Category → Family
Do you miss sunshine and long days? I do
We are in the shortest days of the year right now. The winter solstice will be in just a few days, December 21st, the shortest day of the year. We all see it, we all feel it, especially here in central Pennsylvania, Upstate New York, Michigan’s UP, Canada, and I am sure in Russia, too. Just when you feel like the day is about to begin, like your formal work day ends and you are ready to do something fun, it’s actually dark outside. Gloomy. Usually cold, windy, and raw, because it is Winter, after all. Darkness now comes at four o’clock in the afternoon, and by 6:00 PM dinner time, everyone is yawning and stretching, ready for bed, feeling like it must be hours later than it actually is. Because of the early darkness.
I don’t know about you, but this early darkness business is just wearing on me, and I am feeling ready for some happy sunshine and those longer days where I can actually do something fun or productive after working hours. My mind keeps skipping to June and July, when the sun doesn’t set until 9:00-9:30, and we spend all afternoon outside, either doing yard work, or gardening, or just enjoying the nice weather and long days to get stuff done at a leisurely pace. Sundays can be spent barbecuing in the back yard with friends or family….ahhhh, that sunshine and daylight is just so rewarding.
This small fact keeps my chin up: We are about to turn the corner on daylight. In just four days, every day will be getting longer and will have more daylight. This gives my mind something happy to hitch onto. I miss sunshine and longer days, and in fact, they are just about to start.
Hang in there, folks. I know you miss sunshine just like I do. Spring will be here before we know it, and with it all the happiness and relief from these long, dark, dreary, cold days. From yeccchh to yay, coming up soon.
Hang in there.
An apple picker I know has an early morning sunrise and stretch on a farm
Hanukka’s message to Americans
While Christmas is the national holiday of America, Hanukka is the other big holiday happening now. Today is the last day, and it is worth taking note of the meaning this religious holiday can and should have for all freedom-loving Americans.
Let us reflect upon what the message of Hanukka is and should be for Americans, because God knows, we are all in need of inspiration right now. Especially as we daily recognize ever more just how rogue and turned against us citizens our own federal government has become.
Hanukka is the commemoration of an unbelievably heroic and unlikely war outcome 2,300 years ago by a band of ferociously patriotic religious Jews battling against one of the regional superpowers of their time. In short, when Alexander the Great died, his Greek empire was divided into large parts, each run by one of Alexander’s generals. Seleucus was one of those generals, and while his life was a whirlwind of cloak and dagger politics, leading massed battles, and shifting political alliances, he ended up founding one of the regional empires. The Seleucid Empire included all kinds of remote areas and sleepy places and small peoples that the Greeks did not really care about, including the nation of Judea and its natives, the Israelites/Judeans/ Jews.
But the powerful Greek Seleucids ended up caring very much about the relatively small and highly religious Judeans, because most of the Jews would only go so far in pledging their loyalty to the Greeks, due to religious differences. While in general the Greeks had a very broad and inclusive view of culture, what was then called the pan-Hellenic, and while the Jews could go along with a lot of cultural differences so long as their religion was not compromised, the Greeks did require a basic fealty to their most important values. And those polytheistic values strongly antagonized the Jews’ monotheism.
It must be said that the resulting civil war was as much between religious Jews and Hellenized Jews as it was between religious Jews and the Greeks. Essentially it was the Orthodox Jews vs. the assimilated and very liberal Jews and their protectors, the Greeks. This fact obviously has great implications for the tensions between religious Jews today and their more liberal and religiously distant brethren.
An armed showdown began when the Seleucids erected their own statues and began sacrificing pigs in the Jews’ Great Temple. You know, the same large hill whereupon another uninvited, rogue, imperialistic and colonizing symbol has been erected, namely the golden dome of the rock. And so a Jewish priest names Mattathias (essentially Matthew in today’s English, a name familiar to Christians) picked up a sword, killed some bad guys with some gutsy moves, and started a Jewish rebellion against an overwhelmingly superior military force.
The Greeks and their liberal Jewish allies responded with force, and the Orthodox Jews fled their homes in Jerusalem to the Judean Hills, where they eked out a meagre existence in caves and remote washes where the Greek patrols did not go. Using hit-and-run guerilla war tactics over several years, Mattathias and his sons’ troops eventually wore down the Greek resolve, to the point where headlong massed battles resulted in smaller forces of Jews utterly annihilating their opponents.
