Category → Fruit of Contemplation
409
Legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno won 409 genuine college games. No one can take that away from him, the players, the team staff, or the proud PSU alumni, like me.
Child molester Jerry Sandusky is a scumbag, but the football program had zero to do with his crimes. But it was the football program the NCAA punished, disproportionately to any other football program in American history. Using Sandusky’s association (not employment) with the PSU football program, and Louis Freeh’s horrendously unprofessional report (analyzed in detail on this site) to support its blitzkrieg assault on Penn State, the NCAA coerced PSU trustees and incompetent, spineless top PSU staff to sign the consent decree that unfairly punished the football program.
Enter the courts, where facts actually can matter. And thus we have courts that are correctly beginning to cast doubts on the entire NCAA punishment of PSU football. This week a court held that further inquiry is necessary to determine if the NCAA not only operated consistent with its own charter, but also consistent with the facts of the Sandusky case vis-a-vis PSU football.
Daylight is seeping in, and I do not believe that the NCAA will survive the exposure, or the application of basic logic and rules of fairness.
Joe Paterno, my hero, had 409 Wins to his credit. Those wins remain, no matter what, but hopefully they will soon be reinstated after basic due process for ALL of the victims of Sandusky’s crimes.
Thank You to PA Leadership Conference
A big Thank You to the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference organizers, its speakers and moderators, and the hundreds of attendees who are taking time out of their days, livelihoods, and family commitments to gather together and work on rebuilding American and Pennsylvanian liberties.
I got a lot out of it today. Big Thank You to PA state senator Mike Folmer, whose passionate advocacy for individual liberties inspires so many other citizens to work twice as hard. Even those who disagree with the traditionalist movement respect the commitment we have to protecting EVERYONE’S rights, the opposite of the Left, which is constantly undermining civil liberties.
Happy Birthday, Pennsylvania!
333 years ago this week, Pennsylvania was born, when King Charles signed the Penn Charter, granting William Penn millions of acres of land in the New World. Ever since then, Pennsylvania has been a leader in religious tolerance, democracy, and citizen liberty. Contrast our liberties with, say, adjoining states New York and New Jersey. ‘Nuff said.
Condolences to the Mowery family, who lost former state senator Hal Mowery this week. Hal was a gentleman, cheerful, intelligent, thoughtful, charismatic, and without question the best looking man to ever serve in the Pennsylvania legislature. He will be sorely missed.
Questions you were told not to ask, #1
Why does global warming feel so record-setting cold?
Dickinson College – always good to visit
Thank you to Professor Anat Beck and her very interesting students, for hosting me today. I know it is not easy to hear ideas you do not agree with, and you all did a marvelous job of listening and asking questions, and seeing photos of hunting and trapping. It was an honor to be with you. Just remember: Your entrepreneurialism cannot succeed with more onerous government regulations and requirements, like ObamaCare. When there are more takers than makers, the system collapses. Capitalism has generated more liberty, freedom, and opportunity than any other approach.
Last year I spoke to Dr. Andrea Lieber’s class, also at Dickinson, and we had an excellent dialogue on “climate change.” What surprised me was how little the students knew about the politicization of “climate change” “science.” It is to Dr. Lieber’s credit that someone like me was invited to address her students.
Dickinson has a fascinating, really neat environment and hands-on sustainability program, replete with a new green house/ lab. I hope I am invited back again, because, I like it a lot. The students are inspiring.
OK, belay that last “let it snow”
Like you and most everyone I know around Pennsylvania, I feel done with the snow. Yes, did I say “let it snow” a bunch yesterday? Well, that was then and this is now. Now, we are expecting another eight to twelve inches of snow in the next day. On top of the six to eight inches of hardened crust, ice, and snow already on the ground, another foot is going to keep spring from arriving for a long time.
This much snow puts a stranglehold on our business operations. Shuts down machinery. Trucks cannot pick up, guys cannot cut, or even drive their trucks, let alone get their machines moving.
What really is telling about this cold is that at home, we have burned a solid three-plus cords of seasoned oak firewood. We may be closing in on four burned to date. We have enough to take us into the end of the longest cold winter, but that just means more work felling, cutting, hauling, splitting, and stacking. You know the old saw — “Firewood warms ya twice.” You work hard making it, and then it warms you as a fire. Indeed.
Hold on there, fellow Pennsylvanians. Spring must be just around the corner. Just a few weeks from now, the air should be in the mid-forties, smelling slightly earthy and damp, and a robin here and there will join the cardinal in the back yard. Then you know relief is upon us. Hold on. You are in good company.
Wile-y Coyote, knows the way
On my way out the door this morning, a call came in: “I think you have a coyote,” he said.
Knowing how wiley those coyotes are, I was skeptical and hopeful.
Surely enough, when I arrived the sets were undisturbed, and a second call went like this: “Yeah, we figured out he was mousing, you know – pouncing on mice under the snow,” and then eating them with great pleasure.
So what had appeared like one behavior was in fact something else, entirely. The coyote had not been trapped, but rather had merrily and quite freely zig zagged his way across the snowy field, chasing tasty mouse morsels. Human perception has misunderstood things of far greater consequence before, and will again, but the symbolism was instructive.
Once again I am surprised to see how entrenched most people are in a single perspective, as if their own living place, their own community, their own home, their own food, whatever surrounds them, is in fact (and must, must be) a true reference point for everyone else. As if rural citizens relate to land the same as city slicker flatlanders, whose use for open land is a place to casually watch for deer as they serenely drive to their next appointment. As if the flatlanders exist for the sole benefit of the rural folks….
How often do we hear activists and religious leaders invoke “peace,” as though what they are doing will actually bring peace, or that they would even know what someone else would call peace. The take-away for me today was how entrenched in self most individual people are, and how they often (mistakenly) believe that their world view is dominant, “normal,” and correct. And I’d say that this applies across the board, to all people, and most assuredly to me.