Kindergarten

Hank with a kindergarten buddy, on the school playground in Davis, California. The lightning bugs on his shirt glowed in the dark.

Springtime in Maine

This was the weekly forecast for Portland last year in .... April. I don't know why it seemed appropriate to retrieve it now, but here it is. This fall, it's been pretty warm and pleasant.

France from Above

Yann Arthus-Bertrand, the photographer who did the "Earth from Above" book and exhibit, also did "France from Above," which included this picture.

I don't have the caption. I know nothing about it. Maybe some of y'all can provide details. If it were in the U.S., I'd say it was probably part of a miniature golf course.....

Were Alabama dinosaurs Republicans?

This chalky bluff is on the bank of the Tombigbee River in west Alabama at a place called Moscow Landing. Geologists come here from all over the world to look at the line between the brownish ground in the lower part of the bluff and the grayish white ground higher up. The black backpack in the picture pretty much marks the line, which is known as the K-T boundary. Below it are fossils of oceanic critters that lived in the age of the dinosaurs, more than 63 million years ago. Above the boundary are more recent fossils--oysters and snails and suchlike. The line itself in some parts of the world has a chemical irregularity associated with meteorites, but not at Moscow Landing, which is just a few hundred miles from the probable impact site of the meteorite that is believed to have extinguished the dinosaurs. Here, the K-T boundary shows evidence of scouring and faulting from ... a tsunami. The thinking is that when the meteorite smashed into the Yucatan, which was then mostly covered by a shallow sea, it caused earthquakes, which just might have caused tsunamis.

The tsunami evidence is controversial. But the boundary itself is obvious--you don't need any training in geology to see a difference between the dinosaur-age fossils in the brown chalk and the puny little oyster fossils in the white chalk.

Best thing about Moscow Landing: the chalk. The fossils are easy to dig out--no hammer and chisel needed.

What is chalk? Fossils of teeny tiny critters that live in anaerobic seas. The oceans have gone back and forth a few times between aerobic and anaerobic conditions--they were anaerobic in the dinosaur age, but they're aerobic now. Why the switch? I don't know, and I'm told that nobody does.

Do rams wear red socks?

The regular soccer season is over now at Deering High School; the playoff season starts next week, as the Rams try to keep up with Red Sox, if it's okay to mix sports in your metaphors. Here's Hank in last week's game with Gorham High School, chasing down a ball.

you were a rock.....

....which pressure-temperature path would you want to follow?

This is Figure 15 from my thesis. I like path #2, and that's my final answer.

Mount Rainier

In July, Norman and two friends from high school, David Wasser and Kenny Gross, went camping together on Mount Rainier. Kenny, who lives near Seattle, met David and Norman at the Seattle airport, with the car already packed full of camping gear and food. No wives, no kids, just the boys. They hiked, cooked, etc. Norm says it may have been David's first time camping ever. Being the age that they are, they had schedules and so couldn't stay long up on the mountain--a couple of nights.

Among them, the three friends from Plainview, Long Island, have 9 children--7 boys, 2 girls. Most of their children are now older than the guys were when they were hanging out together at John F. Kennedy High School. No divorces in this group. And so far, no Nobel Prizes, and no grandchildren.

Music for 12 hands

Following a recital last February, the University of Alabama's renowned piano professor Amanda Penick poses with Joe and her other students.

The shirt off his back

This picture was taken in June 1996, in our old house in Tuscaloosa. Ted was not quite 17. Uncle Jack was pretty young, too. They both look good.

But apparently, some very big person with very long arms lent Ted a plaid shirt for the occasion. I guess it was nice of him.

Buzz off

We got some Capisic Pond honey today: dark sticky stuff in a comb. Capisic is a nice little pond at the edge of our neighborhood, where a a lot of people walk their dogs. A friend of John's once took her dog there, and the dog made the mistake of picking a fight with another dog, which was being walked by a policewoman who had the number for Animal Control on speed dial on her cellphone. The incident ended with John's friend promising to take her dog out of Maine and never come back. Sort of.

These pictures are from a website. They must have been taken a little later in the year; right now, the marsh grass is still green and yellow, and the leaves on the trees are trying to make up their leafy little minds about whether it's time to turn and fall. I don't know where the bees are; the wildflowers bloomed loudly all summer, and I annoyed Norman by slowing down to pick them, but I never did notice any bees.

