A Web Around My Blog

Walt Disney World! - December 4, 2010 - The Long, Long Ride

2011-06-07T13:43:00.002-04:00

After a seemingly interminable period of DPW (Disney Park Withdrawal), the Munsons got our collective fix in December, from the 4th to the 11th. We joined our friend Tonya, along with her mom and step-father. We had made the decision to drive and were on the road with a fully packed vehicle at 4AM, Saturday morning, with the goal of meeting Tonya's mom and step-father for a late lunch at a Cracker Barrel restaurant just off I-95 near Savannah, Georgia. It was Kathryn's longest road trip ever. With a lot of prep for keeping Kathryn happy and occupied by both Mommy and Kathryn, she was a model traveller. Our daughter may not be perfect, but she certainly travels well.

A car trip to Florida from anywhere within, say 100 miles of the Atlantic coast, is generally going to involve Interstate 95. Like its counterpart on the west coast, I-5, the road forms the transportation backbone for the East Coast. We join it about the 20 mile mark from our house and remain on it until we reach Daytona, Florida, where we transition on to I-4 for the southwesterly jog into central Florida.

The weather cooperated (always a tricky proposition in winter) and we had a brief visit at South of the Border just after 10AM. For the uninitiated, South of the Border is an I-95/US Highway 301 institution located literally right over the border in South Carolina from North Carolina. It is kitsch gone wild and, quite frankly, for the inherent stereotyping of Latin Americans (Mexicans in particular) present at the place, I'm surprised that it has survived into the 21st century. It is a veritable hodge-podge collection of structures (stores, restaurants, cheesy diversions, and more stores) spread out on both sides of US 301. It was the first time that I had ever stopped there that I can recall. It matched quite closely much that I had already imagined about it!

The huge Pedro sign announcing SotB's location to the curious traveller.

Serape anyone? Authentic Mexican goods made in China!

We met Arlee Ann and Daddy Walt at the restaurant as scheduled. Kathryn and I got to briefly play some checkers and Kathryn discovered a "player accordion" in the attached store that just fascinated her. The accordion stayed in Savannah - sorry, Kathryn!

Although we passed tantalizingly close, a visit to St. Augustine was neither in time nor budget. I have been fascinated by the history associated with this original settlement of ye olde Spanish Florida since childhood, but I've not yet been able to visit. However, I do wonder how the reality of it would mesh with my imagination!

After stop at a grocery store for the perishables and frozen items that we were planning on consuming at our Animal Kingdom Lodge - Kidani Village accomodations, we drove to the Lodge on what seems to be a growing number of access points to the World. When all was said and done, it took longer to confirm which "under Lodge" parking area we were supposed to be at than it did to unload the vehicles.

No sooner had we walked in and opened the curtains to take in some of the "savannah view" when we all perceived a potential issue. The "savannah view" amounted to all of about forty-fifty feet in front of the balcony before you were looking at a chain link fence with a dirt access road beyond, which allowed the resort cast to access various backstage areas. We all felt some frustration and Tonya was at the boiling point having used many of her Disney Vacation Club points current and future to acquire this room. When calmness returned and discussion with resort representatives had taken place, we realized and subsequently confirmed that this was not such a bad location. What we had at first thought was a lousy back corner of the savannah turned out to be a rather important "thoroughfare" for the animals to get from one area to another. Plus there was a feeding and salt block station just to the left of our room. So it turned out not to be the lemon that we originally concluded that we had been handed. This time I actually got pictures of a Disney World accomodation before it acquired the "lived-in" look.

The main living area. Sleeping quarters with seperate baths on left and right. I don't have a photo of the immediate entry, but there is a closet with washer and dryer on the right and an additional bath on the left. To the immediate left in the photo above is the kitchen, also shown below.

The kitchen did come equipped with a moderate amount of basic cooking utensils and vessels and the corresponding dishes, glassware and silverware.

Our room. It was late, and even as excited as she was, Kathryn was ready for bed!

Our room from the other direction. We had an abundance of closets, principally the two visible through open doorway. The passage into the main living area is between the closets.

Even the bathrooms are thoughtfully provided with open cubes below the sink and counter, some with baskets, for more storage. A really convenient way to keep the counters clean and uncluttered!

RIP Betty Taylor and Wally Boag

2011-06-05T00:18:00.000-04:00

The sad fact that these two individuals passed within one day of each other makes the connection that they had to both each other and Disneyland history all the more poignant.

I left the following at the Wally Boag Facebook fan page: I had the distinct pleasure of enjoying both Wally and Betty on visits to Disneyland when my parents and I lived in California many moons ago. Later I learned more of the wonderful comic legacy of Wally and the cherished place he will always have in Disneyland history and the minds of those of us fortunate enough to have experienced the Golden Horseshoe Revue. One cannot help but think that there was a good reason that Wally and Betty passed within a day, maybe to bring proper performances of the Revue to Heaven for the angels to enjoy.

D23, the official Disney fan club, had nice tributes to both Wally and Betty. My condolences to their families with the hope that the joy that they both brought to so many will be of some small comfort to them.

Things Undone

2011-06-04T00:17:00.002-04:00

Life really does simply speed by while you are doing other things.

I shouldn't get upset by the fact that while, when I open my blog to edit or start a new post, I see that there are now, including this one, 96 posts total. However, if you care to count, you will find, including this one, only 78. Yes, I have no less than 18 posts in various stages of becoming. I began this as a way to document my existence and thoughts and that of my family while I inhabit this planet and sometimes it feels that it is more a documentation of an inability to follow through and complete things. Maybe not fair to myself. There are a lot of things that I am responsible for and to that take priority over typing on this machine to post things that may not ever be read outside my own family and maybe not even then!

So, the best thing to do I suppose is to continue planning what I can, learning what I can, doing and creating what I can and accomplishing what I can, to the best of my ability. And, because I do profess to have faith, that striving to do all of that is what is meant for me.

Hmmm......that took more of a philosophical turn than I would have originally thought.

Outdoor Plans for the Horticulturally-Challenged

2011-06-03T22:40:00.004-04:00

In an effort to allow me to do other things in the yard and to save my poor wife's feet, knees, back or any combination thereof, we have hired one of the kids from the neighborhood to mow, bag and edge the lawn for the summer. This will leave me free to attack the following tasks (are you ready for this?):

Weed the recently-mulched front planting beds. We've made the decision to allow the low, small, dark-green leafed plants to grow and act as a ground cover. However, that still leaves all the other weeds that seem to be attracted to our weed-killer-free yard. Hmmm., go figure. A corollary is also to attack the crab-grass that has invaded the pavers between one of the planting beds and the driveway right beside the garage. I also want to transplant a leafy plant from one of the backyard planting beds to one of the front ones. Oh, did I mentioned that our yards around here are full of dense shovel-breaking clay and root systems that thwart most attempts at easy digging short of taking an axe to the ground?
Weed and mulch the planting bed on the side of the house next to the garage. I have no illusions this will be a big job, especially as I want to add another row of 12"x12" pavers to the existing paved area to allow me to set both the trash and recycling containers up against the wall. I also want extend the planting bed to meet our back fence. With the close quarters between our chimney and the back fence, it is difficult to mow and even weed whack in that area, so the thought is that if I put down landscape barrier and mulch my maintenance of that area will be easier (maybe, hopefully).
Weed and mulch (do you get the pattern here?) around the four impossible-to-kill plants surrounding our mailbox. (The other pattern is that the Munson's yard only features impossible-to-kill plants for the horticulturally-challenged.) I'll probably try some landscape barrier here as well.
I'm planning on adding some hostas (from these folks) to a couple small areas between the stairs coming off the deck at the back of house and house itself. Of course, more weeding and mulching involved here as well. Do I have enough mulch for all this?? Probably not.
I'm trying to find an inexpensive source for just plain-old bricks to use as planting bed borders.
One guess as to how much of this will actually be completed. This has evolved to a list of goals - but wait(!), there's more:
The previous owners of our house had placed a bed of small stones along the back of the house, from the deck to the corner. Over time, small plants and ground cover have invaded. I would like to dig the stone up, get rid of the invasive plants and restock the rock. Maybe add a border.
A rather general goal is get rid of some of the more quarrelsome weeds (like dandelions - anyone like an endless supply of dandelion leaves for their salads) and foster the growth of real grass instead. What a novel concept!
This last goal is the big one, the more expensive and expansive goal: eliminate the mud pit otherwise known as the lowest elevation of our yard. Unfortunately, our neighbors have chosen to build up their planting beds to the point that they are, in some cases, 12"+ above ours. This is blocking the natural flow of drainage out of our yard and even the drain that our one neighbor had kindly, at his own expense, put in on our side of the fence when he was putting in his own doesn't appear to be helping a great deal.

Well, we'll see how much of this is accomplished over the course of the summer, eh? I'll keep this updated as things progress....or don't.

What's In a Name? - Adventures in Genealogy - or - Holy Simmering Sauna, Batman, I'm Finnish!

2011-05-24T17:15:00.002-04:00

(Not Finnish as in "finish", but Finnish as in "of Finland" - or "of Soumi," as my new cousins call the place. More on that later.) As I recently commented upon, one of the reasons that my blog has suffered over the past six months has been due to the genealogical research that I've been working on for the past nine months. Becky and I signed up for Ancestry.com and we are making darned certain that the money we shelled out for it is put to good, enlightening and successful use.

ABC has "Brothers and Sisters"; Norway has "-(S)ens and -(D)atters"......

The journey has been fascinating, both rewarding and frustrating. Frustrating in as much as the one line of my family that I really wanted to be able to trace back is that of my father's Norwegian family, the Munson's. However, within the frustration that I feel, even that has been a learning experience for me. I've known for a long time that last names change, either by personal choice or official misrepresentation. Musical artist "Prince" and "Artist Formerly Known as Prince" is one extreme example of someone who did not start life with either one of those monikers. I've also known that the Scandanavian peoples practiced a method of naming that gave a person a first name, but then that name was followed by a two-part name that was not a family name as we understand it. Huh, you say?

Here's how it goes (my understanding): the first part is the person's father's name and the second part meant, depending on the person's gender, either "son of" or "daughter of". Traditionally this meant that a Norwegian named, for example, Lars Jensen, would be "Lars, son of Jen". Lars and his wife might name their son Svein, and he would be known as Svein Larsen. If they had a daughter, she might be named Jorna Larsen. This method of naming is called patrynomic. According to what I've been reading, Norwegians were not required to have a "family name" as we understand it until 1923. (I haven't researched it yet, but I would guess that a similar arrangement held sway in Denmark and Sweden until recent times as well.)

But, if it were all so simple. Two more complications stymie would be amateur genealogists such as moi. First is the tradition of giving a third name based upon the farm or location where one was born or worked. So if good old Svein was Svein Larsen Tveit in some records, that means that he was born or worked on a farm called Tveit or in a locality called Tveit. Over time this could change as well as eventually, at least, people would move around. The second is of a political/ religious/cultural nature. Norway was under the control and influence of Denmark for three centuries from 1523 to 1814, when as a result of the Denmark-Norway combo siding with the wrong side of the Napoleonic wars (i.e. with the guy of small stature with his hand always in his jacket, kids). Then the Swedes exercised a loose union with Norway until 1905. But the important point here is that during the Danish union, the independent Norwegian church was absorbed into the Danish church. Why does this matter? A lot of the clergy coming into Norwegian churches were Danes or, I am assuming, had a great deal of their education in Danish or in Denmark. So if the churches are doing most of the recording of important family facts, guess what is happening to original Norwegian spelling with all this Danish involved!? Yep, things are being spelled according to Danish language rules, not Norwegian.

So where does all this education bring me in my Munson quest? Did I say Munson? Well, unless we're Swedish, in which case all the family history and lore I know of would be uncermoniously dumped off the deep end, we are anything but Munson. What I have discovered is that my great-great-grandfather, Mons E. Monsen (Mons, son of Mon - originality there, eh?), was born in Norway in 1837 and came to the US in 1866, settling first in an area that attracted a large number of fellow Norwegians: Kendall County, Illinois. But, depending how his birth may be recorded in a Norwegian church, he may be any one of the following: Mons Monsen, Mons Munsen, Mons Monssen, etc.

A Finn-y Thing Happened on My Way to the Family Tree

There are some particularly tough genealogical nuts to crack on my Mom's side of the family as well. Among the more enigmatic family lines have been the Morton's, Nelson's and the Archer's. My second cousin Rich has admirably tackled the Mortons and Nelsons and made some headway (but none it seems to link to the family legend of being related to Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson, which would be really cool), but the Archers were a tougher nut to crack.

However, using Ancestry I got lucky and was able to trace the Archers back to a curious sticking point with John Archer, born 1656, and his wife. What rang the bells of strangeness was John's wife's name, which sounded very Swedish. Not that cross-cultural marriages didn't happen, but I hadn't seen any necessarily popping up much in the 17th Century. They were also from an area that was synonamous with the Swedish colony founded on both sides of the Delaware River in the area where Delaware meets Pennsylvania on the west (New Jersey being on the east). I couldn't make any headway with searches for John Archer, so then I turned to John's wife, Gertrude Bertilsdotter. I then discovered that she was married to a guy named Arian Johansson, at the same time as she was married to John Archer??? Huh??? Confusion reigned supreme. Then I concluded that I would Google this Arian Johansson and this led me to a couple of links which explained it all, including this one. Arian did something very American in response to first the Dutch and then the English taking control of what had originally been New Sweden by changing his name - several times!!(And actually, this had already been done for his family once before as the Swedes had a habit of bestowing "easier-to-pronounce" Swedish names on their Finnish subjects!) The entirely cool part is that Johan Grellson (John's father)is considered one of the forefathers of Swedish immigration to the US, and certainly some of the first Finns!

The Power of Two

The power of two, in terms of genealogy is a stunning thing. Think back to a question that you might have been asked sometime in your academic past that went something like the following. What would you rather be paid in a 30-day month: $1 million in a lump sum or one penny on the first day and have that penny double each day for the 30 days. It is amazing that by the 25th day that little ol' doubling process has surpassed the million. By the 30th day whoever is paying you would need to shell out $5,368,709.12. Pretty stunning, eh? Especially when you translate that penny to be you and each successive day is a generation. Those numbers racking up are the number of possible grandparents that you would have in that generation. Here's what the numbers of individuals looks like back to one's 20th Great-Grandparents:

Generation: Number of Ancestors:

1 (You!) 1

2 (Your parents) 2

3 (Your Grandparents) 4

4 (Your Great-Grandparents) 8

5 (Your 2nd Great-Granparents): 16

6 (Etc.) 32

7: 64

8: 128

9: 256

10: 512

11: 1,024

12: 2,048

13: 4,096

14: 8,192

15: 16,384

16: 32,768

17: 65,536

18: 131,072

19: 262,144

20: 524, 288

21: 1,048,576

22: 2,097,152

23: 4,194,304

24: 8,388,608

25: 16,777,216

26: 33,554,432

27: 67,108,864

28: 134,217,728

29: 268,435,456

30: (27th Greats) 536,870,912

See where this is going? The thought of one generation of grandparents adding up to almost half the current population of India is a daunting thought. The numbers also suggest to me that it is thoroughly impossible. To go back thirty generations should put one at roughly 1000 AD. The growth of human population does not run exponentially toward our ancestors, but rather toward us and our descendants. Most of the charts I've been reviewing of the growth of human population suggest that total world population was no more than 500 million at that time. This would hopefully suggest that the various lines of everyone's family trees begin to come back together at various points in history. A simple enough concept, but one that I had, until this point, never truly considered.

WAMB's 2nd Anniversary (a little late....)

2011-05-24T12:49:00.002-04:00

As usual, I'm late with something. In this case, it is my blog's second anniversary - April 24th in case you're curious. WAMB is my own little obvious acronym for (A) Web Around My Blog.

So, a little reflection. In some ways this blog is living up to my original goals for it. The first goal is to document our family history, especially for Kathryn, so that she can look back through these to refresh her memory, gain a new perspective and have a slice of history at the moment it was happening. The second goal is for me to become a little more Tech savvy, or at least Blog savvy. The third goal is to let loose the literary juices that I feel are in me somewhere, to stoke the creative fire. The fourth goal was be able to respectfully voice my opinion whether it be about my favorite topics, be it Disney, stamps, history, whatever.

Where I am not currently living up to my goals is the frequency of my posts. The fact that I have no fewer than 19(!) posts in various states of completion should indicate some difficulty in completing things. The only thing I can say is that most of them are not small posts and normally working on them exceeds all available "free" time. Ce la vie, got to have at least one goal per subject that needs extra effort, right?

Tonight however, not much will be accomplished blog-wise, as I am going to a Revit User Group meeting. (Revit is a program for creating 3D models and is particularly useful to architects and engineers, as it is becoming a professional standard.) Any further explanation should be left for a career-oriented post!

Goals Are Busting Out All Over!

2011-05-23T13:34:00.001-04:00

In spite of very blatantly falling short in one of life's goals, namely posting to this blog on a regular basis, I have recently set a number of goals for myself.

Not to be morbid about it, but perhaps with the big 5-0 staring me in the face in a lot less time than I care to admit, reality is setting in that I really do want to be around for a while.

Goal 1: 50 by 50. If that was a multiplication problem the answer would be a nice round 2500, but this is setting the bar for losing 50 pounds of waistline, thigh and any place else on my body fat has been victimized by a love of food and the righteously maligned middle age spread (cue scary, threatening music). Goal 2 should help achieve Goal 1.

Goal 2: Wii Are Active! A Wii Fit Plus will help with its built-in scale in the foot platform that comes with it and nominal gauges of calories burned and BMI (body mass index, for the uninitiated). But I'm not relying on that alone, last summer Kathryn was very keen on walks when I got home early enough and I'm hoping that will be the case again this year. Although I should clarify that she rode her scooter most of the time while I attempted to power walk to catch up to her. And in a stroke of welcome coincidence, last year the "wellness" packages that my firm's HR department gives out annually (to encourage us all to take care of ourselves a good deal better than most of us do), came with a small pedometer that one attaches to clothing at the waist and it counts either steps, kilometers, miles or calories expended. So at least I can get something of an accurate measure of how far Kathryn and I are going (all within the confines of the neighborhood).

Goal 3: Yard Beautification: This also aids Goal 1. This past weekend, for example, Saturday turned out to be gorgeous day and so the trees were trimmed (including a sizeable amount from one that shading one corner of the backyard enough to hinder grass growth), bushes were trimmed, a root of 1-1/2" diameter breaking the surface of the ground and hindering the opening of our backyard gate was ruthlessly hacked out with pickaxe (insert Tim Taylor grunt here) and Sunday morning I dug up more ground to expand our side yard planting bed. This all seems to expend a great deal of energy, and with this exercise you get to see the results immediately, a nice bonus.

Goal 4: Racing Around the World! Walt Disney World, that is. Once my body can stand it, with that self-inflicted, I mean self-directed goal 1 being achieved, I would like to participate in one of the marathons that they run at WDW. I'm not really picky about which one - 5K, Half Marathon, Full Marathon, participation and finishing will be what the measure of success is. I have not set a date for this goal yet, I'm going to judge by end of the summer results!

So those are the big goals. I have a few more minor ones in mind as well. Including one or two for this here humble little blog......

Spring Has Definitely Sprung!

2011-05-12T13:25:00.001-04:00

Just thought I would share the beautiful irises that our front yard has been graced with for the last couple of weeks. I will definitely miss them when they're gone. I planted them last spring, but we had nothing last year in terms of blooms and height compared to this year. I almost feel guilty for as little as I did for them and I'm rewarded with beauty!

Apple Core, Nothing More......

2011-05-10T13:07:00.000-04:00

This phrase always springs to mind when we head out for occasional excursions to Marker-Miller Orchards.

We first became aware of this establishment for pick-your-own fruits when our friends Chris and Stacy's church organized a pumpkin-picking expedition about three years ago.

We've been back a number of times now. It is not exactly close, being just west of Winchester, Virginia, about an hour and twenty minute drive from us. To be sure there are closer farms for pick your own, but we have simply found that this place has a lot to recommend itself. Plus, it is pleasant to escape suburbia for a while and the drive has been almost entirely stress-free.

So what's the draw for this place? To begin with, the kids love to walk the orchards hunting for their idea of the choicest specimens of whatever it is that we have come for this time: apples, pumpkins, berries, etc. All the orchards and fields are either immediately next to the store, where you buy your container/bag for picking, or a short walk. (The store also features other goodies to be discussed below!) There's an undeniable thrill to being outside and picking something directly off the tree, bush, vine. Plus it helps to establish for kids who normally only see food as something coming from the supermarket that there is trail that leads back to the simplicity of earth, sun and water. (Kathryn lucks out more that way in as much as Becky's parents and many of her family live in an area of farms.)

Of course, the thrill of picking only lasts so long for the kids, so then we usually move on to the large area with lots of playground equipment situated next to the store. A covered veranda wraps that side of the store and features rocking chairs (not a lot of them and they tend to be claimed fast) which are great to keep an eye on the kids as the playground occupies the land sloping away from the store. Further to one side is a covered pavillion with long rows of picnic tables. During the busy times, a band will be performing at one end of the pavillion.

Also during the busy season, they offer a "cow train" ride for kids around the property (a daisy-chain of literally enclosed cow-shaped wagons that kids can sit in, powered by a riding mower in front). When we go with our friends Chris and Stacy and their children, this is usually a must for all our children. For every age you can take a ride around the property in a tractor-led wagon. There are times when the cow train is free, otherwise both carry a price. I gripe about it, but with over $4-per-gallon gas it's certainly not a no-cost venture for them to offer.

