginia," which would make the folks in Blacksburg or Bristol laugh, but then lots of northern Virginians don't venture south of Charlottesville.)

Oops. He just got up. We thought he needed to go potty, but he rejected going outside, using a training pad, or using a newspaper. Maybe he wanted something else. We're still in the adjustment stage.

Meet Coco: Coming Soon to the Dunn Family

2009-12-13T00:52:00.006-05:00

It's awfully late, but this needs to be posted.

Meet Coco. Actually, at the moment his name is Kokomo, but as soon as he joins our family, hopefully as early as Tuesday, it will be shortened and the spelling changed to Coco. The sounds should be close enough and he may not have had the name Kokomo long (they say he doesn't seem to respond particularly to it in his foster home), and dachshunds are notoriously sloppy about spelling anyway, so I don't think he'll mind.

He's a year-and-a-half old male dachshund, who with his brother Bosco was left at a shelter when his owner could no longer care for them. He and his brother snap at each other so separating them doesn't seem to be an issue.

We still need to have a home visit by the adoption folks, but if all goes well they'll leave him with us Tuesday in all likelihood.

We have been moving towards dog adoption all year, and are determined to take the plunge; we've met a lot of nice shelter and rescue dogs as we prepared, but today meaning Saturday as it's after midnight), actually going to consider a dog we'd seen online who didn't show up, we met Coco instead. Sarah was swept off her feet, and I, having had a dachshund from the third grade till grad school I think it was, was also delighted.

The wonderful news was muddied a little by a flat tire which, with a hernia, I can't change. We called road service and the guy we use couldn't break loose one of the lug nuts, so we had to tow the van from the outer suburbs to our neighborhood repair folks, but by 10 pm we had it up and running, at some expense, not counting the expense of a new family member.

More about Coco, and more pictures, when he joins us. With luck we'll have him Tuesday night. If it takes any longer, I believe Sarah will probably explode.

Sarah's Tennis Trophy

2009-12-06T20:20:00.003-05:00

Sarah played tennis for Corpus Christi school this fall and is very proud of the tennis trophy she received at the end of season party tonight. For video of the pizza party and trophy presentation, those with access to our YouTube account can find it there (later tonight: It's uploading now).

Thanksgiving 2009

2009-11-29T23:26:00.001-05:00

Sorry I haven't been posting more, but those with access to the family YouTube account can see a short video of our low-key Thanksgiving.

Sarah's School's Blue Ribbon School Award, Plus, First Honors!

2009-11-14T19:25:00.006-05:00

Tonight we attended a special Mass to recognize Sarah's School — Corpus Christi School in Bailey's Crossroads, VA — only 321 schools nationwide got the award this year, only 50 of them private schools. So the Catholic diocese of Arlington was proud to have four of those (and a fifth was a private Christian school in northern Virginia). Full story here; picture of the award ceremony at left below (from the Catholic Herald here).

Sarah's in the school choir, so she sang at the Mass, but I didn't take pictures there. The picture above left is Sarah with her blue ribbon (all the kids wore them) and the back of the special program for the celebration.

(As always, I leave her face off the public blog. Family with access to our family Flickr photosteam can go here to see the full pic and others.

To gild the lily, Sarah got first honors for her first quarter report card for fourth grade this week!

Update

2009-10-20T20:48:00.002-04:00

I've been terrible on this blog lately, mostly because I've been blogging for work and have a limited capacity to generate words. But we've been busy. Sarah's fourth grade is a good one for her, some troubles in Spanish but enjoying her other courses; she also has taken up tennis, and while rain hascanceled a couple of matches and one of the practices, she's enjoying it.

Over Columbus Day weekend we went to West Virginia and western Maryland, basing out of Martinsburg, WV and spening time at Antietam, on South Mountain, and other points in MD and returning vis old favorite Winchester in VA.

I do hope to do more here soon.

Family History: Some Snapshots

2009-10-05T22:48:00.005-04:00

Okay, I need a motivation to blog more here so I'm going to make this my family history blog as well. I'll talk about various interesting ancestors when I don't have anything else to say.
It's late right now so I'm going to just post a picture and some tantalizing info for the first one. More soon.

This is Anna Bandy Wikle, December 18, 1796 - June 29, 1878. She was born (probably in South Carolina) during the Presidency of George Washington. Though lots of people had their photos taken before 1878, the fact that she lived in the hills of northern Georgia make it particularly interesting that she did. I copied this in the 1960s from a tintype in the possession of a cousin in Georgia. Anna was my great-great-great-grandmother; add a great- for Sarah.

I'll discuss Anna more later. This is just an attempt to sow a little interest.

Sarah calls this picture "creepy." I suppose to a kid today, it is. But you're looking at the face of a lady born in Washington's administration, who never left the hill country, some 213 years after her birth.

More to come.

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A Good Weekend

2009-10-04T22:56:00.002-04:00

I'm negligent once again about keeping up posting. Friday was Tam and my 16th wedding anniversary, and Sarah has taken up tennis, and had practice Friday night and a match this (Sunday) afternoon. Yesterday we hung out around Frederick, Maryland, checking out a new Visitor's Center at the Monocacy Civil War battlefield and attending a street fair, then came back via White's Ferry, the last working ferry on the upper Potomac.

I still haven't posted reflections on turning 62 (though don't miss the National Park Service Senior Pass, which gets you in free along with up to three adults at National Parks. Cost: $10 for the rest of your life. Only advantage I've found yet to being 62 since fathers of nine year olds cannot retire.) I'll get there someday.

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"Nothing Much"

2009-09-23T21:56:00.003-04:00

Conversation quoted by Tam:

"So how's the homework coming?"
"Fine."
"What about the religion test tomorrow?"
"No problem."
"What's it on?"
"Nothing much."
"What does that mean?"
"The Old Testament and the New Testament."

62

2009-09-17T23:45:00.001-04:00

Today was my 62nd birthday. Will blog about it over the weekend, though Tam and Sarah were under the weather and we didn't do anything except get older. And of course, Mary of Peter, Paul and Mary dying today added to the sense of aging. More soon.

Notes from Underground

2009-09-07T23:17:00.010-04:00

Okay, the title is probably more clever than the rest of the post is going to be, since I'm describing one of the older tourist destinations on the East Coast, Luray Caverns. As I noted in yesterday's post, after her descent into an old gold mine in Cripple Creek, Colorado, Sarah could no longer plead claustrophobia on caves, and she herself decided she wanted to see one on this trip to the Valley. And being a well-brainwashed product of advertising campaigns, she decided it had to be Luray Caverns, the most famous of the Eastern Seaboard caves, and one promoted with the ferocity that used to be devoted to "See Rock City" in the American South, except instead of painting barns they just have incessant billboards and TV commercials on kids' channels.

As it happens, neither Tam nor I had been to Luray, so we were fine with that. I grew up in the Ozarks, which like the Shenandoah Valley is full of limestone karst formations and therefore really neat calcite caves with lots of stalactites, stalagmites, and such, but because I had seen plenty as a kid I never got into the ones around here, which tend to be a tad pricey. Then once I had a kid (the obvious reason to go), she long said she didn't want to because it would be too creepy. She no longer thinks so.

I think I've mentioned that Sarah is really fond of her new camera, and that I put an 8 gigabyte memory card in it. (Actually, I see I only mentioned the 4 gigs I put in originally. I bought her 8 gigs on sale at the Harrisonburg Wal-Mart, so she'd have all the memory she could hope to need. For now.)

She took 417 pictures in the cave. Yes, that says 417. I have not edited them all yet, or even looked at them all yet, not to mention the videos and stills I took (a mere 147 for the day, but many of them video, of which probably a bit over 100 were in the cave). So, don't expect a Flickr or YouTube upload imminently: tomorrow's a work and school day. How things have changed since the days of film. Just take everything you see, and cull the duds later.

So the above shot is just a random one, I think one of reflected stalactites in water.

Anyhow, Luray is every bit the touristy place you expect, but it's a great and impressive cave, and worth the visit. Sarah loved it, and so did we.

Earlier in the day we met over breakfast with Moira Gallagher, daughter of Tam's old friends Tom and Cyndi Gallagher (who are also Sarah's godparents). Moira's a senior at James Madison University, in Harrisonburg where we made our base camp for this Valley trip. She hadn't seen Sarah in several years so was of course impressed.

The cave made the return trip a bit more than just a return trip, as coming down via Skyline Drive helped the first day. We try to make a three-day weekend not just two days of travel and one day of visit, but three days of stuff.

Fact I didn't know: there are no bats in Luray. It has no natural openngs to the outside, only the commercial entrance discovered in the 1870s, so there is no natural fauna, there being no food sources or uncontrolled access, though salamanders and other marine life are sometimes found, but not year-round. So it's a batless cave.

Trying to Blog More

2009-09-06T22:13:00.005-04:00

I'm sorry I've been so bad about blogging lately; in particular I wish I'd done a better job on the Colorado Springs vacation. Now, a month after it began, the memories are fading, and I wish I'd done more than the bullet-point notes I made at the time. That's why I've tried to be more careful here.

Now, let me note that eventually much of the Colorado material will go up on YouTube. The trouble is that since my father-in-law doesn't have broadband, but a dialup connection, YouTube isn't really practical for him, and so I burned him a DVD on the last day of the trip of everything we'd taken. But that video is an hour and 15 minutes long, and since YouTube limits (non-commercial folks who don't have big followings online) to 10 minutes each, I'll have to split it into eight segments, reallocate the audio, etc. That will take time. And I haven't had time.

The YouTube videos plus stills interspersed as slide shows with commentary give you the closest thing to contemporary blogging, since it's what we were saying and thinking at the time rather than now. So it will probably have to be the historical artifact of the trip.

Anyway, I'm trying to blog the Labor Day weekend while it's fresh and get back to doing more frequent blogging here. Once I started the work blog I gave less time here.

