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Part of the decline in output for this blog is because I tend to use “Facebook” these days as my main platform for pointing out articles and events I think are worthwhile or important (maybe 75% of the time there), and for saying what’s up with me, music I like, and personal stuff (maybe 25% of the time).

Thomas Nephew | Create Your Badge

The reason is simple: comments and  full-fledged discussions are much more likely there than here, partly because your latest item is transmitted to all your friends, so there’s a chance they’ll see it — even if it’s rapidly buried in the snowfall of posts by all their other friends.  One comment then begets another and another, as the facebook software propels commented-on stuff to higher prominence in the so-called ‘news feed’ (as opposed to the instantaneous, unfiltered ‘live feed’).

Facebook also lets you easily add photos, form groups, and announce events, and even advertise them; there’s also a “chat” feature, though I never use it.  The look of one’s “wall” — the place where one’s messages, photos, and found objects from the Internet pile up — is fairly “clean,” and of a piece with the so-called “home page” news feeds where your friends’ posts etc. pile up.  For quick interactions in a smoothly functioning environment, it’s a very nice system, and it lets you fine tune the degree to which you’re visible to facebook users beyond your circle of approved online friends — anywhere from hardly at all to come one come all.

But the drawback is also clear: Facebook isn’t about long form writing.  (Yes there are “notes”, no, they’re not used much.)  There’s an upper limit on how long the initial post can be, so that you’re more or less compelled to do ‘heh. indeed’ or ‘oh my god’ quick hit comments on your item and then express your views more completely in comments.  It can be kind of fun to combine your teaser, the headline, and a followup comment into one coherent message, but it’s not the kind of writing and researching I do for posts here — posts, to be sure, that go all but unread.

So that’s the trade-off, roughly: write or be read, research or discuss, write as if the world were reading or just as if you’re at a kind of neighborhood get-together.  I find Facebook to be quite absorbing — some people are excellent sources of news and opinion pieces, and others are reliably interesting commenters.  But I miss the kind of writing I did here and the interactions I’ve had with friends and readers here, and I think it’s time to rebalance my efforts between these two outlets and — oh, right! — the actual, real world.

1. Magnolia trees do not do well in heavy snow.  If 10 inches or more of snow are forecast, consider chopping down the tree, most of it’s coming down anyway.
2. Vintage Comfortmaker gas furnaces are sentient, know the difference between good and evil, and have chosen evil.  They do this by arranging for their ignition devices to fail the morning after a blizzard makes your house and neighborhood inaccessible to repair technicians.
3. To relight a vintage evil Comfortmaker (non-pilot light) gas furnace:
   1. turn the thermostat to its lowest setting
   2. go to the basement,
   3. return to the dining room for a flashlight
   4. return to the basement, turn off the electricity to the furnace and basement lights.
   5. wait 5 minutes.
   6. squeeze through a six inch opening to a 18 inch space behind the furnace, remove panel
   7. light a candle.
   8. yell upstairs to set thermostat to 65.
   9. repeat request loudly but without yelling because you don’t need to yell
   10. light wooden kebab stick in candle flame, wait
   11. when you hear a ‘click’ put lit kebab stick above burner-looking things where you hope gas will be pumped in 5-10 seconds.
   12. wait 15-20 seconds; relight kebab stick quickly at least once.
   13. second 21: FWOOMP.  Resolve not to peer in quite as closely next time.
   14. Since ignition device is still broken, set heat to 78; the furnace will go out, the house will cool, and you can repeat steps 1-14 whenever you’re cold enough.
4. The co-op will have everything you need that you spent three hours buying inadequate substitutes for at Safeway.
5. While deep snow is your enemy, it is also your friend, cushioning falls from ladders.
6. Try not to use ladders any more than necessary.
7. A cat staring at a door for five minutes is unnerving.
8. When released into conditions of deep snow, cats will either
   • retreat immediately
   • vanish for unpredictable lengths of time
9. When you look for a cat in deep snow, the cat will appear at the front door either
   • just after you’re done suiting up to go outside to look for her again dammit
   • just before you return from looking all over creation for her dammit
10. When removing ice dams from a roof gutter, avoid being swept off your ladder by an avalanche of snow no longer blocked by those ice dams.  One way to do this is by not removing ice dams in the first place.
11. When snow first falls, take time to really enjoy the serene beauty of the scene.  It’s the last time you’ll feel that way for days.

