COMING FULL CIRCLE

Casa Mia today

My office is in an old Main Line mansion, built as a single family home in the 1920’s.  The estate was subdivided and a town home community was built in the 1970’s, but the old house was retained as the community center.  When I came here in 2003, my first office was in the servants’ quarters.  I would go up and down the back stairs several times a day to use the microwave oven to heat water for tea.  And while waiting those three minutes for my water to heat, I would look around in the kitchen and pantry – thinking about the activities that must have occurred there when this house was in its heyday – with a family living here and likely many servants scurrying about in this kitchen.  At some point I “discovered” the servant’s bell box on the wall in the pantry.  The house was originally wired so that each main room had a button on a wall; when pushed, it would ring the bell over the bell box, and also trigger a small arrow on the box that would point to the room where service was required.  The servant would then report to that location to hear what was required. 

The Bell Box

The bell box contained a hint of who may have lived here when the house was first built.  Two of the locations in gold lettering on the bell box are Mr. Jacob’s Room, and Mrs. Jacobs Terrace Room.  A pamphlet on the history of the house gave me a little more to go on.  I have been doing my own genealogy research for years, and so there finally came a moment when I decided to go off looking for the Jacobs family and see what I could find.  Over the last several years I have been able to find a fair amount on the family:  father John Jr., mother Dorothea, daughter Louise and son John III.  Their time in this house was not that long – from 1926 to 1938 – but they were the only family to own and occupy the house.  They lived here in style – they had approximately ten servants while they lived in the house that mother named Casa Mia:  chauffeur, gardeners, a cook, maids, a nanny.  They enjoyed entertaining – why else build a house with its own ballroom?  They sailed – at the Corinthian Yacht Club in Philadelphia when in town, and at the Watch Hill Yacht Club in Watch Hill, Rhode Island where they summered.  They rode horses – with the Radnor Hunt and jumping at Devon.  The children went to good schools – Shipley and Haverford School. 

Louise, Dorothea and Jake

 And yet no one’s life is all roses.  Mother and father divorced when young John went off to college, and the family moved away from Bryn Mawr, never to return.  Young Louise married a dashing young man from a prominent Chicago family, moved off to a beautiful apartment overlooking Central Park in New York City, had a child, but was stricken with cancer and died before the child’s first birthday, in 1941.  Mother moved off to New York and lived at 950 Park Avenue in Manhattan, where she passed away at age 71 in 1967.  Father lived in Florida, remarried, and kept a summer home in Hyannis.  He died in 1970, at age 76.  And young John, called “Jake” by his family?  In reaching out to his descendants, I was astounded to find that Jake was alive and well, and living in Connecticut.

Jake left Bryn Mawr for Williams College.  World War II intervened and he enlisted in the Army Air Corps.  His rationale:  “If I was going to go to war, I decided I’d rather fly there than walk there.”  He returned to Williams to get his degree after the war, and met and fell in love with beautiful Greta.  They raised 9 children, 8 girls and a boy, and spent a long life together along the Connecticut and Rhode Island shoreline that he had grown to love during his summers there as a child.  Greta died a few years ago, and John has moved into a retirement community in Essex, Connecticut. 

Jake on left, and the author on right, recreating the original photo.

 After years of chasing after these ghosts of the Jacobs family, I really wanted to meet him and spend some time with him.  Essex is 4 1/2 hours by GPS, but an hour or two longer if you actually have to drive on I-95 in Connecticut traffic, so it is not exactly around the corner.  In conversations with his eldest daughter, I offered to drive up and meet her there so that she could introduce me to her father.  Our schedules were never quite in synch.  She sent me pictures last year of the celebration of his 91st birthday.  If I was ever going to meet Jake, I needed to do it sooner rather than later.  But finally this week, we made a firm date – “come up and have lunch with us in Essex.”

