Delmar DustPan

It is Ruth Ann and her daughter and grandchild. Ruth Ann is one of those Wicomico County Government workers (is that an oxymoron?).

My daughters are no longer in the public school system. A fact that I am thankful for. Never less I was looking at the Delmar Elementary School website and I see they have the school supply list for each grade on their website. As I recall this was an important bit of information, at this time of year, when the stores are selling back to school supplies.

For those lucky people who may be going on vacation and leaving Delmar you can have the police make property checks on your home by contacting them and telling them when you will be out of town. Their non emergency phone number is 410-896-3132. You can also email them this information by going to their website and selecting PCO Ed Ferro from the email list.

With the recent news items about Princess Anne Eden/Allen area wells going dry perhaps I should discuss the Town of Delmar Water wells.

The ground beneath Delmar has a number of different aquifers to draw water from. The most simplified explanation of an aquifer I can think to give is it was an ancient river that filled in with gravel and sand and additional layers of sand covered it until it reached the 40 to 70 feet above sea level that we are. This broad river channel is still there, so water will accumulate in these channels as it filters down from the surface and flow through the gravel and that is what we tap into.

The top 50 to 75 feet of soil is considered groundwater. There is usually not a clear cut aquifer in this first layer. The main aquifer is the Columbia. It goes from sea level to about 100 feet down. The aquifer below that is the Manokin aquifer, which is about 150 feet below sea level. There are many other aquifers but like the rivers they are, they may not flow into our area or may be too thin of a layer to be worth while to tap in to.

The Town has two wells at the North end of Town. Well 2A is 205 feet deep which puts it in the Manokin Aquifer. It can pump 1,000 GPM. The second well is Well 3A and it is 143 feet deep which puts it in the Columbia aquifer. The second well can draw 750 GPM. There is a well at the south end of town but due to the iron content it is not used.

Farmers and other developments are also pumping from the same aquifers as we are. There are 5 large wells within a five mile limit of Delmar in Delaware that draw from the Columbia aquifer and one that draws from the Manokin aquifer. Each well draws from 600 to 1,000 GPM. There are of course a large number of smaller wells in the five mile radius of Delmar. I do not know how often the water supply division of DNREC monitor these wells. I also do not know the number of large wells in Maryland that would draw from these same aquifers.

I was watching Cramer's Mad Money tonight on TV and saw he was recommending a French Oil Company (Total -TOT). It is but one more sign that the United States is revolving around in it's on going love/hate relationship with France. The most recent low point in that relationship was France's viewpoint on invading Iraq. It turns out they were right and we were wrong. Now we are starting see little favorable signs toward the French such as the cartoon "Ratatouille", which would not have been made four years ago. I think the problem is both countries feel they rule the world and each has an enormous ego.

When I was in my 20's I was impressed with the poems of Yevgeny Yevtushenko. He was/is a Russian poet, born in 1933. In the 1960's and 1970's he swore he was a true Russian and would never leave his country to flee to the west. When the Soviet Union collapsed he came to America and teaches Poetry at American Universities. There are so many of his poems that I like, this is one website. that has a number of them, but certainly not all my favorites.

The problem with translations is you don't know if it accurately reflects the poem in the native language. Also I notice the title of translated poems will change with each translator. In the website referenced above, over 50% of the titles are different from the book I have with his poems in it, but the poems are basically the same.

Here is one from Penguin Books "Yevtushenko Selected Poems"

PARTY CARD

A shot-up forest full of black holes.
Mind crushing explosions.
He wants some berries, he wants some berries:
the young Lieutenant, lying in his blood.
I was a smallish boy,
who crawled in the long grass till it was dark
and brought him back a cap of strawberries
and when they came there was no use for them.
The rain of July lightly falling
He was lying in remoteness and silence
among the ruined tanks and the dead.
The rain glistened on his eyelashes.
There were sadness and worry in his eyes.
I waited saying nothing and soaking,
like waiting for an answer to something
he couldn't answer. Passionate with silence
unable to see when he asked me,
I took his party card from his pocket.
And small and tired and without understanding
wandering in the flushed and smoking dark,
met up with refugees moving east
and somehow through the terribly flashing night
we travelled without a map, the priest
with his long grey hair and his rucksack,
and me and a sailor with a wounded arm,
Child crying. Horse whinnying
And answered to with love and courage
and white, white, the bell-towers rang out
speaking to Russia with a tocsin voice
Wheatfields blackened round their villages.
In the woman's coat I wore at the time.
I felt for the party card close to my heart.

When companies are owned by Koreans some times this happens

Today is my wife's birthday. I am forbidden to post a photo or mention her age. If you see her today wish her a Happy Birthday.

From the Public Archives "This Day in Delaware History".

"1907 Warden A. S. Meserve resigned from the New Castle County Workhouse because of his opposition to the whipping post. It was the warden's job to do the whipping."

On July 17th, 1997 F. W. Woolworth Company wrapped it up and closed their remaining five and dime stores. The competition was just too tough. With Woolworth closing it allowed WalMart to take its place and move into the group of companies that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Woolworth had been around since 1878.

Woolworth was known for reasonable prices and cheaper made goods. I always liked it as you could find something you could afford in the store. Growing up in Salisbury it was always a place to go after school or after the Saturday matinee movies. When I moved to Delaware I switched to the Seaford Woolworths.

One of the best things was the lunch counter. It was always a treat to have a sandwich and a soft drink at the counter, both as a child and as an adult. I use to like to take my daughters, when they were growing up, to the lunch counter in the Seaford Woolworth. They always enjoyed sitting on those stools to the lunch counter.

Well it is that time of the year again when you are hearing stories abouts bats. With the dry spell I hear they are sweeping in over people's swimming pools looking for water. I understand Snow Hill has issued a notice that they have found a bat with rabies. Down the street from me they found a bat in the room where their children sleep and since they could not determine if the children had been bitten or not, the four children are having the rabies shot series.

Now living in town in older homes you always encounter bats. About once every couple of years I will find one in the house. I wait until they perch on a wall and throw a towel or blanket on them and toss the blanket outside. By morning they are gone. Since the chimneys on the older houses are not used in the summer they like to sleep in them. Also since people open their attic windows some to let the hot air out and they enter through those cracks to the attic.

The Santiago Surrender Tree where General Toral surrendered the City of Santiago.

Since July 3rd the American Army had surrounded the City of Santiago, Cuba. Over the next two weeks a siege of the city existed and surrender agreements were worked out with General Jose Toral. There was some requirement for saving of face for the Spanish General to surrender so a mock attack was made by the American and on July 17th General Toral surrendered. This ended most of the hostilities on Cuba.

The surrender document.

Today is National Ice Cream Day, for a bit of information on it click here.

The Daily Times, in their "In Times Past" feature had a short blurb on an incident involving the Delmar police force 25 years ago.

July 14, 1982

"A Delmar police chief and a patrolman were convicted of beating a Laurel man into confessing a crime he was never charged with committing. Chief Harry S. Hodgins and Patrolman James W. Harris were convicted of assault and police misconduct after 14 witnesses testified in a two-day trial and four hours of jury deliberation. Wicomico County State Attorney Richard Warren said it was the first police brutality conviction in the history of the county. The officers assaulted Robert Craig Wooten by beating him and threatening him with a shotgun. Wooten threaten to sue the town of Delmar for $100,000 if the officers were found innocent. He was satisfied with the verdict."