Little Girls, They Steal Your Heart

They are the emerging power trio in the extended clan: Grace, Kiana, and Gisella. They live close enough to each other that they share a lot of time, and by the time they're in their teens they will own everything we have. They started with our hearts, after all, and any pickings after that are much easier.

Trying to keep track of who is related to whom and how in this family is hard without a scorecard, so here's a quick refresher: Grace is my granddaughter, my late son Doug's daughter, and she turns 9 this August. Kiana, age four, is Reva's daughter; Reva is my son Adam's half-sister. The youngest of the three, Gisella, is Adam's step-granddaughter. For simplicity, we think of them as cousins -- hell, most of the time we all think of each other as cousins.

The power trio gathered in Grace's back yard today, Easter, to hunt down treats.

Kiana and Grace debate the merits of different kinds of bubble solution.

Grace (yes, she changed her outfit -- she does that kind of thing, being a girly girl and all.)

Grace, Kiana, and Gisella on the hunt. (The gray fuzzy thing at left is an actual bunny -- Grace's soon-to-be-stepdad, Ryan, brought a pair of rabbits to the family.)

Gisella, admired by Adam.

Kiana a-hunting.

Gisella with loot.

While all girl, Grace defies stereotype and has been a nimble tree-climber since shortly after she could walk. Hiding Easter eggs for her is a three-dimensional process.

Gisella and Kiana in awe of their cousin's aerial prowess.

A milestone: Grace's first picture with Granddad's big, clunky camera. After just a little bit of initial hesitancy, she banged off this shot: Reva's dad Parris, Reva, Kiana, me, and Adam. Not bad, eh?

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Apple Whirl

"... and the Battery's down." View southward from the 86th floor observation platform of the Empire State Building.

Note: PLEASE CLICK ON THE PHOTOS to see them larger and at better resolution.

We had some money left over in the fund we had saved up for our trip to Ireland last summer. Being adults with a fairly typical associated raft of adult-type financial responsibilities, there were any number of adult-type things we should have done with it.

We didn't do any of those.

Instead we used it to run off to New York City for three days to celebrate our 20th anniversary. Selfish and immature, maybe... but, damn, it felt good. It was all the sweeter because we hardly told anyone we were going, so it seemed more like an elopement than a honeymoon. Delicious, just the two of us.

Neither Diane nor I had been in New York City in almost 40 years, so we saw the place with "new eyes," essentially as first-time tourists. We intentionally restricted our range to Midtown (roughly 33rd to 82nd Streets and 3rd to 9th Avenues) and tried to plan for only one or two major sights in each of our three days.

We also planned for a lot of walking and/or subway transit (we remembered enough about the place to not even consider renting a car), so we left the bulky Nikon camera at home and used only Diane's little pocket point-n-shoot for pictures. It did a fine job where the light was bright enough, but didn't do well at night or in some indoor circumstances.

What follows here is just a sketch of where we went and what we did.

Our first full day was Tuesday, March 29th, in the week of my spring break (see, we weren't completely irresponsible about this; I didn't take any time off work!) We couldn't have been any luckier as concerns the weather: crisp and clear, warm enough so that just a simple coat would do but cool enough that we never broke a sweat.

We set out from our hotel westward from Park Avenue along 49th street, walking to Rockefeller Center, where we gawked for a while. At left is a three-frame panorama of the Rock tower, stitched together by Photoshop. (The iconic golden statue of Prometheus overseeing the skating rink is barely visible at the bottom.) From there we wandered northward along 5th Avenue, admiring the shop windows -- and being astonished (not for the last time this trip) by how clean everything was. There was no litter in the streets, no graffiti, no grit of any kind but metaphorical. I began to suspect that what I remembered as Manhattan had been replaced by Manhattan-land, a theme park.



Above: Glorious St. Patrick's Cathedral on 5th Avenue. Joseph Campbell once remarked that a society's strongest values are reflected in its tallest structures. Manhattan's grand spiritual places, like this one, seem dwarfed and swallowed by adjacent grand commercial towers.


Above: Diane entering a little shop on 5th Avenue. What that shop is can be deduced from one of two things: the sign over its door (click the picture to view larger) or, more easily, the truck parked in front of it. Despite my terror, we actually got out of the place relatively cheaply.