I feel sometimes as if I were a child who opens its eyes on the world once and sees amazing things it will never know any names for and then has to close its eyes again. I know this is all mere apparition compared to what awaits us, but it is only lovelier for that. There is a human beauty in it. And I can’t believe that, when we have all been changed and put on incorruptibility, we will forget our fantastic condition of mortality and impermanence, the great bright dream of procreating and perishing that meant the whole world to us. In eternity this world will be Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets. Because I don’t imagine any reality putting this one in the shade entirely, and I think piety forbids me to try.

– from “Gilead,” by Marilynne Robinson

“Gilead” is that all too rare thing — a beautifully written, absorbing work of fiction written in the voice of a genuinely and believably good man.  The narrator is John Ames, a preacher in the town of Gilead, Iowa, in the late 1950s; though nearing seventy, he has married late and has one young child, to whom he dedicates a journal of what he suspects are his final months of life.

As the passage above suggests, Ames’s writings are also more than that: a vessel for reflection on what matters in life.  The “balm of Gilead” is a biblical reference that even I’m aware of, but it isn’t necessary to be immersed in Christian lore per se, or even to be a casual believer, to be moved to reflection and emotion by Robinson’s writing and Ames’s character.

I write “per se” above because this nation’s own particular “Troy Tale”, the Civil War, also looms throughout the memoir, (many of Ames’s recollections revolve around the John Brown-like figure of his grandfather, who fights in both Kansas and later loses an eye in the war itself), and I join writers from Noll to Lincoln in locating an American theology derived from that.  The narrator explains and frames his father’s views here:

My father said when he walked into his father’s church after they came back from the army the first thing he saw was a piece of needlework hanging on the wall above the communion table.  It was very beautifully done, flowers and flames surrounding the words “The Lord Our God Is a Purifying Fire.”  I suppose that’s why I always think of my grandfather’s church as the one struck by lightning.  As in fact it was.

My father said it was that banner that had sent him off to sit with the Quakers.  He said the very last word he would have applied to war, once he had had a good look at it, was “purifying,” and the thought that those women could believe the world was in any way purer for the loss of their own sons and husbands was appalling to him.  He stood there looking at it, visibly displeased by it, apparently, because one of the women said to him, “It’s just a bit of Scripture.”

He said, “I beg your pardon, ma’am.  No that is not Scripture.”

“Well,” she said, “then it certainly ought to be.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Well, I’m back.

And for the third straight time in the past year and a half, the airline leg of my travel has taken at least six hours longer than scheduled. This time, at least, I got to the hub airport (JFK) from Portland just before things went south, instead of being stranded in some motel overnight. So I became a citizen of JFK Gate 23 and a hostage of Delta Airlines and the air travel industry, which conspired to assure me for the next 6 hours that my plane was “At Gate” and a scheduled departure time was always just a half hour away. (Hey — an “Annie” song! “Departure! Departure! I love you! Departure! You’re always half an hour awa-a-a-y!”)

To be fair, there were thunderstorms across the eastern seaboard yesterday afternoon. To continue being fair, this has happened before in our great country’s air travel history, without automatically triggering dozens of flight cancellations and half-day or overnight delays. I literally would have got home faster from New York by car than I did by air travel. In fact, thinking about it, we did door to door Maryland to Maine’s mid coast by car in about the same time it took me from Portland back by air. I am definitely, definitely looking at train or express bus transportation next time for anything in that mileage range.

When I finally got out to ground transportation at Dulles, however, my luck changed. That’s because lowly Metro has bus service from the airport to several Metro stops along the way (Falls Church, Rosslyn, L’Enfant Plaza). Walked on, swiped my card … and hung on, those buses can do some pretty impressive speeds on the highway. At L’Enfant, I happened to walk right on to the yellow line to Gallery Place, waited maybe 5 minutes for the red line home. It took me about an hour to get from Dulles to Takoma Park; whatever it was, I’m sure it was just about as fast as humanly possible unless you’re riding Chopper One.

