I've Been AWOL This Week

And I'm happy to be back. It was the Week from Hell at the Big Corporation - our busiest time of the year - and on top of that, I finally got the neighborhood newsletter that I edit finished, printed, and mailed out. Whew...

So where does that leave me? With about 50 unread blogs that I desperately want to visit, and 6 days of no posts on my own blog! Where do I begin? I guess I'll begin here...

So let's see, what have I missed commenting on this week?

First of all, the Supreme Court struck down the handgun ban in Washington D.C. and affirmed the individual right to bear arms.

I am rather conflicted about this decision. On one hand, I hate guns and would never have one in my house. If someone I know told me they owned a gun I'd be nervous. I don't even like the idea of people having guns for hunting. I am a staunch believer in regulating gun ownership.

On the other hand, I think the Supreme Court got it right. If their job is to interpret the Constitution, I have no doubt that they did it correctly. When the Constitution was written, the American colonies had just finished fighting a war of independence from England and I'm sure one reason the Founding Fathers enshrined gun ownership in the Constitution as an individual right was because of that recent war, as they could probably imagine another future situation where they might need to do it again.

As for the theory that the right to bear arms is inextricably linked with serving in a militia, I read a good op-ed piece in the newspaper this past week (unfortunately I can't find it or I'd link to it) that pointed out that it would be odd if the framers of the Constitution would have stuck one collective right (to bear arms only as part of a militia) in with all of the individual rights that are in the Bill of Rights. It simply makes more sense that this would be an individual right. So I think the decision was a correct interpretation of the Constitution.

I found an interesting article that looks at this issue from both sides. While it is still not certain exactly what the framers of the Constitution meant, it seems likely that the people of that time felt their right to own a gun was an individual right.

That said, where do we go from here? America is one of the most violent Western countries, and obviously a lot of people here have access to guns who shouldn't. Luckily the Supreme Court did not close the door on regulating gun ownership; it just said Washington D.C. couldn't prohibit handguns completely. However, gun proponents always like to point out that registration and other gun control laws just apply to law-abiding citizens; the criminals continue to get them illegally. And they are correct.

I don't know what the solution is for this problem, and this decision has just made it more complicated for those of us who are concerned about the prevalence of guns in our society. But I think it's something we as a nation need to come to grips with. Perhaps we need to be cracking down on the gun manufacturers; perhaps they shouldn't be making Saturday night specials at all, but be required to make only high quality, more expensive guns, that would be less easy to afford. Perhaps the government needs to declare a "war on illegal guns" the way government loves to declare war on other things like drugs or poverty. It might not solve the problem but it couldn't hurt either.

Moving on...Obama and Clinton got together this week in Unity, New Hampshire, and Obama is leading McCain in a number of key states, so it looks as if the Democrats are on their way to being united enough to move forward.

In Unity, Hillary said:

"'Today we are coming together for the same goal: to elect Barack Obama as the next President of the United States.'

She spoke directly to her supporters so embittered by the primary that they’ve pledged to support John McCain over Obama. 'To anyone who voted for me and is now considering not voting or voting for Senator McCain, I strongly urge you to reconsider,” she said. 'In the end, Senator McCain and President Bush are like two sides of the same coin, and it doesn’t amount to a whole lot of change.'"

I'd like to commend Hillary for her strength in coming out to support Barack Obama after this difficult primary season. Unlike Eugene McCarthy back in 1968, who refused to endorse Humphrey until much closer to the general election, and even then did it without enthusiasm, Hillary Clinton has come through for the Democratic party. I know it couldn't have been easy for her but she is doing it and doing it with grace.

Last but not least, on the home front, here's an update on our wrens.

The mother and father wren are busily feeding their growing babies. We first heard them peeping in the birdhouse a week or two ago; now they are big enough to be making loud chattering noises that sound just like their parents. The two adult wrens are working furiously just to keep them happy. One wren stands guard while the other one flies off and gets a moth or bug, flies back and feeds the babies. Then the other takes off while the first one stands watch. Sometimes one will pass the moth to the other and the second one will feed the children.

The wrens had a close call earlier this week. I got up one morning and from our bathroom window, which was open, I heard a terrible commotion out in the yard; the wrens were chattering much more loudly than usual and I noticed the bird house was turned sideways. Both wrens were chattering up a storm and fluttering about.

I threw on some clothes and ran outside. I heard some peeping in the birdhouse so I knew the babies were OK, and I'd seen both parents so I knew they weren't harmed either. But something had tried to get them.

Sure enough, while I was standing near the bird house assessing the situation, one of my neighbor's cats suddenly took off from under the bushes that are beneath the bird house, ran off and squeezed under our gate and returned to its own yard. I went back to the house and let Diva out, and she came and inspected under the bushes to make sure there were no more cats, and the wrens got back to their business of feeding the babies. Crisis averted...for now.

Let's hope these wrens grow up and fly away soon. I'm a nervous wreck just keeping an eye on them!

Catching Up - And an Award!