From Tiffany's near Central Park, we took the subway back down to Macy's at Herald Square. Again, the cleanliness of everything was astonishing.

Macy's at Herald Square, Broadway entrance.

This was the first week of Macy's annual flower show, in which the entire, massive building is turned into a botanical and floral wonder. I had expected a lot of cut-flower displays, but most of the flora was living. Throughout the store there were many groups of 15 to 20 people taking guided tours of the displays. In the foreground of the photo above, in front of the Macy's entrance, is Broadway. This part of that artery has been permanently blocked off as a plaza.

View to the northeast from the 86th floor observation deck of the Empire State Building.

The Empire State Building is just a couple of blocks from Macy's, so we strolled over to see how long the lines were for the elevators to the observation deck. There were no lines at all. The views from the top were spectacular -- there was virtually no haze at all, so sightlines were essentially unlimited. I chose this frame, including the Chrysler Building and the Queensboro Bridge (or the "59th Street Bridge" as it's commonly called), as a sample for this post. More views from the top at higher resolution, including a couple of 180 degree panoramas, are available in this set on Flickr.

Diane in Times Square, late afternoon.

After the Empire State Building excursion, we took the subway a few blocks north to Times Square -- which was perhaps the biggest astonishment of all to me. It is a completely different place from the sordid yet vibrant Times Square I remember. This new Times Square is squeaky-clean and family-friendly. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, necessarily, just that it's as different as Salt Lake City is from certain places in Amsterdam. Portions of Broadway here, too, are permanently blocked off from traffic; this cartoon sums up the changes nicely.


Unknown to us, while we were wandering around Times Square, President Obama was just a few yards away in the ABC studios giving an interview. The NYPD guys above -- complete with the disconcerting automatic weapons on prominent display -- turned out to be part of his security.


That evening we went to see Elton John's "Billy Elliot." Our seats were incredible -- first row, so close that we could reach out and touch the lip of the stage while our shoulders were still touching our seat backs. The show itself was everything we had hoped it would be, and we intend to see it in San Francisco this summer when it arrives on tour. The role of Billy on the night we saw it was played by Joseph Harrington who I don't think is any relation, but who is certainly one very, very talented boy.


Above: Our hotel on the morning of Wednesday, March 30th. We had a 5th floor "mini-suite." I told you we weren't exactly frugal about this. Once in a lifetime, etc.

Fortitude, the library lion.

This brisk morning started with a walk to the New York Public Library main branch, and a visit with Patience and Fortitude, the iconic lions at the gate. From there, after tarrying in Bryant Park for a bit, we took the N train to the southeast corner of Central Park.


We first took a horse carriage ride around the southern part of the park, up to about 81st Street and back. Our driver (who took the above photo) was a very pleasant aspiring actor named Thomas, and he explained why so many of the carriages in Central Park sport Irish Republic flags. Turns out that the largest of the companies that operate the horsedrawn cabs in the park -- the outfit he works for -- is owned by an Irish expatriate. In an interesting co-incidence, two of our favorite photos of ourselves were taken within the past nine months by drivers of tourists' horsedrawn carriages owned by Irishmen. The little one at right was taken in Killarney in August.

The Gapstow Bridge, Central Park (photograph by Diane Harrington).

After our carriage ride, we strolled around the park for a while -- the trees' lack of leaves afforded great sight lines, and, as the day before, the weather was absolutely perfect for walking.


We wound up at the American Museum of Natural History. A must-see for us was the Rose Center for Earth and Space, including the new (to me ) Hayden Sphere, which incorporates a planetarium in its upper hemi. The planetarium, like our own at DeAnza College, is one of the few in America that has both digital and optical-mechanical sky simulation systems. We took in a planetarium show, which may or may not be the topic of a future SherWords post, depending on what I ultimately determine concerning how reasonable and objective my current opinion is. No matter how that inner battle works out, the magnificence of the surrounding displays and architecture is worth a 3,000-mile trip all by themselves.


After the planetarium show, we scurried upstairs to say hello to some old friends -- some very old friends -- including this cutie, deinonychus antirrhopus. In the background is his big friend T. Rex. The skeletons are posed differently now from what they were 40 years ago, and now impart a sense of motion that was lacking before.

