Robins Like Blueberries

I learned something new the other day.  Robins like blueberries.

Mary, Delaney and I spent over an hour Thursday afternoon watching one robin, and then a half dozen robins, pick their way through our blueberry bushes.


Yes, we could have covered the bushes with netting to keep the birds out and we have done that in past years.  But we decided it was more fun watching the birds.  The robins, the hummingbirds visiting the feeder outside the living room window, and a few chickadees and Carolina wrens made for an enjoyable afternoon.  Besides, a quart of blueberries is only $5.00 over at BJ's.

Update: Chesapeake Bay Beaches Safe

Virginia Beach environmental health officials have announced that water quality tests from the Chesapeake Bay beaches have come back clean.  The tests followed reports from last weekend of foul-smelling black globules in the water and on the beach.  I detailed in a post Wednesday how one city official theorized the globs were sea sponges.

Meanwhile, something else has turned up in local waters.  The Virginian-Pilot is reporting that a small alligator or crocodile was captured in a small pond in the 500 block of Progress Lane, which is about a half-mile from Lynnhaven Mall.  The animal, possibly a caiman, was only three feet long but could eventually be more than twice that size. 

The reptile is in the care of the Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center in Virginia Beach.  Aquarium spokeswoman Joan Barnes tells the Virginian-Pilot that the gator was likely the property of an irresponsible pet owner who owned it illegally and who dumped it in the wilds of Virginia Beach when the gator got too big.

Link:
Virginian-Pilot article about the reptile.

What's in the Water Today?

Another week, another thing in the waters of Hampton Roads.  Reports came out over the weekend of foul-smelling black globs washing up on the Chesapeake Bay beaches of Virginia Beach.

Given the material's appearance and odor, some people assumed it was raw sewage.  However, Virginia Beach Environmental Health Manager Erin Sutton has told the Virginian-Pilot that they were likely sea sponges, similar to an infestation in Norfolk's Ocean View area a few years back.  Water quality tests from the affected beach were pending.

Earlier this summer in Newport News, the problem in the water wasn't sea sponges, but bacteria.  Hilton Beach was closed to swimming for two weeks because of elevated bacteria levels in the water.

Meanwhile, six year old Lucy Mangum was all smiles Tuesday during national TV interviews a week after being attacked by a shark. Her mother said Lucy was playing in less than two of water at Ocracoke Island when a shark bit the girl's right leg.  She's expected to make a full recovery and on Tuesday, Lucy said she had forgiven the shark.

The shark incident at Ocracoke was very similar to one a month earlier at Topsail Beach, which left a little girl hospitalized with serious but not life-threatening leg injuries.  It reminds me of the summer of 2001, when shark attacks killed two tourists, one in Virginia Beach and one on the Outer Banks, in a matter of days.

It was after the second attack in 2001 that the morning show at one of our sister radio stations in New York called for comment and asked me if I felt safe going to the beach.  I admitted at the time to being just a little more apprehensive, but I still said I would be going back to the beach.  And I say that today.  Here's why...

Shark attacks are rare.  The International Shark Attack File reports the U.S. averages about 40 attacks a year, less than the number of fatal lightning strikes each year.  The drive to the beach is potentially more dangerous than actually being there.

Also, our beaches are generally clean.  The Natural Resources Defense Council reports that while pollution runoff is a growing concern at all beaches, the Virginia Beach beaches are tested regularly for water quality and have met federal clean water standards for the last three years. 

Links:
Virginian-Pilot article about the sea sponges
Article about Lucy Mangum
Beach health report from the Natural Resources Defense Council
The International Shark Attack File

Teachers are Free at Colonial Williamsburg

Officials at Colonial Williamsburg have announced they are giving free admission to school teachers on select dates through October 9th.  Teachers will be able to see and enjoy all that the historic district has to offer for free while family and friends can tag along at the discounted rate of $7.50.

In a news release, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation stated it was offering the free program to show their appreciation for teachers and to demonstrate Colonial Williamsburg's field trip programs.

The offer is good on these dates:  August 12th, 13th and 14th and October 7th, 8th and 9th.

To register, visit www.colonialwilliamsburg.com/teachers, or call 800-228-8878.  Teachers must present a valid teacher's ID.

Links:
The news release from the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.
www.History.org, Colonial Williamsburg's homepage.

Cars 2: A Review

It's not great, but not as bad as you've heard.