I spent several hours taking lots of photos and movie clips of the house.  Jake’s bedroom was in the room that is now my office.  We both had a view of the same huge oak tree through the back window, and the view of the comings and goings from the two driveways in to the house.  I think of him whenever I walk in – I see the young boy from the pictures that the family has shared with me.  On Tuesday I loaded up my computer with the photos and off I went to Essex.  It is a gorgeous New England town – immaculate and with well preserved 18th and 19th century homes.  I stayed in the Griswold Inn, the oldest continually operating inn in the country – since 1776.  I woke up early and explored, then studied my Jacobs family history notes, and put the photos in some kind of order.  I was not sure if our meeting would simply be lunch, or whether I would get a chance to talk more about his memories of Casa Mia.  I was prepared for either, but hoping that we could chat. 

As it turns out, we hit it off well and had a wonderful time.  We enjoyed lunch together with two of his daughters, and a caregiver.  After lunch both daughters had to leave, but Jake and I went back to his room to talk, look at his photos, and then look at my photos of his boyhood home.  He left to go off to college in 1938, and returned once, in 1980, when he spoke to the residents of Millridge on his family’s life there in the 20’s and 30’s.  The photos brought back memories – and we spent the afternoon talking about them. 

Jake on left, and author on right.

I sat in Connecticut traffic for a long time on the ride home.  But that gave me plenty of time to review my thoughts on this whole improbable journey, that started with a name on the bell box.  I have delved in to their family history as if it was my own.  I have put flowers on the grave of the young Louise.  I play the piano in the ballroom and think of what songs were being played during parties in the 1930’s.  My wife and I had our wedding reception on the back patio here.  And now I have met the last known living link to that past. 

I am not obsessed – but was simply drawn into this story – of the Main Line during its golden era.  And in researching the story, I have wanted to share what I have learned, and that has led me to regular writing for publication – something that I had always wanted to do but never had the time for.  Now I make the time for it.  I have met some wonderful people along the way.  Life has layers that we sometimes are not aware of.  If you are walking about in this house, and not thinking about the past, then you are missing one of those layers.  I always see the young boy, running in and out of these rooms.  Now I have met him.  The story has come full circle.  And I have been changed and enriched in the process.  

April 12, 1912: And the Band Played On

On April 14, 1912, the Titanic hit the iceberg at 11:40 that night. The eight band members, who were off duty by that time in their second class cabin on E Deck, were called on by their bandleader, Wallace Hartley, to assemble on the deck and play music to help calm the situation. The ship was unsinkable, as everyone knew, and so seeing the band playing without concern would show people that everything was under control.

The band, also called the orchestra, was an "all star team" - assembled from the best of the musicians who worked the White Star line. The five older members who played as a quintet in the first class area were Wallace H. Hartley, 33, the bandmaster, Jock Hume, 29, first violin, Fred Clark, 30, bass viol, Percy Taylor, 32, piano, and John Wesley Woodward, 32, on cello. Three younger musicians filled in with the main band, and also played as a trio in the second class cabin and restaurant: Theodore Brailey, 24, piano, Georges Krins, 23, violin, and Roger Bricoux, 20, cello.

They played songs from their usual sets, first in the first class lounge on the A Deck, which had an upright piano, when it was unclear what had happened to the ship. Later they moved outside the lounge to the main deck, where they continued to play (without the piano) when it became more likely that the ship would not survive the night. They played popular music - light waltzes and ragtime, remembered by one survivor as "lively airs". The White Star Line had a songbook for the musicians who played on their cruises, the White Star Line Songbook. In the book were popular favorites like Alexander's Ragtime Band, the 1911 hit song for young American songwriter Irving Berlin, Oh You Beautiful Doll, Offenbach's Barcarolle waltz, and the Blue Danube Walt. Ragtime was a relatively "new" style, and most of the passengers who recalled specific songs that night remembered the more classical ones such as Songe d'Automne and Valse Septembre.

