Small Miracles

Last fall, Dorothy and I went to Virginia for a tour of Monticello, Mount Vernon, Jamestown, Yorktown and Old Williamsburg. Here, here and here are links to previous posts about the trip. Among them all, I was most fascinated by Monticello.

Thomas Jefferson thought of everything when he laid out the house and the grounds. He had a large gravity clock which had one face outside on the front of the house and another face in the front room, facing in the opposite direction. Think about that for a minute, and understand the engineering that went into the design. The weights themselves required him to put holes in the floor so that they could continue their downward path for a full 7 days. Every Sunday evening, he pulled the weights up to keep the clock running.

There were many, many other parts of the design that were just plain brilliant. I won't list them here, but you can follow this link for a description of the house.

As practical as the design of the house was the design of the grounds. Jefferson was, among other things, a botanist who experimented with thousands of plants during his lifetime. He brought plants back from Europe and from many parts of the colonies, and the descendants of those plants can still be found at Monticello.

One the plants that he kept is known as the Sensitive Plant. A description of the Sensitive Plant in the Monticello catalog can be found here. The interesting thing about this plant is that the leaves fold up when you touch them.

I bought some seeds, and gave the girls some of them for Christmas and kept a few for myself. (I also gave them seeds for Alpine Strawberries that I bought at Monticello. I have grown them before, and if you are able to grow them, you should. Delicious.) Neither of them have been able to get their seeds to sprout, but I planted 5 seeds in 2 pots and now have 3 plants. And as soon as they came out of the ground, I could see a small frond of leaves, and when I touched them, they closed up and lowered themselves to the ground. This from a plant that was so small that I could barely see it.

That was close to three weeks ago. I took this brief movie this morning to show how slowly they are growing, and to show how they react when touched. As they get bigger, I'll follow up with another movie. I'm curious to see how a full-grown plant will react.

The Home For Aged Monkeys

Saw this item in the Columbus Dispatch...

I suspect that Tarzan, Jane and Boy have all gone on to meet their maker, but Cheeta lives on. I imagine him hanging out at the Home For Aged Monkeys, playing cards and reminiscing about his salad days in the African jungle. His best friend, Lancelot Link (formerly of the Evolution Revolution), comes over and they play chess for hours at a time. Puffing on their cigars and sipping their 18-year-old Scotch, they discuss the dearth of meaningful roles for chimpanzees in today's films. So they decide to call Sean Penn and demand equal treatment for simians.

My Kind of Town

Two of my favorite things in life are politics and golf. Fortunately, the two just seem to go together.

The Memorial Tournament was held in Dublin two weeks ago, and I managed to get out to the course every day except Sunday. They allow cameras on the course during the practice rounds, and I was able to get this shot of Phil Mickelson as he approached his ball on the 15th fairway. This was during the pro-am, and needless to say, Phil had the best swing of all the people in his foursome. The weather could not have been nicer.

You might recall that last year, Sergio Garcia stopped by during a weather delay on Saturday. Well, he was back again this year. He stopped by briefly on Wednesday as he was making his way to the 15th tee box, and again on Thursday when he stopped by to pick up the girls for dinner. As fate would have it, there was another weather delay on Saturday this year, and Sergio walked from the 17th fairway all the way back to the house, where he spent a few hours hanging out.

On Thursday, the real tournament started, and we hosted a fundraiser again this year for John Boehner, the Minority Leader of the US House. This is a shot of Boehner with Jack & Barbara Nicklaus and some well-known local guests.

Golf is a big thing in Columbus, and the Memorial Tournament is considered one of the premier events on the PGA tour. Politics is also a big thing in Columbus, and I was able to get my fix of politics and golf all in one fell swoop. (Who made that term up, anyway?)

To show how much influence politics has in Columbus, just check out this advertisement...it is on a newspaper box at the corner of Broad and High Streets, the epicenter of downtown Columbus. Makes me proud to be a lobbyist.

Tick tock...

Isn't it amazing how your perspective of time changes over the years?

In elementary school, the school year seemed to last for ages, and the first day of summer vacation was the first day of forever. Having to wait a week or two for anything was hard, because that was a long time.

Having the benefit of my 50-plus years of perspective, I now view a week as a fleeting moment. You can accomplish a lot in a week, but whatever it is that you have scheduled for next week will be here before you know it.

That's why this picture amuses me so much. It is easy to date: there are 4 candles on the birthday cake, so this picture was taken on March 13, 1967. That's little Horse-Face sitting to my left. Well, to be fair, her name is Laura, but those old family nicknames are hard to shake. Toad (Toni) is on the left, and Diane on the right.

Toad sent this picture to me recently, and it reminds me of how quickly time passes. I remember the day it was taken, and it astounds me that more than 40 years have since passed. All four of us in the picture have grown children. All of the girls are grandparents. In fact, I am the only sibling who does not have any grandchildren.

Well, I should add that I do not YET have any grandchildren, but all of that will change in November!