WEEKEND #8, 2024
(Mid-Season Report)
July 15, 2024
Rehoboth Beach, Delaware
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BIDEN SPENDS ONE DAY IN REHOBOTH BECAUSE OF TRUMP ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT
President Joe Biden cut short his beach visit after the apparent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. The President's 20+vehicle motorcade crossed Rehoboth Beach six times this past Saturday as he spent less than a day at the beach before returning to The White House. The President hasn't had such a hectic day in town since he was evacuated after a plane entered airspace near Rehoboth in June of 2022.
President Biden had only arrived hours earlier via this motorcade that brought him from Dover Air Force Base into Rehoboth Beach around 12:08 a.m. Saturday. He joined the First Lady who arrived on Thursday.
It was pouring as officials prepared for the President's visit at Saint Edmond's Catholic Church.
He is typically the last one to arrive and the first to depart. Here he is arriving in the rain for the 5:30 p.m. mass.
Despite the rain, a handful of protesters were waiting for him.
As word of the Trump assassination attempt reached Rehoboth, the service at Saint Edmond's was concluding. Secret Service agents were seen fielding last-minute phone calls. You could sense something was amiss as they briefed their colleagues.
They appeared to hastily reposition the motorcade vehicles in the pouring rain and sped off with the President at 6:20 p.m. Fox News posted these photos. This time the motorcade took a different route, south on King Charles Avenue before turning back to northbound Bayard Avenue as they headed for his North Shores beach house.
Meanwhile, the First Lady was returning to the Biden beach house after delivering remarks at an Italian Sons and Daughters of America dinner in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In an unusual move, Delaware troopers accompanied her motorcade from the airport in Georgetown. Normally she just travels with Secret Service vehicles. Here's her motorcade as it passed Deauville.
President Biden came into town again around 8 p.m., this time headed for the Rehoboth Beach City Hall where he delivered these remarks on the attempted assassination. When the President is in town, the third floor of city hall, among other things, has been prepared for use as an emergency briefing room with gear that allows him to address the nation in such a crisis.
As word spread, onlookers gathered along Rehoboth Avenue wondering what was happening and hoping to catch a glimpse or a photo of the President.
After his brief comments, President Biden returned once again to his North Shores home as he prepared for his trip back to The White House.
The weather was still too risky for helicopters. After spending less than 23 hours at the beach, the President and his caravan departed his North Shores home around 10:40 p.m. headed for Dover Air Force Base and Washington, D.C. The First Lady remains in North Shores as of Sunday evening.
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REHOBOTH BEACH COMMISSIONER CANDIDATE NEWS
With less than a month to election day, the commissioner candidates in Rehoboth Beach are keeping busy!
Craig Thier attended meet-and-greets on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Here he is in the beautiful home of Sonie and Hoyte Decker on Friday.
Thier emphasizes that he is a full-time resident with expertise in finance and prior experience serving on a school board in New Jersey. Discussion topics included building permits, vague city ordinances, the new RBP headquarters, public restrooms, city spending, budgeting, planning and forecasting, hotel development, parking and the hiring of the city manager.
On Saturday, Thier joined fellow commissioner candidate Mark Saunders at his wonderful home on Country Club Drive. Although they didn't outright endorse one another, Saunders said "We make the best pair" for the job with complementary expertise.
Here the discussion included budgeting, financial and strategic planning, the new RBP headquarters, recognition of contributions of visitors, businesses and residents, making revenue from the city's sewage outfall pipe, losing Deauville, policing, city manager hire, city government communication with public, planning, zoning and building, especially for hotels.
They were also joined by former Mayor Sam Cooper and former Comm. Lorraine Zellers!
Saunders will join Thier at one of his meet-and-greets. Saunders says he has half a dozen planned at various homes. Anyone interested in attending should send him an email.
Suzanne Goode is meeting each Monday at 3 p.m. until election day with voters at the Rehoboth Avenue Starbucks.
"I have loved meeting so many of you the past six weeks of my campaign, and would look forward to getting to know more voters and to hearing additional questions and suggestions from voters whom I have already met," she says.
Rachel Macha has had a busy week with campaign activities as well, meeting Rehoboth citizens, attending last Monday's special workshops, talking to downtown business owners and a meet-and-greet at The Coffee Mill.