By 2:00 A.M. the last lifeboat had left the ship, and yet there were still over 1,500 people on board. The giant gash that had ripped into the hull had allowed the sea water to begin filling the lower holds of the ship, and so the front of the Titanic, the bow, sank lower and lower into the water, and towards the end the back of the ship, the stern, began to rise out of the water. When it became clear that all was lost, bandmaster Hartley dismissed the small band that had played now for about two hours. By some accounts, one musician, either the violin or cello, began to play a hymn, which some remembered as "Nearer My God to Thee". The other musicians joined in. Musicians, when inspired, play from their heart, and no doubt in this circumstance, and knowing you are probably playing the last song that you will ever play, your emotions flow into the song. That was the last song of the night, the last of the crossing, the last song these musicians ever played. Its sounds floated out over the ocean to the lifeboats that had pulled away from the sinking ship.

The band no doubt said their thanks to each other, "It was great playing with you", and then their goodbyes. In that situation, each person makes peace with his thoughts. Bandleader Hartley still had hope: he put his violin in its case, and found rope to strap it to his body. Minutes later, at 2:28 a.m., the ship plunged into the sea and disappeared from view.


All of the musicians died. The bodies of three were recovered: Hume, Clark and Hartley. Hartley's violin was still strapped to his body. The violin disappeared into history, but recently resurfaced. It has been a gift from his fiancé, and was inscribed on the back: “For Wallace on the occasion of our engagement. From Maria.” After Hartley's body was recovered, the violin was sent back to Maria, as she mentions it in her diary.

Clark was on his first trip across the Atlantic. He had never played for White Star before, but the company wanted the best musicians to play for the greatest ship in the world, and so offered him good pay to make just one trip. His winter concert season had just ended, and so he finally accepted.

A fellow White Star musician and friend heard the news and lamented, "The thing I can't realize is that happy Jock Hume is dead. He was the merriest, happiest young Scotchman you ever saw. His family have been making musical instruments in Scotland for generations. I heard him say once that they were minstrels in the old days. It is certainly hard to believe that he is not alive and having his fun somewhere in the world."

Many of the bodies that were recovered were brought to shore in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Three cemeteries there are the final resting place of 150 of the passengers that night, including musicians Hume and Clark. Hartley's body was returned to his home town of Colne, England.

In the 100 years since that night, some have criticized the band, for playing light music, for setting a mood that may have convinced some passengers that they did not really need to get into the lifeboats. There is debate about whether they actually played "Nearer My God to Me". There are several tunes to which the hymn is sung, two of which were more popular in England and one more popular in America. The first British tune is called Horbury, and was composed by British composer John Bacchus Dykes. A second tune for the hymn, popular with British Methodists, is "Propior Deo" (Nearer to God), written by Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert and Sullivan). The American tune is called Bethany, and was composed by American composer Lowell Mason (best known for "Joy to the World"). Several surviving passengers claim to have heard the hymn from their lifeboats, but the American passengers heard the American version, and the British passengers heard an English version. Which tune was actually played? The answer went down with the ship.

I leave it to Captain Hindsight and Colonel Quibble to wrangle about the details. As a musician and a band member, I applaud these men for what they did. If faced with the same prospect, if I knew that I had one hour to live, what better way to spend it than playing music with my musical friends, and performing for a crowd who needed the calming and the hope that music provides?

For one version of this final performance, check out this You Tube clip from the 1958 movie, "A Night To Remember".

For the boys in the band that night, your fellow musicians remember you and salute you.

"Still all my song shall be, nearer my God to Thee."

Mr. Stubblebine's Horse

(I wrote this story several years ago about a small moment in time where the lives of my mother and the Stubblebine family intersected. I was supposed to play music last night with a Stubblebine descendant. Unfortunately she could not make it, but running into that name made me go and dig out this story to re-publish it.)

