Isaac Christopher Daley
November 21, 2002 - November 23, 2002

Six years ago I stumbled through a small speech as our first grandson's ashes were interred, along with a cross made of Legos, a small toy car, and innumerable hopes and dreams.  In honor of what would have been his sixth birthday, I think it's time for me to hear again what I had to say then.  You may eavesdrop if you wish.  (More)
Posted by sursumcorda on Friday, November 21, 2008 at 7:48 am | Edit
Permalink | Read 2427 times | Comments (0)
Category Everyday Life: [first] [previous] [next] [newest]

Once when we were visiting Pittsburgh, we had the pleasure of attending a Stephen Foster festival at the cemetery where he is buried.  While there, we heard the group Home Front, and bought their CD, Parlor to Campfire.  It was somewhat amusing (better to laugh than to cry) to hear our stereo system, which randomly plays tracks from a rather large collection of music, wail forth with Hard Times Come Again No More—right after I had sneaked a look at the rapidly plunging (again! still!) stock market.

As I said to the clerk at the post office—in response to his, "What?  You're here again?"—I'm doing my part to support the economy.  The world is apparently falling down around me, yet life goes on as usual.  I think that's not an unreasonable attitude at the moment, but I also sometimes wonder if there's not a bit of Madame Ranevskaya in me.
Posted by sursumcorda on Thursday, November 20, 2008 at 4:35 pm | Edit
Permalink | Read 1758 times | Comments (0)
Category Everyday Life: [first] [previous] [next] [newest]

Games are a traditional part of our family gatherings.  On any given occasion you are likely to find games in process as varied as Lord of the Rings Risk, Settlers of Catan, pinochle, Quiddler, and n-tuple sol, and a long-time family favorite, Boggle (the 5x5 version, of course).  Because one of our number is the perennial, unassailable Boggle champion, I need to stay in practice to be any kind of competitor at all.  To this end I occasionally indulge in an Internet version of the came, called WordSplay.

There's some fierce competition out there, and I'm usually happy when I find myself around the 50% mark at the end of a game.  Once I almost made it into the top 10 and was elated.  (It helps to play at odd hours, such as early on a Saturday morning, when the number of opponents I face is much smaller.)  This morning I saw my name in third place, only one point shy of the top score, and can't resist reporting the accomplishment.

This is how I know that our own Boggle Champion wasn't playing the game.  Smile
Posted by sursumcorda on Saturday, November 8, 2008 at 6:12 am | Edit
Permalink | Read 1714 times | Comments (2)
Category Everyday Life: [first] [previous] [next] [newest]

I don't expect my resolve to last long, but I'm going to attempt to put a gag on Li'l Writer Guy.  I love to write, and there's always a large backlog of issues, large and small, on which my mind is constantly spewing forth essay fragments.  Crafting them into some coherent form and publishing the result usually offers some relief, but recent political and philosophical discussions (of which what is published is but the tip of the iceberg) have instead left me enervated.

When I consider the long hours it takes to get my thoughts into shareable form, hours that have much more pressing needs tugging insistently at their sleeves, I'm thinking Li'l Writer Guy needs to spend some time with the Carthusian monks.
Posted by sursumcorda on Wednesday, November 5, 2008 at 8:55 pm | Edit
Permalink | Read 3350 times | Comments (2)
Category Everyday Life: [first] [previous] [next] [newest]

Yesterday we capped a busy day (at church till mid-afternoon for a special event, followed by—oh, joy!—flu shots) with our second Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra concert of the year.  I'm greatly enjoying Chris Wilkins' approach to concert programming:  he chooses a good blend of old and new, familiar and unknown, comfortable and challenging.  Well, just barely challenging, but that's okay; I prefer my musical challenges on a smaller scale and with explanation, as with Bernard Rands' Memo 8, which came to mind when I was pondering "challenging."  That was one of my favorite Eastman concert experiences, and I would love to hear it performed again, but I don't see that happening; even a Google search nets little, and my favorite oboist has gone Medieval—not that I mind that!  Ah, well—I have my recording.  But I digress greatly.

