Posts Tagged → mystery
99 Red Flags
Catastrophic Norfolk Southern train wreck in East Palestine, Ohio. “President” Biden still has not visited, but he has flown to Ukraine
Waterways and drinking water in East Palestine, Ohio, are badly contaminated. But the federal government says no aid is available to help
Train wreck mushroom cloud hangs over East Palestine, Ohio, whose toxic mess was greatly exacerbated by the way the federal government employees tried to mitigate the toxic chemicals in it
A red flag is used in car racing, team sports, and other activities to indicate a warning about something dangerous, or as a disqualification of some player or person, usually for breaking the rules of the game.
A new genre of “red flag” laws are being used to illegally disarm law abiding Americans, but that is a whole other subject. Even in this case, the term “red flag” serves the same connotation as elsewhere.
Recently America has experienced a whole slew of red flags as both warnings and as DQs. I don’t know how many red flags there have been, but there are easily a hundred of them. Let’s just say for argument’s sake that there are 99 red flags that we all should have seen in the past two years.
Examples of the warning kind include a handful of planes haphazardly and inexplicably flying into food processing plants out in the middle of nowhere, dozens of catastrophic mysterious fires breaking out at food processing plants and chicken farms, mysterious diseases striking large numbers of beef cattle and chickens at ranches and egg laying plants, adulterated chicken feed suppressing egg laying chickens from laying eggs across America for the past six months, and sophisticated attacks on electricity plants and on public water plants.
Now, when any one of these things happens, it is news. Or at least it should be news, and maybe it is news that such a freak event did not make the regular news. But when all of these things happen all of a sudden, across a relatively compact and short amount of time, with huge shockwaves sent through the American food supply chain that end up with empty super market shelves and very high food prices, it is all beyond news. This is happening on purpose. Each of these events is then a huge red flag that something is wrong. Something bad is happening to the infrastructure of our daily American lives, and if we do not understand what is happening, then we will not be able to address it. And if we do not address it, then we Americans will have little or no food to eat or clean water to drink.
When I talk to friends and strangers alike (I talk to strangers all the time) about these apparent overt attacks on our American food supply, I get a couple responses. One is “Wow, I had no idea. I guess that is why I see empty store shelves and high prices. Hmmmmm.” This response indicates the person is starting to think ahead about what this means for them, and what can they do about it. Self preservation in action.
The other response I get is “Really? I had no idea. Oh well.” And this indicates the person is so deeply asleep in the fat of the land that they cannot imagine either going without food, or how they can go about fixing their situation. Some joke about who will starve during a famine or domestic conflict, and it is no joke – these inattentive and incurious people will end up being the designated starvers. They foolishly take everything we have for granted.
The biggest red flag, both as a warning and as a DQ, was last week’s train crash in East Palestine, Ohio. Not sure why or how it crashed, but it happened in the middle of pristine farmland that grows a lot of important crops Americans rely on to eat every day. And then the Biden Administration’s impotent, uncaring non-response to the initial toxic chemical spill and then to the huge toxic mushroom cloud from the administration’s incompetent explosive “fix” that made the spill even worse said everything about what is happening to our country: HUGE RED FLAG alert. Joe Biden is either super incompetently or purposefully destroying American heartland farmland, and he must be disqualified from doing any further damage
Something bad is happening to America, on purpose. These serious domestic attacks are happening at a frequency too high for random accidents. As we see in other sectors, America’s domestic food production is being sabotaged. And this observation is not even taking into account the effect of giant industrial solar construction on pristine farmland all over the east coast. Farmland that is closest to America’s highest population centers is being destroyed, and will not be able to produce food or fiber (or quarry rock for public roads, or grow timber) for many decades to come, if ever again.
I see red flags all over the place. These red flags indicate that America is being failed from within on purpose, by people who are living inside our borders, who want to use their positions to destroy America. Hello, this is your country, and as it goes, so go you and your family.
As the 1970s bumper sticker read – “If you aren’t mad, then you aren’t paying attention.”
A Vulture’s Nose is Deep Stuff
As I am one of those many outdoorsmen who feels the presence of God most when outside in the wild (as did Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Byzantine monks, most Eastern religious founders, moved by the spirit present when interposing interference is removed), and who daily revels in the magical mysteries of nature and her myriad inhabitants, two days ago I experienced one of those affirmative moments I just had to share here.
Let me begin in a normally circuitous way.
Among our friends, the cabin frig is a notorious repository for hilarious experiments in food storage. Examples run from milk containers constantly long past the “Use By” date, which poses no boundary for me when making morning covfefe, to plastic containers containing mysterious fuzzy delicacies once lovingly stashed in misplaced anticipation of an immediate followup feed some distant time before.
So the other day, I grabbed what I thought was a container of meat pottage of recent vintage, only to discover it held the sad remains of a once-proud free range tuna fish turned to tame tuna salad some weeks prior. Upon opening the plastic container, it was clear this material could be frozen for trap bait come November, or taken to a regular dumping point deep in the forest, 100 yards from the front porch, where several trail cameras record and document the many cool forest denizens that come to explore the enticing odors thereupon.
Unwilling to risk the entire freezer contents to this nasty smelling mess, option B was followed. Taking water along to help rinse out the container only added yet more stink to the spot.
I retreated from that odorous field of battle and took up my point of respite on a chair on said porch, thinking of all the hard physical labor awaiting me, once more responsible instincts took control of my limbs. Within minutes, and I mean just a few minutes, a handful of black-headed vultures began circling the spot of spoilage, some diving down below the tree canopy to more personally investigate the enticing smell.
To me, seeing this is a magnificent experience and feeling. What a display of the incredible smelling ability of these birds!
Yes, vultures are carrion eaters, and they are supposed to be able to smell well.
Well, to me, being able to smell a few ounces of old tuna salad water dumped out in the Big Woods in the middle of a vast forest complex, from miles away, is not just good sense of smell. It is beyond imaginably incredible.
We are talking about parts per trillion of stink being immediately picked up by a winged creature far, far away. What sophistication! What finely honed senses! It is miraculous, and to me, it is a sign of the hand of God, because only God can create such complexity. Human attempts are not even cheap imitations.
Which takes me to this perhaps unexpected conclusion: I do not understand the use of recreational drugs. The free and easy endorphin “high” that my brain feels from witnessing the vultures’ display of smell capability is intense, because I appreciate what it represents. Just minutes later a beautiful ruby throated hummingbird buzzed the porch, inspecting our colorful (flower-colored) American flag gently luffing in the breeze.
Hanging momentarily a few feet away from me, I marveled at its minuscule dose of radiant iridescence.
And then as the hummingbird buzzed away at an impossibly high speed (I mean, how can such a small animal achieve such a high rate of speed so quickly? Another miracle of Creation!), my brain experienced yet another rush of self-induced stimulants. No outside drugs required. No danger, no addiction, no expense, no law breaking.
My takeaway from the vultures: Don’t take Nature for granted. She is everywhere, the handmaiden of God, here to show us The Way. If we just open our eyes and revel in the mystery.