Category → Family
Rockville’s big tree
Every year over the past ten years around Christmas a family in the Rockville neighborhood north of Harrisburg has put up a beautiful light array on their yard tree.
It’s now so pretty that people come from all around to admire it. It’s one of those small local things that brings a community together. I like sharing it here.
Christmas, America’s Holiday
Whatever your religion, if you live in America, today is Christmas, our national holiday.
It’s at the very least a time of peace, goodwill, cheer, and merriment for everyone here. For religious Christians, it’s obviously more than all that.
Enjoy this time. Savor it. Every moment. Savor and be thankful for all the good relationships, the happy moments, the love each of us can share with others. Don’t take anything for granted, nothing: Not the people around us, the incredible opportunities that America uniquely gives us, not the unique freedom here. Cherish it all, celebrate it.
Merry Christmas, America, Merry Christmas, friends.
Ellen Greenberg’s mysterious homicide
Ellen Greenberg was a sweet and happy teenager when I met her probably twenty years ago. She was first cousin to girls my own daughters were friends with, and while my path intersected with Ellen’s maybe a few times a year, usually at kid drop off or pickup, for ten years the one thing I remember about her is her joie de vive. The girl glowed with happiness and sheer joy at being alive.
“Hi Mister First! How are you? Your girls have grown up so much, and they are so nice!” is the happy, positive report I would get from Ellen just about each time we saw each other. Nothing mopey or morose or unhappy about Ellen then. And nothing about her classroom teaching style ten years later was, either. Ellen was a positive, happy person.
Ellen has been in the news the past ten years because she was brutally murdered with a kitchen knife in her own home, and after initially reporting her death as an obvious murder, the Philadelphia Police Department then ruled her death a “suicide.”
In her kitchen, where Ellen lay stabbed multiple-multiple times and lying in a pool of her own blood, all kinds of crime scene protocols were run roughshod over. For example, her computer was taken from the house by a relative of her fiance, like just handed to him by the police on the scene. Crime scene photos show her initially found slumped over, and then again sitting straight up, or with a knife protruding one place but then in another in other photos. That someone first on the murder scene tampered with Ellen’s body and the murder weapon is actually preserved by the photos the police took.
So how could the Philadelphia Police so strongly resist investigating both the crime scene handling, and the murder? Why did the Philadelphia DA’s office recently hide testimony by a physician that made it plain as day that Ellen was murdered with that knife?
Something is not just fishy here, something stinks to high Heaven of rotten corruption and cover-up. Somebody with a lot to lose is being protected by the Philadelphia Police and the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office. But why would the police and DA protect a murderer? It’s not like the sweet and happy Ellen I knew was a threat to anyone or anything, like, say, Jeffrey Epstein was. She was not politically active; she had no “dirt” on anyone. So why she was murdered like she had to be shut up and must remain shut up is a huge and very public mystery now.
Making the resolution of this blatant crime even more mind boggling is the indefensible way that PA AG Josh Shapiro has handled it. Shapiro is someone with a lot of skeletons in his closet. He is someone with a lot of wrongdoing to hide. He is allied closely with the Philadelphia Police and the city’s District Attorney. And although he has been presented with the latest evidence about how Ellen was stabbed after her heart had stopped beating (someone committing suicide cannot stab themselves after they are dead), as well as with the incredible picture below, he still will not open an investigation into the Philadelphia Police or the DA’s office or this murder.
Is Ellen Greenberg’s murder a case of “What happens in Philly stays in Philly“? A corrupt town with corrupt officials connected to other corrupt officials and unsolved murders because someone important has money and some allied politician somewhere can’t be questioned?
See this artist’s drawing of how Ellen was stabbed multiple times, the worst being from directly behind (the human arm does not bend this way), and ask yourself how on earth anyone could ever rule these wounds or her death a “suicide.”
Ellen Greenberg deserves justice, her family deserves justice, and frankly, no citizen can ever again trust any criminal investigation in Philadelphia if this blatant murder is not solved.
Philadelphia’s police say these severe bruises and stab wounds to Ellen’s body were self-inflicted. Does that make any sense to your eyes?
Anatomy of a deer season
It doesn’t matter if you archery hunt for deer religiously, from October 1 to mid-November; the archery season is always over way too fast.
