Posts Tagged → traditional
Hanuka’s meaning for America
Tonight is the last night of Hanuka, and it is important to say that this holiday is still important for America, even if 99% of Americans don’t observe it, don’t know what the Menorah stands for. Those who do not want to be consigned to the dustbin of history can learn lessons from history, apply those lessons, and win. Hanuka presents modern freedom-loving Americans with a history lesson in never giving up, sticking to your principles, and always pursuing freedom, no matter what it takes to persevere.
Often called the “festival of the lights” in an effort to make it sound all cheery n’ stuff, Hanuka is in fact a commemmoration of a long, hard-fought, quite bloody civil war military campaign in Israel 2,400 years ago. That conflict restored Jewish control over Jerusalem and with it, the traditional (Biblical) service in the Great Temple there.
Christians take note of two things: Without the Jews winning the war, there would have been no Jesus/ Yeshua 400 years later, and note also that Christmas, which is America’s national holiday, is marked on the 25th of December. Hanuka begins on the 25th day of Kislev, the Hebrew calendar’s winter month. Jesus was a Jew, the Apostles were all Jews, most of the early Christians were Jews, and when it came time to create a new holiday for Christians, Christmas was set on the same date as Hanuka. There are no coincidences here.
Another important thing to take note of here: While the war ending in the “miraculous” discovery of a bottle of kosher olive oil hidden away in the Great Temple is often described as Jew vs Greek, it was also very much Traditional/ Orthodox Jew vs Liberal Jew, allied with the Greeks. In other words, a bloody tension has always existed between the liberal Jews and the Orthodox Jews, and it is only suspended when both groups are being chased down the same street together by mindless mobs who hate all Jews.
During the civil war that Hanuka marks, the blood of all combatants flowed abundantly, as this was no simple “spiritual battle” as the holiday is often described. Hanuka was not won by those who engaged solely in “spiritual” type behavior, like praying really really hard. Mean “X” tweets were not met with spicy retorts, and the loser then shut up and hid in shame.
Nope, a lot of blood flowed, as a result of years of close quarters combat with edged weapons. The Greeks and the liberal Jews lost more blood, and more lives, than the traditional/ orthodox “Maccabee” Jews, who ended up taking back what had been taken from them, by force: Jerusalem (another related history lesson: Judaism is Zionism, which is the 3,500-year-old religious movement to keep Jews living in Zion/ Israel/ Judea. The Maccabees were Zionists).
Key word here being “force.” The fighting was not mere words contained within the walls of the Oxford Union Debate Club, or other academic classrooms. It was borne out in hand-to-hand physical contest, which the most determined will usually win.
Hanuka’s lesson for freedom-loving Americans today, right now, is (and somehow I just know that you have heard this phrase somewhere before in recent times)… Fight! Fight! Fight!
Be determined, strong, and of brave spirit, because President Trump is not going to be in office forever.
Menorah = Freedom everywhere, including in America
Back hair, chest hair, belly hair…baby, I got it all and more
Confession time: I have a hell of a collection of back hair, belly hair, chest hair, even butt hair and ear hair. Fo’ real.
I know, I know, a man of my age does not age well, as “things” begin to grow from every orifice and heretofore unknown location, but so why then do we have to write about it…sorry, my apologies. There is an honest purpose here.
You, the lone, long-suffering sole reader of this blog, are probably already thinking to yourself “Good Lord, this guy has finally gone off the deep end with this TMI shock jock shtick. ” And were we actually talking about real body hair from my own voluptuous, idyllic form, you would be correct. However, as racy or as disgusting as this may sound, the fact is that I do have a pretty cool record-setting collection of all the aforementioned clumps of hair, but they are not from my own body.
Again and now even more so, whoever is left reading here at this point is gagging, and wondering what happened to the erudite intellectual who used to occupy this lonely outpost of fascination. Well, the bad news is I yet remain under the mal-influence of one Bill Heavey, the also-lonely humor writer of the once-wonderful magazine known as Field & Stream, now digitally un-dead and unknown to Americans under the age of sixty.
The good news is that I am not talking about human hair here, but rather the hair, or fur, of the many deer I have shot arrows at over the past five decades. This is true. I am not lying.
See, I fancied myself an archer at a young age, and so I got somewhere (probably at the kind of now-gone country auction that elderly collectors dream about and salivate over) a cheap recurve bow and a motley assortment of mis-matched arrows and dull broadheads, and set out to bag a deer.
Yes, I practiced, for years, as only the uninitiated and un-groomed and un-mentored can practice. Which meant that on Tuesdays and Fridays my archery “form” aligned well enough that I could hit the broad side of a barn, which were plenty, large, bright red, and quite broad where I grew up. And on all other days of the week my arrows sailed off into the wild blue yonder, to sit hidden in the fallow weeds and maybe puncture a neighbor’s tractor tire the following spring. Or maybe eventually catch my eye and be re-purposed as an arrow, more defunct stick than game-getter at that late point, but available and at-hand, and so useful nonetheless.
As a young man, I shot at deer from the ground and from neighbor’s hillbilly blinds, AKA rickety wooden death traps in today’s more refined hunting circles. My woodcraft was then and remains now unbeatable, and I am not lying or exaggerating when I tell you that I could stalk within feet of a dumbfounded deer, and let fly. Only to watch my arrow clip hair from the aforementioned areas and parts of the deer’s external anatomy, time and time again.
Bill Heavey would tell you, had he been as cool as me as a kid himself, that the deer died of laughter from the ridiculousness of the experience. But no, my deer did not die of anything. Not from shock, not from surprise, not from overwhelming mockery of the incompetent human mere feet away, and not an arrow in the heart. No, my deer stood stock still, with grass or acorns or corn hanging out of their slack jaw, staring at me in disbelief. Some even provided me with two shots.