Following the final battle, when the Jewish “Maccabees” returned in force to Jerusalem, they found the Great Temple ransacked and wrecked. Despite a great desolation upon the land, as a result of this terrible civil war, the religious Jews were able to scrape together enough pure olive oil to re-light the gold Menorah in the Great Temple while they also pulled the religious service back together, too. That fact about the olive oil has become kind of a materialistic Christmasized silver and blue tinsel fairy tale about a miracle, and thus great emphasis has been placed on the “miracle of the oil.”
Truth is, this “miracle of the oil” is almost a Monty Python sketch of what really happened, because the true miracle of Hanukka was that the tiny force of true believer Orthodox Jews was able to defeat a much more powerful but spiritually flaccid enemy. Where have we seen this same kind of scenario play out elsewhere in history? Hmmm, my fellow Americans?
The message of Hanukka is that no dark, evil force can defeat goodness and righteousness. This is the true miracle of this holiday, that a small band of humans, led either by George Washington or Mattathias the Priest, can defeat hordes of knuckle dragging barbarians. This is a message of inspiration that all Americans need right now, because we are now facing a terrible plague of evil, moral rot, and sadistic cruelty emanating from the present interloper rulers of our nation’s capital. Many people predict America is heading for a civil war, or at least an armed contest between the central government of Washington, DC, and the rest of the country. Hopefully, our election system is not so corrupted that we can vote our way out of this mess.
Don’t worry, Americans, because if you call upon God and are willing to sacrifice and take risks, like the Orthodox Jewish Maccabees did 2,300 years ago, then you can, we can, miraculously re-take the America that is ours from those who have risen up to steal it and make us all subjects and slaves to their evil power.
My fellow Americans, take heart from the history of Hanukka that you, too, can be successful against what look like overwhelming odds.
The light of freedom shines bright, including in our hearts and our spirit to fight for what is right
Welp…there is always the late deer season
The 2023 deer hunting season is probably going to be remembered in most parts of Pennsylvania as a strange time. For reasons already written about here previously, the deer just have not been available to the hunters in ways and numbers that hunters are accustomed to. On properties I hunt all over Central PA, deer were either invisible or invested with magical disappearing powers. Everywhere I am familiar with, the deer moved up hill, as far away from human activity as possible.
To say many hunters are frustrated is a big understatement.
All I can say to all this bad luck is that at least we have the upcoming late flintlock and archery seasons to try to make up for the low productivity of our regular season. And in at least one area designed to reduce Chronic Wasting Disease, DMAP 6396, we have a continuation of rifle season for antlerless deer only until late January. I intend to take a new rifle afield for that season in that area.
Folks, for the next ten days, practice, practice, practice with your flintlocks. My biggest challenge with flintlock hunting is the huge flash going off in my eyes. Once I get used to that, I am deadly steady with the old smoke pole. Probably takes me ten to twenty flashes to begin staying stone cold steady.
Late last year after a bunch of really lame close-range misses, I began practicing shooting my flintlock rifle with only priming powder in the pan, and nothing loaded in the barrel. Repeated trigger pulls with explosive flashes in my face helped me overcome my natural reaction of flinching and pulling my head back and away from the flame. Needs no explanation that moving your head off the gunstock is going to ruin your accuracy and aim, which means you probably won’t hit what you thought your gun was aimed at.
Ah yes, the well-earned moniker “flinchlock…”
Couple of recommendations: Go high up, because that is where most of the deer are, and try to hunt in groups, either as actual drives or as organized approaches to hunting the same area together.
Remember to go afield with a brand new sharp flint on your gun. If you take the old, dull flint that you have been practicing with this year, you stand a good chance of hearing “klunk” when you pull the trigger as the rounded flint then hits the frizzen without any sparks, and thus yields no primer ignition, and thus there is no ka-boom coming out the end of your gun barrel.
Though quite often the deer will be fascinated by the weird klunk sound, staying riveted in their spot staring intently in the direction of that odd sound. You might get a second or even a third trigger pull during this stare-down period.