After freshening up back at the hotel, we went out for dinner to a steakhouse on East 57th and then strolled Park Avenue for a while. We slept like stones that night, as our bodies were starting to remind us that we are in our seventh, not third, decades.


Our final full day was gray and drizzly, which was just fine with us. The "only" thing we had on our list of must-sees for that day was the Metropolitan Museum of Art. If you've ever been to the Met, you know why there are quotation marks around the word only in the previous sentence. If you haven't -- well, it's a little like saying the only thing on our list of things to see today is Canada. The place is gargantuan, incorporating in its permanent collections alone almost 20 different sections, each of which could consume at least half a day even for someone who knows as little about art as we do.


We concentrated on the European Paintings section for our day, but spent some time in the Photography, Ancient Egyptian Art, and Arms and Armor sections as well.


In the European Paintings section, we found this evidence from Goya that Lolcats are not new.


For our last night in New York, we went to see, hear, and feel the riotous "American Idiot." Green Day isn't for everyone, but we love their music, and this show, well, rocked. I'm glad that we saved it for last, though, because it was going to drain every last bit of energy we had from us no matter when we saw it, it was that good.

And it did deplete us.

That night, we both had a hard time sleeping because our muscles were yelling at us so loudly. By the time we were somewhere over Iowa the next afternoon, both of us started with the sniffles. And by the time we dragged ourselves back in to Fort Harrington, we had both come down with full-blown colds. It took a while for us to recuperate -- and my first week of classes for the Spring quarter were a bit of a trial -- but the experience was worth that price, too.

Monsters of Accordion Death-Metal

Recent work by Adam "That's-My-Boy" Harrington

In-game "radio ads" from Test Drive Unlimited 2:

... and a brief gig as God in the web-cartoon EddEgg:

Now They'll Have To Put Up Some Signs

Taoiseach Enda Kenny and President Barack Obama in the White House, March 17th, 2011 (Reuters photo)

Enda Kenny, the new Taoiseach* of the Republic of Ireland, visited the White House today, which was not a big surprise since it was St. Patrick's Day. What was a little bit of a surprise was the announcement that President Obama would visit Ireland in May, just before going on to visit that bigger island to its east.

While details of the visit have yet to be filled out, one place that the President made sure to mention that he will definitely visit is the tiny town of Moneygall in County Offaly, since one of his great-great-great grandfathers was a cobbler there before emigrating to the US during the Great Hunger in the 1850s.

We beat him to it.

Entering Moneygall from the East, August 21, 2010

Last August, we made a point of visiting Moneygall, since Obama's connection to the place has been pretty common knowledge since the 2008 election. It didn't take much effort, since Moneygall is in the same county as our home base in Birr and since it's right on the N7 which was, until the end of last year, the main road across the island from Dublin to Limerick. (The N7 has since been supplanted by the new M7 superhighway, which bypasses Moneygall entirely, but that stretch wasn't quite done last August.)

We expected to see plenty of references to Obama in Moneygall, given the special relationship most Irish feel with the United States. JFK is still greatly revered by many, as is Reagan to a slightly lesser extent.

The N7 (now the R445, downgraded from a National to a Regional designation after the completion of the M7 superhighway) is Moneygall's main -- and just about only -- street.

We saw none. No signs, banners, pictures... nothing. In retrospect, we probably shouldn't have expected any. Kennedy and Reagan are remembered there not simply because they were American presidents of Irish lineage -- there have been plenty of those -- but because they came to Ireland and showed respect for the connection by showing regard for the Irish people.

Bustling downtown Moneygall.

So, I reckon, there will be signs and banners, photographs and window shrines for Obama if we were to go back next August.

*"Taoiseach," pronounced TEE-sock (approximately) is the title of Ireland's prime minister, the head of government. The word means leader or chieftain.

A SherWords Quiz

This quiz has nothing to do with cats or anything else useful.

My students had to take a midterm exam today, so why should I give SherWords readers the day off?

This 10-question quiz is closed-book: no reference materials of any kind are allowed. Each question is followed by a link to its answer and, where I feel like it, some explanation thereof. Use these links only after you have answered the question. Ceiling Cat will know if you peeked, and what happens after that might not be pretty.

Ready? Okay, then, here we go!

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1. Which weighs more, a pound of feathers or a ton of lead? (Click here for the answer.)

