Go Orioles

    One of the main reasons why Uncle Jack has not been blogging much lately is that he doesn't have time and one of the main reasons he doesn't have time is that he spends so much of it watching the Baltimore Orioles play baseball. This may come as a surprise to some of his readers who might remember a piece he wrote about baseball a few years ago, to wit:

Dear Uncle Jack,
I have wanted to ask you a question about baseball for a long time but I had to wait for my husband to die, which he did, thank goodness, during a doubleheader last Saturday afternoon. If you want to know the truth he was dead for four hours before I even noticed which did not surprise me because every time he turned on the TV to watch a baseball game he would fall asleep immediately and he would not wake up again until it was over.
Except when I would try to sneak in and change the channel to Miami Vice or something he would open one eye and mumble "gottawatchaballgame" and as soon as I switched back to the game he would fall asleep again.
Needless to say I was forced to endure a lot of baseball during the 35 years we were married and my question to you is this: How could there be such a thing as insomnia in the world as long as there is baseball on TV? I would rather watch two communists play chess than have to sit there while a bunch of overpaid slobs stand around and scratch themselves and spit and wait for something exciting to happen which hardly ever does except when some bimbo runs on the field and starts taking off her clothes.
So if you are so smart maybe you can tell me what is so great about baseball that they have to put six games on TV every night.

Baseball Widow
Southern Shores

Dear Widow,
Uncle Jack's heart goes out to your departed husband who must have suffered greatly during his long and unfortunate marriage to such a sarcastic person as yourself. It is fairly obvious to Uncle Jack that you have not even tried to learn enough about the great game of baseball so that you too could understand and appreciate it as much as your late husband did.
Take the spitting, for example. If you gave your husband a chance he could have opened your eyes to the wonderful world of spitting in which there is never a dull moment if you know what to watch for. He could have told you about the various types of chewing tobacco which produce the almost infinite variety of spitting styles which trained observers like Uncle Jack and your late husband could use to glean valuable information as the game proceeded.
For example, Uncle Jack can tell you almost to the minute when a manager is going to change pitchers just by the amount of tobacco juice running down his chin. And if they have a good cameraman who knows how to move in close to the cheek area Uncle Jack can tell you if the manager is working on a gob of real Red Man or just some wimp-type chew that comes in little packets like Lipton's tea and tastes like Wrigley's spearmint.
And he can tell you it makes a lot of difference over a whole season if the manager is a real man who can handle a real chew or if he is some kind of sissy who goes for one of the designer brands. This is not something you can hide from your players for very long, especially when they are sober.
And there is a lot more to baseball than just spitting, too. If you know the game you can tell what kind of underwear a pitcher is wearing just by the way he handles himself on the mound.
Anyway there is a lot more Uncle Jack could tell you about baseball if he had time such as "hitting the cut-off man" which is so important that if a player cannot learn to do it right he might as well quit baseball and go into real estate just like everybody else.

Sportingly,
Uncle Jack

                                                            *********
      Well Uncle Jack can tell you that he is not the same person any more who wrote that sarcastic article about the beautiful game of baseball, especially as it is played by the Baltimore Orioles.  Ever since he moved to Baltimore last year and got his new 72 inch Samsung high definition TV and started watching the Orioles his life has taken on a whole new dimension.  He has pretty much given up reading which is no great loss because everything he has been reading lately is so depressing.
     It is true that the Orioles are undeniably the worst team in all of baseball and you would think that Uncle Jack would find that depressing, too.  But he doesn't.  During the first half of the season when they lost almost every game he had a lot of fun trying to predict what kind of bonehead plays they would make to lose each game and it never bothered him that they hardly ever won.  With his big TV he had a perfect view of all the action and when the Orioles players would make a spectacular boo-boo he would get to see it a half-dozen times from every angle on the replays and this helped a lot to take his mind off the unemployment situation and the war in Afghanistan and other depressing things like that.
     And now the Orioles have a new manager who must be using the right chew because the Orioles have suddenly begun winning more games than they lose which is also a lot of fun to watch.  Now Uncle Jack gets to guess which of the Orioles players will come through with the big clutch hit to win the game in the 12th inning or whatever and that is much more enjoyable than what he had to do before.
     Anyway Uncle Jack apologizes for not writing more blogs but now you know the main reason why.  Go Orioles.
  