Good luck, folks! Shoot straight and walk tall.
Do deer processors give you back your own deer?
Pennsylvania rifle season for deer is nearing the end of its second and concluding week. On average, Pennsylvania hunters annually kill 400,000-500,000 deer, and I would just hazard a guess that 2/3 of those carcasses are taken by the hunter to local deer processors.
Tonight, deer processors across Pennsylvania are working triple-staffed and double overtime to process the hundreds of thousands of deer being brought in by successful hunters.
A perennial question asked by both new hunters and well seasoned is “When I pick up my deer from the processor, will it actually be my deer I am getting, or will it be someone else’s deer?”
There are two certain answers to this question, and I base these on my own experience and the experiences of many friends and acquaintances.
First answer, Maybe. Depending on what you want done to your deer, you might get back 100% of your deer or you might get back 75% of your deer, with the 25% difference being parts of other people’s deer. If you just want real simple cuts, basic steaks from the backstraps and the hams, and roasts from the neck, leg, and shoulders, then you stand a better chance of getting your deer back. This is because it is almost as easy for the processor to cut your deer up into these basic cuts with a bandsaw and a boning knife as it is to grab whatever oddball cuts he has on hand to fill your order.
Second answer, when ordering sausage and hamburger, is absolutely No. This is because deer sausage, pepper sticks etc. are made from various trimmings and random pieces of deer as they are brought in from the very beginning of the archery season, based on the kind of demand that processor has experienced in the past. Additional batches of sausage are made as demand increases towards the end of archery season and into the rifle season. There is just no way that your deer can be turned into its own sausage mix. Your deer might be contributed to a big pot of deer trimmings destined for sausage, and you might be getting your portion of that sausage, but that sausage just isn’t going to be yours and yours alone. It will be a mix of various deer brought in the same time as your own.
I cannot tell you how many times I have gone through the expense of having my prize deer turned into beautiful shrink wrapped cuts at a processor, only to discover that the cardboard box I received my order in is short at least ten to fifteen pounds of venison (from a huge buck). And worse, some random pieces have been thrown in a try to make the balance, as the processor guesses it. And some of the packages have been frozen a long time. And the same cuts of meat are colored differently, as though from different animals.
The truth is that if you want to eat your deer, then you must either butcher your deer yourself, or get together with buddies and butcher all of your deer together.
Butchering a deer by yourself is much easier than most people think, especially if you are willing to cut up the backstrap and hams into basic steaks, and then grind up everything else for hamburger or sausage. In fact, I am about to take a deer I shot today over to a friend’s house where we are going to butcher it in his garage. This is going to be his first experience doing this, but I am sure it will not be his last time.
With buddies, you can pool your odd trimmings and leg meat for sausage. One or two guys or their wives run the sausage/ hamburger grinder and filler, and by the end of the weekend the sausage has been cooked/smoked, and everything is all done simultaneously. I have seen a historic hunting camp in Elk County that had the most impressive kitchen and butchery set-up, including scales for weighing both the whole deer and the various parts and cuts. This is nice so that the guy who shoots a 60-pound yearling gets his deer, and doesn’t unfairly get a bonus pay-out taken out of someone else’s 120 pound deer. Unless this is the way everyone agrees to work together: Everyone goes home with more or less the same amount.
Nothing against the deer processors, they have an important role to play. But the question asked in the beginning can only be satisfactorily answered by doing the job yourself, and I can say from long experience that butchering a deer is easy and gets faster and easier the more experienced at it you become.
Being thankful is being American
Watching America’s wild riots since 2020, including recent pro-jihad protests demanding that America embrace evil, anti-Western values, you would be forgiven for thinking Americans had become largely self-entitled and unappreciative for all of the incredible bounties we have. College campuses are now full of upper-income white kids wishing hate on America, and upper-income brown kids wishing hate on white people, and no one showing appreciation for anyone who had prepared the way for all of the beneficence they all take for granted.
Note to uneducated young people: White Europeans created both your unique American freedom of speech and the fancy institutions you are at now, as well as all of the technology you practically live on, and they pay most of the taxes that run the military that protects you from direct foreign take-over so you can drink expensive coffees and pose and preen and virtue signal to your shallow ego’s fullest desire.
