Learning Curve

At times I wonder why I never hear from anyone in response to this blog: I've told a few dozen relatives, at least, about it by now. Perhaps some of you are "lurking" -- reading it but offering no comments either in the commment boxes or through E-mail -- or maybe you're new at reading blogs and don't want to show yourself. Fine. But several years ago when my cousin Steve Jones set up a genealogy newsgroup, we got several avid posters, a few occasional ones, and several who said they would join and never did. There is, I suspect, a lot more computer-reticence out there than we like to imagine in the age of the ipod and the iphone. I'm nearly 60, so I'm not exactly born to do this stuff, but then I work in publishing, where computers have been a key part of our existence for 30 years or so.

I urge those of you who aren't used to commenting on blogs or joining in newsgroups to take a chance. It can be a lot of fun. If you don't like it, just don't do it. A few days ago a distant cousin, now 88 with a husband of 91 -- descended from my grandfather's brother so a third cousin or something I think without calculating -- checked in after I located one of her relatives. (She's on my Jones side, my mother's side.) I invited her to join a genealogy newsgroup. Here is her candid answer (I won't identify her, but I've kept her emphasis and orthography):

I was so pleased to hear from you today. First I want to tell you I am computer illiterate. My son convinced me two years ago to learn email but so far I am too cowardly to learn all these things you are talking about. He tries and tells me they are easy and fun and my answer is no they are not!

At the time I was learning I was 86 years old and I told him I was too old to learn but he kept patting me on the back and saying "just calm down Mom. It is easy and it is fun" Well you already know what I said. I had never even typed in my life. I have to admit that most of the time it is. I hear from grand children and nieces and nephews that I ever did before. And now I hear from you.

I think that means she's glad to hear from me, but isn't going to join the newsgroup, comment on the blog, or anything of that ilk

Still Here, Sort of

We're back in our weekday pattern of not being able to blog. Sarah's pinkeye has persisted and spread to the other eye, so the doctor wants her home from summer camp through, at least, Thursday. That means Tam and I have been alternating taking days off work. When we're home, Sarah -- who despite being contagious and unable to go to school, has all the energy of a healthy seven year old and doesn't feel sick-- is a very demanding patient. Combine this with 100 degree tempeeratures outside (at midnight it's locally 87 with a heat index of 92, at midnight, so you can picture what the day was like) and we're trying to keep her inside and calm enough while medicating her. I've managed to do some work (this was my day home with her) but not much. Blogging is on hold till I have a few minutes. Stand by.

Tommy Makem (1932-2007), RIP

Tommy Makem died the other day at age 74. Here's the New York Times obituary (and here's his Wikipedia bio, since I don't know how long the NYT stays online). I'm not sure how many people have heard of him these days, but in the 60s and 70s he and the Clancy Brothers were the best known Irish folk music group in America. They were pioneers arriving at the time of the folk revival generally. I started listening to their albums in college, and whenever you go to an Irish pub these days you'll hear the singers trying to copy the Clancys' and Makem's arrangements. Later the more traditional Irish groups came along with their songs in Irish and their traditional instruments, but to a certain generation of Irish-Americans the "right" way to sing certain songs, especially some of the drinking songs and rebel songs, was the Clancy way. (Makem also wrote a number of ballads and love songs.) Others may see it today as too slick, too packaged, too "Americanized," but that's how we learned it, dammit. Tam loves Irish music but doesn't much like my Tommy Makem's "best of" album, the name of which slips my mind. That's okay, too. Pioneers often lay the ground for better, more traditional folk singers; the Kingston Trio come to mind. (For those of you under 50, look 'em up on Wikipedia.)

I see in the NYT obit that despite Makem's skill at drinking songs and running a pub in New York, he didn't drink alcohol. That may have been true with Makem (he was the Ulsterman in the mix, from Armagh while the others were from Tipperary), but I have a couple of personal memories that suggest it wasn't true of the Clancys. They used to play Washington regularly, usually at one of the universities, and I went to see them in concert a couple of times, I think at Lisner Auditorium at George Washington University. But their fans also learned that after the concert they would generally go to Matt Kane's pub for a few rounds, and once they were suffiicently lubricated would often sing for the house. Now Matt Kane's has been gone for decades, and none of the current generation of pubs comes close: it was upstairs in a walkup on 13th street, much less attractive a part of town then than now. It was for the hard-core Irish pub types. And Marines from Quantico. And at least once that I remember, the Clancys did show up after a concert, and did lead the singing. This might have happened more than once but with the Guinness at the time and the many years since, I'm only certain of being there once when they showed up. That would have been in the late 60s or early 70s at the latest. And Makem might have already left the group by then (the obit says he left in 1969, and I think they may have had somebody else -- Finbar Furey maybe? -- with them at Matt Kane's), but it's the best Clancy story I've got even if Tommy Makem wasn't there, and it's my story and I'm sticking with it.