I'm about to do something I have never done before.  I'm putting my hands to the keyboard to write my very first movie review.  For a kids movie, no less.

I'm writing to defend Cars 2, which has been criticized for a lack of heart and originality.  Cars 2 is easily the lowest of the movie offerings from the computer animators at Pixar, but it's still worth a look.

What Cars 2 is is formulaic.  There's the "international intrigue" plotline.  The story takes race car Lightning McQueen and tow truck buddy Mater overseas for the inaugural World Grand Prix to determine the world's fastest car.  There's the "fish out of water" element involving Mater, who easily embarrasses himself and his friends in Japan.  There's the "mistaken identity" segment in which Mater is mistaken for an American spy.  Yes, it does require a leap of logic for someone to make a mistake that big.  Mater also "helps by accident," Jar Jar Binks style, after being fitted with high tech weaponry.  And there's a "tested friendship" portion in which Lightning pushes Mater away, only to realize later he needs him afterall.

What the film really needed was more racing.  There are three racing segments, through the streets of Tokyo, Paris and London.  They're rendered beautifully but each is too short to have a lasting impact on the viewer.

Complaints aside, Cars 2 is still a pretty good and entertaining movie, better than say, the Shrek sequels that Dreamworks keeps churning out.  There are plenty of laughs, the best coming when Mater gets caught in a cutesy Japanese washroom.

It sets no new standards for computer animation but it certainly lives up to Pixar's very high benchmarks.  Automobiles have no hands but in Cars 2 they can operate computers, scale walls and fire machine guns.  It's fun to watch how the artists worked around those obstacles.

A few more quibbles.  Cars 2 continues the seemingly pointless movie trend of taking a perfectly good 80's pop song, in this case, The Cars "You Might Think," and having it redone by a newer band.  Weezer's version of "You Might Think" sounds almost exactly like the original.  Listen for yourself here.  Wouldn't it have made more sense to have The Cars on the Cars 2 soundtrack?

You may have heard complaints that the movie is an indictment of the oil industry.  Allow me to say that the film's "evil oil" plot line is not that complicated or widespread; even Mater figures it out.  Anyone screaming that Cars 2 is a child's "indoctrination" into environmentalism is probably full of hot air.

Cars 2 is the 12th feature film from Pixar.  One has to be the lowest rated and Cars 2 is it.  But considering Pixar's track record, isn't that like naming your least favorite flavor of ice cream?

Links:
Cars 2 Official Site

Photographer? Not Really. Guy with a Camera? Yes

For the first time in my life, I am a published photographer.  Virginian-Pilot columnist Mary Reid Barrow published my photo of a yellow-crowned night heron in Thursday's edition of "Close Encounters." 

My house is a short walk from Buchanan Creek, a tidal creek that snakes its way behind the Birchwood Gardens playground and out to Lynnhaven Inlet.  Mary and Delaney went out to the creek to hunt blackberries and I tagged along with my new Kodak Z981 digital camera.  It was birthday gift.  I've had it two months now and I'm still learning what it can do.

I felt lucky to get this shot of a yellow-crowned night heron through the trees.

But a short distance away Delaney spotted this guy, in plain view, not 30 feet from us.

Mary urged me to send the above photo to Mary Reid Barrow, whose wildlife column we look forward to every week.  I did but I thought it unlikely my shot would be published;  Barrow must get dozens of submissions from readers every week. 

Surprise!  Not only did she use my photo in Thursday's column, but she teased it in her column the Sunday before.  "Jim Long snapped a close-up of a handsome yellow-crowned night heron on Buchanan Creek in Birchwood Gardens. See his photo in Thursday’s Close Encounters," she wrote. 

Lessons learned.  Always carry a camera.  And trust my wife's instincts.

Links:
July 21st edition of "Close Encounters".
Mary Reid Barrow's blog

The I-95 Blues

Having now completed at least my eighth drive to and from Martha's Vineyard, I can now safely say that Connecticut is the most delay-prone state I've been in.

Interstate 95 covers just over 100 miles through Connecticut, between the cities of Port Chester and Mystic.  The trip through The Constitution State would take only about 90 minutes at highway speed but it often takes twice that, especially on the southbound side.  Delays are a matter of routine.

Before noon Monday we were caught twice in backups that were caused not by car accidents, but by the Connecticut Department of Transportation.  Both slowdowns, about five miles each, were the result of one of the two travel lanes being closed for road construction.