Wrestling Midshipman

This photo of Midshipman Allan Stein has been posted on the website of the wrestling team at the U.S. Naval Academy. I don't know if this means he should go to court and change the spelling of his name to match the official version put out by Navy Sports.

Meanwhile, looks like a lot of buttons to polish after wrestling practice. But they don't make Division I 125-pounders any cuter than that.

The day after Columbus Day

Monday--Columbus Day--was just plain lost as far as picture-sending is concerned. I'm sorry, but it's never coming back.

For Tuesday, here's John at the United Indians headquarters in Seattle, where he works as...something to do with volunteers, a website, an art gallery, maybe fund-raising, HR, um. Not quite that, or maybe, but whatever.

Bottom rail on top.

Can you hear me now?

The array of low-frequency radio towers at the edge of Machias Bay in Cutler, Maine, is what allows the Navy communicate with submarines that are deep underwater anywhere around the globe. The towers themselves don't exactly add to the scenic beauty of the shoreline, though they may look kind of interesting from space--and they may be the only man-made feature in Maine that's visible to astronauts orbiting the earth. Each of the 27 towers is 1,000 feet high. They're remote controlled--all the radio signals are sent to the towers from Norfolk, VA, and then relayed out to the bottom of the sea, with no human intervention required. A small crew of civilians keeps the grass mowed and presumably changes the light bulbs; there are no Navy folks onsite at all, and no reports of Blackwater folks. The daytime picture was taken from 3 miles away, the nighttime picture from at least 10 or 15 miles away.

There is little or no cellphone service in this part of Maine.

End of an Era

Wednesday afternoon, Waynflete played its last home field hockey game of the 2007 series. Our Fliers beat Old Orchard Beach, 1-0.

For approximately umpteen years, there's been at least one and often two Stein girls paying field hockey in Portland. But from now on, other girls will have to step up and manage without them. As a senior, Amelia's now played her last game on her home field.

Amelia and her friend Chelsea Smith, who've been playing field hockey together since elementary school, are co-captains of the Flyers. They suffered through a couple of years of losing all the time, then turned the corner last season. This year, they've already won 5 games, and they've still got a few more road games to play. They could win more. They could make the playoffs.

Here, Amelia passes to Chelsea during the game with Old Orchard. And afterwards, everybody's happy.

High stakes

This form of poker probably has a name, but I don't know it. We played it at the beach last summer in Machiasport. I don't recall who won, but it wasn't me. 

Say "Cheese"

Pinstripes

Now that the Red Sox are safely in the playoffs, it can be revealed: once upon a time, in another life, so to speak, Joe was a New York Yankee.

#2 Patty Duke

#1 Happy Birthday, Pete! (a bit belatedly)

#2 In the 1960s, Patty Duke starred in a short-lived TV series in which she played two roles: "identical cousins" Patty and Kathy. Recently, this here Good Morning picture show misidentified as Amelia Stein a picture of her cousin Avi Stein. They must both be Patty Duke, because the error was not picked up by many of their near and dear--Amelia herself caught it, though she wasn't sure who it was in the picture, and finally her mother set us all straight.

Here are some little-girl shots of Avi and Amelia, along with two more recent images: Avi with boyfriend Nick, and Amelia a few years ago with her sister Maggie.

Edelweiss

In the summer of 2000, my mother and I spent 2 weeks in Alaska. For 5 days, we were on a little ship that visited Sitka and Glacier Bay and other astonishing fjords, where one night this family from Mississippi entertained us with their version of The Sound of Music. It was right up there with the other musical highlight of that trip: the drunk Australians in a Juneau saloon singing "Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie."

Nobody goes to Alaska for the music.  Among the non-musical highlights: a grizzly bear nursing her cubs,  5-foot-tall rhubarb plants and 2-foot-wide dahlias in Fairbanks, a nice greenschist rock outcrop in Juneau accessible by elevator in a state office building, musk oxen, people catching salmon in a creek under a freeway in Anchorage, and the deep blue crevasses at our feet in Mendenhall Glacier. 