Sorry I have been missing in action this week. Between going away last weekend and being deluged with work-related stuff, my brain didn't even have the energy to do anything after my day but passively watch The Daily Show and fall asleep during Colbert.

First of all, I would like to thank Let's Talk for bestowing upon me the E for Excellence award! I really appreciate it!

And I must also belatedly thank Sue J. of Nailing Jello to the Wall and Dr. Zaius of Zaius Nation for honoring me with this award back before I went on vacation last month. And Tomcat from Politics Plus gave me the award as well although with his many posts I can't locate the exact date!

So to all of you, thank you so much, you are all Bloggers of Excellence and I am humbled by being honored by you.

I think by now so many of the blogs I read have received the award that let me just say I award it to all of the blogs on my sidebar, which are all excellent and I hope you will browse through and enjoy them.

Moving on...

I'll give you a quick update on our trip to the Adirondacks. First of all, we were really lucky with the weather: It was a beautiful sunshiney weekend and the temperatures were springlike. There was indeed snow in the higher elevations where we were looking for our weekend getaway. The snow was piled high everywhere, but it was old snow; you know, that kind of crusty, ice crystally snow that has a coating of black road dirt on it, not the pretty white fluffy stuff. Plus it was in the process of melting with much vigor, especially after the big rainstorm they had had up there on Friday. This resulted in mud - lots of mud, everywhere. And of course it hadn't occurred to us to bring boots, so we had to give up any thought of keeping our feet clean while walking around.

The realtor who took us around to the places we were investigating was new at the job, and not that familiar with the area. In fact, she hadn't seen the houses she took us to herself, so it was a learning experience for us all.

The first one we were looking for was down the end of an unpaved road. We kept driving and driving, following the realtor's car, and finally came to a barricade that said "Road Closed." She was sure that the house was supposed to be on the left side of the road so we assumed we hadn't reached it yet as we hadn't seen anything on the left that matched the house's description. So we decided to walk a ways down the road and see if we could find it after the barricade. Diva was with us so she joined us and we marched on down the increasingly muddy road full of ice and potholes.

After about 3/4 of a mile we realized there was no way this house was this far down the road, and turned back. Going back was mostly uphill, so by the time we got back to the car we had had a better workout than we'd had in months! Diva was satisfied for the day and slept in the back of the car for the rest of the afternoon.

Once back in the cars, we drove back up the road and realized we had gone right past the house without realizing it; it was on the opposite side of the road from what the realtor expected. So we finally got to see this house, which turned out to be quite nice inside; lots of knotty pine, a fireplace, nice flow to the rooms.

The other two places we looked at were not as tempting; the first was still unfinished inside and had no fireplace, nor any hope of putting one in from the way it was arranged. The other one needed a great deal of work and was being occupied by a 36-year-old bachelor whose housekeeping habits, to say the least, left something to be desired. I have a good imagination and can picture what a place would look like if it were cleaned out, but this was a bit beyond what I'd want to deal with. It's too bad, too, because it had a great view.

So, we continue our search for a weekend getaway. There are many more places for sale up in that region and we will want to see more of them before making a decision to buy something.

While we were up there, we had dinner in a nice old restaurant in Johnstown, where we were staying. The restaurant is in a Greek Revival house that was built in 1798 and serves relatively gourmet food. We were seated in the bar area as the restaurant side was full.

We ordered our meals (salmon for me, pork tenderloin for DH), and the waitress explained they included several courses. After we finished our soup, she came back and said "Are you ready for your corn fritters?" We had noticed on the menu that we had a choice of corn fritters or sorbet, but the way she said "corn fritters" made us feel that to order anything else would just not be the thing to do. So we said "sure," and a few minutes later, she brought out these dishes with what looked like large round pieces of fried dough, covered in - maple syrup. We dug in, and while they were extremely tasty, corn fritters with maple syrup seemed a very unusual palate cleanser between courses!

Naturally once our main meals came we weren't quite as hungry as we would have been, but we enjoyed them anyway.

In the meantime, a group of men came in and sat at another table in the bar. There were two older men with white hair, and three younger men in their 30's - all dressed casually, flannel shirts and jeans. They started talking about guns and which guns are the best guns, and one of the younger men went off on a long paean of praise about one particular type of gun, and what a great gun it is, and how you can use for anything, and how he once shot a moose at 400 feet right in the forehead with it, and he uses it to get white tails all the time, and so on.

I was sitting there listening to this and I said to my husband, "This sure isn't a conversation you would hear in suburban New Jersey."

I also couldn't quite imagine either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton sitting around with those guys talking about guns. McCain would probably have been able to fit right in.

Driving through the towns in upstate New York I could see the way prosperity has kind of passed them by; the houses are all older, many need paint. There are a lot of makeshift repairs on houses and on cars. The people aren't poor, but they aren't rich, and haven't been rich recently. I felt as if this is the "middle America" that is suffering the most from the Bush administration's policies, and that these are the people that the Democrats need to address in a lot of states that have similar issues to this region of New York.

But unless the Democratic candidates can make them believe they understand them at a very basic level, what they say about economic policies may not matter. I hope they'll be able to make that connection.