Several of the Clancys have already passed on, I understand (Makem got back together with Liam Clancy for some duet albums in the 70s and maybe even the 80s), and I just happened to see Makem's obit, but I'll lift a glass to him anyway for the pleasure he gave. I like the final quote in the NYT obit:

When Mr. Makem arrived at Logan International Airport in Boston in 1955, he carried a makeshift suitcase, a pair of bagpipes and an X-ray of his lungs to prove he did not have tuberculosis, he said in an interview with The Associated Press last year. The customs agent told him, “Have a great life.”

More than a half-century later, Mr. Makem declared, “I took him at his word.”

And with that, the only other thing I can think to say is to quote from one of the songs the Clancys and Makem made famous, "The Parting Glass":

Of all the comrades e'er I had, they're sorry for my going away,
And all the sweethearts e'er I had , they wish me one more day to stay,
But since it falls unto my lot that I should go and you should not,
I'll gently rise and softly call, goodnight and joy be with you all.

RIP, Tommy Makem. May you have been an hour in heaven before the devil knew you were gone, as my great grandmother from Athlone used to say. Slan.

Quiet as Predicted

As I expected, a slow weekend. We didn't do much. Too hot, Sarah recovering from pinkeye. The movie we ended up seeing was Underdog. Sarah enjoyed it, I think. It was not, in my opinion, all that great. Not having seen the original cartoon series on which the live-action version is based, I was at a disadvantage. But also this isn't one of those films that has enough humor aimed over the kids' heads to keep the parents happy (as many do these days), but it got us in a cool theater for a hot afternoon.

We're trying to get a lot caught up before vacation. Taxes that we filed an extension on, but need the refund for, letting The Estimate readers know that I'm still alive, and so on. Vacation always seems to mean you have to do twice as much work the weeks before it. And of course we're trying to do some planning as well, and Sarah's demanding of our time (especially Tam's).

So I don't know how much I'll be checking in here for the next week or so. Stand by.

So far only one cousin has told me they've looked at this blog. I plan to broadcast its existence a bit wider in the next few days. Meanwhile if you're checking us out, click on "comment" below and let me know you're out there. I have to approve comments at this point (to keep spammers out mainly) but would like to know if anyone's reading this.

A Slower Weekend

The past two weekends were fairly heavy blogging ones: I suspect this weekend won't be. Sarah woke up Friday with a case of pinkeye; we got her to the doctor and are treating it, and hope she'll be able to attend summer camp Monday. But whereas two weekends ago (the Great Falls and Baltimore trips blogged about previously) was dry and in the 80s, and last weekend, though hot, was tolerable at St. Mary's City and Solomons, this weekend is going to be around 95 and humid. A movie may be in order. (Mom and Dad want to see "Ratatouille," which the critics liked. Sarah is leaning towards "Underdog," which the Washington Post didn't even bother to review, or "Bratz." Like most parents we aren't terribly fond of the Bratz dolls etc., though the reviews suggest the movie isn't really all that bad, just dumb. We'll see. No grownup movies of course.) Between the illness and the heat and humidity, I don't think there'll be so much adventuring this weekend. And we've got a lot of household stuff to do with vacation approaching fast.

I've set the Blogger site to show 60 days worth of postings. We started in June so we'll be moving beyond that pretty soon, and for earlier posts you'll have to either click on an "Earlier Posts" or "Previous Posts" or whatever at the bottom or on the archives links on the right side. Since in just two weeks we're off on vacation at Hampton Roads, basing out of Newport News to do the whole Williamsburg/Jamestown/Norfolk/Virginia Beach area, we're going to try to get more of our family reading this blog and linking to our Flickr and YouTube sites to document the trip. Expect regular postings. As we learned on our China trip to get Sarah, there's no better way to record your thoughts on a trip than by keeping a log/blog. The Hampton Roads area is an area we like: a mix of beaches, great museums, history (Jamestown, Yorktown, Williamsburg), and something for everyone. And close enough to get to easily. Maybe three hours from home. Near to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, too. And, of course, the Great Dismal Swamp, a feature clearly not named by a modern developer. You'll be hearing more from us.