Finback whale closeup
Originally uploaded by Thomas Nephew

In better news, we all had a great time in Maine, which even my air travel experience — and frequent rainstorms during the week, and being unable to find the dang cabin the first night — did little to tarnish. Blueberries outside our cabin door on “George’s Pond” near Franklin, Maine; kayaks and a beautiful pond ten yards further; roadside lobster pounds, Acadia National Park, and whalewatching excursions down the pike. (Photos here.)

One highpoint of the trip: Maddie and I saw at least four or five finback whales (and heard them too, their blows are audible even at a distance). Sometimes you can see where they are even underwater; I learned (and saw) that the upstrokes of their tails leave huge circular “footprints” of momentarily smooth water on the choppy sea. It was really quite satisfying to see them going about their business — up, blow, slip back down without much fuss — without any visible concern about the boatful of humans a hundred yards away. The people up there care about them, so I have hopes there will still be some around for our grandchildren to see some day.

“Fourmis” (Ants) cabin
The carving is of a very fierce looking ant.
Originally uploaded by Thomas Nephew

We took Maddie to a summer camp in Maine over a long weekend — returning in a single 12 and a half hour marathon drive ending Wednesday morning at 2 a.m.

She’ll be there for the next two weeks. It’s not Maddie’s first time away from home by herself, but the prior times have been with family, and it’s been easier to call at night when we miss her or vice versa. But I know she’ll have fun and learn a lot — for one thing, she’ll have to use her French, since “Camp Tekakwitha” is run by French Canadians, and most of the campers are from there.

And mainly there’ll be swimming and sailing and hiking and camping and probably bizarre contests and crafts and whatnot. I have the feeling she’ll be too tired out to spend too much time missing us. Don’t know how we’ll manage, though. It’s pretty quiet around here.

View from cupola of “Captain’s Watch”
Originally uploaded by Thomas Nephew

Incidentally, we stayed in a beautiful bed and breakfast on Monday night, “The Captain’s Watch” in Cundy’s Harbor, a little fishing town in a beautiful setting near Brunswick, Maine. If you’re in the area, it’s a great place, with very nice proprietors Ken and Donna. The house is a big handsome rambling structure built in 1862; it has a little cupola at the top, from where you can see the harbor and neighboring islands and peninsulas.

Another thing about Maine: it seemed to me like everyone was nice there — the waitress, the ice cream guys, the CVS counter person, the sandwich shop people, everyone we talked to. And I don’t mean nice in a “smile for the tourist” way; I mean just plain nice. What the heck is going on up there? Spooky.

Who the heck is Thomas Nephew?

I was born in 1958 in Schweinfurt, Germany. My mother is German, and I grew up speaking German — first just a few words, then somewhat more fluently following a summer’s worth of at-home schooling, followed by a trip to see my relatives in “Franken,” in North Bavaria. All of this by way of explaining the frequent entries about Germany. For the most part, I grew up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee; I’ve also lived in Jülich and Tübingen, Germany, St. Louis, MO, Davis and Oakland in California, and Ann Arbor, Michigan.

My home is now Takoma Park, MD, just north of Washington, DC.

I have a Master’s degree in Public Policy from the University of Michigan. Before that, I studied biology at Washington University in St. Louis and the Universität Tübingen (year abroad program), and then genetics at U.C. Davis. I got “sidetracked” while at U.C. Davis, and worked for the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign there and then later in Oakland, California. Following that I worked at the Prevention Research Center in Berkeley.

I’m married to the lovely and talented Cricket Dadian, and we have a beautiful girl named Madeleine (Maddie).

Contact

I welcome e-mail correspondence; you can e-mail me at thomasn528 at yahoo dot com. You’ll need to replace the ” at ” and ” dot ” with “@” and “.” (Sorry for the inconvenience. I’m hoping this keeps spammers’ computers from getting my e-mail address by hunting through my web site.)

