SAILBOARDS, GUITARS, AND THE TIP OF THE IDEOLOGICAL ICEBERG

GET SET...

GOING...

GOING...

VIRTUALLY GONE!

Tuesday, 8:00 AM.  70 degrees F, wind WNW, light to sometimes breezy.  The humidity is 72%, the sky cloudless with some haze over the Islands and the lake.  The barometer is down, predicting rain but that seems unlikely unless it is an intermittent shower such as we had last night, which left only a small puddle in the driveway.
    Back to Saturday, at the beach in Ashland; we watched with interest a slightly built  Oriental man of undecipherable age unload a sailboard from his vehicle and put it together, piece by piece .. sail, hand holds, rudder, etc.; then don his wet suit, piece by piece…shirt, pants, shoes…then carry  the whole contraption down to the water.  We watched while we ate lunch in the truck, it must have taken a half an hour.  Once in knee deep water he jumped aboard and he was off at motorboat speed, even leaving a wake (there was a stiff south wind blowing) and in less time than it has taken to write about it he was but a distant speck.  We debated waiting about for his return, but decided he may have left for good and might never come back. 
    Eating lunch yesterday we spied a very small sail out in the channel and conjectured that it might be him, but considered that in several days he might have very well made it to Canada, out the Sioux Locks, over Niagara Falls, up the St. Lawrence and halfway to Ireland.
    I see that the Gibson Guitar Company has settled with the Obama Administration’s suit against them for making classical guitars that contain some inlay woods that are on the endangered species list.  For $285,000.  Wood that is deemed illegal to import in a raw state but that can be imported in instruments made in a foreign land.  How illogical is that ?
    The President has gone a step further and is actually saying to the venerable Gibson Guitar Company and its highly skilled workers, "You can't build that." If I were the owner of Gibson I would move my entire operation to Sri Lanka or somewhere and say to hell with trying to make things here.    How stupid can we be, to let this  continue? And you can be sure that this bit of arcane idiocy is only the tip of the ideological iceberg that has put a gaping hole in our economy.