It doesn’t matter if you archery hunt a bit for bear and deer, hunt the week of early muzzleloader for bear and doe, do some small game hunting, have the men up to camp for bear season for four days, and then hunt every day of deer rifle season. The ending is always the same: It ended way too fast. We wait all year for this time, and before you can blink an eye, it is over.
For many hunters, this time is about being afield, hunting. The occasional actual killing part is a welcome indication that the hunting part was done well. Proof that the time spent outside was not wasted.
Oh, we still have some late deer season remaining, which is the late archery and flintlock hunt. But by now, deer everywhere in Pennsylvania are on high alert. A twig falling out of a tree and rustling a leaf on the ground will send a nearby deer herd into panicked stampede into the next county. So getting deeply enough into the sensory zone of these intelligent animals to take one with a bow or a flintlock at this stage takes real skill, not just the usual luck.
Although I will hunt the flintlock deer season, because I have some DMAP tags left, looking back even now with a sense of longing has me thinking about the anatomy of a good deer season. Some take-aways:
- Eat good food. Whether it is home-made jerky and dried fruit we make ourselves for our own time afield, or it is the extra thick gourmet steaks we bring to hunting camp, eat the best quality food you can afford. Hunting alone or with friends and family is a celebration, so eat like you are celebrating. And because Man does not live on bread alone, make sure your drinks are of a commensurate high quality.
- Practice, practice, practice with your gun. Archery hunters practice non-stop, but for some reasons many gun hunters leave it to one box of ammo and the days right before the season to “practice” shooting. Well do I recall sharing a range with a guy from Lancaster County at the bench next to me. Friendly enough, he enthusiastically, if spastically, launched his one box of “extra” shells down range as rapid fire as a bolt action can fire. I had offered him the use of my spotting scope and Caldwell shooting sled, and he declined. He did end up relying on my spotting and calling his hurried shots, however, because he didn’t quite have his scope figured out. The old random “spray n’ pray” is the approach he packed up and drove off to hunting camp with. Do any of us think he hit what he shot at?
- Bring your best jokes, naughty or practical. Hunting camp is fun, and each of us must contribute to that festive atmosphere. Many years ago, I bent down to inspect a strange looking object hiding under the cabin’s kitchen counter. And just as quickly I jumped back and screamed like a little girl when the damned thing took off running. That it was merely a muskrat pelt attached to a fishing line being pulled by Bob and followed by uproarious laughter at my expense just made my revenge all the sweeter. As for naughty jokes and rhymes, the list is endless. Look them up and bring half a dozen. Maybe I am lowbrow, or maybe I have low expectations, but it sure seems that everyone present laughs at these men-only jokes.
- Get out into position early, like at least an hour before first light, and when you move play the wind (nose into the wind), go quietly and slowly, and carry your gun port-arms and not across your back. If you can get out into position at 4:30am, even better. Just bring a blanket and some Zippo hand warmers.
- Food sources matter for deer and bear, too. We humans are not the only ones who both enjoy and need food. In a year of abundant acorns, a stand of sweet tasting white oaks will draw more deer and bear, and you can sit down wind of that stand of trees. In a year of scarce acorns, like this year, any tree that had a decent crop will still draw animals pawing in the leaves for whatever may be left in early December. By this mid-November, almost all of the already scarce acorns were eaten up, and both bear and deer seemed to be moving widely across the landscape in search of any food. It makes for tough hunting, and so we have to team up with buddies and other camps to work together to scoop up what animals are out there. Be flexible and think outside the box of a permanent stand.
- Speak animal language. Last year I grunted in an Adirondacks wilderness buck after busting him out of his bed. He was a territorial and aggressive SOB. But the conditions were all wrong for playing around, and although his body was visible, I could not shoot through the beech brush to get him. This year I returned for Round Two with the same animal, which had probably never seen a human being, and after two days of tentative efforts, Day Three resulted in the furious huge buck storming right in to my position with leaves, twigs, snot and mouth foam flying. I shot him in the neck at five yards, five miles from my truck. Lot of work, totally worth it for that DIY hunt of a lifetime. My position was carefully chosen for what he could see or smell under a certain wind direction. I waited until it was all just right, and let fly. His response was immediate.