Quiet Day, With Ducks

2009-09-06T17:44:00.015-04:00

Photo at left by Sarah.
A quiet second day of the three days in the Valley. We all slept late. We went to the local visitor's center to gather brochures, and it's collocated with a little (one room basically) Valley Turnpike Museum, but I'm an old Shenandoah Valley addict and enjoyed that. Then a good country buffet lunch at Rowe's Country Buffet between here and Mount Crawford, VA, and an offshoot of the long-established Mrs. Rowe's restaurant in Staunton. After that we headed to the small town of Dayton, a nice old valley town where there are many buggy-driving Old Order Mennonites. Though both the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Historical Society in Dayton (where I've done a lot of genealogical reserch on two lines that came through Rockingham County, one German and one Scotch-Irish), and the Dayton Farmer's Market, a favorite of Tam's, we checked out an old mill (also closed Sunday) but did stop at a playground near the Historical Society where Sarah used to play when smaller and when I'd be in the library. She remembered it, and fed the dugs in the nearby stream, and took pictures, including the duck one above.

Because the video I took there isn't clear enough to show Sarah's face, I'm posting a video of it here:

We stopped at Wal-Mart to get swim goggles (yesterday we bought a swim suit because we'd left without them) but the outdoor pool would prove too cold for Sarah. But we'd done our best to remedy the situation. A brief stop at Jess' Lunch, the local dive/greasy spoon for our collection. Now I'm blogging and Sarah and Tam are watching a DVD of a Beethoven movie (the Saint Bernard, not the Composer). More later if there is more.

Tomorrow, en route home, we plan to do Luray Caverns. The Valley is full of caves, of which Luray is probably by far the most famous, but until fairly recently Sarah has said she'd find caves too spooky, and since they tend to be pricey we've held off. But during the Colorado trip she managed to convince us to take her on a tour of the Mollie Kathleen Mine in Cripple Creek, which is 1000 feet underground, has narrow tunnels and a cramped elevator: by comparison a cave should be roomy. So now that she's ready for claustrophobic underground adventures, we're going to do Luray.

Labor Day Weekend

2009-09-06T00:18:00.013-04:00

More on this image of the deer and the video below tomorrow.

Okay, here's more: for Labor Day, we're in the Shenandoah Valley, staying in Harrisonburg, but we came down via Skyline Drive. Sarah's still enjoying her new camera, so she was thrilled to get the still (through the car window) closeup of a deer. The video is mine. Anyway, more later today.

It was a good day but exhausted everyone. It's now Sunday morning, or rather midmorning, as we've all slept in. I hope we don't lose too much of the day. More later.

Last Day Before School in a Two-Camera Family

2009-08-30T19:09:00.015-04:00

Today was the last day of summer vacation for Sarah: fourth grade starts tomorrow. It was a great, mild, low-humidity day so we went to Great Falls, on the Virginia side of the river this time. But first, we became a two-camera family.

I haven't abandoned the idea of writing more about the Colorado trip, and will at some point, perhaps even later tonight, but let me cover today first.

During the Colorado trip Sarah really began to be avid about taking pictures, so much so that she took a huge number going up Pike's Peak. The nice thing about digital, of course, is that you can take all you want, since you don't have film and don't have to print them, and I always carry large stocks of memory and rechargeable batteries, so you really don't run out of media. The only problem is fighting over the camera.

Well, we had a lot of award points saved up at Best Buy from the last computer purchase, a washer and dryer, etc., and combined with a sale I was able to buy Sarah another camera similar to the one I bought last October at about half its price. Actually the new one is a little more advanced, being a successor model and having more megapixels and some added features, but she didn't like the idea of me taking the new one and giving her the old one as a hand-me-down, even though it's only 10 months old; anyway the outcome is she gets the new one, though agrees to let us use the slightly higher resolution for key family events. I saw no reason to get her a "kid's" camera: she had a Barbie camera a couple of years ago which would take about 10 or 12 pictures. I prefer to give her the real thing now that she's really interested. I put a 4-gigabyte memory card in it which should take about 1200 pictures or a whole bunch of video. It will hold up to 16 gigs.

Hers is red; mine is blue; otherwise they're externally the same. I got her a red camera case matching my blue camera case, too. So we're a two camera family.

Not surprisingly, Sarah, who was absolutely prodigal taking pictures with my camera, is downright cautious about hers. "I'm turning it off; I want to save the power." "But Sarah; I have six extra recharged batteries with us: enough power to run all day, and we'll recharge them tonight." Nothing doing.

Anyway, above, Sarah taking my picture, and me taking hers, and below, photographing the falls. Actually she spent more of her time petting dogs, of which there were many, than enjoying the falls. Two miniature longhaired dachshunds in particular, but many others besides.

The Horseback Ride

2009-08-14T20:53:00.007-04:00

I'd hoped to use this weekend to try to flesh out the memories of the Colorado vacation before they fade, but didn't succeed, so I'll post some pics instead. At left, our horseback ride on Friday a week ago. I don't normally show Sarah's face on this blog, but in the shot at left, the helmet and the shadows keep it hard to recognize her, and I've reduced the resolution so it can't be blown up.

More about all this eventually.

Sunday in Colorado

2009-08-10T01:10:00.004-04:00

I'm continuing to post very brief summaries for now as I'm working on the videos of the trip in the evenings. I'll flesh out the memories later.

Today we went to brunch with Tam's Dad and Marge at the Garden of the Gods Club, a very elegant place.

After that we went to Seven Falls. Another place I visited on my first trip 51 years ago. Sarah petted some dogs before getting distracted by the large number of chipmunks scampering about. After much photography of chipmunks, she finally agreed to actually look at Seven Falls.

We showed her the Broadmoor on the way back to the hotel.

I'll flesh these out either before leaving or after we get home. Sorry to be so terse at this point.

A Quick Summary of Days Three and Four

2009-08-08T23:49:00.002-04:00

I want to post a few notes before I forget, and hope to be able to fully blog on this tomorrow. It's been a very busy week, attempting as we are to balance family duties to Tam's dad with showing Sarah a good time. So far, generally, a success of sorts.

On the other hand, blogging opportunities are limited. I've been also continuing to post to my work blog despite being on vacation, not because I was told to, but because I feel an obligation of sorts to my readership. And I don't want them wandering off because I'm not close at hand.

So here's the basic outline summary:

Friday:

Started with a horeseback ride; Sarah on "Rosebud," Tam on "Undertaker" (!), and me on "Wrangler." Horseback riding was easier the last time I did it, when I had no hernia, no hemorrhoids, and no extra 60 pounds or so.
Lunch at a great Mexican place in Manitou Springs.
The ever-tacky and marvelously American Garden of the Gods Trading Post.
Sarah exploring Balanced Rock, Steamship Rock, and the neighborhood.
A piano concert at my father-in-law's retirement home.
Dinner: Italian.

Saturday:

Tam began the day by a father-daughter meeting, while Sarah and I stayed at the hotel, me doing a laundry to get clean undies and shirts, and Sarah watching Saturday morning cartoon shows.
Then a trip to Cripple Creek. Lunch. Then a stroll around town during a salute to the military day, petting a couple of boxers (one of which gave Sarah a big slurpy greeting), visiting a candy shop for fudge, then:
A visit to the Mollie Kathleen Mine, a gold mine that worked from the 1890s to the 1960s in Cripple Creek and now gives tours 1000 feet below ground. Sarah insisted on it; I was pushing for the Cripple Creek-Victor train ride. Sarah, as usual, got it right. Extremely interesting and informative tour. Have most of it on video. (Also we've now been at the top of Pike's Peak, 14,000 plus feet above sea level, and 1000 feet below ground, within a couple of days. Not bad.)
Visited Tam's Dad and Marge in Colorado Springs.
Dinner at an Outback Steakhouse across from out hotel.

There are multiple stories behind all of these. I hope to get them down, but wanted to at least do an outline before I forget.

Up Pike's Peak

2009-08-07T01:33:00.003-04:00

The main goal of day 2 was the cog train up Pike's Peak. Sarah loved the ascent and went berserk taking photos: over 300 before reaching the top. She was a bit wobbly in the thin oxygen on top, as were we all, so she didn't like the summit as much as the ascent. By the descent she was tired.

Because we had 374 images by the end of the day a normal Flickr or YouTube upload is impractical until I have time to edit out any duds. Stand by on that. We joined grandpa and Marge for dinner at their retirement compound, and then spent some time in Old Colorado City before returning to the hotel. Tomorrow: horseback riding.

Colorado Day One

2009-08-05T23:33:00.003-04:00

A storm in the mountains . . .

The actual colors were more dramatic, but low light and the fact that I was getting wet made better composition impossible.

However, a rather nicer view of the mountains from earlier in the day is below it.

Okay, the story so far. Yesterday was the travel day, and given the joys of travel these days, the fact that I was exhausted (worked Monday in fact) and had sore feet, plus the usual exactions of the TSA and others, meant that we were pretty tired by the time we made it to Colorado Springs, via, of course, Houston. (Not quite as bad as last time, when the connection was Phoenix, which is not only far south of any DC-Colorado direct line, but also well West of Colorado.)

Anyway, it took a while to get the rental car, etc., then we got lost trying to find our hotel, but Tam had promised her Dad we'd drop in before we went to bed, so we then had to go find their place, which had a locked gate, and so on until we finally dragged back to the hotel, very late and very tired. And as fate sometimes has it, though physically exhausted, I couldn't get to sleep.

The blog thinks in eastern time, and I'm not going to mess with its internal structure by messing with it. I may try to backpost to the proper Mountain time so these posts don't show up at 2 am or some such, but if it doesn't work, just ignore the time stamp.