Face Painting Offered at the Apple Festival last October 10th

I mentioned the store earlier. We can (and have) spent more than we should have in there. They offer various apple products (cider, dumplings, pie, etc.), but the mouth-watering one that most everyone seems to go for is the apple cider doughnuts. Ohh, these just delight my tastebuds, especially just out and still warm. They come out as a crusty cake doughnut, rather than a soft, smooth doughnut.

The apple butter is awesome as well. One of the local volunteer fire departments sets up a cooking station opposite the store during the height of apple-picking season to make it fresh. We've picked up tasty salad dressings locally made and bottled. Not that absolutely everything is perfect. I know that we've had a couple of misses, but I honestly can't currently remember what they were.
The "Cow Train" with the Apple Butter Tent Beyond

On top of this, we have always had good experiences with the people behind the counters. It is family-run and they appear to really care that the people who come to visit take home a good experience and will return. When Becky, Kathryn and I went berry-picking early in the season last year, the lady who waited on us told us quite honestly that she really wasn't sure how much was out there, that people the day before were saying that many of them didn't look ready yet, and, when we returned, she asked us whether we were seeing a lot, where generally along the row and which rows we were finding most of the berries. All this so that she could guide the people who came after us.

Soap-box moment here. This is one of those enterprises that is a local operation that offers good value for your money and a lot of fun, gets everyone outside, etc. I see it as a win-win.

Fatherhood Joys, Episode 19 - Kathryn Busts a Move

2011-05-02T18:00:00.001-04:00

[6 June 2011 - I renumbered this post to keep the numerical order of the Fatherhood Joy series correct. "Alles in Ordnung"! ]I learned this past Friday just how many dance moves my daughter has been picking up from various visual media (TV, DVDs, her friends, etc.).

Friday evening the Father-Daughter Dance was held at a local Junior High cafeteria by the Girl Scout Service Unit of which Kathryn's Brownie troop is a part. This was the third year that Kathryn and I have attended one of these and her moves have certainly progressed! With varying degrees of success, not only did she dance the Hokie-Pokie, Chicken Dance and the Macarena, but she also showing what I thought was solid sophistication with her arm and hand movements and also a little hip action! (I'm going to have to pay closer attention to this progress.)

Our friend Chris and his daughter, also in the same Brownie troop as Kathryn, accompanied Kathryn and I. As a matter of fact, we had gone shopping with them to find dresses for the girls. Somehow, which my wife will remind me of if I ask, we decided that the girls were going to go formal. And did they ever!

Kathryn had the full-length dress, in her favorite color purple of course, tiara, jeweled pins to help hold the rest of her hair, elbow-length purple gloves, pearl bracelet, jeweled stud earrings and white dress flats. Chris' daughter had a cream gown, roughly shin-length, tiara tighter than Kathryn's, but perfect for the bun that her mother styled for her hair, earrings, wrist corsage, and white open-toed shoes with heels.

The plan is for Kathryn and I to have some formal portraits taken with her in "the dress," but this hasn't been arranged yet. Thankfully, Kathryn carefully avoided any contact between her ensemble and the pizza and cupcakes offered for dinner/dessert at the dance!

Chris and I noted, in one aside concerning more recent pop music, that, at least with the girls assembled, a large amount of jumping in time to the music was involved among the 9-10-year-olds and older. Now I know that this happened definitely during my college years: e.g. the B-52's "Rock Lobster" and the Romantics' "What I like About You". Among the younger girls in attendance there were at least two spontaneous conga lines.

Kathryn seems to be coming into her own. While she came with her closest friend, she didn't spend her time exclusively with her, but rather divided her time with other girls who seemed to genuinely want to have Kathryn join them as much as she wanted to join them! A truly good night; indeed a joy!

Cell phone cameras have their limitations, but this shows motion! I will post a few more from the"good camera" when they're available....

Baltimore Comic Con '10, Featuring: My Debut on YouTube!

2011-05-02T13:34:00.001-04:00

[This and other posts are now being completed after my long hiatus. - Chuck] My, my. Summer came and went and the only thing I can say is how fast it breezed by with swim team for Kathryn, trying to keep up with the jungle formally refered to as our yard in between the numerous periods of rain which kept the grass green but also growing like bamboo (!), tackling the basement which we refer to as my office but more resembles a warehouse that tumbled haphazardly into a library (think a disorganized "Warehouse 13"- but then again, that warehouse isn't completely organized yet either...), and the ongoing genealogical research, an all-encompassing, engrossing passion that reignited at the end of the summer, so blogging came to a complete standstill.

However, I did get away for a weekend (thank you, dear wife) at the end of August (the 28th and 29th, to be exact) to visit friends Chris Barat and his wife Nicky, which included a visit to the Baltimore Comic Con. An additional Barat houseguest was Mark Lungo, another Disney fan among many other interests. It was my first time actually meeting Mark. He's an acquaintance from the days when Chris, Mark and I were all members of a little APA (Amateur Press Association) publication dedicated to Disney, but principally the shows of the "Disney Afternoon". In other words, these relationships go back about 17-18 years.

We did not arrive downtown all that early and so some time was lost while yours truly waited in a line much longer than anticipated to buy a ticket for the day. I did enjoy our few hours there, being able to reimmerse myself in the "fanboy" experience.

Major highlight of the Con for me: Don Rosa, relatively unknown (still) in this country, but revered in Europe as one of the greatest Disney Duck comic storytellers, was present at the show. It was a no more than a 10 minute wait to speak with him and that was only because the fellow speaking with him when we arrived was keeping Don in an involved conversation. (By contrast with our wait, when Don travels to Europe, I have read that the line to see him can stretch a city block.) We almost stopped the guy as he breezed by us, because, as we surmised, anyone involved with Don for that amount of time was probably someone whom one of us would know by name, since none of us recognized him. Don was pleasant as usual, but we didn't converse with him too long since now there was something of a line behind of us. I do know that some of the line was a red herring, since the line for Sergio Aragones (of "Groo" fame) blended into Don's and so there were people who would occcasionally realize they were waiting for "someone else" instead of Sergio. I wanted to scream at them.

We stopped by the Boom! comics booth, present Disney comics publisher, and I voiced a few of my concerns regarding the content of the Disney graphic albums, which are supposedly compendiums of four-issues of a particular title, but are currently only publishing the main story in each of the four (usually one story arcing over four-issues) and leaving out the secondary stories - hardly complete. [That situation has changed drastically over the months since I first began this post and will be covered later. - Chuck].

We concluded our time at the Con with a presentation by Mike Allred. An artist/writer whom Mark is very much interested in and with whom Chris is familiar. I had heard of the fellow - so much for my creds. Turned out to be both interesting and amusing.

A more in-depth telling of our weekend can be found at Chris' blog here.

The next stop was the Geppi Entertainment Museum (GEM), a short walk from the Convention Center and housed in one of the renovated structures next to Camden Yards, where the Baltimore Orioles play. As we were going to be meeting Chris' wife Nicky to go to an exhibition game between the Baltimore Ravens and the New York Giants later that evening at the Ravens Stadium which is just another relatively short walk from Camden Yards along a connecting promenade, the time at GEM was on the shorter side. We did view all the rooms and this is where I made my title apppearance. Two guys had a camera set up to film a promo with Museum visitors supporting the establishment of a fan network, something that Geppi is obviously backing and supporting. Sure, why not, I thought. You can view the results here, be patient, they actually made me the anchor segment (from 1:22 to 1:29)!

Civic Duty - or - Why DO I ALWAYS Want to Help?

2011-02-03T09:42:00.013-05:00

Since moving into our neighborhood in 2004, I've been attempting to be more involved with the governance of it. After all, we have a Homeowners' Association, a volunteer organization, that manages our dues, expenses, management of the community center, pool including the kids' swim team, tennis courts and common land and organizes community events. Sounds great, right? People from the neighborhood, who have a vested interest in what goes on here, are the ones making sure everything runs smoothly. There are committees for Land and Facilities Management, Architectural Control, Community Event, Civic Affairs and Swim Team; all staffed by volunteers as well. Scrreeech. Over the past two to three years that whole idea of volunteering seems to have hit a pocket of overwhelming apathy. A bunch of things have not been happening, from missed community events to architectural reviews. You probably see where this is going.

My downward spiral to full involvement started at a board meeting a couple of months ago. The call went out to have volunteers to be on a committee to look at some long-term financial difficulties that our community will have unless we can find a way to raise homeowners' dues past the infinitesimal amount that it is allowed to increase each year. The community by-laws are very restrictive and are written in a way to make changing things, regardless of need, very difficult. A corollary with that is the fact that, because of new laws that the state of Virginia passed regulating Homeowners' Associations, there are things of which we, as volunteers, are woefully ignorant. That could be a huge potential problem for us. So we're also looking for a management firm that could handle these things for us. That will also cost money. So I joined that, figuring that it would be better for me to join something affecting my personal bottom line rather than sit on the sidelines. The committee has had several meetings and I believe that our work is almost complete concerning how we would like to proceed (rather how we can proceed). We're also hindered by a rather difficult challenge to even achieve a quorum of residents.

Two weeks ago we had our annual homeowners' association review meeting. The board had found enough volunteers to staff all of the open (or soon-to-be open) board positions save one. One of my neighbors volunteered for the remaining spot, but also commented that he might not be the best choice due to the amount of travel he has to do for his work. That's when my conscience went to work on me. I raised my hand and heard my self saying something like, "I'll volunteer for the spot so that he doesn't have to be obligated to a position that he might not be able to do. Heaven help me." That got some laughs and my neighbor thanked me for stepping up to take him out of the spotlight. At the end of the meeting the board president requested the suckers, uhhh, volunteers to consider which of the open board positions they would like to fill.

Things being what they are with my life, I didn't in any diligent fashion gather an idea of what the duties of the open board member positions are. I knew that the secretary was leaving and that is a position that I've held before, but wasn't completely certain I wanted that one. To make a long story short, that's the position I ended up taking. Quite frankly, it's o.k., if for no other reason than I think it's been a while since anyone took serious interest in official record-keeping in the neighborhood and I would like to fill some of the gaps that I preceive are there. So I'm off on to a two-year mission to seek out and discover old records, meet new neighbors and boldly help my neighborhood like I never have before.

OK, So Just Where Have I Been?

2011-02-01T13:31:00.002-05:00

One would think I had just lost interest, but it couldn't be more from the truth. The truth is that my spare time has been taken up with a couple of other interests being pursued with some amount of urgency.

The first is an effort to finally tackle the family genealogy in a sustained way. Especially since a couple of relatives on both(!) sides of the family have already made a great deal of progress. I joined an online genealogical site which has a lofty goal of mapping as many of the world's ancestors as possible. It is called GenI and so far I have actually been able to make some connections introducing me to distant cousins, confirming and extending my knowledge of my maternal grandfather's and paternal grandmother's families in particular and connecting me with fellow amateur researchers in Norway who may be able to help me with my father's line, which at the moment I can trace no farther back than my great-great-grandfather. In the meantime, I have been able to identify 160 direct ancestors (i.e., generations of grandparents) back to two 14th great- grandparents, who came into this world in the late 1400's! It has exceeded my expectations of what I would be able to find but I still try to approach it with a view that confirming sources are required. I'm attempting to get other cousins involved to fill in other blanks. We have also been working on Becky's side. For some reason, hers have been more difficult to trace back too far (before the late 1700's, for example). It's frustrating, but every once in a while I attempt to Google one of her ancestors to see what might result. The goal of all this, beyond my own curiousity, is for Kathryn to know exactly what her heritage is. She has been showing an occasional flash of interest and that is certainly encouraging.

The other, seemingly perennial, activity is getting the rabbit warren that I call my basement office/library neat and organized. For every small effort accomplished comes a period of inactivity and piling up of "stuff" that renders the previous accomplishment throughly obliterated. I was somehow trying to accomplish it by Christmas - in the middle of a work deadline - somehow getting the tree up and a modicum of other decorations spread around the house - uh huh, that wasn't happening. So it continues......

As if I didn't have enough that I need/want to accomplish, I let my sense of civic duty rise up from its enforced slumber. Rather than let my neighbor volunteer what little free time he has due to a work travel schedule, I raised my hand to fill the remaining open seat on our HOA (HomeOwners' Association) board. As the meeting that we are to be installed is tomorrow; I really do need to decide for which of the five open board positions I would like to apply myself. Our HOA is all volunteer, which is evidently rare these days. Our neighborhood has some immediate managerial and financial challenges that will make the next few months exceedingly interesting!

I aim to restore my blog presence, but I think that might be a work in progress. 'Til next time.

Videopalooza Special: Embrace Life

2010-08-03T09:34:00.002-04:00

A friend sent me this link to a British public service announcement that is one of the most powerful arguments that I've ever seen in favor of wearing one's seat belt, short of showing disturbing actual results. (It's copyrighted and didn't offer an embed link, so please navigate to it through the link above.)

As much as we would like to think that we all do what we need to to keep ourselves safe, TV spots like this are a poignant reminder that we don't all too often.

What Does July 4th Mean?

2010-07-02T22:55:00.005-04:00

I got a reminder this morning of what a magnificent set of documents established the principles upon which this country is based. I normally listen to NPR's Morning Edition on my way to work. This morning they presented a reading of the entire text of the Declaration of Independence with on-air presenters and reporters each reading a portion of the work. Maybe it has just been too long since I have read or heard this document. It is a gem; that Thomas Jefferson could craft the draft and have it still come out to clearly and directly (for the English usage of the 18th Century - regardless of how voluminous it appears to present readers) after the shredding party that the Continental Congress apparently subjected it to, all in the heat of a Philadelphia early summer, is a testament to the intellect, tenacity and sheer stamina of these American intellectuals. They may have indeed been the cream of the crop of their society, prominent in either wealth or status, but the ideas that they set on paper had the power to transcend prominence to the least influential in society.

Creating and governing a country doesn't ever seem to be a neat and tidy affair and ours is no exception. But for anything that any critic can point out - whether justifiable or not - how the United States does not live up to its promise, I believe that in so many more ways it does live up to its promise and sometimes exceeds that expectation. Not only that, but it has a population that, I hope and trust, lives up to those ideals as well (at least most of the time).

There are a couple simple reasons why I believe so strongly in both the idea and the reality of the United States. One is that people from all over the world are still motivated to want live in the United States and to become citizens. A tangent to this is the question of legality, which I wish to remain a tangent for another time; but one aspect of both forms of immigration that is true is a financial one. But consider this - would that draw for the world exist without the types of freedoms we enjoy? Many countries now, or even for many years, have enjoyed similar types of freedoms. Thank goodness we don't have a monopoly on that for otherwise the world would be a dark and scary place. However, I believe we set the standard and it is that standard which continues to attract people.

The other reason is the strength of our constitution with its amendments, in particular the Bill of Rights, and our institutions, however tainted they may appear to be or have been at various points in our history, have been able to remove the stains of yesterday through the diligent work of people who respect and believe in their purpose and responsibility.

I think we all require the occasional reminder about what the strengths of this country are, in terms of who we are and for what we represent.

Here is the Declaration of Independence, as presented at ushistory.org:
(please note that I have some final comments to this post following the Declaration)

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

In having heard the document read this morning, the thought that occured to me is that half of the document is simply the list of grievances against the British crown. I had been thinking that it was less. But that means that the most potent of the ideals of self-determination, descendants of ancient Greek democracy, are contained in the first two paragraphs and the last. So relatively few words created a place on the map that has survived 234 years and a civil war and been an inspiration to so many in all that time. May the United States continue to thrive, to live up to and exceed its ideals, to redress and recompense when it does not, to remain a place that both its citizens and the world can regard with pride and honor.

Recommended Blogging 1 - Allie Brosh's Hyperbole and A Half

2010-07-01T13:15:00.000-04:00

I'm beginning yet another new series of posts today entitled "Recommended Blogging". The fact that I have created yet another series for my blog of course relates to the fact that, organizer that I like to consider myself, when I have the power to, I must create boxes, literal and theoritical, in which to put things. But I digress. (Amazing how, with only one sentence out of the gate , I can digress into a totally different subject. Oh, I'm doing it again...

One of my Facebook friends posted a link forwarded to her from a friend. So how many people it was passed through is completely unknown. However, unlike one of those childhood games about trying to pass a sentence verbatim from child to child and seeing how the original sentence comes out at the end, passing a link to a website, blog, etc. will remain the same. What a hoot this blog is. Allie Brosh types out Hyperbole and A Half, a skewed look at life with an amazing, wicked sense of humor. According to the interview with Allie done earlier and referenced below, she has been receiving up to 2 million visits a month - yes, that's million and month with a capital M, well, small m but you get the picture.

There were two of her posts really got my attention and tickled me to the point of laughing out loud. The first one is mentioned in the aforementioned interview, available here, while the post "How a Fish Almost Destroyed My Childhood is here.

The second one hit home if for no other reason than one of my colleagues and I had been having a good laugh over the hyperbole on a can of a "physical boost drink powder" he had gotten on the recommendation of another colleague. That in itself is worth a post and will get one soon. In the meantime, enjoy Allie's
Xtreme Muscle Product!

I'll be posting more of these as the spirit, time and energy move/allow me!

An Elephant in the Lobby

2010-06-29T13:23:00.001-04:00

One of the blogs that I follow is that of Brian Sibley. For those unfamiliar with the name, Brian wears many hats when it comes to literature, film and television and the visual arts in general: author, playwright, historian, critic, commentator and probably a dozen more descriptions that simply aren't occurring to me at the moment. So the stage is now set.

Recently Brian posted an article about a series of 250 approximately 7'-0" tall elephant statues that have been decorated with different designs and placed about London.

I posted back that this sounded and looked much like the 200 elephant and donkey (for the Republican Party and the Democratic Party) that were set up around DC about eight years ago. Artists had been invited to decorate each which was great with the innovative designs that they came up with, some were political, some not. At the end of the allotted public display time, the "Party Animals" were either donated or auctioned off to various interested parties. One of the parties must have been the owner of the building that I now work in, because one of the beasties has been placed in the lobby for some years now.

I have included a couple of photos of the wonderful Grecian urn design:

Right Side

Left Side

So Brian, this is for you and all the other elephant admirers out there!

Fatherhood Joys, Episode 18 - Summer Starts at the Pool

2010-06-29T12:33:00.000-04:00

Becky sent me this photo that I just felt I needed to share. She managed to catch Kathryn in the act of jumping into the pool. We have entered Kathryn into the swim team for her third summer and she seems to be improving slow but sure. (But the main thing, as always, is that she continues to have fun.)

Fatherhood Joys, Episode 17 - Sad Decision on Guinan's Future

2010-06-25T15:07:00.006-04:00

This week we came to a tough decision about the future of our quirky, lovable foxhound mix, Guinan. Although we love her, both because of and in spite of her quirks, it has become clear that she is presenting us with a Catch-22 situation. In order for us to keep our household going, pay bills and afford other things, like keeping a pet like Guinan, we need the income that Becky gets from her daycare. At the moment this is critical because she is down to one part-time child this summer. The catch is that, so far, when she has let any of the few daycare inquiries that she has received in the past six months know that we have a dog, the conversation dies a quick death on that statement.

Another sad part of this is that Kathryn's diligence in taking care of Guinan had been improving. It was still very hit and miss, but she was displaying some improvement. She was also still at somewhat of a loss as to how to play with Guinan, beyond having her chase the laser light around, which is Guinan's absolute favorite toy.

So, we have called the lady from whose rescue organization we adopted Guinan about bringing her back but so far we have not been able to speak directly with her. In the meantime, Kathryn wrote a note with accompanying picture to Guinan's future owner. It just broke our hearts:

This shows, on the left, Guinan's happy new owner, leading her off to her new home, while Guinan does usual whine, which Kathryn spelled "wihn". Kathryn is on the right, crying and telling Guinan that she'll miss her. Kathryn has left instructions in the upper right for the new owner: Befor (Before) you read the note write your name.

Kathryn's note says: Dear _________, If you want to buy my dog you'll have to take her laser light with you If (if) you're going to get my dog. If you're going to get my good dog you can cange (change) her name first.; Sinserly (Sincerely), Kathryn Munson; along with our address at the bottom of the note, Kathryn added: Don't forget to feed the dog.

Like I said, this made me cry. All I could tell her when I got home from work the day Becky told her was how sorry I was. It felt totally inadequate and I felt like a real-life Snidely Whiplash.

Fatherhood Joys, Episode 16 - Father's Day

2010-06-25T14:11:00.013-04:00

Kathryn presented me with a terrific card that she made in school. It was done as a classroom project with a partially completed cover and pages with leading questions ("I like my dad because......"). Kathryn has a way of making these things truly her own, if I do say so myself. I present the proof below:

Some translation is probably in order (spelling corrections in parentheses; pre-printed sections in quotes):

So awsome (awesome); "My Dad!"; You are so cool; "Happy Father's Day; June 20, 2010"; rocking Dad; "By:" Kathryn

"My dad looks the best when" he's going to work in a purpul (purple) shirt every time he's happy.

"My dad is the best father in the world because:" he's super funny and I think me and him are the best pickles.

"If I could give my dad something special just from me it would be" a Donald Duck shirt thats (that's) indogo (indigo) and a parir (pair) of purpul (purple) Jeans.

"The funniest thing I remember about my dad is" we allways (always) git (get) tickoled (tickled) by my mom in there (their) bed like tickoled (tickled) pickols (pickles) by a duck.

"My favorite thing about my dad is" we like to play soccer and basketball in the front yard.

