Blizzard in Bawlmer

     Uncle Jack feels like he is back in northern Wisconsin again after yesterday's blizzard dumped two feet of snow on Charm City and environs. He has to say that blizzards can be beautiful when observed from the comfort of a 7th floor apartment by someone who doesn't have to go anywhere and who doesn't  have to look forward to many hours of shoveling snow after the stuff stops falling.  So far the only real consequence of the storm is that his Sunday New York Times is now over three hours late and he is in danger of going into withdrawal any moment.
      While he gazes at the beauty of the new-fallen snow beneath his living room window a crew of 700 snow-shovelers is working frantically to clear two feet of snow from the seats and playing field of M & T Bank stadium downtown so the Ravens and the Bears can play iceball this afternoon.  The kick-off  has been moved back from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. to give the sweepers and shovelers a little more time to work so most of the game will be played under lights in sub-freezing temperatures.  Sound like fun?
     This has been a bad month for persons of Swedish descent like Uncle Jack.  First the news about Tiger Woods's multiple infidelities which came as a shock to all of us who know that he is married to a lovely Swedish woman named Elin Nordegren.  Uncle Jack's paternal grandmother's name was Elin so he felt personally violated by Tiger's unconscionable treatment of a fellow Scandinavian.  As a gesture of protest he promises that he will never buy another $20,000 Tag Heuer watch as long as he lives.
       As though the Woods caper were not enough the poobahs at General Motors announced yesterday that they are shutting down the Saab Motor Company for good, having been unable to sell the brand to any other automaker.  As a former Saab owner Uncle Jack would like to extend his condolences to the clever trolls of Trollhatten, Sweden who have been making these wonderful cars for many decades and who might have continued to do so if they had not been gobbled up by the GM monster.  Uncle Jack has many Saab stories to tell, like the night his brand new Saab caught fire on the way home from the dealer, but he will save them for another time.
      Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. will now wish everyone a Merry Christmas, or if that is not appropriate, at least a Happy New Year before they go into hiding for the next week or so.

        View from the seventh floor, Saturday noon.  About six inches had fallen by this time.

      Ditto Sunday morning after the snow had stopped falling.  The sun was blinding.

       Walking down the middle of a busy street is usually hazardous but not during a blizzard.

                                 The Ravens play the Bears here at 4 p.m. Sunday.  Maybe.

                Lucky for Uncle Jack the Mini spent the night in a warm, dry garage.

                          Blizzards can be fun, too.

Busy, Busy, Busy

     Once again Uncle Jack apologizes to all those faithful readers who have been clicking in vain for the past several days while nothing new appeared in this space.  It isn't as though he hasn't had anything to write about.  It has been another fun-packed week for sure but the doing has left little time and energy for the reporting.
     The highlight of last week was his first cultural excursion to D.C. which is something he and Mrs. U.J. have been talking about doing ever since they got to Baltimore.  Trains leave from nearby Penn Station every 45 minutes or so and the 40 minute ride costs senior citizens a mere $7.00 round-trip, making trips to our nation's capital both convenient and cost-effective.
     A play at the Kennedy Center was the catalyst for this adventure.  Called "August: Osage County" it's a sad but also very funny examination of an extremely dysfunctional family whose members gather at the homeplace for the funeral of their patriarch.  The part of the deceased's surviving wife is played by 82-year-old actress Estelle Parsons who is on stage for hours, yelling and stomping around like the lunatic she portrays.  She gives an incredible performance and one can only wonder how, at her age, she can do it twice on Matinee day which this happened to be.  Steroids perhaps. Or geritol.
      Neither Uncle Jack nor Mrs. U.J. had seen Union Station since its massive renovation of a few years back and he can tell you they were impressed.    When it was built a century ago it was the largest building in the country and one of the most ornate.  It languished after World War II when trains went out of favor but in its reincarnation you can almost imagine the grandeur of rail travel at its finest back in the first half of the twentieth century. Even the restaurants are first rate which is not usually the case in train stations these days.
      Look for another blog entry in a week or so if you are so inclined.  Happy shopping.