Back at work

Trying to post as much as possible about the weekends, but during the week we're just too busy to post much. Stay tuned, but please be patient.

Sarah the Archaeologist

Today was our second day at the St. Mary's City Archaeology weekend. See the previous posts, particularly this one, for links and more information on what we were doing and where we were staying. And just below you'll find documentation of one really big caterpillar.

Sarah has been saying for quite some time now that she wants to be an archaeologist. At first I tended to think that this came mainly from the highly realistic view of archaeology she derived from Scooby-Doo, in which archaeologists always seem to be discovering enormous jewels, the mummy of Cleopatra (or some such). This as opposed to most Americans' views of archaeology, derived from those highly realistic documentaries about Indiana Jones and the lost whatever. Having actually spent some time with archaeologists in Egypt and Israel, and even done a little history for one dig about 25 years ago (and Tam actually having worked a dig in Nebraska years ago), we have sought to give her a more realistic view of what archaeologists do. That's the point where most people say, whoa, you mean instead of finding the lost diamond of the forbidden idol's eye, or the Ark of the Covenant, or the mummy with the curse, I have to scrape gravel with a toothbrush all day looking for pieces of old brick? Then plot it on a grid and weigh it and measure it and photograph it?

Amazingly, and I really am amazed, Sarah has weathered the realities of archaeology and actually seems to understand the real value (and tedium) of the field. At the Kids' discovery room at Mount Vernon, not just once but every time she goes there, she sits down with broken pottery and slowly tapes it together (with pieces missing), just like a colonial archaeologist really must. She's watched the dig in the old fort at Jamestown and seen archaeologists sifting the dirt carefully there, but this hands-on day at St. Mary's City was the first time she really got to get her own hands dirty. Though she wanted to dig with shovels, we explained that that is a highly specialized thing and you need special training to know exactly how much to take into the shovel at a time, but she was allowed, both yesterday and today, to break up dirt in the sifters, and show the archaeology students each thing that might be something. She found several pieces of coal, looked at brick found by others, and found what the student thought was pottery and put in the tagged bag for further study. Even though yesterday was in the 90s and she faded early, she wanted to go back today.

Then, today as well, we took the once-a-year tour offered of the archaeology labs at St. Mary's City. (For those who came in late or didn't click on yesterday's links, St. Mary's City was the first capital of Maryland, founded in 1634 by Jesuits and the Calverts. It was eventually abandoned, and has been gradually re-excavated and reconstructed in part in recent decades. It's located here). The chief conservator was very tourist-friendly and they showed us how they handled the artifacts. Sarah and one slightly older boy were the only two kids on our small (12 or 13 people) tour. When they got to the lab, both headed straight to the magnifier which had an arrowhead (or in archae-speak, "projectile point") under it. Since she loves to draw, I showed her how carefully the archaeologists draw their finds. Then we all sat at a table while the chief conservator showed us artifacts. A sword pommel, a slave's or prisoner's shackle, a piece of Delft ware with a date on it, and other interesting stuff. Tonight, I asked her what she liked best: the digging, which she kept going back to? No, she said the lab tour. And what did she like best about that? The artifacts, she said.

I am not making this up. She said, "The artifacts." I doubt if, at seven, I even knew the word "artifact." (I know the Brits prefer "artefact," but then they can't even pronounce "schedule" correctly.) I'm pretty sure I hadn't visited a real archaeological dig before I got to Egypt in my mid-20s. (Well, if you're going to learn something new, start at the source.)

I have no idea if Sarah will become an archaeologist. I became neither a cowboy nor a fireman despite a certain commitment at various times. But she does seem to realize that it isn't all Indiana Jones meets Scooby-Doo.

