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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.

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).

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

1) being 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, um, 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.

E-mail

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 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.

If I link to a site, that does not imply I approve of the site or any specific opinions expressed there.

Yes, I do pretty much whatever I want.

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.

Hilary Knight and Eloise. Originally
uploaded by Thomas Nephew; see
also slideshow.

On Saturday we had a rather wonderful day, organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Willard Hotel, and Hilary Knight — illustrator of the famed “Eloise” children’s book series. The details of the event are described here (”WhereToGoNext”):

Mr. Knight will demonstrate the way he poses her figure, creates her expressions, and explores her gestures. Participants will use pen and ink to illustrate their own whimsical storybook character. Materials are included and parents are welcome to observe.

He did, and then about two dozen kids sat down and had two dozen good cracks at it themselves, while parents wandered from kids table to kids table, sipped their coffees, and just soaked up a beautiful day. Maddie created a couple of nice drawings, including one — a blue vase with flowers on a yellow table — that is quite good indeed, I think.

The workshop took place in Pershing Plaza, a small park in front of the (re-)refurbished, historic Willard Hotel (now Willard InterContinental) on Pennsylvania Avenue. Twain, Grant, Lincoln, have been there, Julia Ward Howe wrote “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and Martin Luther King finished his “I have a dream” speech there. (For his part, Grant coined the word “lobbyist” there for the people who laid in wait for him in the hotel lobby where he went to relax after a day at the White House.) There’s a nice little exhibit on the ground floor of the hotel that’s open to the public. (Use the F Street entrance, across from Border’s Books.)

It looks like this won’t be the last time Mr. Knight and his little creation are in town: the workshop “is the beginning of a series of “Eloise” events in conjunction with the Willard slated for 2008-9.“ Could be fun; it was for us.

Week 1 of 3 is over. It’s not a trial, not with my good little girl, but it’s uninterrupted, plus the early to bed, early to rise jet lag effect has persisted. So I’m out of gas early most nights.

I’ve put together a bunch of links for many of the places we visited in Italy, and hope to get a post up tonight or tomorrow. We’ll see. In other news, I finally got the house tidied up to a halfway decent level, and the Teal Stars (my girl’s soccer team) won 1-0 this afternoon, and Maddie and her team played beautifully.

Looking forward to Cricket’s return very much. And now it’s time for some LOTR nighttime reading.

What a trip! True, we’ll be paying for it for a while, but: what a trip. As I did with our Germany trip a couple of years ago, I’ll be adding back-dated posts (posts dated to the time of the trip, rather than the actual date of the post) over the next weeks, along with some of the pictures we took along the way. The outline will be

• Rome
• Rome, continued
• Florence
• Baratti and the Tuscan countryside
• Siena, and arrivederci
• Miscellaneous notes

The posts will be a bit of a memory aid for me, as well as a chance for me to learn more about what I saw. If you prefer, here’s a link to some of the better pictures from this trip individually or as a slideshow: more pictures, fewer words.

Right now there are only three photos there of the twenty or so I have available. On the other hand, at that rate I’m liable to post another 20 or 25 photos on my Flickr.com site. However, I’m not a paying Flickr member, so I’ll be adding pictures slowly, as my monthly upload limit allows. Subscribing to this feed (RSS) or this one (Atom) provides an easy way to check for new ones. By the way, you can also subscribe to a “Feedblitz” e-mail notification of new “newsrack” posts here; that might make it a bit easier to know when backdated posts have been posted. It’s easy to unsubscribe.

I’m trying to catch up on the news as well, but I’ve been a bit out of the loop for a while; meanwhile, this blog might serve as an occasional welcome Italian vacation from the news. I’ll say that I was expecting to still be reading about Libby’s revelation about Bush authorizing leaks. But the growing Iran drumbeat and the immigration demonstrations were going to push that out of the limelight a little — the prospect of yet more war and the concerns of millions of immigrants trump Beltway skulduggery.

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UPDATE, 4/26: A couple of posts are up now, click on the “Rome” and “Rome, continued” links or scroll down if you’re on the home page. Also, Feedblitz doesn’t register backdated posts as new, so that won’t work.
UPDATE, 5/5: There are about 30 Italy photos on my Flickr.com site now; many are displayed below, some aren’t. Have a look!