June 27, 2007

Once again amazingly I am able to sleep on the train. It is not perfect sleep, but I probably got five or six hours of decent sleep. I don’t remember any stops along the way. The most noticeable thing is the fact that the air conditioning stopped working – I’m guessing at about 3:00 am. At five I get up and check the thermostat and also my travel clock which has a thermometer on it. It’s 79 in the roomette.

By 7:30 I am too hot to sleep and go out to find the dining car. Relatively speaking it is frigid in the dining car, but breakfast is good and I sit with a lady who returning to Sacramento, CA from NY. She has spent the last three weeks with her daughter in Fort Lee, NJ. We talk about California and NY, Broadway and trains. She’s a smoker and cannot wait until the next time we can stop and she can have a cigarette. I suggest that this might be a good time for her to stop. She reports that she had “lost her husband” last March and it would be hard to stop smoking now. Maybe she wants to join him sooner than later, I think.

The big news is the train has stopped and we are still 20 minutes out of Cleveland – EAST of Cleveland. This means we are now close to five hours late.

My roomette is too warm for blogging, so I have headed up to the club car to find some cool air. I call cousin Ralph to give him an update on the delays and he starts to develop contingency plans. Once in the club car, I find a conductor. He is NOT optimistic about our arriving in time to catch the Empire Builder. When asked what happens then he indicates that since they are guaranteed connections that Amtrak will provide accommodations in Chicago and a plan to get me to Portland. The word “bus” is mentioned. The adventure continues….

Chicago Bound

We’re on the Lake Shore Limited now chugging our way through the Boston suburbs and should be in Albany around 5:30 pm.

I had lunch in the Club Car and noticed a couple who I had seen in the Acela Lounge. He reminds me of Uncle Dick Weagly; I have a sneaking suspicion they may be brother and sister… I’m guessing they are returning to the mid-west somewhere…I’ll guess Minnesota. Or perhaps they will be going all the way across the country like me. They seem to be “of means” and obviously are grabbing a sleeper in Albany too. We’ll keep you posted.

We are now about an hour and a half out of Boston in the hill country west of Worcester – the second largest city in New England. I recall that this is where the Amtrak starts to climb into the foothills and ultimately, the Berkshires (you all know the James Taylor song where he sings, “…the Berkshires seemed dreamlike on account of the frosting…” – those Berkshires).

When I came though here 14 months ago it was late winter and the trees were all bare – no frosting. Despite the full vegetation now, there is still much to see. The track follows the extent bodies of water – the old railway architects certainly picked beautiful places to put their track.

We’ve passed through a number of small mill towns that seem to be fed by the river/stream that we are following. There was a beautiful mill and waterfall a few miles back. We’ll have to see if we can figure out what town that was. Very pretty.

7:00 pm

We finally arrived in Albany about an hour and a half late. The train experienced several delays, some due to “mechanical” issues and some related to the fact that CSX owns the lines and freight gets priority over people. All of the trainmen I’ve spoken to do not have nice things to say about CSX. I find out later that there was a high temperature restriction – when the temps get above 90, the trains need to stay under 45 mph. This was part of the delay. There was also a delay due to a traffic light that would not turn green. On two occasions we actually had to pull off to a siding and wait for another train to pass, then back up and resume our trip. That was a first.

In Albany I met Randy, an “Albanian” who was taking the Lake Shore Limited to Chicago for a conference. We had a nice chat and as I was the senior and resident expert on sleeper cars, I filled him in on what to expect.

There was a woman sitting in front of me with two boys. I noticed she was reading the Portland Press Herald, so I soon learned she was heading to Chicago with her son and nephew. She was concerned about the dining car being open once we go on the main train. I assured her I thought it would be open, and then checked with the information booth in Albany to confirm this.

When we arrived in Albany, I overheard a conductor’s radio report that the LSL coming up from NYC was running at least an hour late due to “a fatality.” This was later confirmed by people I met who were on that train. Apparently someone south of Poughkeepsie decided to commit suicide by Amtrak.

I also met Boyd and his wife, a Rhode Island native who was also heading to Portland, OR. They are going to a wedding. Boyd is retired railroad and his son also works for Amtrak. Boyd and his wife get to ride for free, but have to take coach. Boyd may come in handy.

The train from NYC did not arrive in Albany until almost eight. We finally boarded and I went to the dining car. It was now close to 8:30 and I met a professor from U Maine Farmington. We had a nice chat and ordered our meals, and I a bottle of their finest Chardonnay. We had just started eating our salads when the lights went out. It was a bit romantic for about five minutes. But then the 90 degree outside temperature started to invade the space and they stopped serving – railroad rules.

Those who had not ventured down to the dining car were ordered to stay in their rooms and seats while they tried and failed to fix the problem. Forty five more minutes and another engine hooked up and we are back in the light, but still sitting in Albany. It is now after 9:30 pm – we are about 2-1/2 hours late.

I return to my room and the fatigue of the day is getting to me. I take a shower then return to my roomette to listen to some music. Beddy-bye before 11:00.

On the road…

June 26, 2007 – 12:30 pm

I left Bob K’s house this morning at 8:00 in what is the first leg of the journey to the other Portland. Bob drove me to the Amtrak station in Wells where I boarded the 8:40 am Downeaster which arrived right on time. In less than two hours we were crossing the Charles and arriving at Boston’s North Station exactly on-time.

North Station, located below the famous Boston Garden has always been the wicked stepchild of train stations. Unlike its step sibling, South Station, North is really nothing more than a commuter rail station. But much to my surprise they have undergone some renovations since I was last here, expanding the waiting area with a new spacious hall. Still not of the grandeur of South Station, at least it’s no longer a dump.

A quick taxi ride to South and I checked my baggage and then reclined in the luxury of the Acela Lounge, a nice perk for those traveling First Class or who have a sleeper to Chicago. The Lounge is on a mezzanine overlooking the main waiting area. It’s nicely climate controlled space – a big advantage on this warm and humid morning – offering free snacks, drinks, newspapers and Wi-Fi. I did not notice the WiFi sign until it was almost time to leave, but used it long enough to gather some e-mails and check out some free books. More about the books later.

The funny story of the trip so far was an overheard conversation on the Downeaster. Two young women boarded in Dover, NH were walking down the aisle looking for seats when one of the women faced me and spoke, “Oh, half the seats are facing one way and the other half are facing the other way.” It was a rhetorical statement, no doubt, but being the instant comedian I responded to her that “we’re going somewhere else.” I of course was in one of the seats facing the back of the train.

A few minutes later the women headed back up the aisle when the one who spoke again rhetorically announced, “I think this half of the train may not be going to Boston, they are going ‘somewhere else.’”

I guess you had to have been there.

As a going away present to myself I bought a new MP3 player. My old one, a first generation SansDisk had never worked correctly and had committed Hari-Kari earlier in the week. I had contemplated making the trip without a MP3 player and relying on my laptop and some CDs. But the more I thought of it, the more I realized this would add more weight to the trip. So, I popped over to Sam’s Club and picked up a Creative Zen Vision: M. I did this literally hours before leaving for Bob’s so I barely had time to charge it and move some music over on to it. Today I played around with some of the features including the ability to view pictures and videos. It also has a microphone for podcasting and has an FM radio receiver which nicely was able to pick up some Boston classical stations.

The Zen had a free book flyer in the box announcing that one could log into some website and download two free books. What they failed to mention was the fact that one was required to sign up for the service for a year and pay $20 a month. No, thanks.

~j

All Aboard!

Tuesday I am setting out on an adventure. An adventure that will take me to the "left coast" from the "right coast" and back. An adventure that involves choo choo trains.

