School's Out For The Summer!

...and how many of you instantly thought of the classic Alice Cooper song of the same name when you read that?

I thought so.

That song came out when I was around 10, and it was the perennial anthem until I graduated from high school. I haven't heard it once today.

Well, today was the last (half) day of school, here in our neck of the woods, and it certainly was... anticlimactic.

School got out at noon, and I was waiting for soccergirl when she came out, all smiles. All the other kids were similarly smiling. They were cheerful, and they said goodbye to their teachers... favorite teachers like Ms Kraft got hugs (from the students, not me!). The kids said goodbye to their friends, many of whom they will see in the summer for play dates, at soccer camp, or at Vacation Bible school, and so forth.

What I didn't see, and I was surprised about, was any... I dunno... exuberant behavior. They were happy, sure... but I sort of expected something even slightly more raucous, like when I would get out of school for the summer.

It dawned on me, there and then, that these kids all like school a lot more than I did... I suppose I should be glad.

I was stricken by two thoughts while I waited for soccergirl with the Alice Cooper song in my head (cue the Grandpa Simpson voice) "In my day, we were a lot more excited by the end of the school year" and "Jesus! Some of these teachers are young enough to be my children!"

I think I'll just go and have a nap.

As for Alice Cooper... school might be out for the summer, but I'm not.

Immigration

I am distressed by the recent troubles with the current Immigration bill.

One one hand we have a Bill, which is imperfect, as all hurried legislation tends to be, and on the other hand, we have a bunch of freaks running around, muttering, and sometimes shouting about the need to round up, imprison, and deport those that are in this country illegally.

Do any of the people in the latter group have any idea how much it costs to imprison someone?

Are any of them prepared to pay the whopping increase (at least 25%) in taxes that will be needed to imprison and deport these people?

In order to round up and incarcerate (preparatory to deportation) this many people, we will need to build at least two, large "immigration prisons" in every state in the union.

Do you know how much it costs to build a prison?

Do you know how much it costs to staff a prison?

Do you have any idea how much it will cost to double the size of the Border Patrol?

Do you have any idea how much it would cost to double the number of ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement) agents in this country?

Do you have any idea how much all of this will cost the taxpayer?

I suspect you don't. It will cost a lot of money. Money we don't have... especially with two wars going on.

Do any of you believe that it is moral to break up a family?

Do any of you believe that it wrong that someone is an American if they were born here?

Do any of you have parents or grandparents that were the first American in their families... the first Americans only because they were born here? Maybe we should make you leave, too, eh?

Does anyone else think that it is inhumane, not to mention un-American to deport someone to a country where they might be killed if they return?

Does anyone think that the current debate about illegal immigration is racist? If not, why aren't you screaming about building a fence along the Canadian border? I love our Canadian brothers and sisters, but that doesn't mean there aren't thousands upon tens of thousands of them among us, working illegally, that no one gives a thought to.

What about all of the Irish immigrants? All of those quaint folks with the accents so many Americans love? Perhaps ICE should be doing sweeps in Boston and New York and fill up a 747 and send some of them back to where they are from. Can you imagine the shrieking if we did?

The America that I still believe in can do better than this. We are still the land that the "...tired, ...hungry, and ...poor huddled masses, yearning to breathe free" wish to live in. We can still absorb them. They can still be Americans if they want to be.

We need to work harder at finding the solutions that will allow us to live up to our greatness.

I'm Just Sayin'

On Becoming A "Local"

Is the place you live the same place as you were raised?

For most of the people that I encounter on a daily basis, here in the in the Washington, DC area, the answer is an emphatic no.

I live in Prince William County, Virginia, approximately 25 miles south of Washington, DC, and until about 25 years ago, Prince William would be considered by many to be a backwater. It hadn't yet been engulfed in the suburban sprawl that is now busy consuming green spaces with Ebola-like speed. The county population was fairly small, as it was mostly rural.

Fast forward to today. Prince William has a large population... I think it is the second most populace coutny in Virginia, behind our immediate neighbors to the north in Fairfax county... where some of the readers of this blog live.

Northern Virginia, and it's suburban Maryland counterparts, is home to huge numbers of government employees and military personnel, so it should come as no surprise that the majority of the people that you meet are originally from somewhere.

None of our neighbors are native to the area, and only three of my colleagues can claim to be life-long local residents.

Mrs Gunfighter and I came to this area in the 1980's, and moved into our house when we got married in 1994. Sprawl started even before we moved here, but, even then the differences were palpable. In 1994 we could still go to the grocery store and see blue-haired white women that routinely greeted us with: "Howy'alldoin'?" Not so much anymore.

In the past few years, much has changed. I have begun to feel like "a local". I have started to say "old guy" stuff like: "Remember when we moved here, and route 123 (or 234, or Spriggs road)was a winding two-lane road?". I have been wondering about this lately and I have decided that the catalyst between living in this community and being a part of this community is having children.