                Part of the vaulted interior of Union Station in D.C.  The building contains over 130 stores and restaurants and appears to be thriving as a shopping destination as well as a train depot.

The sign says that this Christmas tree is a gift of the country of Norway.  Uncle Jack is not sure what we have done for Norway lately but it is certainly a lovely tree.

  Union Station's exterior.  The Plaza in front of it is about to receive a multi-million dollar reworking, too.

                              One of the interior hallways in the magnificent Kennedy Center.

  This gentleman performed a rhapsody by Johannes Brahms at a concert of Christmas music Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. attended last week.

                        And here's a picture of Brahms himself at the piano.  Amazing.

 

Still here

     Shame on Uncle Jack for not at least letting his readers (are there any left?) know that he has not yet shuffled off his mortal coil---just incredibly busy since returning from Nags Head last week.  He still doesn't have time to write a proper blog entry but here are a few last pictures from the beach in Sonag (and elsewhere) that might help pass the time. It's time to watch the Ravens stomp the Packers into the snow up in Green Bay.

    Sunrise from the deck one day last week.  Uncle Jack is getting too old to walk down to the beach at 6 a.m. any more.  It was still worth getting up for, though.  Not many things are.

This pool at a Sonag development whose name Uncle Jack can't remember at the moment (Dunes South maybe?) has withstood many a storm over the past 25 years but not this one.

                                                        For sure.

Unusual doubledecker stairway shows how much sand gets pushed around during storms in Sonag.  It's a bonanza for carpenters who don't have houses to build at the moment.  Every cloud........

Chez Schneck, a few doors south of the Outer Banks pier, survived thanks to the massive dune built up over the past couple of years by judicious use of sand-fencing.  Time to start all over.  Get to work Polly.

The old Lifesaving Station at Oregon Inlet is looking better than it has for years.  All the ancillary structures built by the Coast Guard have been removed and new shingles applied to the original building.  Anybody know what the plans are for this marvelous survivor of countless storms over the past 100+ years?

More storm pics from South Nags Head

     The weather in Nags Head has been wretched for the past couple of days but the sun made a brief appearance this morning, allowing Uncle Jack to continue his post-Ida explorations of his old neighborhood---South Nags Head, N.C.  This morning's perambulations took him to a couple of perennial trouble spots---the Comfort Inn South and its neighbors, and the Sea Gull Drive area near the 20 milepost---both of which were particularly hard hit by last week's storm..  The pictures tell the story.

The Comfort Inn South lost its walkway to the beach as well as a lot of new decking installed after other storms in recent years. There have been no cars in the parking lot all week so Uncle Jack presumes it is closed until necessary repairs can be made.

The Yachtsman Condos are two doors south of the Comfort Inn.  Owners will have to get along without their swimming pool for a while as this sign suggests.

                                          And this is the reason why.

(Top picture). The Diamond Shoals condo development next door to the Comfort Inn took its usual hit. Management wasted no time in trucking in new sand to replace at least some of what washed away last week. The swimming pool is long gone.
(Bottom).  A hotel can't get much more oceanfront than this.

Longtime readers will remember that a large house called Gray Eagle (later Kuckoo's Nest) stood in front of the house in the foreground until a couple of years ago when it was moved back across the beach road. Looks like it may be time to call the movers again. (Looking south from Seagull Drive)

All but a short stub of Seagull Drive washed away again last week.  It has been rebuilt a couple of times since Isabel but town officials will no doubt think twice before spending any more money on it given that the cottages on the right are now sitting in the water most of the time.  Are they finished as rental houses?  Don't bet on it.

                                                          High but not dry.