I hope to be able to blog and post pictures and videos along the way. I don't imagine there will be too many places to log in once I leave Chicago, but we'll see. Will definitely post when I get to the other Portland. Stay tuned and mark this blogspot.

Whhhooooooooooahwooooooooo...

~j

Cap'n Crunch is Dead

Not really.

But the woman who is credited with inventing that wonderful, tooth-rotting taste has died at the age of 79.

According to the AP story in the Boston Globe, Pamela Low of New London, NH died last Friday at the age of 79. They report:

Low, who lived in New London for the past 34 years, was working for the Arthur D. Little consulting firm in the Boston area when she was asked to help find a flavor for the corn-and-oat cereal. She had studied microbiology at the University of New Hampshire, but drew upon a recipe that her grandmother, Luella Low, used to serve at home in Derry.

"She used to serve rice with a butter-and-brown sugar sauce that she made. She'd serve it over the rice on Sundays," William Low, an Ohio resident and one of Pamela Low's younger brothers, recalled in an interview with the Lebanon Valley News on Saturday.

Cap'n Crunch cereal was introduced in 1963 - I was ten years old and personally am responsible for the company's success as I ate about three tons of the stuff that year. I even had a Cap'n Crunch "treasure chest" which contained a square plastic bowl and shovel-shaped spoon in which you could enjoy your morning treat of sugar and milk.

Imagine my surprise when 27 years later, when I first worked on a college campus, I discovered that the only two breakfast cereals that were served in the college cafeteria were Cap'n Crunch and Lucky Charms.

Pamela Low is personally responsible for getting at least three generations hooked on that stuff. Let's see someone top that!

~j

Pink Flamingos

The words "pink flamingos" conger up a number of memories for me; the John Waters film in particular. However, when I read the story today about the closing of the manufacturing plant in Massachusetts that held the patent on those plastic little darlings I recalled another pink flamingo story that most people don't know about. Yes, the good news is another company has taken over the patent and they will now be spitting the pink birds out in upstate New York. But it must have been around 1980 when this event took place, an event that will forever remain my best pink flamingo story. . .

I was living in the pastoral village of Lower Bartlett, New Hampshire, just north of the tourist trap town of North Conway with its miles of stores, restaurants, motels and drinking establishments. That was at the time when "The Valley" (the Mount Washington Valley to be precise) had just started to explode with development. The land grabbers had come in the first wave in the 1970s and changed what had been a sleepy little hamlet into a resort town. Eight major ski resorts were within an hour's drive of North Conway, so it became the service center for all the tourism industry with lots of places to stay and eat. In the 90s this would expand further with rampant condo development and malls. By 1980, North Conway looks nothing like it did in 1970 when I first visited it on a family trip.

During the time I lived in Bartlett, 1979-1983 the population and development was pretty stable. They were still primarily a two seasons resort - winter and summer - but entrepreneurs were always trying hard to find things to make it a four-seasons resort.

As a two-season town there were a number of transient types who worked and played the ski slopes in the winter and labored in construction and low-paying jobs in the summer. Many of these folks were "fond of the drink" and kept the beer taps in the multitude of bars and restaurants pumping year round. This crowd - and life style - tended to draw a collection of interesting "characters," who spiced up the life in the Valley and created enough gossip and small talk that they had their own weekly newspaper called The Mountain Ear which had a whole page devoted to weekly gossip and "pub chatter."

So one should not have been that surprised when one Monday morning while I was driving to work I had my first sighting of wild pink flamingos. The location, a bog/wetland that was created between the relatively new by-pass highway and the steep embankment that carried the railroad tracks up the valley to the north, would be a logical place for flamingos to roost, right? Except it was late April, and this was New Hampshire, not exactly part of the native migration territory for tropical birds. Goodness knows, April in New Hampshire is more winter like than spring like.

I first noticed them on that overcast morning when the car in front of me tapped his brakes and started to drift into the breakdown lane. Being on autopilot myself, I unconsciously hit my brakes and looked off to the right. There they were. Two of them standing gracefully in the middle of the clear pond centered in the wetland.

It must have been the brain crustiness of a Monday morning as it took me a couple of seconds to react. "Pink Flamingos?" I mumbled to myself.

I stopped the car behind the guy in front of me and got out for a better look. "Yup, them's pink flamingos alright. But they gotta be plastic, right?" More rhetorical mumbling.

As me and the guy from the other car stood there staring in disbelief several other cars stopped and one gawker produced a camera and started taking pictures. People driving in the northbound lane also slowed to look and soon there was big crowd of people standing along the side of Route 16 pointing and laughing at the absurdity of it all.

Now having two plastic pink flamingos along the side of a road in New Hampshire, even in the end of April, was not that uncommon. What was unique about this event was the fact that this wetland sat about 70 feet below the road bed and 30 feet below the rail tracks. The area was a complete bog with no dry flat ground anywhere near the water. For someone to have placed two plastic pink flamingos into this location was quite a feat of ingenuity. And that's what people started to buzz about. How HAD these two birds been "flown in?"

As I was now late for work, I climbed back into my car and headed off to my destination. Once there I told my working companions about the amazing discovery. Soon others came in telling the same tale. By noontime everyone in town was buzzing about it, and apparently the Bartlett Police had to be called in to direct traffic and keep the rubberneckers away.

Later that day, as I drove home in the fading light there were still people standing by the side of the road. The police had ordered people to park at the scenic overlook up on top of the hill and walk back if they wanted to see the pink flamingos. The pink flamingos had become The Valley's latest tourist sensation.

That night on the local radio station the lead news story told of the pink flamingos and how the people were driving in from all over the valley to see the spectacle. On a call-in chat show later that night, caller after caller offering their theory about how the birds had come to rest in that most unusual of locations. One guy was convinced that they had to have been brought in by helicopter; UFOs and aliens were also mentioned.

The next day and the next day, the buzz and the excitement grew. There were new sightings in other locations in The Valley reported on the evening news, but they all turned out to be false. Apparently, some of the business people wanted to steer some of the new traffic in their location.

That Friday, the Mountain Ear had a whole issue devoted to the flamingos including maps and special interviews. However in the gossip column there seems to be some coded messages suggesting some of the local characters had the skinny on who it was who had done the caper.

It was all in good fun and a welcome diversion from the otherwise boring post winter - pre summer doldrums (locally known as Mud Season) that tended to invade this locale.

But then a new mystery came about. Some time between Sunday night and Monday morning, the Bartlett pink flamingos flew the coop! Gone! Vamoose!

Just as mysteriously as they had appeared, they had somehow managed to evict themselves from that unlikely spot, and vanished.

The buzz now shifted to the disappearance. "Could the birds have been the victims of fowl play" the headlines in Wednesday's paper read. But as Mud Season slowly turned into spring and then summer, the talk about the Bartlett Bog Pink Flamingos eventually trickled down and disappeared too.

To this day it remains a mystery. The true story about how two plastic pink flamingos flew into Bartlett, New Hampshire on a spring fling and flew off a week later may never be know.

But it will not be forgotten.

~j

The Queen

This week I picked up the video release of Academy Award winner "The Queen", but I haven't yet had a chance to view it.

I love Helen Mirren and am very much looking forward to the film which not surprisingly, never did appear in any of our Augusta cinemas, despite nine screens.

I'm not sure I could say I "love" Queen Elizabeth. I frankly find her a rather sad individual, cool, perhaps "uptight." But my impressions were warmed when I saw this video clip on the MSNBC site. It's about a 4.5 year old British lad who launched a balloon in hopes of finding a pen pan. You'll have to view the video to hear "the rest of the story!"

