Hey Everybody!  I know it’s been FOREVER since I posted, but I’ve been busy.  I’m now married and moved to Hawaii!!!  It’s not all THAT unexpected, but I didn’t post much about my personal life in the last year or so.  You can read all about this wonderful change in my life at

wherethenavysendsus.wordpress.com

I won’t be blogging from this blog anymore, but I hope you’ll follow me at Home is Where the Navy Sends Us!

Go there to read our story!!!

Thinking about one’s life goals is a funny thing.  It forces you to stop and think about priorities and what is really essential in your life.  While music is an enormous part of my life, far more important to me are the relationships in my life.  My music career will either follow me wherever I go with my family, or it won’t, and I will be with my family and never look back.  Having a family will never have to wait on my career and my career will never come before my family.  If I get to play in a professional pops orchestra, or the pit for a great opera—which are two of my musical aspirations—it will not be at the expense of my (someday) husband and children.

Whatever I do with my music, my purpose is and will always be to honor God both for the talent that He has given me, and the free gift of salvation that He gave me, through Christ Jesus.

Keeping all of the above in mind, during the next ten years I would like to practice and study hard with a good violin instructor.  Also during that time, I hope to play with a variety of professional orchestras or expand my performing repertoire with a professional chamber group.

Long-term, I see myself giving private violin instruction and maybe continuing to play with a professional orchestra.  I also love writing, and hope to author books along with doing some freelance writing.  Whether any of that will come in the next twenty years, I don’t know.  Plans change, aspirations evolve, and while trying to plan a career is a little bit tempting (okay, not really even a little bit tempting for me—am I weird or what?), it can be potentially frustrating and harmful.  The most important thing is to live each day as though it may be your last.  Life changes plans, and that is a beautiful thing, because life itself is the most beautiful thing in the whole wide world!

Beautiful life...

The entire Western Hemisphere is obsessed.  And the only places in the world that aren’t obsessed would benefit by a tiny portion of our obsession.  Perhaps not so obviously, the biggest neurosis afflicting us today is not Hollywood or sports.  We may in fact have an unhealthy absorption with the Lindsay Lohans and Tiger Woods’, the vampires, horcruxes, and light saber swords.  Watching the stars earn millions of dollars and then fail epically in their personal life… is comforting.  It reassures us that no matter how unremarkable our lives may be, things could always be worse.  Even so, there is still a more massive obsession intoxicating us.

Health and safety.  It just so happens that guns—specifically the regulation, or lack thereof—have recently entered this enormous maelstrom of debate and subsequent legislation.

We all want to stay safe and healthy.  That’s understandable.  Each year Americans spend an unfathomable amount of money on child safety seats, hand sanitizer and dispensers, bicycle helmets, flu shots, cold shots—all sources of prevention.

‘An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’ is an old, old proverb.  We may have finally caught onto it, for the most part.  The problem we’re running into now is the bit where we took that axiom one step too far and began trying to say the disease doesn’t exist while we work to prevent it.

Recent years have shown a spike in the gun control regulations and bans all the way across the Western Hemisphere.  The United Kingdom was one of the first to place an outright ban on handguns.  From 1975 to 2007 Washington D. C. had a virtual ban on handguns that prohibited residents from owning them.  In 2007, the ban was ruled as unconstitutional and violating our right to keep and bear arms, as stipulated in the 2^nd Amendment.

Since the election of Obama in 2008, the idea of a national gun ban for the United States has been tossed around at those highest levels of idiocracy, commonly known as the Senate and the House of Representatives.  That amazes me.

So we wake up one morning and decide we’re going to ban guns. Because criminals use them sometimes to kill people, threaten people, rob people… if you name it, they have done it.  Of course, it makes sense then that we’ll place a ban on guns so that people who are committing a felony will cringe in horror and drop their gun when they find out it has been outlawed.  Because we all know how well criminals abide by the law.

Look at the prohibition act of the 1920’s and 30’s!  Alcoholic beverages were banned.  So what happened next?  Bootlegging.  And we were introduced to the swashbuckling, Al-Capone type gangsters of the era.  More alcohol was probably sold after the prohibition act was passed than before, and for more inflated prices, because we had to deal with criminals and the black market for our evening shot of whiskey.