In 1942, my mother Mildred Sheeler Hall was a 16 year old high school student living in West Philadelphia. Her mother, Ida Evelyn Sheeler, had died in 1931 when Mildred was five years old, and Mildred knew her only through the memories of her Spring City cousins, the Sheelers and the Cooks. After her mother's death, Mildred's family had moved to Orlando, Florida, where they lived across the street from a municipal park and riding academy. Mildred learned to ride horses while living in Florida, and after her father died in 1940, she had returned to the Philadelphia area to live with her aunt, Mildred Mae Sheeler, near Rittenhouse Square in the city. After school and on weekends, she would go to the Fairmount Stables in West Philadelphia to ride horses.

Her Aunt Edie Cook knew of Mildred's love for horses. Edie, the daughter of Francis Cook, a Spring City pharmacist, had occasion to talk to Mr. Stubblebine, who ran the real estate agency next door to the Cook pharmacy in Spring City. Mr. Stubblebine had a horse that he was very proud of. Edie asked whether her niece could ride it some time, and Mr. Stubblebine extended the invitation to her to come out and ride his beautiful horse. Edie then passed along the invitation to Mildred to come out to Spring City and ride Mr. Stubblebine's horse.

Mildred was a good judge of horses, having ridden both good and bad ones in her time in Florida and at the Fairmount Stables. Her expectations were low on the weekend when she went out to Spring City to meet Edie and go see the horse.

They went to Mr. Stubblebine's house and then out to the barn, and Mr. Stubblebine brought out a magnificent horse. Mildred couldn't believe her good fortune, to be permitted to ride this beautiful animal, nor the generosity of Mr. Stubblebine to entrust this proud possession to her. He saddled the horse, and then had it pose for Mildred to take several pictures. She then mounted the horse and rode around the barn area to get the feel of the horse. Once she and the horse had gotten comfortable with each other, and Mr. Stubblebine had gotten comfortable that this young girl knew what she was doing, she asked if she could take the horse out through the fields to nearby Zion Lutheran Church cemetery. Mr. Stubblebine said that would be fine, and so off went Mildred astride this magnificent horse.

Mildred's mother, Ida Evelyn Sheeler, was buried in the cemetery at Zion, along with Ida's mother, Ella Mae Cook Sheeler, and Ida's sister, Doris Sheeler. Ella Mae and Doris had died within a year of each other in 1912-13 from tuberculosis, the same disease that had taken away Ida in 1931. Mildred had never been to her mother's grave. She rode the horse methodically up and down the rows of gravestones at Zion Cemetery for an hour or so, but she never found her mother's grave.

Years later, in 1984, I went to Zion Cemetery on the same mission, to try to find the grave of my grandmother, Ida Evelyn Sheeler. Instead of a horse, I rode my trusty Schwinn 10 speed bike. I didn't know of Mildred's ride many years before. I simply did what she must have done - started at one end and worked my way up and down, row by row, though the cemetery. I was more fortunate than the young Mildred;

I found the Sheeler family grave about midway up the one field that I had started in, and pulled out a notebook and described where I had found it. When I returned home that day, I called my mother and told her that I had found her Sheeler family's grave sites, and she and I returned several weeks later so that I could show the graves to her. That is the only time she had been at her mother's gravesite.

As I write this, it is now May of 2005. My mother, in her eightieth year has been diagnosed with cancer, and I have been visiting her to go through her old family pictures and stir up these old memories. When we came to the series of four unmarked photos which my mother immediately identified as "Mr. Stubblebine's horse", my siblings and I all laughed that she recalled this horse and the peculiar name of its owner, sixty five years later. She can look at pictures of the various horses that she rode in the 30's and 40's and remember their names and some of their attributes.

I wouldn't have remembered this name for very long, but coincidentally within a couple of days, as I was searching on the Internet for what had become of Spring City High School, I came across the name Stubblebine in connection with Spring City, and I followed the link to a Stubblebine genealogy site that mentioned several Stubblebines in Spring City. Two likely candidates stand out: Harvey Stubblebine (b. 1900, d. 1964) and his brother Everett (b. 1901, d. 1978), who both were born and died in Spring City.