Trompe L'Oeil all over again

This mural is in San Francisco, near the Mission District and Noe Valley. Ted took the picture. His camera did not have a wide-enough-angled lens to capture the whole scene in one shot, so he assembled a panorama from multiple shots. But the paneled effect was actually painted into the mural, giving him lines to try to match when he assembled the panorama. Where's Waldo? Maybe on the horse or in the boat.

Cousins come of age

Next week, Cousin Pete, the baby on Uncle Bob's lap, will turn 13. This entire cousin-cluster, then, will be teenagers or young adults--as Cousin Vinny put it: they're all Utes now.

Standing, from left to right: Cousins Amelia and Maggie Stein and Melissa Koehler, Allen, Hank, and Joe

Note that Hank is wearing a 101 Dalmatians shirt. He used to have a matching blanket.

Deja vu all over again

On Valentine's Day, 2004, during a trip to Winter Carnival in Quebec City (where they'll throw me in jail for leaving off all those accent marks), we wandered down to the old Lower Town, where Grandma Sandy hopped the fence and joined the party in this mural. Docents need to do things like that to enrich their understanding of trompe l'oeil.

Special thanks to Ted for the photoshoppic enhancement.

Tattoo

Three summers ago, on Estonian Independence Day, military drum and bugle corps and bagpipe bands from all over Europe gathered in the central Estonian town of Paide for a tattoo. The President of Estonia spoke, the bands all played, and then Hank and our friend Patrik Maldre posed wearing a highland headdress. The headdress was made of feathers. Over the three years since then, both Hank and Patrik have grown taller.

#2--Sandals

#1--Happy Birthday, Grandpa!!

#2--Sandals was a happy little dog when he lived with Ted, and we hear tell he's still happy.

When Ted moved away from Tuscaloosa about five years ago into an apartment near Boston that didn't allow dogs, he left Sandals in the care of a dog-loving neighbor. This neighbor's girlfriend, now his former girlfriend, claimed Sandals when the couple broke up. Recently, when Norman ran into her in a Tuscaloosa restaurant, she said that under no circumstances would she part with that little black dog; he was a good dog, they had bonded, end of story.

Where's Waldo?

One Saturday in August 2006, Norman and I were sightseeing near South Royalton, VT, where he was visiting that semester at the Vermont Law School. A sign posted on the front porch of a country store in Tunbridge reminded townspeople to come to the fairgrounds at 4 o'clock that afternoon for the taking of the town picture. We decided this was too important an even to miss.

At 4 o'clock, we joined an estimated 800 Turnbridgians (from a population of about  1,800) who had shown up at the fairgrounds and were milling around in fog and drizzle, in front of a big, black 100-year-old camera set up in the back of a pickup track. The sheriff (yellow rainjacket, front and center) yelled at everybody until the photographer was satisfied. The townspeople were posed in front of the property they owned jointly:  their school bus, fire truck, ambulance, road grader, and snow plow. We stood away from the crowd and watched, along with a very unhappy twelve-year-old and his mother; she wouldn't let him pose with the townspeople because they only lived in Tunbridge on weekends.

Several people held up portraits of people who couldn't be there; other people held up babies, flowers, a Cookie Monster puppet, a scythe, and a geologic cross-section of the mountain behind the town. One man draped a black dog around his neck, and a woman was leading a horse. There was the woman in the purple hat. And in back of the man with red kayak paddles were three infant carseats carrying  . . .  triplets.

Town picture day, we learned, is actually not a Vermont tradition, at least not in Tunbridge. It was a twenty-first-century innovation: somebody had found the old camera in a barn, fixed it up, and decided to try taking a town picture. People seemed happy with the event, and with the photo, and there was talk of making a tradition out of it. Did they do it again in August 2007? Google wouldn't tell me.

Cousin Amelia

This was a few years ago. Amelia is now a senior at Waynflete School in Portland and captain of the Waynflete Flyers field hockey team.

Man On!

Perhaps John just wasn't experienced enough yet with the ways of younger brothers. Time took care of that.

I accidentally hit Send a couple of days ago when I was intending to Save one of these emails until this morning. So even though y'all have already seen a picture labeled Sunday, I did not want the morning to go by without a greeting in your mailbox. Good Morning Again!

