October 2005 Archives
Conversation between my younger son, D-, and me while I was preparing a marinade for steak fajitas last night:
"Is that garlic you're peeling?"
"Yes, it's part of the marinade."
"You use it raw?"
"Sure. Just mince it up and put it in there."
"Can you eat those cloves raw?"
"Sure."
"Can I try one?"
"Here you go... rock on."
Needless to say I don't have the skill with words to describe just how hilarious his ensuing peeling, biting, and chewing of one raw clove of garlic was. I did get my laugh for the day. Those of you who've ever tried eating a large chunk of raw garlic know what I'm talking about.
But there's probably a daddy voodoo doll with garlic soaked pins sticking in it somewhere up in his room.
K-
D-'s handiwork.
K-
I just joined Netflix and late this week, it delivered its first movies. This weekend, I finished watching The Interpreter and House of Sand and Fog. The former was an interesting thriller starring Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman. The movie is complex enough that you really have to pay attention and think about what's going on. I like that. And for me, Sean Penn is like Al Pacino, he's so good it's almost scary (to wit: Dead Man Walking, Carlito's Way, Mystic River). I love to watch him work, even in a mainstream movie like The Interpreter.
House of Sand and Fog is a very, very good movie. I got it mostly because the whole premise sounded so intriguing - two people having equal moral claims on the same house - and because I think Jennifer Connelly is one of Hollywood's more underrated actors (despite an Oscar). The movie was different than both my expectatations and its description. The story just sort of naturally unfolds as you watch two flawed, though basically, good people react to a set of circumstances that they can't completely control. The ending took a twist I wasn't at all anticipating. Kingsley and Connelly really deliver. Highly recommended especially if you like dramas.
Anything I need that can be brought to my house is almost always better than me having to go get it. If Netflix works out, Blockbuster will become a thing of the past.
Next up: After the Sunset, Courage Under Fire, and Millions.
K-
Howard County usually has its first frost by now. Last night we finally got one. Not a hard frost but one you could see on roofs and in grassy shaded areas. Jack was late arriving this year.
K-
I sit here working, trying to concentrate, but voices abound inside my head. Random thoughts flit through my mind: "a meeting tonight," think I; "you need shaving cream," whispers my brain pan; "prepare for camping merit badge," says one voice; "stop daydreaming," scolds another.
Then a giant Wizard of Oz voice breaks through them all, screaming inside my head with fury and intensity. I could tell it had been lurking all day, waiting to pounce at just the right time, waiting until I had built up not a little smug satisfaction, waiting until I was literally bathing in a tub of self-righteous indignation. This was a voice I recognized, one of those many voices inside my head that delight in reminding me just what a goddamn moron I can be.
"MAYBE HE JOINED A PENNSYLVANIA UNIT, YOU IDIOT! Back in those days, each state had their own militias! Maybe McCullough was right and you were wrong!!!! I'll bet that never occurred to you!! Maybe Tench Tilghman moved from Maryland to Philadelphia to go into business with his uncle and he joined a Pennsylvania militia unit when the Revolutionary War began! Maybe that's why McCullough called him a "Pennsylvanian"!!! Did you ever think of that, bozo?"
I go back to work. I've learned to completely ignore the voices inside my head.
K-
I've been reading 1776 by David McCullough. I love history particularly American history from the colonial and federalist periods. I devoured McCullough's John Adams. And even though 1776 is not as long or as detailed as some of his previous works, McCullough's sweeping narrative of the events that crucial year - you wouldn't think the siege of Boston could be made interesting - pulls you along nonstop.
Last night I was reading his conclusion to the Battle of Long Island. On August 27, the rebels (us) got their asses kicked. Washington had been woefully out-generaled; his first attempt at open field battle was a failure against the better-disciplined Redcoats. It was a rout. Now the Continental Army was stuck in Brooklyn, backs against the water, the British Army on the other side, and the British Navy just down the river waiting for favorable winds so they too could join in the assault. Washington's army desperately needed to get back to New York to avoid annihilation. Somehow, miraculously, during the night of August 29, Washington managed to ferry 9,000 troops across the East River to Manhattan without the British finding out. To succeed, the evacuation required near total silence.
Writes McCullough on page 187:
- "At about nine o'clock the troops with the least experience, along with the sick and wounded, were ordered to start for the Brooklyn Ferry landing, on the pretext that they were being relieved by reinforcements. But of this the soldiers near the front lines knew nothing. 'The thing was conducted with so much secrecy, ' wrote another of the Pennsylvanians, Lieutenant Tench Tilghman, 'that neither the subalterns or privates knew the whole army was to cross back again to New York.'"