2. What was U.S. President Truman's middle name? (Answer)

3. What was U.S. President Ford's first name? (Answer)

4. Where in the 48 contiguous states of the USA is it possible to drive southward on a paved road across the border into Canada? (Answer)

5. Which major object in our solar system requires the fastest launch of a spacecraft from Earth to reach on a direct trajectory? (Answer)

6. In a regulation, 9-inning baseball game (not one shortened by rain or other exigency), what is the smallest possible total number of plate appearances for one team's batters? (Answer)

7. If the presidents of San Jose State University, Stanford University, and the University of California at Berkeley stand in the middle of the football stadiums on their campuses, which of them is the farthest west? (Answer)

8. How many accelerators are there in a car? (Answer)

9. What large body of water does the Sun rise over as seen from the Panama Canal? (Answer)

10. If you push straight backward on the lower pedal of a tricycle's front wheel, which direction does the trike move (assuming good lubrication and that the wheel is prevented from turning left or right)? (Answer)

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In case you are thinking of disagreeing with any of the answers, keep in mind who gives the grades around here.

How'd you do?

A Young Irish Earl's Rough Start

Birr Castle, Ireland, in August, 2010

Laurence Parsons had a bit of a challenging start in his tenure as the Fourth Earl of Rosse.

He was only 26 years old when news of his revered father's death in Dublin reached Birr Castle, the family home in the Irish midlands, in the Fall of 1867. Both his father and his grandfather had not acceded to the position until they were in their forties, but youth alone was probably not the most daunting aspect of his succession. His father, William Parsons, Third Earl of Rosse, was a multi-talented man of great accomplishment and high reputation. While primarily remembered today as the designer and maker of a revolutionary huge telescope, the Third Earl was also much admired in the midlands for his family's work to alleviate the effects in King's County (now County Offaly) of the 1840s' Great Hunger and among the Irish people for his clear-headed approach to governmental duties. While not entitled to a seat in the House of Lords by birth alone, he was elected as an Irish Representative Peer in 1845, thus gaining his place in London's halls of power through accomplishment rather than DNA.

The Third Earl of Rosse and his Countess, Mary, in May of 1850. They are shown looking over drawings of a galaxy whose spiral form was first seen by Lord Rosse using his "Leviathan of Parsonstown" during the prior decade. This drawing is by Charles Piazzi-Smyth, a renowned astronomer (and, some would say, crackpot as concerns the pyramids of Egypt), one of many luminaries of science who frequented Birr Castle in the mid-1800s. Illustration from and courtesy of the Birr Castle Archives.

Young Laurence Parsons clearly had big hessians to fill. As though that weren't enough, though, fate dealt him a pair of odd and disquieting incidents in his first two years on the job.

The Policemen Would Listen to No Explanation

Just a little more than a year after his father's death, in the late Fall of 1868, Lord Rosse and a party of friends went hunting north of Parsonstown (now Birr) in the general direction of Banagher on the River Shannon. Included in the party were the Earl's 20-year-old brother Randal and two teenaged brothers, Clere and Charles. As the party rode southward toward home in the gathering twilight, they were accosted -- not by outlaws, but by the law. A yellowing newspaper clipping in the Birr Castle Archives recounts the incident thusly:

A Lord Taken Prisoner by Drunken Policemen Under Menace of a Loaded Rifle.
(From Our Correspondent)
Parsonstown, Tuesday.
An incident among the strangest in the history of the police force, and one which is affording considerable local gossip, has just happened in this neighbourhood. The Earl of Rosse, accompanied by his brothers and some friends, were returning along the Banagher road from shooting on Saturday evening, and within a mile of the Castle they were met by some Constabulary of the Annah Station, who peremptorily ordered the young nobleman to halt, one of the policemen giving proof that the command was no joke by deliberately loading his rifle and making the most convincing gestures. His lordship and party had the presence of mind to forego a long parleying, simply contenting themselves by stating who they were. But the policemen would listen to no statement or explanation, and his lordship and his party had no alternative but to save themselves from the indignity of the handcuffs, or, probably, a personal encounter, by going with the policemen into town, where the tables were soon turned, as the Sub-Inspector, on hearing the strange narrative, forthwith had the whole of his Lordship's late escort taken into custody. The Constabulary escapade is to form the subject of an investigation, and very likely will lead to unpleasant results to the policemen, two of whom at least were intoxicated, and all were in charge of the Constable of the Station.