- Take pictures, send them in emails. While journaling is not dead, most people today do not write in a personal or camp journal. Instead, we take photos and email them around. The recipients always appreciate them. Especially when ten or twenty years has suddenly passed, our knees don’t seem capable of all those steep climbs and hard sidehilling drives any longer, and a lot of our best times at hunting camp are sitting around with dear friends and reminiscing together. So don’t forget to take pictures and share them.
Northern PA’s acorn crop largely failed in 2021, possibly due to a late frost that killed the acorn flowers. Acorns remaining on the ground looked OK from the outside, but were all rotten like this on the inside. Wildlife is hungry and moving widely to locate food.
My “Freedom Buck,” killed on Sunday November 28th at 7:45am, on private property in PA. The ban on Sunday hunting is an attack on freedom, and so I named this Sunday morning buck after my declaration of freedom.
About this “Friendsgiving” nonsense
Why is it so difficult for a bunch of people living the good life in America to say thanks, show appreciation, and have gratitude for what America has provided to them?
Among extremists, America is built on “stolen land,” and observing Thanksgiving Day is honoring a wicked country built on lies. Sorry to use that word “extremist,” but it must be used here, because it is flung repeatedly at anyone who disagrees with the nihilist, racist, genocidal, secular anarchist movement now inhabiting the Democrat Party body and its stinking mouthpiece, the Mainstream Establishment Legacy Media (CNNlol, CBS, ABC, NPR, MSNBC, PBS, PennLive etc et al).
People who posted “Friendsgiving” pictures to their America-censoring social media outlets may be wallowing like pigs in stinking mire and absolutely loving it, but why don’t or can’t they stop and look back over their shoulder? These most ultra of shallow virtue signalers are wearing clothing made by capitalists, living in nice homes built by capitalists, driving cars designed and built by capitalists and that run on fuel (electricity or petroleum) extracted and refined and provided by capitalists, using smart phones and laptops designed and built by capitalists, etc.
This is to say, If America is really so damned evil, and if you all are so really sorry about how we all got here, and you all are feeling so deeply such shame for your benefits and lifestyle, then why don’t you show how you really feel and throw it all away. Put your money where your mouth is, shallowcrats.
Don’t sit here and post these gleeful family pictures while simultaneously lecturing and hectoring the rest of us on how bad we all are. Christ, people, you shallow virtue signalers are the worst hypocrites on Planet Earth, not just in America. You enjoy all the benefits of capitalist America, all its luxuries (oh how Liberals love them some luxuries and swag!), its freedoms to criticize everyone else who is not in your tribe of hypocrites, but then also eschew it all. You get to have it both ways, when in reality we all must make choices in life. To be honorable people, anyhow.
Thanksgiving Day was established early on in American history because people who fought and worked hard to create a free nation showed their true gratitude for it all. For all the opportunities. If there is one defining American characteristic, it is freedom of opportunity, for everyone.
Yes, the American Indians lost their fight to hold on to America, against a seemingly endless tide of human migration. And it is sad, to me at least. I do feel badly for American Indians, what they lost, and most important, how they lost it to people supposedly representing Judeo-Christian ethics, and yet who had no scruples about lying to and deceiving the Indians at every turn.
But let us ask, How much land does a single person need? American Indians probably enjoyed a ratio of 10,000 square miles to each person. Contrast that to the cramped conditions in Europe, where serfs, peasants, and landless native Celts were confined to slums or as de facto slaves on their tiny “freeholds.”
Why was it OK for Asians to migrate to America, set up shop as a hundred different warring, torturing, human-sacrificing Indian tribes, but it was not OK for poverty-stricken landless Celtic tribes (Irish, Scots) to migrate to America and set up shop, as well? Were the Indians really so greedy and selfish that they could not share their incredible land wealth with other needy humans?
Why is it OK for endless illegal migration into America right now (maskless, no vaccine), but we have people celebrating “Friendsgiving” and lamenting the Indians’ stolen Americas?
And about the African slaves…yes, we know that was wrong, because America fought a bloody civil war over the issue, and America made many large sacrifices since then to rectify an issue that affected a tiny percentage of the American population.