Post (Ida) cards from South Nags Head

        Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. took a long walk down the beach in South Nags Head yesterday from James street at about the 19 milepost to Pelican street about a mile south where they had to turn around because there was no more beach to walk on.  He took pictures along the way which suggest the enormous power unleashed by last week's storm.  Most striking was the disappearance of vast amounts of sand as shown by the "bridges to nowhere" which now hang in mid-air over what were substantial dunes before the storm.  A few small older cottages collapsed when their underpinnings gave way but the biggest problem left in the wake of  this storm is the large number of  fairly substantial buildings which now sit high and dry on the beach, well in front of what remains of the dune line, or in some cases are actually in the surf most of the time.  This is not a new problem by any means but the number of such structures is greater than ever before and presents a knotty problem  for town government.  Should they be torn down or forced to move off the public beach or should they be left in place with the hope that one day the beach will be made whole again, by God or man, and their viability for tax purposes restored?
      Look for more pictures in a day or two from other parts of  South Nags Head even harder hit than this one.

       It will take a phalanx of bulldozers a very long time to restore the sand that vanished over night from under this walkway.

                                                             And this one.

      And this one.  Most troubling is the fact that a whole winter's worth of northeasters is still to come.

           Some escaped total destruction but their days may be numbered.

     Some didn't make it.  It will take superhuman effort to get this one ready for rental again next season.

                                                Another victim.

    The widest beach in South Nags Head---former location of Surfside Drive which the town gave up trying to save a couple of years ago and allowed nature to take its course.  Pretty.

     The "High Dunes" in the background are made of sand bulldozed off the street after the storm.  Better     than no dunes at all maybe..

Tale of Two Cities

            This has been a busy week in Charm City and in Nags Head, too, from what he has seen on the internet.  It was one of those weeks when he wished he could be in two places at the same time---and he almost was, actually, through the miracle of streaming video.
             On Friday morning he was surfing the web looking for pictures and accounts of the storm on the Outer Banks when he ran across a link to a website called hurricanetrack.com which sounded promising.  He clicked on the link and shortly found himself  looking at a live, streaming video of a car driving down a street that looked vaguely familiar.  It was when the car passed the South Nags Head fire station on the right that he knew exactly where he was---driving south on Old Oregon Inlet Road---virtually---and in real time.  The driver kept up a running commentary as he drove, mentioning that he was looking for "Oregon Street" where he wanted to make a video of an oceanfront  house that had apparently collapsed in that vicinity.
             Uncle Jack waited while he parked his car on the berm and went up to the beach to make a video with his camcorder and then suffered with him for at least twenty minutes while he struggled to upload the video to a server in the clouds whence it could be viewed later by storm fans like Uncle Jack.  After a while he turned around and headed north on Old Oregon Inlet Trail, resuming live, streaming video as he went---right past Uncle Jack's house at Ciltvaira street and on up to Cahoon's store at Whalebone Junction where he turned around again and headed for Manteo.  Uncle Jack stayed with him across the causeway and onto the Virginia Dare bridge where he apparently lost connection with the Sprint satellite.
            Needless to say, this was a weird, eye-opening experience for Uncle Jack.  It wasn't quite like being there but it was unlike anything he had experienced before.  The static webcams at places like the fishing piers and the S-curves in Rodanthe are fun to look at once in a while but driving around the Outer Banks in real time is something else.  (The trip that Uncle Jack dropped in on had actually started at the northernmost part of the Beach Road in Kitty Hawk and continued south through Kill Devil Hills and Nags Head before he joined it around milepost 18).  He still knows next to nothing about hurricanetrack.com but you can be sure he has bookmarked it and he recommends that you check it out at www.hurricanetrack.com  It's a great resource.
          Meanwhile in Bawlmer the cultural scene was almost as exciting as the northeaster in Nags Head.  Thursday last featured a doubleheader in the form of a jazz concert at noon by a quintet of very talented Peabody Conservatory students followed by all-Gershwin evening with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.  The latter included two of  Uncle Jack's all-time favorite compositions, the Rhapsody in Blue and the piano concerto in F, both of which swing like crazy.
         Sunday morning they paid their first visit to a remarkable Baltimore institution called "The Book Thing". It's a short walk from their condo and it consists of a large, one-story warehouse full of used books---tens of thousands of them,  all free for the taking. (Limit---1500 books per day.  Just kidding---you can take as many as you want).  The Book Thing is a non-profit labor of love for a Baltimore man who cannot stand to see books thrown away so he asks people to donate them and with the help of  volunteers he sorts and shelves them and makes them available to all comers on Saturdays and Sundays.  Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. between them took home a dozen excellent books to put on their new secondhand bookshelf (pictured above) and they will surely be going back for more (as well as donating).
        Sunday afternoon they attended a free concert by the Pavel Haas Quartet from Romania at the Baltimore Museum of Art and yesterday Uncle Jack took the Mini in for its 70,000 mile required maintenance which should ensure a trouble-free trip to Nags Head on Saturday, four days hence, where they will spend Thanksgiving Week walking the beach, or what is left of it, in South Nags Head.  Check in again in about a week when Uncle Jack will blog again.

