When Vice President Joe Biden was in Dover recently we happened to be on South Little Creek Road, heading west toward Court Street and Legislative Hall, when the motorized entourage of police cars and motorcycles protecting Biden’s car flashed up Court Street, sped across Route 13, and turned south on Route 1 headed for Dover Air Force Base.

It was quite a sight, and one seen only in Washington or wherever  the president or vice president happen to be moving about on the ground.

Biden was in town to welcome back to the states his son’s National Guard unit and his high-ranking presence certainly made it an extra special event.

While I haven’t talked to any of the police officers who were part of the lights-flashing assignment I imagine it was something they will long remember.
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On the subject of elected officials, it is time that Delaware join most of the other states in requiring that a replacement for a sitting U.S. senator whose term is interrupted be elected instead of appointed by the governor.

We just saw the opposite happen in Massachusetts to make it possible to have the state’s governor quickly name some one to fill the seat of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. 

Voters shouldn’t have to give up their right to elect their senators.
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One more political note in respect to elections: it is time to change the way election districts in Delaware are re-aligned after the federal census next year.

As it is now, both political parties do the boundary changing to protect their own   incumbents.

That’s not fair to voters. It leads to many legislators, for example, going back to Dover time after time.

If there is one aspect of both the state and federal legislatures that needs fixing, it is drawing reasonable and fair election districts reflecting both population numbers and natural divisions of geography. It’s not an easy job and it is not something that elected officials should control.

Selection of an impartial and balanced commission is needed, and admittedly arranging for that to happen is also not easy.

Since Delaware has only one member of the House of Representatives the state is the district,  solving that problem as farf as federal elections.
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Here’s an aside on Delaware’s state government employees in Dover which has nothing to do with their political persuasion: they are to be admired for the was they can back into their slanted parking spaces in the area of Legislative Hall.

I say this as one who in well over a half-century of driving and parking has never felt comfortable trying to back into a parking space. I actually don’t do that well when getting onto a space going forward, for that matter.

And when I see a driver of a big truck backing into an alley to make a delivery, my hat goes off to him (it almost always is a “him”).

The skill of a good truck driver is something praiseworthy. And we depend on them. The mottos of trucking companies used to be, and perhaps still is, “If you’ve got it, a truck brought it.”
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I read somewhere a while back that a study showed that if a waiter or waitress touches you in some way while serving you, they are likely to get a bigger tip.

What do you suppose a waitress expects in the tip department when she addresses you as both “honey” and “sweetheart”?

That happened to me in Dover the other day and made me wonder. I was having lunch with son Don and thought later that I should have said something to her like: “Can’t you see I’m having lunch with my son — don’t you think we should be more careful?”
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We often watch “Jeopardy” on television and it seems to me that Delaware tends to get more mentions than other states.

Recently, for example, the contestants were asked to identify the state that had a governor’s house with a reputation for being haunted. Delaware  naturally was the answer.

Reputation is one thing, but there haven’t been any ghost sightings recently, to my knowledge.
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A couple of people have given me a copy of a recent comic strip, “Pickles,” which is about squirrels, or, as the man of the house calls them, “Rats with furry tails.” Outdoor columnist George Roof would also agree with that description, and I have, in the past, referred to the frisky gray creatures as “tree rats” in many mentions of their fondness for our birdseed.

The point of the comic strip is that this old guy was always counting the big number squirrels in his back yard and devoted a lot of his time doing it. And his wife encouraged him to keep spending much of his time trying to get the right squirrel count, a task that wound up wearying him, to the point where the wife suggests he sit down and relax with some of her cookies.
In the last frame of the strip the daughter says to her mother: “Maybe you should stop feeding the squirrels, Mom.”

And she replies, as she determinedly stirs a bowl of either cookie mix or squirrel food, “No way!”
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It happens that we haven’t seen as many squirrels recently in our neighborhood near the St. Jones River. But on Tuesday morning we did see three larger animals just outside our kitchen window. It was a doe and two fawns.

They seemed to be especially hungry, eating leaves from bushes or just about anything else. We wondered if the lack of rain had reduced their usual food supply.

Seeing deer in the center of Dover near the river, or on the outskirts of the city as well,  is not a novelty. I doubt that deer were as numerous a hundred years ago, though. They were much more likely then to wind up as dinner.

Do you suppose that we should introduce wolves into the woods of central Delaware to help control the deer population?
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A Little League team had just been whipped, and the coach told them, “Boys, don’t get down on yourselves. You did your best and you shouldn’t take the loss personally. Keep you chins up. Your parents are just as proud of you boys as the parents are of the girls’ team that beat you!”