Why are people who are living in million dollar homes and driving nice cars prostituting their skin color on this false narrative altar that America never gave them anything? Jesus Christ, people, look at the underpants you are wearing right now! I will bet that just your underpants alone cost more than all the clothes combined in one African village in the Congo or Nigeria. Show some damned appreciation. Show some gratitude for what you have. Don’t engage in this shallow virtue signaling, because all it does is draw attention to what a weak non-thinker you choose to be.
None of this makes a damn bit of sense. But then, making logical, reasonable sense never is important to people on the Left. They live a daily orgy of silly virtue signaling and mea culpas while simultaneously reaping the very best that American capitalism has to offer them, us, the entire world.
Just show some gratitude, some thanks for what you have. If you feel badly about the condition of the American Indian reservations, go help them. They need help and will appreciate your help.
And if you feel badly about the obvious plight of so many descendants of African slaves living in America today, then stop supporting bad policies that lock them into this horrible condition. Stop voting for people and one single political party that makes modern-day slavery to its movement and sacrifice by communal catastrophe an absolute requirement.
Will anyone who should hear these words listen to them? Like the people posting about “Friendsgiving” and how bad America is. Probably not. The fast-happy endorphins released in brains by silly virtue signaling “I am so damned right” are an addictive drug. People are hallucinating and fantasizing while high on endorphins, and while it isn’t real, they don’t care. It just feels so damned good, and they don’t have a care or a thanks in the world.
Freedom Sunday
Aaaaahhhh, the swell feeling of freedom.
A few days ago, I sat up in a tree stand in Perry County with a loaded crossbow, waiting for a legal buck to walk by. A legal buck in this area of Pennsylvania has at least three points on one side of his antler rack.
The most distinguishing feature of this afternoon deer hunt was that it was occurring on a Sunday. Sunday hunting (beyond coyotes and foxes) is a new addition to Pennsylvania, and as of 2020 we have three Sundays to hunt deer or bear. People like me prevailed in obtaining these mere three Sundays to hunt only after a protracted 25-year battle with the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau, whose nonagenarian board members constantly shook their canes at freedom lovers.
We lovers of freedom are also by nature opponents of government overreach, and yet while the PA Farm Bureau is against all kinds of government overreach, they were all fall-on-their-sword supportive of a government ban on Sunday hunting. Even on private property, where land owners could make their own personal choice about how to spend their weekend. The PA Farm Bureau would not, and still will not, budge one inch in their opposition to any sort of Sunday hunting. And incredibly, Pennsylvania’s laundry list of career elected officials went along with the PA Farm Bureau’s twenty nonagenarians, and against the wishes of just about everyone else.
So while we await the day when the Liberty Bell shall yet ring again and proclaim liberty throughout the land, granting Sunday hunting from October 1st through February 15th, we must enjoy what crumbs we may glean from the grips of the power and control obsessed.
This present gridlock situation made my three hours of Sunday afternoon archery hunting bittersweet. On the one hand, I was in fact experiencing one Freedom Sunday. Better than nothing, right? On the other hand, sometimes a taste of honey is worse than none at all, and while I sat there my mind kept involuntarily counting the number of Sundays we were being unfairly excluded from enjoying.
If you are curious, the number of Sundays we hunters are being deprived in Pennsylvania is nineteen (19). That may seem like very few days to the person who gets to do whatever they want to do seven days a week, 365 days a year, and without false moralists looking over their shoulder in hypocritical judgment of whatever their choice of entertainment may be on any particular day. But to us hunters, whose season runs from early October to mid February, and again the month of May’s turkey season, those nineteen days are a huge deal. We can’t make up for them in the summer months. We can’t get them back once they have passed.
This means that we Pennsylvania hunters are missing a significant percentage of freedom in our lives as otherwise free citizens. This freedom is being unfairly deprived to us, stripped out of our hands, out of the lives of our children. It is a bizarre situation, when we look at the states around us that have unlimited Sunday hunting.
For example, a week ago I began an annual wilderness hunt out of state on a Sunday morning. The trail head parking lot I started out from was packed with the pickup trucks and SUVs of fellow hunters, many of whom I learned later are tradesmen and contractors, whose work loads are heavy all week long, and whose weekends are their real opportunity to pursue their hobbies and pastimes. Our presence as free hunters, free citizens, in the Sunday woods bothered no one, impacted no one. Pennsylvania needs a lot more of this same Freedom Sunday.