Anyway, today we began by arranging to meet Tam's Dad and partner Marge for lunch, then decided on the way there to introduce Sarah — who was last here at age 4 and a half, just half her present nine — by hitting her over the head by main force with the scenery, so we drove her through the Garden of the Gods. She took lots of pictures.

We spent lunch and the early afternoon with Bud and Marge, then came back to the hotel and crashed; after a rest, Tam and Sarah spent time in the pool and jacuzzi, and I got the day's photos and videos organized (though nothing will go up on YouTube tonight; maybe tomorrow). Then we made quick runs to a Border's (I lost my one book I brought for reading at the airport), and a grocery to stock up on stuff for the room, which has a refrigerator, microwave, wi-fi and a King bed for us and sofabed for Sarah: the combination that keeps us coming to Hampton Inns.

We at at a Carrabas' Italian restaurant, a chain, but one we'd heard of but not tried, and then returned to the hotel. After considerable effort and using Daddy's magic bag of miracle computer cables, I managed to wire Sarah's portable DVD player into the nice flat-screen TV in the room, so Sarah could watch just-released-on-DVD Race to Witch Mountain on the widescreen. Earlier the magic bag-o'-cables had produced enough USB extension cables to put a GPS on the window without having to move the laptop. (The reason was actually to find out the altitude of our hotel. Never mind. It made sense at the time.)

Tomorrow: the cog railway to the top of Pike's Peak. Stay tuned.

The Trip

2009-08-03T18:42:00.002-04:00

I was going to call this "I guess we'd rather be in Colorado," playing on an old John Denver song, but Sarah wanted to call it "The Trip," and you can see who won. I'll use mine on my work blog. We'll be leaving tomorrow for Colorado Springs, to see Tam's Dad, and it will be the first time Sarah's been in Colorado since she was four and a half, half her present age, so much of it will be like showing her a new place. We already have a horseback ride in the Garden of the Gods scheduled, and hope to take the cog train up Pike's Peak.

While I've been to Colorado Springs a number of times since Tam and I got engaged, then married, then parents, I still fondly remember my first visit in 1958. I blogged about the whole 1958 trip adventure last year on the 50th anniversary of it; the post dealing with Colorado Springs is here.

I'll post more once we get there.

Weekend Catching Up

2009-07-25T18:14:00.003-04:00

I've been terribly lax about posting to the family blog, mostly but not exclusively because I've been involved with my work blog, which has hit some high traffic days and seems to be getting noticed, at least by some of the other Middle East blogs.

Last weekend we went to Winchester, somewhat old hat admittedly. The day got off to a bad start as we couldn't find some membership cards for the Mueseum of the Shenandoah Valley and I got into a grumpy mood and we got bogtge3de down. Finally we visited the gardens at the Museum, then took Sarah to the Harry Potter movie (at least a little cheaper out there than in DC), had a decent dinner and the next day went back to the Museum and did some other fun things before coming home.

Now we're at another weekend. Today we saw G-Force, which okay as talking guinea pig spy movies goes, if you like that sort of thing.

On August 4 we'll be going to Colorado. Hopefully I'll blog more before then and regularly out there. I never even posted on the moon landing anniversary although Tam, who rarely posts here, did (see below).

A Memory of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing

2009-07-20T21:30:00.003-04:00

Before the evening passes, I want to set down a strong family memory I have of the wonderful Moon landing, and the first two men to walk on it: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Michael Collins was the command pilot, orbiting above the lunar surface.

It was July 20, 1969. My family and I were gathered in our TV room at the back of the house in Ralston, Nebraska, watching the drama with my grandmother. She later died in 1975, at 93 years of age. So she would have been 86 that night of 1969. It was most incredible for her to watch the two men land on the surface, then slowly walk down the ladder and jump off onto the lunar surface. We all watched the whole thing, it was truly amazing.

But the most amazing thing that struck me then, was the realization that my grandmother, like Julius Caesar, read by candlelight in an earlier time. And then my grandmother, in her lifetime, watched men walk on the surface of the moon. The memory is still strong with me today, forty years after the event.

Road Trip!

2009-07-17T23:17:00.002-04:00

We're doing a weekend overnight. Just Winchester, where we've been way too many times. But maybe I can get some posts up. I've been lax lately, I know.

Remembering Walter Cronkite: A Cross-Posting

2009-07-17T23:05:00.006-04:00

I don't normally cross-post from my work-blog, but this will be of interest to family and friends of my generation at least. The original post is here and the original title is "Walter Cronkite and the Middle East."

Oh my. Ask and it shall be answered. In my immediately previous post I noted that everybody I've posted under the "obituaries" label so far has been pretty ambiguous in their historical legacy but that perhaps I'll have a chance to offer some unreserved praise. Then I heard from my wife, who was watching TV while I blogged, that Walter Cronkite had died. And he had a major role in one particular event in Middle Eastern history. And if you've got something bad to say about him, please say it somewhere else.

My generation needs no introduction to Uncle Walter. Before I got here he was dropping with the paratroops in Market Garden, the disastrous Arnhem operation of World War II. He was the newsman of my youth, and his You Are There introduced me to the history of my parents' generation. And that moment in November 1963 when he took off those black horn-rims, looked up at the clock, and announced that John F. Kennedy was dead, with a catch in his voice, will live forever. He helped us through it. And he got us to the moon. And when Uncle Walter turned against the Vietnam war, it was the beginning of the endgame. Even Lyndon Johnson famously said, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America." (Google it. It's Friday night. I don't want to take the time. It'll be in all the morning papers, anyway.)

And he died in the midst of the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, a day after the anniversary of the launch, three days before the anniversary of the landing. (Historical irony? Synchronicity? Interesting anyway.) We could not have gone to the moon without Walter Cronkite, could we have? When he retired, the space program got boring. He made things official, somehow. When he said "That's the way it is," we knew that that was the way it was.

There will be a lot of memories of Walter Cronkite over the next few days (though it won't match Michael Jackson), so I'll limit myself to remembering why Uncle Walter was important to the Middle East: in 1977 he cornered first Sadat, then Begin, in TV interviews to agree to a direct meeting. Oh, sure, the Egyptians had been working through Moroccan back-channels for a long time, but the fact that Cronkite asked Sadat directly, on US TV, if he would actually go to Israel, and he said yes, and then Cronkite asked Begin, who didn't have much of an out . . . the point is, the process was already afoot, but Cronkite pushed the leaders in public, and Sadat's native showmanship was such that he accepted the challenge. It would have happened anyway, but Cronkite made it happen sooner. (Be patient, when I can find a YouTube of it I'll link.)

I'm not immediately remembering other major Cronkite involvement in Middle Eastern history, but what more do you need? He pushed Sadat and Begin together. And my generation hasn't really watched network news that much since Uncle Walter retired. No one in the Internet era has that authority, that solid grandfatherly reassurance.

Any young folk who don't understand my signoff, ask your elders:

And that's the way it is, Friday, July 17, 2009.

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Catching Up Again: July 4 and Since

2009-07-14T21:17:00.005-04:00

Okay, time to catch up again. Things have been crazy — busy with work, allergies bad, a couple of sick days — and I still haven't briefed on the Fourth of July, let alone other stuff.

On the fourth, we went down to the Fredericksburg area; there's a video up on our YouTube site. We did Chancellorsville, Massaponax Church, Guinea Station (where Stonewall Jackson died — "Let us Cross Over the River and Rest Under the Shade of the Trees" —) then back to DC, set off some snakes in the driveway (pictured), and planned to set off some fountains, do sparklers etc. later. But Sarah's good friend across the street, Katherine, was moving (though not too far) and they invited Sarah to join them for a Chinese dinner, and she wanted to.

The next day we took a tour of the George Washington Masonic Memorial in Alexandria, a somewhat weird place. There's a multiple part video up at YouTube.

I offered to set off the fountains and sparklers on Sunday, but Sarah was worried we'd get in trouble for setting them off after the fourth (though others were), so I acceeded to her concerns that we'd be hauled off to the hoosegow, and we'll save them till next year I guess.

The following weekend we did the Dr. Samuel Mudd House as part of her continuing education in the Lincoln bicentennial, and on Sunday attended a grownup party (which Sarah attended with her Nintendo DS and tolerated because of chocolate cake and the presence of a dog, though she was born) for old friends who've just returned from a tour with USAID in Kosovo, before the husband goes off to Baghdad. (All the prime vacation spots!)

Next weekend: Winchester. Maybe I can blog more then.

Fourth of July Weekend

2009-07-05T22:53:00.005-04:00

A busy and somewhat chaotic fourth. I need to post more and will fill this in at a later date.

The Second of July: "Gotcha Day" and the Return of Lamby

2009-07-02T20:40:00.012-04:00

"The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more. You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not."
— John Adams to Abigail, July 3, 1776

John Adams — who is actually Sarah's second cousin, six times removed, by adoption — got the date of independence day celebrations slightly wrong; July 2 was the day they voted for independence: they only published the thing on the fourth (and I think only Hancock put his John Hancock on it that day: the others signed later).

But July 2 remains "the great anniversary festival" in our family, because it's the day that we were united with Sarah, in Changsha, China, at about 1 pm on July 2, 2001, in the Grand Sun City Hotel. It's what is known in adoptive circles as "Gotcha Day": the next day, the third, was the formal, legal adoption.

Our log — a sort of proto-blog — of our trip to China is still available online; and so are some pages of photos of our first meeting; again, this is pre-Flickr and was posted to tamandmichael.com.

We told Sarah she could decide where to have dinner for her anniversary: she chose home. Okay.

A bit of serendipity though: her earliest two toys were two we took to China and gave her on the first day, eight years ago today: a rattle and a little stuffed lamb. The stuffed lamb, now rather gray with dirt and age, is her oldest toy that we can locate, and is affectionately known as Lamby. (I had to ask Tam if it was to be spelled "Lamby" or "Lambie" and she opted for the y.) The first meeting with Lamby is shown in the photo to the left. Below, Lamby today.