P.S.  They picked up the handsome mahogany bookshelf at a going-out-of-business store on "Antique Row".   They can now brag that their bookshelf is bigger than their TV (but not by much).
        
        
      

Soul Mates

       "Jesus loves me, this I know; for the Bible tells me so.
       Little ones to him belong; they are weak but he is strong."

       Uncle Jack must have been about three years old when he learned that song, along with a lot of others touting the benefits of the Christian faith, in Sunday School at Nidaros Lutheran Church in Ashland, Wisconsin. Later, under the tutelage of the Reverend John A Houkum (pronounced hokum to Uncle Jack's everlasting delight) he memorized enough of the Nicene Creed to be admitted to membership in the Lutheran Church of America, Missouri Synod. (To this day he doesn't know why the Lutheran Church of America was split up into competing synods, or why there were five Lutheran churches in his home town, none of which could muster a congregation large enough to support a full-time minister).
      The Nicene Creed concludes with the words "We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come" and there is no doubt in Uncle Jack's mind that at the age of twelve or thereabouts when he pledged allegiance to the Lutheran Church he probably believed it, although he doubts that he gave it much thought at the time,  In that respect he is probably similar to all children who have been indoctrinated with one set of beliefs or another long before they are able to think for themselves.
      Somewhere along the way, probably at the den of heretics known as the University of Wisconsin, he began to doubt much of what he had been taught in Sunday School. For example, how could it possibly be true that the world was created in seven days as the bible tells us when the geological record proves beyond reasonable doubt that the earth has been around for millions of years?  In his first anthropology course he learned a little about the astonishing variety of religious belief professed by various groups of people around the world which led him further to question the sanctity of Christianity as the one and only route to "salvation",   In due time he began to wonder about the whole notion of an afterlife which, the more he learned about biology and physics, seemed exceedingly unlikely even as he grew closer to the moment in his life when he might acquire some definitive information about it.
      Anyway you can blame Mencken for this foray into elementary metaphysics.  What set it off was this passage from "Minority Report", a collection of his writings published posthumously (if only he could come back!) in 1956.

     The fact that the pious Christian believes he will live forever is no proof that he will, though it is frequently cited as one.  Even if all men believed it it would still not be true---and perhaps for that reason alone.  All its persistence proves is that the majority of men are unable to grasp the concept of annihilation.  They grasp readily enough the idea of being unconscious  for a short time, but they are quite unable  to think of being unconscious forever.

     The more Uncle Jack thinks about the Christian concepts of  afterlife, i.e. Heaven and Hell,  the more he thinks that a very long nap might be just the ticket.

                                                   "Smart" parking in Mount Vernon

          Catching rays on "The Beach" at Johns Hopkins U. on a sunny Sunday afternoon in November.                       Further evidence of global warming.

                                                                   Go Hops!!

                                        Tree in front of a knitting shop in Hampden all ready for winter.
  