"I like being with my dad most when" we are outside playing basketball or doing are (our) usewoll (usual) thing, reading. Two words The End

Star Award [see the green circle with the yellow star inside it on the right side of the front cover]

I never stated that the card made perfect sense, with references to Kathryn and I as "pickles" and Becky as a "duck:, but that's her sense of humor and imagination, at least at seven-years-old. And I love it.

The Incredibly "Open Intimacy" of the Web

2010-06-03T14:12:00.000-04:00

I signed a condolence book recently. Only it wasn't a real book and was instead a blog. This wasn't any old blog; oh, it could have been and the fact that it is in a language that I can just slightly comprehend would have been another factor making it unlikely that I would ever visit it. No, this was the suddenly well-publicized vacation blog of the family of the sole survivor of the recent Libyan plane crash. As many of you will already know, Ruben van Assouw, a young boy from the Netherlands, returning from a vacation with his parents and older brother in South Africa, survived when his parents, brother, and all the other passengers and crew did not.

Tragic, yes. But not really unusual as history has rolled on by us. The fact that unrelated strangers have, over time, found ways through the mail to connect personally with victims of tragedy is also not truly new or unusual. What is new and unusual, at least to my way of thinking, is the ease of connection (through a blog, once the address is posted publically once) and the immediacy of the connection (being able to post on said blog).

The condolences to Ruben had been posted to the blog almost as soon as the crash had been known, in numerous languages and from all over the world. It was quite stunning and quite touching. Some people might take a very jaded view of the messages; but I prefer to think of it as the ultimate in empathy, people trying to connect on a very basic level responding to emotions and situations that know no boundaries.

The following is what I addressed, simple and straight-forward:

Dear Ruben,

I am sorry that I cannot post my thoughts in "nederlands". There are many beautiful images and memories recorded by your father here, in addition there are many beautiful and thoughtful tributes of hope, love and concern. May all of these give you some comfort as you and your relatives grieve for your loss, as well as all the other families geieve for their loved ones as a result of this tragedy. There are many poeple all over the world, as you can see in these posts, who wish you well and wish for you a bright future in spite of your loss. God bless and keep you, from Herndon, Virginia, USA, Chuck Munson and family

It is one of many; intimate, addressed to one little boy, trying to help him to see a future beyond his loss.

Disney Musicians - in a Roundabout Sort-of Way

2010-04-28T12:54:00.001-04:00

As most anybody who knows me can tell you, I'm definitely in the club known as Disney geeks. (Let's put it this way: as tight as the finances are around Schloss Munson, my beautiful, all-knowing wife still plunked down $75 of our precious income to get me a charter year membership in the ueber-Disney-Geek club that the company revved up this past year, it's first official fan organization, D23 - ok, I digress, even so, to explain further: "23" comes from the year that Walt and Roy started the Walt Disney Studios, 1923.) That last bit had absolutely nothing to do with this post other than to indicate how my mind works.

The first group of musicians with a Disney connection of whom I am aware is the terrific Dixieland jazz band, The Firehouse Five Plus Two, which was made up of Disney animators, including Frank Thomas and Ward Kimball. There is a website devoted to the band (doesn't everyone?):Firehouse Five Plus Two Website and a Wikipage (doesn't everyone?):Firehouse Five Plus Two Wikipage. That is obviously quite a direct connection, but the point is that these guys received a fair amount of attention outside of the participation of Disney animators and the appearances that they made with the world of Disney.

This second one struck me because of the make-up, i.e. people who aren't necessarily known as musicians, but also have Disney connections. A couple of years ago Becky and I were watching something to do with the NBC show "Heroes" and caught actor Greg Grunberg (Matt Parkman) mentioning that he had formed a band with some other TV actors and it is called, most appropriately, Band from TV. That struck my funny bone, as these kind of things are wont to do, and I filed it in the little gray cells for future reference. I've since discovered that there are an amazing array of actors in the band including Hugh Laurie ("House"), Adrian Pasdar ("Heroes"), former "Bachelor" Bob Guiney, Jesse Spencer ("House"), and, here's the Disney connection, both James Denton and Teri Hatcher from "Desperate Housewives". The band has a website (doesn't everyone?): Band from TV Website

, and a Wikipage (doesn't everyone?):Band From TV Wikipage.

Anyway, just a Disney thought for the day. There are probably other musicians / bands that possess similar circumstances (oh, all those "kids" who have come out of the Mickey Mouse Club of the '90's and the Disney Channel more recently - but even then, some of those kids have been seemingly groomed for an "additional" musical career). Anyway, if you think of anyone who deserves to be in this list, let me know.

Fatherhood Joys, Episode 15 - Moments that Make Me Laugh ... and My Daughter Has No Clue

2010-04-28T08:09:00.003-04:00

Sometimes Kathryn comes out with things that, like I'm certain most children do, that make their parents laugh while the child has no idea why.

This morning is a prime example. I'm quite certain that Kathryn is aware of absolutely nothing about the 1979 film "Apocalypse Now". I haven't even seen it, but one line stands out from that with my generation I believe above all others: "I love the smell of napalm in the morning!"

So imagine my surprise when Kathryn came down to breakfast and stated most happily: "I love the smell of chocolate pop-tarts in the morning!" I had to turn around.

Marching Along, We're Adventurers! Singing the Song of Adventurers!

2010-04-20T22:02:00.006-04:00

"Say what?.........." Fear not, I hear you.

Yes, we're at another chapter of Chuck's imagination taking off. But at least I seem to be in good company. In a posting on March 29th 2010, Ryan Wilson, who publishes the Disney-oriented blog, the Main Street Gazette, gathered a group of like-minded bloggers together to ruminate on how they would bring back arguably the most missed entity of the now-closed Pleasure Island complex at Walt Disney World: the Adventurers' Club. For the original procedings between Ryan and his guests click here.

For the uninitiated, the Adventurers' Club was part-bar, part-lounge, part-scripted, part-improv comedy, part-burlesque, highly interactive and highly entertaining, all in the form of a club for self-styled adventurers forever stuck to our delight in 1937. The cast of characters running around the place were all of a quite particular type and the actors portraying them often played more than one role, so, for example, one night you might come in to see a portly butler Graves while the next night a svelte Graves put a whole different twist on the character and you realize that the cast member now Graves was Otis Wrenn the previous night and vice-versa! Entry to the club would find you in a circular gallery, stuffed to the gills with the "memorabilia" of club members and overlooking the main lounge, equally stuffed. The lounge was dominated in the center by a large statue of Zeus, I believe, in whose outstretched back hand a fishing rod had been cheekily added. Two small rooms, the Mask Room and Treasure Room flanked the stair as you descended to the Lounge. When you entered the Lounge the bar was to the left and the entry to the Library, where the larger shows of an evening would take place, was to the right. Smaller "events" would take place in the Mask and Treasure Rooms while the Lounge would play host to the "New Member Induction Ceremony". Everyone present at that time would become "members" of the club. The ceremony was conducted both by the club president, Pamelia Perkins, and the Colonel, a half body puppet dressed in a British officer's uniform (think India during the Raj), who was perched in an enclosed balcony located in a corner of the wall and who was moved and voiced by a cast member behind the curtain. At that time you would learn the club pledge, the club song (see post title!), and perhaps most well-known the club secret hand signal and salute "Kungaloosh!" (This happened to be the name of the favored alcoholic beverage at the club, but that is entirely beside the point!) You can find a fuller explanation of the club here. As noted in the referenced Wikipedia link, Disney has stated that props will mainly be headed to Hong Kong Disneyland where some form of the club will be part of its Mystic Point expansion. However, as it is near impossible for yours truly to get to Walt Disney World, let alone Hong Kong, it might as well be on the moon.

So, back to the original premise, which, by the way, has been traversing my brain practically from the day that I became aware that the club was closing. By necessity, we have to consider reason(s) Pleasure Island was shut down. First, they might not have been making enough of a profit (cough, gag, cough) to justify its continuation. (In the case of the Adventurers' Club, this may actually have had some validity. Beyond paying the entrance fee to the complex, which I recall ranging from $14 to $22 over the years, you could conceivably enjoy the club the whole evening and never be compelled to purchase one blessed thing.) Second, was having two major shopping areas - once Downtown Disney Westside was completed - separated by something that definitely did not fit into the mix that Disney was creating with a much wider range of stores and restaurants than with the old Disney Village.

Therefore, if the Adventurers' Club were to return in some form it would have to be located in an appropriate venue, guarantee an income that Disney could live with for providing an evening of entertainment populated by actors to a numerically-limited audience and give people the type of experience that made the club great to begin with.

My idea is to establish the club as an enhanced, plussed if you will, dinner theater. Offer two seatings an evening for a three-hour long experience; an earlier one slightly sanitized for younger ears and a later seating for the "looser" version. The premise is that the club has arranged to come to some tropical, exotic spot for the 1937 Annual Awards Banquet. (This suggests a new venue in connection with perhaps either the Polynesian or the Grand Floridian resorts - close to the monorail so you don't necessarily have to drive to get there. But maybe the best one would be Animal Kingdom Lodge, even if it is off the beaten Disney path!) The decor will suggest the 1930's tropics with heavy, dark woods, potted palms, lots of ceiling fans and lots of large wicker chairs, the type in which you look very small.

The evening will begin with an hour-long "social". At some point realization sets in with Pamelia that not all the guests are actual club members, and only club members can participate in the Awards Banquet. The only answer is to make everyone there a member of the club; this brings in the pledge, song, secret sign and salute. The Mask and Treasure Rooms can be reconstituted in an off-hand way on either side of the social area, with the idea that they were things brought along to make everyone "feel at home".

After the hour, guests are admitted to the "Grand Salon" for the banquet. The space is terraced down to the stage with semi-circular tables to afford views to all. I'm seeing this as a served meal as you would not necessarily want a large number of guests on their feet at a buffet line during the show. I would think it would be great fun if some of the cast, since they mingle with the guests anyway, end up seated with guests at some of the tables and served dinner, although, of course, at some point they will be called away to the stage to interact with the others. There could be elements of the Radiothon, the Cabaret, and the other Library shows brought into this, but especially the Balderdash Cup. Perhaps the Balderdash Olympics. I even thought of a new character that could be competition for Emil Bleehole: Perpigilliam O'Dontal, who, since her nickname is Peri, is - drumroll, please - Peri O'Dontal. HAWWW! Yes, cheesy, I know, but maybe just slightly clever?? A little? A "good" groaner? Anyway, the egos can be clashing to riotous levels as the time draws nigh to name the Adventurer of the Year. I would suggest that this gets mixed up so that it is not always the same character. That way you get a potentially different show when you come back. The presentation of the Adventurer of the Year would be the climax and the Banquet concluded with a singing of the club song and motto. So you Adventurers, how does that sound???

As It Happens, This Is One Way to Hear the News from Canada

2010-04-17T01:53:00.005-04:00

As It Happens, it is an incredibly wonderful call-out show from CBC Radio. You can get more background on it from either the Wikipedia link that began the first sentence or the CBC Official Site. One of the things which I have always enjoyed is the off-hand, tongue-in-cheek, occasionally downright humourous, don't-take-yourself-too-seriously attitude with which they approach many stories, balanced with a dead-on, respectful, very serious handling of stories that require it.

American Public Radio offers the program to public radio stations and one of our local ones carries it. So when I'm near a radio at the right time of evening, I get to listen. One of my favorite spots in the program is the very top of the program when they give the program synopsis. Up until this evening I was completely unaware that this also serves as the program description on the official site. The normal opening takes one of the synopses, usually the final one, and creates a pun prefaced by: As It Happens, the "insert day of the week here" edition. Radio that ....

So the following is today's opening, straight from the website, thank you to the CBC and As It Happens:

A pop star avoids the hit parade. In Bangkok, a daring escape by a singer-turned-protest leader marks another big day for Thailand's Red Shirts.

Three ringleader circus. British voters endure their first-ever televised election debate -- from which a surprise contender emerges the victor.

Opening a border behind closed doors. The U.K. arranges a secret deal to grant refugee status to beleaguered Jews in Yemen.

The only-ness of the long-distance runner. Comic, actor, philosopher and marathoner Eddie Izzard is a man like no other -- as you'll hear in our feature interview.

Quantum of soulless. When they're too busy to read the fine print, thousands of shoppers wind up selling their souls to a British online store.

And...he ran a grass-roots campaign -- from underneath. A Tennessee town elects a dead man mayor.

As It Happens, the Friday edition. Radio that pays its respects to the body politic.

Silly, yes, but I laughed out loud.

Silliness aside, I enjoy hearing about the latest happenings in our great northern neighbor. I am of the opinion that while most Americans at least know that it's there, we tend not to pay very much attention to it. Canada is a great friend; they know an awful lot about us - if for no other reason than being the US we are, however well-meaning, loud and boisterous and bit overbearing. I think we would do well as individuals to know just a bit more about what is happening with our neighbors, especially Canada - eh?

Blog Interrupted

2010-04-07T17:53:00.002-04:00

As I suspected would happen, life and work have "interfered" with my time to devote to social-networking and blogging activities, at least for this month. I'll try to post something as I have several posts in the works, but I'm not going to promise anything and just surprise myself if I can. I will at least be paying attention to what's going on out there in the virtual world.

Fatherhood Joys, Episode 14 - The Seasons Through My Daughter's Eyes

2010-03-22T13:37:00.003-04:00

The other morning Kathryn, after writing the new day in on her calendar (she does this every day - on the surface that might seem redundant, but she always embellishes the numbers that she writes), stated that she loved all the seasons. I thought that was worth an explanation, so I responded "You do? What do you love about each?"

"Yes, I do," she replied. "Well....I love spring because of the flowers, I love summer because of the beach, I love fall because of the color of the leaves and I love winter because of sledding!"

The simplicity of it was just wonderful. May she never lose that.

Cubicle, Sweet Cubicle

2010-03-17T12:45:00.001-04:00

I don't think I have ever explained fully to any of my friends and relations exactly what my job entails, how our field office operates and what we do at Dulles Airport. What has that got to do with my cubicle? Nothing directly, but it will help understand the progression of events. The project that I was hired by SOM to work on was the People Mover Station at the Dulles Main Terminal. By the time I was hired, the design of the station was long done, however part of SOM's contract was to supply technical support during the construction phase. Now the airport does have a contract with a joint venture firm to provide construction administration, but in this case they wanted the architect to have a continuing presence to answer contractor questions, review submittals of material and building systems from the contactor, etc. We vet all this though the people working for the airport's construction administrator, PMC. Our cubicles are in their office, so we are surrounded by the individuals for whom we work - it's a good thing. As our station project winds down (our work here continues, however, since we have the revision and addition to the East and West Baggage Sorting Basements), PMC has been downsizing, consolidating their own operations here, and we've been affected by that process. So about five months ago we relocated to different cubicles about two aisles over from where we were and where we had been for at least the previous five years. Two of the cubicles that we were moving to, mine and another colleague's, had actually been an open production area. We did not have a wall present between the cubicles or walls on the aisle. For all this time we have kept our furniture, etc. in a temporary state of arrangement, waiting for the panels missing to create our absent walls. Last week our fearless leader, bless his soul, got that process on the front burner and we (my colleague and I, with the help of our incredibly handy admin) constructed our walls over the course of two evenings. So, I've let a wall come between me and my colleague. An actual physical one. And even then it's a good thing. Even if I can no longer look my colleague in the eye.

The best part is that I have never had a work area so organized and neat before. I am a happy camper and here is the proof:

Fatherhood Joys, Episode 13 - Sunday Afternoon with Kathryn

2010-03-15T18:34:00.001-04:00

Sunday afternoon I had the pleasure of being able to spend a few hours with my daughter. Yes, I see her everyday, but lately our interactions have been more about what she has to do, making sure homework has been done and a rushed storytime at night because I have once again gotten home to late for the more-leisurely read that we (Kathryn and I) both enjoy.

This time was afforded to Kathryn and I while Becky took our friends' daughter Caitlyn home following a sleepover for Kathryn the night before. Caitlyn and her mom had come over on Saturday, along with another Brownie mom and her daughter, as the two mothers needed a convenient place to practice what they were going to demonstrating for a "try-it" at an upcoming Brownie meeting: cake decorating. But I digress - Becky and I suggested that we keep Caitlyn overnight when we discovered that Caitlyn's siblings and dad had been attacked by the same stomach bug from which Caitlyn had already recovered. So, on Sunday, after church, errands and lunch, Kathryn and I were on our own for a few hours. (Becky was remaining at our friends' home for a while to help out with a few things.)

It being a rainy Sunday out, we stuck fast to indoor activities. Kathryn asked if we had "The Prince and the Pauper" (Mickey Mouse-version) on DVD and added that, "you know, Daya, I still like that." Pulling out Disc 2 of the Mickey Mouse in Color, Vol. 2 - Walt Disney Treasures DVD set led to us watching not only the aforementioned "The Prince and the Pauper", but also "Mickey's Christmas Carol" and the seemingly little-known-outside-Disney-animation-buffs short entitled "Runaway Brain" - an awesome eight-minute (+/-) short that has some great in-jokes. "The P and the P" led to, of all things, a discussion about lines of succession (when a monarch dies, who inherits the throne), "Mickey's CC" had a discussion about time (what makes up an hour, what makes up a year) and "RB" had a discussion of monsters, and other scary things.

A little action seemed to be in order next, so Daya fired up the Wii. At Kathryn's request, I put in the Wii Resort Sports disc. First we played tennis. My crafty daughter has figured out that if you're playing mixed doubles, and you and your partner are both sides, then you can't lose! She and I will always win against her and me! Brilliant..... Next we played baseball, which I won, but not by much. Then it was back to Tennis for a round of training exercises, at which Kathryn skunked me. She really did. Of the roughly five rounds that we played, I won one. Then we went to the golf training exercises. There is one where the green and also an island in the water hazard (read "lake") is overlayed with a series of concentric rings. Each ring represents a point amount, the highest is at the center (100 pts.) and the lowest is at the circle furthest out (10 pts.). You acquire points by hitting the rings with your shot. Kathryn earned 160; I earned 80. Kathryn was actually very gracious in defeat, "It's ok, Daya, you can win." She was also magnanimous in victory, "You got 80, Daya! That's good." I know that she's not always like that with her peers, but the good sportsmanship she exhibited here was gratifying, to say the least.

Becky came home shortly after we finished the game and the normal family dynamics were restored. But it did feel good to have that little bit of time that we didn't have to race through. I think as parents that kind of one-on-one time is incredibly important. It seems exceedingly difficult to always have to cram it into the day-to-day time and then the messages and lessons can easily be lost. Have a Sunday afternoon at least once in a while; you'll find yourself wanting more of them.

Videopalooza, Part 3 - French Racers, Carol and Julie Laughfest, Thrillin' All Over and a Serious Word about Free Speech

2010-03-12T13:33:00.000-05:00

"More YouTube discoveries / things I've been clued into" is the easiest way to describe this.

"C'etait un Rendez-vous"
This wonderful little film by Frenchman Claude Lelouch "C'etait un Rendez-vous" migrates occasionally to the site, in defiance of copyright regulations, which occasionally appear to get it pulled (including the posting to which I was going to link). Regardless, even though it is now over 30 years old, it is fascinating to think that it could have been filmed even in 1976 (or was it '77?) without any casualties or massive fines levied on someone/anyone/everyone associated with it, although supposedly Claude himself was arrested after the release. Beyond the daredevildry displayed, it frames a moment in time in the life of one of the world's great cities. The nine-minute +/- plot is simple: a high-speed drive across Paris, done without the cooperation of the city early after daylight one Sunday morning and also done without stopping at a single one of I'm guessing 150+ traffic lights (numerous near misses) in order to reach the steps in front of the Basillica Sacre-Couer on the Montmartre heights where a beautiful woman awaits....The driver passes by a number of well-known Parisian landmarks and one of these days I'm going to figure out the route taken! If it is legitimately released, it is well worth viewing in spite of the 30-plus year aging!

Julie and Carol - My Entertainment Dream Team
Anyone who knows me well, will figure, if they don't outright know that I am a huge fan of both Julie Andrews and Carol Burnett. They are two of the very few celebrities with whom I think I could have a meaningful conversation if we ever found ourselves stuck in an elevator. They both do exemplary work, seem to be down to earth (just to be clear, IMHO Julie is proper and one can definitely be proper and still down to earth - the two are not mutually exclusive) and are not chased by scandal every time you turn around. A highlight of my enjoyment of these actresses is that they have actually done three television specials together. Bless someone for putting some highlights and segments to YouTube as I had only seen the last one they did and that was years ago. In addition, I discovered a number of times outside of those specials where these two stellar performers entertained audiences together.

From their first special Live at Carnegie Hall in 1962:

"History of American Musical Comedy"

"The Pratt Family Singers" - a send-up of The Sound of Music before Julie was approached to do the film version!

"From Big D"

"Meantime" - Carol's solo

"The Nausiev Dancers"

"You're So London"

From their second special at Lincoln Center in 1971:

"We Couldn't, We Shouldn't, We Mustn't, We Can't Misbehave Tonight"

"1960's Medley - Part 1 of 2"

"1960's Medley - Part 2 of 2"

"Closing - Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie"

From their third special Julie and Carol: Together Again in 1989:

"Opening"

"The Tea Party"

"Together Again Medley"

"Phantom of the Opry"

"Mamas Rap"

"Closing"

From the 1999 Tony Awards:

A medley before introducing the cast of "Fosse".

