Soggy

There's another abandoned old sofa sitting along Route 82 in downtown Unionville. This one is right across from the ballfield parking lot, a few houses west of Hood's. I can't imagine it's in very good shape, given the four inches of rain that have fallen in the past few days.

So sue me

It will come as no surprise to my readers that we reporters develop distinct opinions about the people we encounter at municipal meetings month after month. A reporter colleague was telling me the other day about a gadfly he deals with regularly on his "beat," and I was immediately reminded of Mr. Frankland from Arthur Conan Doyle's classic Sherlock Holmes tale "The Hound of the Baskervilles." Apparently litigiousness is nothing new:
"His passion is for the British law, and he has spent a large fortune in litigation. He fights for the mere pleasure of fighting, and is equally ready to take up either side of a question, so that it is no wonder that he has found it a costly amusement Sometimes he will shut up a right of way and defy the parish to make him open it. At others he will with his own hands tear down some other man's gate and declare that a path has existed there from time immemorial, defying the owner to prosecute him for trespass ... He applies his knowledge sometimes in favour of the villagers of Fernworthy and sometimes against them, so that he is periodically either carried in triumph down the village street or else burned in effigy, according to his latest exploit."

Eye strain

At the Kennett Giant this afternoon a loyal "Unionville in the News" reader spotted me buying a soft pretzel (no mustard, please) in the lobby and asked if this was going to be part of my next column. I confessed to her that I've been so busy with work that going to the supermarket just might be a highlight of the week.
I'm a freelance book editor, and the past few weeks I have bitten off way more than I can chew (workwise, not the soft pretzel). Right now I'm working on a textbook on Integrative Dermatology and a treatise on Victorian literature, with a book on "Young Catholic America" to arrive any day.
I recently finished a book on the changing nature of protests in America (fascinating), a teacher's manual for a Communications course, and a history of the Muslim Brotherhood (talk about "ripped from the headlines").
But the project that has taken the lion's share of my time is proofreading a first edition of a 700-page ethics reader, an old-fashioned paper-and-pencil project that is heavy going to put it mildly. The typesetters consistently typed "modem" instead of "modern" and "die" instead of "the." Other mistakes I've found include "the cult of nacho" instead of "the cult of macho" and "lolled" instead of "killed." Yeah, there's a difference.
My deadline for this project is so tight that I couldn't even go out this morning and check out the flooding in Springdell. Ouch!

And how!

It's funny how fragments of my expensive classical education come in handy. Like at the Kennett Y on Thursday, when our instructor brought along a new "toy" -- a resistance band in two tensions, readily stretchable and barely stretchable. I chose the tough one, of course, and urged the woman who came in after me to do the same.
She looked at me skeptically.
"Hubris," she said in a warning tone.
Not quite a word one expects to hear at the gym  ... but, as it turned out, quite prescient of her. The blue band was challenging indeed, though hardly on the level of Greek tragedy.

Sportsmanship, good and bad

A friend of mine takes photos of athletes for a national sports magazine, so you can imagine the egos and entourages he has to deal with. But the other day he was shooting an acclaimed college basketball player and, much to my friend's surprise, the fellow turned out to be modest and gracious, even though he was nursing a bad head cold. My friend found it especially endearing that this soon-to-be-gazillionaire even brought along his own tissue box!
In sharp contrast, on Saturday night a friend and I could have served as poster children for poor sportsmanship when we found out that we both entered, but did not win, the same vegetable competition at the Unionville Community Fair last week. We heaped scorn on the puny, blotchy, misshapen specimen that inexplicably took first prize. (But naturally, the entries for which we did win ribbons fully deserved them; clearly those judges possessed the wisdom of Solomon.)

Second best

I have always loved my dentist's chair -- until this afternoon.
At my appointment today in West Chester the dental hygienist let slip the fact that another dentist in the practice has installed a heated, massaging chair in her office. How wonderful would that be?! Now all of a sudden I feel cheated.
I mentioned this to the Cranky Friend and he said it reminded him of the heated, massaging, womb-like business-class seat he once enjoyed on an Air Japan flight from Tokyo to Manila. (He also recalled fondly the beverage menu, which was chockfull of old brandy and single-malt Scotch. Attention, dental practice consultants.)