Cool Campus

     Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. have been pretty much holed up in their air-conditioned condo for the past couple of weeks but a change in the weather has allowed them to get out in the early morning for their usual brisk walks through the neighborhood.  Yesterday they hiked through the tree-lined streets of Guilford, the exceedingly upscale residential area just north of their condo, and this morning they returned to the Johns Hopkins Homewood campus across the street, their favorite exercise venue.
     The campus is quiet during the summer break except for the sounds of heavy construction equipment at the site of the new addition to the Eisenhower library and a couple of gangs of workers putting the finishing touches on the renovation of Gilman Hall, the oldest building on campus, which has been underway for the past two years.  They had the wide, brick and marble walkways pretty much to themselves except for the arrival of several busloads of young lacrosse players from area schools who are participating in a summer camp.  Johns Hopkins is a perennial collegiate lacrosse powerhouse and this is no doubt one way to get a look at prospective recruits.
     The highlight of their morning was a visit to the newly renovated interior of Gilman Hall which they have been eagerly awaiting ever since their arrival in Baltimore a year and a half ago. It was not a disappointment as the pictures below suggest.

 Sherwood Gardens in Guilford is as lovely as ever in spite of weeks of extreme heat and drought.  The park has an extensive underground irrigation system that keeps everything pretty

. The new library addition threatens to eclipse the old building next door which is one of the least distinguished buildings on campus  in Uncle Jack's estimation.

  Right now, though, it's just a hole in the ground which keeps getting bigger every day.

The stained glass windows in the Hutzler Reading Room, now completely refurbished, are the pride and joy of Gilman Hall.  Mr. King was a 19th century Baltimore businessman who made a ton of money and then devoted the last 25 years of his life  to the fledgling Johns Hopkins University.

The Gutenberg window,  one of nineteen that provide light and beauty to the reading room (where Uncle Jack plans to spend more than a few of his waking hours henceforth, proudly wearing the Johns Hopkins T-shirt he purchased at a yard sale for fifty cents. (Considerably less than the cost of tuition).

The view from the nineteen windows will not make it easy for scholars to concentrate on their studies.

Eat your heart out Oxbridge.

Lacrosse crossing.

The Sands of Time (past)

       As the Nags Head and Dare County commissioners continue their dogged pursuit of many millions of dollars to heap sand upon dwindling beaches it might be instructive to look back at previous costly efforts to stop the ocean in its tracks.  When Uncle Jack lived in South Nags Head from 1992 until he moved to Baltimore last year he wandered the beach frequently, taking pictures of whatever was going on at the time.  Thousands of these pictures still reside on the hard drive of his current laptop which from time to time he attempts to purge to make room for new pictures of the wonders of Charm City. The pictures below are a few that he ran across recently which record various episodes of expensive futility as mere mortals struggled to prevent Mother Nature from removing man-made structures that were impinging on her beaches.

     This is part of the  50-foot wide, 10-15 foot high berm that was built the entire length of  Nags Head in 2004 after Hurricane Isabel tore things up rather badly in September 2003.  FEMA contributed about $3 million to the ill-conceived project with another roughly $2 million added by state and local treasuries.  Thousands of truckloads of sand were hauled to the beaches from borrow pits in Currituck county.  While it was officially described as "compatible" with the existing sand Uncle Jack found this to be a dubious claim inasmuch as much of the stuff looked and acted more like clay than sand.  In any case it soon washed away so it didn't really matter in the long run---or the short run either for that matter. The chief beneficiaries of this largess were a few oceanfront property owners who were able to avoid the cost of bulldozing for a year or two and the dozens of  dumptruck owners from all over northeastern North Carolina for whom the year 2004 brought an unprecedented bonanza.