Nothing wrong with white people, and nothing is wrong with America. Can you identify a better, freer country with more opportunity for more people than America? I can’t, and you can’t, either. America’s young people must learn to be thankful for what they have and where they live, or they will lose everything they are taking for granted right now.
Being thankful and appreciative for what we each have was baked into the American culture from the beginning. Because the first few generations of Americans had to work hard for food and shelter every day, and the Europe they had fled was closed to upward mobility and meritocracy.
In Europe if you were born poor, you stayed poor. Only in the new America did we have “influencers” who gained popularity and income through their persuasive skills. That is the essence of capitalism, by the way.
Thanksgiving Day has its beginning in the thanks to God and to helpful American Indians given by the Puritans. Having fled violent religious persecution in Europe, the Puritans were starving. Despite being newcomers posing a potential threat, they were saved by their Indian neighbors, who taught them how to farm and hunt. Traditional Thanksgiving food that we eat today includes the foods eaten at the first Thanksgiving feast – wild turkey, squash, beans, and maize.
On October 3, 1789, after the brutal American Revolution and the War for Independence, America’s first president, George Washington, gave this Thanksgiving statement of appreciation below. May each of us Americans, and especially our foolish, spoiled young people who take so much for granted, read it and imbibe it, follow through on it, and express our thanks for everything we have – clothing, food, home, and smart phone, and the opportunity for so much more than anywhere else on planet earth.
By the President of the United States of America—
A Proclamation
Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor—and Whereas both Houses of Congress have by their Joint Committee requested me “to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”
Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be—That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks—for his kind care and protection of the People of this country previous to their becoming a Nation—for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war—for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed—for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.
And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions—to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually—to render our national government a blessing to all the People, by constantly being a government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed–to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shown kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord—To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and Us—and generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.
Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.
Go. Washington
Yeah, PA’s lame bear season in one picture
Pennsylvania is about to have one of its lowest bear harvests in decades. And like so many policies of any sort, the story of this failure is told not just by the data, but by a picture of the data (see below).
In sum, this year’s early bear seasons of archery and muzzleloader resulted in roughly 1200 bears being taken by hunters. These are predominantly individual hunters in elevated stands, not crews of drivers pushing bears to standers.
By the time the real firearms “bear season” arrives in late November, much of the steam has been bled out of the system, so to speak. The demand has been met. Many serious bear hunters have already taken their bear and they won’t be going “to camp” to participate in punishing bear drives through thick mountain laurel on steep mountains in the northcentral region. And when the most ardent hunters pull out of a camp, that loss of energy and excitement affects everyone else. We noticed many empty camps across the entire northern tier this past week.
Again, the 1,217 bears taken in the early season so far are 200 bears ahead of the roughly 1,000 bears on record for the “bear season” as of tonight, which is the end of the formal “bear season.” In other words, bear season wasn’t. It is actually producing behind the early season.
So is the early season the real bear season now?
Add a poor acorn crop to the situation, and whatever bears were roaming around in October’s early season have gone to den for the winter now in our “bear season,” or have moved southward by the time November arrives, because all of the available wild food has been eaten up. We are now in our third year of a failed acorn crop in the northern tier, and the silence of our woods shows it. No food means no wildlife. Hunters saw no poop, no deer rubs, no squirrels, no nothing. Hunters scouring rugged northern tier landscapes that are the historic high producers of bears are encountering woods devoid not just of bears, but of deer and turkey, as well.
Yesterday was a classic example of this dynamic. Our guys put on a drive across a NW Lycoming County mountaintop area that usually holds bears. I was the lone stander in the primo spot, a saddle between two hills with a stream running through. I could see far in every direction. There were no other drives happening anywhere around our guys, which is unusual. But another and much larger drive was going on behind me, and pushing toward the area we had hunted the day before. And half a mile down the forest road several long range hunters were set up looking across a canyon. If there were bears around, or even deer, the two drives would push them past the long range guys, at least.
