Happy Independence Day!

I wish all my American readers a very Happy Independence Day! This is one of my favorite holidays. It’s also one of the most well-traveled, when families hit the road to do things together. The good folks at BabySafeTravel.com have some great tips and ideas for kid friendly travel and road trip safety (wish I had this when mine were little!), so check out the site if you have kids.

Please drive safely, enjoy the blessed holiday, and have a very happy weekend!

P.S. We Mecombers will be going on a special day trip for the holiday, so I will skip the Saturday Photo Hunters. I will also be posting a travelogue of some of the neat places we will be seeing! Say tuned.

Thracian Cliffs Golf Course

When I was asked by the people at Thracian Cliffs resort in Bulgaria to look at their website, I thought of the incredible scenery the Thracian landscape affords, and my mind started to blow! THIS, people, is top-notch luxury property. The website itself is incredibly beautiful. I love Greek culture, Greek food, Greek scenery– I’m going to see it all someday!

Thracian Cliffs is on the north coast of the Black Sea, in Bulgaria (north of Greece). The Thracian Cliffs project is new, begun in 2006 with final work slated for 2011. It’s absolutely gorgeous, words just cannot express the incredible splendor of the area and the luxurious Thracian golf property. Thracian Cliffs is expected to become one of the top international courses for golf, ever. I can certainly understand why. It’s just exquisite.

The spectacular Gary Player Golf Course is located here. The course is named after the incredible international golfer (aka the Black Knight) who personally designed the course. This classy course is surrounded by elegantly Bulgarian properties and resorts, a true golfer’s paradise. Really, even if you never expect to stay at the resort to play golf, you must see the website! The history of Bulgaria and the photos of the resorts are truly stunning. If you travel and play golf, make this a destination; it’s remarkable.

Website for the Armchair Traveler

Here’s a cute website for the armchair budget traveler (like me, heh heh): Nextstop. It’s an online travel community that offers short reviews, photos, and snippets about travel destinations. And it covers places– even the more obscure places– all around the world. It has the big cities, like San Francisco and Paris and Tokyo; but I did a quick search for Syracuse, NY, and got some nifty results! It also has a nice widget that you can create and customize, and add to your website, showcasing your own reviews of places. Nice one to bookmark.

Payne Stewart Golf Course Officially Open

Golfing is BIG– just HUGE– here in Upstate New York. I’m actually a little surprised at how popular it is, especially when you consider that for half of the year we have snow on the ground! But within a 7 mile radius from where I live, I can instantly think of 6 golf courses!! And in nearby Vernon, NY, is the famous golf course at the Turning Stone Resort run by the Oneida Indian Nation (and where the PGA Championship has been held). That golf course has been called the Northeast’s premier golf course.

There’s a new golf course– a blossoming one– or all you golf fans. Perhaps you’ve heard of it: the Payne Stewart Golf Course. It’s located in the Midwest entertainment capital of the country, in Branson, Missouri. Payne Stewart was from Missouri. He was a rising star in the world of golf, but died tragically almost ten years ago when his jet plane crashed. Stewart was also well known for his stylish golf clothing when he played– he looks like a real Scotsman! The PGA Tour established the Payne Stewart Award in 2000, given to a player who shows respect for the game (as Stewart did) and who gives honor to the sport through professional conduct and dress. What a legacy!

The Payne Stewart Golf Course officially opened this month. It’s a beautiful 7,319 yard, 18-hole course, designed by Bobby Clampett and Chuck Smith. Each hole has a special name, named for some important event or aspect of Stewart’s life. I’ve seen photos and the course looks SUPERB. Of course, it’s so fitting to be located in Branson (Branson Hills, precisely, situated in the gorgeous Ozark Mountains), where you can find the best of the best in entertainment and vacation attractions. The famous Hilton Promenade at Branson Landing is there, offering spectacular family-friendly prices and events. Ad there’s the Hilton Branson Convention Center Hotel. Did you know that Branson is the nation’s Live Entertainment Capital of the World?

So if you’ve got a hankering for some fine golf in a gorgeous location, and a desire to play in a part of history and legacy, check out the Payne Stewart Golf Course and the Hilton Promenade at Branson Landing. You won’t be disappointed!

Photo Hunters: Flags

It seems like an eternity since I last participated in Photo Hunters. And it’s been a few weeks since tnchick’s site had problems, and the old default look is still up. :S

The theme for this week is Flags. Well, I’ve got some flags!

Does anyone know what the New York State flag looks like? It looks a lot like this one.

That flag is at Fort Stanwix in Rome, NY, the place of a defense fort for the French & Indiar War and the American Revolution War. This was the flag of one of the many regiments stationed at Fort Stanwix (each regiment seemed to have their own flag, because the colonies were not united into states before the Revolutionary War). The New York State flag borrowed from this Stanwix regiment flag. Here’s our state flag.

Here are flags hanging at the Children’s Museum in Utica, NY. These flags represent the largest ethnic groups that have come to settle our area. According to numerous Bosnians who have been flocking to New York State in recent decades, Utica, NY, is known throughout the world as America’s “emigration capital.”

And here are some flags hanging on the U.S.S. Slater, the great battleship destroyer escort during World War II and the Korean War. These flags, placed in certain colors and orders, communicate information to other ships. When we visited the Slater, the tour guide told us what thes eflags were “saying,” but I forgot. Maybe it had something to do with letting us in for free, heh heh.

And this is an old “Don’t Tread on Me” flag, that was another flag of a one of the regiments for the American Revolution. This one hangs at the Oriskany Battlefield, in Oriskany, NY (known as the bloodiest battle of the Revolution). This “Don’t Tread on Me” flag was signed by veterans after the events of 9/11 in the country.

So that’s my Flag for Photo Hunters! How did your Photo Hunt go today?