This potential ban on guns concerns me more than the prohibition act or the ensuing bootlegging, because I’m beginning to wonder why we’re paying our elected officials such exorbitant salaries when they clearly have never read a data table in their lives.

Look at the crime rates for any of the countries with a gun ban.  Crime exists.  We all understand that.  Then there’s a ban on guns.  Add that to the equation, and over the course of a couple years, all of the sudden the crime rate skyrockets.  Meanwhile, our elected officials are sitting back in their ultra plush recliners, behind a small militia of security, drinking a scotch and thinking, ‘Hm, this is nice.  Europe banned guns.  Maybe we should do the same.’

Call me crazy, but it seems like the rise in crime might have more to do with the effects of the ban on normal, law-abiding citizens than the criminals who are committing the crimes.  Since when have criminals been known for their adherence to the law?  With a gun ban, all that we have done is effectively removed the best source of self-defense from the citizens who aren’t going to use the gun to commit a crime in the first place.  Meanwhile, criminals are still finding ways to get guns, and they’re still using them.

A citizen with a gun is much less likely to become the victim of a crime than an unarmed citizen whose only weapon is the lethal look of death and the tattletale approach.  Some of us are the body-builder, super-fighter karate kid types who have fairly decent odds to overpower an assailant even without a gun.  Some of us are not.  I place myself in the latter category.  Even with rudimentary knowledge of self-defense, I know that if I were to be attacked by a larger person, my odds of overpowering him enough to just get a head start running are rather slim, to say the least.

The same arguments apply to gun control on campus.  We all cringe at the horror stories of shootings in high schools and universities.  But why is the reaction to those events immediately to ban guns even farther?  One sane person with a gun could have stopped all of the shootings before they progressed to massacre status.  The criminal is not the gun itself, but the person behind the gun.  In our effort to stop crime, we are going to have to look past the gun, or instrument of crime, and focus on the person pulling the trigger.

If we are merely out to eliminate the objects that are used to injure people, we should toss out our cars first.  Between 35 and 40 thousand people die each year in car wrecks in the United States, compared to an average of 15,000 homicides per year.  Notice that figure is homicides total.  All homicides aren’t committed with a gun.  It is quite obvious that cars are killing more people than guns, so we should place severe restrictions on cars.  If you want to, you can even factor in the extra disadvantages of cars—the noise pollution and air pollution, for example.  So let’s all just go back to riding our bicycles and horse-drawn carriages, shall we?

We acknowledge that we have a right to protect our families and ourselves from harm.  How we choose to do that is our own decision, and should not be legislated—least of all by officials who are surrounded by security.  If the supporters of a gun ban want to give peace and love to the criminals who are robbing, raping, or murdering them, by all means, do as you please.  I’m going to have to side with Al Capone on this one, criminal or not, because as he so wisely put it, “you can, in fact, get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.”

A hundred years ago an American education was highly valued, and seen as a particular decoration on one’s resume.  Today our universities are still among some of the most prestigious worldwide, but the quality of our elementary and secondary schools has reached abysmal lows on the international spectrum.  Recent studies by education researchers indicate that American students are testing well below the top ten in all subjects, and below the top twenty in a few (http://nces.ed.gov, Digest of Education Statistics, OECD). What has gone wrong with our education system?

Brian Crosby suggests that the problem is that “today’s education system is yesterday’s education system.” (Crosby, xiv) While the countries around us have modified their education systems to follow our rapidly advancing civilization, the American public education system has remained virtually the same since its inception. The International Review of Education included this thought in a recent periodical:

Considerable data have emerged in the last 25 years suggesting that US students lag academically behind their counterparts in other industrialized countries.  Like many Americans living in the US, the international community might also be wondering how and why the nation whose universities and research institutions are the world’s finest, cannot provide its elementary and secondary students with a sound academic preparation. (IRE Vol. 54, No 1, Jan 2008)

Other people are concerned by the school system as well.  Every election, whether local or on a national scale centers around politicians who promise that they can and will change the education system for the better.  Attempts have been made.  Notably, former President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind Act” and President Clinton’s 1994 reauthorization of the “Elementary and Secondary Education Act”.  In 2009 about 153 billion dollars were poured into the education system (www.febp.newamerica.net), and that number was not significantly different from past years.  Even with these funds going into the school system, the results continue to be substandard, and even regress a little over the years.  Testing data that has been collected and analyzed by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement have assessed American students as “performing very poorly in comparison to most other countries.” (McAdams, 10)

Where we once were among the leading nations in education, we are now not even average, as our students place well beneath the top ten in key areas such as science, mathematics, and reading.