Freedom Sunday: Me deer hunting on private land last Sunday. Hurting no one, bothering no one. Why not more of this Sunday freedom?
Summertime Relaxation vs. Biden Admin daily anti-America insurrection
It is presently the summer time, a time when we go to the beach, mountains, or the local forests to relax, take a break from work and life’s responsibilities, and to spend time with our families. National and state parks are huge destinations for tens of millions of Americans.
Summer vacations are a part and parcel of American and European culture, and they should be an easy time. A time of happiness, cookouts, cold beer, maybe cutting wintertime firewood for your cabin or camp site, hanging out, fishing, camping, exploring, visiting historical sites, etc. You get it, this is nothing new to Americans or Europeans. And for me, this is the heart of my summer time. I do everything listed above and then some, and it is on purpose that I have left this blog site unattended for weeks, while I try to rest my mind and body.
Try.
I say “try” because the decades of the Left’s anti-America planning and plotting are now debuting new attacks. Daily Americans are treated to new discoveries of election theft, the role of the US FBI and DOJ not in stopping crime, but actually in CREATING crimes so that they can then “solve” them and then create political leverage for the Left.
Two examples:
We now know that the FBI had a substantial undercover presence at the January 6th rally in DC. Dozens of undercover FBI agents and paid FBI ‘informants’ were infiltrated into the rally crowd, along with hundreds of other FBI-allied street activists, all of whom purposefully instigated fights with Capitol Police and engaged in acts of violence and vandalism. While it is a bit of a stretch to say the acts of 500-800 people at the US Capitol (the People’s House) were a false flag operation, it is absolutely, indisputably true that a great deal of the violence and destruction that occurred January 6th was either done by FBI agents and or their paid civilian helpers.
In other words, the FBI was a cause of the January 6th problems. The same FBI that is now kicking in doors with SWAT teams to violently take into custody grandmas, grandpas, and entire families who were ushered into the US Capitol building by the Capitol Police themselves.
In terms of the January 6th DC rally violence, the FBI was greatly involved in both creating the “problem,” and then in charge of “solving” the very problem they themselves created. All for obvious political purposes. This is corrupt.
Another example is the now horribly unfolding truth about the supposed plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor Gretchen Whitmer. What we are now learning is that of the half dozen or so defendants in that alleged plot, at least TWELVE were FBI agents or FBI paid informants. In some of the group meetings and vehicles involved in this now clearly fake “plot,” the undercover FBI agents and their paid informants were actually the great majority of the participants or outnumbered everyone else.
This raises the question and immediately resulting answer of whether or not the FBI actually created, staffed, and staged the entire Whitmer kidnap plot, once again for overt political purposes (supposedly fighting against supposed white supremacist militia people). In other words, by all appearances the FBI created the plot in order to “solve” the plot. Think hard about what this means about the nation’s primary “law enforcement” organization…it means the lawless FBI is completely corrupt and that it is a political arm of one political party.
Never mind that the Biden Administration also has the US military actually flying illegal aliens into America on US military planes, or that the administration is trying to create a 1984-like Ministry of Truth that is anything but truthful. Never mind that every day there is also some other new totally illegal, unlawful, un-American, lawless outrage committed by the Biden Administration against America and everyday taxpaying Americans. Within just eight months, the Biden Administration has turned the entire US government AGAINST America.
So while it is summertime, and I am trying to enjoy my summer break with my wife and kids and friends, I am also horrified by the official lawlessness emanating out of Washington, DC, and its satellite offices sprinkled around the many dis-united states. I need a break from this daily assault, and I also need time to digest the huge volume of daily lawlessness that marks the Biden Administration’s coup d’etat against the American Republic.
Next up… Washington DC Prison City vs. A Dozen Free States
How’s Your Turkey Season Going? Yeah, Me Neither
Highly successful turkey hunters are as rare as hen turkey teeth, and they will earnestly tell anyone in earshot that it is a pursuit only for the crazy. Spring gobbler hunting is tough, for so many reasons. Very tough. The weather is often cold as hell in the dark pre-dawn, you must sit unmoving for hours, call perfectly, but then move very slowly and correctly only at the precise moment when the shot is offered, and then eventually the temperature warms up and the swarming bugs come out, ticks crawl up your butt crack and into your armpits, etc.