Thrillin' All Over!
About two years ago our admin at work had us in stiches with this amazing effort that a wedding party did to choreograph a dance for the entire wedding party to perform to Micheal Jackson's "Thriller". Of course, then I started noticing that popping up everwhere, including a Philippine prison of all places on the face of the Earth! Here is the original wedding version:

The Philippine Cebu prison inmates' version:

And here is a Micheal Jackson tribute that the inmates did shortly after his death last summer:

A Few Notes on Free Speech....
So now: what about free speech? All the "access" and virtual soapboxes has me mulling over what free speech means in the 21st Century and how we react to an explosion of platforms. The availability of self-publishing, blogs, vlogs and all manner of personal expression, whether on actual paper or more often virtually, has seemingly burst into life in the last dozen years. I still tend to look at it in reverential terms as a phenominally good deal for free speech and aiding the widest possible spread of content. It is however, like so many other things, something that needs to be tended and nurtured for the right balance. Too wide open and anyone can say anything regardless of the truth; too tightly controlled and one can say nothing regardless of the truth. Please don't misunderstand - I believe that there is nothing under the sun that can't be talked about. I only have three caveats to that: I prefer not to attempt serious discussion with parrots or brick walls, I cannot abide by anyone who knowingly distorts the truth and I prefer that the topic be appropriate for the age of any potential participants. With the first caveat, I'm basically saying that I find conversing with those on the fringes of society, either socially or politically, regardless of direction, difficult. I'll attempt it, but it is usually the only time I am pessimistic regarding the impending results. With the second, one usually gets deep into refutation of one or more of the others falsehoods and the original topic is all but lost. The third one should be blindingly obvious: there are topics, e.g., that my seven-year-old simply cannot grasp and that I will not subject her to (we're having enough trouble getting her to understand the mathematical principles of addition and subtraction). Enough said?

The Walt Disney World Fantasyland Expansion - Good Day for Princesses, Bad Day for Comics

2010-03-11T12:26:00.001-05:00

The buzzing of confusion in you, my potential visitor to this blog, regarding my title resounds through my blog. The reason for this title is that the news of the expansion of Fantasyland - and the necessity to remove Toontown in order to accomplish that - removes what I believe are the two remaining direct links to the world of Disney comic books in the park.

One is the statue of the founder of Duckburg, Cornelius Coot, created by Carl Barks back in the 1950's. Dear old Cornelius was refered to in more than one story from Unca Carl's prolific imagination. (It is my intention to include my photos of these items once I find them in my semi-organized collection.)

The other is a tribute both to Unca Carl and Clarence "Ducky" Nash, Donald's original voice. It is a street sign that allows you to stand at the corner of "Barks and Nash" and "Hyperion".

Now you might very well say that getting upset about the removal of these items is insignificant compared to the endeavor being undertaken. But please consider that these are the only things - beyond the occasional Uncle Scrooge pins and Christmas ornaments and the seasonal Uncle Scrooge character appearances, that refer back to the comics at all.

With a higher profile finally being given to the comics within the Disney Company's various efforts to reach fans and collectors, including, as noted in one of my earlier posts, promoting the current comic licensee, Boom! Studios (you could still knock me over with a feather as far as that goes, but I'm certain that there are reasons), one could find reason to hope that Disney comic (read Duck and Mice - because Boom! also is publishing Disney series based on the Monsters, Inc., Cars, and The Muppets, and they are obviously already represented in the Parks!) references would be reestablished in at least a couple spots.

Therefore I greet this news and the latest news that ground has already broken for the expansion with mixed emotions. My daughter Kathryn is going to enjoy visiting Princess homes - at least I presume that she would still be enjoying that at opening.......

Why We Need Space

2010-03-08T12:30:00.001-05:00

Any discussion about space (outer, that is) usually involves a dollars and cents component. I'm not embarking in that direction, although it most certainly involves it. This is more about the importance of space exploration from an inspirational and generational, if you will, point of view.

In the interest of full disclosure, one of my former college roommates has spent the last twenty+ years in Texas working in the space program. (How many people can tag their email honestly with the line: Why yes, I am a rocket scientist!)

To bring you up to speed in case you are unaware, the US has run up a massive debt to attempt to get our economy back on track. Now the government budget is attempting to close some of the gap on all this debt, old and new, and one of the places that is being looked at for actual cuts is NASA. Nothing new here of course and it is, according to what I have read, no less than 4000 jobs.

I posted the following to my friend's Facebook page after he posted this:

It's good to know that this isn't just pie-in-the-sky stuff under threat - it's work already done as well. Always seems like there are always people, politicians or otherwise, who look to exploration, one of life's greatest inspirations, as a place to balance whatever it is that they feel is in need of balance, whether it be financial or otherwise. I know this is a tough time (boy do I know), but we've done other great and inspiring things in times of hardship. Gutting the human spaceflight program / Constellation is short sighted - I am not aware of anyone else slashing their space budgets right now and no offense to the Europeans, Russians, Chinese and Japanese or anyone else with a space program - I simply feel that we have a lot more to lose in what our program has accomplished for the past 50 years.

He posted an additional link afterward to an editorial by former astronaut Walt Cunningham in the Houston Chronicle and noted that there is also a website GoBoldlyNASA which addresses the importance of keeping the space program going and focused.

In my reasoning for supporting the continued exploration of space, both manned and unmanned, is frankly that it is something that humans have always done, no matter what else is happening. It is not irresponsibility and misdirection of resources as much as it appears to be to me a fundamental element of our human psyche. We are pre-programmed to explore the unknown or the little understood. We do this exploration in different directions from the small (witness the particle accelerator in Europe) to the deep (continued investigation of the seas and oceans) to the far away (space). Exploration with immediate, tangible goals (solving world hunger, diseases, etc.) is obviously no less an important component of this. I feel that they are all part of a whole that together lead us forward. Sometimes the progression is less than perfect, but what about the nature of human beings is perfect, or anything that could be considered perfect? The point is the forward movement on all fronts, both the tangible and intangible.

LOSTie Questions of the Week - March 5

2010-03-05T18:27:00.001-05:00

This is the second in an especially limited series considering that the mysteries surrounding this show is nearing its close and the questions will either be answered to our satisfaction ....... or not - but it has been a wild ride so far and I have never experienced a television program that has left me dumbfounded about its ultimate explanation after FIVE seasons!

1. I would truly like to know why the NTL (see last week's questions) is being done. I think a lot of us thought that it might appear at some point -- but why???

2. What deal did Richard Alpert make to do a Portrait of Dorian Gray number, did he arrive on the Black Rock or is he still older than that?

3. Now that MIB (aka Flocke on Lostpedia) has taken care of the temple - i.e. killed everyone who wouldn't see the light (except for Kate - remember that CooCoo Claire now wants to kill her - and Miles, Ilana, Frank Lepidus, Ben and Sun - who seemed to be able to hide from ole' Smokey behind the big thick wall that I would have sworn would not necessarily protected them - what is he planning on doing with all the rest of the Others?

4. Dealing with my Question 3 last week regarding Bernard and Rose, someone on Lostpedia suggested that they are Adam and Eve! And that thought has more than a few takers. Another supposition is that it is Bernard and Rose's skeletons in the cave that Jack and Hurley go into. The thought being that if they didn't leave the island, being in their 60s back in 1977 would put them well into their 90s today. The back and forth of time travel is making my head spin....

5. Regarding last week's episode as well: who is coming to the island per the message from JG (Jacob's Ghost)? Widmore? He probably is still looking for it now that it's gone all walkabout.

Any takers on these?

Fatherhood Joys, Episode 12 - An Actress Is Born?

2010-03-05T12:45:00.011-05:00

Serious drama it was not. It was giggles, waves, lines said loudly, lines said softly, lines perfectly delivered, lines horribly botched. It was studied distance, intense concentration and bored fidgeting.

It was, above all else, a roughly six-minute-long play presented by the Brownie troop of which Kathryn is a member. The parents were invited to the last portion of their normal meeting to experience the play about two girl scouts visiting Thailand, that the girls had already performed at Thinking Day, a girl scout gathering held recently at one of our local high schools. Each troup attending was supposed to pick a country with a standard of living which is less than the US - in the idea of "be thankful for all we have" and "how can we help people".

The display that the troop created for Thinking Day containing facts, photos and items from and about Thailand.

A thai Tuk-tuk (taxi).

Kathryn portrayed a tuk-tuk driver. A tuk-tuk is an open-air, mostly three-wheeled taxi in Thailand. She "drove" - with the aid of a Wii game system steering wheel - the "visiting" Girl Scouts around. When the visitors commented that the 200 Thai Baht that was their tuk-tuk fare was only about US$7, Kathryn informed the audience that the average Thai earns 1/8th of what the average American does. Therefore, she couldn't charge more for fear of losing all her business and her livelihood. She then "drove" off to allow other representatives of Thailand interact with the girls.

Kathryn (photo above) as the tuk-tuk driver with the two girls portraying the girl scout tourists - the girl on the left is our friends' daughter Kaitlyn. One girl was a Thai dancer, one was a Buddhist monk, etc. I think they all did a find job and bias has nothing whatsoever to do with that opinion.

The girl in pink portrayed the dancer.

The girl in orange portrayed the Buddhist monk.

At the conclusion of the play, each girl held up a sign extolling an action that one could perform to help someone in another country. Of course with Haiti and Chile's earthquakes still fairly fresh in the news, it was a poignant reminder of how fortunate most all of us truly are.

Fatherhood Joys, Episode 11 - The World of School Reports

2010-03-01T00:16:00.002-05:00

The growing pains of school are upon Kathryn. Last Monday we completed what became a family project/report (as opposed to something for which Kathryn was solely responsible). Nonetheless, she had a hand in the process at every step. The children in her class had been given an animal to study, write and present a report, and also create and present a representation of the animal in its habitat. Her animal was the red fox. The truth be told, we pressed Kathryn to work on this during her snow days, when she had plenty of time. Of course, she chose to do anything but!

Becky finally got her into gear at the end of the previous week, bringing home a book from the library to supplement the information and pictures that Becky had found on the web. However, we still had one planning hiccup last weekend when our friends' kids came over for a sleepover because of a Brownie event on Saturday and then taking the kids to the indoor pool and then Sunday they were all gathered at our house for lunch, games and dinner. Needless to say not much got done. But with Kathryn's attitude for much of the weekend, I'm not certain much would have been accomplished anyway. Yes, I can still say I love her even after a weekend of being constantly just simply "out of sorts," ornery, disobedient and then, of course, the next moment being the funny, silly, sensitive daughter whom we know and love!

The bottom line is that with a bit more practice because her regular teacher was absent Wednesday and Thursday, she didn't do her presentation until this past Friday. She was able to relate much of the information in her report in a clear and informative manner, according to Kathryn.

Fatherhood Joys, Episode 10 - What I Want to Be When I Grow Up

2010-02-28T21:40:00.007-05:00

Kathryn and I were in the middle of story time the other night, reading a delightful twist that Disney Publishing did several years ago for a number of the "princess" stories, a series called "My Side of the Story". In it the heroine and villain tell the tale from their point of view and the authors have most delightfully skewed them quite a bit. This set-up is just to lead us to the fact that while reading Cinderella (Cindy)'s version, Cindy revealed that she actually wants to be a veterinarian.

Soooooo, I segued that into, "So pumpkin, have you thought about what you'd like to do when you grow up?". She responded that she wanted to be a "pixie princess veterinarian". My first non-verbal reaction was well that's a niche market. I went through a very deliberate dissection of her response with her.

1. Humans don't normally become pixies. Humans are humans. Pixies are pixies and besides which, as cool as pixies are, they're kind of stuck in storybooks. One down.

2. Well, while princesses certainly do exist; Kathryn wasn't born one, so princess by birth is out. She accepted this - rather well I thought. That leaves our favorite other option: princess by marriage. I had to concede that there are certainly princes out there for young girls to consider marrying. However, there are very few of them, we don't actually live near any, and we definitely don't run in the same social circles as they do. It is not inconceivable that she would meet and fall in love with a prince, but hmmmm, highly unlikely. This may have been a touch over her head, but it was earnestly presented and she accepted it. Two down.

3. This was the much more reasonable suggestion. I did warn her that it takes a lot of education, but compared to the other two, that really wasn't highly discouraging to her - which was good.

Then she amended her choice: veterinarian scientist. It seems as if she's all about the test tube mixing and what "color" combinations she can develop. Did you know, that when you mix raspberry red and blue, you get raspberry green that simply fizzes up instead of becoming the next Mount St. Helens? Fascinating the chemistry theories of the seven-year-old mind.....

This was interrupted by trying to finish storytime in an attempt to get Kathryn to bed only slightly late. However, I was glad that I had asked the question. I get such illuminating response from my daughter when questions are asked in the middle of a bedtime story.

LOSTie Questions of the Week

2010-02-28T21:24:00.001-05:00

This is an especially limited series considering that the mysteries surrounding this show is nearing its close and the questions will either be answered to our satisfaction ....... or not - but it has been a wild ride so far and I have never experienced a television program that has left me dumbfounded about its ultimate explanation after FIVE seasons!

These are not necessarily questions that pertain to this past week's show, simply ones that come to mind that may or may not pertain to this week's show.....

1. Are we going to find out why Desmond disappeared from the seat next to Jack on the "Normal Time Line" (refered to hereafter as the NTL)?

2. OK, so Claire has gone nutso with the "Sickness" and has Daddy Deadest and Smoke Monster/Locke (SML) looking after her. Does this mean that she's a candidate who has signed up with SML, like Sawyer/Ford has?

3. If everyone who is out in the wilderness comes down with the Sickness eventually - how does that jive with Bernard and Rose, who seem perfectly content to live their lives out in bucolic simplicity on a part of the island that no appears to visit .... ever?

4. Jacob and MIB (Man In Black): are things really as they seem that Jacob represents good and MIB represents evil? Or are we just getting jerked around again?

5. I saw one suggestion at Lostpedia that Jack will be the new Jacob and Sawyer the new MIB. But would that make for a satisfying conclusion?

6. And what in the world is the story behind the NTL showing the island under water??? Can anyone cut through that riddle?

7. Who is David Shephard's mom?

8. MIB refered to the fact that the people who come to the Island eventually kill/destroy and Jacob states that he is going to be proven wrong. Are they playing some global game of cat and mouse, or is Jacob, assuming that he is good, trying to win a struggle with MIB about the ultimate character of man, whether man is inherently good or evil by his very nature?

So, any theories, anything I may have obviously missed, feel free to chime in.....

Compendium of Useless Knowledge, Part 1: What is Heinz57?

2010-02-20T21:38:00.000-05:00

My sincere thanks to colleague Mike Scalingi for passing the accompanying image along and inspiring this new, occasional series of posts to cover the interesting knowledge that one may never ever use but is cool anyway .... at least to some of us .... well maybe a few of us .... well ME at least!

If you've ever taken a look at the labels of Heinz brand products in the supermarket, you may have noted that each label features a prominent "57". You may also have caught that it references "57 varieties". Fine enough, but 57 varieties? 57 varieties of what?

Thanks to Mike, who discovered this somewhere on the web; it turns out that at some point in the company history, some bright young (or old) thing hit upon including the number of variety of actual products that the company produced. It is a way to generate interest in a product by adding a mystery to the label. But I guess when you produce above or below 57 products, the name is going to stick because you can't go around replacing labels everywhere!

So here's the list in all its glory (apologies for the fuzzy quality of the image):

Happy Valentine's Day

2010-02-14T03:01:00.001-05:00

I posted this for my wonderful wife on Facebook and thought it was worth preserving here:

Picture accompanying this is what awaits my sweetie when she comes downstairs tomorrow. Not much, but this is a year for not much. Fortunately love and friendship only need two people to happen, so in that regard, we have all we need.

The Unbearable Heaviness of Snow

2010-02-13T19:44:00.005-05:00

One of the things so aptly demonstrated by the snow last week is how nature can so easily overwhelm the efforts of man, and it hit a little close to home, or rather work. One of the more spectacular events in this regard was the collapse of the Dulles Jet Center. This large metal frame hanger and terminal for private flights sits less than a quarter mile from my desk at work where I am currently typing this. Becky and I first heard about this while watching the storm coverage last Saturday; watching in not a small amount of disbelief the remote feed from the on-site reporter. At least two sections of this L-shaped building collapsed and evidently the resulting strain on the rest of the structure led the authorities to condemn the building. When I've passed by it since, it appears that even more of the building is suffering from a slow disintegration.

Ironically, since we are a group of architects here, our opinion when this building went up only a couple of years ago, was what a disservice it was to the airport entry. The entry highway, going all the way back to Dulles designer Eero Saarinen's plans for the main terminal, was a gradual unveiling of the terminal as one got closer. This building just totally wipes that away and totally ignores it. Of course, aesthetic concerns get very short shrift these days and the Jet Center is situated at what is, for private aviation, an incredibly convenient spot not all that far from the main terminal and adjacent to one of the north-south runways.

Architectural considerations aside, the visual results of the collapse are impressive. One of my colleagues forwarded this article from AVweb, an aviation news site, which includes some pretty telling photos with very unnatural position for both planes and structure!

By Russ Niles, Editor-in-Chief

The bill to general aviation from last weekend's massive snowstorm on the east coast could hit tens of millions of dollars and most of that could come from the partial collapse of one building at Dulles International Airport. As we reported Saturday, part of the roof of Dulles Jet Center came down under the weight of the snow. At the time, all that was known was that there were aircraft inside but photos provided to AVweb by a reader show a scene that is enough to make any insurance executive shiver. Two Bombardier Global Express jets and a Gulfstream 550 appear to be in takeoff attitude inside the hangar, their tails pushed to the floor under the weight of the crushed structure of the building. It's not immediately known whether they can be repaired and it might be tricky getting them out from under the twisted steel.

The storm also took out Dulles Aviation's hangar at Manassas Regional Airport. Newspaper reports say there were no aircraft or people inside the hangar when it came down. The ordeal may not be over, however. A winter storm warning was issued Monday and up to 14 more inches of snow could fall by Wednesday.

Fun, Fun, Fun in the Winter Sun

2010-02-13T12:12:00.000-05:00

As was mentioned in the last post, two of our friends' children (Caitlyn and Julia) were staying with us until yesterday. So Kathryn had a couple surrogate sisters for the past few days of no school. (School being open on Monday will be quite another story from the emails that Fairfax County Public Schools has been sending out.) The girls have been out enjoying the snow, with a pile of snow that was formerly on our deck becoming a sledding hill, dubbed Mount Kathryn, and then yesterday the girls got really creative, making a "snow hotel" or snotel in the front yard. They "made" a TV with antenna, a Blu-Ray player, a Wii, all the remotes for said equipment and then Becky took orange hair spray (acquired for Crazy Hair Day at school last year) and sprayed the TV "screen" and the fronts of the "equipment". It all looks awesome; Becky and the girls did a great job!

Looking from the deck across our backyard and our neighbor's.

Gallopin' Guinan streaking across the backyard. Man, she had fun!

Caitlyn climbing back up the hill while Guinan plays "Queen of the Mountain" and, oh yes, eats snow.

Caitlyn takes a tumble off the sled on its way down the hill while Kathryn makes her way back up the hill.

Another trek back up the hill.

All three girls on their way back up the hill while Guinan makes an end run around Caitlyn and Kathryn.

Kathryn laughs uproariously while Caitlyn has to take a breather.

Guinan investigating, and eating of course, the snow.

A lull in the action - I think Julia was around the corner at the playhouse.

Kathryn and Julia prepping snowballs.

Kathryn takes aim - at yours truly!

TV, Blu-Ray, Wii, Remotes, and a "figurine" to provide an artistic touch to your "room" - what more does one need?

Front view of the "equipment."

Kathryn and Guinan share a "special moment."

Snowpocalypse, Snowmageddon - Whatever, It's a Lot of Snow

2010-02-10T20:33:00.017-05:00

Winter Wonderland

Pithy titles seem to be all the rage; at least to this untrained observer. But the snow that arrived this past Friday, the 5th, just seemed to prove this, especially with all the witty reparte on Facebook and scramble for apropos storm title for the local TV stations' weather coverage. It has proven to be an enormous amount of white frozen stuff that will leave many a yard, including mine, a sodden, soggy mass for much of the spring. It has also broken long-standing records when combined with the insult-to-injury snowfall yesterday (pithy titles of its own: snowvertime, snowoverit, snOMG).

I think the most useful attitude that I have heard suggested about this interruption of everyone's way too busy lives came from our pastor on Sunday (our church is so 21st Century with an inaugural webcast during the December storm, followed up by another one with this last one - from two locations no less, but I digress....). The thought is that we have in many ways lost the ability to simply and utterly relax, to enjoy family and friends and not be rushing to do things. This is not to say that it should be without physical activity, after all the snow still has to be shoveled, etc. The idea is to honor the intent of the sabbath, sort of God's recommended day to recharge. So I think Becky and I have tried to take that into consideration in how we've spent these days where the roads have not been a safe place to be.

Snowmageddon blew in on Friday and left clear skies by 4PM Saturday. My fellow co-workers and I bugged out of the office around 1:45 or 2:00 when snow began sticking to the roads. It was nice to get home that early and then we just relaxed and watched the beauty of it pile up. And it was indeed gorgeous. There is something incerdibly calm and calming about a world around one that is clothed in a cloak of white. I suppose the fact that it lays evenly, depending on the wind, over everything, produces streamlined, comforting appearance.