Soccergirl is our anchor here. We are involved in youth soccer, the church, girl scouts, and her school. Is it any wonder that we can be at the mall/bookstore/supermarket/you-name-it, and we see people we know... everywhere? Mrs G and I are not hugely social... in that we tend to go home and stay home, or do things together as we are busy most of the time, so our social interaction happens at soccer games, girl scout meetings, chatting with the "school moms" during school pick-up times (this is usually me).

Yesterday, I found myself talking, at different times with different parents about summer camps, travel soccer (no thanks!), school events for next year, vacation bible school, swimming lessons, day care and Tae Kwon Do all in the span of two hours. I talked with several parents and discovered that we knew people in common and wind up saying things like: "oh sure, I know her, she drives the green minivan with the Australia sticker on the back" or "Yeah, she goes to our church". Jeez, we even know some of the local politicians for whom streets and parks are named.

This place that we live, this bedroom community of commuters and SUV's (not us, thank you) has become our home. When I do the math, I come up with incontrovertible proof: I have lived here longer than I have lived in any one place in my life; we refer to the house at the corner of our street as "Tom and Arlene's house", even though Tom and Arlene sold that house and moved 10 years ago; we don't socialize with anyone (with the exception of sg's godparents, and them rarely) that we did when we moved here... back then, all our friends were DC friends from work; soccergirl is FROM here.. this area is the only home she has ever known, and will likely grow to adult hood right in this place.

Kind of strange, isn't it?

Adultood.... suburban parenting... being a local.

Do The Math

If you do the math, you have to come to the conclusion that 150,000 to 180,000 American soldiers cannot hold down an insurgency in a country that is larger than California, with a population of nearly 28 million people. After all, at the height of the war in Vietnam, the United States had around 500,000 soldiers in-country, and South Vietnam was less than half the size of Iraq. We know what the outcome there was, right?

Somebody explain it to me... rationally, and with specificity.

I try to be a rational human being... but the numbers refuse to add up.

We can hold all of the opinions we want... but opinions without facts might feel good, but they don't hold up to scrutiny.

Mr Bush's war, despite all of the military success of removing S. Hussein, will be seen by history as a blundering failure.

Celebrity Reader

Recently, my blog was graced with a visit with a local celebrity.

Those of you in the Washington, DC area will be immediately know the voice of this man as soon as you hear it.



Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to intorduce Mr. Ronnie Mervis, of Mervis Diamond Importers.

Before any of you freak out and suggest that your pal Gunfighter has turned into a shill for a diamond merchant, I assure you that this isn't the case. I have been in contact with Ronnie and his son Jonathan because they have been reading my blog and were interested in picking up the traffic at their site, and since they figured mine was well-trafficked, they would ask for some pointers.

It has been a couple of months since we first made contact, and after some discussions about blogging, we have been mostly talking about South African rugby.

I'm not suggesting that you buy any diamonds... and I'm not in the market for any either (I'm a civil servant folks... I don't, as a habit, go about buying diamonds), but give Ronnie a visit, just because he seems a nice chap!


Ronnie, center, with Clinton Portis and Santana Moss, of the National Football League.


GF

NOTE: Shame on you if you think Ronnie is going to give me a nice shiny new bauble for Mrs Gunfighter for mentioning him on my blog... which would be nice, but no such offer has been made

Date Night For Gunfighter

Mrs Gunfighter and I had a great day yesterday! Soccergirl went to a sleepover Girls Scout event and was gone for the whole day, leaving us to our own devices.

OK... before you start leering, let me start by saying, when soccergirl departed, Mrs G was still in Gettysburg, Pa. for our church's Synod Assembly, during whic they elected a new Bishop (yay! and congratulations on your retirement Bishop Schneider, what a great guy), but she would be home soon.

I killed about two hours watching New Zealand destroy France at rugby (62-10) and then I mowed the lawn (and the lawns of the two houses next door). Just as I was finishing up from mowing, Mrs G. arrived at home. Woo hoo!

I took a quick shower, and away we went... to the bookstore, where we passed a some fine time, without the usual "mommy!, the new Unicorn book is out!", "daddy, will you buy the new Junie B. Jones book for me?", "mommy! a new book about sharks/dinosaurs/faeries!!!" We made some cool purchases and headed out to dinner.

We went to the Olive Garden near the mall, and could actually go to the bar and have a drink while we waited for our table. (I'm starting to dig this alone-time stuff)
We had a nice dinner, and then headed for the movie theater.

We weren't going to see anything in particular, and when we got to the theater, we were glad that we didn't have anything special in mind. the were movies called "Surfboard" and "Knocked Up" and a few others that I never heard of, as well as Spiderman 3 (no thanks) Pirates of The Caribbean 3 (sold out), Shrek 3 (not interested). So without a movie to watch, we decided to walk through the mall to walk off out meal. After that... we went home!

We spent the next three hours talking and laughing and listening to the new Michael Buble cd that we bought at Border's.

Then we went to bed.

What a night.

I woke up this morning at 7. It is my default setting.

Mrs G is still snoozing, and soccergirl is probably still snoozing at the sleepover... we have until noon to ourselves.

This is big fun, I tell you.

PS: I bought the new Ipod on Friday. The second generation Nano, in silver!