The wild turkey itself is a fickle and troublesome quarry with the tolerance for anything being even slightly out of sort measured by the millisecond, etc. Wild turkeys can go from standing still to 50 miles per hour in about a second-and-a-half. So when they detect something wrong with the set-up into which they have been lured by the hunter’s calling, they can get out of Dodge with amazing speed. They are also incredibly tough and can withstand tremendous punishment before actually giving up the ghost. Even when they are shot fatally, a wild turkey can run or fly out of reach of the hunter.
So turkey hunting is an almost guaranteed skunk right off the bat, with success rates in Pennsylvania just above zero percent. To really effectively hunt wild turkeys in most places, and especially in Pennsylvania where hunting competition is thick and fierce, a person must have the patience of Job, the grit of Rooster Cogburn, and the faith of Moses. Not to mention the time needed to finally orchestrate the one brief moment where all these qualities briefly line up with your shotgun barrel that is itself lined up on a turkey’s neck about thirty yards distant.
Because spring turkey hunting is more than a fad, something slightly less than a religion, and has the word “pursuit” in virtually all of the turkey hunting gear companies gear descriptions, I thought I would share with the three readers of this website my own recent turkey hunting experience. It was almost like a bad dream.
It started with me falling asleep in the blind I set up on the southern side of the ravine, through which Sheep Hollow runs. My two hen decoys were 30 and 40 yards distant, on the other side of Sheep Hollow, stuck into old stumps for extra elevation and visibility. I use a slate call, and am good enough to call in some turkeys who die at 40-45 yards out with the most skeptical looks on their faces. Turkey hunting is nothing if it isn’t an excuse to get some shuteye in some really uncomfortable surroundings, surrounded by annoying insects, with hidden tree roots exploring the hidden recesses of one’s posterior and lower back. It’s great!
So there I was, head lolling around like a Hershey Park kiddy ride, chin on my chest, alternately dozing and suddenly jumping awake with a start, wondering if that crunching leaf was a sneaky gobbler (it never is). This happened a dozen times until I fell deeply asleep.
Far into one of my deepest REM sleep modes, an uncommon noise on the far side of Sheep Hollow caught my slumbering hunter-sense, and my head automatically raised up. My eyes slowly opened to slits, to look through the bug netting. Suddenly my neck extended three times its normal length as my head craned to ascertain that in fact a mature gobbler was consorting with the decoys. Like most guys on the make, he was playing both and as yet uncommitted.
Slowly I brought the shotgun barrel from its resting place on my knees to a place where it was resting on the wooden crossbar and burlap, and generally pointing at the gobbler. Then my eyes were focused and working pretty well in concert with my head and hands to align the front barrel bead with the gobbler’s head and neck area. This happened in silent, slow-motion seconds.
But, turkeys being what they are, which is essentially a CIA spy satellite with wings, complete with the latest in high-tech optics and listening capabilities that miss absolutely nothing within a 300-yard radius, the amorous gobbler went from struttin’ his stuff to suddenly looking my way. Then, mimicking my own startled reaction just seconds before, his own head telescoped three times his neck’s normal length as he stared in alarm at the strange object thirty five yards away. His big eyes bulged as he saw through my contrived hiding place and into my very soul.
I fired just as he collapsed his neck in preparation for high-velocity lift-off, and the shot pattern just clipped his neck area. It was not the solid hit it would have been if the dang bird had just stayed focused on the rubber chicken thingies meant to deceive him. So he hit the ground, rolled downhill, and began to thrash wildly in what were either death throes or an intelligent effort to escape. Anyone who has hunted wild turkeys for a while knows this moment: The hunter is either a hero, or is about to behave like the clumsiest brute in the wild woods, because the turkey is either about to die on the spot and be tagged, or it is about to lead the hunter on a merry chase across hill and dell.
The bird opted to turn me into a clumsy brute as it staggered to its feet and began heading down Sheep Hollow in a drunken stagger toward Route 414 and Pine Creek beyond. And so I played my assigned part and I myself staggered out of the blind, swatting burlap out of my way, my legs numb from being asleep for two hours. Partially running, partially bouncing off of trees to steady myself until the blood flowed back into my independent-minded feet, I headed on a downhill sidelong trajectory meant to intercept the wounded animal and quickly bring it into my death embrace.