*sigh*
David, David, David. I am so disappointed in you. Pennsylvanian Tench Tilghman? Pennsylvanian Tench Tilghman!?! You might as well stick a knife in my heart and break it off. As any Maryland schoolchild knows Tench Tilghman is from Maryland. Born and bred in Talbot County on Maryland's Eastern Shore. And Tilghman wasn't just a nobody during the Revolutionary War, he went on to become Washington's aide-de-camp. Valley Forge, Yorktown, through thick and thin. That sort of thing. How could you get that wrong? Tsk, tsk, tsk.
David, are some of your other facts in this book wrong? I'm not really sure what I can believe from you now. Was Washington's horse not really named Gumball? Did Nathanael Greene not really wear ladies underwear into battle? Did Henry Knox not really drive back from Ticonderoga in an Abrams tank?
I just don't know what to believe anymore.
K-
I was a chaperone this past weekend on a camping retreat for more than two dozen 7th and 8th graders. It rained much of the time so we were forced to use the gym for many of our activities. Luckily we had it to ourselves most of the time. We played several different games. Nearly all of them had the adult chaperones standing on the sidelines watching and chatting.
One game, in particular, proved to be a group favorite. Not only is this game fun, but has the added cachet of being banned by Howard County Public Schools. Because they rarely get to play it, the kids requested this game many times. They played it in all sorts of permutations (boys vs. girls, 7th grade vs. 8th grade, etc.).
It finally occurred to them that kids against adults might be fun. After all, they're young, we're old... it would be like shooting fish in a barrel, easy pickings, piece of cake. That the kids far outnumbered the adults only made the idea that much more tantalizing. "Won't you guys play? Please, please, please? We'll take it easy on you."
What was this beloved game?
Dodgeball.
That's right... banned-in-Howard-County dodgeball. I hadn't played it since the Nixon administration. And how did the old farts do? Four of us (3 men, 1 women) took on the 24 middle-schoolers and beat them 3 straight games.
The leaders exulted and most of the kids took the losses in stride. A few of the kids had a gripe or two. "You guys caught the ball too much," said one dispirited youth. (Catching the ball eliminates the thrower.) My favorite comment came from one kid who complained the adults "used too much teamwork."
It wasn't all peaches and cream. One adult over-stretched a muscle in her side. And I needed a 3-hour nap. But we had fun and the game is better than the movie.
K-
The menace grows.
K-
Asked by my younger son, D-, this morning: "Dad, when you were a kid, did you ever organize for fun?"
Well, duuuUUUUUh, don't all kids? My room, my closet, my desk, my baseball cards, my football cards were all paragons of neatness and organization.
Then, as now, tidiness is my life.
K-
Eastern Shore mushroom farmers send a warning. Found this in my front yard this morning. Next time it will be in my bed.
K-
When my mother died, I became executor of her estate. I got to locate, marshal, and oversee all her assets. And as anyone who's been executor can attest, the job entails a fair amount of work. (For those of you who've agreed to be executor of someone's estate - but have yet to perform the task - consider it a mixed blessing.) You've got to be careful. Executors can be audited, called on the carpet by the IRS, brought up on charges for malfeasance, for not doing a good job. So I've taken the job seriously and have been very conservative handling her assets.
One asset I never expected to cause problems is her farm on Maryland's Eastern Shore.
Well, it isn't really her farm. She owned it, true, but like me, she inherited it from her mother. My great-grandparents were the farmers. My mother was no more farmer than me, which is to say, not at all. Neither one of us could tell you much about the business of agriculture. We could probably identify a tractor or a cow or a pile of manure, but that's about it.
During the time she had it, my mother was fortunate enough to have tenant farmers rent the land who were diligent and trustworthy stewards. My mother could be a true absentee landlord without any worries except how to spend her farm rental.
And that's the way I expected it to continue. And probably will continue. But I recently received a letter from the Kent County Planning Commission. It's full of ominous words and dark foreboding. Changes are afoot, forces are moving, armies are massing. You see the property next to mine has been sold. Sold to a mushroom farmer!
Mushrooms! Mushrooms will be raised next to my corn and soybeans. Compounding things, as an adjacent property owner, I've been called to testify. Me. Kem White. Mr. Black Thumb. Testifying to the incredibly rural Kent County Planning Commission, all twelfth-generation Maryland farmers, about what mushroom farming might do to my farmland. I didn't even know mushrooms grew on farms. I thought they grew in caves or bogs or forests or something. Now I'll be commenting on "substrate preparation", "growing rooms", "spore dispersal", and "psilocybin boosting". (Well maybe not that last one.) I'd sure like to have something intelligent to say. But what are the odds of that happening? They might as well have me comment on 14th century Venetian sculpture for what I know.