My first chore on Saturday morning was cleaning a way off the deck and an area of yard for our dog Guinan to do her business. Let's just say that she was soooo ready for that and someplace where she didn't have snow past her shoulder blades. Also I cleared off most of the deck to avoid a possibility of collapse. The result of that effort was the creation of Mount Kathryn, an "artificial" snow mountain right beside the deck that Kathryn learned, on her own according to Becky, how to sled down on Monday. Then we set out to attempt a first pass at snowblowing/shoveling. That was successful, but it involved a lot of effort. Becky has considered the snowblower one of her toys ever since we got it and Saturday was no exception. I have resorted to the push broom as the sturdiest snow removal device available for the roofs of the Vue and the Venture, as well as any other parts of the vehicles. I got my vehicle, the Vue, clean and had a good chunk of Becky's Venture done when she told me that we were going to be out here again and she wasn't planning on using the Venture to go anywhere anytime soon! So we let that pass and finished up. I usually get the areas that are harder or more inaccessible for the snowblower: the front stoop, around the garage doors, the pavers to get to the trash and recycling containers, etc. We came out again after 4PM and uncovered the rest of it, removing the snow that was deposited in the intervening hours. Kathryn always has loved the snow and had a blast climbing on it, over it, through it and getting stuck in it. I responded to a number of "Daya! Help! I'm stuck!" over the weekend. When we weren't shoveling, we were watching the coverage on TV, mostly Channel 7, the ABC affiliate in Washington. The most awesome event I think we saw was the huge snowball fight

with literally hundreds (thousands?)of people that took place at Dupont Circle downtown and was evidently arranged through Facebook and Twitter!

I feel bad for all the people who lost power during the storm and especially bad for those who are still without it. We lost power, but the silly thing is that we lost it Saturday night - after the storm?! It did give us fair warning with several brief interruptions in service before it finally went out for the next approximately six hours. I was in the middle of giving Kathryn a bath. It was oh so fun trying to finish it up until Becky found the flashlights with which our wonderful daughter enjoys playing (so they weren't where they normally should be)and got new batteries into three out of the four. (The fourth is a large lantern-style light that takes four "D" batteries - try finding that size battery around here currently, every place was out!) Not knowing how long the power would be out, nor how cold the house might become, we took the precaution of getting bundled up and had Kathryn sleep with us. (Thank goodness for king-size beds!)

Sunday, after the webcast service, we went out to finish up what still remained. Now I should add that Becky usually snowblows a good number of sidewalks as part of being a good neighbor, so we don't keep the use of the blower to ourselves. However, I noticed that our neighbors across the street were trying to get their driveway and sidewalk accessible and the neighbor next to them had brought his shovel and was helping them out. I motioned to Becky that I was going to help them. I had barely touched shovel to snow when my wife roared up to quickly clear the street side of the driveway. It was awesome that she became an instant hero to our neighbors, which was a good feeling I think for both of us.

I did go into work Monday and Tuesday. The roads were ok, still packed with snow and some sudden lane closures forced by piled-up snow, but one that I wouldn't have expected to be tricky (Virginia Route 28) was nasty with on-ramps and off-ramps a slippery proposition with lots of loose snow and deep tire tracks and sections of deep rutted snow. Amazingly, our parking lot at work was, outside of the large piles of snow at the perimeters, nicely uncovered to bare pavement! Go figure.

Our second storm didn't really arrive until the evening. Our friends "deposited" their two daughters with us. The older one is in Kathryn's Brownie troop and yesterday afternoon was a meeting. The little one stayed because, well, things were promising to be unpleasant if she couldn't. So we acquired two additional daughters for an undetermined number of days, especially now that Fairfax County Public Schools are closed for the rest of the week! This afternoon we took the girls out in the front yard and they once again had such a good time in the white stuff. Fortunately for us, there wasn't as much snow as predicted, but it still looks nasty and I'm really wondering what the roads will be like. The other thing I need to do with Kathryn is to make a snowgirl. I missed it this time. The snow girl is almost always named "Eloise" (you know, after Kay Thompson's book Eloise, about the six-year-old girl who lives at the Plaza with her nanny) and she "rawther" enjoys annoying/amusing the neighbors and creating a lot of fuss and bother among the Plaza staff.

Photos from the Storm and the Aftermath Around the Neighborhood:

During the Storm: The Front Yard from the Porch

After the Storm: My Car

After the Storm; Becky's Car

After the Storm: Kathryn Playing Explorer

After the Storm: The Walk Looking North Toward the Corner

After the Storm: The Walk Looking South to Where Becky Was Still Plowing the Neighbor's Walk

After the Storm: Looking Across the Intersection From Our Corner

After the Storm: Our House - Note the Snow Overhang at the Left Side of the Roof

After the Storm: Top of the "Fort" Portion of the Swing Set

After the Storm: "It's cold out here!" - Becky

Stopped In My Tracks - A Surprise Disney Encounter

2010-01-28T12:44:00.027-05:00

If, by any chance, the model railroad show known as the "World's Greatest Hobby", should come to a convention or exposition space near you, run don't walk, because you are in for a real treat. I saw an ad that this show was scheduled at the nearby Dulles Expo Center this past weekend. I was originally interested in it because of its family-orientation with an emphasis on having a large area devoted to displaying layouts. Most of the hobbyist shows are all about the buying when it comes right down to it. I thought I would see if Kathryn would indicate an interest and thus justify breaking out my HO scale items from the carefully packed containers in the basement. Saturday turned out to be jam-packed with normal weekend stuff, so a train show visit was going to have to occur on Sunday.

To make a long set-up short, my wife Becky set up plans for her and Kathryn to join our friend Stacy and her kids to go see a movie. In the meantime, Stacy's husband Chris and I could have some "guy time". in the meantime, I had noted that the online show description stated that there was an "exhibit" detailing Walt Disney's interest in trains; that of course sold me on definitely going. Fortunately Chris was agreeable to a train show visit so off we went. The show was held at the Dulles Expo Center which is a fancy name for two converted and barely renovated big-box stores, set diagonal from one another and sharing a parking lot, which are rented for events like this. When there are multiple shows being held (and it seems that the other building actually had two shows occuring in it this past weekend), the parking is a nightmare. So by the time we parked in the nearby office park and walked into the show it was after 1PM. (In the interest of full disclosure, while this show is free to those under 16, the accompanying adults get to fork over $10, but if spread across Mom, Dad and the 2.1 kids it's not such a bad deal.) There were no programs with show layouts left and there were more people than I have ever seen in that building (an observation confirmed here), so we spent more time than we wanted to searching for the Disney exhibit. Naturally it was down the last aisle, but, as had been indicated at the door when we entered, there was actually a presentation going on.

The gentleman presenting was wearing a Disney-style name tag (the kind that you'd see on cast members at the theme parks, etc.) with his name "Michael", had some amazing images on screen of Walt's backyard railroad, and knowledge that over the course of 90 seconds coalesced in my brain to the realization that I was listening to Michael Broggie, son of Roger Broggie. Roger Broggie was with the Disney Studios Machine Shop when Walt came and requested his help with the backyard railway that he wanted to create. Roger eventually became the head of the Machine Shop and was responsible for much of the railroads around the parks, as well as other ride systems. Michael wrote a book about Disney and trains in '96: Walt Disney's Railroad Story. Needless to say how much of a treat it was to listen to someone who has some personal knowledge and relationship to Walt, his family, and the Disney company at a time when some of the most exciting things were happening and had a personal part in it. For example, when engineer Bob Gurr was developing the cars for the Autopia ride to be placed at Disneyland, Michael was his test driver, or, as Michael claims his dad later put it, his test dummy! Michael also brought up something I've heard from many different sources: Walt had an uncanny ability to discern talents and possibilities in people to which they themselves never would have progressed without a push from Walt. Roger didn't really know anything about scale model railroads, but learned as much as he could as quickly as he could and it obviously led to much bigger things! Walt actually utilized a number of people from the studio on his railroad, named the Carolwood Pacific, putting them to work designing a "train barn" and landscaping, for example. Michael quipped that it's now clear that all you really need to do to build a backyard railway is to buy a movie studio!

Michael Broggie showing a photo of Walt's Carolwood Pacific Railroad featuring himself as a youngster riding in one of the cars! (Note a copy of Michael's book displayed at the corner of the table.)

Michael with a photo of Walt and Walt's brother Roy.

Also visible in the photos above, sitting on the table, is a model railroad that Bachmann has recently created of one of the theme park trains (I believe it's from Disneyland) featuring the engine that is now named the Roger E. Broggie.

Michael was kind enough to answer questions and shake hands after his presentation. As with all things Disney, I discovered that we are mutually acquainted with at least one or two people who work for Disney or are Disney licensees. Being as involved with the company as he has been, he is acquainted with many of the people whom we read about (at least we Disney geeks). And as so many people who are connected with the company are, he was just as pleasant as he could be. And although Chris and I enjoyed walking around the show and marveling at most of the operating train layouts that were presented, that encounter was the highlight of the show for me.

More photos from the rest of the show:

Part of an enormous O scale layout. When Chris and I noted an incredibly long train, we asked one of the operators how many cars were in it. His response was that we didn't know, but he did know that there were no less than 37 engines in it!
A cool glass-roofed passenger platform on the same layout. The amusing thing about this that unfortunately is too small to easily discern here is that a good number of "passengers" waiting patiently for their train are superheroes!

An urban layout. It wasn't large compared to the others, but it was highly detailed.

One of our last stops before it was time to leave was the Lionel booth, a truly over-the-top affair.

From the Rant and Rave Dept.: Disney Promoting Disney Comics! Unthinkable!

2010-01-27T12:54:00.004-05:00

I'm posting this to a) promote Disney comics (YAY!), b) bring the referenced article to my Disney-comic collecting friends who otherwise pay scant attention to the larger Disney-enthusiast world, and c) to send Disney a "what-the-heck, it's-about-bloody-time, where've-ya-been-for-the-last-twenty-plus-years" rant. Anyone familiar with my personal soap-box issues concerning my love and appreciation for Disney comics knows my rants about the comics being the "lost step-child" of the prized Disney "synergy".

So now, what exactly has my knickers in a twist, you ask, Gentle Reader? Simply put, it is the lead article in this week's edition of the e-mail newsletter, "Disney Insider", that Disney has been sending out to fans for the last 5+ years.

If you've now perused the article, you may say,"but this is great publicity for the new Disney comics licensee." Yes, you would be correct. It is an extremely nice thing to see Disney comics lauded in an official capacity by Disney, since we who care are extremely interested, desperate even, to see this medium survive for our favorite characters. So once again - why on Earth are my knickers twisted??

First, I need to give you who are completely unfamiliar with this topic a quick, Readers Digest-version of Disney comics publishing history. After 1984 when Dell/Whitman (the original publisher of Disney comics since 1940) stopped their comic publications and since 1986, Disney comics have had three different incarnations. First, Bruce Hamilton acquired the license and started the Gladstone line of Disney comics, which were actually fairly successful both in quality and sales. Then Disney itself decided to step in, evidently figuring they needed to cut out the middleman. (I've seen the company do this type of thing before and knew that this was a universally Bad Idea.) Its titles were shut down as they eventually alienated both any burgeoning market and the fan-based market. Eventually a lot of the old Gladstone team came together as the license was acquired by Steve Geppi, who is a "Big Name" in the comics industry and a Disney comics fan (as was Bruce Hamilton), and published the Disney titles under the Gemstone banner. Geppi realized that it was important to get new readers and there was some planning and discussion to get the comics into places like Walmart and Target. However, those new markets never opened up and, for reasons which I believe are unrelated to his interest in keeping Gemstone going, Steve shut down Gemstone towards the end of 2008. The point of all this history is that the support and publicity that these three ventures received from the mother company, the highly-tauted Disney synergy, were absolutely, positively n-o-n-e-x-i-s-t-a-n-t. (When Disney has paid attention to the comics, it has principally been in a historical context as opposed to promoting contemporary issues.)

So, when Boom comics comes along and begins publishing titles based on Cars, Finding Nemo and The Muppets during 2009 which seem to have done well and all of a sudden the rest of the company takes note to the point that Boom, around June or July last year, is able to seal a deal to bring back the "classic" characters and, roughly put,"make them popular again" (mainly by giving them a super-hero Extreme Makeover: Duckburg Edition), I'm feeling cold bristl-ies as opposed to warm fuzzies. Especially when Boom has what I understand was not an unsubstantial booth at the D23 Expo in September (Disney established D23 as their first official fan organization - as opposed to the unofficial clubs like the NFFC, Mouse Club or Magic Meets). Where was this recognition when Disney was hosting the Official Disneyana Conventions in the '90's?

The other point that has my "dis-meter" ("disrespect" as opposed to "Disney") just a twirlin' has been the way that the legendary greats, such as Carl Barks and Floyd Gottfredson, are casually tossed aside as mere footnotes: "they're gone". One could argue that for today's uber-teched, uber-Super-Heroed kids, there is a relevance disconnect. But does that make Mark Twain, Beatrix Potter or C.S. Lewis less worth reading than J.K. Rowling, Judy Blume or R.L. Stine? History, in comic literature no less than in any other subject, is generally worth one's time.

Please understand, I want Boom to succeed in this effort in no less a desire than that I had for Gladstone, Disney, and Gemstone. I hate seeing what I have come to call with every previous venture as "the other shoe dropping". I like that Disney is finally paying some attention to the current licensee. Are they attempting to "right a wrong"? Unknown. I just wish, that with so much history, I didn't feel like Boom is completely throwing the baby out with the bath water and receiving an "atta-boy" like everything before is crud and worth throwing out.

Videopalooza, Part 2 - English By Lines

2010-01-22T13:39:00.001-05:00

For the second time in the past few months, the topic of diagramming sentences came up in conversation between me and my colleague Robert. (Yes, we do lead exciting lives, don't we?) Ah, I hear some of you: "sentence diagramming"? What in the world is that? Well, Kinder, to diagram a sentence is to dissect the sentence graphically into the parts of speech (subject noun, verb, direct object and all the modifiers such as adverbs, adjectives, prepositonal phrases, gerunds and gerund phrases.

This lead to us practically racing back to our computers for a quick Google search on "sentence diagramming." Among the offerings was a group of what promises to be, once I can turn on the speakers, a very engaging set of tutorials by a gentleman whose YouTube handle is Mrthoth and in the videos calls himself "Yossarian the Grammarian". I'm going to reference these below as a public service. To Mrthoth / Yossarian, please keep doing what you've been doing. The English language will thank you.

Lesson 1: Verbs, Subjects, Adverbs

Lesson 2: Prepositional Phrases

Lesson 3: Prepositional Phrases Again

Lesson 4: Subjective Complements

Lesson 5: Direct Objects

Lesson 6: Gerunds and the Gerund Phrase

In addition, this gentleman has an additional 24 videos covering other hazards in the minefield of English grammar!

Yossarian is not, however, the sole sentence diagramer with a presence on YouTube, so please check out the other posters, including another gentleman with the handle, Mr. A.

Fatherhood Joys, Episode 9

2010-01-11T23:40:00.003-05:00

Fatherhood joys occasionally are distinctly not. Case in point: Kathryn endured a punishment this past weekend. Say what, you say?

Sad, but true. On Friday her Friday folder was awash in math papers (we're talking addition and subtraction) that prinicpally had a substantial amount of answers flat out wrong. Now Becky and I know that Kathryn has been struggling with the concepts of addition and subtraction and even the ability to visualize numbers. In other words, she still struggles with automatically recognizing that there are eight pencils in front of her or four crayons or three pieces of paper - well, you hopefully get the picture. We've been struggling with this and other pieces of unfinished classroom work coming home for a couple of months now. We've told her repeatedly to ask for help for things that she didn't understand.

So back to Friday's math. Frustrating as all get out, but what made it really disappointing for us was the explanation to which eventually Kathryn fessed up (thank goodness for an active guilt complex - ahhem, at least in this case and I'd like to think it will still be fully operational between the ages of 13 and, say, 20, well, 21). It seems that frustration, procrastination and downright avoidance, coupled with the thought that it is more fun to talk with her friends has lead to an over-abundance of classwork papers in her to-do basket. So this past weekend Kathryn spent without any electronic devices - no TV, no DVDs, no DS Lite, no WII. I believe she asked about watching movies twice, but after that, nothing.

In a way it did and didn't surprise me that Kathryn woke up before Becky and I on both Saturday and Sunday and didn't attempt to watch a DVD in her play room and by then merely would have said "Oh, I forgot." Instead she read, she played with her dolls, she drew, wrote and colored pictures. Friday, with relatively little help from Becky, she finished her math homework. She wasn't distracted. We also worked on math recognition problems on and off over the weekend. I wanted to attempt to teach her "Parchesi" because of all the counting, especially addition that would be required, however that didn't happen - maybe next weekend.

In the meantime, we'll try to work with her to better understand her math classwork and homework. Becky wrote to Kathryn's teacher, which Kathryn gave to her this morning, explaining the actions we took and stating that we wanted to work with Kathryn's teacher to get Kathryn where and how she needs to be. The fact that she is in a cluster of tables with children whom she knows and with whom she plays and studies shouldn't be a problem, but it is evidently. So if her teacher deems it necessary, she has every right to move her. I don't want her to struggle and I certainly don't want to have her consider school as a chore rather than a place that she looks forward to being at on a daily basis. I'm sure this will be "to be continued...."

Fatherhood Joys, Episode 8

2010-01-05T13:33:00.005-05:00

This one needs no elaborate introduction. Becky sat down with Kathryn to write the note pictured above. It was left out on Christmas Eve and Kathryn was thrilled with the response in red, which seems to be one of the favorite colors of a certain jolly old elf! In case Kathryn's handwriting is not quite legible it says: Dear Santa, I like how you dress in red. We left some cookies and a glass of OJ for you. I hope you enjoy your snack and please be quite [sic - quiet] for us and the dog, Guinan. Thank you, Kathryn.

RIP Roy Disney

2009-12-16T15:14:00.003-05:00

Roy Disney, Walt's nephew and son of his brother Roy, passed away today. Personally I'm quite saddened by this. It has always struck me that, in spite of an otherwise low profile, he seemed to have no problem making very public stinks if something smelled rotten in Disney to him. While I'm not trying to make some Disney white knight out of him, I believe it safe to say that his actions both in 1984 and 2004 helped the company back from a dangerous, potentially destructive, path each time. I often wonder how well the larger Disney family functioned since Roy's actions in 1984 helped unseat Walt's daughter Diane's husband Ron from his lead position at Disney.

It is an unsettling bit of irony that Roy passed away one day after the anniversary of his uncle Walt's passing.

I will add my condolences to many others to Roy's family and friends.

I am unaware of whether there is another Disney at the company who will grow into a leading role.

Separated at Birth Update

2009-12-12T18:41:00.002-05:00

Had I done a little searching, as I did only after posting the article, I would have found that a lot of people, a very lot of people, came to the exact same conclusions. So far from something original, I just joined the chorus.

I still hope to post something new this weekend, but we are otherwise booked helping friends today and attempting to magically transform Schloss Munson into a Christmas wonderland tomorrow. Wish us luck.

Separated at Birth Moment from Disney/Pixar's "Up"

2009-12-10T14:27:00.005-05:00

Mike, one of my colleagues at work and a pop culture maven, suggested this to me and, when we checked his observation out, it was hysterically accurate. We were having a couple minutes of banter about film/TV when Spencer Tracy's name was mentioned. Mike asked me if I had noticed how the character of Carl Fredricksen, hero of "Up", in spite of being voiced by Ed Asner, physically resembled the older Spencer Tracy from, for example, "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner"? I said no, but a moment's reflection and a quick IMDB search for images from the film proved to confirm it. Mike continued that the villain, Charles Muntz, reminded him of another actor because he felt their battle was like Spencer Tracy fighting whom, whom? Suddenly the light bulb turned on: Kirk Douglas! I was again skeptical, but doggone if IMDB didn't come to the rescue again. At this point I was laughing hard enough for tears: Carl/Spencer vs. Charles/Kirk. Just another example of the great sense of humor and respect for Disney and greater Hollywood history that the folks at Pixar have. And don't get me started on the obvious Charles Muntz/Charles Mintz connection that is clear as the proverbial bell for any student of Disney history!

A Seasonal View

2009-12-07T13:19:00.015-05:00

We have developed a ritual of getting studio photos for most of the major annual milestones: Christmas, occasionally Easter and Kathryn's birthday. So for today's entry, I am finally getting personal and adding pictures of us beyond my profile pic.

First up is the latest family Christmas pose: This was taken last month in a joint session with friends of ours.

For our photos of both families we brought along the domino game known as Mexican Train which we have grown to really enjoy playing. We set it up on the floor and posed as if we were playing it.

A second round of photos the day after Thanksgiving included the three girls playing as at a tea party and decorating the Christmas tree. I think we were all very pleased with the way that they turned out!

This past Saturday (which by the way was Walt Disney's 108th Birthday - couldn't leave that out!) we saw our first snowfall. This is the Schloss Munson, our homestead since January '04.

Kathryn beside my vehicle and our funny lab-hound mix, Guinan, getting adjusted the snow. Guinan is so amusing, because once used to the snow, she began to bound through it. The way that she leaps from the back deck, you would think she would be breaking a leg or legs any moment!

Although Kathryn lacked a smile, the snowman - oops, snowgirl - more than made up for it. For want of better materials, I decided to use the red berries off the tree right next to where we built the snowman for providing eyes, mouth and buttons.

Fatherhood Joys, Episode 7

2009-12-02T13:11:00.002-05:00

Kids at Kathryn's age are such amusing people. They are discovering who they are and pretending and make believe are simply a wonderful part of the process.

Kathryn, for example, never lets an opportunity pass by to place herself into a story, tv show, film, etc. She is usually the sister or cousin of a main character and gives herself some complicated name. If it is time for our bedtime story then she normally requests that I include her in the story. At first she gave herself some pretty fantastic names like, well, something like "Alizee" or some combination of actual names. Now her names are more on the order of what you'd expect to hear: Jenna, Hannah, Molly, etc. If we are reading something with an all animal cast, then that still borders on the strictly fanciful: a red meerkat alligator, for example - can anyone even imagine that??? She can.

