November 2005 Archives

1. Two more days till Williamsburg.

2. POTUS is coming to Maryland today. He'll bloviate at the Naval Academy about why critics of the Iraq war are unamerican then meet with Robert Ehrlich (Maryland's BCD governor) and Michael Steele (Maryland's black lt. gov. running for senate) so they can sniff his farts. But as Thomas Friedman recently opined in the NYT: "It's not just that [Bush] doesn't seem to be having any fun. It's that he seems to be totally out of ideas relevant to the nation's future."

3. Unless they're baked in a pie, apples just don't do it for me. Delicious apples aren't.

4. Anyone else creeped out by this media-driven countdown to the 1,000th capital punishment victim? I'm surprised we don't have a nationwide office pool going. In all honesty, the older I get the less I like my state committing murder on my behalf. I think we should just stop at 999.

5. Every time I visit, I'm blown away by the writing and photography at Fragments from Floyd. Check it out.

6. Signs are acorns will be abundant this fall.

7. Each year it's harder for me to think up what I want for Christmas but people keep asking.

8. The JAMA will publish an article today warning that use of Vitalis and Brylcreem as a teenager leads to near total hair loss in your early 50s. No exceptions even if you only used it for a year or two. Sure glad I didn't use that stuff. Feel sorry for anyone who did.

9. Two Gilbert Stuart portraits of George Washington are to be auctioned today. (See 1 and 2.) Only $10M a piece. Portraits by Stuart are part of the reason Washington is viewed as stuffy and wooden by Americans today and not as the great man he was. James Peale did a portrait that shows more of Washington's character and vigor.

10. The Census Bureau reports that Howard County is the country's 8th richest county with a median income of $79,455. I would have thought it was higher. Seriously. $80K incomes can't buy the houses they're building around here. Find your county.

11. Can the country just stop for one, big, heartfelt "Awwww......" so we get it out of our system? I'd like to move on.

12. The government of Canada collapsed Monday because of corruption and I think 4 people in this country noticed.

13. It's been nearly 4 years since Santa Claus ran into me with his car. I'm wondering if the time is ripe for telling the tale?
K-

I was just reading about Michigan's bowl chances. It's looking like the Outback Bowl will be their New Year's destination. Michigan gets to play some southern team... South Carolina, I think.

Another bowl possibility for Michigan is the Vitalis Sun Bowl. The Vitalis Sun Bowl? I never would have thought Vitalis still existed let alone be in a position to sponsor a major college bowl game. I remember Vitalis from my youth because my father used it. It was this greasy liquid he put on his hair. "Hair tonic" he called it. I guess Vitalis kept his hair in place and made him "well-groomed." Gave his hair that slicked-back, plastered-down, 1930s Cary Grant look if you ask me. I remember Vitalis came with one of those made-up secret ingredients, V-7 or some such thing. I always thought Vitalis was disgusting. The oiliness was bad enough but it also had the color of pee. I could never abide using anything in my hair. To this day my hair care regimen consists of 3 easy steps: wash with shampoo (quality doesn't matter), dry with a towel, brush. No machines, glop, or combing later in the day required.

I could never take the Vitalis Hair Tonic bowl seriously. I sure hope Michigan goes to the Outback.
K-

D- wanted to see the new Harry Potter movie. It was one of things he asked for as a birthday present. Today he and I went.

In general, I'm not a big sword and sorcerers movie fan. I thought the last Harry Potter movie was merely OK. Today's movie was different. I don't know if it was that the PG-13 rating gave the director a little more latitude with the violence and more macabre aspects of the plot or if the director just did a better job. In any event, I really liked this installment of Harry Potter. It moved right along desite running nearly 2 hours 30 minutes.

One thing though. Parents need to a lot better job teaching their kids to keep quiet in a movie. "Bloody hell, you're not sitting in your own living room now are you?"

