Posts Tagged → roads
Much, much to be thankful for in America
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and there is so much to be thankful for here in America. Let’s start with the “small” things, which we take for granted:
-Surfeit of food, of all tastes, colors, varieties, amounts. At bear hunting camp this week (pictures below), people brought a wide variety and overwhelming amount of snack food, in addition to the high quality main course ingredients. Super rich, high-calorie, high fat, mostly sugar and corn syrup as the first or second ingredient, this “snack” stuff could feed an African village for a week. But it is practically poison here in America. We take it for granted, and often reach for it out of boredom, never out of need. It is killing our health, with way too many Americans obese and diabetic. The good stuff, like amazingly abundant and cheap fresh fruit and vegetables, does not blast our palates with artificial flavor, and is shunted aside.
-Paved roads, which are not common in much of the world. Americans like our paved highways and by-ways, everywhere. They are enjoyable to drive on, and are so smooth that we can eke every possible bit of gas mileage efficiency out of our personal vehicles as we shave minutes off of long distance trips. Importantly, our highways are made from quarried rock and oil pumped out of the ground.
-Personal vehicles are not a get-to-work or manage-the-farm necessity for half of America, but are rather the higher-end personal statement of appearance and perception, of how we want others to see us. Meanwhile, half the world still uses horses, donkeys, and cattle to transport food and goods. The next time our personal car gets a scratch, let’s remember that a vehicle is but a tool, and tools get used and scratched. Let’s not take these super expensive tools for granted.
-Shelter, like a home, has rapidly changed in concept in just a few decades. Our grandparents aspired to own a home of about 900 square feet in size. And while we mocked 1980s tyrant Imelda Marcos for her huge closets and psycho big shoe collections, a lot of car garages are now about 900 square feet, while the homes they are attached to are 3,500 square feet. Meanwhile, our own families have shrunk in size since the 1950s, compared to our grandparents’, but our homes are generally exploding in opulent size and personal service.
While I do not question or judge market forces like supply and demand, we must be thankful for what we have available to us, dammit. The tin shanty favelas surrounding Mexico City were filled with domesticated animals and pobrecitos human beings, all under one small leaky roof made of rusty corrugated metal; the things I saw then still haunt me even now.
I am not trying to be a scold or a downer, but man oh gees, do we as a nation need to be super duper thankful to each other and to the One Above for all the blessings this incredible America enjoys. If we take these myriad blessings for granted, then we will take anything and everything for granted, including each other. And when people take each other for granted, their relationships fail. American citizens need to have a close relationship with each other and with our self-representative government. It all goes together, hand in glove.
Tomorrow, we must all give deep thanks for what we have, and show appreciation for it all. Not the least of which is living in the wealthiest, freest nation ever created by humans.
Happy Thanksgiving, my fellow American citizens!
A 1970s Grohmann “skinner” knife gifted to me by a friend whose dad hunted with me. It was dull as dishwater until Irv worked his magic on it. It now shaves hair and has a heavy dose of home-made cutting board butter on the rosewood handle. It goes deer hunting this weekend.
The bear we caught up in our Monday drive, seen here back in July. Estimated at well over 7′ and 600-700 pounds, he escaped with but a scratch from an excited hunter who did not take his time and aim carefully. Photo by Bob G., thank you.
The Ruger Marlin 1895 45-70 in the mountaintop laurel jungle minutes before our drive made contact with the big bear.
When shot wild and excitedly, twelve gauge copper slugs will kill only trees, and not the bear-of-five-lifetimes
Light blood trail went for 1500 feet, and then disappeared. We determined his left front leg had been nicked, not hard. Lucky bear, sad hunter
Sad hunter makes the universal “I can’t believe I did that” gesture of frustration back at camp. Yeah, you will never see another 700 pound bear on a drive in PA, old friend
Hurricane Helene says No Such Thing as White Privilege
“White privilege” may be the most racist thing you will hear anyone say or allege in your lifetime, probably from the most racist people on Planet Earth, white liberal Democrats, but that has not stopped this fake social construction from being pronounced and bandied about like it is actually real.