Last night's concert showed Wilkins' programming strengths and his willingness to venture into non-traditional concert territory. The theme was Abraham Lincoln, and the program a collaboration with the Orange County History Center. (More)
Posted by sursumcorda on Sunday, November 2, 2008 at 2:27 pm | Edit
Permalink | Read 2756 times | Comments (5)
Category Reviews: [first] [previous] [next] [newest] Everyday Life: [first] [previous] [next] [newest]

I've been an adotive Red Sox fan for more than 30 years now, and duly celebrated when they won their long-awaited World Series title, and when they did it again.  But I'm from Philadelphia (among other places), and the only major league game I've ever seen live and in person was with the Philadelphia Phillies.  That was back in the Connie Mack Stadium days, which incidentally makes it fun for me that one of Florida's Congressmen is also Connie Mack, grandson of the original Philadelphia manager.  I wonder if he suffered conflicting loyalties in the recent World Series.

Had it been a Red Sox - Phillies battle, loyalties here—and in at least one other household in our family—would, indeed, have been conflicted.  But it wasn't, and my identity with Florida is not enough to extend to Tampa Bay if they're going against the Phillies.  Not that I watched any of the games myself, though I read that the final game so was exciting I almost wish I had.

Congratulations, Phillies, and our favorite Phillies fans!  Enjoy the moment!
Posted by sursumcorda on Thursday, October 30, 2008 at 6:59 am | Edit
Permalink | Read 2337 times | Comments (0)
Category Everyday Life: [first] [previous] [next] [newest]

To all those following and praying for Heather, Jon, and Judy Wilson:  Judy's trial resumes this afternoon.  I'm no longer there to continue my blow-by-blow commentary, but I'll pass on the news as I am able.  Jon is now scheduled to appear as a defense witness, so prayers for him and his testimony would be appreciated.   (I find it bizaare that he was ping-ponged that way—he was originally scheduled, like Heather, as a witness for the prosecution—but my prosecuting attorney friends don't.  Facts are facts, and you use whomever you need to establish them.)

There may even be a verdict today, so prayers for the judge would also be a very good thing!

Posted by sursumcorda on Wednesday, October 29, 2008 at 7:20 am | Edit
Permalink | Read 6892 times | Comments (15)
Category Children & Family Issues: [first] [previous] [next] [newest] Everyday Life: [first] [previous] [next] [newest]

I spent several of my formative years in the City of Soft-Pretzel-y-Love.  Not the fancy, cheese-filled mall variety, or the bake-at-home frozen blandness, but the soft, chewy, salty Philadelphia Pretzel, preferably from a germ-laden street vendor's cart and drizzled, of course, with mustard.  Nothing ever tastes as good as memory makes it, so for over thirty years I have been making do.

Enter Facebook.  Bear with me here, it's a convoluted story.

It all began, for me, when Janet joined Facebook.  I no longer remember what brought her, reluctantly, to that point, but she had so much fun re-connecting with old friends that she persuaded me to join as well.  The connecting-with-old-friends bit only works if one's friends are also on Facebook, which is much less likely for folks of my age, but nonetheless I've made a few enjoyable connections.  As a whole I find the Facebook package more annoying than not, but can put up with it for the few gems it tosses my way.

Like the inspiration for this post.  This summer I met a friend of my son-in-law-to-be.  Enjoyable as our time together was, we are far apart both generationally and geographically, and in the old days the chances of her sharing a recipe with me would have been nil.  But she is on Facebook, and graciously accepted my "friend request," the result of which is that when she posted a video on pretzel-making, I found it.  There are actually two in the series:

It is a very good thing we do not have cable television.  Put me in front of a food channel and I might not move all day.  Other shows by this guy are proving a major temptation getting in the way of progress this week.  "This guy" is Alton Brown, and his show, Good Eats, is on the Food Network (whatever that is).  Some related links:  One set of shows on YouTube, another set of shows on YouTube, and the fan page.  (I spent a fair amount of time trying to determine the legality or lack thereof of having the shows posted on YouTube, without success, but they've been there for quite awhile without being removed, and one of the posters runs the fan site and knows the chef, so I'm feeling free to enjoy them unless convinced otherwise.)

After all the preliminaries...ta da!  What I Did Yesterday:  I made the pretzels!  It was easy!  Dark brown, shiny, chewy, and exceedingly delicious, with or without mustard.

alt

 

Did I say they were good?  I mean really, really good.  Even without the umibacillus vendorophilus.

Posted by sursumcorda on Tuesday, October 28, 2008 at 7:45 am | Edit
Permalink | Read 5200 times | Comments (1)
Category Everyday Life: [first] [previous] [next] [newest] Food: [next] [newest]

We've lived in Florida over 20 years and have had a few interesting animal encounters, like the time we were driving home from choir rehearsal and had to stop while an alligator crossed the road ahead of us.  Usually, though, it's pretty tame around here, once you get accustomed to lizards in the house, palmetto bugs (aka cockroaches on steroids), and spiders half the size of your hand.