  

 

Mencken on Man

           The World Serious is over and  pro basketball has thus far failed to ignite Uncle Jack's interest so he finds himself with plenty of time for more cerebral pursuits like exploring the acerbic works of the Sage of Baltimore, H. L. Mencken.  This is in no way a chore inasmuch as he finds reading Mencken at least as much fun as watching LeBron James.  Sometimes he does both at the same time and can hardly contain himself. He  has been aided and abetted in his travels through Menckeniana by Mrs. U. J. who has a knack for locating choice out-of-print tomes and surprising him with them.  Most recently she found a copy of  Prejudices, Third Series, published by Alfred A. Knopf  in 1922, whence the following is excerpted:


All the errors and incompetencies of the Creator reach their climax in man.  As a piece of mechanism he is the worst of them all; put beside him, even a salmon or a staphylococcus is a sound and efficient machine.  He has the worst kidneys known to comparative zoology, and the worst lungs, and the worst heart. His eye, considering the work it is called upon to do, is less efficient the the eye of an earthworm. an optical instrument maker who made an instrument so clumsy would be mobbed by his customers.  Alone of all animals, terrestrial, celestial or marine, man is unfit by nature to go abroad in the world he inhabits.  He must clothe himself, protect himself, swathe himself, armor himself.  He is eternally in the position of a turtle born without a shell,  a dog without hair, a fish without fins.  Lacking his heavy and cumbersome trappings, he is defenseless even against flies.  As God made him he hasn't even a tail to switch them off.  


      More to come next time.

Lights, Camera, Action!

     As Uncle Jack has often said, there is never a dull moment in Bawlmer.  This week he and Mrs. U.J. have found themselves in the middle of a movie set---or more correctly---looking down on a movie set from their seventh floor balcony.  A movie production company from Hollywood has been on the Johns Hopkins campus this week filming location scenes for a new movie, as yet unnamed, about the origins of the popular internet phenomenon called Facebook.  A couple of nights ago they set up their lights and reflectors and cameras almost directly under Uncle Jack's condo and spent the next several hours shooting what appeared to be the same scene over and over and over again until they finally got it right.  It was interesting to watch for a while but then it became tedious.  Very tedious.  Movie-making is not always thrilling from the looks of it.
       Johns Hopkins is actually standing in for Harvard in this epic, much to the dismay of many students who felt that the administration should not have sold out to Hollywood just to make a few bucks.  Classy Harvard, with its zillion dollar endowment, would never stoop to allow a movie to be made in its hallowed precincts for any amount of money.  Facebook was actually dreamed up by a Harvard student who, when he cashes in on his invention, will be able to buy his own university if he is so inclined.
    Uncle Jack no longer remembers why he has a Facebook page but he does and he checks in on it once in a while just to see if anything interesting has turned up.  So far he is utterly baffled as to why it has become such a fabulous success on the internet. Google he can understand.  Facebook is a mystery.
      He and Mrs. U.J. returned to the historic neighborhood of Mt. Vernon on their way to a concert at the Peabody Conservatory one day this week.  They missed several streets on an earlier excursion, pictures of which appear below.

 This trio of triangular buildings at the corner of Madison and Tyson streets caught their eye, especially the tiny one in the middle. Early 19th century builders didn't let any space go to waste.

Tyson Street is one of the hidden treasures of Baltimore.  It's only a couple of blocks long but consists almost entirely of late 18th and early 19th century houses, all impeccably restored and extremely charming.

                                      More Tyson Street houses.

                   And still more---one of which is for sale, probably for a pretty penny.

                Yet another triangular house. The interiors must present challenges for the occupants.

This elegant old hotel on Tyson, once the residence of Wallis Warfield Simpson, later the Duchess of Windsor, is being rehabbed into what the developers claim will become the most prestigious hotel in all of Charm City when it opens next spring.

Eubie Blake, composer of the Charleston Rag and I'm Just Wild About Harry and jazz pianist extraordinaire was a native of Baltimore.  This museum in Mt. Vernon is high on Uncle Jack's list of places to visit soon.  It was closed on this occasion.