UPDATE: 6/2/07

"The Queen" is masterful...Mirren is fabulous, as is the rest of the cast. Run out and see it today if you have not seen it. You will want to see it before all the whoop-la starts in August surrounding the 10th anniversary of "that week."

~j

Deleted

They say that nothing in the blogosphere is ever really deleted. Apparently, two hundred years from now some anthropologist will be able to dig through the remains of some server that housed my last blogger entry and reveal that I was a very cranky individual. Well I was, and to some extent I still am. But I did delete the last blog entry made here because, after reading it, it was just plain rubbish. That's a British term for something we in Brooklyn would call "crap."

My last entry was a rather snobby recitation about the fact that the rest of the USA was apparently obsessed with the television show American Idol and I was the only person not "glued to the tube" the last night of the season. But then I picked on that poor Indian boy, you know the one with all the hair, and said some unkind things. It wasn't his fault he was apparently not very talented when it came to singing and that there were people manipulating his image on both sides. But quite frankly, I found the entire American Idol idea rather stupid. I think what made me the most cranky was its popularity - this fact was one more indication the entire American psyche had gone to the dogs.

It is not just that Americans are getting dumber - they are - but that's another issue. What bothers me on a basic level is that this stupidity might suggest that all popular culture ideas, in any generation, are simply rubbish too. Is that possible? Could the Peace Movement of the 1960's that led to the end of the Viet Nam war be nothing more than the cultural equivalent of American Idol? It could be. Could the Woman's Movement, the Civil Rights Movement, even the Gay Power movement have been nothing more than a popular cultural fad of its time, ultimately - like American Idol - meaningless?

I am waiting for the day when of all those Baby Boomers who lived through the 60's sit up and take notice of what a mess this country has become and once again, donning peace signs and tie-dye t-shirts, rise from the background din and call for revolution.

Or is it more like that they will just pass me in the high speed lane of the Interstate driving their SUVs and give me the finger?

Anyway, I am cranky for a lot of reasons, but whining - even though I am good at it - does nothing to cheer me up. So, I'll shut up and ponder my navel.

Peace

~j

Rainy Friday

I think this is the first time I've had five minutes to think for a couple of weeks. It is one of the crazy times of the year work-wise and I'm not sure I have a lot accomplished that I can point to.

The weather here has turned rainy and cold - unseasonably cold with lows in the 30s. I decided last weekend that despite the rather lovely weather of temps in the high 60s and abundant sun, I would wait another week before brushing off my "green thumb" and putting the container garden in.

I did go so far as to purchase topsoil and filled all the pots and flower boxes. I cleaned off the porch chairs and swept the "winter dust" off of the porch, but the flowers will have to wait.

At the local Shop N'Save they have a display of some various cover flowers in some racks outside the store...they looked pretty sad today...almost as if they were begging some one to bring them in out of the cold.

But this is just temporary and I know we will be complaining about the heat soon.

The big news here at the building is the crazy landlord is at it again with another construction project that will no doubt create a summer - or longer - of havoc, discomfort and misery.

They never do any job quickly around here. The porch project - where they constructed new patio/porches on the two buildings - too over three years to complete. The landlord apparently pays for these project on the layaway plan, and when he has enough materials in stock, does a little more.

So this project is a new entry way for the west end - my end - of the building. It's gonna look like Tara from Gone With the Wind - and in no way consistent with the architecture of the building. I'll take some pictures when it stops raining.

~jeb

A Hole in One

Almost.

So, what can be better than a hole-in-one in golf? How about hitting the flag on a fly.

That's what I did on Sunday, May 6, 2007 at the Sable Oaks Golf Course in South Portland. It was the 13th Hole - I used a 7-iron on a 142 yrd hold. There was a steady wind from the right and I tend to pull shots when I tee them up and use an iron. The pin was placed on the front left. I aimed just right of center and tried to keep my head down.

It was like something in a dream, a perfect draw and it hit the flag about half-way up. The ball dropped below the hole and to the left about 5 feet away. I should have birdied, but took a par and walked off with a smile.

So how do I feel?

About the same way I did when I almost won the lottery about 20 years ago. I had five of the six numbers and won $1,000. I loved winning the money, but after a few days realized I would probably never come that close again.

Let's hope the "golf gods" are better to me than the "lottery gods."

~j

We Were Wrong...

Those were the words in the Maine Sunday Telegram's editorial yesterday describing their opinion on the Bush Administration's ability to execute the war in Iraq.

I told you so.

Like many American's, I personally have had, and continue to have, no confidence in George W. Bush's ability to do just about anything. He is at best, not very bright and he has surrounded himself with people with dangerous ideas and distorted views of reality. Some of the have left his administration - thankfully - but not before creating the largest political and global blunders in the history of this fine country. This may take decades to repair.

It looks like the Maine Sunday Telegram editor's have finally come around to my way of thinking. It gives me no comfort.

~jeb

You got it, Toyota!

Sorry, I have been missing for a while. It was a busy week or two at work and I was blogging stuff on two of my other blogs:

Work 1: http://maineascd.blogs.com/
Work 2: http://www.jebswebs.net/blog/

So, I have been collecting news clippings and notes on stuff to write about and finally had the time this afternoon to comment.

The news that Toyota has now surpassed General Motors in selling more cars elates me. I helped to contribute to this news by purchasing a 2007 Toyota Camry Hybrid last summer. I traded in my 2004 Mercury Sable which on a good day was getting 27 mpg and on a bad day was getting 23 mpg. The Camry on a good day gets 38-39 mpg and the worse was 25 mpg during the depths of winter. I'm not sure why, but others are also experiencing this.

But that's not my message, my message is the American automobile industry has their heads up their...you know whats. I mean, they are bleeding red ink all over the place and all of the research is showing them that people was fuel efficient cars. So, what does Ford do? It ramps up the advertising for their gas-guzzlers. What a bunch of boobs.

They did this in the 1980s too. When the price of gas skyrocketed, they were still pushing the big guzzlers and when they finally responded, all they did was put crappy small, underpowered engines in their cars. I had a 1982 Mercury LN-7 which was a "sporty," two-seat version of the Ford Escort/Mercury Tracer. What a piece of crap.

So, good for Toyota.

~jeb

Sharing

I just found this on a link from Dave Barry's blog. You gotta watch this:

http://www.thisjustin.com/2007/04/11/david-blaine-terrorizes-passersby-again/

Sorry the embedding version does not want to work on Blogger

~j

I Don't Recall

I am certainly not the world's biggest Jon Stewart fan, but I do enjoy his Daily Show on Comedy Central, and I particularly enjoy his "moment of Zen" at the end of each show.

But when the NBC Nightly News starts to provide fodder for what will inevitably be Stewart's Daily Show Moment of Zen for April 19, 2007, I think we have achieved a new level of absurdity.

Tonight on the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, the program included a segment on the US Senate hearings with US Attorney General Aberto Gonzales in which they mentioned, and then demonstrated visually, Gonzales excessive use of the phrase "I Don't Recall." In fact they reported that Gonzales used the phrase 70 times during the testimony, and then showed a clip of a "protester" in the audience who was actually keeping a scorecard of the number of times the phrase was used. Quite amazing.

I can hardly wait until 11:00 pm to see Stewart's spin.

I guess Alberto may want to get his resume in order.

~jeb

Surviving the Storm

The news people have been busy this week with the horrible news of the tragedy at Virginia Tech, but here in Maine the news was just the latest storm to hit us this spring.

As I have featured, ad nauseum, in this blog over the past few months we have had a series of crazy winter and spring storms that have brought large amounts of snow, sleet and frozen garbage.