She's also impressed that I know a little bit in this area. She avidly watched the recent, much hyped, Discovery Channel special on Egypt's Queen Hatshepsut, despite being a little "creeped out" (her words) by pictures of the mummy.. Like most Discovery Channel or History Channel programs on Egypt, Zahi Hawass, the chief archaeologist for the Pyramids Plateau and a self-promoter of the first order, was much in evidence. I mentioned to Sarah that some 25 years ago, when I was living in Egypt and Zahi was just starting out, I knew him slightly through mutual friends who (like Hawass) had gone to the University of Chicago. This impressed her no end; I'm still getting questions about it. (Why is he on TV all the time and I'm not?) Dad knows someone on TV. (Sure, I know most of the Middle East talking heads on CNN, and am sometimes one myself, but that doesn't count. This guy's on the Discovery Channel!) I haven't seen Zahi Hawass in a quarter century and I'm not sure he ever knew my name, but I get brownie points anyway.

During the tour today she kept telling people I could recite the Greek alphabet, and asking me to do it. I can, with a little prodding, still remember it in proper order I think, but Greek is not one of my languages and I keep telling her I actually speak quite good Arabic (even weirder alphabet) and a bit of mediocre Hebrew (yet another alphabet), so why she keeps asking for Greek I'm not sure, but I did hear her tell the other kid on the tour that "one of the letters is named pi." Maybe that's it.

I'm not sure where this is going: I doubt if your average academic archaeologist started this way, though I may be wrong, and I rather suspect Heinrich Schliemann did.

For those invited to our Flickr and YouTube family sites, both stills and videos of the dig are online.

Really Big Caterpillar

Really Big Caterpillar, originally uploaded by michaelcollinsdunn.

This is the really big caterpillar we saw today. We were at St.Mary's City for the second day of Archaeology Weekend (see separate postings), when one of the reenactor/living history people called out to Sarah, "You want to see something really weird?" This huge, maybe five or more inches long, caterpillar was crossing the path. We think it's a tobacco hornworm, but it's bigger than any anybody had seen. The living history people (that's why the guy holding it is in colonial outfit) didn't know what it was. Sarah has a stuffed tobacco hornworm (she has every stuffed animal imaginable, even caterpillars) so we were fairly confident' we'd seen smaller ones at the colonial farm in Accokeek, Maryland, which recreates a colonial tobacco plantation. This is a gigantic one if that's what it is though. Most of the Internet postings I've found say they get up to 75-85mm (maybe 2.5-3.5 inches) and the largest estimate I found was four inches; this one is at least five I think: look at the man's hands in the picture; he was a big guy. The Internet did say they drop to the ground and burrow when they are ready to go from larve to pupa; maybe that's what this guy was planning before we all started gawking. Now the video:

Road Trips and Hotels, Then and Now

I've just uploaded to Flickr (for those with access to our family pics) some pictures of Tam and Sarah relaxing in bed in our hotel room watching a DVD (Krypto the Superdog, if you must know) on a portable DVD player while I upload digital pics taken this afternoon to the Internet and begin this blog posting over the hotel's free wi-fi connection. Almost nothing in the sentence I've just written would make any sense at all to someone transported from 1980. ("I've just," "pictures," "bed," "hotel," and a few more.) Quite a bit of it would be meaningless to a time-traveler from 1990, and frankly quite a number of things might be fuzzy even to someone from 2000. My laptop, which itself dates back to 2001, bought just before we went to China for Sarah, has had added to it over the years a wi-fi card, add-on speakers and some other things to try to be up-to-date, but even so its days are numbered.

All of which, being a geezer who will be 60 rather sooner than I like to admit, makes me think of what hotel/motel travel was like when I was growing up. ("Oh, Dad, not againnnnn....") Today, driving down through southern Maryland, we passed some of the old motels from the 50s and 60s. They look so small today, the little cabins and such. Those that are still in business seem to be in the no-tell motel line of work, not designed for a family or, necessarily, for staying the entire night. But families stayed in them back in the day, because it's what there was.

In 1958, almost half a century ago now, my Dad was moving from Montgomery Ward to Sears and had to do a week's training somewhere (Kansas City? Oklahoma City? Not sure now, but out of town), while my Uncle Miles and Aunt Kathy Landis were going West on a combination vacation and business trip with Miles having meetings in Canada and New Mexico. They asked my Mom and me (since my Dad would be away) and my cousin Steve Jones (then of Oklahoma City; now of Nashville when last heard from) to go with them. I'd never been west of Kansas, never seen the Rockies, never been in a foreign country (wild, exotic Canada!), never even seen a real desert. I got to do all those things, and to see the "wild" West at a time when every other TV show was a Western. It was a tremendous opportunity. We went to Dodge City (Wyatt Earp! Matt Dillon!), Colorado Springs, up through Wyoming to do Yellowstone, then up through Idaho and Washington to British Columbia, then down through Utah and New Mexico. It was a trip to remember, if not the trip of a lifetime (I've been weirder places since, obviously), then the trip of my youth. [And even the exotic places are alike these days. All over China we saw McDonalds; at Golani Junction in Galilee, where a key battle of Israel's war of independence was fought and virtually within sight of the Horns of Hattin of Crusades fame, there are the Golden Arches. In the 1950s, which I'm reminiscing about, the British retook Nizwa, Oman, using airplanes against sword-wielding fighters on horseback. By the time I got to Nizwa, in the 90s, it had a KFC.] Oh yes, I was 10, just about to turn 11. That may be the perfect time: old enough to know what you're seeing, young enough to be open and un-cynical about it.