The fact that she is becoming a good reader also helps I think, although getting her to actually do it is sometimes difficult. I don't quite understand her resistance other than it is easier, i.e. lazier, to let good ole' Daya do the reading. I seem to be getting around that one by sharing the reading duties. I read two pages, then she reads two pages. At the moment she is working her way through the Disney Small World Library. I've read many of these to her before, but this week marks the first joint effort. We've travelled to Russia, India and Norway. She now also seems interested in other places and surprises me at times with what she remembers. (It would, however, also be nice if she could remember her chores and heaven knows we didn't set that bar too high!)

One of her latest flights of fancy is the arrival of her "invisible sister Kelly". Up until the other night Kelly had been a pretty passive invisible friend. She would do things with Kathryn, or Kathryn would explain some make believe action that Kelly would do. The other morning I went into Kathryn's room to wake her up and, being the restless sleeper that she is, most of the bedding was heaped on the floor. I wasn't upset with her, but I did mention that she had lost the bedding over the side again. She then told me, beginning with "well......" which is our clue to the complete fabrication to come, that she had been the one to lose hold of the sheet and blankets, but it was Kelly's fault for pushing Kathryn to the edge of the bed. My eyebrows shot up at that one. I didn't directly contradict her, but let her know by tone of voice that I wasn't buying it for a second.

She has also been doing this all along with her American Girl dolls (Kit, received from Aunt Marcia many moons ago and now Ruthie, whom she received last (?) Christmas - I lose track of the exact circumstances of when she received things). They truly take on a life of their own. And now that our friends with whom we visit a great deal have one for their middle daughter. And both girls now have "styling centers " for the dolls, well....... They can be occupied for quite some time together.

This is a great age with her. She still young enough to be pretending vividly, but old enough to be able to coherently explain what she's thinking.

First Blogosphere Thanksgiving Greetings

2009-11-26T02:54:00.002-05:00

This is the first major holiday that I have celebrated with the ability to wish the wider world a Happy Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving, even more than Christmas, is a time to concentrate on all the things that are going right - as opposed to those that aren't.

Thanksgiving has always struck me, and this is no slam to Christmas, which is pretty special if you remember what that holiday is supposed to be about, as sort of the anti-Christmas. It is not a holiday easily lost into a sea of commercial and spending excess. (Black Friday doesn't count because, let's face it, that's all about Christmas as well.) It is a holiday when all we need to do is gather together, enjoy and celebrate each other's company, give thanks for what we have experienced and received over the past year, trust in God (or whatever is appropriate for you) for safety and health in the coming year. Simple, straightforward. Happy Thanksgiving!

Blog Interrupted

2009-11-24T16:35:00.002-05:00

Although I just posted my lengthy camping soliloquy, I've had a lot of intervening duties that have, and probably will again, take me away from this. So.....if I haven't posted for a while, it's probably not because some ill has befallen me - other than being too otherwise occupied. Just suffering from the malady "Blog Interrupted."

A-Camping We Will Go!

2009-11-24T13:25:00.000-05:00

The second weekend in September witnessed the great SOM-Dulles overnight camping trek (a "Grand Journey" "sponsored" by SOM Great Outdoors Expeditions - sounds official, doesn't it?), which was composed of most of the people in our little field office and a number of the family members and/or friends as well. The ultimate venue was the Little Crease Shelter in the Veach Gap area of the George Washington National Forest to the south and west of Front Royal, Virginia. (This area is part of the Shenandoah Mountains, which themselves are part of the Appalachian Mountains which run from Maine to Georgia and were the first major natural barrier that the European settlers had to surmount in order to gain access to areas west by land routes. But I digress.)

Originally, the plan was for all the Munsons to participate in this shindig, but Kathryn had been offered a spot on the winter swim session offered through the neighborhood swim team that she has been on during the last two summers and that started on Saturday evening so that took out her and Becky's participation. Also, Becky had unfortunately been suffering some heel pains during the week so a hike, uphill, involving rocks, crossing creeks (small though they were), etc. was not sounding good for her.

The bulk of the group (eight of the fifteen of us and an additional eight family members and friends), which in reality was everyone except for me, met in Manassas on Saturday morning and caravaned to the parking area located at approximately a 1-1/4 mile hike from the shelter. Becky, Kathryn and I had a prior engagement at noon - a birthday celebration for my college friend Glenn. I'm really glad that we went because we got to see friends whom we hadn't seen in quite a while. Hermits that we have become, that meant everyone! So by the time I got back to the house, finished gathering and packing, and on the road for the 75-mile drive, it was just after 4 PM. This was approximately 1-1/2 hours after my original intended departure time, but as usual, my expectations on schedule were not exactly realistic. The directions I had turned out to be quite accurate and the last sixteen miles of the drive out from Front Royal was particularly scenic. Veach Gap Road, the last portion of the drive, was a gravel, one-lane affair and I was incredibly glad that I didn't meet anyone coming back out because there were several places that I would have had to back up quite a distance for a lack of any true spot to move over to the side. The parking lot seemed to be more full than our little group would have warranted so I gathered that there were more people hiking out here than just us. I took what appeared to be the last available spot to park, right by the chained-off entrance to the trail.

Before I get too far, I have changed the real participants' names to protect everyone (except yours truly, of course). So our group consisted of: Papa Bear, Mama Bear and their son Teen Bear; Metropolis Superman and his wife Metropolis Superwoman and their sons Superboy A and Superboy B; Task Order Czarina and her Consort and the Prince and the Princess; Terrazzo Tester and her boyfriend Eagle Scout; Ceiling Koenig ("King" in German); Presenter Extraordinaire; and King Admin.

We'd been informed that we needed to follow the trail marked by single yellow stripes, applied to trees at roughly 200-yard intervals. So once I had changed into the work boots that I'd brought for the hike and ungracefully hoisted the 40-lb. laden pack onto my back, I locked the car and off I went at approximately 5:55PM. The initial few hundred yards were a gentle walk along what would otherwise be assumed to be an access road. Then the rocks started, the trail closed in, the walkie-talkie that had been left for me to contact our group when I arrived seemed silent enough in response to my messages to the "SOM Base Camp" that I wondered if I was using it correctly, the sweat started to get in my eyes, the shadows of the sun gre longer, and thoughts of "are you out of your cotton-pickin' mind??" crept with ever-increasing alacrity from my sub-conscious into my most-conscious. Then I'd spot another tree with the yellow-stripe and the gentle if firm admonitions from my brain would follow: "Get a GRIP! You are on the right path, you are not in the deep dark wilderness." The only thing that was indeed pressing was beating the sunset. I distinctly did not want to be hiking an unfamiliar trail after dark.

Let no one kid you: hiking uphill, with a backpack adds time to a flat land hike with no pack. I knew that I must be getting close when I smelled the fire. I finally saw the shelter across one last crossing of the creek. But wait - why didn't I recognize anyone? The sign I passed definitely said "Little Crease Shelter". A gentleman asked if I was with the "Dulles group". Must be us, so I said yes and he pointed up the rise. Ah-ha, they didn't get there in time to claim the shelter. Found out shortly that it was Boy Scouts from Front Royal - they happened to pick the same weekend and the same shelter, go figure! I continued up and shouted greeting after a couple of my colleagues noticed me. I was tired (read: out of shape), thirsty (I didn't stop, more worried about light than thirst), and confused (only once did I seem to get someone evidently trying to call me on the walkie-talkie). That last was accurate; they had been trying to get hold of me, but the range and reception were working against us. Mama Bear and I had a laugh about this. Also, since a large part of the group had returned quite tuckered from climbing to the top of the ridge that we were on, the general agreement was that I was truly on my own. (The irony was that we were stressing how no one should be hiking in alone with a group so full of novices!)

The tent was actually pretty simple to set up - to the point that I was thinking that Becky and I should be getting a larger version of it for our own. Nonetheless King Admin and Eagle Scout helped me with construction.

The facilities for relieving one's self were also pointed out to me at this juncture. We had an outhouse to use. It was quite a civilized structure there on the side of the hill. Constructed of wood with a roof of corrugated plastic/fibreglass, it boasted a relatively clean interior, very little odor and plenty of bathroom tissue. Evidently it is proper etiquette to leave any roll that you begin there. Eagle Scout lined the almost clear path to it with large branches in order for the path to be well-defined. It probably would have been adventurous to feel the call of nature in the middle of the night, but (fortunately) I was not so blessed.

In the meantime, Papa Bear and Teen Bear with help from the rest of our motley crew of seasoned campers and campers lite got dinner started. It is true what they say about eating in the Great Outdoors - everything does taste better - and it is not just the charred wood on the side of that burger! Dinner consisted of burgers with many of all the fixin's, vege-burgers for the Task Order Czarina and her family, and assorted chips.

The smores were probably the highlight of dinner. Papa Bear set out a variety of chocolate to accompany the graham crackers and marshmallows: milk, dark and Nutella. They were awesome. For the Task Order Czarina and her family and also Terrazzo Tester, smores were an entirely new thing - the tradition has not yet traveled to India and Germany. Unfortunately for the Task Order Czarina, her Princess had long since expired for the night on mommy's shoulder. We spent a good part of the evening sampling the varieties. Terrazzo Tester pulled out two bottles of different varieties of locally-produced liquor (Schnapps) from her German hometown. Good stuff!

We also learned after dinner that Metropolis Superwoman is a closet pyro. It seemed to be her dedicated mission to keep our campfire going as long and as bright as possible. We had to ban her from the wood pile in order to maintain a supply for morning.

The engineering highlight of the evening was hoisting huge sacks with the remaining foodstuffs up above the ground and out of reach of any of our animal friends with the use of ingenious pulleys looped over the biggest branches we could find in convenient locations. Metropolis Superman had brought "bear bells" to attach to the sacks. The bells proved to fuel a great deal of amusement as to what everyone would realistically be able to do should any set of bells start ringing at 3 or 4 in the morning. Papa Bear and Teen Bear had the most experience with the actual hoisting and led this effort.

I stayed up for a while, talking of the cosmos with Eagle Scout, Ceiling Koenig and King Admin. They kept going; I was beat.

Entering the tent would probably have been quite a show for anyone viewing the procedure. After taking off the hiking shoes, I figured out that the main way to get my inelegant frame safely into the tent was a procedure not unlike a controlled fall. I didn't hurt myself, but I certainly ended up on my back and feeling much like a turtle. After a couple false starts zipping the tent shut, during which I learned to my later dismay, a couple "friends" had followed me in (two mosquitos and a creepy-crawly, all now playing whatever heavenly harp exists for them). This was followed by the gymnastics to change. When you aren't used to doing this in either a prone or cross-legged position, getting into the sweats to sleep in was, let us say, challenging. I had long since abandoned the idea of performing proper dental hygiene or at any point prior to breakfast, leaving my tent for any reason. If the bells pealed when a bear came along, the tent was just going to be going with me.

For a while I ignored the obvious stirrings of the morning in order to catch some more z's. It was not a completely uncomfortable rest and the inflatable mat definitely helped. Finally too many people seemed to have risen to remain slothlike. The gyrations and contortions of the night were repeated in reverse and I found myself up and relatively awake. Papa Bear is such a good provider and we were treated to pancakes, courtesy of a camp grill, sausages courtesy the same. Breakfast was a rather leisurely affair, taking the better part of the morning.

Of course, as we were packing I recalled that Papa Bear had had me bring the popcorn popper up with me, which we never broke out the previous evening. (This is a popcorn popper of the old school variety - a pan with a hinged lid decorated with numerous small holes. The concept is simple. You pour the popcorn kernals into the popper, close it, hinge it, hold it over the fire and let nature take its course. The trick, as with the microwavable popcorn, is knowing when to take it out of the fire. At what point do the pops die down enough to know that as many of the darlings have popped as ever will without burning the lot.)

The hike back out was uneventful, outside of the fact that yours truly is about as far from being sure-footed as a porcupine is from being warm and fuzzy. I had more than one instance of slipping and sliding on rocks that others appeared to glide over with ease and effortlessness.

All in all, it must have been a success because everyone was claiming that they would be interested in a repeat experience. So stay tuned, happy campers, and see if the SOM Great Outdoors Expeditions makes a second "Grand Journey"........

IKEAnt Put Another Thing Together

2009-10-22T22:30:00.000-04:00

Becky and I got a big work-out a few weekends back. We helped Tonya, our friend and housemate for five months (May through September), get set up in her new condo. She was staying with us while the condo was built - it is scarily impressive how quickly a four-story, 12-unit building can be built (especially when each unit is 2 stories itself - the units are stacked you see, with, for example, the stairwell for the unit above carving a piece out of the unit below, etc.). Anyway, Tonya closed on the unit as of September 25th. In anticipation of this move and needing to stretch her furnishing budget, Tonya purchased a large number (31 to be exact) of furniture items at the Swedish giant of put-it-together-yourself furniture, IKEA.

As it turned out, Tonya had planned a trip to Disney World to celebrate her birthday and was leaving the day after closing. Insane people that we are, in an effort spear-headed by my I'll-do-near-anything-for-you wife, we spent the next few evenings and the following weekend attempting to get as much of Tonya's place arranged and furniture together as humanly possible. To be fair, the builder had allowed Tonya and us in the weekend before and we had put the furniture in the guest room (bed, bureau, two nightstands and two chairs together), but that still left a good amount. Even with needing to get Kathryn to swimming on Saturday and a Brownie/Girl Scout activity on Sunday, we still managed to get all the furniture (with the exception of one "Billy" bookcase) together, the kitchen items unpacked, washed if necessary, and put away, everything from the garage downstairs hauled upstairs, everything of Tonya's from our house moved and in place and all the drapes hung that we could locate. I don't think we worked that hard getting our own household set up. And it was nice to see the look of disbelief on Tonya's face, especially when she didn't think she would be physically staying in her place for another couple days! I do believe that if Becky or I see an allen wrench any time in the near future we will probably show the affects of PIWD (Post-IKEA Wrench Disorder).

New Photos of International Disney Comics (and Their Impact)

2009-10-22T13:57:00.003-04:00

Arthur de Wolf/Disney Comics Worldwide shared some new cover scans that he received from a friend in Germany. Some very interesting stuff for those interested in what's printed overseas.

I have noted that children's literature, yes I put this in the literature category, is a powerful indication of societal norms. This is, after all, what we give our children to read. Consider which books generate the most controversy: usually it is ones which would be accessible to young people. Even Disney comics aren't immune to this: Ariel Dorfman's leftist dissection of Disney comics and their influence in Latin America (note that I consider this to be a highly flawed work, but it found an audience in the early 1970's) and the attempted banning of the Finnish weekly Aku Ankka (Donald Duck) from Finnish youth clubs in 1978 on the charge of, among other things, decency - couples Mickey and Minnie and Donald and Daisy appeared to be co-habitating (!) and the ducks in particular went around half-dressed (to misquote "Casablanca": "Unca Carl, I'm shocked! Shocked!"). This silliness aside, the comics are at once, among other things, a picture of language and culture (six different covers for the same magazine covering different languages of India) and a statement on foreign relations (the cover of a Barks Library issue from Iran of all places).

Pictures of international Disney comics - Posted using ShareThis

Anyway, enjoy and if my schedule ever frees up more, I have many posts just waiting to be finished up.....

Beating One's Head Against a Wall

2009-10-02T13:09:00.004-04:00

I get these emails every once in a while; everyone does I would assume.

They are the political, get mad (or make fun) about "x" email. Some are very specific about their "x" variable, some are more general. Some are very specific about the president, some are about the political parties, most are generally about the political philosophies (left vs. right; red vs. blue; etc. and how ours is better than theirs).

In a warped bit of irony, of the emails that I receive, probably 90% are based on the right end of the political spectrum and generally contain a rail against how the right is stifled in the media and their message is not getting out. To judge from my email, the message is getting out pretty well and the fact that I can name more conservative commentators right off the top of my head than I can liberal (Michael Moore notwithstanding, who seems to be blasting off into the outer space of political and economic thought): how does that justify the notion that the conservative voice is stiffled?

But I digress. The following is typical of what I get, and the slant on it is pretty quickly obvious:

For those that don't know about history .. Here is a condensed version: Humans originally existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunters/gatherers. They lived on deer in the mountains during the summer and would go to the coast and live on fish and lobster in the winter.

The two most important events in all of history were the invention of beer and the invention of the wheel. The wheel was invented to get man to the beer. These were the foundation of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of humanity into two distinct subgroups: 1) Liberals, and 2) Conservatives.

Once beer was discovered, it required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture. Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so while our early humans were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery. That's how villages were formed.

Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to B-B-Q at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is known as the Conservative movement.

Other men who were weaker and less skilled at hunting learned to live off the conservatives by showing up for the nightly B-B-Q's and doing the sewing, fetching, and hair dressing. This was the beginning of the Liberal movement. Some of these liberal men eventually evolved into women. The rest became known as girlie-men.

Some noteworthy liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, the invention of group therapy, group hugs, and the concept of Democratic voting to decide how to divide the meat and beer that conservatives provided.

Over the years conservatives came to be symbolized by the largest, most powerful land animal on earth, the elephant. Liberals are symbolized by the jackass.

Modern liberals like imported beer (with lime added), but most prefer white wine or imported bottled water. They eat raw fish but like their beef well done. Sushi, tofu, and French food are standard liberal fare. Another interesting evolutionary side note: most of their women have higher testosterone levels than their men. Most social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, dreamers in Hollywood and group therapists are liberals. Liberals invented the designated hitter rule because it wasn't fair to make the pitcher also bat.

Conservatives drink domestic beer, mostly Bud. They eat red meat and still provide for their women. Conservatives are big-game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumberjacks, construction workers, firemen, medical doctors, police officers, corporate executives, athletes, members of the military, airline pilots and generally anyone who works productively. Conservatives who own companies hire other conservatives who want to work for a living.

Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to govern the producers and decide what to do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans. That is why most of the liberals remained in Europe when conservatives were coming to America . They crept in after the Wild West was tamed and created a business of trying to get more for nothing.

Here ends today's lesson in world history: It should be noted that a Liberal may have a momentary urge to angrily respond to the above before forwarding it.

A Conservative will simply laugh and be so convinced of the absolute truth of this history that it will be forwarded immediately to other true believers and to more liberals just to tick them off. And there you have it. Let your next action reveal your true self.

I did respond to this, but I tried to be out-of-the-box about it. Here's what I said:

Unfortunately this leaves out the Moderate, which is not surprising since neither group wants to admit the existence of a third, which throw off their balance of mutual loathing. (The Moderate is both provider and nurturer, and gosh darn proud of it. They tend to live in places like Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa.) And if the first two groups do admit that the third exists, they both hurl insults regarding why this third group isn't more like them. The third group just sits back, laughs at the ridiculous extreme notions of the other two and basks in the knowledge that they'll be there to pick up the pieces.

So, now you know where I am.

R.I.P. Mary Travers

2009-09-17T08:40:00.002-04:00

Part of my childhood has left this world, Mary Travers, one-third of the popular folk group Peter, Paul and Mary, passed away yesterday.

According to my mom, "Puff, the Magic Dragon" was the first song to which I really took a shine. She said I would try to sing the words and dance around to it. I was a two-year-old groupie.

Although many then and today eschewed the group's liberal politics, they made and sang songs which, if you ask me, just make you feel good.

For many years the group would appear every summer at Wolf Trap, here in Northern Virginia. The only time I ever saw them was at one of these concerts. They put on a wonderful show. I felt a glow leaving it. Becky and I wanted to take Kathryn to their next performance.

I would like to think that Mary has now lent her wonderful voice to a heavenly choir and the songs that choir sings will be sweeter for it. Goodbye Mary, it was wonderful to have you here.

A Sense of Accomplishment

2009-09-16T13:32:00.003-04:00

Not that everything is yet complete, but a major portion of the project that I've been working on ever since I came to SOM opened to the public on Tuesday.

To those whom I haven't fully explained what our project is, it is an addition to the main terminal at Dulles Airport. The addition provides a new security screening area and is also the station for the new people mover system that will transport passengers between the main terminal and the terminals out on the field. The people mover will replace almost entirely the much-reviled "mobile lounges" whose use dates back to the terminal opening in 1962 and were eventually repurposed to be the shuttles between the terminals. The mobile lounges, which resemble extra wide buses that can be raised up and down, were originally used to transport passengers directly from the main terminal to the door(s) of their plane. Unfortunately, the larger planes that began appearing in the later '60's and the advent of jetways, those tunnels used at the gate that you walk through to your plane, rendered the mobile lounges obsolete for their intended purpose.

The portion of the project that opened on Tuesday was the security screening component. The people mover trains will be in operation when all the test runs have been completed.

This project has lasted about nine years and I have been working on it for the last four years, nine months. It is one of the first projects I've done in twenty-plus years in the profession where I could actually point to some portion of it and know that it's in that place and looks that way because I personally had a hand in it. There have been a number of opportunities out here which have come about for various and sundry reasons related to schedule, budget, client requests, etc., where members of our team have really been challanged to design a solution. And it has all been in the interest of achieving the design intent of the project. There is still much to be done, but it was kind of freakish this morning to be on site and see passengers coming through areas that were just big holes in the ground not long ago and places where the general contractor and the sub-contractors brought our design together. Hasn't always been easy, but it is always incredible to see projects take shape.

Read more about the Security Mezzanine and People Mover Station:

Metropolitan Washington Airports Authroity (MWAA) Official Site
USA Today
Washington Post
Washington Business Journal
WJLA Channel 7 (ABC) - with Video!
WUSA Channel 9 (CBS)

Fatherhood Joys, Episode 6

2009-09-07T23:21:00.002-04:00

Kathryn turned seven yesterday. The cliches are right about how quickly time goes by - guess that's why they're cliches.