This last storm, which was more wind and rain than snow, has taken quite a toll on much of the coastal areas of Maine and the southern most counties in the state. We lucked out here, relatively speaking, with only about 3 inches of rain and wind gusts only in the 30-40 mph range. Along the coast the winds were near or just above hurricane levels and took down trees, eroded beaches, and even took a few lives. There were lots of road flooded and most people in southern Maine are confronting soggy basements.

We saw the sun today for the first time since Saturday and they are telling us it will be almost like spring this weekend. We'll see!

~jeb

My Home Town

I must admit to some fondness for my "home town" of Brooklyn, New York.

It has been a long time since I lived there - 35 years to be exact - but as they say, "you can take the boy out of the city, but you can't take the city out of the boy," or something like that.

So it was interesting that two Brooklyn related "events" affected me this week. The first was an article in the local Kennebec Journal, Augusta's city newspaper. The article in the Sports section - a section I rarely read - was entitled "No media circus greeted Jackie Robinson" and written by Jim Becker, a retired sports writer for the AP. Here is a link to the article on MSNBC (it's not on the KJ site). The article marks the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's arrival in the major leagues. The historic event of the first African-American major league player took place at Ebbets Field, the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers. The article goes on to describe some of the backstory which has been obscured by 60 years of history. It's a good read.

Regretfully, by the time I was "of age" to know and follow baseball, the Dodgers had moved to California and Ebbets Field had been raised and turned into an apartment complex. I actually know more about that than Ebbets Field. I do remember when they held a big auction at the stadium and pictures on the news of people walking off with memorabilia including tracts of stadium seats. I remember my parents were depressed of the loss of the Dodgers AND the Giants who had also run away from the city. Indeed I remember the prejudice at the time towards "Negros" with some blaming them for the loss of these two National League treasures. That was in the day when there wasn't much money to spend on stadiums and teams would simply change cities when they wore out their stadium.

I remember that they kept the flag pole from Ebbets Field and installed it in front of the Ebbets Field apartments...I think it is still there. But apparently the apartment complex has been renamed for Jackie Robinson. You can visit a memorial to Ebbets Field here. And there is another tribute site here which includes the memorable sound clip of James Earl Jones talking about the "the one constant through all the years" from the film Field of Dreams. Very fitting. I'll tell you about my encounter with James Earl some other time.

The other Brooklyn connection came last night when I visited Johnson Hall in beautiful downtown Gardiner, Maine and heard a three-piece band from Brooklyn called The Wiyos. Hard to describe, their website calls their music a mix of "Vaudevillian Ragtime Blues, Hillbilly Swing and Old Time Country." I call it fun. Great little band.

Although only one of the band members is actually FROM Brooklyn, they apparently all live there and Joebass, the guy I talked to after the concert lives on Classon and Bergen Sts. which is even closer to the old Ebbets Field site than where I lived in Clinton Hill.

And so it goes, Brooklyn has been on my mind. I wonder what that means?

~jeb

Mud Season

Sorry I have not had anything to add to this blog in about a week. I have been busy updating my three or four other blogs - all of which are job-related - so you know how that goes.

It seems all I ever do on this blog is talk about the weather...so forgive me if I note that we are expecting another large snowstorm tomorrow and then another one possible on Sunday night into Monday. As I think I pointed out in the previous entry, Mother Nature has a bad way of paying us back for early winter nice weather, and is she ever.

The other thing I've noticed is that the enthusiasm for foul weather, which is a trademark of just about all TV weathermen, has been ebbing away as they have to forecast winter storms in the middle of spring. Joe Cupo, the weatherman of the NBC affiliate in Portland has been apologizing for this pattern and almost playing down the storms. This compared to December and January when they announce such events with great fanfare, donning their striped sweaters with the STORM CENTER - Channel 6 logos and matching coffee cups. They chitter like little birds as they announce school closings.

I always tell friends and family back home that March and April are known as "mud season" in this part of New England. Apart from the obvious mud that tends to be ubiquitous, mud season is also very bland - brown, in fact. Everything is brown this time of the year, the trees, the grass, the mud, your shoes...even some of the people. So, having the occasional blizzard this month is actually making things a bit more "colorful" - that is if you consider white a color!

We resign ourselves that this is a crappy time of the year weather wise in New England. April showers in Maine can bring April Floods, so keeping it white can have some benefits. At least we are getting water into the ground in a slower and more efficient manner. But if this pattern of stormy weather continues into May - when I really hope it is not still snowing - we may have May Floods this year.

Oh, well...I gotta get off this subject or I'll get depressed.

~jeb

More White Stuff

Yes, it is April, it is Spring, it is almost Easter, Baseball season has already started and yet Mother Nature is making up for lost time.

Sometimes when we have a late-start to winter like we did this year, the big lady treats us to a late spring, or more often, NO spring. This looks like it could be that kind of year.

Fourteen inches of white stuff last night into this morning. Ugh!



~jeb

Tired Puppy

It could be the time change to Daylight Savings Time over the weekend, the 13 hours spent driving to and from New York City, or the lack of quality sleep due to my stay in a hotel, but regardless, I'm one tired puppy. I really think having spent 10 hours with friends from 30 years ago and having to tap into long-abandoned memory centers in my brain is the real cause for the delirium.

It's been four days since I have returned from our wonderful Treaty Stone Reunion Folk Festival at St. Francis College in beautiful downtown Brooklyn, and my head is still spinning. I have provided pictures, but little commentary, on the TS-SFC blog, but in some ways I don't think words can capture the experience. Clearly the photos have not; you should have been there!

For those who wonder, Treaty Stone was a loosely formed group of "hippie types" who attended SFC from about 1969 - 1977. The group, officially a "club" under the Student Affairs rubric had as its primary purpose the pursuit of happiness, art and camaraderie. I just made all that up, but I would expect that if you could find written documentation of the group's existence in the annals of SFC lore, you would find something pretty close to this description.

Treaty Stone was the brain child of founder and leader Dominick Delsante who was a man wise beyond his years and equally mysterious. A true free spirit, Dominick organized this merry band of "long-haired, hippie freaks" as part of the anti-war movement of the time, but our primary activity was the folk festivals that we held 2-4 times per year.

I joined the group in 1971 and probably played in my first folk fest in early 1972. I had only been playing guitar for a few years at that point and had tried to master a singing and performing style based upon my idol Stephen Stills of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young fame. But my repertoire of songs were not limited to CSNY and over the years I managed to get a little better with each folk fest. Well, at least I thought so.

The folk fests were always held in the study hall outside of Founders Hall and were low maintenance affairs which included tables with candles, simple junk food and a BYOB policy. We spent more time with making arrangements for sound equipment than anything else and we only charged students a few bucks to get in. The folk fest were always on a Friday night and would run until around midnight. Most of them, for obvious reasons, are a blur. You can see images from the SFC year book on the TS blog.

After Dominick and I graduated around 1975 the remaining members kept the TS tradition alive for a few more years until interests changed, the Vietnam war was over, Nixon was gone and disco had invaded.

We held a couple more folk fests in 1986-7. The one in '86 was successful with a nice turn out, but I recall the attendance was lacking in 1987 and we put the idea back on the back burner.

John Kiely who, like me, was one of the later members has been instrumental in making all of the arrangements for each of the reunion events. This one was a big success with probably close to 200 people in attendance. Bill Boyle and Brian Dennigan should also get lots of credit for making this year's event a success. Bill and his family provided the sound system and served as The Lord of Illumination. In addition to Bill, John K, Brian and myself, other performers included Pistol Pete Mancuso and his son, Emil Baccash and Ellen Tucker.

