Here are the boys' class photos for the year. Eddie's was rather special, because they took class photos on the day that Eddie's class participated in an historic one-room school reenactment at Waterford. Thus, all his class were dressed in period costumes.
The best part of these camping trips are the times we spend with good, close friends. I love sitting with Phil and gossiping about nothing in general, or listening to Desi as he captivates the children with yet another rendition of "The Ghost with One Black Eye." Sharon's mega-burps after a large meal of sausages... well, those I could do without! (But I still love you, Sharon.)
The group particularly enjoyed joke-telling around the fire, and I believe the consensus favorite was Eoin's "A cowboy walks into a salon..." Sometimes, the best jokes are unintentional.
Luke told a funny one at the fire:
There are three guys who are walking along a cliff. Suddenly the back part of the cliff falls away, and they are trapped on a high point. Also suddenly, a genie appears and tells them that if they jump off the side of the cliff and shout any word, their wish will come true.Later that night, walking to the bathroom with the boys, Luke proudly informed me that he had censored the joke for the little kids at the fire. He said, "Dad, you know that joke had a bad word in it? But I changed it."
So the first guy runs and jumps off the cliff while yelling, "Mattresses!" And he lands on a pile of mattresses and lives.
The second guy runs and jumps off the cliff while yelling "Pillows!" And he lands on a pile of pillows and lives.
The third guy runs, but trips on a root before going over the side, and yells, "Awww CRUD!" And he lands in a pile of crud.
That's the end of my Cowan's Gap photos. I hope you enjoyed viewing them as much as we enjoyed posing for them! Good friends. Good times!
Our hiking adventure on Sunday started along the creek on the Plessinger Trail. We then left the creek and wound up the side of the eastern mountain along the Geyer Trail. The Geyer Trail was a pretty difficult climb, going from 1300 feet in elevation to 2000 feet in just about half a mile of distance, something like 14° or a 25% grade.
(Although the Geyer Trail was friendlier than the extreme hand over hand scramble up and down the western mountain on the Horseshoe Trail of last time. I now know why the Horseshoe Trail is named as such: because of the cross-section shape it makes across the saddle of the mountain.)
The Geyer Trial eventually connects up with the Tuscarora Trail at the very top of the eastern peak, opening up into a sunny glade and makeshift campsite for primitive campers. The Tuscarora Trail travels a great distance, connecting up with the Appalachian Trail over sixty miles away to the northeast. We, however, just took it along the eastern mountain ridge and back down to the campground lake.
Our total hike was about 4.6 miles, with a difference in elevation of about 700 feet--a very satisfying hike!
The lake at Cowan's Gap is spectacular, if not a bit frigid this time of year. Despite the cold temperature of the water, the lake provided ample entertainment.
The kids spent most of their time on the beach building sand castles, but a few brave souls managed to dip in for a refreshing cold bath. We also rented a few boats and toured around the circumference of the lake. Some of us even fished a bit.
Late in the afternoon, Desi buried Eoin, Ronan and Luke in the sand. He buried them so thoroughly that they couldn't extract themselves. They were truly trapped. Sensing their distress, I walked over with to help them. I fetched a bucket, and began scooping the ice cold water from the lake. You can imagine how quickly they got free after receiving a few cold gallons over their heads. Yes, I'm a cruel daddy! Mwuah ha ha!
Memorial Day weekend was a splendid weekend. The weather was sunny, warm (but not too warm), and no humidity. We spent the weekend camping at Cowan's Gap State Park, a lovely park only 90 minutes away from home.
This was our second time at the park, and it's quickly becoming our favorite for a number of reasons. One, it has great facilities: immaculately clean bathrooms, great camping pads, low density sites, and a lake with snack bar and boat rental facilities. Two, the park has superb hiking trails, as seen on the following picture. The yellow trail is the hike we took this weekend, a 4.6 mile circuit that took us up and down in 700 feet of elevation changes. (The green trail is the challenging trail we took last time we visited Cowan's Gap.)
Finally, the park is just FAR enough from DC to be less peopled than, say, Cunningham Falls, but near enough not to be a half-day's drive away.
All of this, plus our usual crew of friends, adds up to one mega-fine weekend.
I have a BUNCH of photos to post, so I will post a few each night til I get them all posted.