Somewhere around about the time we went to Gettysburg in March, Lamby disappeared. Tam and Sarah both said he hadn't been with us on the trip, but after we'd searched high and low I actually called the Gettysburg hotel twice, but they didn't have it.

Serendipity and synchronicity however: tonight, Sarah and her friend Katherine were playing and dumped out a tall green toychest on the floor and voila, though we'd looked there before, there was Lamby.

So on this important family anniversary, the First Toy resurfaced. That has to mean something.

Eight of Sarah's nine years have been with us now, and this is a great day. It's an anniversary for the whole family, marking our becoming a family.

They Grow Up So Fast: The Big Bike

2009-06-22T20:14:00.005-04:00

Sarah's been biking for years — she stopped using training wheels at a younger age than either her dad or her mom did — but she had small-wheel kid bikes till now. A neighbor passed on a big kid bike (I think maybe 26 inches but she's out on it now so I can't check), so she's excited. We got it late last week but were busy with weekend stuff and I didn't get the seat lowered and chains adjusted till tonight.

Photo, as usual on the blog, not showing her face. Family who can see our Flickr site can see more, and I have a little video I'll probably post to YouTube.

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Father's Day

2009-06-21T23:54:00.003-04:00

A quick note: Father's Day is drawing to an end. A nice family day. Lunch at Frost's Diner in Warrenton, leisurely driving in the Piedmont and foothills of Fauquier and Rappahannock counties, then home; dinner at Red Hot & Blue.

But it's still Father's Day for a few minutes, and blogging is too much like work, so that's it for now.

End of Third Grade; the Weekend

2009-06-14T23:05:00.003-04:00

A busy three days. Two new videos up on the private YouTube site: Third Grade Awards Ceremony, and a visit today to southern Maryland.

Friday was the last day of Third Grade. An awards ceremony was held, and Sarah's certificates are on the video. Then it was a Daddy day; Tam attended the ceremony, as did I, but since I have Fridays at home and everything was over by 11 am, I had the day with Sarah: lunch at La Madeleine, a visit to Best Buy and Target to spend some of her allowance and a little extra "graduation" money (bought a video game), other errands.

Yesterday (Saturday was kind of routine. A little shopping, a short trip to Alexandria, then everybody got tired and we went home. Today: southern Maryland. She wanted to go to Solomon's Island, I said if we go to a favorite place let's do one new thing on the way, so we went to Surratt's Tavern Museum, a key site on John Wilkes Booth's escape route and part of our ongoing Lincoln bicentennial adventure. Then on to Solomon's Island for a brief visit to the Calvert Marine Museum before it closed, then ice cream on the boardwalk. Then home, and dinner at a Mexican restaurant.

Tired; I'll try to catch this up another time.

A Quick Weekend Report

2009-06-07T23:37:00.000-04:00

It's late and I'm tired, but a quick summary of the weekend: yesterday we went to see Up, which Tam and I liked but Sarah complained about. Also shopping and errands. Today, a lovely day, we went out to Maryland — we asked Sarah if she preferred a drive in Maryland of Virignia and she said "I'll take the Old Line State" — she'd had to do a report on Maryland and knew the state nickname as a result.

We visited the Monocacy Aqueduct, where an old aqueduct carried the C&O Canal across the mouth of the Monocacy River where it flows into the Potomac; a two part video is up at YouTube. We also drove past Sugarloaf Mountain but Sarah didn't want to go up, and paid a quick visit to the Monocacy Civil War Battlefield. Not a lot, but at least we got out.

I discovered that the two parts of our Day 3 of the New York Trip YouTube posting were rejected by YouTube due to being over 10 minutes long, caused by a glitch I inadvertantly introduced. That's being fixed now, but I suspect day three of the NYC trip will appear above (that is, after) the Monocacy Trip.

Cheers.

Yet Another Good Question

2009-05-26T23:49:00.006-04:00

"How can eels lay eggs when they don't have butts?"

Sarah, tonight. Context? We don't need no stinkin' context. She was working on homework when she asked. Eels had come up in a story for a book report, so perhaps that was the connection. Or not. I tried to answer.

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New York a Day After

2009-05-26T23:46:00.003-04:00

The YouTube videos are up. It takes five to cover the three days (day four was the drive back and no pictures were taken). Day one is one video; days two and three are in two parts each.

In retrospect, now that the doctor has lanced my blister, it was a great trip, and I think Sarah got a lot out of it. Though when I asked her if she had told other kids about it she said 1) no one asked and 2) almost everybody in her class had already been to New York.

But I think she was much impressed. She'd been asking to go for a long time.

We're Home

2009-05-25T20:37:00.002-04:00

We're back. Not much to post. The usual pit stops along the way for snacks, stretching legs, etc. Heavy rain from Baltimore on, necessitating a few shifts in route, but nothing major. Foot blister hurting; may see doctor tomorrow if it hasn't improved. Sarah's now got lots of homework so we're concentrating on that. I'll be uploading the videos to YouTube shortly. (No video of today: nothing of note to photograph.)

From Tiffany to Katz's Deli in a Day

2009-05-24T23:24:00.011-04:00

Our third day in New York City and the last in the city itself; we'll drive back to DC tomorrow.

A busy day. Everything from Tiffany and Cartier (we didn't go in but showed Sarah Fifth Avenue) to a meal at Katz's Deli on Houston Street. Sarah had a cheeseburger, unfortunately, so she didn't get to appreciate the food: I urged her to have a Kosher hot dog because she does like hot dogs. Tam and I reminded ourselves of what pastrami tastes like, as opposed to the stuff you get everywhere else except the Lower East Side.
As I said, it was a busy day.

Overall, it's been a great trip. After a couple of days of walking on sore feet I discovered a rather ugly foot blister that may need some attention when I get home, but otherwise things have gone pretty well.

We started with Hershey's store on Times Square, which Sarah has wanted to go to ever since we visited M&M world. Then we walked across 48th Street to Rockefeller Center, then stuck our heads in Saint Patrick's during Sunday Mass to give Sarah a look. Some quick hot dogs from a cart to hold us till later. Then up Fifth, past all the jewelry and fashion houses, to FAO Schwarz opposite the Plaza at the Park. Sarah loved FAO Schwarz and decided on a teddy bear — she had to have something from there, naturally, and it was just a question of what — and then we went to the Central Park Zoo. It cost us $25, once again making me appreciate Washington, where the Zoo and Smithsonian Museums are all free.

We visited the penguins and puffins — Washington's Zoo lacks penguins, so we were filling a gap — and polar bear, then went to the children's zoo, where the heat and humidity got the better of me and I sat drinking water and cooling down while Tam and Sarah did the exhibits. [As an aside if you haven't been to animated movies or watched cartoon TV lately, the penguins of Central Park Zoo are key characters in the movies Madagascar and Madagascar 2, and now have their own TV series on Nickolodeon. I think I was more attuned to the fact that Madagascar starts in the Central Park Zoo than Sarah was, since the real zoo doesn't look much like the cartoon one, and there are actually more penguins, though some of them looked like they might share personalities with their cartoon versions.]

By then we needed to cool down. After walking several blocks without finding a proper spot, we grabbed a cab to Grand Central, visited an Irish pub next door, and then showed Sarah Grand Central Station. She wasn't familiar with the term "as busy as Grand Central Station," but she immediately recognized the clock in the Grand Concourse from the movie Madagascar (See Above), where it gets destroyed. And of course, since it was Sunday, it was not like Grand Central Station at Grand Central Station. But I think the size impressed her.

Then we took the subway to the Lower East Side. Because it was drizzling a little cabs were hard to find, so we walked east on Houston to Katz's. Pastrami and hot dogs for the grownups, a cheeseburger for Sarah. A waitress there told her how lucky she was to visit the best toy store in the world and the restaurant in the same day (she had spotted the FAO Schwartz bag). I would say Katz has a good claim to be the best deli in the world, but then there are the best barbecue place, the best Chinese place, etc. etc. The world needs all of them. (I've said this before but the best chili parlor is Fred & Red's in Joplin, Missouri; the best catfish joint is Mildred's out in the middle of nowhere on a Blue Highway in northern Alabama; the best barbecue is in North Carolina but I will not alienate half the state by naming one variety over the other, but I'm pretty sure the best Western North Carolina is in Lexington and the best Eastern North Carolina in Goldsboro. For many categories, I am still searching for the best. What is recorded here, however, is not my opinion. It is demonstrable Truth.

Subway back to the Port Authority; bus back to Secaucus. Home tomorrow.

It was a long day. Tam and I tried to have a beer across from our hotel in New Jersey, but Sarah was fading fast.

I have posted some stills to the Flickr site, but the YouTube videos will need a while to process as we took a lot of video and I'm make the usual video interspersed with slideshow of stills to cover the trip.

More from home.

Day Two in New York

2009-05-23T23:28:00.016-04:00

I was too exhausted to post much last night about our first few hours in NYC, and today was a long one: left the hotel about 10 am and got back just before 10 pm, with visits to the Empire State Building (didn't go up though, just looked at it), Fifth Avenue, Central Park, Columbus Circle, the Battery, the Staten Island Ferry, Wall Street, Trinity Church, Ground Zero, Chinatown, Little Italy, and Greenwich Village. So we're a bit tired once again. Not to mention going through the Port Authority both coming from and returning to Jersey. I'll add some tonight and more as I can. Just uploading to Flickr is taking a while so I won't try any YouTube uploads, possibly till we get home.

Anyway: For now let me summarize what I can. On Friday, May 22, we drove up from DC, arriving in Secaucus, NJ before 4 pm. There's a bus from in front of our hotel that runs in to the Port Authority and, most times of the day, only takes about 20 minutes to get there; the hotel costs a third of what one in Manhattan would. And as northern New Jersey goes, it's a pretty modern, mall area. (I know: as northern New Jersey goes, a toxic waste dump is pretty nice, but make your own jokes. This isn't bad at all.) So we decided to go into Manhattan for Sarah's first look.