And yet, by the time dusk arrived and our men had slid and tumbled down the mountain side to gather at the truck, no one anywhere had seen a bear or a deer, nor heard a shot. The long range guys were packing up as we were driving out, and they told us they had seen several deer on Sunday, but nothing else any other day, including that day that had so much activity.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission is a government agency, and agencies make mistakes. Sometimes the best-intended and carefully considered policies have unintended consequences. Maybe the Saturday opener (as opposed to the long-time Monday opener) to bear season is part of the failure we are seeing. Maybe it’s the acorn crop failure making a bad situation worse. Maybe it’s the early season stealing all of the thunder from the regular rifle bear season. I don’t know the entire answer why, but the numbers don’t lie, and this 2023 bear season was a flop. Yes, we will see another 100-200 bears taken in the extended season that is concurrent with deer season in some Wildlife Management Units. But overall, PA has not seen a bear harvest this low in a long time. And as I recall, last year wasn’t that great, either.
Something is wrong and something needs to change. A lot of small businesses in rural areas depend on these big bear and deer seasons to make their end-of-year financial goals. Let’s hope the PGC staff and the board are up to the task of fixing it.
Harvest results as of the last night of regular rifle bear season, 2023. Not final, but not going to change much. The early season was the best season.
PA’s 2023 bear season
After hearing just one rifle shot all day (followed by the customary follow-up shot thirty seconds later, and the coup-de-grace shot a minute later) today, at 4:20PM, I felt compelled to write about what seems to be happening this bear season. In a nutshell, this is not your pap’s or even your dad’s Pennsylvania bear season in Northcentral PA. That long-hallowed experience of buffalo plaid Woolrich coats and moldy little hunting camps built in 1948 filled with men putting on big drives across the landscape, is now a thing of the past.
Some people blame the Saturday bear season opener that started eight years ago for the demise. Others blame the early October muzzleloader and archery seasons. Either way, what many hunters are calling the death of the famed PA bear season is actually a direct result of the incredible success of PA’s decades-long bear population conservation program.
When PGC biologist Gary Alt became the steward of the PA bear program in the early 1980s, he faced a problem. Hunters, nature lovers, and simple habitat and ecosystem health required more bears across Pennsylvania. And bears were not responding to the demand. In twenty years of hard and smart work, Dr. Alt turned the situation completely around. When Dr. Alt left the PGC twenty years ago, his life’s work was one of the great wildlife conservation success stories in America. Black bears then filled habitat niches in almost every county from Philadelphia to Erie, from Honesdale to Pittsburgh, and everywhere in between.
And then, almost overnight it seemed, PA had way too many bears. Bears were showing up in cities proper, turning over trash cans in suburban back yards everywhere. And so the PGC had to try and dial back some of Dr. Alt’s success. Increasing the number of bears taken by hunters was the solution.
Now looking at harvest data resulting from a half dozen years of early muzzleloader bear season, early archery season, regular bear season, and extended bear seasons running concurrent with deer season, it is easy to see why we only heard one rifle shot all day today in what probably still is the epicenter of PA’s bear hunting. And why none of our guys encountered any bears hanging from hunting camp porches on their valley run tonight.
Early muzzleloader and archery seasons combined now account for almost half of the overall annual PA bear harvest, even before “bear season” has begun. These early season hunters are mostly single men hunting near their homes. By the time the traditional bear season arrives in late November, half the licensed bear hunters who are likely to kill a bear are already tagged out, and the rest are looking forward to the concurrent bear-deer seasons in their home hunting territories. Few hunters feel compelled to make the historic annual migration north, and why would they?
Those of us, we hardy few, who do still come to the traditional bear hunting ground up north, are faced with an already depleted bear resource, and many fewer men pushing across the landscape to break free and push those bears that remain. And yet, despite our reduced opportunity, we enjoy the crisp Fall air, the camaraderie, the laughs, and the naughty food and drink our wives would never approve of, if they only knew.
Good luck this season, boys. You’re gonna need it.
RIP my friend Nevin Mindlin
Nevin Mindlin was probably an annoying precocious kid. He was probably one of those kids in school who at a young age would constantly raise his hand to answer questions posed by the teachers, because he actually knew the correct answer and he also probably knew a great deal more about whatever the subject was. Although I did not know Nevin at the tender age of eight, I am certain this lovingly annoying ability of his was probably becoming pronounced right about then. And it never stopped and it served him well all the way up until his death this morning in south Florida.