Here's the first set, an artsy set of some of the park flora and fauna. Notice in the photo of the bat, the inset circle of the bat, enlarged. I actually caught that bugger with my flash!
Becky's been going through old photographs, redoing the family photos on the wall upstairs. One of these photos, a photo of Eddie (when he was two) and I walking along the river at Ball's Bluff, was badly faded. This photo was superbly composed, and remains one of Becky and my favorite photos. We finally found the old 35mm film negative, and got it redeveloped and scanned in digitally. It really is one spectacular photo! Becky has a marvelous eye.
Of course, it's still spring in the garden. The peonies are blooming, and this variety remains my personal favorite. It is so delicately colored that by day two of the bloom, the sun has bleached all the petals to pale pink and off-white. You must appreciate this flower very quickly.
My new clarinet has returned from the fix-it shop! I dusted it off and tried doing a scale after twenty years of no practice. Remarkably, I still remembered how to do it! I was amazed how quickly I got winded. I didn't remember it being this hard to blow on this thing.
The boys wanted me to play with them on their instruments. We picked one song we all know--"When The Saints Go Marching In." I played from memory, thank you very much!
What you are witnessing here is the genesis of the next big family band. Just like the Wilkinsons, or the Osmonds, or the family Jackson, we Harrises will be a tour de force on the Billboard charts. You saw it here first, folks!
Just let me practice a bit more.
(In the meantime, if any of you parents have bad children who need punishment, I will be happy to practice in front of them for $7 an hour.)
I was just closing the living room curtains, when I noticed this little lady sitting in the tree outside our window. If we're lucky, we may see chicks soon.
Becky finished her first sweater. She's been working on it for five months or so. She wore it to church on Sunday, and was all the rage among the knitters there.
I think she looks very swell indeed! Now, if I could only convince her to make kilt hose.
Today was less windy, so we took attempt #2 at shooting the rockets. Today, we shot off Astrovision, Black Diamond, and Outlaw. We got some great video of the rockets, but not without collateral damages. Astrovision's elastic binding cord separated, leaving the nose cone to float safely down to earth, while the body of the rocket came down full speed, breaking one of the tail stabilizers upon impact.
Black Diamond was even more dramatic. It's such a tiny rocket; it really gets up very high. But I had packed the blast paper in too tightly, so the nose didn't eject. Thus, the whole rocket came down like some kind of munition. "RUN BOYS! RUN!!" The rocket wedged itself into the dirt nose first. Actually, it was really cool.
Both rockets are repairable, though, so they will fly another day.
Today, we got some good video of the take off, and a decent video of the flight!
I recently finished reading Roots, by Alex Haley. What an accomplishment! I am so proud to have finally read this book!
I have always wanted to read Roots, and felt it was my duty to do so. I even have a beautiful and personally autographed hardbound copy, which I lost for about ten years and miraculously found again very recently.
As a white kid, and having gone to school in the deep south, I have experienced racism and bigotry first hand. Of course, I studied the history of the South and the Civil War in school, but learning about this history in the classroom doesn't really make the story come alive. Roots did that in a way that no other book had done.
The problem for me was that it's such a big book! I would always get started, but eventually lose interest or fall asleep. Finally, I found an audiobook format narrated by Avery Brooks. Compatible with my long commute, I was finally able to make it through the entire volume. And what an incredible tale! This book should be a must-read for every single American high school student today.
Along a similar vein, there is a YouTube video has been making the rounds on the Internet. In it, Wintley Phipps, a gifted preacher, philanthropist and powerful baritone, discusses the origins of the popular spiritual Amazing Grace. If you haven't seen this meme already, it's powerful stuff:
The boys and I finally took Eddie's Christmas present, a video-capturing rocket, to Franklin Park and shot it off. The rocket was really cool, but we didn't quite get the video right. So all you can see is the parachute phase. Next time, we'll hopefully get more of the take-off on video.
Anyhow, it's still pretty darn cool.
"If we are to have peace on earth ... our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective. No individual can live alone, no nation can live alone, and as long as we try, the more we are going to have war in this world. We must either learn to live together as brothers or we are all going to perish together as fools."
Martin Luther King, Jr. 1967
© Copyright 2005-2014, Scott E. Harris. All Rights Reserved.
Please do not reproduce or copy without the permission of the author.
