Posts Tagged → red stag
Foggy Ireland
Ten years ago several young Syrian toughs confronted me on a boat in Mallaig, Scotland. Freshly imported into Scotland as supposed victims, they knew that they were untouchable, and they pushed everyone around, acting like they owned the boat. It irked the American crap out of me and I stood my ground. Been a while since I had a good donnybrook, which is always good for a man’s vasculature, and I squared off.
The captain walked over to me and quietly confided “Ya, ya kin take ’em, and we will all cheer you for it, but the coppers will lock you up and ship ya home, no matter who started it.”
So I drank that bucket of Syrian sh*t and enjoyed the quiet ride across the loch and to my hunt for red stag.
Not long after, Scotland had a Syrian prime minister who said wildly racist crap about the native, indigenous white Scots people, and he derided both Protestant and Catholic religion. The Scots had imported their own invading force, intent on destroying Scotland from within. No “Bravehearts” these.
A couple years later I toured the spectacular Worcestshire Church in Barmouth, Wales, (Bugs Bunny forever destroyed my ability to properly say or spell Worcestshire) and commented to a local man how sadly empty and un-used it appeared. Yes, he confirmed, the church sits neatly cared for and tidy, but the Welsh government acts to dissuade the Welsh people from attending church.
The following year, the government of Wales began removing public statues of white people, because white people statues somehow represent racism, they said, because apparently white people are inherently racist, they said. Or something nuts like that, they said. Whatever their nutty cause (imagine removing statues of black people because of their skin color…it is nuts), the Welsh government was making culture war on its own people.
England’s government has obviously gone to war against its own native people, importing millions of illegal, unvetted, unknown criminals from culturally opposing places, allowing them to run violent rampages daily against the native, indigenous people, and then arrests and harasses the victims of said rampages. Whether I am willing to submit myself again to this craziness, I doubt that I will even be allowed into England as a tourist at present. Thought crimes like those committed on this blog are officially deemed much more serious offenses than knifing people, and the British government is quite effective at tracking the different opinions held by others.
So one supposes that Ireland just had to join this war against native Europeans, and against its own native Gaelic speaking indigenous people, and so the Irish government began doing all the same things as the aforementioned “UK” member states. A stroll through Dublin a few years ago revealed more tattooed Pakistani men than native Irish on the streets, more Arabic spoken than English, or Gaelic, more new mosques than churches. As in Wales, the beautiful old churches sit empty. Irish coppers (Gardia) will indeed jail an Irish guy for stopping racial harassment and sexual violence by Pakistani men, while looking away at the Pakistanis’ crimes.
The official Irish Government war against Irish culture and people is well on its way. Despite countless generations of Irish fighting and dying to maintain their independence from Romans, Vikings, Angles, Saxons, Victorian England, modern British…the list of invaders and occupiers is long…now, Ireland is embarked on a foggy headed policy of self-erasure.
Conspiracy mongers dwell heavily on the unnatural coincidence of all of Western Civilization suddently and simultaneously committing “Harry Kary,” or ritual seppukku suicide. I do concur that it is odd as hell. But it is not some shadowy, secret handshake cabal causing this.
Rather, this “suicidal empathy” immigration policy is the inevitable result of too much material success putting too many people to sleep. Way way too many people in France, Germany, England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and America have too much, and thus take way too much for granted, and have too many creature comforts and food and ease of living, to realize that they cannot drain their own collective bank account for the benefit of myriad total strangers, without losing it all themselves.
The old adage about soft times making soft men, resulting in hard times, which then make hard men, tough men, making tough and sometimes brutal decisions about life and death, seems to be playing out here. I observe the America’s young socialist brats have no idea just how hard and tough the old Americans like me can be, will be, need be.
An Irish song comes to mind about the likely future, as told by the Irish past:
As down the glen one Easter morn to a city fair rode I
Their Armed lines of marching men in squadrons passed me by
No pipes did hum, no battle drum did sound its dread tattoo
But the Angelus Bell o’er the Liffey’s swell rang out through the foggy dew
Right proudly high over Dublin Town they hung out the flag of war
‘Twas better to die ‘neath an Irish sky than at Suvla or Sud-El-Bar
And from the plains of Royal Meath strong men came hurrying through
While Britannia’s Huns, with their long range guns sailed in through the foggy dew
Oh the night fell black, and the rifles’ crack made perfidious Albion reel
In the leaden rain, seven tongues of flame did shine o’er the lines of steel
By each shining blade a prayer was said, that to Ireland her sons be true
But when morning broke, still the war flag shook out its folds in the foggy dew
‘Twas England bade our Wild Geese go, that “small nations might be free”
But their lonely graves are by Suvla’s waves on the fringe of the great North Sea
Oh, had they died by Pearse’s side or fought with Cathal Brugha
Their graves we will keep where the Fenians sleep, ‘neath the shroud of the foggy dew
Oh the bravest fell, and the Requiem bell rang mournfully and clear
For those who died that Eastertide in the spring time of the year
While the world did gaze, in deep amaze, at those fearless men, but few,
Who bore the fight that the freedom’s light might shine through the foggy dew
As back through the glen I rode again and my heart with grief was sore
For I parted then with valiant men whom I never shall see more
But to and fro in my dreams I go and I kneel and pray for you,
For slavery fled, O glorious dead, When you fell in the foggy dew…
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Commando summer vacations
Few things, few activities are as deeply satisfying to me as summer travels in America, especially across the northeast. Call these trips short vacations, commando vacations, traveling vacations, whatever, they are always fun and invigorating. I am always somewhat dispirited when these trips end.