When my head stops spinning, I'll write more.

~jeb

New York, New York

I'm in The Apple today in preparation for our Treaty Stone Alumni Reunion Folk Festival at St. Francis College. The TS Folk Fests were where I first learned to play guitar and perform in front of an audience. I got involved with this group of "hippie types" at the otherwise conservative Catholic college in beautiful downtown Brooklyn while a student there from 1971-1975.

It's always a driving challenge to come to the City. I remind my Maine neighbors that just in my drive through The Bronx I will see more cars and more people than I will see in a year in Maine.

It's a busy place.

The surprise news is that they are building a new stadium for the New York Mets. Located in the parking lot adjacent to Shea Stadium, the new digs, to be called Citi Field, are well on their way to completion for opening day 2008. Check out the webcam for the play by play

George Steinbrenner and those people from The Bronx are not to be left in the lurch. The New Yankee Stadium is being built next to the old.

And there is the news about the NJ Nets moving back to The City and becoming residents of a new stadium being build in beautiful downtown Brooklyn. Of course not without major controversy.

So, I am staying at a motel with a lovely view of Astoria, La Guardia Airport and a corner of Riker's Island.

See you later.

~j

Wa Happened???

I know, I know...the website is gone.

We'll the truth is I damaged it beyond repair when I was updating some files to the DNN application and I could not get it fixed. So, I had to delete the database and now it's toast.

Rather than trying to repair/rebuild using DNN, I am moving the site over to a new host and will be using either Joomla! or Drupal to run the site. I'm fairly convinced that the LAMP environment is better suited for web apps. I've had just too many headaches with the .NET experience.

So, you can take a look over at www.jebswebs.net to the new host. It's all still experimental.

~j

Loss of an Icon

Most people in central Maine are walking around in a daze today, in shock that the most beloved and famous of local restaurants, Slate's in Hallowell had burned to the ground on Sunday.

This is a terrible loss on many levels but we can be thankful that no one was seriously hurt in the fire. But it is very sad nonetheless.

But I am feeling a particular uneasiness about this event. You see I had dinner there just the other night and so I am thinking that I was one of the last people to have enjoyed Slate's Restaurant the way it was.

I am reminded that I had a similar experience almost 20 years ago when the Cape Neddick Inn (and here for picture) burned to the ground a few days after I had dinned there.

That's a little bit spooky.

Let's hope that Slate's can rise from the ashes and again serve the good people of central Maine.

~jeb

Town Meeting

The Portland Press Herald ran a piece about town meetings in this weekend's paper.

I will not comment on town meetings in Maine as I am sure they are wonderful and colorful. I don't believe they are very efficient these days and I have a little trouble with letting small numbers of people - who have the time to attend these meetings - make all the decisions about a town's affairs. My guess is that they are probably past their prime and will continue to become a vestige of bygone years.

But my perceptions of town meetings may be adversely affected by the experience at my very first town meeting in Bartlett, New Hampshire.

I kept hearing about this phenomena when I arrived in town the the school district I worked for was pretty worked up about the process. In SAU 9 in the Mt. Washington Valley, there were nine towns making up the district and that meant there were actually TEN town meetings the district administration had to contend with. One for each of the towns and then one for the whole SAU.

In actuality these were really Annual School District meetings because the only thing that was discussed was that school district's business. The actual town meeting took place about a month later after the school district meeting had been held and the school budget approved. So, in those days, all we seemed to do and talk about were the annual school district meetings and town meetings.

Well, anyway at this first annual school district meeting in Bartlett, I witnessed what was perhaps the most reprehensible behavior of a public figure in my life.

Now, I thought that that thing with Richard Nixon was pretty bad, and I certainly had seen my share of corrupt politicians, but this one took the cake.

It began when one of the town selectman - these are three people, almost always men - who basically run the town - stood up at the annual school district meeting and demanded to know what the thousands of dollars of special education was being spent on. The special education director, my boss, carefully responded in general terms talking about teachers' salaries, specialists' (like me) salaries, books and materials.

The selectman was not satisfied with this explanation and asked for more specifics about "out of district placement costs."

My boss then explained that occasionally a student's needs could not be met in the local public school and that the law required we find a special placement for them.

After several more questions it became clear the selectman had an axe to grind and he wanted to know about a specific student.

The special ed director would not budge and refused to answer specific questions due to confidentiality.

With that, the selectman said, (paraphrasing) "I know that we are spending $30,000 per year on that [insert name here] kid to go to that school in [insert name here] and I have a solution..."

By now, everyone was on the edge of their chairs. I was was simply horrified.

"You get me a silver bullet and I'll put that kid out of his misery and save the town all that money."

Mild pandemonium ensued, but the selectman did not back down and did not apologize for his statement. The moderator eventually moved us off the topic and the meeting continued. I found out later that the parents of the child in question were in the room and that they had endured this behavior for many years.

In the years that followed, I attended a number of town meetings without the same antics, but always with a fairly large amount of "high theatre." It seems that there are some in town who attend those meetings only for the theatrical value and that there are others in town who like to be the actors and hear themselves talk.

In all fairness, usually the only ones who attending the annual school meeting were the teachers and parents and they always voted in the budget. At one of these meetings, one of the parents I worked with insisted they get me some help - yes he mentioned me specifically, thought I did a crackerjack great job and that I needed help. And right there the town did just that, they voted to add more money to the budget and add another position. Six months later there were two of us.

~jeb

The iPhone War is Over - Money Won!

It appears the momentary battle between Cisco Systems and Apple Computer over the trademark name iPhone is over.

According to the New York Times, the battle ended Wednesday when the companies settled their lawsuit. The paper alludes to the payment of some settlement, but that information is not disclosed.

Don't you wish all wars could end so easily?

~jeb

Daylight Savings Time

I remember when I heard the news last fall that the U.S. federal government has decided that they would change the dates for the beginning and ending of Daylight Savings Time (DST) in 2007 that it would be trouble. I can't recall the last time they did this (I think it was during the energy crisis of the mid 1970s) but I do know that I did not own a computer and all kinds of clocks and devices that automatically change when DST begins. I imagined there would be a similar "crisis" this year similar to the Y2K whoop-dee-doo in 1999.

Well I heard nothing more about it until about a week ago when I got a newsletter from Microsoft indicating they had developed protocols and patches for various products so they would continue to function correctly. The patches were downloaded with the next updates. But I have been going around and checking various other devices to see if they will explode or so something screwy on March 11th when the clocks need to "spring forward." I'm most concerned with my Palm, but then I realized it doesn't automatically update to DST and that I have to do that manually. Not sure what will happen with my atomic clocks. Probably a nuclear meltdown.

Well I was fairly satisfied that things would be fine when I came across a website called dateand time.com. Now talk about someone having too much time on their hands!

Anyway, this is actually a pretty neat site that has a list detailing when the DST changes around the world. Until I saw this website, it didn't even occur to me that they had DST in the southern hemisphere. It just never occurred to me.

And it never occurred to me that different nations would change on different dates. It must make airline schedules a real delight.

Anyway, this explains the need to continually rely on Greenwich Mean Time (GMT or Zulu). At least that doesn't change - I don't think...

Now, who has too much time on their hands....

~jeb

Microsoft Firefox

So, I'm the one most of my relatives and friends contact when it comes to on-line hoaxes and spoofs.

It wasn't always that way. I earned this reputation as "Hoaxbuster" by regularly refuting the endless number of silly e-mails friends and relatives would send me that, to me, were so obviously phony. I've trained two relatives, a sister and an aunt, to at least check with Snopes.com/Urban Legend before passing on this dribble.