Good thing I'm a muggle.
K-

I went to the Maryland Christmas Show today. That's where all the white people in Maryland go to kick-off the holidays. Despite the rather chilly temperatures (it never got above 32 degrees), the place was mobbed. Women predominate at the fair. Men go but it's just to drive the car and carry the bags.

Men: leave your genitals at home; there's just no need to bring them.

I had the opportunity to take a few photos. You'll find them after the jump.

Hope you all had a great turkey.
K-

D- received a gift card to Best Buy on his birthday a week ago. What did he buy? A Led Zeppelin album.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
K-

Blessing of the Stew Pot
by Alla Rene Bozarth
Blessed be the Creator
and all creative hands
which plant and harvest,
pack and haul and hand
over sustenance --
Blessed be carrot and cow,
potato and mushroom,
tomato and bean,
parsley and peas,
onion and thyme,
garlic and bay leaf,
pepper and water,
majoram and oil,
and blessed be fire --
and blessed be the enjoyment
of nose and eye,
and blessed be color --
and blessed be the Creator
for the miracle of grean bean,
for the miracle of fawn mushrooms,
and blessed be God
for the miracle of earth:
ancestors, grass, bird,
deer and all gone,
wild creatures
whose bodies become
carrots, peas, and wild
flowers, who
give sustenance
to human needs, whose
agile dance of music
nourishes the ear
and soul of the dog
resting under the stove
and the woman working over
the stove and the geese
out the open window
strolling in the backyard.
And blessed be God
for all, all, all.
Amen!
Food & Faith: Justice, Joy, and Daily Bread edited and compiled by Michael Schut.

All of our Thanksgivings are white. This year we had snow.

K-

Was it Christmas 1970? Or was it my 16th birthday? It matters not - they're the same day.

I receive a present, a book, given to me by my father. Why he chose this book I don't know. It wasn't a bestseller at the time. There's nothing flashy about it, nothing spectacular. In fact, most people would likely find this book daunting: a standard-sized hardcover with 1,122 pages of close-set type, no pictures. My father never read it himself, of that I'm certain. Maybe he was passing through a store, saw its cover, and thought I'd like it. Maybe my mother told him to go out and buy me something - anything - so I would have something special from him on my 16th birthday. I'm sure he never once thought that this book, without doubt, would have a greater, more lasting influence on my life than any other single volume.

Everyone has a book that changes their life. I suppose for some that book is the Bible. But I find the Bible - full of great lessons and metaphor - too dry, too broad, too jumbled to effect a life change. For some that book is the seminal publication of some great societal watershed: Common Sense, Uncle Tom's Cabin, or Silent Spring. For most, it's a work of fiction read as a youth: Lord of the Flies, Alice in Wonderland, or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. For nearly everyone, it's a book that fires the imagination.

And so it is with me. I have read The Complete Sherlock Holmes cover to cover at least 4 times. My original copy of the Doubleday tome I keep at work, its bookplate - with my crabbed, childlike scrawl of a signature - adorning the inside front cover. I have three annotated versions of the Sherlockian Canon: Baring-Gould's, Les Klinger's, and the Oxford. I own commentary on these Sacred Writings, histories, chronologies, compendiums, reference works, periodicals, Sherlockian pastiches, Sherlockian crossword puzzles, pictures, statues and crockery, pins and stickers, one large bookcase in all. I subscribe to a Sherlockian quarterly, The Baker Street Journal; belong to two Sherlockian scion societies: Watson's Tin Box and The Six Napoleons of Baltimore; and correspond with the Hounds of the Internet, a Sherlockian discussion group. My nom-de-net namesake, Cyril Morton, was the one electrical engineer specifically mentioned in the Sacred Writings. Even this blog's name and masthead were inspired by a passage from The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb.