And it's not just I-95.  A look at Connecticut's Interactive Travel Map shows the state is literally peppered with construction zones.  I counted 25 construction zone icons on or near I-95 alone, one for every four miles of interstate.  The New Jersey Turnpike is a cakewalk compared to I-95 through Connecticut.

Love the annual vacation with Mary's family; hate the trip home from there.  Remind me to pack the Pepto before next year's trip.

Have These People Been at Your Door?

The Virginia Beach Police Department has put out an advisory cautioning residents to think twice before giving to charities that solicit door to door.  The advisory singles out the Richmond-based group Teens Against Drug Abuse, which officials say is not authorized to solicit in Virginia.

The group's representatives are frequent visitors in my neighborhood during the summer.  The Virginian-Pilot describes the group's operations thus:  teenagers, toting Rubbermaid containers filled with candy and other snacks, are dropped off in residential areas and sent out on their own to sell their wares door to door.   The kids tell customers they've pledged to stay off drugs and are hoping to sell enough snacks to qualify for a prize, usually a trip to an amusement park.

The police advisory does not indicate if Teens Against Drug Abuse is operating a scam.  The group doesn't have authority to solicit in Virginia and has an unknown filing status with the IRS.

To find out if a charity is legitimate, research the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services charity database.

Link:
Teens Against Drug Abuse website.

Farewell to the Space Shuttle

America's vehicle to space, the space shuttle, will soon be retired.  The just launched STS-135 involving the orbiter Atlantis will be the fleet's final mission.  The shuttle program spans a near lifetime of memories, good and bad, for me.

In the 1970's, for those old enough to remember, the concept of a "space shuttle" seemed like science fiction.  The astronauts we knew flew in small capsules perched atop giant rockets, not in gleaming white, winged space planes.  The fact that the experimental shuttle, the Enterprise, shared the name of Captain Kirk's TV spaceship and looked like a prop from the film 2001, only solidified the sci-fi notion.

And yet there it was, gliding in from outer space in April of 1981.  My 9th grade Industrial Arts teacher, Mr. Smith, set up a TV so we could watch the first space shuttle landing during class.  Mr. Smith was as awed as we were.

Life on a college campus in the 1980's was one of isolation.  In the years before the Internet and cell phones, a college campus became its own closed universe; we were largely ignorant of the outside world.  So in January of 1986, when word began filtering through the Longwood College dining hall that the shuttle had "crashed," we knew something really bad had happened.  We watched the Challenger's final moments over and over again on a 10-inch black and white TV in my dorm room.

When legendary Mercury astronaut John Glenn launched with the shuttle Discovery in 1998, it had been years since I had watched a launch live on TV.  I was immediately reminded of the power of a space launch.  Watching launch highlights on the evening news cannot convey the countdown, the anticipation, and the breath-catching glory of the shuttle, it's boosters and external fuel tank lifting off the pad and driving toward space.

On a Saturday morning in 2003, I felt chills when the Weather Channel's Bob Stokes told his audience that NASA had lost contact with the shuttle Columbia.  Flipping through the cable news channels, I found Fox News had video of debris streaking across the sky but its anchors couldn't explain what they were looking at.  CNN had no video but did have a space expert, who articulated what I feared...that the shuttle's crew was lost.


For all of the awe it has inspired, the shuttle was, quite simply, a workhorse, the Clydesdale of space.  In 135 missions, the shuttles have carried dozens of satellites, both commercial and military, into orbit.  They have lofted laboratories and housing modules, and served as construction platforms as the labs and housing modules were pieced together into the International Space Station.

In the end, the orbiters simply became too expensive to use (more than $1 billion per launch) and maintain. For now, American astronauts will rely on Russia's cramped Soyuz capsules to get to the ISS, at a cost of more than $50 million per trip.

President Bush announced the retirement date of the shuttle fleet in 2004 but NASA has still not settled on a design for a new launch vehicle.  Until then, we are left waiting for America's next journey that will awe and inspire.

Hampton Roads Topics: Hit and Run Accidents

This week Hampton Roads Topics will focus on a crime that has been getting a lot of attention lately in Hampton Roads:  hit and run accidents.

Three high profile hit and runs in Virginia Beach this year have caught the public's attention.  In February, 12 year old Camryn Johnson McCall was left for dead when a van struck her just off Lynnhaven Parkway and then left the scene.  The driver, Mark Tiejen, a man with a long history of vehicle violations, was later arrested when a witness gave investigators his license plate number.  At last report, the victim was still in critical condition at a local hospital.