There is a small part not far from our house that hosts a suprising variety of flora and fauna for its size.  From pileated woodpeckers to herons and sandhill cranes, from squirrels to gopher tortoises, you never know what you'll encounter on the jogging trail.  Once I even met a red fox. (More)
Posted by sursumcorda on Monday, October 20, 2008 at 7:42 pm | Edit
Permalink | Read 2312 times | Comments (0)
Category Everyday Life: [first] [previous] [next] [newest]

I love to cook, but that's something I keep forgetting.  Maybe I need an audience; it hardly seems worth the time and effort when I'm eating alone, and even when I'm not we're usually so busy it hardly seems reasonable to spend much time cooking.  But Porter keeps talking about how this is the best restaurant in town, so it seems only fair to work towards making that a reality.  On Saturday, we had some of our favorite company over for dinner—the best kind to cook for, because they're always appreciative and don't mind being guinea pigs for whatever I want to try out.

Earlier this summer, my nephew had feasted us on Hazelnut-Crusted Chicken with Raspberry Sauce, a Bon Appétit recipe from Epicurious.com.  The taste was even more amazing than this beautiful presentation (click on picture for larger view):

alt

It was a recipe I knew I had to add to my repertoire, so that's what I served.  Sort of.  Well, actually, that was the starting point, but I never can resist changing things along the way.  One of our guests doesn't eat meat, so I used salmon instead of chicken.  I had the store take the skin off the filet, then sliced it into pieces about two inches wide.  I could have bought hazelnuts, but had pecans in stock, and I used raspberry balsamic vinegar instead of white wine vinegar, canola oil instead of safflower, Cherchies' Champagne Mustard instead of honey mustard, Penzeys' Florida Seasoned Pepper for half the black pepper—you get the picture.  And because it was fish, I baked it for about 20 minutes instead of frying it first.

Despite all the changes, the end result was still really, really good.  I'm going to go raid the leftovers now....

Posted by sursumcorda on Sunday, October 5, 2008 at 3:28 pm | Edit
Permalink | Read 5969 times | Comments (2)
Category Reviews: [first] [previous] [next] [newest] Everyday Life: [first] [previous] [next] [newest]

Last night the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra presented Fanfare, its 2008-2009 season opener, featuring the U.S. Army's Herald Trumpets.  As always, it was an enjoyable concert, though odd in a way, since I often found the orchestra too loud.  I'm accustomed to that in everyday life, and carry earplugs with me nearly everywhere I go, because whatever is amplified is nearly always amplified too much for my taste.  Yet this was live, acoustic music, and it wasn't just the guest trumpets that were too loud.  Orchestras are supposed to be too loud only if you're sitting directly in front of the percussion or the trumpets—not when you're far away in the balcony.  Weird.  Perhaps my ears are getting better as my eyes are getting worse.

As the oboe section is of primary importance to our family, we immediately noticed a gaping hole—where was Principal Jared Hauser?  And Laura Hauser was not amongst the bassoons, either.  There turns out to be a good reason for their absense:  Jared left to take the position of oboe professor at the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University.  Good for them, but very sad for us.  I'm particular about oboe playing, and I loved Jared's sound.  This reminds me of when Principal Flute Aaron Goldman left to become Assistant Principal Flute of the National Symphony Orchestra.  The OPO seems to be a sending-off point for really good (and nice) musicians.  I'll never forget the fun we had listening in one night when Jared and Janet played baroque oboe duets together.  I was hoping for a repeat some day—but now one is in Nashville, and the other in Switzerland.

Oddly enough, in a concert that featured such greats as Verdi, Shostakovich, and Richard Strauss, my favorite work was Tromba Lontana, by the living composer John Adams, whose Short Ride in a Fast Machine I had enjoyed when Janet performed it at Eastman.

Added 2008-09-29:  Stephan was kind enough to point out that I had written "Tromba Iontana" instead of "Tromba Lontana."  It comes of not knowing Italian, I suppose.  (The title was translated as "Distant Trumpet.")  I will grumble just a bit and ask why the program chooses to use a lower-case letter in a font where the lower case L and the upper case I are identical, and in a publication where most of the other titles have all major words capitalized—but I checked in the pdf version and it is, indeed, a lower-case L.