I will miss Nevin, for a lot of reasons. A good friend is always tough to find, and human chemistry is always a mystery. Opposites attract is an old saying, and as opposite as Nevin and I were from one another, we always enjoyed one another’s company. Maybe it was because I, too, was the annoying kid in grade school, but without Nevin’s intelligence. Probably I secretly admired him and I also wanted to be like him.
Nevin went to college, not just anywhere, but at Goddard College, a hippie freak school in the 1970s. Which must have been an interesting experience for all involved, because Nevin was a conservative Republican. He got his MBA from Lehigh University. He served in the US Navy and learned to take apart radios and fix complicated things. This ability to deconstruct and reconstruct complex bits of wires and capacitors became one of his annoying habits as an adult, when he would describe whatever public policy we were grappling with as a radio or electronic array. Nevin could diagram a public policy like no one else, and as he drew on the blackboard in his mind he saw electric wires, capacitors, and other radio components. Maybe he was just overthinking stuff, but it was impossible to refute him on his own terms. He would stop explaining and ask for questions, and the people in the room would just sit there staring, unable to conjure the right response. He should have been a salesman.
After working in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for a long time, where he was the executive director of the House Labor & Industry Committee, Nevin went on to be the policy director at the PA Department of Labor & Industry under Governor Tom Ridge in the 1990s. Of course Nevin was smarter and more experienced than most of the other appointees (except fellow appointee Tom Armstrong, whom he admired), and he always struggled with reconciling his clear headed and deeply held principles with impolite political necessity. This business of trading off principle for necessity would plague Nevin his entire life, and I don’t think he ever felt good about it. Maybe he should have been a philosopher. If he had been a salesman, he probably would not have been a rich one.
Nevin retired a bunch of years ago and ran for mayor of Harrisburg. As a candidate, he was very popular, especially among the Black population, even as a conservative Republican, and he scared the pants off the political establishment. I was in the courtroom when a now departed county judge held that Nevin’s reliance upon the official opinion of the county elections department was Nevin’s mistake, and not the mistake of the paid professionals who advised him, and thus was he disqualified from running for mayor at the last minute. It was a disgraceful moment in the history of human self-rule. Even the judge found his moment of political necessity distasteful, and his shame at having to remove this pure hearted, well meaning, popular man from the ballot and from threatening the political establishment was written all over his own unhappy face. I will never forget it.
Nevin served the Harrisburg Jewish community in a number of roles, including president of the Silver Academy Yeshiva. He never stopped dabbling in local politics, until he moved to southwest Florida a few years ago and said “What the hell, I think I’ll just go fishing from now on.” I always felt proud of having taught Nevin to fish, because it brought him great pleasure. We used to fish the Susquehanna River here in Harrisburg, back in the early 2000s, when a guy could catch 100-150 smallmouth bass in a day, and have a real shot at the huge muskellunge we had back then. Those were real good times together. He also enjoyed splitting wood with me, and fishing Pine Creek.
One Fall night on our way up Pine Creek Valley, probably twenty years ago, we encountered a wrecked SUV sideways in the road, the driver injured and hanging out her window. An enormous buck lay alive panting on the other side of the road. Despite having all four of its legs cleanly removed from its body due to the collision with the front of the SUV, and despite being hardly able to move more than a couple of feet at a time on its bloody stumps, the buck was full of fierce fight and aggressive lunges toward anyone who approached him. I was trying to maneuver into a safe angle where I could dispatch the suffering animal when the driver’s husband showed up. He barely noticed his wife in the driver’s seat of the steaming, crumpled SUV, and walked over to the buck. The man clearly admired the buck’s huge rack (I’m guessing it was in the 140s-150s) and tried to get ahold of it to twist and break the animal’s neck. That was a mistake, as the buck quickly lunged and speared the guy squarely in the gut with its long tines, drawing blood. The man was filled with rage, and I handed him my 9mm pistol that I had been prepared to dispatch the animal with. He damn near emptied that entire clip into the buck before he handed the gun back to me.
We left the dark wreck scene with its gory buck, steaming disabled vehicle, and the injured woman with her uninterested husband running his hands over the deceased buck’s rack, and Nevin said “You deer hunters are a really weird bunch of people.” He really should have been a philosopher.