The escapade did, in fact, lead to unpleasant results for the police involved. Also in the castle archives is this groveling letter from the island's top cop of the time, the Chief Constable of Ireland in Dublin:

Constabulary Office, Dublin Castle
8 Dec. 1868
My Lord,
I have received, and read with pain, the report of the misconduct of the party of Constabulary towards your Lordship and your friends on the evening of the 28th.
I am glad to think that conduct like that in question towards any individual is, on the part of the Constabulary of very rare occurrence. But that such an outrageous and uncalled for interference with a person of your Lordship's position, and in your own immediate neighbourhood should have taken place, is I believe without precedent.
My duty calls upon me to recommend the dismissal of Constable Burke and Sub-Constable Coyle.
As regards the former, I may mention that he has served 30 years without ever having been, until now, reported for drunkenness, - and that he is married and has a large family.
Should you think fit for these reasons to interfere in his behalf, I shall consider the discipline of the Force...

... and, unfortunately, the last page of the letter is missing. There is also no record of a response from the young Earl, so the fate of Constable Burke and his ability to continue to feed his large family is not now known. A curt scrawl at the top of the letter in the Fourth Earl's handwriting gives us a clue, though: "Constabulary defence of annoyance to our Party." Burke probably didn't fare well.

Less than a year later, an unprecedented and much darker event not of his making shook Laurence Parsons's family.

You Killed Her, You Bury Her

St. Brendan's Church of Ireland, Birr, on a gloomy January day, 2011. Photograph courtesy of and copyright by Stephen Callaghan. (Mr. Callaghan is very skilled and talented with a camera; I urge you to come back later and click on his name to see what I mean.)

Mary King was born near Ferbane, a village about ten miles north of Birr Castle along the road from Parsonstown (now Birr) to Athlone. Her mother, Harriette, was Laurence Parsons's great-aunt, and the King family were frequent visitors to Birr Castle during his father's heyday. In her teens, Mary became acquainted with many of the prestigious scientists who visited Birr Castle and its great telescope and other engineering marvels -- and began her own lifelong fascination with science in general and optical devices in particular. Girls of the time in Ireland were not afforded formal education, but Mary's inquisitiveness, intelligence, and moxie propelled her to eventual scientific prominence anyway. Among other distinctions she gathered as an adult, in the 1860s she was one of only three women entitled to receive the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society -- the other two being Mary Sommerville (after whom Sommerville College of Oxford University is named) and Queen Victoria.

Mary King Ward (probable identification based on hairstyle) in a detail from one of Piazzi-Smyth's drawings. Her likeness is more commonly seen in a photograph by Countess Mary Rosse, wife of the Third Earl of Rosse, herself a pioneering woman in science and technology. Illustration from and courtesy of the Birr Castle Archives.

In addition to a keen scientific mind, Mary was intensely enthusiastic about bringing the excitement of science to young people. She wrote several very successful books for youngsters, published as were all of her writings under her married name, Mary Ward. She drew the illustrations for her books herself, and they embody even today her lighthearted earnestness. Of her books for children she said that she wanted them to be "an agreeable bait by means of which unwary youth may find themselves caught in the meshes of science while seeking only amusement."

Bug fun: "The Insect Maypole" by Mary Ward as reproduced in Whatever Shines Should Be Observed by Susan M. P. McKenna-Lawlor (see recommended reading at the end of this post.)

Mary's personal life was not very easy. When she was 27 she married Henry Ward, a striking military man who had served in the Crimea and who was a son of Viscount Bangor of County Down in the Northeast of Ireland. A year after their marriage, Henry made a disastrous career choice: he chose not to have one. He resigned his commission as Captain and devoted the rest of his life to social activities and sports, thus burdening his family with aristocratic activities without aristocratic income. It fell to Mary to provide for the family -- and to bear his eleven children -- but there is no evidence that she ever expressed anything but good cheer and optimism. They moved from home to home, each more austere than the previous one, until they finally wound up in a simple, unfurnished Dublin rental house in 1868.