Shutdown

Perhaps the one good thing that has come out of the federal government shutdown is that I got to have breakfast at Perkins on Thursday morning with a young friend who is at home instead of at her internship with a federal agency. The most direct impact the shutdown has had on me is that PubMed, the National Institute of Health's database, isn't being updated, and as a textbook editor I spend quite a lot of time on the website verifying article titles. Somebody at PubMed is going to have a LOT of uploading to do when the budget is finally passed.

Let me explain

Blow Horn: you either totally get what all the fuss is about -- or you don't.
For me and the "Occupy Blow Horn" crowd, the reappearance of the sign on Oct. 6 means that tradition has triumphed in a world that, sadly, tends not to honor the customs of yesteryear. The sign was a comforting, loyal friend, much like That Tree (whose demise also triggered an outpouring of emotion from far and wide). One man who lives up the road from the sign used the word "romance" to describe our relationship with it, and he may be right.
Blow Horn also makes a great signpost: "Turn left at Blow Horn" is an easy shorthand if you're giving directions to The Whip. One friend confessed that for years he didn't know the exact name of Route 841 -- and with Blow Horn there, he didn't need to.
But a lot of people just don't understand -- alas, some of my own family members among them.
"Why," they ask me, baffled, "would you actually want someone blowing their horn in front of your house?"

Compost removed

On Sunday, Oct. 6, Russell Jones finished removing all the spent mushroom compost from his Hood Road farm, well ahead of the township-imposed Nov. 1 deadline.
"Today the research project by Stroud Water Research on the property will begin," he wrote in a Monday morning e-mail. "I will keep you posted regarding this study which I hope will provide us all with valuable insight about passive composting's environmental impact."
Last autumn Mr. Jones had 900 loads of spent compost trucked in from local mushroom farms to his West Marlborough property, located between Hood Road and Street Road near Mosquito Lane. It was supposed to decompose there for some months and then be removed to be bagged up and sold as potting soil. However, neighbors complained about the noise and truck traffic and told the township they were worried about environmental damage. The Brandywine Conservancy, which holds an easement on Mr. Jones' property, also objected to the use. Earlier this year the West Marlborough supervisors set the Nov. 1 deadline for removal.

Wednesday events

Two really interesting events are coming up on Wednesday, Oct. 16.
Author Laura Resau will be speaking at Unionville High School at 7 p.m. Ms. Resau's "The Queen of Water," based on the life of an Ecuadorian child slave, was the focus of the UHS English department's school-wide "One Book One Unionville" reading program. She will be meeting with students during the school day, and the entire community is invited to attend the evening session.
Dr. Houping Liu, a forest entomologist with the state Bureau of Forestry, will be at the Brandywine River Museum to give a lecture on the emerald ash borer, the destructive insect that I've written about several times in this column. It has been spotted as close as Montgomery County. Refreshments are at 6:30 and the lecture starts at 7. Register at 610-388-8386 or loldsschmidt@brandywine.org.

Baked goods

At the Unionville Community Fair I did my usual shift as the "director" of one of the Saturday afternoon baking competitions, and people submitted 11 apple pie entries and 10 chocolate cakes, an excellent turnout. (Alas, there was only one entry in the youth brownie/cookie contest. I was on the verge of texting the Young Relative and telling him to whip something up.)
The judges started their tasting at 2 p.m., and many of the contestants stood nearby watching anxiously. The judges take their work very seriously, and the process is a lengthy one. I was sent out periodically to give updates to the entrants, like a nurse updating the waiting family of a surgical patient: "The judges have one more pie to taste," I'd intone, or "The judges did not have a bad word to say about any of the chocolate cakes."
The entries were so good this year that the deliberations seemed to take extra-long. At one point I was instructed to say, "The judges are close to deciding."
"We don't believe you anymore," said one contestant.

It's back!

I was on my way to my Sunday-morning tennis match -- and oh my gosh, what a wonderful sight greeted me on Route 82: the landowner's young son was neatly repainting the much-missed Blow Horn sign on the old stone mill at the intersection of Routes 82 and 841.
The historic but much-weathered "disappeared" in October 2011, prompting much grumbling and a light-hearted "Occupy Blow Horn" motorcade. Having the beloved sign back in its rightful spot has brought great joy to us West Marlborough residents -- the response after I posted the news on social media was amazing. Thank you to the landowner, and three for the mill!