We report to the American people that while we can take justifiable pride in what our schools and colleges have historically accomplished and contributed to the United States and the well-being of its people, the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people. What was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur–others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments. (A Nation at Risk)

So far as I can see, however, our attempts to improve the system have not seriously involved drawing a comparison between the educational systems of countries who we must consider peers in the field.  What makes our education system different from the education of the countries in Western Europe who routinely score higher?

One reason that I see is how their entire school system more closely models a vocational school and begins early on to prepare students for a field of work.  The first five years of education take place in a primary school.  The fifth grade through the ninth or tenth grade, depending on the country, will involve students actively choosing a profession and beginning to take classes preparing them for that career. At the ninth or tenth grade level, students and their parents must decide whether they will join an apprentice program while taking remaining compulsory classes, or attend one of two more options: A high school that will specifically lead to technical or business school, or the much more academically rigorous program that will conclude at the 12^th or 13^th grade with acceptance to a university.

Our education system is very different on many levels.  Children are certainly not encouraged to pick a profession so young—in some cases, it is advised that a decision not be made until after the first few years in college.  If they were encouraged to come to a decision, it would do little good because the system is still tailored to provide nothing but the most general, limited background necessary to “complete” a high-school education.  This is not to say that nobody does well in this program.  Plenty of students are still accepted to colleges and universities each year.  But plenty of students will never further their education because the entire effect of school was demoralizing, and they aren’t prepared for the more rigorous studies of higher education.

In the small town where I grew up, we heard of people who graduated from our high school and were still unable to read, write, or do math.  These people were not mentally handicapped.  It is simply evidence of a system that does not work. Is there any possibility that they were accepted to a college or university?  Very, very little, I think. In that situation they will either get a low-end job and probably work for minimum wage for the rest of their lives, or they will join the growing numbers of unemployment.  This instance is not specific to my little town in the middle of Kentucky.  According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, 12% of adults in Kentucky are without basic literacy skills, but 19% of adults in the District of Columbia are illiterate. (National Assessment of Adult Literacy 2003)

Some people might argue, “This is America, land of opportunity!  If they want to drop-out of high school, and skip college altogether so they can flip burgers for the rest of their lives, it’s their choice.”  And yes, the choice to attend college or not is a personal decision, and should be, but literacy is essential in today’s society.

There is the undeniable fact that some people are not of a personality that benefits from college.  There is nothing criminal about that inclination, but it’s a tough line to draw if we say that people who don’t attend college don’t even deserve the opportunity to have a decent job.  Wouldn’t it be better to have a trade or vocational school option readily available during high school for kids who don’t think they’ll go through college for any reason?

Yes, there are trade and vocational schools in the United States, but they are so far outnumbered by traditional high schools and colleges, that we can’t honestly say we have tried this option.  The past years have shown us the most serious economic downturn since the Great Depression, but maybe the economy would be better boosted by a larger number of skilled trade workers than burger-flippers.

Also in European countries, the academic program is much more rigorous.  In talking with foreign exchange students, I have noticed that they are amazed by how easy the work is in American schools.

Academically powerful countries like Japan, Germany, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore demand more coursework from their students and expect them to work hard to master the material.  They spend more time in class and more time doing homework. (International Review of Education. Vol. 54, No. 1, Jan. 2008)

Through the past century we have slowly been relaxing our standards.  Other countries maintain a strict level of rigorous coursework, and the students are expected to spend more time learning it, and keeping up with the homework.  Diane Ravitch and Antonia Cortese suggest that, “We are the only industrialized nation that considers the mastery of basic skills to be the goal of K-12 education.”  (Why We’re Behind, 2) And we aren’t even doing a good job with the basic mastery of basic skills!

People may ask what the disadvantages to the international education systems are, and with good reason because every system has its failings.  However, I was not able to find any articles or books discussing possible disadvantages.  At this point, I believe that to be because the American system is at a level so far below our peers, that we are focusing more on trying to diagnose the problems of our education system, and rightly so, than picking apart other systems in the world.