Subsequent storms chopped away at the berm and removed most of it in short order.  Actually the berm project was done in two phases.  Work started at the southern end of  South Nags Head in the spring of 2004 and then stopped for several months for the tourist and turtle-nesting seasons.  By the time berm-building resumed in November much of what had been done in the spring had already vanished.

Heavy equipment owners and operators did well, too, as did the engineering company that planned and executed the debacle.

This section of the berm at Seagull Drive was to have protected the newly constructed post-Isabel street
at the left.  Subsequent storms took it all away in a relatively short time.

Seagull Drive after the temporary road and its protective berm washed away.  Back to square one.  All the cottages in this picture are condemned and awaiting removal or demolition at this date.

These two pictures chronicle the Town of Nags Head's expensive but ultimately futile effort to stop the ocean from claiming Surfside Drive in South Nags Head.  Successive walls of massive sandbags were erected only to be knocked down and overwashed by storms, leaving the beach in dreadful condition as shown here.  Eventually the town gave up and cleaned up the mess, revealing a wide and natural beach under all the detritus.

Will a $32 million beach renourishment project be enough to save these houses from the wrath of Mother Nature?  Stay tuned.

Nice while it lasted.

     If there has ever been a more perfect July 4 weekend on the Outer Banks Uncle Jack missed it.  Packing the Mini and leaving Nags Head on Monday the 5th was almost as hard as giving up bourbon a few years ago. He and Mrs. Uncle Jack got in some lovely walks on the beach after the excruciating heat went away in the middle of the week and he took a few pictures, some of which appear below:

One morning thousands of minnows like these were washed up on the beach for miles.  Who knows why?

This house near the 20 mile post has been derelict and blocking the beach for years.  Looks like it's about to be moved.  Which reminds Uncle Jack that "Sal de Mer", the subject of his last blog, was torn down back in May, not moved to a new location.  Would that the same will happen soon to some of the other wrecked houses in South Nags Head.

Like these fronting the former Seagull Drive.  What a mess.

Another view of the unsightly and dangerous wreckage of Seagull Drive.

The new Jennette's Pier is coming along.  Nearly half of the temporary "work pier" has been removed, revealing what the finished structure will look like.  Three wind turbines are in place and ready to generate electricity when the time comes.

The magnificent pier house looks very much like a traditional Nags Head cottage.  The whole thing is a serious challenge to Mother Nature who managed to wreck several previous iterations of this pier. Hopefully she will lay off until after the grand opening next year.

Adieu Finisterre

      Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. fled the unseasonable heat and humidity of Bawlmer a couple of days ago and are presently ensconced in their former home on James Street in South Nags Head where the temperature has dropped precipitously into the low 80's after a front passed through last evening. This morning's walk on the beach was totally delightful.
      The neighborhood is not quite the same as it was the last time they were here in April.  Conspicuously absent is the oceanfront house known originally as Finisterre and more recently as Sal de Mer.  When they bought their house in 1994 Finisterre occupied the beachfront lot on the south side of James Street with one other house between it and us.  At that time it was protected by a substantial dune at least 30 feet wide.  A smaller 1950 vintage flat-top across the street was similarly situated.
      Subsequent northeasters chopped away at the dune, narrowing it substantially before the arrival of Hurricane Dennis in 1999 which obliterated the flat-top and did some serious damage to Finisterre as well.  The owner gamely put it back together and tried to replace the vanished dune with huge sandbags as well as a the bulldozed faux dune pictured below (which disappeared in the next storm).
     Uncle Jack is not sure of the exact sequence of events but at some time between Dennis and Isabel (or perhaps after Isabel in September 2003) Finisterre changed hands and the new owner renamed the battered house Sal de Mer.  In any case Isabel really did a number on the unlucky building, tearing off the front deck, sending the brick fireplace crashing to the beach and washing away the driveway and parking slab.
      The new owner struggled to stay ahead of Mother Nature's depredations but after subsequent storms kept tearing up the place, necessitating expensive repairs every year, he threw in the towel a year or so ago and the very silly bank that held the large loan on the place had to take it back.  They put it up for auction  but  apparently couldn't find anybody foolish enough to buy it.  And now it is gone.  Was it moved in one piece or was it torn down?  Stay tuned while Uncle Jack investigates.
       Uncle Jack chatted a number of times with the last owner of Sal de Mer, a very nice man who dearly loved his house. Apparently nobody told him when he bought it that it had already been moved back 90 feet from its original location and that the house across the street had  been destroyed in a storm years earlier.  Such is the allure of living oceanfront that it might not have made any difference even he had dealt with an honest real estate agent.