So, I had a particularly good laugh when one of my edu-geek blog-friends found themselves victim of a website called Microsoft Firefox. Maybe it's that cynical New Yorker in me, but I immediately saw the pun intended. The edu-geek apparently did not and has a rather lengthy blog describing her victimization.

The outrage that she expresses is funny, but the numbers of comments from readers trying to carefully explain the joke is even funnier.

Sorry, I know I should be more sensitive. But watch the video for the "product" it is hilarious.

~jeb

The Morning After

All I can think of is that syrupy song from The Poseidon Adventure, the original one (1972). You know that song, the one by Maureen McGovern.

God, I'm showing my age.

Anyway, here's a video of ...the morning after the storm...

~j

Valentine's Blizzard

Accessible Politics

Wouldn't it be great to have at least one campaign website that meets accessibility standards?

It must be exceedingly annoying to people with disabilities, particularly those who use assistive technology, when it comes to politics on the Internet. In the last election, I sent out several e-mails to candidates and the state Democratic Party asking them to make their website accessible. At first there was the customary, "Oh thank you ... so nice to hear from you..." followed by implications that they would be taking my advice and getting right to it. And this would inevitably be followed by abandonment.

In all fairness, I'm sure there was some poor unpaid intern reading and responding to my e-mail and they had no time or power to effect any of my suggestions. But you would think they would have thought about this before the election process started.

So on this date, I did a little testing and looked at most of the people already running for president.

Now, before you jump all over me, I will admit that this was not a very scientific study and I merely used one on-line tool (The WebAIM Wave) to test ONLY the home page of each of these candidates. And in some cases, these were still sites for "exploratory" activities. So, things might change....

Anyway here is the score; the number of accessibility errors showing on each site.

• Hillary 6 errors
• Obama 8 errors
• Rudy 8 errors
• Mitt 3 errors
• Biden 5 errors
• Dodd 8 errors
• Richardson 4 errors
• Vilsack 8 errors (I know, "who?")
• Edwards 2 errors
• McCain 4 errors

Now, I would encourage you to do your own testing and see if there are things that I am missing. And, I would challenge the accessible web community to raise their voices on this one.

Oh, and BTW, the most common area where accessibility errors were found were in the labeling of the input boxes - you know those places where you write down how much money you are going to send to the campaign and where you enter your e-mail address so they can send you propaganda for the next 22 months....

~john b

Winter in the Northland

Now is it our turn to act hysterical.

We have a snowstorm in the forecast for 12+ inches of snow here in Augusta tomorrow into Thursday. There are already parking bans and school closings and the first flake is 12 hours away.

What a bunch of wimps.

~j

Winter in the Southland

I'm on the return leg of a trip to Charlotte, NC on business and a little pleasure. I drove down last Tuesday and took two days to make the nearly thousand mile journey. The first day I encountered some light snow in southern New York and eastern PA, and then smooth sailing to Roanoke, VA. The news in Roanoke was that a "big winter storm" was approaching. People were absolutely obsessed - well at least the people on the local news stations. The forecast in Roanoke was 1-4 inches of snow and more to the south. The forecast for Charlotte was a Winter Storm Warning.

I got up early on Thursday to face the pending behemoth, and was pleasantly surprised to find that all of the hype was over the top. I was on the road for close to two hours before I saw a flake. I actually saw more salt trucks than snow flakes.

Coming through the mountains into North Carolina the light snow stopped and then started again about an hour north of Charlotte. The snow quickly turned to sleet, then freezing rain to all rain in a about a 10 mile stretch.

When I got to Charlotte, it was a ghost-town. The streets were deserted of mid-day traffic and the mall adjacent to the hotel had only a few stores open. Most had signs about the "inclement weather." One even had a sign indicating that they were out "playing in the snow." The best was the sign on the coffee shop indicating they were closing early!

What a bunch of wimps.

I have more info about "the storm" on my Maine ASCD blog including pictures of the less than 2 inches of slush and the quote from the local news indicating that they had broken all previous records for a 24 hour snowfall - 2 inches. I howled!

I left Charlotte on Sunday to mild temperatures in the 50's and based upon the forecast for bitter cold, headed east to The Outer Banks. I had initially intended to drive south to Hilton Head and find me a nice green golf course. But the forecast for there was temps in the 40's and I figured if I wanted to play golf in that kind of weather, I could do that in Maine.

So after a 5.5 hour drive through some fairly remote areas, I arrived on the beautiful Outer Banks of North Carolina and settled in a Ramada in Kill Devil Hills, just north of Nags Head. It is a very pretty area and I'll post pictures soon.

On Monday, I scouted out the surrounding area visiting the "First Flight" location in Kitty Hawk and even drove down to Cape Hatteras.

Backtracking north I have headed up to Virginia Beach for an overnight. The news here again was for brutal winter weather. This time the forecast is for the deep freeze and once again the natives are restless. The lead story on both the 6 o'clock and 11 o'clock news was "the cold." They were even telling people how to dress. People in "the south" apparently have forgotten how to wear clothes.

Apparently the hotels in Virginia Beach were designed by people who also need a lesson in wearing clothes. When I arrived at the Marriott Courtyard on the north side, there was a repairman in the lobby repairing something that was leaking in the ceiling - obviously a broken pipe. The gentleman at the front desk to took my credit card failed to mention that the central heating had been turned off and as a result there was no hot water. I only learned this when I went down to the pool area and stepped into a freezing jacuzzi. The pool, though warmer than the other puddle, was far from warm so I returned to my room and decided a warm shower was in order. No such luck.

Several phone calls to the front desk, promises that "heat is on the way," more phone calls and sitting for 45 minutes in a wet swimsuit, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I told them I was leaving and that they needed to find me a hotel in the area that had hot water.

Thirty minutes later I was checking into a queen suite in the Marriott Courtyard 18 blocks north down Atlantic Ave. My over sized room perched on the beach provides an even better view to the north where I can see the Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel stretching to the Del-Mar-Va peninsula. This morning I found the first rays of sun angling in from the cold horizon landing in my bed.

I took a little trip last night to see some of the town. This time of the year Virginia Beach is pretty deserted. Many of the hotels and restaurants are closed. I had a truly awful "irish" dinner in a restaurant near the hotel that would make all of my relatives roll over in their graves. The deli style corned beef was cold, the potato had some black spots, and the "cabbage," was a wedge of brownish glop that looked and tasted like nothing. They even had some rubbery squares on the plate that were supposed to be slices of "traditional Irish Soda Bread." I told the waiter that there was no Mrs. Murphy anywhere on the planet that would serve this stuff and call it an Irish dinner.

Don't come to Virginia Beach for the food - at least not any Irish food.

~j

Brrrrr

Hey baby it's cold outside....as the saying goes.

It was -5 degrees F at 8:30 this morning in beautiful downtown Augusta and it has not gotten above 10 all day. With a "refreshing breeze" from the northwest, the windchill is in the "danger" range.

Check out the latest from Weather Underground

So much for the palm tree plantation. Damn!

~j

FairPoint - Huh?

I know, I know, I've been MIA for a while. That's due to the fact that I have been busy with the other 3-4 blogs that I write and simply have not had the time. But today's new was so incredible that I had to get my comments out there into the blogosphere.

The big technology news here in Maine today was the announcement that Verizon was selling off its landline assets in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. I had known that they had been discussing the idea of selling off the wires and keeping the communications side - much in the same way Central Maine Power sold off its power generation side of the business but kept the distribution side. That made sense to me. Afterall, the number of landline have been dropping steadily for the past few years as folks switch to wireless. Then with the competition from Cable TV and VoIP, the days of wired phones were clearly numbered. But this is bigger than I thought.