In conclusion, it is obvious to me that the decline of academic achievement is related to our inefficient education system, and the lack of significant change in the education system over the centuries.  The problems cannot be blamed entirely on the educators, or entirely on the students.  Both parties are responsible, and it will take both parties cooperating to turn the education system around.

Let’s face it.  As a culture, we are obsessed.

The entire Western Hemisphere is obsessed.  And the only places in the world that aren’t obsessed would benefit by a tiny portion of our obsession.  Maybe not so obviously, the biggest neurosis afflicting us today is not Hollywood.  We may have an unhealthy absorption with the Lindsey Lohans, Lady Gagas, vampires, horcruxes, and light saber swords, but that is not all of it.

It’s not sports either, even though we follow the Tiger Woods and Michael Jordans avidly, grinning when they win and craning our heads when they hit a tailspin on the court or in their personal lives.

Some of us seem to subsist on the soap-opera tabloids in the front aisle of the grocery store.  Watching the stars make billions of dollars and then fail epically in their personal life… is comforting.  It reassures us that no matter how unremarkable our lives may be, things could always be worse.

Beyond the sports gods and movie star screw-ups, there is, however, an even more massive obsession.

Health and safety.  What is safety after all, but preventative measures intended to keep us healthy?

Every year we spend an unfathomable amount of money on child safety seats, hand sanitizer and dispensers, bicycle helmets, flu shots, cold shots—all sources of prevention.  ‘An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’ is an old, old proverb, and I think we might have caught onto it, for the most part.  The problem we’re running into is the bit where we took that axiom one step too far and began trying to say the disease doesn’t exist while we work to prevent it.

Recent years have shown a spike in the gun control regulations and bans all the way across the Western Hemisphere.  The United Kingdom was one of the first to place an outright ban on handguns.  From 1975 to 2007 Washington D. C. had a virtual ban on handguns that prohibited residents from owning them.  In 2007, the ban was ruled as unconstitutional and violating our rights to keep and bear arms, as stipulated in the 2^nd Amendment.

Since the election of Obama in 2008, the idea of a national gun ban for the United States has been tossed around at those highest levels of idiocracy, commonly known as the Senate and the House of Representatives.

That amazes me.

So we wake up one more and decide we’re going to ban guns. Because criminals use them sometimes to kill people, threaten people, rob people… if you name it, they have done it.  Of course, it makes sense then that we’ll place a ban on guns so that people who are committing a felony will cringe in horror and drop their gun when they find out it has been outlawed.  Because we all know how well criminals abide by the law.

Look at the prohibition act of the 1920’s and 30’s!  Alcoholic beverages were banned.  So what happened next?  Bootlegging.  More alcohol was probably sold after the prohibition act was passed than before, and for more inflated prices, because we had to deal with criminals and the black market for our evening shot of whiskey.

This potential ban on guns concerns me more than the prohibition act or the subsequent bootlegging, because I’m beginning to wonder why we’re paying our elected officials such exorbitant salaries when they clearly have never read a data table in their lives.

Look at the crime rates for any of the countries with a gun ban.  There’s crime.  We all understand that.  Then there’s a ban on guns.  Add that to the equation, and over the course of a couple years, all of the sudden the crime rate skyrockets.  Meanwhile, our elected officials are sitting back in their ultra plush recliners, behind a small militia of security, drinking a scotch and thinking, ‘Hm, this is nice.  Europe banned guns.  Maybe we should do the same.’

Call me crazy, but it seems like the rise in crime might have more to do with the effects of the ban on normal, law-abiding citizens than the criminals who are committing the crimes.  Since when have criminals been known for their adherence to the law?  With a gun ban, all that we have done is effectively removed the best source of self-defense from the citizens who aren’t going to use the gun to commit a crime in the first place.  Meanwhile, criminals are still finding ways to get guns, and they’re still using them.

A citizen with a gun is much less likely to become the victim of a crime than an unarmed citizen whose only weapon is the lethal look of death and the tattletale approach.  Some of us are the body-builder, super-fighter karate kid types who have fairly decent odds to overpower an assailant even without a gun.  Some of us aren’t.  I place myself in the latter category.  Even with rudimentary knowledge of self-defense, I know that if I were to be attacked by a larger person, my odds of overpowering him enough to just get a head start running are rather slim, to say the least.

