Category → Family
I brought my guns to school
Back in the 1970s, I brought my deer rifle to school on the bus.
It was locked in my school locker when I arrived at school on the bus. In its case.
No one made a big deal about it.
No one was hurt by my gun.
My biology teacher reloaded my 7mm Mauser shells for me.
I hunted after school with friends, and no one was hurt. We were all safe handlers of our firearms. We all took it seriously.
It now might be a time for Americans to recall a different time, a safer time, a time when Americans could not imagine using basic firearms to hurt one another. A time when deer rifles were as normal as new sneakers, as significant as new clothes. A high powered deer rifle meant that much, and that little.
So many Americans today wonder what happened to our nation. Well, quit treating traditional American values as inferior to the chaos, anarchy, and violence that have replaced them. Let us traditionalists come back. Let your kids demonstrate how responsible they are. Take comfort in the inherent strength of our nation and its traditions. Relax.
We gun owners are safe, responsible, and experienced. We have our own children who we cherish. We will do nothing to hurt our own children.
Guns, used safely, are safe.
Gun swap on the kitchen table
Today, a friend called me. A friend of his was bringing over some rifles, shotguns, and old knives to trade. Was I interested in participating?
I’m reporting here that we traded guns like pennies in a penny-ante poker game.
It’s an American tradition, this private gun ownership thing. No paperwork. No records. No criminals. No bad intent.
For another buddy of mine I got a lightly used pump deer rifle. He will pay my actual cost; I don’t make money off of friends.
Background checks have been proposed on this harmless activity; they would merely document who got what, for future attempts at gun confiscation. None of us are or will be criminals. Guns in our hands are the highest deterrent to crime, however.
Time for a Muslim Peace Movement, Now
Muslims are not victims*.
However, the victims of Islam are many, and continuing, and today yet another was unveiled.
British peace activist David Haines was beheaded by a Muslim activist on video, which I watched both in horror and in solidarity with him. David Haines knew what was happening, was absolutely composed, cocked his eyebrow and muttered some inaudible phrase to himself as his chin was lifted and the knife sliced into his neck.
David Haines died on his knees, his hands cuffed behind him, utterly vulnerable, not a threat to anyone. This is pure sadism.
Whether Muslims will admit it, or not, this sadistic evil violence has become the face of Islam to Westerners.
In the absence of massive Muslim marches supporting Western civilization and individual liberties, one can only conclude that Muslims everywhere agree with this Koranic behavior.
Oh sure, there are some bland Takiya (religiously permitted deception) statements by Muslim infiltrators, but there are zero public demonstrations by reformers who wish to indicate their break with the parts of the Koran that proscribe this exact form of murder and mayhem for non-Muslims.
It is time for a Muslim Peace Movement. A movement that supports Western civilization, that supports the rights of minorities such as Christians, Yazidis, and Jews, that will re-write the Koran to represent a Western mindset.
It is time.
* The Koran forbids any criticism of Islam or its founder, Muhammad, and yet the Koran is full of hate and vilification of every other religion around the Arabian Peninsula in the year 670 CE. Christians, Jews, and Hindus are specifically called cows, monkeys, pigs, and so on. If this is not “hate speech,” I don’t know what is. This double standard must end. You are not a victim if you are victimizing everyone else and they are calling you out on it.
Field Notes
Field Notes are the monthly notes written by PA Game Commission wildlife conservation officers, about notable experiences and interactions they’ve had on the job, out in the field. And you know that for those folks, men and women, out in the field is truly out there in the wild. Their descriptions of encounters with people and wildlife are unique and often funny.
Field Notes are published monthly in the PGC’s Game News magazine, and for all of my hunting life (1973 until now), one person really summed up Field Notes and gave them pizzazz, making them my first-read in the magazine.
That was artist Nick Rosato, whose funny illustrations in Field Notes came to epitomize and symbolize the life and lighter side of wildlife law enforcement. Rosato’s humorous, rustically themed sketches summed up a WCO’s life of enforcing the law against sometimes recalcitrant bad guys, while maintaining an empathy usually reserved for naughty school children, when first-time offenders were involved and a slap on the wrist was needed.
Rosato died this summer, and his art will no longer grace the pages of Game News. I will miss Rosato’s humor and skill, because for most of my life he helped paint the human dimension of officers who are too often seen as gruff, grumpy, and unnecessarily strict law enforcers.
Speaking of WCOs, a couple years ago I was hunting during deer rifle season when I encountered a WCO I knew. He had a deer on the back of his vehicle and we stopped to chat and catch up with each other. Out of nowhere, I asked him to please check me, as in check my license, my gun, my ammunition.
Getting “checked” by WCOs and deputy WCOs is a pretty common experience for most Pennsylvania hunters, but the truth is, I have never been checked by anyone in my 42 years of hunting.
“Sorry, Josh, I just do not have the time. You will have to wait ’til later or until you meet another WCO out here,” he responded.
With that he smiled, waved, and drove off to follow through on his deer poaching investigation.
I think that encounter should be a Field Note, Terry. It is probably a first.
Maybe this year I will be “checked,” but perhaps having every single license and stamp available to the Pennsylvania hunter, and hunting only when and where I am supposed to hunt, somehow creates a karma field that makes WCOs avoid me.