So the news that Verizon was changing their business plan was not so incredible as was the fact that they are selling to a little tiny company in North Carolina. I mean, come on, is this a joke?

It was just a short ten years ago when Maine was full of little ma & pop telephone companies including the one over there in Bryant Pond where they still were running a system with crank phones (this is not a joke)! And it looks like we are taking a step backward, "Number please.... "

According to their website, FairPoint Communications is:

FairPoint is a leading provider of communications services to rural communities across the country. Incorporated in 1991, FairPoint's mission is to acquire and operate telecommunications companies that set the standard of excellence for the delivery of service to rural communities. Today, FairPoint owns and operates 31 local exchange companies located in 18 states offering an array of services, including local and long distance voice, data, Internet and broadband offerings.

This compares to Verizon which is described on their website as:

Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ), a New York-based Dow 30 company, is a leader in delivering broadband and other wireline and wireless communication innovations to mass market, business, government and wholesale customers. Verizon Wireless operates America's most reliable wireless network, serving nearly 57 million customers nationwide. Verizon's Wireline operations include Verizon Business, which operates one of the most expansive wholly-owned global IP networks, and Verizon Telecom, which is deploying the nation's most advanced fiber-optic network to deliver the benefits of converged communications, information and entertainment services to customers.

Now, why would you want to have your business telephone system with a company like FairPoint? BTW, wasn't that the name of the episode from the first StarTrek:The Next Generation? Mission to FairPoint?

Answer: Not me!

One really has to wonder where these TarHeels are getting the "approximately $2.715 billion" for this sale. This is like Joe's Hamburgers buying McDonalds. BTW, FairPoint's actual telephone company is really a bunch of little companies and have a "carrier service" called - you guessed it FairPoint Carrier Service, which actually advertises on their website - "After Hours Customer Service!" Whoo Hoo!

The PUC better take a good long hard look at this one and make sure we stay in the 21st Century.

~jeb

Home Again

After a brief trip to the land of the Big Apple, I have returned once again to Maine. It is still green here, but at least it has cooled down and feels more like December.

I posted the Christmas Eve at the Smith's place on the website. Enjoy.

~jeb

I'm Dreaming of a Green Christmas

I know I showed you those nice snowy pictures of my backyard a few weeks ago, but the summer weather has returned and we are now "enjoying" temperatures that would remind you of April rather than December. No one is dreaming of a White Christmas this year as that is clearly not a possibility unless you are in Denver or Minnesota.

I'm in New Jersey with the relatives and the temperature in Morristown was a balmy 62 yesterday. Lawns are green, golf courses are open (well they're open here year-round anyway) and my sister tells me there are cherry blossoms blooming at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens!

So here's wishing you a wonderful Christmas from the tropics of the north east US where global warming is making us the sun and fun Christmas capital of the world. Ho-ho-ho?

Check out that link to the right about "An Inconvenient Truth." The perpetual "summer" is not a good thing.

~jeb

21st Century Schools

I will comment on this topic on the Maine ASCD Blog after the holidays. Just looking for a place to keep the link for now.

21st Century Schools - QuickTime Movie [requires plug-in]

~jeb

Time Magazine's Person of the Year is Me

Yes, it's true.

I have been named Person of the Year by Time Magazine. Rather, it's not I, it's actually you. Uh, I mean, not You - you, I mean ME - you. Got it.

Oh read it yourself.

~j

Wait a Minute...

We have an old expression in New England that, "If you don't like the weather, wait a minute."

People I have met from the mid-west claim the adage as their own stating that it is an "old farmer's expression."

Well it might be true in Illinois, but it was definitely true here in the Maine over the past week or so. Our thermometers have been getting a real work out with ranges from the teens to 50 degrees (F) up and down within 4-5 days. Yesterday it was 50 and I was walking around in a light jacket. I drove home from Portland in a rain storm that seemed to be growing in intensity, despite predictions of a "chance of a passing shower." I watched the temperature gauge on my car drop from 43 to 35 and about fifteen minutes after I got home, it was snowing.

And this morning, it looked like this.












And if you need to see this in moving images, you can download this 9MB Quicktime movie.

~jeb

An Inconvenient Truth

Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" has recently been released on DVD. I had not had a chance to see it in the cinema when it was release last spring.

All I can say is, now I know what everyone is getting for Christmas.

Buy it, see it. Do something about it.

www.climatecrisis.net

~j

Turkeyman, He's Everywhere

There were two wild, wild turkey stories to report this week; one from Maine, one from New Jersey.

It seems that wild turkeys have become a nuisance everywhere these days and may even have become vicious....well, maybe just a little aggressive.

The Portland Press Herald story on Wednesday notes that the turkeys on Mackworth Island are attacking SUVs. In New Jersey they are taking the commuter rail and heading north!

Reading the comments on the PPH site are precious.

Gobble Gobble

~j

Gobble Gobble

It's Thanksgiving Day morning and I am watching The Parade, catching up on yesterday's newspapers and just finished baking m Swedish Apple Pie. The house smells wonderful.

Despite the forecast for showers and rain, the sun is shining in Augusta and a slight breeze is stirring the pines.

I'm heading to Bob and Gail's for Turkey Day fare later in the afternoon; the apple pie is my contribution along with a couple of bottles of wine.

Random Thoughts

I'm happy to see that I am now driving around in Motor Trend Magazine's Car of the Year. My 2007 Toyota Camry Hybrid was selected for this prestigious award; well not my car, but the model. I knew it would be a good choice and I am still thinking that this is the best car I've ever owned.

Yesterday I hit the malls to get some things for our Northeast ASCD Affiliate Conference which takes place next week. I had to head over to Staples to get some printing done and I also bought some last minute items at Hannaford. I know there is this phenomena called "Black Friday" or something which relates to the fact that the Friday after Thanksgiving is the busiest shopping day of the year. I think the "black" refers to the financial figures expected as a result. Well Wednesday before Thanksgiving might qualify for the second busiest shopping day...the stores were mobbed especially the Christmas Tree Shops and Bed, Bath & Beyond which opened this week at the Turnpike Mall. Those Christmas Tree Shops are a "license to print money!"

We'll Santa should be appearing in Herald Square in a few minutes so I had best get into the shower and ready for the rest of the day.

Wait a second, there's Mr. Potatohead - He's from Maine too!

Best wishes to you and yours!

Happy Thanksgiving

Treaty Stone - SFC: Mark Your Calendars

Treaty Stone - SFC: Mark Your Calendars

No More Bull

The last Ford Taurus rolled off the line in Georgia yesterday ending a 21 year history. My last Taurus (actually a Mercury Sable) “rolled off” this past summer when I traded the 2004 Sable for a 2007 Toyota Camry Hybrid.

The price of gas had just peaked past $3.00 a gallon and I had been sniffing around hybrids since they appeared a few years ago. Had Ford come up with a reasonable hybrid – instead of the ridiculous SUB hybrid (that got almost the same gas mileage as the Sable), I might have bought one.

I owned three Taurus/Sables over a ten year period. The first, a 1996 was my favorite. Unlike the average person, I loved the oval shape and Star Trek interior. I know that the radio button drove everyone crazy, but I loved them. This was my first automatic transmission in many years, and after as few weeks of driving, I had no interest in returning to the stick. Yes, the gas mileage compared to the 1991 Mazda Protégé (4-cylinder) was striking, but in those days we weren’t too concerned about these things.