The same arguments apply to gun control on campus.  We all cringe at the horror stories of shootings in high schools and universities.  But why is the reaction to those events immediately to ban guns even farther?  One sane person with a gun could have stopped all of the shootings before they progressed to massacre status.  The real criminal is not the gun, but the person behind the gun.  In our effort to stop crime, we are going to have to look past the gun, or instrument of crime, and focus on the person pulling the trigger.

If we are merely out to eliminate the objects that are used to injure people, we should toss out our cars first.  Between 35 and 40 thousand people die each year in car wrecks in the United States, compared to an average of 15,000 homicides per year.  Notice that figure is homicides alone.  All homicides aren’t committed with a gun.  It is quite obvious that cars are killing more people than guns, so we should place severe restrictions on cars.  If you want to, you can even factor in the extra disadvantages of cars—the noise pollution and air pollution, for example.  So let’s all just go back to riding our bicycles and horse-drawn carriages, shall we?

We acknowledge that we have a right to protect our families and ourselves from harm.  How we choose to do that is our own decision, and should not be legislated—least of all by officials who are surrounded by security.  If the supporters of a gun ban want to give peace and love to the criminals who are robbing, raping, or murdering them, by all means, do as you please.  I’m going to have to side with Al Capone (who just happened to be a criminal) on this one, because “you can, in fact, get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.”

Well, through some miracle, it just so happens that I have completed the bulk of my packing.  Just finishing out my last day of work at the country club before I go have dinner with some friends tonight, finish packing later tonight, and leave tomorrow morning.

Somehow, I think early morning tomorrow will look different… or early 8 AM when I get up… whichever comes first

Family picture from vacation…

Anyways, that’s all I have time to share right now.

I’m leaving on a jetplane…

Lovin' my Ez

I’m not exactly sure where the summer took a jaunt to, but it has all but left–except the heat.  It’s still blistering hot.  So maybe it’s not the summer that has gone, but the idea of everything that goes into summer–what actually constitutes summer.

What makes up summer for me?  Not necessarily the blistering heat–I can take that or leave it, and I prefer to leave it unless I’m toasting myself near a cold lake or the ocean.  Summer is more about what you do in it… Ice cream with best friends, vacation on the beach, iced tea, sun tanning, and if you have the most wonderful man in the world around once in a while it certainly doesn’t hurt anything… *happy sigh*

This summer was incredible.  I’m headed off to college next week.  Part of me is a little bit reluctant to let go of these last couple months with my family.  It really won’t be the same again… and I imagine that after a little bit of time in the dorm I’ll get all teary-eyed thinking about how Em, Sam, and Ez are growing without me.  I won’t be watching Sam ride his “two-wheeler” bike, and fall on his face but jump right back up and go at it again.  I probably won’t be watching with bated breath when Ez crawls or sits up for the first time.  I won’t be fussing at Emily to not chatter and giggle so much in the morning, while I giggle right along with her inside my head.

I think I’m going to be missing alot.  Not just the three little kids, obviously, but I think missing them may be a lot more poignant because I watched everybody else learn how to ride a bike, or sit up and crawl.

Holding my little man, holding my littler man

I miss everybody just thinking about missing them… but it’s not the end of the world, just the changing of the seasons.

Lots of people tell me that the best part of my life is yet to come.  I can’t wait to see it, but if it’s just as wonderful as the first 18 years have been, I have nothing to complain about.  When I stop and consider it, I guess I honestly think all my prayers have already been answered… Life is great, love is wonderful, and it just gets better every day ))

This morning I crawled out of bed in time to babysit Sam, Ezra, and my three little second cousins who live in the area for a couple hours so Mom could do some stuff.

On her way out the door, Mom mentioned that Sam and Ezra were both in dire need of a bath.  “You can even put them in the tub together, and let Sam help you with Ez.”

Okay.

I can do this, right?  Piece of cake.  I’ve bathed plenty of kids 0-5 before, just not at the same time.

Heh, yeah right.

I was carrying Ezra around in one arm, of course, so I walked back to the living room to locate Sam.  Turning on oozy excitement and finding a smile somewhere (quite a feat before 9 in the morning) I looked Sam straight in the eyes, “Sam! Guess what!  You get to take a bath this morning!  Go grab some clean clothes and I’ll start your bathwater.”

Glazed stare from the four-year-old.

“Bath, that’s right.”  I reached down with my free arm and nudged him to his feet.

Somewhat grudgingly but without too much complaint he made his way to the bathroom.