We stayed in a different motel every night. Some may have been part of loose chains like Best Western, but they weren't clones of each other like the average Hampton Inn or Comfort Inn or Ramada today. I have photos still of some of them. I've tried -- since my father-in-law still lives in Colorado Springs and we get out there periodically -- to locate where we stayed in 1958; I think it's gone, or so transformed as to be unrecognizable. The motel rooms were invariably small, a TV if you were lucky (three channels in the big towns, one at most in the little ones if there was a TV at all), maybe a phone. air conditioning still new enough to be advertised on the sign.

Two other things stick with me from that trip. The Interstate Highway system was just beginning; we would find construction all over the place, and a certain amount of new highway here and there, but mostly we were still on the old two-lane roads, and a good four lane still had stoplights. (Oh, and roadmaps were still free at every filling station.) You drove through downtown, even in Denver or Cheyenne or Salt Lake City you went down the main drag. And it was the last era before franchise food chains. Every meal was in a different restaurant, and a different menu. About the only real national franchise was Dairy Queen, and they only did ice cream in those days. McDonalds I think was just starting up; the first ones I remember in Joplin would have been a couple of years later.

Sarah will never know that world. Barring a nuclear war, she'll never know TV without 100 channels, or a world without an Internet and Google. But neither do a lot of people only a few years younger than I. That 1958 trip sticks with me, especially when I look at what we're doing right now: I'm posting this, and before I walk across the room after finishing it anyone on earth can read it. Sarah's watching a DVD in bed. The DVD can hold more information and last longer than four or five huge movie-theater 35mm film reels could in the 50s.

A few other hotel/motel memories. My Uncle, Bill Jones, lived in Osawatomie, Kansas (of John Brown of Osawatomie fame). He worked for the Missouri Pacific railroad; Osawatomie was where the Missouri Pacific's Kansas City area headquarters were. When we visited we always stayed at his house, but when he died in 1962, too many relatives were showing up at once, so we had to stay in a hotel. Osawatomie has the usual chain hotels now (I get 10 on Google), but in 1962 the choice was the railroad hotel downtown. The railroad hotel was (surprise!) over the railroad station. An old hotel, like something out of the 1930s as I recall it, with the added benefit that periodically just as you were getting back to sleep A TRAIN WOULD RUMBLE THROUGH.

One last travel/hotel memory and then I'll post this and go back to reading Middle Eastern newspapers online. (Only a few years ago you had to wait several days at best. Now I have the major papers from Beirut, Cairo, Jerusalem, etc. bookmarked. But that's another story...

Sometime in the 60s [update: Google tells me 1967], after my mother's death, my Dad and I were on a trip hunting family clues in the Ozarks. It just happened to be the day the last episode of the Fugitive was going to be on, in which the One-Armed Man finally gets found. We ended up in a little motel in either Reeds Spring or Reeds Spring Junction, MO. Ozark readers will know these places. (I think it was Reeds Spring Junction.) The motel was in the hills and the nearest TV stations were in Springfield. (Branson was not, believe me, anything like it is now, Ozark readers.) There was no cable, no satellite TV, just whatever the rabbit ears brought in. We tried watching The Fugitive on the tiny black-and-white TV in the room. Just as Richard Kimble, Lieutenant Girard, and the one-armed man all got to the final confrontation, the picture, which at best had been a very fuzzy blend of grays, disappeared altogether, and so did the sound. What happened? Did Kimble get off? Would we ever know?

So, of course, we just looked for the video on YouTube, right? No, I actually think I've still never seen the final episode of the fugitive. I suppose it is on YouTube by now. And 1967 was 40 years ago now.

