The wife and I headed off this weekend for a few days sailing on the Chesapeake. Due to the miracle of modern weather forecasting, we managed to sail not one single yard. Thunderstorms and tornadoes were threatened for all the days we had planned. So we abandoned the plan and went to visit the in-laws in PA. Spent some very quality time with my wife's infant nephew, making faces and cooing like the perfectly smitten idiots we were; spent some time chasing the dog when he wouldn't give the frisbee back. Despite not sailing, it was nice.

The night before we decided no sailing would take place, we drove to Annapolis for dinner. Annapolis, in addition to hosting the Naval Academy and serving as the capital of Maryland, is a tourist trap for sailors ("a drinking town with a sailing problem" as an ubiquitous T-shirt would have it). It has a couple of decent restaurants and too many shops that sell nothing but image.

Three observations:

1. The word "collectible" is a synonym for crap (or as my mother would say, "IBST", which stands for "itty-bitty-shitty things").
2. The only black people we saw downtown were in the restaurant kitchens (or standing by the back doors smoking). This is different from the rest of Maryland.
3. That the singer/guitar player at the outdoor restaurant right on the downtown harbor sang "Lola" by the Kinks to great applause was, I thought, very weird. Was it commentary on "don't ask, don't tell" or don't people in Annapolis know what the song is about?

Our young officers, in many ways the face that America now presents to the world, are being educated within the walls of the Naval Academy - just a hop, a skip, and a stumble from the harbor. They are learning certain ethics, modes of behavior and interaction, a type of knowledge about their place and role in the world. But they are also being educated in a very different way every time they step outside the Academy gates, imbibing a whole different set of ethics. Annapolis is one America, one America of many, and a very small one for young men and women for whom the whole world is a responsibility.