Once there however, the complaints unleashed.

“Baths are the WORST thing!”  Sam moaned.

“Tough luck, buddy, you’re never gonna get away from them.  Sorry about your luck.”

“Why are you undressing Ezra?  I don’t want to take a bath.”

“Ezra’s gonna take the bath with you.  It’ll be fun.  Hop in the tub.”

“WWWWHHHHAAAAATTTTT??????”

Sam splashed his way into the tub and sat there looking miserable as I carefully set Ezra in the water with him.

“I don’t want to take a bath with Ezra.”

“Oh for pity’s sake, he’s your little brother!  He can’t even sit up by himself!”

“But I don’t want to.”

“I remember Mom giving me baths with Andrew.  Stop whining.” (My tolerance of his whining is decreasing, even while I’m starting to giggle at how far his lower lip is thrust out)

The whining continued… and continued… and continued…  All the while Sam is whining, Ezra is laughing, and splashing, and the world’s happiest baby-in-bath.  Guess they balance each other out.

Yes, I have to agree with you, he's just about the cutest thing ever--this picture is not from the morning bath session though. I didn't quite have enough hands to manage the two kids, let alone two kids plus a camera....

And just for some perspective... Sams lower lip was about 3 inches further out.

After one too many “This is weird.” comments I finally swallowed my giggles and solemnly swore to him that if he didn’t shut up he wouldn’t take a bath by himself until he was twelve.

The whining stopped.

Of course, it might have stopped because Sam finally laid eyes on a squirt gun that was floating around the bathtub.  He got the most rotten grin on his face and promptly squirted me.

And squirted.

And squirted.

The problem was that the more he grinned and squirted, the more I giggled–and I was holding a three-month-old in the water.  Suffice it to say i had no free extremity to swipe the squirt gun from him until I spent enough time juggling the baby and the washcloth that he had me wetter than the baby.

Coughing water out of my mouth, I assured Sam that I’d had quite enough water and he subsided a little sheepishly.

For five minutes.

I looked up from washing Ezra in time to see Sam, with one of those little yellow ducks and that tell-tale mischievous grin. Didn’t even have time to duck.  (pun very much intended)

The long and short?  I think there’s a good chance I got wetter than Sam did.

There are certain things that some girls are born without.  Mental maps of Lowes, for example.  The mysteries of the universe that might as well just not be mysteries, because, if we’re being completely honest, we couldn’t care less if we knew or not.  Until yesterday.  For me anyways.

No, not Lowes again.

Golfcarts.

Simple enough, right?  There is one speed (gas pressed flat on the floor), brakes (requires going up a large hill–especially as a result of the gas pedal), no seat belts, ( ), no windshield (bugs in your mouth), little bars that you can hold onto if you can grow a third arm in time to catch yourself before you fall out of the cart… and this awesome smooth leather seat that’s about three feet long (more on that later).

Needless to say, golf carts are a LOT of fun.  I mean, who needs to play golf as long as you have a golf cart?!  The only problem is that some golf carts have gas tanks.

Why a problem?

Whoever invented them left off the gas gauge.

The rental carts do okay.  I check the gas when I pull them out each morning, and as a result they never get much below a half tank.  My arch-nemesis, however, aka the Range-Ball-Cart, has a very large thing on the front that picks up the balls.  This very large thing makes the cart feel like a whale, and somehow it just really isn’t worth it to drive the cart all the way out to the gas tank every day.  So I usually just turn the cart on and press the gas down.  If it goes, I promise myself that I’ll gas it up “tomorrow”.  And as we all know, the best part about “tomorrow” is that it’s “always a day away.”

Yesterday, my folly caught up with me.  I was cruising along, out by the 200 yard line, when the engine sputtered, coughed, and stopped moving.  There was no question in my mind that the gas had run out.

Not too much of a problem.  I’ll just hike back up the hill (yes, the driving range is on a hill) get the gas can, fill it up, come back down, and dump it in the gas tank.  Easier said than done.  The gas can is about 5 gallons, which means it’s a little heavy when it’s full.  Not too bad, I can lift it without trouble, but it is neighboring on heavy.  The golf cart has a bunch of weird bars sticking up all around the hole for the gas tank JUST to make my life difficult.  Because there is no way to get the two-inch nozzle to the gas entry point.  Period.