The Sherlockian Canon wasn't published in chronological order. His Last Bow, depicting my man Holmes as an energetic 60-year-old catching a German spy on the eve of the Great War, was published nearly 10 years before Doyle's final canonical entry, The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place. His stories were of uneven literary quality. The drama and excitement of The Sign of Four, The Adventure of the Speckled Band, and The Hound of the Baskervilles are utterly lacking from Doyle's later stories. And Doyle wasn't above introducing inconsistencies to the stories. Was Dr. Watson's wound from the "Jezail bullet" in his shoulder or his leg? Sir Arthur was never quite sure.

But Doyle imbued the 56 short stories and 4 novellas composing The Complete Sherlock Holmes with a sense of place and character and detail rarely exceeded in English literature. To this day, Victorian England fixates itself in my imagination with a clarity and presence unlike any other.

"Come, Watson, come! The game is afoot." cries Holmes to a sleeping Watson on a bitterly cold early morning in 1897. "Not a word! Into your clothes and come!" I read those words and am transported back, back to a place I've never been, yet a place real, familiar, and fully-formed in my mind. My breath steams as I nestle ever further into my heavy coat. I sit in a hansom cab with my companions, silent, as we rattle through the still and quiet streets of London on our way to Charing Cross Station. We have work to do, my friends and me, as our hearts quicken at the thrill of the chase. Stanley Hopkins and Scotland Yard await, just as always.

Just as it ever will be.
K-

Absolutely. In fact, it's been a Martian year, 687 earth days, since that plucky Mars rover, Spirit, landed on the Red Planet. To celebrate, NASA released this panoramic view of the Martian landscape with the Mars rover digitally inserted. NASA included the rover to give the viewer perspective and a sense of virtual presence. And to give conspiracy-theory wackos fodder for their misconceptions. Anyway I love cool engineering feats like this and pirated this photo from the NASA website.

Now if NASA could only insert these guys into the scene.
K-

Conversation between my son and me at 6:15 AM this morning just after waking him up. In fact, these were the first words out of his mouth:

"Daddy, will you go on the computer and print me the lyrics to Blowin' In The Wind? I need them for that project we're doing in sociology."
"Not a problem."

And it wasn't. I had them in less than a minute.
God, I love the Internet.
K-

The first day of the rest of his life.

Happy birthday, D-.
K-

I watched Millions last night. Sweet and touching, whimsical and bright-spirited, it's the story of two English brothers who encounter a huge bag full of money, £265,000 in all.

Each has a different idea about how to spend it. Damian, the younger, just wants to do good, such as treating a crowd of homeless to lunch at Pizza Hut and stuffing wads through the front mail slot of a house of Mormon missionaries. (What they do with the money is hilarious). Anthony, the elder, sees the money as salve for hurts received in a tempestuous new environment using it to buy friends and merchandise. They try to spend as much of it as they can before England switches to the Euro and their bag becomes filled with just so much worthless paper. Together they discover just how hard this can be for two small children in an adult world where money is all-important.

Damian, at 7, knows his saints the way other boys know Manchester United. In fact, he's fortunate enough to have his own personal visions. (“Clare of Assisi, 1194 until 1253!") The saints come to him wearing halos ("The Ugandan Martyrs of 1881!") as he seeks his most important saint of all. “Do you ever come across a St. Maureen?" he asks Clare. "She hasn’t been there long." Anthony, being the realist, thinks his brother slightly loony. But he seeks St. Maureen too, without completely realizing it. Don't worry about the saints. They have their place and don't detract from the movie's sophistication. That's one of the things I liked about it. This was one of the best movies I've seen in a while.

And the ending? Well, we can talk about that later.

But I think it ended the only way it could.
K-

PS. For me, the actors' Liverpudlian accents tested my listening ability to the limit. I ended up turning the subtitles on.

Most days D- calls me at work when he gets home from school. Just to touch base. He fills me in on his day and I tell him about mine. Typically he doesn't have anything earthshattering to report.

Today was not one of those days.

D- plays the trumpet. And for many high school trumpeters, playing in the high school jazz ensemble is the pinnacle, the peak, the top. It's what you strive for. Jazz is cool; jazz is hot; jazz ensembles take only the best. Playing trumpet in the jazz ensemble takes work, commitment, desire. "If you play jazz, your Tuesdays are mine," shouts the band director.