For the next three Saturdays through August 3, from 8:30 a.m. to 9 a.m., she is inviting voters to join her for coffee at The Coffee Mill on Rehoboth Avenue. Here's a photo from last week's coffee.
OTHER ELECTION NEWS...
Important election dates and info is on the city's website.
The Rehoboth Beach Homeowners' Association is hosting a candidate forum next Saturday, July 20, at 10 a.m. at the firehouse on Rehoboth Avenue. Candidate bios/statements are on the RBHA website.
Welcome to The Starboard!
BUY A LIFEGUARD A LUNCH AT LORI'S!
Rehoboth Beach Patrol lifeguards quickly figured out where to find the most reasonable and healthiest meals in town during their lunch break... It's at Lori's Oy Vey! Cafe in the CAMP Rehoboth courtyard off Baltimore Avenue.
Sarah Herrmann and coworker Kathy Dillon noticed that they had the same lifeguards returning each day for lunch. "We were trying to figure out how we could say 'thank you' to them for being so loyal to us. We've always given them free drinks. So we wanted to do some kind of pay-it-forward to help them," Herrmann says.
They couldn't figure out what to do last year to show their appreciation, but this year, they decided to allow customers to purchase lunches for the guards. "It has really taken off and people love it," Herrmann said, noting that customers have purchased more than 100 lunches for the lifeguards so far this season... "The lifeguards are super appreciative towards it, and it's just working out," she added.
"Lori's is a long-time favorite breakfast and lunch spot for the Rehoboth lifeguards," says RBP Chief Derek Shockro. "The 'Buy a lifeguard lunch' vouchers are a great way to support these first responders during their work day. The RBP is very appreciative of Lori's and the Rehoboth community supporting us throughout the summer," he said.
Maureen Cusick Thomas contributed $100 for the lunches during a recent visit. Thomas has been coming to Rehoboth her entire life. She paid her way through college working here at restaurants and as a lifeguard at Indian River Inlet. "They weren't letting women lifeguard on Rehoboth Beach yet so, there were a couple of us women at Indian River Inlet," she pointed out.
Here is Lori's owner Lori Kline in the green top next to Thomas with four RBP lifeguards!
It's small businesses like Funland and Lori's that are important to this town, Thomas explains. "And as you notice, Lori gives back to the community. So I like supporting small women-owned businesses and businesses that give back to the community. That's really actually why I did it," she added.
Thomas wanted to be anonymous, but her contribution could not be easily overlooked!
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RAIN AND RAINBOWS
It's been a good few days, and a welcome sight, for rainbows and rain. David Koster recorded 4.5" of rain near Rehoboth. This gauge is in his yard off Old Landing Road. It was the two-day total accumulation from the storm system here.
The Rehoboth Beach boardwalk DEOS weather station reported 0.66" for Saturday, 3.41" on Friday and an additional 0.44" on Thursday.
Here is more on that impressive record-setting rainfall.
The conditions on Thursday and Saturday were ideal for rainbows.
Photos courtesy David Koster, Portraits In The Sand
Here is a double rainbow Robert Lee captured last Thursday at the Steamboat Landing campground looking toward Lewes.
Photo courtesy Robert E. Lee
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IT'S RODNEY COOK TIME AT THE BACK PORCH!
Rodney Cook's popular watercolor exhibition returns to the Back Porch Café this coming Sunday. This year's show features 32 pieces, many of which are his classic subjects including colorful and beachy scenes such as fanciful balloons, umbrellas, beautiful flowers, continuing examining kites as their own subjects, and familiar landmarks.
It is "hard to reinvent the wheel, so I wanted to try. This show is going to be about Rehoboth and other things too. So we have the lifeguards and other stuff but also paintings from the past, not too distant, and I am going to bring in some large flower compositions, some large compositions of different kinds of objects," Cook explains.
He says part of his job is to identify the wonderful things around us, along the boardwalk, for example, that we may not notice any longer because we are used to seeing them regularly. "Look at your environment and come up with new variations. Coming up with new ideas is not easy," he knows after doing this for more than 25 years.
Cook says he needs to continue to reinvent the wheel. So he has added several abstract pieces this year, somewhat of a departure for him. For example, here he is exploring the language of water and the geography of umbrellas. "You expect them as boats, as coverage and part of the language of the ocean," he points out. "The umbrellas are very geometric objects while the ocean is water, organized but irregular," he explains.