The 1996 Taurus started to nickel-and-dime me at around 100K. First the heater core (all three had the same problem), the brakes (again all three had the same defect) and then the catalytic converter. I had dumped $2500 into it in six months and it needed a thousand dollars more work to make it last another year. I used that as a down payment at bought a 2000 Taurus. By then the Ford engineers had bowed to the “complaints” of the old farts running the company and had ruined the design to a box. The novelty and forward thinking elements were all gone. But it was a comfortable and relatively safe car.

At around 100K this one started to misbehave like the last one and my extended warrantee had expired. After breaking down on a road trip to DC and having to pay $500 to have it fixed, I drove back to the dealer and got the 2004 Sable.

The Sable was a step up in terms of creature comforts and I loved some of the higher tech gizmos – my favorite was the self-dimming rear view mirror. But with each successive Taurus/Sable, the gas mileage dropped. The Sable only got 26 mpg on the highway (although it got 29 mpg when we drove to Florida in spring 2005). In the winter, the best I could hope for was 24 mpg.

I reflect on this because I think it is symptomatic of what was happening to Ford in general. Their business plan was becoming more Republican with no regard to gas mileage issues and more interest in continuing to promote large gas-guzzling behemoths like the Explorer and Expedition. I was increasingly becoming ashamed of driving a Ford product and it was clear the company had no interest in changing.

So, the death of the Taurus and what it represented are clearly symbolic of the demise of Ford Motors. They have now dropped behind Toyota and are threatened with extinction.

We’ve owned Ford products in my family since the 1930s. When my father steered away in the late 70’s to Chrysler, he regretted it. But he never bought another Ford. I’ve owned seven Ford/Mercury; most bought new. But, I’ll tell you, without a major turn around in their corporate mindset, I think I’ve bought my last.

~jeb

Maine Mystery Beast Returns

It seems the Maine Mystery Beast that was all in the news a few months ago (see my blog entry) now has its very own poster.

Figures it would show up just in time for Halloween.

~jeb

Arming Teachers

While scooting through my Bloglines collection of education sites I found several references to school violence and the recent shootings in schools around the nation. But when digging further, I discovered that a Wisconsin state lawmaker has proposed the arming of teachers as a solution to gun violence in schools. I intially thought this was some kind of a joke, but then found the interview with the lawmaker on several website including a site with a link to ABC News.

But the best review is Stephen Colbert's Colbert's Report

~jeb

Pessimism

Bill Nemitz, a regular columnist for the Portland Press Herald and the Maine Sunday Telegram had an interesting piece in today's MST regarding the "pessimism of Mainers." The column struck a note and I think Bill is on to something.

His piece deals with a Brookings Institution report that was released this week called "Charting Maine's Future" which provides a reasonably upbeat perspective of Maine's current economic picture. Coming in at this time of negativism - something always associated with the annual elections season - I found this report particularly refreshing and the Nemitz piece particularly relevant.

Nemitz based part of this column on the comments of former governor Angus King who, for the sake for full disclosure, was involved in the funding of the report. King has been reported in the media this past week as praising the report and is quoted in the Nemitz piece as saying: "That's their stock and trade, telling people how bad off they are." This is in reference to the nature of partisan politics that, as Nemitz states, "run increasingly on pure negatives."

If I see one more TABOR ad or one more for that Woodcock telling us that Maine is the "most highly taxed state in the Union," I'm gonna throw up. All I can say is I grew up in Brooklyn, NY and brother you do not know what taxes are. Long before there were sales taxes or rooms and meals taxes in Maine we had them in New York. And we paid them. I'm sure there were people complaining about them 50 years ago, but they didn't have an ad on the TV every five minutes. Geez, people might actually start to believe that nonsense.

All I can tell you is that a couple of years ago I attended a wedding in Plymouth MA for the son of one of my cousins. Attending the wedding were the groom's aunt and uncle who live in Westchester County, NY. These are people I remember meeting at family gatherings 40 years ago and I know them to be good Westchester Republicans - at least that's what mother used to say. Well they are very well off; he a retired VP from some multimillion dollar international company; she a socialite, and the live in one of the more high priced areas of Westchester. At the wedding, we got talking about local real estate and they were absolutely astounded at the fact that they had gone and looked at several beautiful new homes being build along the Massachusetts shore with price tags in the close to a million dollar range. They expressed their surprise that the taxes on the properties were only about $6,000 per year. According to the rich cousins, a similar property in NY would be taxed over $10,000. I guess it's all relative.

One of the more enlightening pieces of information coming from this Brookings report is the fact that the Maine population is actually growing. And our population is not growing because we are being overrun with Mexicans and migrant workers from Third World Countries. Maine's population is growing because rich retired people are coming to Maine because of our beautiful way of life. Imagine that.

Don't they know were the most highly taxes state in the nation? I guess not.

Or, perhaps they know what I know. That the Woodcocks and the Republicans and the pro-TABOR people are just a bunch of rich farts that want more money for themselves and they are trying to convince the few folks whose houses are in areas of Maine where there have been incredible increases in value of the land and are being "taxes out" that it's those "devils" in Augusta that are doing this to them and that by voting in the Pubs and TABOR all of their problems with go away. Sorry sister, TABOR ain't gonna do anything to save your house.

Nemitz best comments come at the end of the column:

King, who helped fund the Brookings report, likens Maine's funk to the advice he received during a motorcycle safety course: Focus on the road ahead and that's where you'll go. Stare too long at the roadside ditch, on the other hand, and guess where you'll end up?

"Maine looks in the ditch all the time," King said. "And lo and behold "

Oh, as lest you believe I am a Angus King fan, I'm not. I was one of the thousands of State workers who were fired when King came into office.

~jeb

ED

I wish there was some way I could capture this and post it... I was just cruising MSNBC's video selections and the story about the Congressman from Florida sending inappropriate e-mails to a 16 year old boy popped up first - but not before an advertisement for medication for erectile dysfunction.

You don't supposed they did this intentionally?

Hi Ho

~j

Fall Color

It's that time of the year when Mother Nature provides us with the most vivid colors.

The leaf peepers are arriving like the swallows at Capistrano and the Fryeburg Fair starts tomorrow.

~jeb

Where the Heck Have I Been?

We did come home from Canada. And, I had hoped that I would be blogging almost daily from the Maritimes. But life got very busy after I returned and work occupied all of my time.

I heard from an all college friend (I was almost going to say "college chum" - eeek!) who was involved with me in a loose band of "hippie types" at St. Francis College. We called ourselves "Treaty Stone" and our main claim to fame was the fact that for about six years we hosted a series of "folk festivals" on campus. They were usually on a Friday night and drew a nice size crowd who drank cheap wine and cheese and crackers while we watched and listened to each other play guitars and attempt to sound like the leading folk rockers of the time.

My own specialty was doing covers of Stephen Stills. I parted my hair down the middle and tried to perfect that slighty pre-nasal, Texas voice. It all seems rather silly now, but we had fun at the time.

Many if not most of the "musicians" continued to play and I even enjoyed a brief stint doing the bar scene in Brooklyn and at some other similar college affairs. In the early 80s I even was involved with a musical duo and we played in bars in the Mount Washington Valley of NH. That too was short lived as I moved away and basically lost interest.

Now all of my music is played at the 5:30 Saturday Mass at St. Mary of the Assumption here in Augusta. I think my skills have actually impoved over the years.

So, I responded with some enthusiasm when John Kiely contacted about a reunion of Treaty Stone. In all of the excitement of nostalgic replay of the past, I offered to create a website for the affair and have just starting collecting stuff for what will likely be a blogged site. This will allow for multiple users to access and update the information and unlimited resources for posting images and other files. So, stay tuned.

~jeb