The report of Everett's marriage noted that he had just completed a course in real estate law, so it seems that he is most likely the Mr. Stubblebine who owned the magnificent horse. Unfortunately, his back is turned to us in the surviving pictures (see attached), and so the identity is a mystery to us, at this distance, but it may well be that his descendants may recognize this side of him.

I wrote to Joe Stubblebine, the keeper of this very thorough Stubblebine genealogy web site, and he suggested that I write out my mother's story and send it along with the pictures that we had. I was glad to do so. The story is not one of action or adventure; simply a slice of life from this time, a brief intersection between the Stubblebines and the Sheelers of Spring City, a thread in the tapestry of life. I am glad to share it with the Stubblebine family and friends.

Contributed in August 2005 by Douglas P. Humes

Smokers Unite – you have nothing to lose but your chains!

What is the stupidest thing you’ve ever done in life? For me, there is a variety to choose from. But in the Top 5 has to be the decision to smoke cigarettes, a mistake made with that first one in 7th grade, and then repeated approximately 20 times a year, 365 days a year, for over thirty years. I quit a hundred times during that period, but only the final one ever lasted any significant time. But that final quit, in 2001, has been the life changer. I don’t miss it, and I don’t kid myself about its virtues. It is a powerful addiction to a drug, and like any addiction, it whispers lies into your ears about how much you need it. I could not quit until I approached it not as “giving up” something that I liked, but quitting an addiction to something I hated.

About six years later, having lived through a number of deaths of contemporaries, I began to wrestle with that issue of mortality. I always thought that some day I would have to pay for my 30+ years of smoking. And I wondered whether there was anything proactive that I could do. Through a client that arranges for clinical trials of cancer drugs, I became aware of that whole world of clinical trials, and so I went searching in the public data base for clinical trials of lung cancer. And I found what I was looking for: a clinical trial for the early detection of lung cancer. I signed up for it.

The common wisdom on lung cancer is that once it is noticeable enough to detect, it is too late in the process to offer much in the way of treatment. (And of course there are exceptions to that rule – exceptions who I know by name and who are disease free years later). But that is the basic state of the art with lung cancer: if they could catch it earlier, then they might have more treatment options. The clinical trial I signed up for is seeking to do just that – it is exploring whether there are perhaps biological markers that may indicate why lung cancer starts to grow in certain people but not others.

How do they gather this information? First, they start with the study group most likely to get lung cancer – heavy smokers and former heavy smokers. They bring us in one by one, and first ask a battery of questions on lifestyle and family history. They test our lung capacity now to establish a base line. Take blood samples. And sputum samples. And then do a CT scan of our lungs. The scans are reviewed and then we are sent a report, with a nifty CD containing our lung scans (see photo above for one little slice). They tell us where we are today. If there is no apparent disease or progression, we are told simply to come back in a couple of years and they will look at it all again. If they see disease, then you are sent to your own medical providers for treatment. The study is not a treatment study, but an information study.

We are all adding our data to the data base. Over time, some of us will be diagnosed with lung cancer. When they have a larger enough study and history, then researchers will be looking for biological markers that may differentiate the cancer patients from the rest. And if they can find those markers, then in the future they can perhaps select people with those markers for earlier treatment.

My latest visit was two weeks ago. The location of the study is at NYU Medical Center in Manhattan, in a big medical complex a few blocks south of the Untied Nations near the East River. I am situational friendly with Ellen and Jacquie, the nurses who are working on the study. We repeat the sampling and questions from the original visit. Chat about our lives. This year Ellen said “we want to make a good effort on the sputum sample this year.” She laughed when she said it; I asked “why?” She said that in a colon cancer study they think they may have found a marker in sputum. So she repeated “they’re really pushing the sputum.” I did my best, in a telephone booth contraption breathing a saline inhalant that irritates the lungs, and was finally able to deliver a small sample into a plastic dish with a lid. I apologized for it, and she said “No, that is actually a nice one. I’ve become an expert on sputum!” It was all done in a light hearted way.