Speaking of hunting experiences, yesterday morning Ed and I were goose hunting on the Susquehanna River. Out in the middle of the widest part, we were alone, sitting on some rocks, chatting about our families, professional work, politics and culture, religion. Our time together can best be summed up as “Duck Blind Poetry,” because it ain’t pretty, but it is soulful. Two dads together, sharing life’s experiences and challenges, makes hunting much more than killing.
While we were noting the Susquehanna River’s recent and incredible decline in animal diversity, we suddenly saw four white Great Egrets fly across our field of view, followed by three wood ducks. Intrigued, we began speculating on where they had all been hiding, when out of nowhere a mature bald eagle appeared on the horizon. It flapped its way over us and clearly was on the hunt. So that was why the other birds had quickly flown out of Dodge!
Seeing these wild animals interact with each other was another enjoyable example of how hunting is much, much more than killing.
Unfortunately, during that serene time afield, I introduced my cell phone to the Susquehanna River, and have found myself nearly shut off from communications ever since. While the phone dries off in a bath of rice, I am enjoying a sort of enforced relaxation. Please don’t think my lack of responses to calls and texts is rudeness. I am merely clumsy. Let’s not make that a Field Note.
9-11 happened 13 years ago; are we any wiser?
America’s toughest enemies attacked us September 11, 2001.
It appears that the subsequent 13 years have been spent trying to cover up who those enemies were, and pretend they are actually peaceful, despite that they remain to this very moment committed to the destruction of America and Western civilization.
No American policy, foreign or domestic, can change the mind of someone who has been raised, nurtured, and trained all his life to want to kill you. The problem is on his side, not on ours.
America’s president says that no religion condones the killing of innocents. Wrong again. This particular totalitarian ideology poses as a religion, and it is all about death and destruction. Submit (‘Islam’), or die. We see it over and over again.
Perhaps why our Apologist In Chief keeps saying “ISIS is not Islam” is that, as the world’s greatest promoter and defender of Islam, he realizes the images of Steve Sotloff and James Foley having their heads sawed off, helpless on their knees, have had a profound impact on the Western psyche. So Obama needs to challenge ISIS now, in a country he lost after America won it, before the cat is fully out of the bag and people see the truth we are facing.
Let’s wise up, recognize our own greatness, and stop beating up on ourselves for things we do not do and did not do. Otherwise, the victims of the 9-11 attacks died in vain, and the huge memorials in Shanksville, New York, and Virginia will not be signifying 9-11, but America’s willful blindness, instead.
See more with her amazing speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MwqVmoXPbc
And if you REALLY want to watch her kick ass, watch her respond powerfully to foolish propaganda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry3NzkAOo3s
Chautauqua’s shame
Chautauqua Institution was once an intellectual’s dream destination: Opera company, symphony orchestra, book stores, authors and noted speakers every day for the summer. Gated and safe. Nice people. Beautiful homes next to quaint Victorian gingerbread boxes, all adhering to a commonly held design ideal. Chautauqua Lake, at 32,000 acres a real big body of water to fish, swim, boat, and otherwise enjoy.
Chautauqua was also a unique symbol of community building, and education. The institution spawned The Chautauqua Movement, which was big from the 1890s through the 1930s, with places like Mount Gretna in Central Pennsylvania dedicated to comfy living, higher entertainment, tolerance, and learning.
Now, Chautauqua Institution is the antithesis of its founding ideals and original mission. Overthrown, captured, and jealously guarded by political extremists, its summer programming is now carefully groomed to exclude dissent and include well known jihadists. It’s pretty much extreme political indoctrination 24/7 there.
And yes, you read that above correctly. Chautauqua Instituion is now so tolerant of intolerance, the place regularly hosts pro-Jihad, pro-Sharia Law advocates (think of the people behind Jim Foley and Steve Sotloff having their heads sawn off while on their knees), who lie lie lie to adoring audiences, who in turn shout down questioners asking the right questions for the liars during the appointed Q&A periods.
I myself have been nastily hissed at and yelled at there, for clapping in support of a speaker or statement I like, while the endless sea of extremists in the audience uproariously cheered on their favored speaker.
The place is now ruthlessly run by intolerant, close-minded control freaks, serving up anti-Americanism by the bucketful, pro-Jihad by the boatload, and dissent-crushing manipulation by the truckload.
How sad. How utterly shameful.
Farewell, fair maiden of Chautauqua Lake’s shores. We once knew ye.
Summer mode continues, sorry
Yes, I am still in summer mode here. Things are moving slowly. Please bear with us.
Fellow Americans, enjoy your summer!
Dear fellow Americans, we got it good here. Summer time is for gardens, BBQ with friends, travel with the family, loafing by the pool, fishing, and so on.
Summertime in America is truly a serene time. We are blessed in this.
Don’t take it for granted.
The hoops and links and tethers that kept the world’s nations mostly stable over the past sixty years are broken. Entire arrangements of human life across enormous landscapes are changing. Europe, the Middle East, the Far East, all are in significant play. Iraq and Syria both have lost control of their borders.
Think this doesn’t effect you or your life? You’re wrong. Energy, trade, security, violent jihad, and more are all in flux, and changes are rippling across the globe.
America is a strong nation. Be prepared to be challenged, because it’s going to take all we have to succeed.
On that happy note, enjoy the hot dogs and cold beer!