View from the Ledge looks at some beautiful architecture.

"Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, whose county lies at the center of major drug and alien smuggling routes to Phoenix and cities east and west, attests to the violence. He said his deputies are outmanned and outgunned by drug traffickers in the rough-hewn desert stretches of his own county.

'Mexican drug cartels literally do control parts of Arizona,' he said. 'They literally have scouts on the high points in the mountains and in the hills and they literally control movement. They have radios, they have optics, they have night-vision goggles as good as anything law enforcement has.

'This is going on here in Arizona,' he said. 'This is 70 to 80 miles from the border - 30 miles from the fifth-largest city in the United States.'

He said he asked the Obama administration for 3,000 National Guard soldiers to patrol the border, but what he got were 15 signs."

More:

"Mr. Cutler said it was 'outrageous' for the BLM to direct travelers to dial 911 to report suspicious activities since the calls do not go to the federal government but to state and local police. He said the signs are telling Americans to call state and local law enforcement authorities to deal with border lawlessness while at the same time telling Arizona that only the federal government can write and enforce immigration laws."

Read on.

Thanks, David.

It's really cool that "September" rhymes with "remember".  "September" from the indispensable Daughtry. who reminds us what rock music used to be.  When i finally (soon?) go bald, I'm growing chops like those.

Sippican Cottage points us to the best advice a modern boy can receive . 

A sample:

"Ride a bicycle without a helmet. You heard me. And no spandex spangled with lavender and chrome yellow blotches and French words. You'll wear canvas shoes, too. You will not have anything with you that people with helmets refer to as "hydration." Eventually, you can get a snort of rubber-tasting hot water from a garden hose."

Thanks, American Digest.

"If Obama were to murder Lauer's family and burn down his house, he'd be thrilled the President visited his home."

Dear God.

John is back at school.  Year one, EVERYONE accompanies the college-bound kid to school to help with the move-in process.  Year two is a wave and a "send me a picture of the room".  Independence is important.  We got a picture of the room.  All is well.

Eclecticity looks at the future of screen technology .

And, let's take a look back at the first IT guy:

I spent eight hours driving with a colleague today.  We decided to tackle a important competitive issue while in the car.  Each of us had some insight and after about an hour, a pretty comprehensive outline was developed.  The process was aided by a lack of interruptions.  After all, we were in the car, on the way to a meeting.  We had nowhere else to go during the drive. 

As we cruised along the highway, we threw ideas out, put them down and discussed the issue thoroughly.  At one point, we even called a client for some details on which we were unsure.  He added some thoughts to the discussion.

I've had some very productive and memorable discussions during long road trips.  Today's drive gave me an good idea for corporate planning sessions.  Get the team in a car or van and hit the highway with an agenda of topics to be tackled.  The road trip format seems to foster informal and open discussion.  Someone - preferably not the driver - should be designated as scribe to capture all ideas during the trip. 

Little setup is required.  The cost is minimal since a meeting room need not be reserved and snacks could picked up at a roadside gas station.  Phones could be collected and turned off to avoid interruptions.  I'm willing to bet that the exercise would yield impressive results.

I went for my physical yesterday.  In between listening and checking and telling me to lose ten pounds, my doctor asked me about the health care reform bill.  I told him that I thought it would raise the cost of health care and decrease access to health care providers.  He agreed and expressed strong concerns about the direction that the legislation moved the health care system while doing nothing about malpractice reform or the current shortage of family physicians.  I coughed, agreed and coughed again. 

Then I read this editorial in today's Wall Street Journal.  Good for these doctors:

"To counter this election-year ruse, my colleagues and I at Docs4PatientCare are enlisting thousands of doctors in an unorthodox and unprecedented action. Our patients have always expected a certain standard of care from their doctors, which includes providing them with pertinent information that may affect their quality of life. Because the issue this election is so stark—literally life and death for millions of Americans in the years ahead—we are this week posting a 'Dear Patient' letter in our waiting rooms.