Two bicyclists have been injured by hit and run drivers on Shore Drive; one in May and one in early June.  Both of those cases remain unsolved.

These three recent cases are really just the tip of the iceberg.  Virginia Beach Commonwealth's Attorney Harvey Bryant says during the program that since early 2009, his office has prosecuted 65 felony charges of hit and run involving property damage or injury.  There may be hundreds more hit and run property damage cases that have gone unreported, he says.

I talk with Bryant and Virginia Beach Police Public Information Officer Adam Bernstein about why as many as one in ten traffic accidents involve a driver who flees, and what can be done to reduce the number of hit and run incidents.

Hampton Roads Topics airs Sunday mornings at 6:00 on these stations:  92.9 The Wave, ESPN Radio 94.1, Star 1310, and 97.3 The Eagle.

The Local Forts

There's an interesting article in today's Daily Press on Fort Wool, an old Army post that millions have seen but few really know about.  The article talks about how the 150th anniversary of the Civil War and the pending Army withdrawal from nearby Fort Monroe have sparked a renewed interest in Fort Wool.

Fort Wool sits next to the south island of the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel; the fort's lookout tower is a familiar site for drivers heading from Norfolk into Hampton.  It and Fort Monroe were built to guard the entrance to the harbor following the War of 1812.  The island on which Fort Wool sits was once the summer White House for President Andrew Jackson.  Fort Wool was abandoned by the Army in the 1960's and given to the state of Virginia.  The city of Hampton leases the island and maintains the fort and the large American flag on the island.

Both forts are open for tours but only Fort Monroe is accessible by car.  A walking tour of Fort Wool is part of the Miss Hampton II harbor cruise that runs April through October. 

Fort Monroe is home to the Casemate Museum, which offers a history of the fort.  Admission to the museum is free.

Links:
Daily Press article about Fort Wool
Miss Hampton II Harbor Tours to Fort Wool
Fort Monroe's Official Site

Hot Latin Nights

This week on Hampton Roads Topics, I interview Vanessa Evans of Volunteer Hampton Roads about their upcoming fundraising gala, Hot Latin Nights.  The event, in its 6th year, is an outdoor party in the heart of Norfolk's historic Ghent neighborhood.  There will be live music, catered food, and a raffle for a new iPad 2.

Hot Latin Nights also includes a silent auction on dozens of items, including huge gift baskets from some of the area's most recognized companies.  You can view some of the items up for bid on their Facebook page.

Volunteer Hampton Roads is an umbrella organization representing more than a hundred non-profits in Hampton Roads.  Their mission is to connect volunteers with the places they are needed most.

www.VolunteerHR.org

Hampton Roads Topics airs Sundays at 6am on these Max Media stations:  92.9 The Wave, Star 1310, ESPN Radio 94.1 and 97.3 The Eagle.

New Laws on the Books

Hundreds of new laws approved at this year's General Assembly session take effect today.  One that is garnering a lot of attention involves traffic lights. The new law allows bicyclists and motorcycle riders to proceed through a red light, assuming it's safe to do so, if the light hasn't changed in two minutes. 

The legislation grew out of a problem that two wheel vehicles have with traffic light sensors.  I heard a reporter on WVEC-TV say today that bikes, motorcycles and mopeds aren't heavy enough for the sensors to detect and change the red light to green.  That's not quite accurate.  The sensors aren't detecting weight; they're detecting electrical current.

The grooves in the road at traffic lights mark where a loop of insulated conductive wire is embedded in the road.  When an object containing iron or steel comes near the loop, an electrical current is generated, and that's what signals the traffic light that a vehicle is waiting at the red light.  Bikes and motorcycles just don't have enough metal for the system to work sometimes.

Which brings me to this question:  what was my family's 1986 Renault Encore made of?  Although in many respects it barely qualified as a car, it was still a four-wheeled hunk of metal.  And yet there was a traffic light in Lynchburg that refused to change when I drove the Renault to work at WLVA-AM 25 years ago.  The light had no problem detecting the family Volkswagen...it was only the Renault it refused to recognize.

As Dad once wrote, "My Renault won't gault in the snault."  The Renault couldn't make the traffic light gault, either.

Links:
A list of new Virginia laws
Wikipedia's entry on conductive loops
Wikipedia's entry on the much maligned Renault Alliance/Encore.