You can use HTML or text format e-mail, I don’t care. I will try to answer all serious e-mail, or explain why I can’t do so on the blog.

When your correspondence is about a blog post or an issue you’d like to see discussed, please indicate whether you mind being quoted, and if not under what name (true, pseudonym, anonymous) you’d prefer to be quoted.

However, abusive e-mails I suspect to be responses to posts in the “newsrack” blog or to the blog in general will be published at my discretion, with your name attached. I’ll also take other steps as warranted.

What rules are there about commenting?

Just be polite with eachother, and to some extent with me. I reserve the right to take action about a comment if I think it is too impolite or offensive, or for any other reason I see fit, particularly including comments that are…

1) off-topic (including but not limited to commercial spam),
2) way too long, or
3) from an IP source known or reasonably suspected to be truth- or candor-challenged.

When necessary, I will either…

1) delete the comment,
2) block the IP address of the commenter,
3) or both.

I don’t mean to cut off or chill normal discussion, which can get heated now and then. Also, I’ll hold comments about me to a lower standard than comments about other readers. This is mainly about foul language, racist language, or sexist language. All are out of bounds.

Hey– what happened to my comments from a while back?

I messed up at one point and lost comments from my old commenting service, BlogBack Plus, which went out of service a short while later. I had backed up a bunch of the old Blogback comments, and hope to add them to the archived Haloscan comments at some point and hook that all up again. But some (roughly from early June 2005-September 2005) are gone for good. I’m sorry.

Sitemeter

The small rainbow-hued square near the bottom of each page on this site (see image to right) is a “Sitemeter” visit and page counting application. I’ve set the “privacy” level of visitors who click through on that image to “medium”:

Your visitors can’t see any of your site reports and charts but the information in the “General Summary” report may be used and displayed in public lists or rankings with other sites (for example: a list of sites ranked by their average daily visits).   If someone clicks on the Site Meter counter on your page, it will not take them to your statistics page.

However, as the owner of the site and the “sitemeter” application, I see more information, including:

Domain Name, IP Address, ISP, Location (approximate): Country, State, City, Operating System, Browser, Javascript, Monitor resolution, Color Depth, Time of Visit, Last Page View, Visit Length, Page Views, Referring URL, Visit Entry Page, Visit Exit Page, “Out Click” (most recent page, if any, visited via a click from this site), Time Zone, Visitor’s Time, and Visit Number.

I pledge to keep this information to myself unless I think someone is engaging in hostile behavior (spamming and the like) or deceptive behavior, i.e., pretending in comments to be someone they aren’t or (in my judgment) failing to reveal important bias that may reasonably be inferred from the domain or other information.  My usual interest in the information, however, is simply to see how many visits I get, which posts of mine are linked to by other web sites, and what those web sites are.

What are your blog policies? Or do you just do whatever you want?

I sometimes go back and tinker with my posts after I publish them to the web. I usually add “EDIT:” or “UPDATE:” comments within the post when I do so, so people returning to the post (especially via a link to the post established before the edit) have an explanation for the change.

Yes, I do pretty much whatever I want.

Disclaimers

I have no control over and do not endorse any external Internet site not owned by me that contains links to or references this site.  Also, if I link to a site, that does not imply I approve of the site or any specific opinions expressed there.

I may need to send Ron Paul a contribution. Some of his supporters have been saying John McCain is ineligible to be President because he was born in the Canal Zone, but while Article II of the Constitution seems to bear them out –“no person except a natural born Citizen… shall be eligible to the Office of President.” — it all depends on what ‘natural-born citizen’ means, doesn’t it, says the Washington Post’s Ron “Political Junkie” Rudin:

Some might define the term ‘natural-born citizen’ as one who was born on United States soil. But the First Congress, on March 26, 1790, approved an act that declared, ‘The children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond sea, or outside the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural-born citizens of the United States.’ That would seem to include McCain, whose parents were both citizens and whose father was a Navy officer stationed at the U.S. naval base in Panama at the time of John’s birth in 1936.