Almost like a cartoon rendering of a buffoonish hunter after a smarter prey animal, the turkey caught my drift and picked up speed, stumbling and rolling faster down the ravine and closer to the highway. I slid on my ass down a large smooth rock face just as the bird flopped out onto Route 414. From there it was literally all downhill. Instead of some locals driving by in their pickup and jumping out to grab the bird for me, no one happened by and the bird crossed Route 414, bounced off the guard rail, and then pitched down over the tree-studded sheer cliff face to the Pine Creek rail-trail below.
Meanwhile I was still trying to cross Route 414 while pulling clumps of leaves and twigs and other forest floor detritus out of my pants. Upon reaching the guard rail I looked down and saw the turkey laying in the middle of the rail trail. He was not looking real healthy and it was possible he was going to simply peter out there, if left undisturbed for a couple minutes. Then I could tag him and lie about what a perfect shot I had made on him to my friends.
But such are the plans of mice and men, or something like that. Because what is a rail-trail if not a place for humans to ride their bikes? Especially when it is the only brief moment in the year the place must be left undisturbed for just a couple minutes. The rail-trail is not the designated dying area for severely wounded wildlife. And so when the nice lady in her pink Gore-Tex get-up came riding her bicycle along the rail-trail, toward the listless creature, and making a gentle crunching sound in the fine pea gravel that even I could hear a hundred yards out, the bird felt like it was being pursued once again. And it decided that, in fact, rail-trails are not the dignified place to die. So it weakly flopped its way over the rail-trail and down to the edge of Pine Creek.
Meanwhile, I had seen what was coming. Determined not to lose the bird to the rushing water, I sat down and again rode the next steep incline down on my butt, and once again bouncing from tree to tree in an effort to slow down my headlong speed and prevent serious breakage of some part of my body. This stretch of the rail-trail is actually part of our property, and it is also about the most useless part of our tax parcel. Except for now.
Of course I reached the margin of the rail-trail in a dramatic flourish of flying leaves and branches, a mini avalanche of stones and dirt and curses, just as the pretty in pink lady on her bike arrived. The dying turkey heard the commotion and rolled down the stream bank and into the edge of Pine Creek. Now a dead animal at the water’s edge is nothing new and no big deal. But a dead or dying animal out in the current is something else altogether, and so not having time to explain my bizarre appearance to the nice lady, who had come to a stop to either gawk at the camo-clad madman or ask if I needed medical/ mental help, I bolted across the rail-trail and pitched head-first over the stream bank. Launching myself at the turkey, whose carcass lolled gently with the stream current against the bank, my fingers came up just inches short as the rest of my not-insignificant bulk made its crash landing in the rocks and thorns along the stream’s margin.
With its last ounce of dying energy, the turkey rolled itself out into the stream current and immediately began floating away at a rapidly increasing clip. My friend Scott and I had just floated Pine the week before, casting for trout (thank you to the Big Brown Trout Club run out of Wolfe’s General Store at Slate Run for the amazing fish we caught), and the substantial rains over the past few days had turned a high but fishable river into a near-maelstrom with a really fast current. So I crawled on my hands and knees into the water and then rushed toward the disappearing turkey carcass.
Down through the run we went, bird, white caps, and human in pursuit. Under normal conditions, this part is a good fast stretch with trout under the trail-side cut bank and beavers denning on the far side bank. But today, it was practically a white water, with literal white caps from the high speed water slamming into boulders under the surface. Although at one time I had taught lifesaving and certified lifeguards, and I had been as comfortably aquatic as a human can be short of being a trained Navy SEAL, I was quickly beginning to doubt the wisdom of my ways. Pine Creek was at about 48 degrees that day, and despite my ample natural insulation against cold, I was beginning to really feel the chill tug at my willpower to continue. In fact, I was starting to wonder if I was going to drown. Making the situation worse, I passed an otter laying on the edge of the little island we had now reached. Never have I seen more disbelieving eyes in human or beast than the look on that animal’s face as the bedraggled human (me) splashed by.