After the visit, I met my wife waiting in the lobby, and off we went to see the rest of New York. Each time I have gone, we have turned the visit into a night or a weekend in New York. We walked a bit, had a nice dinner, and saw Spiderman on Broadway. We stayed overnight, and then made our way home the next day. The visit and the participation in the study is something that I look forward to. I am being proactive. I am contributing to the greater good. I am having a great weekend with my wife. And two weeks later I get my report, with a new CD with the newest scans and the older ones as well. And so far, it has always been good news.

More good news. Participation is free. I think they put through a claim if your insurance covers some of the items, but otherwise, you get these diagnostic services for free because you are participating in a study. Of course there is no such thing as “free”; someone is funding the study. Ellen indicated that they have funding to last for at least another five years. I asked her if they are still enrolling new participants. She said yes, indeed. That’s where you, the reader, come in. If you are a current or former heavy smoker, and are willing to get yourself up to New York once every year or two, then this is a good reason to do so. And if you are not that smoker, but know of loved ones who are, you may want to let them know about this study.

Here is the background and contact information:

Ellen Eylers, RN, MSN, MPH
Program Coordinator
NYU Lung Cancer Biomarker Center
550 1st Ave, 7N24NBV
New York, NY, 10016
p 212.263.6126
f 212.263.7980
ellen.eylers@med.nyu.edu
website: http://medicine.med.nyu.edu/pulmonary/node/731

So am I blogging about lung cancer as something that is “right with the world”? I am not. I hate cancer. Despise it. It has taken a lot of love out of my life. So this is the way I fight back. I become proactive. I let everyone know that this study is out there. We together accumulate data, and a lot of smart and talented people review it all, and find better ways to combat our common enemy. We still lose soldiers along the way; but hopefully with enough of us contributing, we eventually win the war. That’s what is right with the world – people devise this study, people fund it, people participate, people administer it, and over time, we find some truth that helps make the world a better place. And we see a lot of Broadway shows in the process.

If these walls could talk ...

My office is in an old Main Line mansion (known during the day as Casa Mia), built by the Jacobs family in 1926. I have been researching its history, and the history of the family, and writing a monthly article for the community newsletter. Last night I was in my office late, chasing my deadline, and writing a follow up on last month's article about the 21 year old debutante Louise Jacobs and her life in the mid 1930's. And in the midst of that effort, something cool happened. Here's the article:

In June of 1937, the Chicago Tribune noted that “Hubbard Phelps has a new Taylor cub plane and has been seen flying over Watch Hill almost every day. … He will see the Harvard Yale boat races at New London from the air and will have as his guest Miss Louise Gaylord of Honolulu. Miss Gaylord, who is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Gaylord, formerly of Chicago and now of Honolulu will spend a week with Mrs. Phelps at Anchorage.” Watching the dashing Hubbard Phelps from the ground that summer was another Louise, the striking blond 21 year old socialite from Bryn Mawr, Louise Jacobs. And no doubt young Hubbard was watching her back.

In that summer of 1937, Hubbard Phelps was 21 years old, and spending that summer with his family in Watch Hill, an exclusive resort community in Rhode Island. As a history of the town reports,

“By the turn of the 20th century, there were seven sumptuous hotels on the water's edge. Also, at this time the first "summer cottages" were built by a syndicate of Cincinnati industrialists. By 1920, most of the Watch Hill cottages that stand today had been constructed by people from such places as Philadelphia and St. Louis. The seclusion of the resort attracted the rich and famous: Isadora Duncan, Clark Gable, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Mary Pickford, Andrew Mellon and Henry Ford.”