Thoughts on the Associated Press Story

Note to Readers: This is not a travel post. Haha!

Earlier today on my other blog, I ranted about the FTC Bill (coming up for passage this summer). I wanted to write a little about it here, because there are a LOT of misconceptions about the issue. Firstly, the 86-page bill is here (it’s a pdf file). The bill makes a big deal about the reliability and needed oversight of “new media” (that’s us, fellow bloggers) when it comes to truth in advertising laws. Now, I will state that I am JUST FINE with truth in advertising– I have no problem with that. Rather, these are some of the issues I have with this FTC bill:

1. Blogs are OPINION forums.
The FTC desires to regulate opinions?! What will happen if one of my opinions is considered “wrong” or “misleading” by someone who has other opinions? Will I be targeted, simply because I have a blog?

2. I OWN my blogs. It’s MY private property.
This is a lot different than that “store clerk” parable that is being thrown around these days:

“If you walk into a department store, you know the (sales) clerk is a clerk,” said Rich Cleland, assistant director in the FTC’s division of advertising practices. “Online, if you think that somebody is providing you with independent advice and … they have an economic motive for what they’re saying, that’s information a consumer should know.”

The guidelines also would bring uniformity to a community that has shunned that.

This is a horribly poor allegory for sponsored posts on blogs. I OWN my blogs, I am an independent contractor, and this is MY space. A more appropriate allegory would be that of celebrity endorsement. We’ve all seen them, ever since I Love Lucy or The Honeymooners. How about Kim Komando and her GoToMyPC.com? Laura Ingraham and her Select Sleep Number Bed? Rush Limbaugh and his new GM SUV? Will they be required to hoist large placards over their heads, informing addle-brained consumers that their endorsement or product name-drop is sponsored? No! And how about movie makers with their “paid for” insertions of products and product names in movies (remember E.T.’s Reese’s Pieces?)! The movie makers get paid BIG bucks for dropping brand-names into their films. Do you think the Feds are going after them? NO!

But bloggers, who earn a measly $5-8 per sponsored post will have to do it– or be SUED or JAILED by the Feds! It’s unconscionable.

3. This bill, if passed into law, is unenforceable.
Here’s an example: on this blog, I write product reviews. Probably 80% of the product reviews I do on this blog are MY OWN. I don’t get paid for them. I just love doing product reviews. It’s WHY one of my blogs is called, uh, Freaky FRUGALite. I have a readership of educated, frugal moms and dads, and this is why I write about what I do. DUH!! Is the FTC going to sue me for this post about trying out Montezuma Cranberry Wine? I liked it and it has some certain health benefits for me. What am I to do if some addled-brained idiot buys the stuff and gets sick from it or doesn’t get any health benefit?? And how can I prove that I was never paid to write about Montezuma Wine– how on earth can I prove a negative?! I’m doing it for ME and for my readers– it’s part information and part entertainment, and the American people aren’t SO stupid so as to believe otherwise.

4. SEPs vs SEDPs: I think there should be “Stupid Laws” on the books.
If you read a blog post about how a vitamin is going to make you fly like Superman, and you buy that vitamin believing that you can now fly like Supermen, then YOU should be sued, for being such a stupid idiot! I think it’s high time Smart, Enterprising People (SEPs) had some defending here, against the Stupid, Easily-Duped People (SEDPs). The SEDs have been pandered too and coddled for tooo long. It’s about time they reaped some consequences here.

5. Next thing you know, we’ll have to have a Fairness Doctrine for blogs….!
Yeah, this is such a slippery slope! The Feds could tighten the screws, forcing us bloggers to abide by the idiotic Fairness Doctrine. Next thing you know, I won’t be able to write about Hoover vacuum cleaners unless I am “fair” and also write about Dyson vacs in the same sentence! All in the name of “fairness”! GRRRRRR!

6. Bloggers are independent thinkers, and we don’t want government-sponsored “uniformity.”
In the REAL world, that kind of uniformity is called “SLAVERY.” It’s called DEATH TO FREE ENTERPRISE, to CREATIVITY and to INNOVATION.

Finally, I like what John Dvorak had to say about this. (He’s a blogger, by the way, and he did not PAY ME to say this- happy now, FTC?):

This is like the government, in cahoots with the RIAA, going after some mom in Ohio for stupidly leaving Kazaa running on her machine and discovering she’s been a transit point for the “Best of Bee Gee’s” for the past two years. Meanwhile, the Asian mobs off the Indonesian coast are cranking out commercial counterfeit CDs by the millions. Do something about that first before you go after the oh-so-dangerous mom in Ohio.

The same holds true here. I could care less that Milly the Yarn Spinner at millysworldofyarn.com is getting free samples of yarn to review on her blog. Has she disclosed it was free yarn? Will she return the sweaters she knits from the yarn? Who cares?

We do not need the FTC looking into Milly when there are large corporations ripping off the public every day. The community of bloggers can make Milly miserable for her misleading review, but the public can do little about financial scams, major price fixing, overbilling by the phone companies, or any number of big scams. Where is the FTC?

Because the FTC so willfully ignores the obvious, most eggregious lawbreakers, and because they are instead turning their attentions to the Little Guy and the Mom Blogger, I find this bill very suspicious. It makes me really, really wonder about who is “sponsoring” this bill… where’s the FTC’s truth in advertising, huh? Who are the people pushing for this regulation?

And here’s a note to you Blog Purists who remain arrogantly unspotted by the evil taint of sponsored content– go your way to please your virginal readers with your pure and blameless content… go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your approval. Be merry in your own little immaculate niches, and pay us dirty thieves no mind. If you believe that your content is somehow better than ours merely because of the lack of sponsored posts, that’s just fine with us. Go away now, and be merry. You’ll not be missed, anyway…

Next Page »