Comical sounding yes, but at that point I was actually scared that the one minute I had presently spent swim-chasing after the now-dead gobbler was going to be my last on earth. My physical ability was rapidly diminishing. But all good things come to an end, and the powerful run quickly petered out at the end of the island, where Pine becomes a large pool below Miller Run Natural Area. It was here that the high-velocity turkey suddenly became just a piece of random flotsam that I was able to splash my way up to and grab.
With my prize finally in hand and dragging lifelessly in the stream behind me, I sloshed my way to the shore, clambered up the bank, dropped the turkey at my feet, and laid down on some large rip rap boulders. How long I huddled there, soaking wet in the thin sunshine, I don’t know. Probably fifteen minutes had gone by before I had the strength to look around and get up the nerve to collect the bird and head up to the cabin. But my wet camo and death-like stillness had fooled one more animal, the otter I had passed on the way downstream, who came in at a mad dash along the boulders, grabbed the dead turkey, and dove head-long back into the water.
And oddly enough, my only thought was “At least I didn’t fill out the tag yet, and my season is not over, so I get to keep hunting.”
Like I said, spring gobbler hunting is for either the mentally retarded or the crazy. Whichever I may be, go ahead and be the otter. Take your pick. I stopped caring.
White liberals confessing they are systemically racist
The bizarre phrase “systemic racism” is being bandied about an awful lot these days. Mostly it is being used as an accusation against the whole of America, as though racism is everywhere in America. We shall see about that in a moment, but first let’s consider what this phrase even means.
When something is “systemic” it means that the infection or disease is coursing throughout the body, and that it is system-wide. In medical terms, something that is “systemic” probably cannot be fully treated. The body is probably going to die from this system-wide infection. Which is what makes this accusation so intriguing in political terms. It means that America is supposedly, allegedly, so racist that it is going to die, and needs to die.
The people using this phrase the most are white liberals, those lawless hardcore partisan Democrat Party adherents who have been goose-stepping, vandalizing, burning, looting, and murdering throughout American cities over the past year. White liberal politicians at every level, white liberal judges, white liberals employed by activist organizations and at purported “news” outlets like CNN and the New York Times, white liberal charitable foundation staff, white liberal teachers, white liberal public employees etc are all in on promoting this allegation of “systemic racism.”
And yet what is so intriguing is that when we look at the basic statistics (violent deaths, violent crime, joblessness, children born out of wedlock and into poverty, failed public school systems, failed public services with high taxes, urban blight etc) behind the human behaviors resulting in the deaths and mayhem attributed to “systemic racism,” we find….these are all Democrat Party-run cities across America, run almost entirely one way or another by…white liberals!
Gees, you try rubbing, you try scrubbing, and no matter what, these darned white liberals keep popping up everywhere as the problem child in every disastrous American city. White liberals run literally all of the institutions that run the cities harboring all of the victimized minorities.
Just about every major city in America is run by the Democrat Party and its local police force, and we are told that the police forces in these cities are “systemically racist.” Because these big city police forces are staffed by and run by the Democrat Party and its systemic white liberals, this means that white liberals totally own this issue. If there is racism of any sort on these police forces, or in the policies and ordinances these cities have, then by gosh, they are wholly owned and caused by white liberals. White liberals are the genesis, nexus, and end-result of all this racism and racial discrimination. The minorities living in these urban places are totally victimized by their white liberal overlords.
America itself is not systemically racist. At least not the regular hard-working, tax-paying, community-volunteering white people who live outside the big urban shitholes run by the Democrat Party. America is overwhelmingly populated by really nice, tolerant people who don’t give a crap about skin color or other people’s religious views. But they are up against a bizarre group of psychologically twisted white liberals who accuse everyone else of what white liberals, they themselves, are – freaking rampant racists.
Because white liberals tend to politicize everything, like every little thing, it is logical to see this false broad accusation of “systemic racism” against America and against America’s really nice heartland citizens as a political punch. And yeah, it is that. But it is also something else, much deeper and more important. This accusation is a subconscious effort by white liberals to come clean about what is really going on in their own heads.
This false accusation against America is really a gigantic confession by white liberals that they are racist as hell and they want forgiveness from everyone living around them.
The question is, given just how badly white liberals have treated all of the minorities living in Democrat white liberal Party – run urban shitholes, can they be forgiven? Or are white liberals such a systemic problem and such a dire threat to the American body politic that they must be utterly eradicated, like any other disease that threatens the body?