We've had really two days of celebrations. On Saturday with our friend Stacy and her three children and then today with Grandma and Pop-pa. "Aunt" Tonya got to experience both days.

I know that Kathryn appreciated everything she got (her American Girl dolls Kit and Ruthie hit the mother-lode with a bed with trundle, chest of drawers filled with jewelry and shoes, and some rad outfits, and another American Girl Lite doll to join them whom Kathryn had christened Abby), but sometimes it was a bit mechanical. We already know that sometimes Kathryn really doesn't know how to react to questions or statements. Her standard reactions are based on the tone of what we're saying, more than its content I am beginning to believe.

I guess that is what drives me nuts sometimes; it's the seeming incomprehension at some pretty basic concepts. But then she'll turn right around and delight me with what she does get. On Sunday we went to the mall to have pictures taken with Grandma and Pop-pa. Kathryn loves the play area and begged to be allowed over there.

She is now, however, at an age and height that actually is past the limits. But I know that she's sensitive to the point where she would not intentionally hurt anyone and I also cautioned her that there were a lot of smaller kids that she needed to watch out for. No sooner had I said that then I watched a little girl make a point of eyeing Kathryn and immediately started following Kathryn around. Kathryn noticed and soon they were following each other up, down and all-around. The girl's mom noticed too and I saw from across the play area that she spoke with Kathryn and sent them on their way. When the mom passed within earshot of me, I remarked how her daughter had latched onto Kathryn. She said that Kathryn was very sweet, had introduced herself and the girl's mom had introduced her daughter to Kathryn since she was slightly autistic and didn't speak well. She thought her daughter was attracted to Kathryn because she had a cousin who looked similar to Kathryn. Kathryn continued to play with her until it was time for us to leave. The little girl signed "I love you" to Kathryn on our way out. Does it get any better than that?

Berlin, die Symphonie der Grossstadt (Berlin - The Symphony of a Metropolis) - Walther Ruttmann - 1927

2009-09-07T21:55:00.003-04:00

The history of Berlin, Germany fascinates me. Such potential, and yet weighed down with the baggage of being the capital of two regimes characterized by almost unlimited ambition and ruthlessness toward populations both foreign and domestic. Of all European capitals, I believe it is one of the youngest.

Although it will probably be pulled because of some copyright infringement, I was delighted to find this film in multiple parts on YouTube.

Released in 1927, the film explores the life of the city and its population from factory workers on their way into work early in the morning to the school children on the way to school to office workers and managers, shopkeepers and finally day-today business on the street, lunch, and then, at the end of the day, the whole process in reverse and then the nightlife that closes out the day. It is still an incredible, visually appealing chronicle of life at one moment in time.

Still, it is sobering to know that these seemingly ordinary people were many of the same people who, just a few years later, would look to a charismatic, but ultimately unstable and deadly leader, to give them back stability and a future that would look more towards a nostalgic past. Thirteen years later, these same ordinary people and their children would be paying a terrible price for that misjudgment. The city that existed in this form would be changed forever. The Berlin that one sees today is not a city picking up from where it left off before that fateful year of 1932, but rather one that has to meld itself back together after both picking a fight that never should have happened and living without the use of roughly 40% of its body for roughly 40 years. Recognizable, but with many scars, and new pieces of skin that will take time to be accepted as Berlin. It would be an interesting project for this film to be remade in another 18 years. At that point it will have been 38 years since the wall fell, almost as long as the 44-year-era (1945-1989) of a divided Berlin.

The Film:

Act I, Part 1

Act I, Part 2

Act II

Act III, Part 1

Act III, Part 2

Act IV, Part 1

Act IV, Part 2

Act V

What You Don't Know, Can't Scare the Bi-gee-bees Out of You

2009-09-06T23:00:00.002-04:00

I got quite a substantial shock last week, but not quite the shock I am sure happened to friends from whom I haven't yet heard regarding the subject.

I occasionally look to see the latest news from places we've lived over the years, a task made infinitely easier by the Internet. To return to last week: I did a search on Boeblingen, Germany and our neighborhood there, Tannenberg. I did the proverbial double-take when German words meaning "evacuation" and "bomb" registered with me in the headlines that I was seeing. A few frantic website visits later (namely here and here and here) and I had, more or less, the story - with a happy ending fortunately.

During WWII, Boeblingen had the misfortune of being the home of the airport for the industrial city of Stuttgart (Mercedes and Porsche, folks) about ten miles to the northeast and also to a rail junction. That made it a target as the war progressed and in October 1943 it entered the allies' bomb sights. The Tannenberg neighborhood was built, mostly after the war, on the side of a hill and an area of plateau across from the main part of town. During the war it seems that our street existed and was home to an anti-aircraft position just across the street from where our friends built their home in 1960. Flash forward to today and the business property that the flak battery occupied is being redeveloped for housing. On the 29th of July excavation work was proceding and surprise (!), the workers discovered an unexploded four-ton British bomb. The bomb was evidently meant to eliminate, or rather obliterate, the flak battery. The call immediately went out and the authorities leapt into action (let's face it, even though it's getting less and less, Europeans have a considerable amount of experience in the oh-look-here's-immediate-death-staring-us-in-the-face department), evacuated the area, including our friends just across the street, to a distance of roughly 1/2-3/4 mile. The evacuation was in effect until 6:15 PM that evening when a team of four bomb-disposal experts were able to render it harmless.

Quite sobering the thought that potentially at any time over the past 66 years this relic of war could have rendered its destruction far into the future. It brings into clear focus the efforts that have been made to diffusing mines and bombs in former war zones, especially Angola and Cambodia, where they continue to claim limbs and lives without discrimination, an equal opportunity killer.

More background: an article in German on some filmmakers looking at this incident can be found here; a Blue Media video report can be found here.

Fatherhood Joys, Episode 5

2009-09-01T22:15:00.005-04:00

Kathryn is definitely starting to feel her own power to express herself. Although sometimes it isn't exactly expression that we want to encourage.

Case in point: telling the truth. Adults know that honesty is not universally the best policy. I contend that the reason that Art Linkletter's kids' show that he hosted for many years was as popular as it was because the kids were simply calling it as they saw it - no more, no less, no malice aforethought. Saturday our house guest Tonya thought we had already left for our errand that we needed to do. But Kathryn and I were on the computer, creating a fairy character for Kathryn at the Disney fairies website, and being generally quiet in the other room. Tonya was bothered by the fact that, when she and Becky went that morning for a walk-through of Tonya's currently-under-construction condo, it appeared to be so much smaller than the model. So she got the tape measure out trying to get an idea if she was getting less condo than the model offered. So anyway..... Tonya was making no small delicate measurements with the tape measure. It was noisy and I asked her, even though I knew the answer, what she was doing. She asked if she was making too much noise, so of course I said no, and really she wasn't compared to a lot of other things. But not my daughter who proclaims, "Well, you are being rather loud!" So much for the efforts to get across what's appropriate and what's not. In truth I wanted to laugh so hard it hurt.

By the way, I believe the "rather" bit is coming from the Eloise books. (For the uninitiated in both the books or the recent films, Eloise is the six-year-old who lives with "Nanny" in a suite of rooms at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan while Mom jetsets on business.) In the books, both Eloise and Nanny tend to say "rawther". I'll take "rawther" over some of my daughter's complete and utter honesty any 'ole day!

Disney Buys Marvel

2009-09-01T08:55:00.004-04:00

This will be my shortest post . . . . . . ever.

I simply am dumbfounded by this. It may make sense businesswise for Disney; and we all know that is a big motivator there in spite of the artistic goals of Roy, John, and even Robert to some degree.

However, as I noted on Arthur de Wolf's blog, this smacks to me of an even further diminishment of what we know as the classic characters. When is big too big???

Thoughts, anyone?

Oh, and I'm sure there are some Marvel fans just howling that the "kiddy House of Mouse" is taking over.

Now - thoughts, anyone?

Hmmmm, new thought. Do you think corporate Disney will do for Marvel Comics what they did for Disney comics? Yes, you guessed it: run them right into the ground. The power of positve thinking!

Fatherhood Joys, Episode 4

2009-08-25T11:10:00.000-04:00

Kathryn was looking through Sleeping Beauty the day before yesterday - Disney version, of course. This is, by the way, one of her two favorite Disney princess stories. Only Cinderella comes close on the bedtime story hit parade. To continue: she got to the part where the good fairies, Flora, Fauna and Merriweather were attempting in vain to create a perfect 16th birthday celebration for Briar Rose, their incognito name for the Princess Aurora (aka Sleeping Beauty). Fauna was attempting to make a cake with results like a failed Leaning Tower of Pisa. Flora was attempting to make a dress for Aurora with results that looked like a bad day on Project Runway and her model was Merriweather whose body type is safely 180 degrees from Aurora's and definitely not America's Top Model material.

So Kathryn pointed to each fairy in turn and very matter-of-factly declared: "This one doesn't bake, this one doesn't sew and this one...doesn't......model." I almost lost it at that, but then she turned the page, pointed right at Aurora and stated with equal candor, "And this one doesn't get married!"

She was ignoring the implications of the end of the movie of course, but then again, it's mainly the adults that see those complications cascading into the film, but that is so obviously another story. In the meantime, I simply love listening to my daughter.

A Loss of Civility

2009-07-09T12:52:00.000-04:00

My morning commute has been quite easy for the past four, almost five years. As opposed to my former commute, which much more resembled a DC area commute, this has been a piece of cake. Tuesday morning there was a subtle change.

Up until Tuesday, after leaving my neighborhood, I would make a left at one intersection with traffic signals (where my accident occured last October, but that's another story) and travel on a two-lane road approximately 1-1/2 miles to another traffic signal intersection to make a right and so on to work. Within the distance of the two traffic-lit intersections that I've described above is an intersection where there was, if you please, a little social and psychological experiment occuring. Another two lane road ended at this intersection. It also carries quite a bit of traffic and quite a few people turn on it from our road. If there had been a three-way stop here if may not have presented quite the strength of experiment, but the fact that there was but a single stop sign for that other road presented a challenge. Driving from my direction drivers go straight or make the right at the intersection. We in essence are the gate-keepers. We determine whether the left hand turn lane in the opposing lane will back up to the split, thereby blocking all oncoming traffic. Likewise, the intersecting road has no turn lane, so one person waiting to make a left across our lane ties up traffic on that road ... period.

This has been like this for years as far as I know, but over the years an understanding between drivers has developed that turned this into a three-way stop. Those of us heading in the direction I am, regardless of going straight or turning right would slow to a crawl or stop, allow one car from the oncoming lane to turn left, then - if someone in the other road was trying to make a left - attempt to get the next person in the oncoming left turn lane to allow that person through. This is truly where the social experiment part came into play. It was always interesting to see:

#1 Which of us gatekeepers would follow the rule of the road rather than trying to deal with an evident bottleneck and plow through without second glance.
#2 Whether communication between the oncoming left turner and the other road left turner would result in the other road left turner being "allowed" to turn left or whether the oncoming left turner would ignore any communication attempts to barrel on through while the gate-keeper is more or less stopped.
#3 What was the effect of timid/aggressive driving in each lane.

Tuesday, however, made all of this irrelevant. As you've probably guessed, it was the day they activated the traffic light that the county has spent the last few months installing. No muss, no fuss, less accidents (maybe), no human interaction required. I'm not certain I entirely welcome the traffic light.

Austerity Breeds Short-Sightedness

2009-06-24T10:40:00.000-04:00

I'm going to try to be thoughtful and helpful in this post and not spiteful and belligerant. That's my disclaimer.

Last month I heard two stories on NPR's Morning Edition coming into work. The first one is what turned the fire on under my outrage burners and the second got me up to boil with fantastic speed.

The first story was how California is putting its Poison Control hotline on the chopping block as part of an attempt to narrow its small to medium-sized country debt. The examples that the report used were very illustrative of how having a resource that panicky parents can call when the kid(s) has/have gotten into something potentially dangerous. In the majority of calls cited, the result was just keeping an eye on the child because the end result was not critical rather than a trip to the emergency room. In at least one case the result was advice to take the child in immediately. What started the slow burn was that the cost of the program was reported to be $6 million . . . . and by one source the amount of money saved by reduced amount of ambulance calls, paramedics and emergency room resources was $70 million. Hmmmm, save $6m and add another $70m back into the medical burden. Yeah, that makes sense. Now - are there other options available? Don't know - come to think of it, I need to ask Becky who we would call. Point is: even the smallest action has a ripple effect somewhere else. Politicians tend to follow the knee-jerk method of research and analysis, so I guess I should not be surprised.

On to story two. Again from California - poor state, it seems to be a breeding ground for this stuff. In order to save untold millions, once again our nearest and dearest who do not have a franchise, and shame on us, parents who collectively do not tend to speak up very loudly on their behalf, our children, California's in this case, will suffer from reduced, slashed or eliminated programs and curricula in the public schools. This is, I know, going on in countless other states. Why am I so upset? Because at a time when many surveys are showing how low down the totem pole of educational standards we are (Does every survey show that? Probably not, but I haven't heard much unqualified praise for the American educational system, have you?? A great program here, a successful one there, small glimmers of hope, but overall????), here we are slashing the building blocks that will give the next generation half a chance to get out of this mess. They need to be able to jump into the kind of jobs that are not wandering off shore. Without a decent education that puts as many of our children ahead of the curve as possible, how is that supposed to happen? Anyone got any miracles they are ready to pull out of their hat?

This is in no way saying that I want to abrogate my role in my child's education. Au contraire, American parents, as a whole need to sacrifice some of their time and step up to the plate. Don't feel qualified? Learn with your child(ren). Feeling singularly happy with your performance in imparting actual learning and the importance of it to your child(ren)? Help someone who doesn't.

Nothing happens in a vacuum. Can't emphasize that enough. Is there a lack of funding? Heck yes. All over the place. If our politicians don't have the foresight or imagination or courage to define priorities which help families and children to continue into this still new century with the tools to come out of it better than we appear to be experiencing it so far, then it truly is up to the rest of us to try to fill in the blanks and utilize that American spunk, grit and know-how upon which our reputation has been built.

That's my soapbox du jour.

Blasting Away at Tradition (Disney Comics Fall Down, Go Boom)

2009-06-23T01:29:00.000-04:00

At this point the word seems to be assuredly out that the License to publish comics with the traditional Disney characters has been picked up by Boom! Comics. While I'm glad to hear that someone has picked up the license, from the descriptions of the two titles starting in September, I really have to draw up a pros and cons list, to wit:

PROS:
1. Disney comics with traditional characters are back!
2. They are trying to pick up the traditional backbone of comics readership: die Kinder (the kiddies). Nothing wrong with that, it's where most adult fans started out. And it's well-discussed and documented that kids have much more to distract them from mere comic reading than 40-50 years ago!
3. They seem to be choosing things that might have seen the light of day in Gemstone's pocket series had that succeeded. And they are willing to see the stories chosen spun out for over a year. That certainly cuts down on planning costs; your only concern is what you're going to start next year. Allows them the luxury to either a) sit back and see how these things play, or b) market the begeebees out of them so that they see the light of day in places where they may stand a retail chance.
4. They've chosen things that we have not yet seen. I know that there are people out there who are all Barks (or Rosa, or both) all the time, but I feel that there are other talents out there who deserve to be read, enjoyed, and nurtured to allow their gifts of story, art, or both to mature and potentially add to that august company.
5. Lower price - $2.99 - for 24 pages. Certainly more likely to encourage parents of aforementioned kiddies to consider buying a copy.

Five good reasons. At the risk of being labeled a revanchist curmudgeon, I offer my cons list:

1. There is nothing traditional about the way these proposed stories handle the characters from what I read. Not necessarily bad - but neither title being offered is grounding us in tradition.
2. The lack of tradition suggests that we adult fans are being told in a very pointed way to take a long walk off a short pier. Do we "buy" the change; or simply go bye?
3. The fact that these two stories have been chosen to start up WDC&S 699 and Mickey Mouse and Friends 296 makes me question why they even kept the titles at all - except that it is something people may recognize. They chosen to evidently take nothing from Gemstone, even to the point of leaving the serial from WDC&S 698 unfinished! (Yes, this has been printed elsewhere, but doggone it is the principle of the thing!) Another slap in the face for continuity is that celebration of the 700th issue of WDC&S is simply being papered right on over. Gemstone wouldn't have let this go unnoticed. Did they even contact anyone connected with Gemstone - at all??? I'd love to be wrong, but the answer is probably obvious.
4. A little update since I began writing this. I checked back to Arthur De Wolf's blog on his Disney Comics Worldwide site and he had a new entry quoting a Newsarama interview with Ross Richie, co-founder of Boom, stating that "classics" would be part of their mix as well. OK, what does that mean? I'm still skeptical. Especially, as Arthur pointed out, Ross made it sound like all Gemstone did was reprints, or mostly anyway. A real slap in the face, intended or not, for all the good folks at Gemstone like archival editor David Gerstein who spent a lot of time pouring over stories to grab fresh new, good ones to see an American comic for the first time. Has Ross read any of the Gemstones; or does his definition of traditional (i.e. old and stale) include anything that doesn't explode out of every other panel?
5. About that price point (a retail definition I have despised ever since my Disney Store days, because it means nothing more than "price" - period - and I include here to emphasize my utter contempt for the wool about to pulled over many people's eyes), here's a whopper: when you consider it page for page, the Gemstones were cheaper!!! You may protest but: $2.99 divided by 24 pages comes out to just shy of 15c per page, while $7.95 divided by 64, no, let's say just 60 pages (losing the cover, the contents on the inside front, the letters column on the inside back, and the back cover) comes out to 13.25c per page, folks! OOOOHHH, there's some rocket science!
6. Yes, 6. A topic not discussed above was the wonderful problem that has hampered every Dinsey publisher since the Last Days of the Whitman Empire: distribution! No one has ever been able to get their product where it really needed to go: where it is in full view of everyday John and Jane Q. Public und die ever-lovin' kinder. And one of the biggest impediments is the company granting the *!@#&* license! The only reason why the Gemstone copies of WDC&S and U$ made it to the Art of Disney store at Walt Disney World is because it could be sold like a paperback book. Great for the adult enthusiast, but even my wonderful Disney-loving six-year-old Kathryn would hardly be making a beeline for the Art of Disney. Unfortunately it takes nothing less than convincing an entire business unit that you have something worth selling. I'm afraid that these 24-page pamphlets are not going to be touched with a 10-foot pole because they read "damage out" all over them (in other words, they will be manhandled enough to be rendered unsellable). Not that I want to, but taking a cue from Whitman (hold on to your hats on this one), I remember visiting WDW in July and August 1972 and at that time Whitman had just begun bagging groups of comics for sale and, yes, these were sold at the park. That may be a way to get around that issue.

Don't get me wrong, I want Boom to succeed. I would just like to think that they will a) respect rather than disrespect Disney comics traditions (i.e., not throw the baby out with the bath water) and b) learn the lessons of Disney Comics publishing history. I commented that the demise of Gemstone was yet another sad end to a cruise on the Titanic; I hope this Titanic gets out of the harbor.

Videopalooza, Part 1

2009-06-18T22:39:00.000-04:00

I am playing around with this to learn how to do things that my fellow friends and bloggers already seem to know. One is how to embed videos, both my own and from YouTube. As there are a number of good ones (at least that I enjoy) from YouTube, I'll start there. The first is one I was so happy to find recently. Why I hadn't thought to look for it sooner I really can't say. A family friend introduced us to this while Mom, Dad and I were visiting in Europe in 1997. This is a New Years / Holiday tradition in many parts of Europe, especially northern Europe and especially Germany, where this performance was filmed. It is called "Der 90ste Geburtstag oder The 90th Birthday or Dinner for One". Yes, the last part of the title is in English, and, except for the introduction to the German audience on what they are about to hear being said, the performance is in English as well. There is a good Wikipedia entry on it that can fill you in on the history, as well as a small blurb on IMDB. Most of the YouTube versions of it are in B/W, but this one was in color. It is in two parts, hence two windows for it:

Part One

Part Two

Of course, something this popular leads to all sorts of parodies and tributes. Apologies to the non-German-speaking crowd for the next three videos, but here are a few of the ones I enjoyed (more English/non-verbal videos follow!):

"Happy Otto" Show - Miss Otti Wird 90 - Miss Otti Turns 90 - with Otto Waalkes and Ralf Schmitz - also in two parts. In this version the guests are German personalities as portrayed by Ralf Schmitz. Even if you are not familiar with the famous guests, Schmitz's performance conveys the comedy of his impersonations.

Then we have a song that ended a Christmas holiday special shown in Germany on Christmas 2008: "Same Procedure" . The song explains how it wouldn't be New Years Eve without "Dinner for One" and how everything is ready, the glasses are set at the table, etc.

A few other favorites involve fancy footwork, such as "Evolution of Dance". This one will not be new to many of you (but my blog is a convenient place to reference it!)

Now Judson Laipply has released a second version:

And I'm pretty certain that OK Go would not be where they are today if not for this posted video of the song "Here It Goes Again ".
Then there is the stuff that is plain funny and silly, like the guys who have taken the now well-publicized event that occurs when Menthos mint candies and soda meet:

Or:

So now you have an idea of the sort of silliness and insanity that appeals to me. Poor Kathryn.....I will be known as the "strange" dad I believe.

Fatherhood Joys, Episode 3

2009-06-18T09:20:00.000-04:00

Last night was Kathryn's first swim meet of the season. We had no idea what to expect out of our daughter. As I've mentioned before, we want her to enjoy it first, improve second and compete third.