Jazz ensemble try-outs were Tuesday night. D- auditioned even though he knows he's not the best trumpeter at his high school.

In his phone call today he tells me matter-of-factly "I'm officially in the jazz ensemble."

Officially. What a great word. Officially.

D- and I have a little tradition. After every gig, he hands me his trumpet and I carry it for him. That's because I once read when Louis Armstrong was a boy, he would hang out with all the great New Orleans jazz bands. In particular, he would hang out with King Oliver's band. King Oliver was the greatest trumpeter of his day. King Oliver took a liking to the boy with his budding musical talent. So King let the young Armstrong carry his trumpet. That was all. That was the honor. That was enough. That's how Louis Armstrong paid homage to King.

Way to go, D-.
Love,
Dad

When two cars approach each other, say in a parking lot or other wide-open venue, there is never any issue about how to pass: each car goes to the right of the other and then proceeds onward.

Why is it that when two people approach each other, say when rounding a corner in a hallway or passing each other through an open door, there is always this hesitancy? Each person gets to experience a few moments of bewilderment in what is an otherwise common social situation. "Do I pass on the right?" "Do I pass on the left?" "What do I do?"

This situation drives me nuts. We all do this weird little dance as we try and figure out how to get around each other. Dodge left... feint right... weave, bob, shuffle... But the answer is simple, people. It's just like driving: pass on the right. It just couldn't be simpler. How come people don't get this?

Carry on.
K-

I saw this picture and accompanying article in this morning's Baltimore Sun and got quite a laugh. Seems someone is stealing Baltimore's light poles. About 130 of them have gone missing and no one is sure why. Scrap metal seems the most logical reason although you'd think the local scrap metal dealer would question 130 light poles showing up at his shop.

I'm impressed. It's gotta take a lot of work to bring down a light pole. And to do so right under the noses of the citizens of Baltimore. I now know how to spell c-h-u-t-z-p-a as well as u-n-o-b-s-e-r-v-a-n-t.

I mean the pole would make a real lot of noise when it fell, there's electricity to avoid, they're heavy, and what if the cops come by. (Although cops are easily handled. Witness Venkman, Stantz, and Spengler in Ghostbusters 2 burrowing into a Manhattan street. All problems can be solved by watching the right movie.)

On Saturday, Baltimore police arrested a guy with a light pole sticking out of the back of his car but it didn't break the case. This guy only picked up an already downed pole.

I'm thinking the culprit is some nefarious lighting contractor from York, Pennsylvania. I hear tell they're building roads up that way and it would be just like Pennsylvanians to come steal our streetlights. Those bastards.

Fire hydrants and manhole covers can only be next.
K-

A few months ago, a computer science student at the University of Maryland/Baltimore County sent me an email. Referred by a blogger friend of mine, he wanted me to participate in a study he was doing on blogs and blogging. UMBC is not far from me and it has a pretty good computer science school so I figured, "Why not?" He sent the consent form, I signed it, and I was surveyed. (By IM no less.) I thought nothing more about it.

Last week he contacted me again. This time he's a Ph.D. candidate performing a larger study on blogs and blogging. His question was simple: would I help again? He warned me that this was a bigger and better survey. More involved, more in-depth, it would take more time. And the interview would take place not by IM but by phone or in person and could last as long as an hour. Since I have absolutely nothing else to do, I agreed. I sent him my phone number, he called, and I was surveyed yet again.

I was surprised. His survey - at least the questions I was asked - weren't in the least controversial. How long have I been blogging? (2 years) Why did I start? (To see if I could.) What other blogs do I read? (I explained Blogroll.) How many visitors, comments, regulars? (I told him about my Salma fiasco.) How did I see my blog? (Boring, pretentious crap.) How did others see my blog? (Boring, pretentious crap.) He asked about the software I use. ("Movable Type," I answered but interestingly he didn't seem to know what that was.) How often do I blog (about every other day), do I feel pressured or guilty to blog (sometimes), and where did I see my blog a year from now (if I'm still blogging, about the way it is now). I explained that I print my blog so future generations of White genealogists can also read my boring, pretentious crap in addition to the three people that do so now.