One part mirrors the other part, an umbrella and a boat, but by mirroring them in this manner, the scene takes on an abstract and modern flavor as he plays with lots of ambiguities in the space.
"The modern concept is that we realize that this painting is a construction but we are playing with a horizon in a traditional mode. We know it is a construction even though it is put together. We know it is a construction that is realistic while playing with different definitions of the space that is created in this kind of creation," he explains.
Also new this year he explores the beauty found in weather maps. "I've never really done a weather map and I thought it would be really neat to take a weather map of across America and play with that as its own composition in a modern way," he says.
The weather map is its own language that can function as an artist's language. "We live in that and it represents us... Taking the language of the weather map and deciding that it can be a language worthy of the arts," he says.
"Editing is a universal part of all work," he explains. So "to get comprehension it means a lot of times you have to do significant editing to make it comprehensible," he adds noting that the weather map offers more artistic leeway.
Here's another example of Cook's continued exploration. He is capturing and painting a tumble in the surf.
Cook, a college art professor, launched his art career painting murals in Baltimore including the eight-story Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower which became known as the Baltimore Arts Tower.
While in the field he frequently painted sketches with watercolors to see how the mural would appear. Watercolors are reasonable, could be done in a car without making a mess, are quicker and are good for gathering info, he explains.
The opening reception for this show is this Sunday, July 21, from 3 to 5 p.m. at Rehoboth's Back Porch Café. The show ends on August 20.
CAMP REHOBOTH HOSTS RECEPTION FOR "MAKING THE CUT"
"Making the Cut" is an exhibition at CAMP Rehoboth that examines the art of color wood cuts which were inspired by Japanese artists of the 17th and 18th centuries. It's a combination of drawing, woodcarving, watercolor painting and printing, explains Fred Dylla, a Lewes artist and founder of the Delaware White-line Woodcut Guild.
The white-line woodcut technique involves first sketching, and then carving an image into a board such as a piece of birch plywood. A distinct raised line is created as wood is carved from each feature. When you're ready to create a print, you pin a piece of paper to the board just like the Japanese used that is absorbent and made from the inner bark of mulberry bushes. The artist then takes a paintbrush and applies paint on an area of the board, folds the paper over the carving and rubs the back of the paper into the carving to absorb the paint.
It gets the term "white-line" because no paint is applied to the ridge that rises and separates elements in the carving, thus creating a thin unpainted border around each element in the artwork, the white line.
The Delaware White-line Woodcut Guild meets on Tuesdays at the Lewes Library. They have 15 members... here are four of them: Lorraine Quinn, Mark Harris, Anne Barney and Lisa Bain.
Mark Harris has on display these four copies made from the same board but each are unique artworks, he explains.
This exhibition will remain on display through July 31.
PHOTOS OF THE WEEK
Rehoboth Sunrise by Kelley Gillespie ...
Osprey Catches A Fish by Richard Tananis ...
Cutter, Seagull and Banner Plane by Molly Hildahl ...
Photography contests: Delaware Beach Life, Rehoboth Reflections, Ocean Photo, Delaware Farm Bureau
Please click below to see the exciting beach clocks ...
See Beachclocks.com for more info!
OTHER NEWS:
THE MERR REPORT--- Suzanne Thurman from the MERR Institute says her organization had a quiet week with no responses. The next MERR fundraiser sunset dolphin tour is set for August 11. Also, MERR seeks volunteers for the annual dolphin count on July 20.
CUSTOM SIGNS STOLEN FROM THE ATLANTIC SANDS HOTEL--- Two guys reportedly removed "custom signs" hanging at the Atlantic Sands this past week. "At this time the investigation is still active. We have made no determination as to the identity of the suspects. We can confirm that three signs were stolen from the outdoor area of the hotel each valued at approximately $60 each for a total of $180 in stolen property," says Lt. Mark Sweet, Rehoboth Beach police spokesman. The theft is believed to have occurred overnight between Wednesday and Thursday. That was the night following the Mid-Atlantic Regional Lifeguarding Championships.
CRITICAL SHOOTING IN COOL SPRING ROAD AREA--- Delaware State Police are investigating after a man was found with a critical gunshot wound to his back in the area of Martins Farm Road and Fisher Road just before 8 p.m. Sunday. That is in the Cool Spring area east of Harbeson. Police found a handgun and crashed bullet-ridden SUV at the scene.