Note above that I say the bus "at most times of the day, only takes about 20 minutes to get there." A little before five pm is not most times of the day, even though we were inbound rather than outbound. Every bus in the Western Hemisphere and some that must have been imported from Tokyo or other crowded cities for the occasion was lined up for the Lincoln Tunnel and again for the Port Authority terminal. We got there in less than an hour I think, but when the return trip was 20 minutes (as was the Saturday morning trip) we realized we were better located than we initially feared.

So landing at the Port Authority I simply walked Sarah east on 42nd Street, told her she was at Broadway and 42nd Street, two of the most famous streets in the world, then turned her to the left and voila, Times Square.

It's quite true that Times Square has been much cleaned up since Giuliani and Bloomberg arrived, but we also discovered, later, where the sleezy "gentlemen's clubs" had gone: mostly to Eighth Avenue. Fortunately the sheer sensory input is so great that I don't think Sarah registered what we were passing.

We got her a snow globe in a junky souvenir store, showed her the huge Times Square Toys R Us with a big ferris wheel inside (she declined to ride, thinking the cartoon characters on the gondolas were too juvenile for her, If I properly understood her objection), but then spotted "M&M World" with its "Now Open" sign. M&M World is a three story building devoted entirely to M&M products. I see from its Wikipedia page that there are actually now three of them: in Times Square, Las Vegas, and Orlando. Of course. The three most excessive places around. She loved it and bought a bunch of M&Ms: you can pick your colors, including some exclusive to M&M World colors apparently, and your plain or peanut.

Across Broadway from M&M World is a Hershey store, which we only stepped in the door of as her chocolate acquisitions were already quite adequate. She wants to go back. In fact as of this morning Sarah was content to spend her whole stay in Times Square, but after showing her a lot more of Manhattan I think she's gotten a bit more broad-minded.

Giuliani may have gotten the strip joints and peepshows out of Times Square, but it is still not what you'd call a genteel and restrained place: it's just the flashing lights and giant jumbotrons are for M&Ms and Hershey, new movies and, as always, Broadway shows, rather than sleezier stuff. The sheer sensory input is beyond what I'm accustomed to at age 61, and wore me out fast. Sarah, of course, was jumped up on adrenalin. She was already psyched for her first trip to New York, and we dropped her in the center of the maelstrom on the first afternoon.

I'll cut Friday short so as to get at least today's basics down before sleep overtakes me. Tam and Sarah are out cold already; only blogging duty drives me on.

We ate at a very elegant Italian restaurant in the theater district that was labeled in one of our "New York For Kids" books (either Frommer's or Fodor's, both of which we bought): it was kid friendly enough, but no restaurant in the theater district is cheap, but then we're in New York.

And so back to Jersey and to bed.

Today we started with what at first looked like a plan: the Empire State Building, walk up Fifth Avenue, stop at Rockefeller Center, perhaps spend some time in Central Park, and then go to the American Museum of Natural History for most of the afternoon.

This spun out of control early on. Moltke said no war plan survives contact with the enemy; I sometimes feel our travel plans don't survive contact with actually seeing what's available.

We started, as planned, with the Empire State Building. Sarah, who has decided for now that she doesn't like heights, declined to go to the top of it or any other skyscraper, so we just walked by the facade and looked up. Then we turned up Fifth Avenue intending to walk to the Park and stop at Rockefeller Center and perhaps Saint Patrick's.

But we had used the word "park," and by the time we came up to the New York Public Library, Sarah was agitating to do the park first. Tam was pushing for Rockefeller Center. I tried to compromise by jumping to the Park and then coming back, but then we had some problems with a Metrocard machine at the Bryant Park subway station, and the usual other frustrations. We finally got to the park and Sarah declared she wanted to go to the Central Park Zoo, but en route there sidetracked to rock climbing just inside the south entrance. By this time it was noon and our planned day was rapidly spinning out of control so I laid down the law: we've got to decide what we're going to do and do it. Today was a beautiful day; tomorrow is chancier on weather, so I said, instead of our prearranged plan, would you like to go on a boat ride?

We were getting hungry so we did the New York thing and walked west to Columbus circle, got hot dogs from a cart, and then took the subway from Columbus Circle to South Ferry. Tam says in her single days she always used cabs, but I learned long ago that despite its crowds and chaos, the subway gets you just about anywhere faster and cheaper.

So we next took the Staten Island Ferry. There's a new, very clean and modern terminal on the Battery end (and a mostly new one on the Staten Island end too), and the ferry, which for years cost all of a nickel, is now free. (I think it cost more to collect the nickels than to let people ride free.) It's still one of the best ways to get a great look at the harbor, that great natural seaport up there with Hong Kong and Kuwait and Singapore and San Francisco that has stunned people from Verrazano to Hendrik Hudson to the rather large number of sailors here for "Fleet Week" which is on right now. (Lots of US Navy and Marines, but also quite a few Canadian Navy as well.) And you still get a good closeup view of Lady Liberty without having to invest the time to actually go there.

After that, which ate up about an hour and a half including a snack while waiting for the return ferry, we walked from the Battery up to Wall Street. Sarah didn't know what Wall Street or the New York Stock Exchange were, so we did our best to explain (it was Saturday, but lots of tourists in Wall Street anyway). Photo above of Tam and Sarah in front of NYSE; Sarah has her head turned so it meets my blog requirement not to show her face on the open site. Then we visited Trinity Church. Sarah is a fan of the movie National Treasure (I'll come back and link to some of these references at some point: too late right now) in which the conclusion is set deep under Trinity Church where the enormous treasure of the Knights Templars has been buried (if you haven't seen it, don't think about it too much; if you have you'll know what I'm talking about). So it, unlike the NYSE, was a known quantity to her. Two observations in the Financial District: tourists in front of Federal Hall asking to have their pictures taken with the NYPD (and souvenir stores have lots of NYPD and FDNY souvenirs now), obviously a legacy of 9/11. And large numbers of tourists climbing on the famous Bull statue on lower Broadway and having their pictures taken: nostalgia for the days of Bull markets, I guess.

Tam and I were last in lower Manhattan in 1998. Before Sarah, and before 9/11. I had already had the nagging feeling from the Staten Island Ferry that it just looks wrong: although my first trip to New York in the 1960s was pre-World Trade Center, it has been a long time since I got used to seeing those twin towers in the skyline. And they're just not there anymore. I know New Yorkers have had almost eight years to get used to it, but this is my first visit to Manhattan since.

So of course we went to Ground Zero. Sarah knew all about that: it's something they learn in school. I won't try to reflect right now: too much good stuff to tell to mar it with the maudlin. Nor will I rant about the people selling souvenir picture books or hawking fake Rolexes. You'll get that wherever tourists congregate, for whatever reason. One guy selling souvenir photos approached us and Tam and I both said that we had lived through it and didn't need pictures. My mental picture is still the plume of smoke over the Pentagon. It is, however, sad that the reconstruction/memorial is still little more than a foundation, whereas the Pentagon was fully repaired before the one year anniversary. A picture of the site today at left.

We then took the subway to Chinatown to give Sarah a glimpse while we walked to where she really wanted to go, Little Italy. In so doing we passed a shelter dog rescue center where Sarah petted the dogs: we're in high dog alert as I think I've explained. Then we crossed over to Mulberry Street where a street fair and parade were under way, with a bunch of groups dedicated to Saint Anthony marching carrying statues (including one with dollar bills attached) and with a bunch of beefy guys in black suits (on a hot day) and sunglasses. A tip, fellas: if you want to avoid stereotypes about "the mob," don't dress like a cheap mafia flick. Tam and I were both reminded, though, of the Saint's Day parade in Godfather 2 when De Niro is starting out.

We then ate at a place called Da Nico on Mulberry Street. Good food, too much to finish. Maybe pricey for Little Italy but not for New York as a whole.

Then a cab to Greenwich Village. Got out at Washington Square. Break dancers, bands, many dogs to pet. Walked around the Village a bit, stopped for a beer in a combination Irish pub/Mexican restaurant (it's the Village, remember?), walked to the West Fourth Street station, subwayed back to the Port Authority, then back to our basecamp in Secaucus. Day two complete. Started out rough, ended with Sarah getting a real sampling of not just Times Square and Midtown but New York as she is lived: Chinatown, Little Italy, Greenwich Village. And Wall Street,where the money used to be; Ground Zero, for obvious reasons, and samples of other places.

Tomorrow I am determined to get us to Katz's delicatessen (Send a Salami to Your Boy in the Army; I don't think I'm going to explain the When Harry Met Sally scene to Sarah just yet); Tam and Sarah can pick everything else. I think we've tentatively decided to put the Natural History Museum off till next time: it's wonderful, but overlaps the Smithsonian in enough areas that seeing more parts of New York might be more educational at this point.

We're Here

2009-05-23T00:07:00.002-04:00

Well, we made it to New York. I'm very tired and my feet are killing me and we've had some problems with the hotel, but we're here; Sarah has seen Times Square and gotten to know a little bit of Midtown. We'll do much more tomorrow and Sunday. Right now we need to rest.

Before We Go to New York . . .

2009-05-19T21:16:00.004-04:00

. . . Let me catch up a bit. As I noted in my last post, we're going to take Friday plus the three-day Memorial Day weekend and make a four-day flying visit to the Big Apple, Sarah's first view of the City that Never Sleeps. I should really catch up a bit on some of the things since our last posting, back during our Winchester weekend . We came home from that trip via the Panhandle of West Virginia, stopping in Berkeley Springs and at a farmer's market. You'll find a video of the trip at our YouTube site, for those with a password.