The time trials were last weekend and she did improve over last year. For the freestyle she was 30 seconds better - we are ignoring the fact that she was still 20 seconds behind everyone else. At the moment I forget how she did on her backstroke.

So now to last night. To begin with the weather was completely un-June-like: rainy would have been one thing, but it was actually chilly on top and the kids were all freezing and the water even more so. I was late getting to the pool, which fortunately was in the neighborhood adjacent to ours. I found Becky just as Kathryn's freestyle heat was about to start and the girls were stepping up to the pool.

The buzzer sounded, the strobe flashed, water splashed, the race was joined! Ah, the strains of Vangellis from "Chariots of Fire". Screeeeech. So maybe not quite that heroic or epic. Kathryn, bless her heart, kept her arms going (mostly) and her legs kicking (mostly). Daya (her pet name for me) kept following her like a lane camera at the Olympics and I kept trying to encourage her (with dignity, of course): "Come on, Kathryn" "Move those arrms!" "Keep kicking, honey!" "Stroke, stroke, stroke; kick, kick, kick". All that at the top of my lungs, dignity left the pool. When she was halfway across, I afforded myself a look at the other lanes. Of course, some of the girls had already finished and the rest were ahead of her, but then my parental heart skipped a beat. Not that I want anyone else to be disappointed mind you, but there, there in the first or second lane, can't recall which at this point, was a swimmer from the other team. And, bless her, she was behind Kathryn! And she stayed behind Kathryn! For once, maybe the only time this whole season, I don't really care, my daughter was not last. We could rightly give her ego a boost on the merit of her efforts and her achievement. To Becky and I, it was like she came in first. Actually, she did, in the place it matters most: our hearts.

David Gerstein at D23 Website!

2009-06-16T01:51:00.001-04:00

I posted the following to the Disney Comics Mailing List, but I think it deserves to be spread as far and wide as I can cast it:

Hi everyone,

David may not be tooting his own horn, but I'll toot it for him: he is credited with an article on the official Disney D23 site celebrating Huey, Dewey and Louie as part of Donald's 75th Anniversary.

Kudos to David for a nice succinct history of our favorite triplets with a heavy dose of comic history for the greater Disney audience - ALWAYS a good thing, since IMHO we tend to be the forgotten step-children of Disney fandom. Not too many bright spots in US Disney comic fandom these days, but here's a particularly nice one!

Have a comic-al day,
Chuck Munson

I am privleged to know David through friend and comic super-fan, Joe Torcivia. David is one of those special people who is a font of comic and animation knowledge, especially Disney. Check out his blog through the link I have set up in my "Blogs I Follow" box.

A Belated Happy Birthday

2009-06-10T11:05:00.000-04:00

A quick note of one-day late birthday/anniversary greetings to the Disney character tied for first in my favorites column, Donald Duck. (He's tied with that marvelous creation otherwise known as his rich Uncle Scrooge McDuck.)

What is about this irascible duck that attracts me? I guess it is his everyman qualities, his definite lack of perfection, his striving to be that which his personality always sabotages, his portrayal of human foibles in the guise of a duck in a sailor suit.

But I truly believe that I wouldn't feel half as strongly about Donald, Scrooge, Mickey and the rest of the gang if I had never discovered and been able to read all the wonderful comic stories that really brought all these characters to life for me. I grew up at a time when the cartoons were not readily available. The Disney presence on TV was the Sunday night show (and I didn't start watching it, that I remember, until after Uncle Walt's passing). I read comic versions of the movies long before I ever saw them. And for the classic characters, the fab five, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, etc., the cartoons, when I did see them, seemed to be lacking in depth. I understand now that the "depth" was an ingrown necessity of the comic stories to show, in the form of thought bubbles or soliloquys, what was going on in that character's head. And jointly, the Duck stories done by Carl Barks in the comics and the Mouse stories by Floyd Gottfredson in the newspapers, brought these characters to life for me. There are a ton of other great artists and storywriters creating magic with ducks and mice, but those were the first two I really knew anything about and the ones that always will stand out.

This is a long-winded way of stating why I feel the need to wish an animated character duck a happy 75th anniversary, along with a wish for continued good health and popularity!

Fatherhood Joys, Episode 2

2009-06-09T22:33:00.000-04:00

Kathryn loves the water. Any water. A bath, a shower, a swimming pool, a water park, a beach - it makes no difference. I have been reminded of this consistently over the last few weeks.

This marks the beginning of her second season on our neighborhood swim team. In anticipation of that, and in consideration that she managed despite all attempts to generally come in at the bottom of the pack last summer, we enrolled her in two short four-week swimming classes at one of the county rec centers. (Yes, I know that it is not the point that she was consistently behind last year; it just meant that we needed to give her extra practice to get ready. We want her to enjoy it, but we also want to see her improve so that she continues to enjoy it.)

She actually has been doing pretty well, in both the classes and also at the swim team practices which began last week. Still the prediction that one of the teen assistant coaches made of her last year would appear to be coming to fruition. As much as she loves actually being under the water, she will do well at strokes like butterfly and breast as long as she can master them. Freestyle and back stroke she struggles with. I recognize her struggle, I deal with the same thing myself when trying to swim: the can't-walk-and-chew-gum-at-the-same-time syndrome. You start making the correct arm strokes and your kick falls apart, you correct your arms and your stroke dies. However, she did a breast stroke as part of her lesson at the rec center on Sunday that was just a joy to behold. She kicked correctly most of the time, her arms seemed to be more or less where they needed to be and her head gently bobbed up for breathes in the manner she prefers anyway. The time trials for the swim team are early, like be there at 6:45 AM early, on Saturday morning. Time will bear witness to my impatience to know how well she will do.

What I am not enjoying so much is the battle that rages on our attempts to leave either pool. Our otherwise polite daughter will pitch a fit (of varying intensity) if the requisite playtime fails to be tacked on to her practices / lessons. It all comes back to her love of the water. It overrides her otherwise sound judgment that "time to leave" does indeed mean what it says. The other day, in classic "pick-your-battle" mode, I allowed her to join other children in going off the diving board after practice. I let her go four times; with "let's go now" came griping. Then came the request to be allowed to take a shower in the women's room. That was fine, or at least it would have been, had not wonderful Mommy be waiting on us with dinner. I finally resorted to prevailing upon of our neighbors to go back into the women's room and encourage her to finish after 10+ minutes. Big surprise that she was not a happy camper.

One part of me wants to give her some sort of appropriate rebuke every time she pulls this stuff. The other recognizes that, in a way, I should feel very fortunate that she loves and, almost always, has loved the water. She has been going underwater from the beginning and otherwise loves playing with it or in it. I hope that the parents out there reading this have kids who enjoy the water. It is simply another joy among many.

From Germany with Love, Part Zwei (Two)

2009-06-02T17:36:00.000-04:00

Back on May 23rd, no less an august periodical than the Wall Street Journal took a serious, if somewhat bemused, look at the popularity of Donald Duck in Germany. The bemused part comes into play by comparing the popularity of Donald Duck in Germany to that of Jerry Lewis in France.

The other part of the article that struck me rather odd was the seeming dismissal of Carl Barks' original English (American) dialogue as somehow simplistic and ordinary. Excuse me, but it takes an incredible paring down of dialogue and careful choices to have a story which flows smoothly, succinctly and sounds natural.

The author did admiringly give a rather full explanation of the role of Dr. Erika Fuchs in translating the stories to German. The lady whom all German Disney comic fans look up to translated Disney stories and gave them a polished, sophisticated air for over forty years. A full explanation of why the effort was made to "ramp up" the dialogue is included in the article.

In the end, I think kudos must go to both Barks and Fuchs for making the most of these stories in their respective languages. Enjoy!

Fatherhood Joys, Episode 1

2009-05-29T13:54:00.000-04:00

I'm not the first dad who loves being a dad and I certainly won't be the last. This is just the first of hopefully a series of little (and big) observations on how Kathryn delights me and makes fatherhood a joy for me.

At 6 yrs, 8 mos she has become a great reader, much better than I was at her age! The subtleties of how the vowel before a single consonant will be long and before a double consonant will be short (e.g., later and latter) are as of yet lost on her. Nonetheless, she can be counted on to be in her room reading her easier storybooks (prefered reading material: Disney princesses, but definitely not exclusive) if she awakens before the parental units. I'm hoping that this trend can continue. Kids, like everyone else, have more and more options available to them to occupy what can be construed to be called "leisure time." She and I played our Wii for about an hour and a half last Saturday morning. And despite the fact that my 6 year old skunked me on just about everything (yes, I wasted my youth reading when I obviously should have been playing pinball and the rudimentary video games), she still settled down with her American Girl catalog later and read and dreamed of all the things she would like for her Kitt doll. She even found a new appreciation for the Sunday newspaper comics. (Although they are certainly skewed a lot older than I noted they had become of late - "sex change," "witness protection program" and "exotic dancer" all registered an appearance at one alone. It was actually very funny, but made me cringe as a parent when I know that my daughter has a tendency to repeat things. I digress....) And occasionally she asks a question that shows that, while it may not be obvious, there is somthing that is sinking in and taking hold in that fascinating mind of hers. Gives me lots of hope.

A Day Late, A Lego Short

2009-05-28T12:45:00.000-04:00

Anyone who knows me really well will know that I enjoy building with Legos. My former housemate Chris also has enjoyed this pastime since childhood. Just another thing that I believe our lovely wives either tolerate or are mildly amused by or both.

For over ten years Chris and I have been discussing our plan (read "pipe dream") to acquire something like 50 to 100 thousand grey Lego bricks in order to construct a Gothic cathedral. High Gothic mind you, light, airy, flying buttresses everywhere, rose windows (note to self - we also require an insane number of the different colored glass blocks for the stained glass and awe-inspiring rose windows). You get the picture.

About two-three months ago our wild Lego visions expanded to branch out into all manner of architecture and civilizations. To wit, some of our emails:

Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 1:22 PMT
From: me
To: Rebecca Munson; Chris Lewis
Subject: From MSN Report on the NYC 2009 American International Toy Fair

Cool new item from Lego:

Consider Lego, for example: The privately-held Danish toy company has decided to meld technology to its analog toy line, which is otherwise dominated by utterly analog plastic building blocks. Their “Builders of Tomorrow” box, which will cost $29 when it’s introduced this spring, comes packed with multi-colored bricks, of course. But you also get a link to a Lego Web site that offers downloadable monthly architectural building plans that can be executed using the blocks in the box.

This rekindled those old hopes and dreams.

Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 1:31 PM
From: Chris Lewis
To: Chuck Munson
Subject: RE: From MSN Report on the NYC 2009 American International Toy Fair

Be even neater if it was a giant gray block set model of something like, say … Notre Dame! Then we could download other gothic masterpieces!!!

Followed by:

From me to Chris:
OOOOOOOhhhhhh - I can see it now: LEGO presents - Great Monuments of the World. A series for all ALEs (Adult Lego Enthusiasts)! Including the Egyptian subset (comes with hieroglyphic blocks and the Moses vs. Pharoah figures), the Minoan subset (check out the minotaur figure in the Knossos palace set), the Greek subset (comes with Great Greeks figures to populate your agora), the Roman subset (the Nero add-on comes with real burnt blocks!), the Byzantine subset (a set that continually shrinks over a thousand years), the Gothic subset (comes in nothing but gray blocks - yay!), the Rococo subset (consists of nothing but specialized pieces galore!), the Georgian and Federalist combined subsets (round window tops vs. oval window tops - your choice), the Victorian subset (each set is no less than 2000 blocks in an homage to over-the-top ornamentation), the Wright subset (every figure available for this subset comes pre-bent to acknowledge the models lower ceilings), the Philip Johnson subset (consisting mostly of clear blocks), the general Modernist subset (no sloped roof pieces included OR allowed), and the Frank Gehry subset (which comes with a warning to have a ream of paper in the printer to download the plans).

From Chris to me:
Don’t forget that the Gehry subset comes with a multitude of strange shaped blocks that only go together one or at most 2 ways, creating unique undulating forms both difficult to build and maintain economically.

Also … the general Modernist subset can be enhanced with the purchase of various Richard Meier subsets – all white and clear blocks (no other colors allowed).

And as long as we’re going to have a full out gothic subset, we should also have a commemorative Fay Jones subset, in woodsy earthy tones and clear blocks.

From me to Chris:
Love the additions. Oh man, NOW we're into the Great Architect series. The Ayn Rand tribute series - no blocks, just an admonition to make them yourself out of whatever material you deem fit - hang the cost and hang whatever anyone else thinks, they're all philistines anyway. The Gaudi series is wonderful, but it can only be purchased and built in Barcelona. I believe the Fay Jones set, like the Arts and Crafts set before it, is part of the Tribute to Lincoln Logs series.

From Chris to me:
Or perhaps we should have two or three new lines instead …

Great Monuments/Cultures of the World: Egyptian, Minoan, Greek, Roman, Indian, Islamic … (the “monuments” portion of the line could be the master/largest most impressive set and recreate a specific great monument of the culture (Karnak Temple, Palace of Knossos, Parthenon, Coliseum or Pantheon, Taj Mahal, etc.). The “cultures” sets could be supplementary, smaller, and be in the basic styles of the period so you can build what you want)

Architectural Styles Series: Victorian, Georgian, Federal, Modern, Prairie, Tudor, Italianate, Neoclassical, etc.

Great Architects Series: Wright, Gehry, Richard Meier, Philip Johnson, Fay Jones, I M Pei, etc.

Obviously this could be carried, like so many other things, to its illogical extreme, but I thought that the premise had merit.

Evidently Lego and someone else did as well. I navigated to the link below from a blurb in one of the emails I get from the AIA . Said blurb was titled "Lego Frank Lloyd Wright." Take a gander.

I would guess that this was in the planning a long time before February and while I think it is very cool, there is not an inconsiderable amount of sour grapes I am holding at the moment. Just goes to show you, crazy ideas are not necessarily crazy ideas - if you have the ability or desire, go for it!

To English-Speaking Disney Comics Readers - With Love from Germany

2009-05-27T22:25:00.000-04:00

For those blissfully unaware of the latest tragedy in the tortured recent history of American Disney comics, earlier this year the publisher in whom we had set great hope for success since 2003, Gemstone, ceased publication of the two remaining monthlies, Walt Disney Comics and Stories and Uncle Scrooge, as well as their one-shot magazines. Ever since the original publisher, known by its three different monikers - Dell/Gold Key/Whitman - depending on the era you're refering to, ceased publication in 1984, US Disney comics have led a tortured existence. As I have noted elsewhere, it's like riding the deck chairs as the Titanic goes under on a regular basis. The ballroom is glittering while it lasts, but I'm getting tired of getting continual chills waiting for yet another publisher to resurrect the ship.

I'll spare you a retelling of the ship's log, but at this moment we cannot turn to another English-speaking country to find a publisher still afloat. Canada, Australia and New Zealand depended upon Gemstone. The UK has Disney magazines, but the type of comics that we enjoyed with our publishers do not exist there. India does have two English-language titles about to start, however I have been unable to locate a way to reach the publisher, let alone a way to actually order them.

So what does this have to do with Germany? First, again for the uninitiated, the ship which is so leaky here, has a fleet sailing all over Europe. Disney comics, while off the high seas they may have enjoyed in earlier decades across the continent (Spain and Portugal being the low ebb with their titles breaking shells with Davy Jones), are still plowing full steam ahead with barely a chill in the water. Germany is among the most varied and strong markets for its lines of Disney comics. Micky Maus may be its flagship weekly, but the container ship-equivalent is the thick pocket-size book, Lustige Taschenbuch. Now, courtesy of Netherlands-based Arthur deWolf and his wonderful Disney Comics Worldwide website (see my Disney comics links), we learn that the German publisher Ehapa will be christening a special issue, maybe a series, of the Lustige Taschenbuch - the English Edition, in July. I am assuming that this cargo will be easier to find and easier to ship, despite the probability of it being a considerable anchor that my wallet may not be able to weigh in.

The presence of this book just blows my mind, or keeping the nautical metaphor, smokestack, foghorn, take your pick. I have an idea that this issue actually plays off the fact that every German school kid is taking English at some point, probably for most of their education. But can you picture a similar thing happening here? Even in languages that are widely spoken every day here? I'm starting to veer into the much-discussed issue among US Disney comics fans as to whether the comics can ever re-establish a popularity in the US outside of a relatively small fan-base. It can get quite lengthy and touch on many hotspots regarding kids, school, free time, literacy, the digital age and a half-dozen other topics. So I'll drydock that discussion for now.

The bottom line is that the English Edition gives us some glimmer of passing Disney comics superliner as we Titanic survivors continue to row toward an uncertain future.

As I navigated to Arthur's blog to see if there was any new postings, the May 27th post met me at the dock. Perhaps the Titanic is about to rise from the deep once again with a Boom!

Why I Never Get Anything Done......

2009-04-26T18:37:00.000-04:00

April 26th: (I date this for a reason: to see exactly how long it takes me to finish one blog posting,) I would really have prefered that my second post delve into one of my eclectic interests, however I know right now if there is any one thing that is standing in my way of completing this post in a week, my own self-imposed deadline, it is my seeming inability to get anything done. I just can't imagine why that is......

I suppose this has been covered by countless other bloggers (let's face it - the very nature of blogging takes time from other things in our frequently over-scheduled lives). I suppose I won't even finish this right now as I get taken off to other priorities (You: "Do I have to do it now?" - Spouse, Child, Parent, Boss, Teacher, take your pick: "Yes, *whatever* is absolutely essential right now!"). I'm a dad (definitely lower-case) and as a dad you learn very soon after going through the larval bachelor/boyfriend phase, that your priorities come from everyone else's. At least for everything else to go smoothly and for everyone else to be happy - or some semblance of happy. Before I get accused of some sort of sexism, which for anyone who knows me would, I think, be commonly agreed to be amusing, there is definitely a "mom" version of this at a whole different level and many variants. I personally can only really speak of "dad".

Now that that is established we can look at those priorities that seem to be continually overlapping. This past weekend is a case in point. I did have work that needed to be done at the office. A home agenda item was multiple items of yardwork - this coincided with my wife's agenda. Going to the warehouse grocery store and the regular grocery store was also on coinciding agendas. Kathryn was begging for time with Daya - she got short-changed this past week with time spent racing home to make certain I was at least home for "story"... and then racing back to work all this past week.

The work at the office is getting done but way too slowly for my tastes. However, the proverbial you-know-what has not hit you-also-know-what. Not yet.

The yardwork was partially accomplished as well. Becky, bless her heart, did the mowing on Saturday. I did a large amount of weeding and also attempting to spray the dandelions to kill the wretched enemies of the established lawns. We shall see if it does any good. I sprayed as well, but it is like the proverbial attempt to close the barn door l-o-o-o-n-n-g after that horse has bolted. One of my neighbors pointed that out - along with a recommendation for the lawn treatment to help eradicated the dandelion issue after a few treatments (read: years) -- I must say that he graciously stated the obvious and left me with some shred of lawncare dignity (which we all know is one of those measures of worthiness in the eyes of the neighborhood "guys", or dads)!

April 29th: But this is not getting to my point. Hmmmph. I knew it! I began this post three, count'em, three days ago. And here I am back at work tonight, taking a five-minute break and spending it trying to get out a post that should have been done already. I'll have to get the work done however because I can't stay late tomorrow because Kathryn will be singing in a program celebrating her school's 25th anniversary. She has to be there at 4 Pm and because Becky will still have one of her daycare kids present, I will be having to get Kathryn over to the school.

This coming weekend, before the forecast of rain, we were doing the incredibly exciting "stain the deck" chore, along with the "dig the lawn up some more" cha-cha. Ballroom dance, now there's something I haven't done in quite a while. A really enjoyable way to get exercise.

Oh, that's the other thing that we have starting next month, Kathryn will participate on the neighborhood swim team again next year. We are all pleased that she'll be doing this again. As much as she occasionally fussed about swimming in lanes, she still loves it. I will be going to be doing timing during the second half of the home meets. This year as well they are requesting that parents serve on at least one of the multiple committees. I forget at the moment which one we ended up on.

June 4th: Uh-huh. Need I say more. Started spending massive amount of time at the office trying to get lots of work done. Spent a couple evenings where I woke up at my desk, just in time to go home, shower and come back to work!

In the meantime, Kathryn has indeed begun her swimming practices with her swim team, but she has missed ones this week mainly because of the overall nastiness of the weather.

In regards to all the rain that we have had over the past month, I have been anxious every time we get a heavy downpour. Thankfully the sump pump has kicked in when necessary every single time. The thought of having another water in the basement incident is nothing I want to experience again. Even with the loss in furniture, we still came out of it fine, since I lost very little in the way of Disney or philatelic items.

The other thing that the rain has done is to curtail my lawn and garden work. It has been two weeks since I was able to mow the back yard, because of its inability to dry out!

So here I sit, trying to finalize my blog (ha, like that is going to happen any time soon!), do some more office work and keeping in mind that I have "door and door hardware" meeting tomorrow at 2:30. Not quite certain what it is all about however. I am not a big fan of meetings that I don't have an agenda for at least a day in advance.

Obviously in the meantime I've written other posts, but they took a while to finish as well!

Welcome!

2009-04-24T03:53:00.000-04:00

Nothing quite like creating something that you have no idea about what you really want to do at 4AM in the morning. That said, I have been thinking about a place to address, in an obviously more public manner than an email to my friends, what I'm thinking and experiencing. This is obviously a work in progress, but I'm excited about the thought of being able to unleash my random thoughts on an unsuspecting public! LOL! So here goes - hopefully my next post is within a week, month, year??