I think I should at least find out what soybeans and mushrooms look like before I go over there. And what do I wear? Overalls? Nah. Something with more gravitas. A John Deere hat? Maybe.
Just one more thing to worry about.
K-
A minor clarification if you please.
Since posting the last entry about my Sunday eagle being the best yardbird ever, I've received not one, not two, but three, count 'em three, phone calls objecting to my post. Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, and Jeff Beck have each called my house to make perfectly clear that they are the best Yardbird ever, not some errant buzzard of mine.
Maybe they're right. Maybe those guys are better yardbirds than mine. Clapton, Page, and Beck are pretty good. (Actually it's Page by a nose.)
So guys are you happy now? Will you stop calling my house? I admit it, you guys are the best Yardbirds ever.
Sheesh. Musicians can be so touchy.
K-
Birders list. Some birders keep lists of every bird they see anywhere and have all sorts of list permutations. I just keep a life list and a yard list: the birds I've seen any time in my life and those I've seen while standing in my yard. Fun but not obsessive.
Yesterday was a beautiful fall day. A cold front had pushed through earlier in the weekend bringing sunshine, cool temperatures, and wind. Sometimes the passage of a cold front and the attendant winds brings birds you might not otherwise see.
Late in the afternoon a neighborhood child knocked on my front door selling candy for his school. Just after the sale was completed, I chanced to look up and noticed a large, dark bird wheeling just above the court in the gusty winds. I thought I saw those unmistakable field marks: dark brown body, white head, white tail. I dashed for my binoculars. When I returned, the bird was just about to sail over the houses behind me. Clapping the bins to my eyes I confirmed those field marks.
A mature bald eagle had just soared over my yard. How about that?
K-
I was at the Baltimore Marathon today. How about that! A very scenic 26.2 miles, uphill and down, it was my first marathon. Whew! Am I beat.
Okay, okay, so I wasn't actually running the Baltimore Marathon. I was only there to spectate and cheer for my older son, A-, who really did run the marathon. That's him on the left in the red shirt. A good friend of his - who was to run the race with him but had to withdraw because of a stress fracture - is in the shirt next to A-.
A- finished his first marathon in 4:32, we had fun, it was a glorious day.
K-
My younger son, D-, and I have a running joke about the name "Hercules". Not long ago, he opined that it's an underused given name and deserving of much more prospective-parent consideration. There's a lot of gravitas to be had with a name like Hercules. D- even says he would go as far as naming one of his own children Hercules - we can only hope it's a son - to help resurrect the name as a common American appellation.
Well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I just read of a former Michigan football running back who had that very first name: Hercules Renda. Seems he was a 5'3" halfback for Michigan in the late 30s. And, apparently, "Hercules" is not a nickname. That's his bona fide given name. The bad news is that I read all this in his Michigan obituary. He died while walking at the age of 88 and was a friend to every UM football coach.
D- will be saddened to learn of the passing of another Hercules. I am, too.
K-
Am I the only one flabbergasted by POTUS's statement that a big part of the reason he's appointing Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court is because of her religious beliefs? Quoting POTUS: "People ask me why I picked Harriet Miers. They want to know Harriet Miers' background. They want to know as much as they possibly can before they form opinions. And part of Harriet Miers' life is her religion."
Evidently so. Neither the Baltimore Sun, Washington Post, nor New York Times commented about it today. (The Sun had a minor front-page article about POTUS's statement "below the fold.") Not her legal acumen, not her experience trying cases, not her scholarship, but her religion. That's the best POTUS has got.
Unlike other government positions, Supreme Court appointments demand exceptionally-qualified legal minds. Competent just isn't good enough; religion is irrelevent. The Senate's constitutionally-mandated role to provide "advice and consent" on judicial appointments presumes there's something upon which to base a consent. In Miers's case, there is absolutely nothing for the Senate to review. Just her religion, her "trailblazing" legal experience on the Texas Lottery Commission, and some goofy missives to Bush.
The base cronyism and inept political hacking flowing out of this Republican administration are appalling. In my life, I've never seen anything like it. And I snorted - Snorted! - Watergate. POTUS as grifter. His is a travesty of statecraft.
And people think Katrina and Rita hammered this country.
K-
About a year and a half ago, I blogged about how Snakehead fish - an introduced, exotic species - were being found in Maryland waterways in increasing numbers. Snakeheads are an extraordinarily agressive species to both anglers and other fish, so the Department of Natural Resources was vitally concerned about their spread and the detrimental effect they might have on our native fish stocks. The fish can slither on its fins and live on land for up to three days.