Well, Mother Nature herself has recently descended from the heavens above to demonstrate that in reality and in the natural world too, there is no such thing as “White privilege.”
In the form of Hurricane Helene last week, Mother Nature inflicted huge devastation and destruction upon eastern Tennessee and northern North Carolina and the regional demographic there. It is a group of people I have had a lot of life experience with and who I maintain intense admiration for, white rural working people.
That there are a lot of white liberal Democrats in Asheville folded into the mix of Hurricane Helene victims does not mitigate or reduce my sympathy or hope for everyone’s full recovery there. Everyone is equal before the law, everyone is created in the image of God, and we are all Americans who should be caring for one another, regardless of our political opinions or religious views.
So Hurricane Helene destroyed billions of dollars in built infrastructure, including homes, towns, villages, farms, rural roads and interstates and bridges and schools and hospitals, stranding hundreds of thousands of largely white rural American citizens without power, water, or food.
And so just to demonstrate that white people can be victims and actually have no racial privilege whatsoever, the federal government response to Hurricane Helene has been… almost silent. Like cavalier and ignoring the huge mess of human misery. Like on purpose.
Recall that to our elites, Appalachian whites are the deplorable, disposable, ignored, maligned, forgotten Americans who nonetheless mine the coal that gives us most of our electricity, serve as the roughnecks on oil and gas drilling platforms that run our vehicles, fill up the special forces and combat infantry positions in our most highly motivated and patriotic high-risk fighting forces, who log the forests that provide us with high grade lumber for our fancy kitchens and furniture, who work for the railroads, and who drive trucks across the interstates that bring Amazon Prime to your home super pronto.
In every one of these professions, these (white, rural) people are taking big risks that almost always exceed their expected financial return. Why? Because they are proud to work hard, and they love America more than they love themselves. And they are devoted to America because there is no other nation anywhere that will give them the same freedom and opportunity.
White rural working people are the people who disproportionately make America work and run and give you, dear reader, the comfortable lifestyle to which you have become all too accustomed. And now that these people need a lot of help to get through this natural catastrophe, it sure appears that they are being abandoned by the same federal government that is simultaneously giving away unlimited taxpayer dollars right and left to border-jumping illegal migrants and to the porous demi-government in Ukraine.
I am hearing mostly consistent reports of aid efforts from acquaintences, friends, and family in Asheville and eastern Tennessee (some of their own photos are below; one of my family members from there is now in a hotel in South Carolina). Last week a friend of mine from Harrisburg loaded up his work van with bottled water and food and drove seven hours to the literal end of the paved road in eastern Tennessee, where he followed signs to a Baptist church. There in the church parking lot he was met with tears of fear and appreciation, and many needy hands as entire families sought shelter there with their sole remaining belongings: Their clothing on their bodies. (Some of his own photos of this are below).
Radio personality Glenn Beck reported his unbelievably negative experience with a sole FEMA crew instructive example of No White Privilege To Be Found Here.
Plenty of political fallout has resulted from apparent Biden-Harris government failure, or even willful blocking of aid efforts. While checking his email at a FEMA post, a partisan leftist Democrat in my family there said this is all politically generated misinformation, but I don’t know if I can accept that. The damning reports and real-time online videos are overwhelming and seem irrefutable, while politically partisan mainstream media outlets appear locked into a defend-Kamala Harris-at-all-costs posture, instead of having their crews on the ground recording what the citizens journalists are capturing.
Tons of on-the-ground reports are pouring out of the region, showing a complete lack of federal interest in helping, and a complicated mix of local territorialism, miscommunication, petty power flexing, and even theft of supplies. And even when the Biden-Harris Administration does speak publicly, they are actually saying sorry, we have no money for your disaster relief.
Because Joe Biden and Kamala Harris ALREADY GAVE AWAY all the unsustainable taxpayer money to illegals and the endless war in Ukraine.
Folks, not only was there never any such thing as White privilege, but when there was an opportunity to demonstrate that American Whites get treated at least equally with everyone else, both American citizen of color and illegal border jumper alike, the point is made by our current federal government that American White people come last, if they get any help at all.