Do I miss travel in those days? Maybe I miss the diversity: each place was different, not the same mix of Wal-Marts, McDonalds and Applebee's. Roads went down the main streets of the towns, not bypassing them without stopping. (If you've seen Cars you'll have a sense of the nostalgia I feel about that 1958 trip.) It's a little too much like work to know that I can know exactly what's happening all over the world from my room in this Hampton Inn in Maryland. In one sense, if you're always in touch, you're never on vacation. But I can do this. I can write this and it can be available to anyone on earth with Internet access within seconds. Tradeoffs. And, of course, I didn't have to go to work every day and pay the mortgage and stuff either, so that too is part of the charm. And Elvis hadn't gone Vegas yet.

Oh, Dadddd....you're doing it againnnnn....

Swimming Fun

I just wanted to add a bit about the end of the day at the hotel. We, Sarah and I, spent about an hour or more in the hotel's outdoor swimming pool. Really nice, it's been the first time she could get in the pool since recovering from walking pneumonia, and being cleared to resume swimming Thursday by the doctor. The water was just great, cool at first upon getting in, then warming up quickly. It wasn't crowded, so Sarah and I had a good time playing together. I had been feeling so wiped out and "brain fried" from the high heat and humidity being outside and helping with the screening dirt activity, and the swimming just restored me, physically and energy wise. I feel a lot better. And Sarah enjoyed showing us what she's learned so far with swimming efforts.

Archaeology Weekend

We're on a weekend overnight trip. Old St. Mary's City, Maryland (located here) is having a Tidewater Archaeology Weekend, and Sarah, who wants to be an archaeologist, thought it would be fun. Unfortunately today was around 90, so digging in dirt has its disadvantages. It was quite hot, I was the only one who bothered to pack a hat, and so not only did we cut the digging short but I spent $22 each for hats for Tam and Sarah. We retreated to the hotel we're staying at in Lexington Park, Md (next to Patuxent River Naval Air Station, nearest place with hotels near St. Mary's City) to cool down. Tomorrow we go back to tour the archaeology labs (the tours were booked for today but we got in on tomorrow's) and if the weather's not so hot maybe we'll do some more. Mainly Sarah found a few pieces of coal in the dirt she sifted.

This area of southern Maryland along the lower Patuxent and the Bay is the earliest-settled part of Maryland and is close enough to home to get down here quickly. Besides Pax River, which has a small naval aviation museum, there's Solomon's Island, where there's a marine science center Sarah likes (and ice cream on the boardwalk), Point Lookout (where the Potomac meets the bay: site of a Civil War prison (Union prison, for Confederate prisoners) and today of a state park with beaches.) The Civil War Buffs among you may recall the lines from "I'm a Good Ole Rebel:"

I followed Ole Marse Robert
For Four Years Nigh About
Got wounded in three places
And starved at P'int Lookout...

Today would have been more successful, though, without the heat and with hats. Meanwhile Sarah got in some good pool time -- she's getting more confident about swimming, though she still wants a tube or a life vest while paddling around.

A few pictures at Flickr; hopefully we'll get more tomorrow.

Ready, Set, Comment...

Okay, late last night I let the first round of family -- the inner circle of both our families -- know about the blog. Don't know if anybody's read it yet, but starting with the last couple of posts, comments are also live. Just click on "comments" below the posting and you can respond. For now, I'm moderating the comments since sometimes comment boxes get filled with spam, but if only family responds I may stop that. So your comment may not appear immediately. It's a way to get a conversation going.

A Good Question

I can't resist recording this. Sarah, like all kids at bedtime, asks a lot of questions to try to find a reason not to have to go to sleep. As I was leaving the room tonight, the following conversation occurred:

"Daddy, how come you know so much?"

"Because I love to learn. I want to know the answers to questions. I used to be a college professor."

"I have a question."

"Okay."

"Who built the light bulb?"

"A man named Thomas Edison."

"Was he afraid of the dark?"

My answer was that that was a very good question and I didn't know the answer. But my answer was not as good as her question.

Baltimore, Moron Eels, Sharks, Spaghetti and the Seahorses' Wedding

In all the Internet, in all the blogosphere, I wonder if that exact title has ever been used before? Especially the Seahorses' Wedding part. And the Moron Eels. Read on.