The letter states in unambiguous language what the new law means:

'Dear Patient: Section 1311 of the new health care legislation gives the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and her appointees the power to establish care guidelines that your doctor must abide by or face penalties and fines. In making doctors answerable in the federal bureaucracy this bill effectively makes them government employees and means that you and your doctor are no longer in charge of your health care decisions. This new law politicizes medicine and in my opinion destroys the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship that makes the American health care system the best in the world.'"

First Trust Blog looks to freight trains as indicators on the economy:

"To paraphrase, when trains have 100 or more cars, the economy is doing well, but during recessions, trains often have just 60-70 cars.  We have tested this anecdotal evidence over the years, and we’ve found it to be a fairly good gauge of economic activity.  It also gives us something to do when we are stopped by a train.  It’s not perfect, and it’s only anecdotal, but we love the information.  One thing to remember is that during recoveries not “all” trains have 100 or more cars on them.  However, during recessions, very few are 100 or more cars in length."

It is that time when late summer moves into early autumn.  The feed corn stands brown in the fields, waiting to be felled and dried and stored.  The smells of dry grass and rotting water moss from the low creek mingle in the evening air.  The crickets and cicada chirp with a ferocity that doesn't seem possible to maintain.  The vegetables rush to ripeness, overflowing collection baskets with tomatos, peppers and beans as the plants finish up their season's work.  Flowers are tired, waiting to disappear until the spring.  Everything foretells the shift when the weather will break and autumn will come with winds to clear the trees and rains to refill the creek and cold to give us a taste of winter.

If I were told that only one piece of learning advice would be heeded by my children, I would offer this:  "When you are reading, be completely, utterly 'in' whatever you are reading."  I am certain that success would be theirs.

The Catholic Thing looks at the importance of reading fiction:

"We will not have taken the time, as C. S. Lewis once said, to live other lives than our own.  Books allow us to do this vicarious living,especially fiction. To be sure, we have good and bad fiction. Yet, I recall Rudolf Allers once saying in class that we should constantly be reading fiction, even bad fiction, for we will almost always find there scenes of human reality that we would not notice otherwise."

Thanks NLT.

Yep, it was on the mix.  The Little River Band sings "Cool Change":

Found at Lint, the site for Wispy, Clingy Ephemera.

For at least today, we are craftsmen.  So what is your craft?

- When writing, our words will be honed to be pleasing but effective.

- When speaking we will measure twice and cut once.

- When teaching, our students will be treated like the as-yet unfinished but important projects that they are.

- When managing, employees will be approached as we would any highly anticipated undertaking.

- When taking calls from the customer, the inquiries will be used as an opportunity to demonstrate our amazing skills.

- When handling client requests, they will be heard as we would hear an expert's sought-after advice.

- Our day will be planned as an important project would be sketched out?

- Adjustments will made based upon how the plan plays out.

- At the end of the day we will step back and admire our progress.

Today we are craftsmen.

Neo-Neocon reports that parents are having a tough time saying goodbye to their college students:

"Freshman orientations at many colleges now often include a schedule that specifically mentions that the rest of the activities are for students only. Some have even instituted staged and formalized ceremonial leave-takings.

It seems that the current crop of parents are so heavily involved with their children that it’s hard to say goodbye. Years of arranging playdates and chauffeuring and tutoring for college boards create a situation in which going away to college looms almost as large an empty nest watershed in parents’ lives as the subsequent marriage of their offspring eventually does."

As for us?  It was nice having John home for the summer but we hope he enjoys his sophomore year.  My words:  "See you at Thanksgiving."

I am pleased to report that CO has a nice host of college-aged readers.  As I did last year, I'll be adding some regular posts for those embattled readers.  Check in regularly boys and girls.  We'll feature advice on college (The game, Drink Star Trek, can easily be adapted), paper ideas ("The original rock stars: Antonio Vivaldi, Muzio Clementi and Franz Liszt") and ammunition to withstand the onslaught of college professors ("Yes the market is imperfect as is your Utopian 'one-world, one-prison' gulag.")

Thanks, Dr. Helen.

I love it when a plan comes together.

Thanks, Tim.

I'm ready.  Julia Fischer plays Autumn from Vivaldi's Four Seasons:

. . .at A Suitable Wardrobe.

Obama


Bush

Thanks, American Digest.