Ho Ho Ho

     Uncle Jack just realized that he hasn't posted a new blog entry for over three weeks and for this he apologizes to the patient band of faithful readers who have come to expect him to write something on a fairly regular basis.
     He has no excuse other than sheer laziness.  Unless it is lack of inspiration.  He likes to find cheerful things to write about and that seems to get harder with every passing day.
      First there was the whole ghastly "Black Friday" nonsense to kick off the formerly joyous Christmas Season. In the beginning it was three wise man from the east bearing gifts of gold and frankincense and myrhh and now it's frenzied shoppers fighting over plastic gew gaws from China in the aisles of Wal-Mart and Target. Where will it end.
       Then came the exhumation and rise from the political graveyard of Professor Gingrich.  Here, in Uncle Jack's estimation, is a real-life zombie who could, as president, do even more damage to the country than he did as speaker of the house in bygone days. Can we trust a man who managed to suck nearly two million dollars in lobbying fees out of Fannie Mae while damning the same agency out of the other side of his mouth?
     And then there is Romney the "job creator" who amassed a large part of his fortune by buying failing companies, stripping them of their assets and firing the workers.  These Republican front-runners are beginning to make the alleged illegal immigrant from Kenya who now occupies the White House look like a winner.
    Uncle Jack didn't intend to turn this holiday blog into a political screed but that seems to be what he has done and he apologizes.
     What he really intended to do is once again call attention to his new Amazon Kindle book which could provide a handy solution for folks who can't afford to send their friends gold, frankincense or myrhh this year. Uncle Jack's book is a great, cheap gift at only $4.99 and you don't have to have a Kindle gadget to read it.  Just Google "Uncle Jack's Outer Banks" Kincle edition and click on the appropriate link to find out how to order it.
     In the meantime Merry Christmas to all for whom that is the appropriate greeting and Happy Holidays to all others regardless of race, creed, ethnicity or political persuasion. Uncle Jack will be back on January 1 to wish you a Happy New Year, too.

"Tilt".  One of the many unusual pictures in "Uncle Jack's Outer Banks" Kindle edition.

Fun at the Beach

Wondering where Uncle Jack is?  Go to http://www.obxconnection.com/blogs/blog_entry.aspx?BHID=1

Topping Off

    It has been a pretty interesting week in Baltimore so far and Uncle Jack has the pictures to prove it.

Uncle Jack mentioned last time that he wouldn't miss this ceremony for anything and he kept his promise by hiking over to the JHU campus this morning and taking it all in.

When the JHU Bluejay mascot shows up you know something important is going on.  This was the first time Uncle Jack has ever been up close and personal with a bluejay.  He isn't particularly bright as far as Uncle Jack could tell.

The librarian of the university was on hand to say a few well-chosen words about the new Brody Learning Commons before the final structural component was put into place, i.e., the "topping off".

After the head librarian had added his signature to the many already inscribed on the beam, three hard-hatted workmen guided the construction crane to the right spot and attached the beam for transport.

A lovely day for a topping off as you can tell by the azure sky.  The journey was accompanied by the inspiring sounds of Richard Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" blaring from the loudspeaker system.

Two waiting riggers guide the beam to its final resting place.  With the framework in place the remaining construction will take a little more than a year to complete.  Stay tuned. Uncle Jack will be watching.

Several weeks ago, when Mrs. U.J. purchased the tickets, last Friday night seemed like a great time to go to Camden Yards and see the Orioles take on the Tampa Bay Rays whom they had trounced three times at the beginning of the season. The huge building to the left is a former warehouse of the B & O railroad which formerly occupied this space, known then and now as Camden Yards.

Grandma and granddaughter Isabella, a fanatical Oriole fan, enjoyed the first three innings from their front-row seats even though the Orioles fell behind, 3-0, in the first.

In the fourth inning it began to rain, hard enough to drive most fans in the open seats to cover (like Uncle Jack and company) but not hard enough for the umps to call the game.  Actual puddles began to form in the infield so an army of groundskeepers ran out between every half-inning to dump sand in the wettest spots.

This got ridiculous after a while and the field became a quagmire.  The Rays continued to add runs as the rain fell and eventually waded off with an 8-2 victory, sweeping the series and avenging their earlier losses. An altogether unsatisfactory evening at the old ballpark and quite probably Uncle Jack's last.

If you are truly desperate for something to read at work here's another chestnut exhumed from the archives:


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

                                                                 Reincarnation


Uncle Jack was standing in line at the supermarket the other day with his week's supply of chicken necks and generic okra and while he was waiting he managed to sneak a peek at one of those tabloid newspapers they put near     the checkout counter right by the chewing gum and the razor blades.
Uncle Jack would never actually buy one of those newspapers but every once in a while he likes to find out what the other half is reading about so he leafs through a Globe while he is waiting for the checkout girls to finish talking about what they did last night after the skating rink closed.
Anyway right on the front page they had this article about something called "reincarnation" which is a long word for how after you die you come back to earth and live another life all over again---usually pretty different from your first life. According to this article a lot of people really believe in reincarnation but Uncle Jack is not sure you can believe everything you read in those grocery store newspapers. For example, if Elizabeth Taylor really did all the things those newspapers said she did she would have to be about 95 years old and double-jointed, too.
The whole idea of reincarnation sounded pretty silly to Uncle Jack at first but the more he thought about it the better it sounded---especially when he compared it to some of the other possibilities. For one thing it is a lot better than believing that when you die you're dead and that's that. That does not appeal to Uncle Jack at all. Even on a bad day like when he runs out of Rebel Yell and he goes all the way up to the ABC store and it turns out to be Arbor Day or something and they are closed, he would like to believe that life is worth living.
Reincarnation also sounds a lot better than going to Heaven, too, if Heaven is anything like the way the Reverend Hokum described it when Uncle Jack was in Sunday School. The Lutheran Heaven didn't sound like the kind of place Uncle Jack would like to spend more than a day or two even if his room had a jacuzzi and remote control color TV.
Another reason he would not want to go to the Lutheran Heaven, though, is because that is where the Reverend Hokum probably wound up and if you want to know the truth he doesn't think the place could be big enough for both of them.
Anyway this article did get Uncle Jack thinking about what he would like to be if he did get another life to live over again which he doesn't think he will but then again he never thought he would get a chance to live on the Outer Banks either so you never know about these things.
He is pretty sure he would not like to come back to life and be a person all over again. For one thing he would have to go through junior high school again and he is not sure it would be worth it to have to do that. Uncle doesn't think it would be fair for anybody to have to be thirteen years old more than once.
Also if Uncle Jack came back as a person he could wind up living in some place like Toledo or Columbus where it would take him fifteen hours to get to the Outer Banks after he heard the bluefish were running and by the time he got here it would be too late.
Anyway Uncle Jack has thought about it a lot and he has decided that if he has to come back he would like to be a labrador retriever. He would like to belong to a nice retired Outer Banker who has a Grand Wagoneer and lets him ride in the front seat and goes fishing every day but never goes duck hunting and lets him have a little saucer of Rebel Yell once in a while.
That sounds a lot better than going to Heaven if you ask Uncle Jack.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Beautiful Baltimore Redux

    Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. took a walk this morning through the Guilford neighborhood across the street from their condo.  Their destination was Sherwood Gardens, the incredible park maintained by Guilford residents for the enjoyment of the public and themselves.  Each year at this time tens of thousands of tulips burst into full bloom creating one of the most amazing floral displays on the planet.  Enjoy.
(Click on the pictures to enlarge).

                                                                     

                    This tree was in a yard in Guilford on the way to Sherwood Gardens.

                                    As was this unknown bit of colorful ground cover.

Meanwhile back at the Johns Hopkins library worksite workers installed the first roof beams yesterdat just as Uncle Jack predicted a couple of days ago.  Is he smart or what?

                                                  He wouldn't miss this for the world.

Baltimore the Beautiful

     Spring has sprung in Charm City. A few pictures are worth a lot of words.

                                             A house on St. Paul street near Uncle Jack's condo.

                                                         Same house. More bushes.

The Johns Hopkins campus was in fine floral fettle for this weekend's Alumni gathering.

The JHU bluejay was all puffed up after the lacrosse team's win over Loyola Saturday afternoon.

This gigantic tent was the scene of some lavish alumni stroking over the weekend.  Mayor Bloomberg of New York City is one of the alumni who have contributed many hundreds of millions of dollars to the school in recent years.  Most of the students' $45,000 a year tuition money goes to pay for extravagances like this tent which make the alumni feel important and loved.

And here is where some of the alumni contributions are going.  Steelworkers have taken over this phase of the construction of the Brodie Learning Commons next to the Eisenhower Library.

Same structure a few days later.  It will provide the connecting link between the old building and the new.

The roof girders on the main building will probably come next.  Stay tuned.


Uncle Jack didn't feel like writing anything this week so he drug this golden oldie out of the archives:


                                                                                                                   
                                                    Tempis Fugits

As Uncle Jack grows older he is seized more and more often by uncontrollable fits of philosophizing. He never knows when these attacks will come and he is as helpless to stop them as an epileptic is to control his convulsions. Fortunately these spells of pontificating usually pass before he has time to bore more than a few close friends and relatives.
Uncle Jack has been afflicted most recently with deep thoughts about the nature of time. He has reached an age that enables him to confirm the widely held belief that time seems to speed up as one grows older. He has often heard this said by older persons, but older persons have told him so much that turned out to be wrong that he has never been sure he could believe anything they say.
But now he knows from his own experience that time does indeed pass more rapidly as one grows older. It took approximately 25 years for Uncle Jack to get from age l2 to age l8 but it took only about two weeks to get from his 50th birth to his 80th. At this rate he expects to turn 95 sometime around the middle of next week.
   This amazing speeding up of time, which seems to be a fairly common experience of middle-aged people in our time-conscious society, can be scary enough to cause folks  in Uncle Jack's age bracket to do some fairly weird things. Men and women who have been dutifully trudging down life's highway for half a century or so sometimes accidentally look up just long enough to see a tractor trailer with a skull and crossbones on it bearing down on them.
Some folks go trudging on and don't even try to get out of the way, and for the rest of us it's probably a good thing they don't. Others make some remarkable moves in an effort to dodge that truck, like the folks he met on the waterfront in Manteo last week.
This couple, on the early side of middle age, took their big leap about a year ago, divesting themselves of cars, televisions, lawnmowers and mortgages---all the encumbrances of solid middle-class existence. They used the proceeds from their years of straight-arrow effort to build themselves the pretty sailboat you may have seen at the Manteo dock last week.
They live on their boat now, going wherever they please whenever they please. Sooner or later, when their money runs out, they'll be back in the middle of the road with the rest of us, but what memories they'll have on those nights when there is nothing to watch on TV.
Uncle Jack must say, however, that he felt not even the slightest twinge of envy when the intrepid couple sailed off to New York City yesterday. Why anyone would voluntarily go to New York City when he could stay in Manteo is beyond his comprehension.
The other event of last week that seemed to trigger this fit of deep thinking was the sunset last Thursday evening. Uncle Jack will wisely refrain from attempting to describe that sunset; it was truly ineffable (a word he learned in high school knowing that some day it would come in handy). Suffice it to say that the sunset was so magnificent that it started Uncle Jack philosophizing so hard he thought he was going to have a stroke.
The message in all this, he thinks, is that as we trudge down life's highway we should not be afraid to look up once in while. We might see a big truck bearing down on us but on the other hand we might see a sunset that will knock our socks off.
Whew.
Whatever this is Uncle Jack hopes he will be over it soon.

H. L. Mencken on Kissing

Mencken once joked that life would be perfect with a good sauce, a cocktail, and a
girl who kissed with her mouth open.  Well, two out of three ain't bad.

Easter on the Outer Banks: A Roaring Good Time

     Seekers of a peaceful place to celebrate one of the highest holy days of the Christian calendar did not find it on the Outer Banks this weekend.  The roads to and from the churches were clogged with what seemed like thousands of blatty motorcycles as the final few days of "Bike Week" happened to coincide with the three days of Easter this year.  God and Mammon duked it out and Uncle Jack isn't sure who won.
     Except for a quick trip to Manteo (which reverberated like the inside of a motor velodrome on Saturday afternoon) Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. stayed close to home in relatively peaceful South Nags Head and took several  long beach walks while enjoying the balmy temperatures that prevailed most of the weekend.  Tomorrow it's back to the peace and quiet of Baltimore where four persons were shot to death and one severely wounded by unknown assailants on Easter Sunday.  Maybe the motorcycles weren't so bad.

South Nags Head on Dwellable

                             Sunday afternoon in Sonag.  Don't you wish you were here?

                                Nary a fish was caught but who could care on an afternoon like this?

This house at the head of Pelican Street in Sonag burned several weeks ago.  Right now it's Motif #1 for amateur photographers like Uncle Jack.  Will it still be here when he returns next month?  Stay tuned.

The derelicts of Sea Gull Drive are still in place (sort of).  Don't be surprised if they're back on the rental market shortly after beach renourishment is finished.  The Lord works in mysterious ways, especially in the wonderful world of Outer Banks real estate.

The extraordinary height of this cottage near Sea Gull suggests just how much sand Mother Nature has removed from this section of beach.  No doubt she is licking her chops in anticipation of all the fresh, new stuff she can started moving around after beach renourishment

                      Only certified rappelers and sky-divers are allowed to use this beach access walkway.

                Hopefully beach renourishment will cover up this mess---for a little while anyway.

Sunrise in Sonag

     Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. are very happy to be in South Nags Head on this beautiful, balmy, sunny Wednesday morning.  As the pictures show they were up before sunrise and took a walk on the beach up to the new Jennette's pier before breakfast (whole wheat everything bagels from the Nags Head outlet of New York Bagels, now open for the season at the Outer Banks Mall).  There is a goodly crowd here in the run-up to Easter including a few hundred motorcycles left over from last weekend.  Many businesses sport fancy "Welcome Bikers" banners which they one day may rue if the experience of other resort towns like Myrtle Beach is any guide.

South Nags Head on Dwellable

6:20 The unspectacular adumbration of a rather puny sunrise to come. Taken from the beach at Whitecap Street in South Nags Head.

                                   This is as exciting as it got this morning.  Uncle Jack is spoiled.

At low tide the beach was wide and flat and great for walking.  Looking north toward Jennette's Pier.

A measure of this winter's erosion.  A root from what must have been a pretty substantial tree at one time.

Beach nourishment can't come too soon to the Comfort Inn South whose time has nearly run out.

The new 250-car parking lot at Jennette's Pier awaits paving which looks like it might begin today. The Grand Opening is only a month away now.

Sam and Omie's is ideally situated to attract pier-goers. Sigh.

This is a very sturdy-looking pier.  Mother Nature has her work cut out for her if she plans to knock this one down.

Recent bulldozing helped to soften the sheer dropoff in front of these Sonag condos.  The owners will no doubt welcome this summer's beach nourishment project no matter when it comes.

Ditto for these.  Renters should have a great view of the proceedings from their oceanfront decks.  Maybe next year they can sit on the new beach if it's still there.