On May 2 we went to the annual flower mart at National Cathedral, which had food, flowers, rides for kids, etc. A video is up of this, too.

On May 9 we went to the Udvar-Hazy branch of the Air and Space Museum, a big hangar where the Smithsonian keeps the big planes that won't fit in Air and Space on the Mall, including the Space Shuttle Enterprise (the first production model that never flew in space) and the Enola Gay. Sarah is clearly getting more interested in this stuff.

On May 10, Mother's Day, we did the usual Mother's Day stuff, including a brunch at a local Indian restaurant, then we examined caterpillars (the tent caterpillar season is here), and tried to go to Great Falls on the Virginia side. When that proved difficult due to a mile-long backup of other cars with the same idea, we headed out to Leesburg and showed Sarah the Civil War Battlefield at Ball's Bluff. The Mother's Day stuff took four YouTube clips to cover all of due to their 10 minute limit.

Tonight we visited Sarah's art fair and a farewell for the school's longtime principal, and Sarah sang as a member of the choir. A video of that will go up tonight. She was disappointed to not win a ribbon since her photo (the one I posted a couple of posts back) was indeed really good. But none of the photographs entered won anything. Judges must have a bias against photography. She did, however, get a check for $25 for selling the most stuff in their pre-Christmas sale last December. So she gets to take that money to New York with her (it's equivalent to her allowance for 2 weeks.)

Start Spreading the News . . .

2009-05-16T00:51:00.005-04:00

Well, we're not leaving today, but a week from today. I know I dropped from sight almost three weeks ago, but the good news is I've been putting up videos at our YouTube site regularly to recorxd the interim. The bad news is I think only one of our relatives is signed on to see them, so I need to add some commentary here and note that if anybody among our kin are reading this, and can't see our YouTube site, ask and we'll invite again. We shifted from the Winchester Trip into a busy Mother's Day weekend, and a lot has been going on. I'll catch up, I hope, over the weekend now beginning.

Meanwhile, if the Sinatra fans couldn't figure it out from the headline, we're going to spend the Memorial Day weekend plus the previous Friday (thus a four-day weekend) to show Sarah New York, New York. I didn't see the Big Apple for the first time till I was 19 or 20, but then I wasn't growing up just 250 miles to the south. Tam loves New York more than I do — I like it, but I think it is not in my top two or three favorite places, as it clearly is for Tam. But it's unlike anyplace else in these parts, that's for sure. And neither Tam nor I have been there since some time in the mid-90s; once Sarah came along life got busy, and we haven't been traveling out of the country either so we haven't even been flying into JFK, which is at least technically New York and you can see the skyline. Speaking of which, neither of us has been there since 9/11, so it's a different skyline (though I remember the days before the World Trade Center went up, but then I'm old, as Sarah keeps pointing out).

We're still working on what to see in a limited amount of time, My nonnegotiable demand is Katz's Deli on Houston Street in the Lower East Side. The classic Kosher Deli, the "Send a Salami to Your Boy in the Army" place. (And site of a well-known scene in the film "When Harry Met Sally." It's the "I'll have what she's having" scene. Enough said.) It's been there since 1888. I'm not sure I've been there since maybe 1978, but from the looks of the website, the only thing changed is the prices.

We're going to be staying in Secaucus on the Jersey side (less than half the cost of any hotels we'd want to stay out in Manhattan, and close to trains and buses into the city). We should be able to get to Penn Station from there in a short ride, and then spread out over the city. We aren't exactly rolling in money (is anyone these days?), but we aren't going to be eating at the Waldorf, either. More like street food, Pizza, and deli. Maybe a splurge or two.

More as we get closer, and some catching up in the next day or two.

Almost Heaven, West Virginia

2009-04-27T00:25:00.008-04:00

Sarah took the photo at left herself. She's rightly quite proud of it and we may suggest she enter it in her art contest at school.

It's nearly 1 am after our trip, and I have to work tomorrow, or rather later today. So forgive me if the rest of this account is saved for Monday night. I'll leave this on the site until I have time to explain what all we did.

Meanwhile, a key: the river is the Upper Potomac west of Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, seen from the slope of Cacapon Mountain, taken from this overlook. the river curves (blocked by the foreground) to the right across the picture. Foreground and land to the left of the river is West Virginia; to right of the river is Maryland. At the distant water gap you can just make out the more distant crests of some blue mountains that overtop by a little bit the green foreground mountain; the distant ones are Pennsylvania.The town visible left of the river is Great Cacapon, West Virginia.

Meanwhile Flickr and YouTube sites will have some stuff but it will make more sense once I'm able to post here.

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Winchester and the Snow White Grill

2009-04-25T19:16:00.015-04:00

We're in Winchester for an overnight. Again, since I started blogging on the Middle East at work I haven't been posting as often to the family blog. Mostly now it's when we're out of town doing something interesting, though last week — when I didn't post at all — we did do the great Lincoln bicentennial exhibit at the Library of Congress, which combined with the National Museum of American History Lincoln exhibit which I had already posted about (and there's a video on our family-and-friends YouTube page), plus our visit to the newly opened David Willis House in Gettysburg, plus a still-to-do reopened Ford's Theatre and a visit to Lincoln's summer white house at the Soldier's Home, we're immersing Sarah in a lot of Lincoln for the 200th.

But that was last weekend. This weekend we decided to get out of Dodge since the weather forecast sounded good — but there's a catch. It's sunny and warm all right: 93 degrees (our van temperature was showing 95). IN APRIL. A little too hot, so we've been snapping at each other, and we abandoned the idea of doing some of the many civil war sites in the area (Battles close to town: First and Second Winchester, First, Second and Third Winchester/Opequon. A few miles farther out: Cedar Creek, Fisher's Hill, Cool Spring, Stephenson's Depot, etc.etc. . . . Winchester claims to have changed hands 72 times in the Civil War. To get there they have to count every time a cavalry scout rode through town, but it was a busy place. Due to the heat we limited ourselves to the Old Court House Civil War Museum. It's air conditioned.

We did stumble on Old Town Winchester beginning a week-long celebration of Apple Blossom Festival, which concludes next weekend. We ate at the Snow White Grill, which I've posted about before, and which is still great, but also now has its own website, since it's celebrating its 60th anniersary. History and photos here; the all-important menu here; like Fred & Red's in Joplin, it's the sort of place they should make a National Historic Landmark. Or National Historic Greasy Spoon, a new designation for preservation I could really get behind. Photo above is not from today, but photo at left is, showing the Apple Blossom crowds.

Also, as we are in high dog-love mode right now, Sarah stopped to pet every dog we saw (even at a roadside rest stop, but certainly at the Apple Blossom Festival). A photo that doesn't show her face, left.

Near the Visitor's Center we saw a mother duck with eight very new ducklings, so there was that. We've always liked ducks, and who doesn't like ducklings? Mama Duck and little ones, in the final pic of the day.

More after dinner, if I have anything.

UPDATE: Dinner at Castiglia's down the street. Good, reasonably priced Italian. Tomorrow we hope to go to Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, where Sarah enjoys playing in the spring, eating ice cream, and other such diversions. We've done all this several times before, but it's got something for everybody and it's not that far from home.

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Ninth Birthday and the Easter of the Chocolate Chicken

2009-04-12T23:44:00.017-04:00

Sometimes life gets so busy you can't actually record it: living it takes up too much time and space. That's what it's been like lately. Since I've been blogging on the Middle East at the MEI Editor's Blog, I get tired of looking at the Blogger interface, and haven't been doing a good job of recording our family adventures.

Before I say anything about the weekend just ending (a fairly routine one), I'm just beginning to blog last weekend, which marked both Sarah's ninth birthday (Friday, April 10) and Easter (Sunday if you couldn't figure that out on your own). Her April 10 birthday means it always falls close to Easter, but this was the closest yet.

And the German chocolate chicken, shown in the photo, is part of the story.

First of all, Sarah was off school on Friday for Good Friday. I work from home Fridays anyway, while Tam had to work. Since her birthday fell on Good Friday and the following weekend was Easter, we figured it was not the time to have a party for friends. She wants a sleepover anyway, so we'll do that another weekend when Easter doesn't intrude.

So Friday was a Daddy-daughter day, which we used to have regularly before she started preschool, but which are less frequent these days.

First we had lunch at our local La Madeleine. The days when the lunch request was aways MacDonalds are past. Of course it's more expensive, but the food's better.

Friday also coincided with the opening of the Hannah Montana movie. So we took in a matinee. Not surprisingly, there were virtually no males there except a few other Dads with daughters. It actually could have been worse, and Sarah enjoyed it.

We then headed for our local outlet of German Gourmet, which Sarah quite rightly thought would be the best place to pick out a chocolate cake for her birthday. We chose a Black Forest Cake — $25, but you're only nine once — and as we were waiting in line to pay for it, she spotted the Easter chicken shown above. Since everyplace else has chocolate Easter rabbits, she thought the chicken (which sits on chocolate Easter eggs) was hilarious. (I think it's just a cultural difference, and the German shop had rabbits too.) And yes, I bought the chicken.

That evening we had a small party for the three of us, then she played with a friend for a while. We gave Sarah a few gifts, though several of her birthday gifts had already been given ahead of time. Also, by prior arrangement Sarah began getting a regular allowance on her birthday.

On Saturday, we ran errands mostly, but also, since the real birthday present sometime in the upcoming months is going to be a dog, we stopped at the local Petco, which has dogs for adoption on Saturdays. While we're not ready yet — we need to get more fencing in, and get the house dogproofed — we're actively educating ourselves to give Sarah the sense this is really going to happen. The rescue group had a number of dogs there, giving Sarah plenty of interaction time (and she's very good with dogs, and always asks neighborhood dog walkers if she can pet them). She particularly liked Maggie (link will only work until Maggie is adopted), though she's also fond of corgis and some other breeds. Saturday night we went to Easter Vigil for the first time with Sarah, but it proved a bit too long for her: dozens of people were being baptized. Still, she made it through.