Nevin was married twice. First to Gail, who gave him three great sons he was crazy about, Joshua, Avi, and Hillel, and then to Jean, who was with him when he died today. Nevin leaves a legacy of clear headed public policy, of absolutely beautiful principles based on America’s founding documents and the Torah, which he tried to follow, and memories among his friends of his explosive, joyous, easy laugh and always happy demeanor. I will miss my friend Nevin so very much. Godspeed, old friend. I hope you get to fish on your journey.
He will be buried this Sunday in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he grew up.
Nevin Mindlin fishing in south Florida, looking like an Amishman who had taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque and ended up in Heaven
Another NFL season? Who cares
According to the aggressive internet advertising I have encountered, and clicked right through, another National Football League season has begun. And unlike my childhood and adulthood up until 2016, I now just don’t care. I won’t be watching any NFL games at home, I won’t be going out to a sports bar to watch a game, and I won’t be going over to a friend’s house to watch a football game.
The fact is, me and the NFL are splits-o, over, finis, done, parted ways, divorced. Oh, I did my part as a fan; it was the NFL that caused our breakup. When the NFL’s strange public policy positions got me mad in 2015, the disrespectful kneeling by spoiled brats in 2016 got me furiously disconnected. I could not then relate to a business that deliberately stuck its finger in my eye and then expected me to overlook it and keep on keepin’ on. Nope. In 2016 I turned off the NFL TV and never looked back.
The situation has not been helped by a woke, racist, anti-America ESPN and fellow sports “media” outlets, in which the NFL continues to appear and participate, as if nothing is wrong. The situation has not been helped by the NFL adopting certain flags, colors, etc as statements about sensitive social issues and political policies that are guaranteed to drive away people who take their business with them. I always wonder what the outcome would be, the response would be, if the NFL jerseys and helmets sported the National Rifle Association logo….we know it would not be positively received by the ESPN et al “sports media” entertainment complex, which is really now just an adjunct of communist anti-America Hollywood.
I don’t think the NFL misses me, either. Occasionally I will be at someone’s home, or out with family, and a football game will be playing on a TV. My eye or ears will catch snippets of the game, and sometimes bits of the advertising during the game. So far the advertising ratio seems to (roughly) be about 25:1 aimed at American blacks over American whites. That disproportionate advertising effort tells us that American blacks are still loyal fans of the NFL, and very much the target audience of NFL games, while American whites have left the stadium, euphemistically and statistically speaking.
Incidentally, my disgust with NFL rubbing my nose in its leftist politics also bridges over into Penn State football. “The house that Joe [Paterno] built” has also left me in the dust, not so much the team or its management with the silly names on the jersey shtick, but Penn State University itself. My alma mater has gone totally woke, adopting policies and political positions completely at odds with my values. And at odds with the university’s own stated values of fairness, dedication to academic excellence, etc.
The way Coach Joe Paterno was mistreated by the PSU board of trustees didn’t help my view of the school. Then there was the unjustified hiding away of the Joe Paterno statue, and unjustified general official abuse of the golden Paterno name. PSU has done nothing of substance to correct its poor behavior. Instead its administrators and trustees and staff just keep on keepin’ on with the leftist nonsense, expecting me to get on board. Every year since 2012 PSU has found some new way to alienate me.
Despite receiving constant emails from Penn State and the PSU Alumni Association begging me to contribute and participate, I have backed away and found other ways to spend my time and money. Not getting back on that PSU train, despite five decades of dedication and personal participation.
So, just like I won’t support an NFL that aggressively adopts political positions that I cannot agree with, I cannot support a Penn State University that has adopted policies and politics that I cannot possibly agree with. The same goes for Major League Baseball, the National Basketball League, the National Hockey League, and a cornuplethora (thanks to John Correia for this funny word) of other now leftist-woke sports-entertainment institutions. All of whom seem to be doing just fine without me, I might add. If they missed me and my business, then they would have been courting me by dialing back the leftist politics junk. And they have not done so, but rather increased their leftist politics activism.