Well waddayaknow. Not clear if it takes both parents being U.S. citizens, so that may take a little bit of litigation… And then: Thomas in 2012! (Hear all the T’s? Alliteration. Plus I’ve already got my slogan: “Change I can believe in.”) I have, like, twenty friends on Facebook, so this should be a cinch.

Originally uploaded by longwayround

E-Robin’s blog “fact-esque” is celebrating its fourth birthday, so here’s a birthday cake; I hope it’s OK with photographer “longwayround” (seems to be under the license), but if not, I’ll find another one.

“Fact-esque” is one of my favorite blogs; eRobin manages a rare blend of activism, smarts, passion, and good humor that I haven’t found anywhere else.

Each of her readers will have their own favorite posts, but here are a few of mine:

• White House Letter — eRobin pinch hits a grand slam for Liz Bumiller. Eerily, Bumiller actually wrote very nearly the same thing the next year.
• Social Security 70th anniversary week
• The Chuck Pennacchio Online Petition Drive — eRobin organized bloggers to write on behalf of insurgent candidate Chuck Pennacchio, running against DINO “I’d vote for Sam Alito if only I could” Bob Casey for Pennsylvania’s junior Senate seat.
• Casting Call! — features “Curious George” book cover and a casting call for firefighters in the wake of yet another Bush photo-op with them, after Katrina.
• … and I could go on.

I’ve met eRobin once, at a demonstration back in 2005; she’s as nice in person as she seems online. As Edwards supporters will be chanting in 2012: Four more years! Four more years! …Well, whether they’re chanting that or not in 2012, I am right now. Keep up the great work, eRobin — long may you blog!

It’s been fun getting Maddie to the Washington Ballet Nutcracker shows and being part of the hustle and bustle of Christmastime. I helped sell Nutcracker paraphernalia during intermission a few times, benefiting the Washington Ballet School’s scholarship funds. Before the show, at intermission, after the show: a crush of people — what’s the price on that? I’ll find out for you; yes, we take credit cards, would you like that wrapped, hope the credit card connection doesn’t hang — and then it’s over with a litter of tissue paper, paper rolls, and shopping bags around you and “see you next time”s. I kind of like it.

But it’s also been a little exhausting after a while — between that and Christmas shopping, neighborhood parties and an end of year crunch at work, I’ve been even more sporadic about blogging than usual.

Maddie’s in her second year as a “Fox page” in the Sugar Plum Fairy’s woodland (rather than Land of Sweets) court scenes, mainly early in the second act. She comes skittering out with a bouquet for Clara and the Nutcracker Prince, does a little dance around them with other woodland creatures, and then retires to a side stage to watch the rest of the proceedings — which were also fabulous, as ever. The show is really fun; kids of almost all skill levels are integrated into an imaginative, “Americanized” production of the ballet (in this case set in 1880s or so Georgetown, and then in the dreams of the American Clara, peopled by Betsy Ross, Ben Franklin, a King George Rat, etc.).

The top pros are scintillating — while I’m no expert, I was particularly impressed by the Sugar Plum Fairy, and the dancers of the “Arabian Dance” (recast as “Anacostian Indians” in this production). But I was also very impressed with the top ballet school students (I believe), some of whom put in several pieces of hard work (and some very quick costume changes!) per performance — party girl to Snowflake to Cardinal to Cherry Blossom — always dancing beautifully.

There may be other good Nutcracker productions out there, but I don’t think there could be a better one. It’s well worth your while if you get a chance; but at this point this parent and volunteer is relieved that won’t be until next year!

My blog space
Originally uploaded by Thomas Nephew

I’m joining in “Show Your Blog Space Day” at PSoTD’s request. Note the printer cable obstructing the (seldom used) file cabinet drawer. For a far more sightly blog space, see eRobin’s entry. The computer wallpaper is “globe east 2048,” via NASA Earth Observatory’s “Visible Earth.”

I don’t usually have this many books on my desk, but I’m intending to write a bit about a couple I’ve read recently, so there they are — “The Shock Doctrine” (Naomi Klein), and “A Shameful Act” (Taner Akcam). Thumbs up review versions: two thumbs up for both books. Five word review versions: History retold challenges “free” marketeers; Turk: how Turks committed genocide.