On Sunday we joined our old friends Cynthia Lancer-Barnes and her son Jake from Bermuda, with Cynthia's mother, aunt and another old friend, for a long brunch (that ran till about 5 pm) at Meiwah restaurant in Friendship Heights, MD (just over the DC line). So an Easter with friends, wrapping up a good weekend.

Though Sarah knows now that the Easter Bunny is us, she insisted we hide plastic eggs fullo of candy anyway, but we didn't get around to it until we got home at nearly dusk, so we did it inside.

I'll try to come back later and talk about this weekend, though there's less to report.

There are videos of the birthday cake and Easter at our YouTube site.

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Gettysburg Day Two: Devil's Den

2009-03-23T00:59:00.012-04:00

It's very late and I'll be brief. The second day of the Gettysburg adventure went well. A good part of the day was spent in the rock warrens of Devil's Den, which prior to parenthood I always thought of as interesting rock formations that provided excellent cover for sharpshooters; now I learn that, for kids, it's a terrific playground. Sarah climbed in and out of tunnels and up and over rocks both before and after lunch, and had a ball.

In the afternoon after a second round at Devil's Den (and some time admiring passing dogs since dog lovin' is very important right now), we did do the Eisenhower farm. Perhaps I'll post more another time, but this will have to do for now. Pic (not showing Sarah's face, as per my blog rules) above.

A new two-part video is up at YouTube, complete with slide shows etc.

Oh yes, and we went to the Eisenhower farm as well: more on that another time.

Sarah Takes Gettysburg

2009-03-21T19:36:00.012-04:00

I haven't blogged for a couple of weeks; busy with work and the work blog, etc.

We're in Gettysburg; it's part of our effort to teach Sarah about Lincoln during the Lincoln bicentennial year, and we're using our Hampton Inn points for a free night's stay. One new attraction is the renovated David Wills house, where Lincoln spent the night before his speech at Gettysburg, putting the finishing touches on his "few appropriate remarks." It just opened to the public on Lincoln's birthday. Has the bed he slept in, etc.

We had lunch at Ernie's Texas Lunch, originally founded in 1921, "Home of the Texas Hot Weiner," and (this printed on the checks) "the most famous address in Gettysburg since Lincoln's." That kind of place.

Then I showed Sarah the Angle, and Little Round Top, and explained Pickett's Charge and Chamberlain and the 20th Maine; I have a DVD of the movie Gettysburg with us and am trying to get her to watch it (the movie made from The Killer Angels). I didn't subject her to a reading of the famous lines about Pickett's Charge from Intruder in the Dust; Faulkner's a bit heavy for the third grade, but I still think of it whenever I'm at the clump of trees, and my blog readers aren't getting off so easy:

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happened yet, it hasn't even begun yet, it not only hasn't begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it's going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn't need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose and all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago.

The editor in me says that someone should have given Faulkner some extra punctuation marks (a period here and there and a whole lot more commas would help), but it does evoke something anbout the mythology of Pickett's Charge for southerners (at least white southerners). And of course, unlike Faulkner, I never won the Nobel Prize for Literature. I use too much punctuation.

Later: Sarah actually watched the Little Round Top and Clump of Trees scenes in Gettysburg, as we explained the places we were today. Of course she stayed up till midnight and I'm now updating this post after midnight, but otherwise I got the point across.

We'll do more of the battlefield tomorrow, and perhaps the Eisenhower farm.

Yes, the statues Tam is standing by (on Gettysburg's town square) in the picture above are of Abe Lincoln apparently giving directions to a 21st century tourist. I don't completely get the modern tourist statue, but what the heck. Abe's looking good.

One reason I'm a civil war buff, I think, is the knowledge that my ancestors fought on both sides. A Missouri great-great-grandfather fought for the Confederacy; a Georgia great-grandfather fought for the Union. Yes, you read that right: he was a member of one of only two companies of formal Georgia Union infantry (there were also some irregular guerrilla units). Not only was he a Georgian who fought for the Union, he later commanded one of the only two Grand Army of the Republic (the Union veterans' organization) posts in Georgia. Punchline: it was the William T. Sherman post. Really. He was also a Northern Methodist preacher in the south, and sometimes preached, I'm told, in black churches. His mentor used to preach wearing a sidearm since the KKK was after him. You can read my profile of the Rev. John Henry Dunn here, if you want to know more about him for some reason.

If my southern ancestor fought for the Union, my border state Missourian ancestor fought for the Confederacy. That was a lot more common, but it had the downside of his dying a long way from home, and being buried in Mississippi, a long way from the Ozarks. That's another story, But when I stand at the Angle at Gettysburg, I see myself on both sides, and when I stand on Little Round Top, I fully appreciate the accomplishment of Chamberlain, but I also, looking down that hillside, appreciate the guts it took for those Texas and Alabama boys who were trying to go uphill against a fortified position. Sam Hood is not one of my favorite Confederates -- I've been to Franklin, Tennessee, and that made less sense than Grant at Cold Harbor, and killed a bigger percentage in about the same amount of time, but unlike Grant, Hood blamed his men, not himself -- but at Little Round Top they ought to get credit for the sheer daring of it, though Chamberlain naturally deserves the reputation he has gained in recent years.

As for Pickett's Charge, well, back in the 80s when I didn't have a car I sometimes got to visit Civil War sites by giving tours for friends who did. After one friend had been with me to Gettysburg, we later were doing the Seven Days around Richmond, and at Malvern Hill, looking out from McClellan's position towards Lee's, he said, "this reminds me of Gettysburg." Ah, I thought, well are you learning from me, young Jedi. Indeed Lee's tendency for frontal assaults tended to come out when he didn't have Stonewall Jackson around to come up with a better plan. At Gettysburg, he should have listened to Longstreet. I have now offended roughly half of America's Civil War buffs and cheered the other half. Good thing no one reads this blog but family.

More on Gettysburg tomorrow.

A Good Weekend

2009-03-08T23:27:00.005-04:00

Monday we had a snowstorm. Yesterday (Saturday) and Today were in the 70s. 77 today at Sarah's school, according to the local "weatherbug" reading, and last night after midnight it was still showing at 67, as it is again now at nearly 11:30. From a snow day to shorts and shirtsleeves in five days. I'll settle.

Also last night we went to daylight savings time: I like the new extended weeks, and now it's light later in the evening. I hate Decembers when I pick up Sarah in the dark.

Yesterday we sought to go to Alexandria's Saint Patrick's Day Parade but left a bit late and got there after all the parking was gone, so we headed on downriver and spent a little time along the Potomac, with Sarah climbing a tree, petting various dogs (the overture to the dog is crescendoing about now, as it's going to come sometime soon after the birthday in April), and enjoying the weather. Today we went to the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian, and did the "Abraham Lincoln: An Extraordinary Life" exhibit (excellent), one of many Lincoln bicentennial exhibits around town. Plus some hands-on kid's stuff, ice cream, a simulator rider (Bermuda Triangle) and other things to please Sarah. A really good, first spring weekend family time.

I have good video but for some reason it's hanging when I load to YouTube. Will do it during the week as I think TouTube is getting clogged on weekends.

I learned a really bad thing though: the Smithsonian-Folkways record collection (Smithsonian bought out the old Folkways record librart when they closed) is now mostly available for digital download. Since this is the greatest folk-blues-roots music-ethnic music collection in the world, this could get expensive.

The Bars of Cairo

2009-03-04T00:11:00.006-05:00

There isn't going to be a lot of cross-fertilization between this blog and my work blog, but this post likely belongs here as well, so I'm not just going to link to it, but also cross-post the entire post, and perhaps tell more personal stories in this vein as we go along later:

Here's the entire post:
(From MEI Editor's Blog, Tuesday, March 3, 2009)

Huffington Post on the Bars of Cairo? Actually, Worth a Read and it Reminds Me of a Story...

Since I noted in my earlier post that today's news wasn't very inspiring, a little social commentary may be in order. Thanks to a link from The Arabist, I was led to this interesting piece over at The Huffington Post, of all places, about the decline of Cairo's non-elite downtown bars.

This is actually a good story, and what gives it away is that the authors were not just going to middle class bars but to the baladi bars in "popular" working-class neighborhoods like Bulaq. I know the Bar Massoud in Bulaq, which they mention, among others. It was a true baladi bar (that is, "of the country," "native,") working-class bar. The equivalent of a blue-collar bar in a steel-belt city, only it would be a white-galabiyya bar where the locals worked as vendors, doormen (bawabin), cab-drivers, laborers and such. If I remember Massoud correctly it was one of the biggest in Bulaq, which then had six or seven, and it may even have had Western-movie style swinging doors. One of the Bulaq bars did. I don't know many Westerners who ever went to them, and it wasn't a regular hangout, but it was a real glimpse of an Egypt even the Egyptian middle class never sees.

And it evokes a somewhat dormant area of my scholarly research product . . .