In my efforts to confirm the true title, I discovered these two YouTube videos, which you might enjoy.  I wonder, just a bit, about copyright issues when works like this are put on YouTube, but for now I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

Tromba Lontana

Posted by sursumcorda on Sunday, September 28, 2008 at 11:19 am | Edit
Permalink | Read 3315 times | Comments (1)
Category Reviews: [first] [previous] [next] [newest] Everyday Life: [first] [previous] [next] [newest]

Today we celebrated the Smithsonian Institution's Museum Day by visiting The Maitland Historical Society's Waterhouse Residence Museum.  If you're going to get in for free, why not check out a museum you didn't even know existed?  The Maitland Historical Society's museums are located on lovely Lake Lily in Maitland, and we enjoyed a walk around the lake after our tour.  I believe we can call Museum Day a hit; everyone in our almost-crowded tour had brought web-printed admission passes, and for most of us the museum was a new experience.

Since Mr. Waterhouse came originally from "the north," I can't help wondering if he was a descendant of my eighth great grandfather, Jacob Waterhouse, who immigrated from England to New London, Connecticut in 1676.  He had a nice house, much more so than would be expected for a middle class family, because he was a carpenter and buit much of it himself.  Part of the museum is his shop, which is filled with antique tools.  "Antique," I'm sure—but it let us know how old we are when we found ourselves giving a sotto voce commentary throughout the tour:  "This house is the same age as the one I grew up in," "My aunt had a stove like that," and "Those tools look just like the ones in my dad's workshop."
Posted by sursumcorda on Saturday, September 27, 2008 at 4:35 pm | Edit
Permalink | Read 2062 times | Comments (0)
Category Reviews: [first] [previous] [next] [newest] Everyday Life: [first] [previous] [next] [newest]

The Associated Press hasn't taken up the story yet, though I know from experience that will probably change.  I wish private grief could remain private; since it is not, however, I need have no qualms about providing updates for those whose love and prayers support the particpants in this unfortunate drama.

Nearly six years after Isaac's birth, and more than four after she was charged in his death, Judy Wilson's formal trial began.  Although they support Judy and never wished her to be charged, Heather and Jon were subpoenaed by the prosecution as witnesses—the only eyewitnesses other than Judy herself.  Required to report to the Allegheny County Courthouse by 8:30 a.m. on Monday, we packed ourselves up—three sleepy children, breakfasts for eating in the car on the way, a cooler with lunch and snacks, an overstuffed diaper bag, Jon's laptop bag (Lime Daley service must be available, trial or no), a bag of books, toys and games, plus jackets, blankets, baby slings, and oh yes, legal paperwork—and headed for Pittsburgh, in the middle of rush hour.  (More)
Posted by sursumcorda on Tuesday, September 23, 2008 at 8:57 pm | Edit
Permalink | Read 5424 times | Comments (9)
Category Children & Family Issues: [first] [previous] [next] [newest] Everyday Life: [first] [previous] [next] [newest]
Ike

I never used to pay attention to the weather forecast, and was amused by my mother-in-law's apparent fixation on the topic.  She was a Connecticut Yankee, and the weather sometimes meant life or death to her early New England ancestors.

So too, for Floridians, and ever since 2004, when we emerged from our 40-year hurricane lull, I've found it wise to keep an eye on the forecast, at least during hurricane season.  I have my favorite Tropical Weather link, and have carefully followed the progress of Fay, Gustav, and Ike recently. (More)
Posted by sursumcorda on Tuesday, September 16, 2008 at 6:17 pm | Edit
Permalink | Read 2406 times | Comments (0)
Category Hurricanes and Such: [first] [previous] [next] [newest] Everyday Life: [first] [previous] [next] [newest]

At four days old, Faith saw the pediatrician for a general checkup.  The only news of note is that she weighed 9 lbs. 11 oz., up half a pound from birth, putting her right on track to follow Jonathan's lead as "sumo baby," especially since Noah has weaned himself.  (Noah followed a more normal weight gain because he shared the abundant milk supply with Jonathan.)

For the most part, Faith eats and sleeps, although she is looking around more, and today had her first opportunity to spend some time on her tummy on the floor.  Heather tried to get a picture of her lifting her head, but the duration is still short and the camera delay long, so I don't know if she was successful.
Posted by sursumcorda on Friday, September 12, 2008 at 10:12 pm | Edit
Permalink | Read 1979 times | Comments (0)
Category Everyday Life: [first] [previous] [next] [newest]
Go to page:
«Previous   1 2 3 ... 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 ... 55 56 57  Next»