Once again we’re wrapping up another month and rapidly moving into the holiday seasons. Thanksgiving Day has come and gone with the last of the turkey leftovers are in today’s lunchtime sandwich. The trees are finally bare of leaves, we’ve cut the grass for the last time this year, and we have next spring’s gardening to look forward to.
It’s just another late autumn day here in Northern Virginia, out on the edge of our nation’s capital.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the current hot topic of “enhanced pat downs” our Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has recently started. Even more, I’ve been thinking about how few people in our country actually seem to care that a government agency has taken it upon themselves, without any debate by elected officials or discussion within the public arena, to grope people using the legal justification that “probable cause” consists of attempting to board a commercial aircraft after legally purchasing a ticket. For the sake of national security and keeping us all safe from bad guys.
I may have mentioned this in the past, but I really like Thanksgiving Day. In fact, it’s become my favorite holiday. Notwithstanding that my doctor recently assured me that I was in good health “for a man my age,” just knowing that I have another annual holiday for the chance to give thanks is a good thing.
So, as in year’s past, I want to list the many things Winnie and I are giving thanks for this past year.
Dear Mr. President,
I wanted to write you a letter, and decided that posting an open letter on this website had just as much of a chance of being read by you as if I handwrote a personal note on perfume-scented vellum and mailed it directly to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in a big red-white-blue striped envelope with a large lollipop taped to it.
So here goes. My open letter to you sir, the President of these United States.
Just spotted this quote from the late, great, H.P Lovecraft, entirely appropriate for late on Halloween night, and just had to repost it.
Well, it’s Halloween night once again. The ghosts and goblins are out and about, mixing in with the little kids going door to door asking for candy. It’s also the end of the month, well into autumn, and the leaves are littering the lawn daring me to rake them up, knowing full well that if I do, there’ll just be more on the ground tomorrow. So far, I’ve resisted the dare.
Today, Winnie officially became an American citizen. At a 2:00PM Citizenship Oath Ceremony in the Fairfax USCIS center, Winnie did take the oath of Citizenship and became an American.
Here it is already September, the long hot n’ Dry summer almost passed. Although I enjoy warm weather, these past two months were almost too much of a good thing. And in the category of “here we go again,” we have a hurricane watch just days after the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
The more things change…
I’ve really been missing not having a boat of my own these past few months. Sure, I’ve gotten out on the water sailing several times, but being in a rented sailboat is not quite the same thing as having a boat of my own. I’ve also been looking at doing something different for a while now, a different kind of boating.
Well, last week Friday, I took the plunge, and with Winnie’s approval bought a single-seated sporting kayak.
Letters to the Airlines
In my continuing Don Quixote-style quest against the dysfunctional, authoritarian, over-reaching and civil liberties-free government agency sadly mis-named the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), I have written some letters. No, I didn’t write to my congressman. No, I didn’t write to either of my senators. I also didn’t write to the head of the TSA, nor to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). I also didn’t write to the President (I figured he was a little busy trying not to get rolled by the minority Republican Party). I wrote to the real power behind the transportation industry in this Country.
I wrote letters to the airlines.
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