The Phelps were a wealthy and prominent Chicago family. Hubbard’s grandmother, Louise Hadduck de Koven, had been involved with Jane Adams and Hull House, and worked for children’s rights in an era where children were ground up in an urban industrialized society, and she was alive and active at Watch Hill, living until 1953. Hubbard’s father was Mason Phelps, who captained the Yale golf team and was a member of the gold medal winning U.S. golf team at the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis. He had a career as a professional golfer, and then founded a manufacturing business, the Pheoll Manufacturing Co., and served as president from 1908 until his death in 1945. Young Hubbard Phelps had his father’s genes – in 1935, at age 19, he won the Misquamicut Men's Golf Club championship, the youngest golf champion in history of the Misquamicut Club. He was a pilot as well, and had studied aviation in Oakland, California, and then in 1937 his family had bought him the new Taylor Cub airplane, at a cost of about $1475. Hubbard was young, rich, handsome, a star athlete, a dashing pilot. Hubbard was a “catch”.

It was a small summer community, and everyone knew, or knew of, each of the other families. The Jacobs had been summering there for years as well. Louise Jacobs and Hubbard were the same age – he was born 20 days before her. They had played golf and tennis, and sailed and swum together since they were little children. And Louise Jacobs was young, rich and beautiful as well. She was a “catch” too. While the newspapers were reporting in June that Hubbard was squiring Miss Gaylord from Hawaii, by October of that year, the Chicago Daily Tribune was announcing “Young Phelps is Engaged to Eastern Girl”. The article went on to note:

“Mrs. deKoven Phelps and her sister, Mrs. William McCormick Blair, are in Bryn Mawr, Pa. today for a large dinner party Mr. and Mrs. John Jacobs are giving there to announce the engagement of their daughter, Louise, to Hubbard Phelps, son of Mrs. Phelps of Lake Forest. The wedding is planned for the spring.”

Something clicked between these two young people that summer, or had perhaps been growing for years. In the fall, he returned to Washington DC where he was living, and she returned to Casa Mia with her family. But the relationship had to have been established by the fall, as the families were announcing the engagement at a dinner party on Saturday, October 30, 1937 at Casa Mia.

As I sit and write these lines, there is a party below me in Casa Mia. The conversation rises and falls, there is music in the background, and the occasional burst of laughter. It is the sound of people having fun together. And I am imagining that if I go downstairs, I will see the beautiful Louise Jacobs, and the dashing Hubbard Phelps, the center of attention of their proud parents, the two dowager grandmothers, and the gathered brothers of Louise and Hubbard. When I walk through the mansion, I am always imagining what these walls witnessed, and what they would say it they could talk. Tonight, as I finish this piece, I realize that they are talking to me, adding to my mental images of Louise and Hubbard and their families, and telling me what the engagement party sounded like in 1937, as the sounds drift up into John Jacob's old bedroom. Now I am going downstairs, and wondering whether I am going to pass through that wrinkle in time, and end up back in 1937. If you don't hear from me after this, you'll know where I am.

What's right with the world: old haunted houses, wrinkles in time, walls that talk, and an active imagination.

In praise of the Ten Minute Commute

On this wet and cold day, which generally slows down traffic, causes accidents, and leads to a much longer commute, I made it to the office in the usual time: ten minutes. I pass through two traffic lights, then down one long hill to a turn that is usually backed up - for people headed north. But I head east - and so can use the shoulder to get around the morning backup to my right turn,, and then a long uphill, passing beneath a heavily trafficked interstate that is always jammed. Then I have to make a left against oncoming traffic - sometimes I have to wait as long as a whole minute - but this morning, a kindly oncoming driver flashed his beams at me - "Go ahead buddy, make your turn" - and so I was into the homestretch, down a lane past a school and church and then into the driveway to my workplace. Walking from the parking lot to the building. I heard honking. Not the human variety but the goose variety - and looked up to see one goose sitting atop a chimney on one building, and one goose sitting on top the chimney of another building. Both honking. Perhaps arguing over which chimney will be their spring nest. In ten minutes, I have arrived at my office, with little traffic, little to hold me up, and not even enough time to get the entire news cycle from KYW. And with my peace of mind intact.

