Blue Ridge blog

Blue Ridge blog: "I walked along the Watauga River this morning before heading to work. I think I was trespassing, but only the birds noticed. This is the view of the Mast Farm Inn from the river. Actually this is the barn and the grainery. Forget cereal. This is the way to start your day..."


I wish I could show Marie's photo…since I can’t you’ll have to follow the link yourself. I have to agree about a walk along the river being the way to start the day…The play of light on the farm is gorgeous.

Valle Crucis…my dreams continue to return there. I can’t wait to return for a week again this summer. Mornings on the porch with a cup of coffee looking out over Clarks Creek…hikes up the knob…days that don’t try to steam you until you’re cooked.

This year we are planning our trip to coincide with the Highland Games on Grandfather Mountain. Seems my wife really wants to experience the reality of the Scottish Culture, and to think I’m the one with the Scottish ancestry…I am really going to have to try and swing by the old home place out of Vilas, though after a couple of hundred years it might be a little hard to find. At least I should be able to cruise the creek they named after the family before most of them headed over the mountains into Tennessee. Great-great-great grandpa James Linville was born there on the 15th of July in 1794. Shortly after the turn of the century his family had migrated on over the mountains and he lived most of his life in north western Missouri where he died in 1873.

Why the National Guard?

From The Washington Post Editorial, May 17, 2006
"Why the National Guard?: "Disingenuously, Mr. Bush declared in his address that 'we have enough Guard forces to win the war on terror, to respond to natural disasters and to help secure our border.' That may be true in strictly numerical terms. But the president neglected to mention that the tens of thousands of Guard troops who will be rotated to the border over the next year will do so during their annual two- to three-week training periods. In other words, they will be deprived of time to train for war missions or natural disasters in order to drive trucks and staff desks for the Border Patrol.

Administration officials say the deployment is designed to provide such auxiliary services until civilian contractors can be brought in..."


The emphasis in the above is mine but I think it is telling that our CEO President is again moving government services to the private sector. Maybe it is only poetic that in all likelihood these civilian contractors will not be able to find any “American Workers” willing to apply for the jobs at the pay scale they will be willing to pay in order to guarantee the profits of the CEO’s. Which explains the “Guest Worker” plan, who else will we be putting on the border to protect us? Wouldn’t it just be easier to hire the Mexican Army to work the other side for us? We could call it foreign aide…

I find this reliance on “civilian contractor” very troubling in all of its various guises. Why do we now pay a company to do what we used to pay citizens to do? Call me a bleeding heart liberal, but I find it very hard to trust the good intentions of a corporate board. And I have yet to meet a Corporate Citizen with an inherent morality. And the fact that the courts wish to guarantee Corporate Free Speech while the “elected” officials take this very same “speech” to the bank is ruinous to the “common good”.

My Blog List