This was the scene of the filming as seen from Uncle Jack's balcony.  No sign of it remained the next morning.

Mencken on Capitalism

     What we confront is not the failure of capitalism, but simply the failure of democracy.  Capitalism has really been responsible for all the progress of the modern age.  Better than any other system ever devised, it provides leisure for large numbers of superior men, and so fosters the arts and sciences. No other system ever heard of is so beneficial to invention.  Its fundamental desire for gain may be far from glorious per se, but it at least furthers improvement in all the departments of life.  We owe to it every innovation that makes life secure and comfortable.
     Unfortunately, like any other human institution (for example Holy Church), capitalism tends to run amuck when it is not restrained, and democracy provides inadequate means of keeping it in order. There is never any surety that democracy will throw up leaders competent to discern the true dangers of capitalism and able to remedy them in a prudent and rational manner.  Thus we have vacillated between letting it run wild and trying to ruin it.  Both courses are hazardous and ineffective, and it is hard to say which is more so.


      Thus sayeth H.L. Mencken, the Sage of Baltimore, in "Minority Report",  a collection of his notebooks published shortly after his death in 1956. How Uncle Jack wishes Mencken was still with us and commenting in his inimitable fashion on the events of the day, especially in the realm of capitalism and its discontents.  What would he have to say, he wonders, about the likes of  Geithner, Bernanke, Summers, and Obama who are struggling to contain the disaster perpetrated by the latest group of capitalists to "run amuck"?  What language would he use to excoriate the greedy Wall Street bankers who have brought us to this parlous state?  It would be fun to read the Baltimore Sun again, that's for sure.

Music Hath Charms in Charm City

     Uncle Jack was lucky that the public schools of his home town, Ashland, Wisconsin, had a wonderful music program.  He started playing a little plastic instrument called a "Tonette" in the first grade, switched to the clarinet in the fourth grade and to the bass clarinet in the eighth grade.  The band instructor, a revered teacher named Ted Mesang who later became director of bands at Oregon State University and appeared on national TV conducting a massed band with about 400 players during the half-time program at the Rose Bowl, told Uncle Jack he had a chance to become the best bass clarinet player in the history of Ashland High School and that is what he did.  He even won a full-tuition scholarship to the University of Wisconsin in Madison on the strength of his superlative bass clarinet playing. (A full year's tuition was only $100 in those days but it seemed like a lot of money at the time, especially to his parents who belatedly learned that he had spent all his hard-earned tuition money on beer during his gala senior year).
     What he is really happy about, though, is that his experiences in the Ashland High School band turned him into a lifelong classical music lover. In spite of his scholarship he never was much of a musician but he made up for his almost total lack of innate musical ability by diligent practice so that when the time came he could play the right  notes at the right time, more or less. At the same time he learned to appreciate what real
musicians can do when they put their minds to it and he has spent countless hours listening to great players rendering the work of great composers.
     Lucky for him and for Mrs. U.J., who loves good music as much as he does, Baltimore has turned out to be a music lover's paradise.  The Baltimore Symphony is world class,  Johns Hopkins University sponsors the Shriver Hall Music Series which brings world-renowned musicians to the campus all year long, the Peabody Conservatory offers student concerts several times a week, and there are a host of other music venues offering occasional performances. It is not exaggerating to say that they could attend a different concert just about every day of the week all year long if they had the time and the stamina to do it, which they don't, unfortunately.
     One of their favorite musical outings is the Thursday Noon Concert Series at the Peabody Conservatory where advanced students perform in front of an audience as part of their training.  Each concert features a different musical family, e.g. strings, brass, woodwinds, voice, percussion. in various combinations.  Every one of the half-dozen concerts they have attended has been delightful and they continue to be amazed at the remarkable skills and talents of these young people who come to Peabody from all over the world to study with great teachers.
     Last Thursday's concert featured percussionists including marimba players, tympanists, snare and bass drummers and a host of others.  The final piece was a performance of "Musique de Table" by the contemporary Belgian composer Thierry de Mey which was one of the damndest things Uncle Jack has ever experienced.  The three Peabody students who performed it must be among a tiny handful of people in the world who have mastered its intricacies and they did it flawlessly.  If you have a few minutes to spare and have never seen "Musique de Table" performed,  Uncle Jack thinks you might enjoy looking at one of the several performances of this unusual work available on YouTube.  You can get to the right place by clicking on this link below. If this one doesn't work try another. Turn the sound up so you can hear it clearly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg4quXjmoaA