During a post-doctoral research year in Egypt in the late 1970s (1977-78 for the record, the year Sadat went to Jersualem), several fellow scholars (who have achieved some level of professional success and might not want me to identify them by name) and I actually wrote up a little underground guide to the baladi bars of Cairo. There were, as the article notes, a lot more of them then; the 1980s and 1990s were devastating to the baladi bar scene as religious pressures closed a lot of the bars lower-class Egyptians could afford, even while more five-star hotel bars were sprouting for the tourists and the nouveau riche. We explored the old, declining bars of the downtown and its outliers, described in the article I've linked to, as well as such areas as Shubra, Bulaq, Faggala -- mostly neighborhoods with minority or (Faggala) majority Christian populations,which meant they were a little less vulnerable to Islamist pressures as most of the bars were owned by Copts -- as well as such really down-market places as the makers of the ancient African fermented wheat drink known in Egypt as buza (a true speakeasy sort of place, but with families and, I'm sure, no sort of government license whatsoever). We disdained the big hotels and the upmarket areas such as Zamalek and Heliopolis. Our guidebook, typed up in the days before personal computers and circulated as a xeroxed samizdat, is pretty much gone with the wind (I may have a copy in a storage room somewhere, and a few mid-to-late-1980s updates on a 5 1/4" disc), but the memories endure, and are rather like those evoked by this story. [Readers: If you have an original complete copy post a comment and let me know.] Most of the bars we explored are gone now; some of those we patronized were known to Naguib Mahfouz and others of the literati, but most were holes-in-the-wall where foreigners were a decided oddity, and the Egyptian middle classes rarely showed up unless slumming. (And of course, one had to speak the language.) You do not want to know about the sanitary facilities.

Perhaps this article will remind other old Cairo hands of a different era in Cairo, before Islamist pressures closed the bars in the "popular quarters." I understand the bar scene today is one of wealthy young Egyptians with their cell-phones and text messages, not the baladi bars of old men in galabiyyas drinking Egyptian brandy, evoked in the article linked to.

There's a secondary class of bar worth remembering: the mid-level colonial bar. The old Bar Cecil on Midan Tawfiqiyya (Urabi) was a stupendous one: once a hangout of the British officer class, but not the ranks who hung out at Shepheard's, it was glorious for its big windows on the circle, its brass rails, and so much more, but it died, became a branch of the Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI), itself of later scandalous infamy, and is forgotten. Another mid-level British officers' bar survives I think (last I heard) in the Barrel Bar of the Hotel Windsor, which was an overflow for the original Shepheards burned in 1952. But the old colonial bars have their own fan clubs, and this post is really aimed at remembering the baladi spots.

And, to try to give some additional "redeeming social value" to this post, let me add a comment that spins off the word baladi in its sense of local, down-market, working class. It's still sometimes a bit of a pejorative "a baladi neighborhood," the baladi loaf of bread is the heaviest barley round, not the nice white bread of the middle clases, etc. But it also can mean "everyman": In the era of the monarchy the standard "Egyptian public" figure in Egyptian political cartoons -- the equivalent of the old "John Q. Public" in US cartoons of a certain era -- was a dapper gent in a tarbush (fez) called Misri Effendi, roughly "Mister Egyptian" using an honorific not used for the working classes. After the 1952 Revolution (and we can talk another time about whether it deserves the name of a Revolution), the standard character in political cartoons became Ibn al-Balad, "son of the country," usually a fellow in a white galabiyya and a skullcap. Middle-class types still appeared in cartoons where appropriate, but the national personification became Ibn al-Balad. Of course, the real Ibn al-Balad types didn't read political cartoons in Roz al-Yusuf or the big dailies, but at least they replaced Misri Effendi as a stereotypical cartoon icon.

Boombox and Musical Progress

2009-02-24T00:23:00.012-05:00

I still haven't posted on the last day of our Shenandoah Valley trip, now nearly 10 days ago. I will, but wanted to add a few notes that I don't want to forget.

We stopped at the Wal-Mart in Staunton, VA for a few necessities and because we don't have one near us. Our "few necessities" managed to ratchet up to $141, but the take was worth it.

Our Family Room stereo's five-CD changer is getting sticky even with multiple cleanings, so we looked at CD players. Sarah fell in love with a modernistic shaped boombox that plays both CDs and MP3 players, and it was only $30 so we bought it for her. [Update: For about five days this post has said "it was only $30m so we bought if for her. I would like to clarify -- especially to friends and relatives who might want a loan -- that it was not in fact $30 million, but only $30. The "m" was a typo. We love Sarah, but we will never see $30 million. If we did, the boombox would be on a yacht or a Learjet. That is all.]

Now I've been downloading MP3s of songs she asks for (mostly from Disney Channel or Nickolodeon programs: has Disney become the mysterious master of us all?

So at the Staunton Wal-Mart we got Sarah a boombox. Of her own. That she can use in her room, and that takes earphones when she's in company.

I'm delighted, though, that she likes some of the songs I like. She likes Tennessee Ernie Ford's "16 Tons," and she likes "Yellow Rose of Texas," and Alabama's "Song of the South," and Horton's "Battle of New Orleans." Also "Country Roads." She also likes some at least of the early Rock I've been playing, giving at least a moderate thumb up to Chuck Berry doing "Johnny B. Goode."

It may be the greatest triumph since she started to like chili.

Mardi Gras: Happy Fat Tuesday

2009-02-24T00:18:00.009-05:00

It's fat tuesday, Mardi Gras, Carnival. I still have a lot of posts to catch up on, but meanwhile a happy last day of debauchery before the onset of Lent. UPDATE: Sarah made a Mardi Gras mask and got beads today. Since her face is not revealed, I'm posting it here.

Outside of New Orleans Mardi Gras doesn't have much hold in this country; maybe a tad in Savannah and in some Spanish communities, but the idea is a good one: we're about to fast for weeks and give up the pleasures of the flesh, so let's indulge them all for a day or a week or whatever. (Actually, lent ain't what it used to be and only the most devout try to fast, but is that any reason not to party?)

Oddly enough, Mardi Gras is pretty much a Catholic thing, though others will join in. Protestants just don't seem to get into the spirit of the thing (for one thing they never did Lent; for another, the Puritan streak doesn't approve of the partying). Catholics -- at least Mediterranean Catholics and their descendants abroad -- seem to still cling to the understanding that repentance is rather empty if you haven't sinned a bit. Before you put on the sackcloth and ashes, party down, dude. Our Orthodox brethren usually start lent on a Monday and their lent makes even the pre-Vatican II version seem hedonistic: they don't eat eggs, fish, cheese, and lots of other stuff (basically if I have it right, all animal products) on most days. I've never heard of an Orthodox Mardi Gras. I think the Greeks have the national panache (though there's probably a better word in Greek) to pull it off if they decided to.

When I say Mardi Gras is a Catholic thing I don't (of course) mean an Irish Catholic thing. It's found in warmer Mediterranean cultures where it's easier to take off most of your clothes in February and March, and where the women drink like the men. An old friend (Portuguese speaking American) once described Carnival in Salvador, Brazil to me. Sounded wilder than Rio or New Orleans, but he was young then. But if you don't have a Lent, how can you appreciate a raucous, orgiastic blowout before it starts?

I've heard that Mardi Gras in New Orleans has gotten pretty tacky at times (usually involving girls lifting their tee-shirts to get more beads), but I'm not sure if that differs much from Rio where (it being summer down there) a lot of clothing doesn't seem to be necessary in the parade. And let's face it, even in non-Mardi Gras seasons, the French Quarter was not exactly Cotton Mather country.

There's an essay waiting here about the differences between Latin Catholicism -- French (New Orleans), Italian, Portuguese (Rio) -- and, say, Irish and Spanish Catholicism have such different attitudes towards such things as Carnival/Mardi Gras. Another time. Begging my Irish ancestors' pardon, I'd rather be Creole on Mardi Gras.

Happy carnival, happy Fat Tuesday. Indulge yourself. Eat, drink and make merry [and yes, I heard the "make Mary" joke before most of you were born], for tomorrow is Lent.

More on other subjects shortly.

The Dunn Family Blog

When I'm Sixty-Four

Day Seven: Coco Trees a Prey

The Day 6 Video

Day 5's Video

More Videos: Day Four (Three is Delayed)

The Day 3 Video

Day Five

Earthquakes, Hurricanes, WiFi Issues and the Milky Way

Days One and Two: The Movie

Day Two

On the Road Again: Vacation 2011, Day One

"Gotcha Day" Celebrations and a Video

"Gotcha" Day, Ten Years Later

Homage to Harryhausen: All the Great Monsters in One Clip

I'm Baaack ....

Coco at Mason Neck

Sarah Moves on to Middle School

About a Picture Policy Change

The Brower Kids' TV Debut

The Joplin Tornado

My Dad's 100th Birthday

Christmas 2010

Holidays

The Wired Family Room

A Farewell and a Reunion

Anniversary Weekend

Home Again

Days Five through Seven

Ripley's Aquarium in Gatlinburg

Day Four: Great Day, Lousy Evening

Days Two and Three: Coco Gets Crazier

Roanoke: Day One

Counting Down to Vacation

On the Road with Coco

A Missing Month

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Recycling Bin

Memorial Day Weekend 2010

The Space Station, the Shuttle, Venus and the Moon

Mother's Day Weekend

Baltimore Again

The 10th Birthday Adventure

Into Spring: The Dog is Crazy but the Snow is Gone

Relaxed

A Thaw from The Long Winter Silence

The Snow is Several Dachshunds Deep

Snowed In: Again

Cross-Post: Stone Pasha and the Khedive Isma‘il's Yanks and Rebs

One Month of These Big, Brown Eyes

Coco: The Official Portrait

Our Holidays

Christmas in the Middle East: Posts on my MEI Blog

Coco's First Night

Meet Coco: Coming Soon to the Dunn Family

Sarah's Tennis Trophy

Thanksgiving 2009

Sarah's School's Blue Ribbon School Award, Plus, First Honors!

Update

Family History: Some Snapshots

A Good Weekend

"Nothing Much"

62

Notes from Underground

Trying to Blog More

Quiet Day, With Ducks

Labor Day Weekend

Last Day Before School in a Two-Camera Family

The Horseback Ride

Sunday in Colorado

A Quick Summary of Days Three and Four

Up Pike's Peak

Colorado Day One

The Trip

Weekend Catching Up

A Memory of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing

Road Trip!

Remembering Walter Cronkite: A Cross-Posting

Catching Up Again: July 4 and Since

Fourth of July Weekend

The Second of July: "Gotcha Day" and the Return of Lamby