Rarely have I had a commute like this. In the past, I have worked in the city, where the commute involved first getting to a station, parking, getting to the train, waiting, riding, then making my way to the office from the train station. That could take an hour on average, and of course much longer with weather conditions interfering with each leg of the journey. In later years, I had a job that was about a full marathon, 26 miles, from home to the office in Kennett Square. But over a road laid out in Colonial times - the old Baltimore Pike - over hills and around curves, past new shopping malls, through many cross streets and traffic lights, and towards the tail end, over the Brandywine Creek. On a good day, a 45 minute commute. And on its worst day, when the Brandywine flooded out of its normal course, and the bridges were all closed, I had to drive to Wilmington to find a bridge across the "creek" that was still open. I saw accidents weekly, and read about fatalities along this stretch several times a year. In snow, with the hills, it could take between one and two hours. It was discouraging to get into the car and realize that I still had this long commute in front of me. It was not a commute on cruise control listening to books on tape. It was work.

With my current commute, I can bike it in nicer weather. I even ran it once, just to try that out. The distance is not bad, 3 miles, but there is a significant hill in each direction, and so running is an option, but low on the list when my middle aged knees have a vote. But it's good to know I could walk home if that ever became necessary.

I view the time that I save through my commute, and the peace of mind of having such an easy one, as a form of pay that I receive in my current job. I am self employed, and in choosing to be self employed, I have chosen also economic uncertainty, which is magnified in times of economic turmoil like we are experiencing now. I have no steady paycheck. No steady benefits. I only eat what I kill, as the saying goes. But I am also paid in two items that so far the government does not tax: time and peace of mind. My commute is invariably ten minutes each way, each day. I never have to drive through Wilmington to get here. I never have to stand in a train station listening for the announcement that the trains are delayed or canceled due to weather conditions. From the front door at home to the car is ten seconds. From the parking lot to the office door is about 90 seconds. The only honking I have ever heard is from geese. I honked back at them this morning, but it was a friendly exchange. I arrive, not stressed out from the commute, but at times oblivious to it. It goes so quickly and painlessly that some days I pull in and don't remember passing through the landscape at all. I find value in that.

Life may change and I may be thrust back onto the wheel of the rat race, but this morning, this cold and rainy morning with people further to the north dealing with March snow flurries and icy roads, with traffic backing up on the interstate, I had a ten minute commute.

What's right with the world? A ten minute commute!

"And the seasons, they go round and round"

A few weeks ago, my wife learned a new trick - took a cutting from one of our forsythia bushes and brought it inside and put it in water. A week later, it was in bloom. A reminder of what is to come. After the rain this weekend, driving to the office yesterday there were whole patches of small white flowers, snowdrops, that were not there the previous day. Today, crocuses shooting out of the ground. I am going out to run at lunch today - and it looks like a two layer day, as opposed to the three and four layer runs of winter. People were talking about watching the Phillies play on Sunday - baseball - on television. A lot of great expectations for this team. Will they ever lose a game all season? In spring training, you can think thoughts like this. Spring is a time of rebirth. A month ago there were eight foot high piles of snow where my office mailbox is. Now, crocuses are coming up. Robins are back. There is some chirping going on in the morning - not a lot yet, but it's starting. How do they all know it's time?

I still get excited about that first snowfall in December - how beautiful it looks when everything is covered in white. Love it when the leaves start changing in the fall and their smell is in the air. And love the first trip down to the beach - Memorial Day - when the sun is out, and the brave and foolish are the first to swim in the ocean, and the rest of us are in beach chairs, just enjoying the sun and sand and surf. I don't know how the seasons change in China or Egypt or Australia or Fiji. But here in Pennsylvania, they come in four distinctive varieties, and it is always a pleasure to welcome in the new one.

What's right with the world? Snowdrops. Two layer days. Spring training, when everyone can dream of winning the pennant. The change of seasons. Painless rebirth.