I could have died from the shame of it all.
This routine of Bad-Indian-Sucky-Bow went on for decades, even as I graduated to used but working Fred Bear Kodiak recurves and then to custom “stick” bows. My prize and pride is a beautiful reflex-deflex longbow made by none other than Mike Fedora, the dean of modern traditional archery in America. Back in 2000, Jack Keith and I traveled from Harrisburg to the Eastern Traditional Archery Rendezvous, then at Denton Hill in Potter County (home of many more bears than people), where we connected with Jack’s dear friend John Harding, and where I was introduced to Mike Fedora.
At ETAR, Fedora traced my bow-holding hand, did some phrenology-like measurements of my various body parts, and pronounced that the bow of my dreams would be ready within a few months. And no sh*t, Mike Fedora did produce a beautiful bow that was like an extension of my soul. I could then and still can shoot that thing into bullseyes all day long. At archery targets, me and that custom bow are deadly.
At deer, I still drop the ball. No can hit. Must be nerves, which are steely when I am hunting with a rifle. And so my arrows continue to clip bits of hair from all over deer bodies all over Upstate New York and Upstate Pennsylvania.
I am telling you, my collection of these bits and clumps of hair is large and legendary. If nothing else, no human being alive has missed so many deer at so short a distance for so long as I have. A living, walking, malfunctioning Guiness Book of World Records I may be in this regard, around these parts it is nothing to brag about. Rather, I inspire pity from even little kids dressed in camo who have already arrowed several Pope & Young bucks by the age of seven.
In the not too distant past, someone with my pathetic archery hunting skill would have perished from starvation long before amassing even the beginning of such a fine and rare collection.
And yet, I have discovered hope, salvation for my pathetic-ness and hopeless skill-less-ness. As much as I hate to admit it, I, a traditional archery snob who mocked bows with “training wheels” (compound bows) and belittled “bow-guns” (crossbows) as un-sporting arms that no worthy deer would allow itself to be taken by, I have finally fallen to the siren song of the modern crossbow. Or, to be honest, the cross-gun that shoots a short arrow like some kind of James Bond super-weapon.
Despairing of my ineffectiveness at archery hunting, and desiring to finally carve some notches in something to prove my prowess as a traditional hunter before I expire, I went and bought a Ravin R10X crossbow. It came highly recommended by contractor Ken Pick of Renovo, PA, whose son aced a very nice mountain ten point with one two weeks ago at the distance of 87 yards.
I can barely hit a deer with a modern centerfire rifle at 87 yards, so when I saw the photos of the young chap and his buck and his James Bond cross-bow-gun, I decided if I could not beat them, I had to join them. And join them I did, by buying said Ravin R10X at Baker’s Archery in Halifax, PA. Vindication and verification and all related cations came at me real fast as soon as I took that scary-ass contraption afield.
This is no lie and no exaggeration: Ten minutes after I took a little mosey to a spot where I had not hunted before, but where I thought deer had to be (this is the woodcrafty Josh), I had whacked an anterlessless deer. I had only put the scope reticle on the spot where I thought the arrow would hit the deer, and before I even pulled the trigger a loud THWACK resounded in the woods.
The deer ran twenty yards and died of fright, with a gigantic hole coursing through its body where I must have aimed but do not remember doing so, due to my own shock at having actually killed something with a stick and a string.
Life is full of surprises. Don’t deprive yourself of these dangerous-as-hell you’ll-shoot-yer-eye-out-kid bow-gun contraptions. Dude, they are cool and totally worth it.
Take my experienced word for it.
The trophy of my dreams: A yearling button buck taken with a James Bond super weapon on a ground stalk
A young man who was mentored in traditional archery, with good form, at ETAR 2020 at Ski Sawmill
People’s trail cameras are literally everywhere. This was sent to me as I was preparing to ask this kind young man to help me drag the deer fifty feet to the gravel road
No joke about it, my friend and archery and life mentor, Jack Keith, was the real deal in everything, and I miss him every day.
People who subsist on archery can’t afford to write silly essays about sucking at archery
Traditional archery legend Fred Asbell showing how to correctly hold the bow while hunting. Fred took all kinds of animals all around the world with traditional archery tackle
A young man with even better archery form at ETAR 2022
Pickled eggs
Pickled eggs are a regional treat unappreciated by many otherwise redeemable connoisseurs from the flatlands. My wife and I relish them, our kids turn up their noses, and many other people ask “What?”
So here we go:
Using a gallon-size empty large glass pickle jar, I put in a can of sliced beets (plain, unsalted, if it can be found) with the red juice, 2-4 sliced onions of any color, thinly sliced rounds from 2-3 large carrots, and a dozen hard boiled, peeled eggs. Pickling solution is made to taste, usually a teaspoon of white sugar and a teaspoon of salt dissolved in a few ounces of warm water, dill, basil, and garlic to taste, about 8-12 ounces of apple vinegar, 1-2 ounces red wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar, and top it off with warm water. Turn the sealed jar upside down and shake it for a minute.
Set it out on the kitchen counter for a few hours, and then refrigerate (or in the winter, put it in your cold mud room or outside enclosed porch, good natural refrigerators).
After a couple days, everything in that jar is begging to be eaten. After a week, it is a delicacy. We eat the eggs whole with the vegetables on the side, or I slice them up into salads that Viv and I eat for lunch.
Three cheers for Central Pennsylvania’s traditional foods!