Two Grandmothers and Forty Years

Here is my Grandma Rose (Blumenthal Horowitz) in 1956, with my baby brother Charles; in the other picture is the kids' Grandma Helen (Ruskin Stein Behr) in 1996, with Allen and Hank.

Disneyworld

Late in 1980 or early in 1981, Aunt Arleigh,  Uncle Richard , and Cousin Lindeigh stopped by to visit us in Jacksonville, FL, on their way to Disney World. We had two babies at the time: Ted was about 18 months old and John was right around three. Arleigh and Richard volunteered--volunteered!!--to take John along for the trip to Disney World, even though he was still so young he wasn't clear on the difference between Mickey Mouse and Jimmy Carter. And while he no longer wore diapers, he wasn't yet a completely independent bathroom-going sort of person.

Nonetheless, they strapped John's carseat into their car and headed for Orlando. John and Lindeigh had a wonderful time, and Arleigh and Richard were awarded super-duper extra credit in the family-generosity account. A few months ago, they moved to New Zealand (except for Lindeigh, who's still in Seattle), where they are in the process of buying a house with three sheep, but that doesn't change the accounting: we still owe them big-time.

The truth is: we owe just about everybody. When it comes to kind, generous family and friends, we lucked out big-time.

Richard also lucked out soon after this picture was taken, when fashions changed and he could get a haircut.

The Stone Age

Three years ago, Grandpa Bob's 80th birthday was celebrated on Peaks Island, Maine, where there are lots of rocks. The rocks are older than Grandpa Bob--roughly 400 million years older. The human species evolved in an environment where rocks were plentiful, and these young male humanoids demonstrate that we are hard-wired to make forts and stuff out of stone.

Also, some among us are hard-wired to knock down the forts that other people make. Hank recalls that he had to rebuild this whole thing all by himself.

Left to right: Ted, Hank, Allen, Joe, and Cousin Nick Horowitz. Not shown is John, who was hiding behind a camera.

P.S. Grandpa will be 83 next week. He's already beyond the stone age.

Hogwarts on the Chesapeake

The statue of Harry Potter in front of the Naval Academy dorm got a fresh coat of paint this past weekend. Usually, it's a statue of the Indian chief Tecumseh, but last weekend, it looked like Harry Potter. On the base of the statue, the Naval Academy was identified as the "School of Character and Command." Around back was the crest for Hufflebill, the house of the Midshipmen--well, of course they're in Hufflebill, on account of their mascot, Bill the Goat. The cardinal in the crest was a nod to Saturday's football opponent, the Ball State Cardinals, who...won.

One of the 30 midshipmen companies is responsible for painting Tecumseh, who is also known as "God of 2.0." The special occasion this time was parents' weekend for the senior class.

Happ

Twenty-six years ago today, Joe weighed in at about 6 and a half pounds.

"Stein on the Danube"

Painted by Egon Schiele in 1913.

Blue Angels

Today I'm scheduled to work as a volunteer cook in a concession tent at the last Great State of Maine Air Show, at the Brunswick Naval Air Station. There will be no more air shows in future years because the Naval Air Station is closing down. Back in June, at a picnic honoring the six plebes-to-be from Maine, the Maine Naval Academy Parents Club passed around a sign-up sheet for this project--I don't yet know what this organization does with any money it raises (the picnic was potluck), but I guess I've got a mindless sort of sign-up habit.

Headlining the show will be the Blue Angels team of precision fighter pilots. If you google them, you may come across this bit of nonsense from the Navy Public Affairs Office:

How do the Blue Angels deal with stress?
The squadron focuses stress by exercising; weight training, cardiovascular programs, and flexibility training; and by eating a healthy diet. 

Personally, I think they deal with stress by making a lot of sick jokes and flying very fast.

December 1988

December 1988: Cousins gather in Chevy Chase for Grandma and Grandpa Horowitz's 40th anniversary. Jessica clearly is queen of the festivities. Baby Allen's head is hiding the bears on Ted's sweater--they were either pandas or koalas, but I can't remember which. The bear on Jessica's sweater, of course, is a proper teddy.

Shortly after this picture was taken, Grandma and Grandpa moved to their condo in Bethesda. The gold chair moved to Alabama, where it served us well for the rest of the twentieth century.

Is it interesting that nobody in this picture is showing any red-eye?

Sailors in Trees