Pool season has begun at Wayfarer’s Refuge.
We set it up over Memorial Weekend, and Grandson has begged me for pool time every day this week. It’s rough being a grandpa.
I did some yard work this week, including sheet mulching the first of the gardens I want in the front yard. This one was easy enough to lay out. I just moved the border edging around a little bit, and voila. No real clue what I’m going to put there yet, though I’ve found a couple of volunteer plants around the property that might look nice.
The OSU Extension Office website has been unsurprisingly helpful at finding ideas. It occurred to me after looking at a few things they had that I could seed the places where I had tree stumps ground out with wildflower mixes. There are two or three spots along the front of the property, one over by the trampoline, and a couple of others out in the back yard. I think I’m going to grab a couple of packets of seeds from Native American Seed and see what I can get growing. I’ll need to buy some more hose and some sprinklers though. One of my long-term projects though is to bury some water lines to make reaching the far corners of the property a little easier.
Youngest Daughter is off to her last summer camp. She’s doing the final year of a three-year leadership development program. Part of this year involves them filling various staff positions; she put in for lifeguard. When she went up before Memorial Weekend for training, she lacerated her foot badly enough that they sent her home. It didn’t need stitches but it was pretty deep and they didn’t want to risk infection. She’s doing retail staffing at the canteen instead. She wasn’t the only one who washed out of training though. One of her friends hit the cold water and got sick from the temperature shock, so he went home too.
Things I’ve Read This Week
This Cop Got Out of 44 Tickets by Saying Over and Over That His Girlfriend Stole His Car via ProPublica. This kind of officer gives cops a really bad name. Yes, a few of his brothers in blue filed reports about him, but how many of them turned a blind eye because hey, it’s Chicago? The officers aren’t doing themselves any favors when they twice elect a guy like John “Savages they all deserve a bullet” Catanzara as their union president, either. This department, the second largest in the country, isn’t helping their image by having what amounts to a black site and a history of corruption dating back decades.
Former Gun Company Executive Explains Roots of America’s Gun Violence Epidemic also at ProPublica. I really like their reporting, even if I don’t agree with some things, like this post. Ryan Busse is a former VP of sales at Kimber. He left the industry and wrote a book called “Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry That Radicalized America.” I disagree with his position that the gun industry is responsible for radicalizing the country. There’s plenty of blame to go around for that, quite frankly.
I also question his positions on a couple of things. For example, I’m very leery of red flag laws. So many of them allow guns to be taken before due process happens. In many states, the accused can defend themselves but generally only well after their rights are restricted. I think that’s backward. And red flag laws both curtail rights and seize property without compensation. I believe the person losing their property should have a right to designate a receiver rather than trusting a police department to safely preserve the firearms.
Busse also tries to correlate a company named “Rooftop Arms” with the Highland Park, IL shooting, where the attacker fired on a parade route from a rooftop. He claims the names of firearms “could encourage people to do irresponsible things.” That’s…a stretch. I just don’t see the justification for that statement.
Busse goes on to see that he doesn’t think that “controlling irresponsible marketing is an infringement on our Second Amendment rights,” and here I sort of agree with him. I think it’s actually an infringement on our First Amendment rights. I’ll paraphrase an appropriate saying here. “The arguments you use to restrict someone else’s rights today will be used to restrict your rights tomorrow.” We’re seeing it right now. Some parents in a Utah school district succeeded in getting the Bible removed from elementary and middle school libraries on the grounds of violence and sexual content.
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