The Aquarium

Anyway, this weekend proved to be a really great one. Last weekend I was out with gout; this weekend we hit two homeruns. Both days were gorgeous: 80s, low humidity, Mediterranean/California sort of day. Yesterday, as noted earlier, we went out to Great Falls Park. Today we headed to Baltimore to visit the National Aquarium there. It's truly one of the great aquariums, and Sarah is very interested in marine life of all kinds. She did an extra credit report on green sea turtles last year.

We finally joined as members. If a family of three goes and wants to do the dolphin show as well as the main aquarium the whole thing can run close to sixty dollars, whereas a family pass for a full year is only $124 and you don't have to wait for timed-entry tickets, so if you go only twice a year -- and we're in Baltimore more often than that, it's only 45 miles away -- you might as well be members. We're also members of the Science Museum in Baltimore, and (in the marine life line), the Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons, Maryland, and the Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center in Virginia Beach. In different ways the Baltimore and the Virginia Beach aquariums are both tremendous. Tam and I are both midwesterners -- she a Nebraska Cornhusker and me an Ozark ridgerunner, so neither one of us exactly grew up around oceans. We're glad we have these resources so close. (Washington does not, really, have an aquarium as such, except for some fish in the basement of the Commerce Department (really). So it's pretty much Baltimore and Viriginia Beach and Solomons.)

Sarah loved it. She loves sea turtles, as I noted, and sharks always give her a certain thrill though after a while she starts to get a little scared. When she was a toddler we first took her to the Baltimore Aquarium, paid (then, when she was younger and rates were cheaper) something like $45 and then halfway up the second level (of five or six) she announced she was finished and wanted to go home. No more: we can't pry her away.

We saw quite a lot, though we skipped the dolphin show. She's seen it before but says she doesn't remember, though I think she would if she went. Then we wandered about the Inner Harbor for a bit, had ice cream (well, she did), and at 5 pm (after insisting all day she didn't want to go on any of the historic ships, take a water taxi, or even ride a paddleboat: "No way," was the comment) she announces maybe she'd like to go on a boat after all. Okay, next time. Or we'll be in Norfolk for vacation. (Earlier she had been hesitant to say why she didn't want to go on a boat. I assured her they were perfectly safe. "That's what they thought about the TItanic," she responded. Well, true, but I would be absolutely dumbfounded to see an iceberg in Baltimore's Inner Harbor in July, I commented. "How was I supposed to know it hit an iceberg? I'm only seven."

The other great line of the day came even before we left. There's a new Australian exhibit at the Aquarium, which is quite interesting (have you ever seen a blue crayfish? The Aussies call them yabbies. They look like something you'd see after too many Fosters at the local.) Anyway, one of the TV ads for this features a Moray Eel. This morning Sarah says, "And did you know they have a Moron Eel?"

One of the breakthroughs in the past year is that museums, aquariums, and such are not just places to buy new stuffed animals (though we still do that: see below), but places she actually looks at everything (tries to read what she can), watches videos, etc. She is really becoming engaged with learning. Okay by me.

Spaghetti in Little Italy

But today we also had a breakthrough in a new direction. When Sarah was a toddler, and small enough to just tell what to do, we ate out where Mom and Dad wanted. Now she usually wants to eat at home. On the road, McDonald's. Or Hard Times Cafe, also a comfort food place for Mom and Dad. Or if McDonalds is out, she has become adventurous enough to try KFC or Burger King, though the latter alienated her by giving her the wrong order. We really have to bargain to get to go to someplace nice, and she insists she doesn't like Mexican (which she won't try). The Hunan Pepper Genes just haven't kicked in yet, despite her being from Hunan.

She does like Italian as long as it's 1) spaghetti, 2) pizza, 3) ravioli, 4) various other pastas so long as the sauce is marinara or you just pile a lot of parmesan on top. But last night (Saturday after Great Falls) we managed to get her to a Bertucci's pizza, and were talking about planning to go to Baltimore today and noted that real Italian cooking is the sort you get in Baltimore's Little Italy. Little Italy is just a few blocks east of the Inner Harbor and we decided to have an early dinner in Baltimore before driving back to DC. She was fascinated by the idea of Little Italy and once we parked and set out we passed a nice new restaurant, then went on up to the older strip of restaruants Tam and I were more familiar with: the old family places, the sorts where you figure Frank Sinatra might drop in or there might just possibly be a hit one evening (Michael Corleone going into the bathroom for the gun, you know the type of restaurant we mean). But Sarah wanted to try the newer place we had passed. Okay: you aren't going to survive in Little Italy in Baltimore if you don't do good Italian.