I explained that writing - especially writing well - is hard work, painful almost, even for the casual blogger. Good ideas are difficult to come by. Making those good ideas interesting reading is even harder. Ideas you thought were good turn out not to be. Things that were funny or exciting to you seem trite when committed to paper. I've got well over 500 blog entries; I doubt more than 20 rise above drivel.

He listened.

One thing he didn't ask about - and something I've always wondered about the blogosphere - is: am I an honest blogger? Do I think my blog is a faithful portrayal of who I am? The Internet provides nearly complete anonymity, so there's nothing preventing me from fabricating everything on my blog. Or worse, plagiarizing the work of others. How many bloggers create false personas, pretending to be someone or something they're not? Screeching, shrill, conservatives who are in reality milquetoasts; mordant provocateurs who are in reality diffident homebodies; swaggering, snide, know-it-alls otherwise locked in dead end jobs; 20-year-old Carolina Panther lesbian cheerleaders masquerading as 50-year-old engineers from Maryland. How would you know? Two years of personal writing ought to create a fairly complete portrait of an individual. How would someone who read my blog cover-to-cover react to the genuine article?

Now that would be some interesting data.
K-

Me: I got my flu shot today.
D-: Really? I want one of those.
Me: Well, I only got one because my employer was giving them away for free. If I get one for you, I'll have to take you to the doctor. And I don't know that you really need one.
D-: I thought I did. There's all this talk about people getting aviation flu.

K-

Mushroom farmers are good neighbors. At least that's what I decided after attending a hearing of the Planning Commission in Kent County, Maryland. Mushroom farming doesn't bother corn, soybeans, or wheat and corn, soybeans, and wheat farming doesn't bother mushrooms.

My prospective mushroom farmer-neighbor, wants to move down to Maryland from Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, where residential development is forcing mushroom farmers - in this case a third generation one - further south in search of suitable production areas. He seems like an upstanding guy. The people who will actually live next door to his production facility have far-greater concerns than I do: increased truck traffic, constant odor, and flies. The Kent County planners will have to figure out a way to keep them happy.

But if you're looking for large quantities of portobello mushrooms, it's looking like Maryland will soon be the place to be.
K-

Asleep. That's what I was. Sound asleep - in bed - Saturday morning.

7:15 AM - "Kem, are you painting today? Am I supposed to go get paint for the dining room? I'd really, really like the dining room painted and the wallpaper up by D-'s birthday. The wallpaper ships on the 8th. Are you painting today? Hello?"

K-

I just read the review for Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin from the New York Times Book Review. James M. McPherson wrote the review. In case you don't know James McPherson, he is one of America's pre-eminent US historians and quite possibly the leading expert on the Civil War. Some McPherson quotes about Goodwin's book:

"Having previously offered fresh insights into Lyndon Johnson, the Kennedys and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Doris Kearns Goodwin has written an elegant, incisive study of Lincoln and leading members of his cabinet that will appeal to experts as well as to those whose knowledge of Lincoln is an amalgam of high school history and popular mythology."

"Within that sphere Goodwin has brilliantly described how Lincoln forged a team that preserved a nation and freed America from the curse of slavery."

Heady praise. I loved No Ordinary Time and I was already looking foward to reading Goodwin's new book. McPherson's praise only makes her book that much more enticing.
K-

My father was a philatelist, a stamp collector. In addition to his collection, I've inherited countless numbers of stamps that we can use for regular postage. I've used up all his stamps that are self-adhesive. Now I'm into the stamps you have to lick.

Bleccchhhh!

I'm surprised anything got mailed before self-adhesive stamps. Licking them is disgusting. A barbarous, barbarous activity.
K-