As you all may or may not know, I try to be a pretty creative girl once in a while.  It isn’t convenient, but I’ll get a smaller container and use it to pour the gas into the tank.

Two words about that.

Styrofoam melts.

It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen, but styrofoam melts like butter in a hot skillet when you pour gas in it.

I finally found a plastic container that was about 16 ounces, and proceeded to pour in, pour out, pour in, pour out, pour in, pour out…. you get the idea.  After the gas can was about half empty I finally realized maybe I could crawl on the seat, lean over the back and dump the gas into the tank from a distance.  The gas can somehow managed to wedge itself in a thoroughly upright position, directly over the gas tank hole.

Luckily, before I was able to contemplate finding a screwdriver and shoving it through the gas-can to make a hole into the gas-tank, or my head, one of the lovely older couples at the country club came to my rescue.  Mr. Smith unstuck the gas can, filled the gas tank, and all in about half the time it took me to melt a styrofoam cup.

No matter what they say, chivalry isn’t dead.

My career as a mechanic may be.

As we pause in our everyday life to celebrate the fourth of July this weekend, I find myself wondering how fully we appreciate all that Independence Day stands for, or if it has simply become a time for us to roast hotdogs over a fire and watch fireworks explode against a dark night sky.

I certainly hope we all realize that Independence Day is about a lot more than hotdogs!  The separation of the Colonies from Great Britain on that notable day back in 1776 marked the first step in a long history of freedom.  Over the years, it hasn’t been easy to maintain that freedom, and today we stand to lose all that we and our ancestors have fought so hard for.

The principles and standards supported by the Constitution are being dropped like flies as the leaders we elected to protect and uphold the Constitution disregard it with a concentration that is astonishing.

Last time I checked, being an American meant being free to make your own choices, for better or for worse, in your pursuit of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  That opinion isn’t very popular right now among mainstream media sources, and certainly not among our leaders.  They are perfectly happy if you don’t ask questions.  Why should they care if you have read the constitution and declaration of indepenence?  You’re just another average citizen. Or so they struggle to make you believe.  They wage a psychological battle, drawing hard and fast class lines while preaching and trying to sell equality.

Do you notice how, while education is such an “important” thing, critical thinking is rarely encouraged?  Are you ever given a textbook passage, and asked to point out the fallacies?  Or are you led to believe that the teacher/professor is always right, the material presented in the books is always correct, and there is no need for further questioning of a subject?  How much are we conditioned to never ask questions?

Where exactly do the questions of 3-year-olds get lost? You know, the days of, “Why is the sky blue?  Why do trees have leaves?  How do birds stay up?  How many trees are there in the world?  Why does a ladybug have spots?”  Why doesn’t that attitude of questioning prevail through childhood and even adulthood?  Sure, maybe some of the questions don’t have answers, but lets take this questioning bit to the political arena.

“Why do you think gun restrictions will prevent crime?  Do criminals ever obey the law, or will gun restrictions merely hamper the law abiding citizens who allow the restrictions to be imposed?”

“Why should I let you dictate to me what kind of health insurance I should have, or if I should have any at all?”

For the past hundred years or so at least, our leaders in DC have been increasingly prone to make our lives better by cutting our freedoms.

What else was the prohibition movement all about?  You think telling me it isn’t legal to purchase alcoholic beverages is some how making me free? You can laugh all you want, but we still suffer (and I do mean suffer ) from the lingering effects of the prohibition movement.  To this day, in some off-the-map counties in Kentucky, for example, it is illegal to sell alcoholic beverages.

Plead irrelevance if you must.  But this Independence Day I challenge you to ask questions.  What exactly constitutes freedom?  What makes you feel free?  What will be the last step that pushes you over the edge to realizing how enslaved you are?  Yes, it could be difficult to analyze these questions, let alone come up with answers, but don’t worry the egg before you get the chicken.

If you’re feeling pretty good about that, for the bonus round, ask yourself what the difference is between freedom, and the equality that our politicians are so bent on shoving down our throats. Interesting, isn’t it?

This Independence Day, I am proud to be an American, with the history of freedom-seeking “average citizens” who wanted nothing more than a better life for themselves and their children.  For all that has changed in the past two-hundred some years I don’t believe that has.  This year, let’s remind our leaders what freedom and the pursuit of happiness is all about.

And as always, God Bless America.