It was a new-looking place called Petalo's. [UPDATE: SEE NOTE AT BOTTOM. I hope it's not gone.] It had a lovely terrace but Sarah insisted on eating inside, despite it being a perfect day. (Have I mentioned yesterday and today were both in the 80s and low humidity? Those of you who know Washington know that's not normal in July. This would have been a great day in California. Or Greece.) But the boss had spoken and so we ate inside.

It was an interesting menu: not only high-end Italian, but also kabobs and other Middle Eastern (they called it "Mediterranean," but trust me, I know Arab: they even had foul mudammas) stuff. (Perhaps "Arab" is too politically sensitive. Anyway we had the Italian so I can't judge the Arab.) Sarah got as far as Kid's Spaghetti and Meatballs and looked no further. Tam and I -- who don't get to good restaurants as often as we'd like but know all the varieties of Happy Meal -- decided to splurge on the house special: $25 bucks a shot, but a veal scallopini in a very rich cream sauce (up the dose of lipitor) topped with pepper rings stuffed with crab meat. Whoa. It's the "Petalo's Veal" on page four of the online .pdf menu, [UPDATE: This link has failed twice and I don't know why. If you get a generic ad page, go back to the Petalo's link above and find the menu there.] and I heartily recommend it, provided you other high-cholesterol folks eat nothing but lettuce and carrots for a week afterwards. (In case my doctor is reading this.)

Sarah announced that the spaghetti and (one very large) meatball was the best spaghetti she had ever had. Then she got apologetic and said that she hoped Mom wasn't offended. I noted that, whereas Mom makes sauce by opening a jar from Safeway (though she does usually throw in some extra basil and oregano), I was pretty sure this place made its own sauce. Impressed (doesn't everyone get it from Safeway?), Sarah actually asked the waitress, who assured her the chef made the sauce and she would pass on the compliment. At one point Sarah announced this was the best weekend ever. Photos of Sarah with the spaghetti appear on our Flickr site for those with access.

The Seahorses' Wedding

Well, I guess I have to get to the seahorses' wedding and it's midnight and tomorrow's a work day so I'd better do it now. Sarah has one of the largest collections of stuffed animals imaginable. Dragons are her favorite (she was born in the year of the dragon), and unicorns are big, and she has a fair number of pandas (people can't resist giving them to her), the usual teddy bears, etc. Sea animals are also big: one huge turtle, several smaller turtles, even some stuffed jellyfish (yes), and a fair number of seahorses. Today she wanted another sea horse. I said I'd get her one animal and after weighing the seahorse against a dolphin, she chose the seahorse. Driving home to DC she decided that she would marry the new seahorse to one of the older seahorses, and as we made our way back over an hour or so's drive she cranked up the libretto for this wedding. Once home she dressed the bride-seahorse in a bridal outfit not designed for a seahorse, got out necklaces (no rings: Seahorses don't have fingers) and so on. A video of the bridal gown and a full video of the ceremony are at our private YouTube site if you have access. It is possibly the only video on YouTube with the tags "seahorse wedding," but I haven't confirmed this. When I posted "Rats Playing Basketball" I not only discovered how many Rats Playing Basketball videos there are on YouTube, but how many rat fanciers then start asking to exchange videos. I don't respond.

The ceremony is elaborate and well-staged, but the officiant (Sarah) tends to dissolve into hysterical giggling while trying to lead the seahorses in their wedding vows. Wouldn't you?

The happy couple eventually went on a honeymoon in a carriage (which is either a Barbie carriage or a Cinderella carriage, but I'm not sure which: Barbie and Disney Princesses seem to be slowly merging together). But I didn't get video of that.

UPDATE: As of mid-September, 2007, the Petalo's links aren't working at all. I hope it didn't go out of business, and will try further updates later.

Great Falls

Not much posting lately. Recovering from illnesses, busy with work. Last night I finally uploaded a month's worth of stuff to YouTube. Today we finally got Sarah someplace new: Great Falls. This is the fall line of the Potomac, there are parks on both the VA and MD sides, but we went to MD. As usual when she doesn't want to do something, she loved it. Gorgeous day. 80s, no humidity. Perfect day along the river.

Sarah always wants to do the same old things she's done before. Today she tried an adventure. More anon.