                                                    Finisterre's front deck after Isabel.

Finisterre post-Isabel.  Note new steps replacing wrecked deck.  They, too, washed away after a later storm along with the huge faux dune and the sandbags beneath it. Mother Nature is relentless.

                                        Sal de Mer last February, looking very vulnerable.

With Sal de Mer gone this house (right in front of Uncle Jack's old house) takes pride of place as the only oceanfront house on James Street.  A dubious distinction but it comes with a terrific view and a much wider beach.


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Can you spell "octogenarian"?

 Uncle Jack can.  Now that he is one he thought the least he could do was to learn how to spell it.  So far it doesn't seem a whole lot different from being a septuagenarian but that could change without notice if he falls down or has a stroke or one of those other ills that flesh is heir to as the bard put it. Will he live to become a nonagenarian? Stay tuned.
    Anyway he would like to thank all those faithful readers who sent him birthday greetings last week when he was up in Minnesota.  He couldn't read them until yesterday when he got back to Baltimore because his parsimonious brother still has dial-up ($9 a month for 58 minutes) so Uncle Jack's laptop didn't work up there.  Your kind thoughts were worth waiting for, though, and he thanks you again.
    It was fun to be back on his home turf for a week, surrounded by family and stuffing himself with the food and drink of his childhood----potato sausage, Swedish rye bread, bruna bonor (look it up) and Leinenkugel's Old Style Lager, the beer that has helped to make high school tolerable for generations of northern Wisconsin youth.
    The temperature exceeded 90 every day he was in Brainerd, Minnesota and to his further consternation Mother Nature (or perhaps God) sent a tornado to destroy the town of Wadena, only 60 miles away just after he arrived. He hoped to find relief from the heat and humidity back in Bawlmer but today, Friday the 25th of June, is the fifth consecutive day of sweltering, rainless weather with temperatures approaching 100.  With any luck he and Mrs. U.J. will be able to escape to Nags Head next week where it won't be so miserable. (?)
      
      

Old and Happy

     Uncle Jack just noticed that two weeks have passed since he last blogged.  "Time flies when you're having fun" it is said, and if a recent scientific study got it right this is especially true for older folks like himself.  According to the scientists there is strong evidence that once a person gets past 50 he tends to get happier with each passing year right up to the time he croaks---barring serious illness or some other idiosyncratic factor that might affect the psyche of any particular individual. He got this good news from an article in the New York Times this morning, a link to which he has provided below for anybody who would like to read the whole thing.  It's a pleasant change from reading about the oil spill catastrophe.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/health/research/01happy.html?ref=todayspaper

    The scientists could shed no light on why people should get happier as they grow older but Uncle Jack can offer some purely anecdotal evidence that might help.  For one thing he doesn't have to go to work any more.  This has freed up a lot of time for him to do the things he really likes to do, like  reading, for example, and watching the Orioles on his 52 inch, high definition you-know-what, even  
though they are the worst team in baseball at the present time. Being in a position to do almost nothing that you don't want to do can contribute greatly to your sense of well-being.  A little red wine every day doesn't hurt either. Uncle Jack knows.
      Anyway he just wanted to let his dwindling cohort of readers know that he is in fine fettle and too busy doing nothing to sit down and write a blog very often, for which he apologizes.  His only begotten son Eric and family will be visiting all next week from Los Angeles which means at least a couple of trips to our nation's capital among other sightseeing.  There should be a blog in there somewhere so look for something in a couple of weeks if you are so inclined.

    This picture turned up on Facebook a couple of days ago.  Uncle Jack can really identify with that frog.