:      The leaves just keep getting prettier and prettier around the JHU campus.

                                                  Ditto.

Food for thought

    Uncle Jack starts almost every morning by reading the New York Times on line.  This is probably not a good thing to do because it almost always guarantees that he will be plunged into gloom even before he has had his bran flakes.  No other publication in the world does a better job of gathering the worst news from every corner of the world and presenting it to him in eminently readable form before breakfast.
     For many years the most distressing stories have come out of Iraq where we appear to be in the final stages (maybe) of our most colossal military fiasco since the Viet Nam war.  Now the spotlight has moved to Afghanistan where we are floundering around like the blind giant of myth, trying to swat pesky flies with a club more suited to breaking skulls.  The historical record shows that Afghanistan for centuries has defeated every effort by outside powers to impose their various conceptions of proper government on this wild and crazy part of the world.  But there we are (with the reluctant assistance of a few NATO "allies") trying to do the impossible, again at great cost in lives and treasure.
     Uncle Jack has probably read a million words about what we should or should not do in Afghanistan at this point but an op-ed piece in the Times this morning has helped to focus his thinking more than anything else he has read recently.  Read it and weep, and if you find it illuminating forward it to your congressman and senator and the president.  They will need all the good advice they can get on this one.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/opinion/29sebestyen.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

The Law is an Ass, So Far

    Tragedy has visited Johns Hopkins University twice in the past month.  On the first occasion a male student killed a presumed burglar in his back yard near the campus with a samurai sword.  Then last week a female student was killed by a hit-and-run driver while crossing the street in front of  Uncle Jack's condo building. Both events cast a pall of gloom over the community but the second has also raised a storm of outrage as facts have emerged about the alleged driver, John Meighan, 39, who turned himself in to the police the day after the incident.  According to a report in the Baltimore Sun newspaper:
    Meighan already has 21 motor vehicle convictions on his record, including six for driving while intoxicated and two for driving under the influence. He was free on $100,000 bail before his arrest Saturday, awaiting a December trial on unrelated hit-and-run and DWI allegations from late July. He's also been convicted of escape for leaving an alcohol treatment facility while in custody in 2002.
    On the day of the accident several eyewitnesses reported to the police that Meighan's truck was being driven erratically  and at least one witness identified Meighan as the driver a couple of hours before the fatal accident. There were no witnesses to the accident itself so the authorities have not as yet been able to add manslaughter to the long list of offenses with which Meighan has been charged.
    Meighan is now locked up without bail while awaiting further disposition of his latest and most serious alleged crime.  Needless to say Baltimoreans are aghast and astonished at the failure of the judicial system to protect other drivers from a proven menace like Meighan.  Some observers fear that the lack of an eyewitness at the scene of the accident may allow him to escape serious punishment because the only evidence against him is circumstantial at this point.
    Readers may recall a similar tragedy in Kitty Hawk a few years ago when an oft-convicted drunken driver plowed into a Jeep at an intersection on the Bypass, killing four young women.  If Uncle Jack is not mistaken the driver is serving a life term in prison for that heinous offense.  Will some way be found to keep Meighan from driving again?  Lots of folks around here, including Uncle Jack, will be watching carefully as the wheels of  justice slowly grind through this sad case.  Stay tuned.

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    Sunset over Johns Hopkins Homestead Campus, from Uncle Jack's balcony, October 25

                                                           Ditto

                                                        And again