Today's Baltimore Sun reports that this war is over and the fish have won. Maryland's snakehead infestation is permanent. About 200 of the critters were caught in a Potomac River tributary recently. "The water is black from these schools of fish," reported one official. When asked whether the DNR hoped to eradicate the fish, the official said, "There is no way. It could never be accomplished if we wanted to. We're not even really trying to reduce the numbers."
So much for draining and poisoning ponds as a precaution. You'd think house sparrows, starlings, kudzu, and zebra mussels would have tipped them off.
K-
I found this in an old computer folder. Engineers in my area find this amusing. It shows the ideal missile design from the point of view of the specialist. I'm the "Analysis" specialist. We're a ribald lot, no? Try not to fall out of your seat laughing. Or at least have some pity.
K-
Thorns
Mother left 139 shares of Delphi in her estate.
Delphi share price when she died: $5.12
Delphi share price today: 36¢
Roses
Found this link. I love Kubrick and liked The Shining. I guess this is the trailer that got away. Anyhow, it made my day.
K-
I just found out that Karl Rove and I share December 25 as a birthday. The thought that I have anything in common at all with that guy...
K-
Me: New underwear.
D-: TastyKake and popcorn stolen from his lunch bag while it sat in the band room refrigerator.
K-
Yesterday I had to mow the lawn. Over seven inches of rain fell on Friday and Saturday causing my drought-stricken lawn to turn lush. I'm not really wild about mowing the lawn but it's not my most-hated Harry Homeowner chore either.
Step one for me is walking around the yard and moving all those things that might be in my way while mowing: hose reels, downspout splash trays, small children, dog poop, and the like. As I walked around the yard yesterday, I discovered something that sent chills down my spine. I probably got the biggest shock I've ever received as a homeowner. It almost took my breath away.
A snake skin.
I found it lying on a two-foot patch of grass in between the deck stairs and the foundation of my house. You can see the head of the skin in the picture. If you look carefully, you can see where the snake's eyes were. So why would an old, dry snake skin give me such a fright?
The answer is after the jump.
K-
Today is my mother's birthday. The eighth day of October.
My mother and I have rarely been together on her birthday. We spent them together up until the time I left home when I was 17. But from that point on, college, geography, schedules (her's and mine), and life's other commitments kept us apart as she celebrated another year. I always sent a card and a present. We talked by phone. We shared a laugh and got caught up. But it was up to my father and her friends to provide her with a celebration.
Even on her birthday last year - when she turned 75 - I was in Maryland and she in Michigan, though I had just spent the preceding three weeks with her getting her through brain tumor surgery, finding a nursing home, and starting the process of getting her affairs in order. Those three weeks had kept me away from my job too long. I had to get back. And once again, others had to sing Happy Birthday to her while I was elsewhere.
So for me, in that one small way, today's birthday is not much different than all the others. I sit here in Maryland and she's, well, I don't really know where. Somewhere good, I hope. She's certainly somewhere better than where she was last year on October eighth. But there will be no phone calls this year. This will have to do.
Happy birthday, mother.
K-
You expect certain things. Certain things at home. Certain things at work. And when something unusual occurs, something unexpected, something outré, something not in its element, you're struck, caught short, taken aback. But you do a double take, shake your head, and then move on with your life, perhaps a bit more wise than than you had been just two minutes earlier.
Last night coming out of work, with the parking lot largely empty, skies darkening, the air still and moist, I heard something unanticipated, totally out of its element, almost astonishing.
Bagpipes.
On my quiet engineering campus, in a suburban setting bordering on bucolic, I heard bagpipes. Bagpipes, fifes, and drums. And I wasn't imagining it. As I headed out, there stood 5 or 6 guys in kilts warming up for who knows what.
My head still shakes in wonder.
K-
Today at work, I get to participate in what we engineers affectionately call a "dog and pony show". This is a meeting, usually for a large audience, sometimes with important attendees, where we all get up and report on the things we've been doing and how successful we've been. Kind of the business equivalent of an "All Skate" at the roller rink.
I have a friend who is ex-Navy. He once told me that while stationed in San Diego, he and some other Navy buddies drove down to Tijuana, Mexico. He told me that while there, he attended a dog and pony show... a real dog and pony show.
He said it wasn't the same.
K-
Inspired by my latest Picture of the Week shown on the right, I've decided I'd like to try the very same thing. From this moment on, I will stop at nothing to find a man on fire so that I may shake hands with him.
And people think I'm a wuss.
K-
I'm still here... just hit a kind of lull in the blog-worthy activity level. I'll be posting more directly.
K-