The following year, in August of 1869, she and Henry made the trip halfway across Ireland to visit Birr Castle and, presumably, to check on how young Laurence was doing as Lord Rosse. On Tuesday afternoon, August 31st, one of the Parsons engineering marvels was brought out for a romp: a self-propelled steam carriage of the Third Earl's design which could reach speeds up to seven miles per hour on a good road. The family tutor (home schooling is a long tradition in the Parsons family), Richard Biggs, is said to have been steering the contraption, the younger two boys, Clere and Charles, were feeding fuel to the boiler, and Mary and Henry were perched on the passengers' bench. The auto steamed out of the gates of the Castle demesne and up Oxmantown Mall toward St. Brendan's Church of Ireland at its junction with the road to Tullamore. Randal was walking along behind; the only brother not present was the young Earl himself.

Birr Castle Demesne gates in August, 2006.

At the church, Mr. Biggs steered the steamer right, toward the center of Parsonstown and into disaster.

There are conflicting accounts of exactly what happened -- Biggs may or may not have run over a curbstone, the vehicle may or may not have overturned -- but somehow Mary was thrown from the bench to the ground and was crushed by one of the vehicle's massive iron wheels. She was taken to a nearby physician's home where she died within minutes of her grievous injuries, "a broken neck, her jaw was greatly fractured, and she was bleeding from the ears" according to the doctor's statement.

Mary Ward, noted scientist, educator, and pioneer in women's rightful ability to contribute to science, had become the world's first automobile fatality.

In grief and anger, the young Lord Rosse had the steam carriage destroyed, and no photograph or drawing or plan of it exists. Her husband Henry was obviously unable to provide for a fitting funeral and burial, so Lord Rosse sent a telegram to Mary's brother John about the issue. His response was, "You killed her, you bury her." Mary Ward remains the sole "non-lineal" member of the extended family to be entombed in the Parsons vault in Birr.

Coda

Mary Ward's spirit lives on in a very strange yet delightful way. One of her great-granddaughters is Lalla Ward, a former actress perhaps most well-known for her role as Princess Astra and the second incarnation of Romana in the great television series "Doctor Who." Lalla, born Sarah Ward, retired from acting in 1992 after marrying biologist and author Richard Dawkins.

She now draws illustrations for her husband's science books. Great-grandma would be proud.

Lalla Ward in character as Romana. Source unknown.

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Strongly recommended reading:

The chapter on Mary Ward in Whatever Shines Should Be Observed by Susan M. P. McKenna-Lawlor, volume 292 in the Astrophysics and Space Science Library

Section 1 of Chapter 6, "Teenagers without their father", in From Galaxies to Turbines: Science, Technology and the Parsons Family by W. Garrett Scaife

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Steam-powered carriages can still be seen in County Offaly -- at least once a year, in the Birr Heritage Week parade. Below is a video clip of one such that Diane and I took in August, 2006. Part of the south wall of Birr Castle is in the background. A much higher-resolution version can be seen here.

Two Years On, and Still Flickering in the Corners of Our Sight

Keeping warm by hiding the white parts.

Today, as tears fall from my eyes, I sit and remember all our great times.
The years have gone by so fast, it's hard to believe that already this much time has passed.
You seem to have missed the last two years.
But now I know that you have seen more of time itself than I have.

... from "Two Years" by Amy Renee Banker, adapted only slightly.

Five Weeks in Six Minutes

County Clare, Summer 2010

One of the nice things about taking an insane number of photos while on vacation is that you get to spend a huge amount of time at home deciding what to do with them and then doing it. In a way, it's like taking the trip over for free. That's the way it worked when we were in Ireland in 2006, and that's the way it's working now with the 2010 batch -- only more so.

I've published a few things so far in this space from that trip (here, here, and here, for example, along with the whole "Erin Go Thud" business), but I'm taking my time with the two big pieces. The biggest, an account of the trip in the style of the "HI-POD" series of 2007, is scheduled to be posted on the one-year anniversary of the days, as it was then. The next-biggest, an annotated slide show on sharrington.net, is in process now.

The first step in putting together that slide show was to select the images we wanted to be in it. We picked about 750, or approximately 20% of the available images. The next step was to shrink the selected images to a web-friendly file size, a step I just finished today. That's when I had an "ah-HA!" moment for a little additional project, inspired by Pummelvision (thanks, Mary Ellen Carew!) and by my son Adam's recent work in putting together video clips. Why not slap those 750 images together in very rapid fashion to produce a Pummelvision-style, mad-speed version of the entire trip?