The goals are to see new places, usually off the beaten path, meet new people, see old American architecture, and explore old towns, small towns, take in new sights. Small town America is quite fabulous, although they are all increasingly becoming “discovered” and populated by down-state summertime residents and tourists, and even the dreaded out-of-state tourists, like me. While there is less to “discover” in these “discovered” small old towns, one benefit of the summertime down-state residents is that they increasingly purchase and rehab the most beautiful Victorian and Federal homes that until recent years fell into increasingly sad disrepair. When these old hulking brick, stone, or beautifully complicated trim wooden buildings are fully returned to their original glory, they are really something to see, to behold, to bask in. Each is a work of art in its own right, and the investors deserve our applause and appreciation. I would like to have an ad hoc summertime picnic on all of their porches.
Although I do not always get the level of accommodation I would prefer on these trips, I can make up for poor overnight conditions by staying out late and getting out early, and bringing my own sheets and pillow cases, just in case. One lesson learned over the decades is Trust the Big Hotel Chains. If you can find them, not always possible in the more remote areas, they are universally clean, comfortable, hygienic, well kept, and generally safe. Whereas, bed-and-breakfast destinations are widely hit or miss, with the misses being gross and uncomfortable, and old family owned “spas” and grandiose Victorian or imitation French estates can be a little sticky and pretentious, or downright gross and pretentious with genuinely weird characters hanging about. Give me the universal American standard of three star or better hotel chain every night possible. Or a car-camping tent site at a state park with flush toilets and showers.
The term for exposing people to new ideas and objects, Education, emerged in 1918. It replaced the long term phrase popular instruction. As the keeper of this blog, I think about the differences between these two concepts, education versus instruction. One of the huge things missing in today’s “education” establishment (overrun with rote partisan indoctrination) is the act of instruction, the conveyance of new skills, new ideas, new ways of appreciating or thinking. And so I like to think that here the reader has an opportunity to encounter some instruction, something new. This sounds like a heavy burden, a heavy lift, until you consider what I am presenting as new here: An Upstate New York distillery, which makes various alcoholic spirits, which I had only read about in Mountain Home Magazine. On this most recent commando vacation, I was able to connect a variety of dots on a map in one afternoon, one of which being this distillery.
Situated above Seneca Lake, the Finger Lakes Distilling Company has a pretty nice pied-à-terre, from which we enjoyed our picnic lunch views over and across the lake. I had just enjoyed a very relaxed tasting inside, and being a lightweight with alcohol, I was in no condition to drive. However, I am no lightweight in terms of weight, and I am always ready to eat…so we sat, ate our food picnic style, and let the cool early summer breeze flow across us while the distillery operation ran all around us. Fascinating to me at least is that this distillery locally sources all of its own grains, flavors; everything they use in their many various products is grown right in the Finger Lakes region. And one of the great joys of connecting the various dots across the Finger Lakes region is driving through the great amount of scenic working farmland and beautifully kept farms that make up that special landscape.
Of the four bottles of rye whisky I sampled, and bought, only one really appeals to my taste; the other three are going to be gifts to friends. What can I say; I have friends with poor palates and poor choices in their friends; no fancy gifts from moi. What I greatly enjoyed is the McKenzie single barrel straight rye whiskey (80% rye and 20% malted barley) aged six years, and finished in a “Pommeau” cask. This is really an outstanding flavor, a world-class product. And at $42.50 a bottle, it is about eight to fifteen dollars less than one would expect to pay for a similar quality product in Scotland, Ireland, or in other parts of America. And though I am not a drinker, as I have become a serious lightweight with age, I do enjoy sampling on location the locally made, sometimes internationally famous, sometimes should-be-internationally-famous whiskeys made in Scotland, Ireland, and occasionally America.
One of my favorite related memories is watching small boats putting in at the Isle of Skye, where they would each buy a couple cases of delicious small batch single malt, and then move on up the coast to the next small distillery, unknown to the outside world, but coveted and seriously in demand among connoisseurs. I happened to be standing high up in the Black Hills of Knoydart with a historic double rifle over my shoulder, hunting red stag, at that moment, and so alcohol was that farthest thing from my mind. But the determined boats way down below, and their sophisticated whiskey buyers, will never leave my mind. What a life.
Anyhow, below are some photos from the Finger Lakes Distilling Company, which despite being a real ongoing concern for some time now, has (bizarrely) not trademarked their unique product or bottle labels. See? This is the real essence of small town, rural America: Family-owned-and-run high quality, with all of the refreshing, remote innocence one hardly ever sees any more. Except maybe in Papua New Guinea, where according to one guy the locals ate Joe Biden’s grandfather with a side of whiskey bottle.
The single malt lacks the peaty flavor of coveted single malts from Scotland. If Upstate New York has any peat for roasting the malted barley, McKenzie should get it and use it
Real strawberry milk by the half gallon at Buttermilk Falls… can a summer day be better spent?