I will bet that if there is ever a need to financially support sports teams and leagues that have deliberately alienated their audiences by adopting leftist politics, and thereby lost a great deal of money, the political establishment will find a way to bail them out with taxpayer money. And we know the GOPe will make it happen.
Meanwhile, with the NFL out of my life I now have a lot more time and money of my own to spend on things that really bring me happiness. Reading on the couch next to my wife, visiting with friends and laughing about our kids, reloading antique black powder cartridges that became obsolete a hundred years ago, but which are still plenty effective for taking wild game at sporting distances, splitting firewood, studying the Bible, writing, there are so many productive uses of the time I used to mis-spend on the NFL.
So long, Screwy, I won’t see ya in Saint Louee, as Bugs Bunny would have said.
Four years ago, Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself
Four years ago, Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself. He died mysteriously in not just any prison, but in New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center, in the heart of and under the complete control of the Democrat Party political apparatus that he was a threat to. He was under 24 hour scrutiny by two guards and he was under 24 hour surveillance by multiple cameras.
Epstein had tons of horrible dirt on a ton of Democrat Party bigwigs and donors. Had he been allowed to stay alive, he would have talked, spilled the beans, disclosed the horrible secrets about these horrible people that would have disrupted the evil shadow world occupied by so many Hollywood and Democrat Party bigwigs.
Mysteriously, the guards watching his cell got up and disappeared from their guard duty at the same time Epstein died. No one was around to see how exactly he died.
Mysteriously, the cameras trained on Epstein’s cell also failed, did not record his cell, and had no backups. No one ever explained this coincidence.
A mystery visitor to the prison at that same time was never found. No one knows who the burly guy was.
Ultra-Democrat federal prosecutors then dropped the charges against the two guards for leaving their positions and for falsifying their log books that night. Everything was then hushed up. Someone with the information to destroy a political party conveniently died, and no one was held responsible. Not even the paid uniformed guards who were supposed to be watching him. The entire Epstein murder is one giant coverup in plain view of the American public.
Is anyone paying attention to this?
The deep mark on Epstein’s neck is the thin line of a strong wire or cable, nothing Epstein had access to. A ligature, the kind used by hitmen. But his cause of death was laughably and disbelievably recorded as death by hanging from his bed sheet, by a New York City Democrat bigwig, medical examiner Barbara Sampson.
Longtime Democrat Party donor and insider, Epstein was also a convicted pedophile and child molester leading a bizarre life of high finance and child rape on his “orgy island” in the Bahamas. Hundreds of children were illegally sexually trafficked on Epstein’s island, and at least hundreds of Democrat Party bigwigs and insiders joined him there, including Bill and Hillary Clinton. Apparently a few Republican Party bigwigs participated, too. This might account for why “Republican” US AG Bill Barr immediately and outright dismissed all the mystery surrounding Epstein’s death as nothing to see here, everyone just move along. Barr obviously covered for not just the Democrat child molesters, but the Republican ones, too.
Here is one good article about what a sham this murder was, and what a sham the coverup was.
No wonder so many Americans see this disgusting arrangement as a “uniparty” or a “deep state” or an “administrative state” that illegally operates separately from the We, The People, who are supposed to have complete control over our government. Both political parties are in on the sham. They cover for each other, they take care of each other. Meanwhile, the rule of law that is supposed to keep America operating is thrown out the window.
It is almost as if Epstein’s blatant murder was a run-up to the stolen 2020 election, that also happened right in front of our faces, and which the uniparty also told us to move along, forget about, nothing to see here.
Folks, America is in huge trouble from this crap. The only reason all this evil skulduggery has not destroyed us yet is that America is in effect a huge bank account. There is just so much of everything in America that it will take a long time before the rot inside begins to really show up on the outside. Our cultural, political, and financial wealth is all being quietly siphoned off, one political murder at a time, one dropped charge at a time, one official coverup at a time, one stolen election at a time. At a certain point, this corrupt rot will become so prevalent and so blatant that no one will believe in the system any more. And then all hell will break loose.
I do believe that is their plan.
We all fold bed sheets. Have you ever seen a bed sheet that could leave this very sharp, deep cut in human flesh? Neither has anyone else but the New York City Democrat political hack Barbara Sampson. Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself. He was murdered to shut him up.