So I did.



(You won't be able to view this video in Germany, due to copyright issues there about the soundtrack -- a jig by James Galway and the Chieftains.)

YouTube's processing clipped the top few percent off each frame, which is kind of irritating but I can't see how to fix that without expending way too much effort. All of these images will be available in still, annotated form over on sharrington.net within a couple of months.

The frames come at you in strict chronological order, so lots of views of our headquarters, Birr Castle Demesne, are interspersed throughout. And, for you Bothy Cat fans, she's liberally sprinkled throughout as well.

Enjoy! You should view this at the highest resolution your download speed (and patience) will allow. Cranking up the volume wouldn't hurt, either.

Mustsee Teevee

Adam after a hard day's work on the set. The blood and the tats are fake, but the pride is real.

Tomorrow night (Tuesday, December 28th) is the debut of my boy's first-ever featured role on a TV program. He plays the villain-of-the-week on an episode of I (Almost) Got Away With It titled "Got to Fetch a Hooker."

Details:
Investigation Discovery ("ID") channel
10pm Eastern, 7 and 10pm Pacific

ID is one of the Discovery suite of cable channels. (Click here to see if your tv provider carries it and, if so, on what channel.) If you don't have ID as an option, the episode will run later on the main Discovery channel and will be available for download within a couple of days on Amazon and iTunes for two bucks.

I make absolutely no guarantees concerning program quality, since I've never seen an episode of the program -- but you can bet that I'll be riveted to the one tomorrow.

A Folly of Bow-Wows [UPDATED with higher-quality video]

Christmas Day this year was a very quiet one at Ft. Harrington. Some of the extended family will converge here tomorrow, but today it was just us and the four-feet. As always, distribution of presents (in this case, rawhide chews) to the children (in this case, dogs) was the highlight of Christmas. Rawhide chews are a special, special treat for Kelsey, Jax, and Emma, primarily because they never get them on any day but Christmas. That's because one of them (whom I will not embarrass by mentioning his name here in public) tends to steal the others' and hoard them.

(Video -- "Treats for the Canines," starring Kelsey, Jax, and Emma with a special guest appearance by Cooper-the-Giant-Kitty -- at the bottom of this post.)

It's a Ft. Harrington Christmas tradition that Emma winds up with no toys or treats because...

... her bratty brother steals everything of value.

Bow on the Bow-Wow

But enough of the mutts. This is MY blog, so what did I get? I'm sure everyone reading this is impatient to find out, right? I made out like a bandit, I did. Not only did I score the traditional Pendleton shirt and a great barn jacket, but my loving spouse also gifted me thusly:


I'm gonna spoon out a bowl of that corn relish and snuggle in with my Patti Smith books and just disappear for a whole day. Just as soon as my mouth heals from its Christmas Eve emergency extraction of a shattered tooth.

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Click for video -- "Treats for the Canines," starring Kelsey, Jax, and Emma with a special guest appearance by Cooper-the-Giant-Kitty.

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Note, for those who need it, on the title of this post: click here.

A Grave Post

Before Diane and I left for Ireland earlier this year, I posted an offer in this space to take photos while we were there for anyone who had a specific place or thing in mind. Our friend Ronnie Peterson took us up on that, as did a friend of mine over on Flickr.

Ronnie's request and its great benefits to us have been chronicled here earlier. Linda ("chocolatepoint" over on Flickr) asked thusly for something that proved, similarly, to be of more benefit to us (in the places we sought out that we might not otherwise have seen) than to her:

Thanks for the kind offer to take a photo that I might want. I don't have anything specific in mind. If you happen to roll by an interesting old cemetery, though, and feel like taking a few shots, I wouldn't mind seeing the photos. You know how I love old cemeteries and genealogy and such. Don't go out of your way, though!

Our ultimate response to Linda can be seen by clicking here, transporting you over to sharrington.net. The set that lives there includes, among others, these sights:

Passage to the heart of the Neolithic tomb at Knowth,

the 12th Century Dominican Priory ruins at Lorrha, far northern Tipperary,

the ancient monastic city at Clonmacnoise on the Shannon, and

Fury.

Once again, click here to view the full set.

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