A couple of days ago my family went up Pistol River to swim at Deep Creek, a local spot where the river bunches up so you can swim without freezing to death or drowning. I like a certain small sandy beach at Deep Creek, but you have to wade across the river to get to it. Unfortunately I forgot to take my BlackBerry cell phone out of my dungaree cutoffs, and I was in the middle of the river when I remembered it. When I got to the other side, the BlackBerry was flickering like it was gasping for air. I shut it off immediately and hoped it would dry out by itself.

But it didn’t. By the time we returned home a few hours later, the glass display had fogged up. Youngest son Sam came to the rescue and told me, “Put it in rice overnight, Dad. The rice will draw out the water.” I did, and by morning it worked! Thank you, thank you, thank you 15-year-old son Sam. I had a lot of data besides phone numbers on that BlackBerry.

I’ve since backed up my BlackBerry data to a hard disk storage device, then did the same for my laptop, which it turns out hadn’t been backed up for about a year. You need a data scary moment like this now and then to make you remember how much grief it can cause you to lose a lot of computer data.

Tomorrow night, Thursday, July 8, could decide the future of the Crook Point Golf Course proposed to be located in Pistol River about 10 miles south of my town of Gold Beach as the Curry County Planning Commission holds a meeting and will listen to public comments. The meeting is at 7 pm at the Curry County Fairgrounds in Gold Beach.

At stake are several hundred new jobs for this hard-pressed area and more than $8 million a year being injected into the local economy. All local businesses and their employees stand to benefit from the new economic activity. I plan to attend and lend my support. I expect there will be some opposition, mainly from hard-core fringe environmental groups who don’t want to see anything built anywhere.

The proposed golf course will be an especially important revenue producer for our local school districts, fire, and police departments, generating $400,000 in new taxes each year, which is 40 times what the property proposed for the golf course now generates.

If you are from this area, you should attend this meeting and voice your support. Too many valuable proposed projects in the past have been killed at this type of meeting because the naysayers outnumbered the supporters.

In the new issue of BHM you may have noticed that we’re trying to promote our town of Gold Beach by suggesting readers visit. Here are a couple of interesting scenes of the town. The first is a painting of Gold Beach as it existed in the year 2000. Very little has changed. The second is a photo taken recently of the bridge leading into Gold Beach from the north.

This video of Ron Paul gives a sensible assessment of the potential result of new sanctions against Iran.

Paul is a maverick in Congress, often bucking the herd mentality of our elected politicians. A clear thinker who is more responsible than any other person for the birth of the Tea Party Movement, he clearly articulates the serious mistakes of U.S. fiscal and foreign policy. Many voters, especially younger people, are finally listening intently to his common sense explanations, although his fellow incumbent politicians still pretty much ignore him. I expect many of those incumbents to be voted out of Congress this November.

Ron Paul is a Libertarian, although he had to don Republican clothing to get elected to Congress. His common sense explanations, which reflect long-held Libertarian thinking, can save America from its misguided politicians. More of Ron Paul’s insights can be found here.

It’s a great day for freedom. The Supreme Court today struck down Chicago’s handgun ban. This is an immensely important case. I recommend reading Mas Ayoob’s blog posts on it.

Lenie is still in Wisconsin and will soon visit Jackie Clay at her home. She sent me this photo of the two of them at the recently finished MREA Fair.

It’s just great to be home. My own bed, sitting quietly on my deck and listening to the wind whisper in the firs.

I have work to do: already mowed the week’s-worth of grass, watered the garden, and gone in town to solve a few publishing problems for Annie. But there are structural jobs — rework a shed and build a garden hot bed. They’ll be fun.

It’s the solitude during the day I like best. I let out a Tarzan-yell and no one hears but my kids. They are good Tarzan yellers themselves. I’m ruining them for citified society. They’re going to need an occasional Tarzan-yell for the rest of their lives.