Thoughts On A Sunday

It's Father's Day, and around here that has two meanings.

The first is, of course, that it's Father's Day. The second is that it's the last day of the annual Motorcycle Week and that thousands upon thousands of bikers will be departing the Lakes Region and its surroundings and heading home.

With the exception of a couple of days, the weather was perfect. While the number of motorcyclists attending this year's festivities was down a bit, the lower numbers were not unanticipated. Higher fuel prices were probably one of the biggest factors in the smaller numbers this year. Even so, there were probably 300,000 people that visited over Bike Week. Not bad. Not bad at all.

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The WP In-Laws departed from The Manse this morning, hoping to beat the homeward-bound motorcycle traffic. When they left they took BeezleBub with them. This will be his first week at what has been come to be called “Camp Grammy”.

He spends about one week in three or four with them over the summer. This is just the first one. It means he'll miss the last day of school tomorrow, but since he's already turned in all of his textbooks and completed all of his assignments, we saw no need to send him on the last day. The last day is what is called “Moving Up Day”, where the kids will meet the teachers they'll have next year. But BeezleBub already knows all of the teachers in his school and who he'll have next year, so we saw no harm in sending him to Camp Grammy a couple of days early.

Besides, it one less trip we have to make to get him there.

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The Boat goes into the shop tomorrow to fix the problem I wrote about here. While it will mean a little bit of walking on my part (I'll have to park the car at the boat yard where The Boat resides, move the boat to the shop, which is on the other side of the cove, and walk back around the cove to get back to the car), it will be such a nice day tomorrow that I won't mind that one bit.

After taking care of some medical appointments I have earlier in the day, I figure I can get The Boat where it needs to go before they close up shop for the day.

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John Stossel shows us that even with a change in eminent domain laws in many states, a man's home (or business property) may still be taken from him by a town or city wishing to cash in on promises of more tax revenue. At least in one case the property owners were able to convince on big corporation to back away from that kind of deal.

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Jay Tea gets into an analysis on the differences between conservatives and liberals when it comes to immigration (conservatives see the difference between legal and illegal immigrants while liberals apparently don't), gay marriage/civil unions, and abortion.

He's stirred up a lively discussion about all three topics.

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Jay Tea also discusses another idea that I believe has some merit – an American version of France's Légion Étrangère, or Foreign Legion – that would give immigrants, especially illegal immigrants, a path to American citizenship.

While such a path is available for legal immigrants by joining the US Armed Forces, no such path exists for legal immigration wannabes.

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If the Republicans running for President haven't been paying attention to Fred Thompson before, they are now.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the streets and roads no longer reverberate with the exhaust notes of thousands of motorcycles, people can sleep without disturbance, and where the summer folk will soon be here in droves.