The first principle, again

I suspect that most who read this have heard all about Wednesday's terror attack in London. There are a couple of things which you may not have seen or read about the attack though, particularly if you follow only the major U.S. press.

A woman holds a placard at a vigil in Trafalgar Square on Thursday. Photograph: Hannah Mckay/Reuters

Think about it. You know, or should know, what terrorists do to Muslim women who stand against them. Can you imagine standing in her shoes? Can you? You know that every terrorist now has this image on his or her cell phone. You know it. If this is not a portrait of courage then such a portrait does not exist.

After Wednesday's vigil in Trafalgar Square, Omer El-Hamdoon, deputy secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said:

“It’s good to see that many people have come out today. This is an important message that Londoners need to display which is that terrorism will not divide us and it is not going to stop us and scare us. For any person to attack innocent people is outrageous and despicable and we condemn it unreservedly.”

A peace vigil will be held today in Birmingham to promote unity, after the city’s most prominent mosque issued a statement condemning the Westminster terror attack as “barbaric and heartless."

The city centre vigil has been organised by the Stand Up To Racism group and MEND (Muslim Engagement and Development) and will begin at 5 p.m. in High Street.

Mosque chairman Muhammad Afzal said of Wednesday’s atrocity in London:

“Nothing justifies taking lives of innocent people. Those responsible must be brought to justice."

Urging calm within all communities and offering condolences to those bereaved by the attack, he added:

“The Islamic faith does not allow anyone to take the life of others. No religion justifies the indiscriminate killing of individuals in such a barbaric and heartless way, and such acts only serve to differentiate between the misguided and the just.”

I would not be a bit surprised to receive adverse comments for posting this. Some will say, "those are just words." That's fine. I'll just note that people, including myself, have been asking for years where the peaceful Muslim voices are. And I'll just refer you to the image above. There are many others.

Anyway, America, I'm going to keep quoting the following and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

This is the first principle of America. In truth, it's the first principle of civilization.

It means that all men are equally human. None are more human, none are less human. None are better, none are worse. We are all fundamentally human, and our rights come to us from our creator, not from other men. Whether you regard your creator as God or as Nature makes no difference. God and Nature are self-evidently very much greater than humans, therefore the rights we are endowed with cannot be given or taken by men.

Our equality and rights come at a cost, and that cost is responsibility. Only human beings can have natural rights, and only human beings can exercise responsibility.

Highly esteemed people are not more human with more unalienable rights. Lowly esteemed people are not less human with fewer unalienable rights. People who are on the other side of an argument are not less human with fewer rights, just as those on the same side are not more human with more rights.

As a case in point, I am a gun guy. My right to keep and bear arms within the framework of American society is protected by the Second Amendment to the Constitution and cannot be infringed by the state. There are people who are anti-gun. Their right to keep and bear arms is also protected. Just as importantly, their right to be anti-gun, to speak out against guns, to peacefully gather in protest about guns, and to petition the state regarding their beliefs and positions about guns -- these things are protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. As are my rights to do the same in support of guns.

Now as a gun guy, I have the same natural right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness as the anti-gun folks. I also have a self-evident right to defend and protect my Life and Liberty and pursuit of Happiness, and this includes the right to use deadly force, with or without a gun, to do so. The anti-gun folks have the same rights, and these rights are recognized in state and federal law all across the land.

My responsibility is to never threaten, abridge or take the unalienable rights of another human who is not directly trying to take my Life or my Liberty or destroy my ability to peacefully pursue Happiness. My responsibility is to treat those who differ with me as I would have them treat me -- as an equal human being whose unalienable rights may not be infringed.

Here is where dishonesty comes in. As soon as an anti-gun person lies, cheats or steals to prevail in the argument, they violate the First Principle by treating me not as an equal human being, but as an object to be used and manipulated. This standard applies to me also.

The same is true for name calling. If I call anti-gun people "bleeding heart libtards" -- even if I only think of them in that fashion and never say the words -- then I am violating the First Principle. Flip the coin and the obverse is identical.

Our nation is in mortal peril, and it's not because the government is doing bad things or because legislative bodies at all levels are corrupt or because the press has become nothing more than the propaganda arm of a certain ideology. These things are only symptoms. They are not the disease.

The disease is one of smashed principles. Most of the people who live in this country -- this America where the First Principle is that all men are created equal -- have become entirely too accustomed to thinking of and treating others as a means to an end, as objects to be ridiculed, called names, lied to, cheated, stolen from. This includes me. I'm no more or less human than any other American, and I live in the same environment with the same exposure to the ongoing rot of moral and ethical degeneration.

Our rights will not -- cannot -- save us. In the land of the Sovereign Citizen, only our responsibility can save us.

What a happy thing!

This blogging thing is enjoyable and therapeutic. Occasionally, though, it's downright amazing.

So there I was, watching cows and calves...

I was sitting in my pickup yesterday afternoon. My pickup was parked out in the pasture on the southwest slope of a little rise. Here's the place...

I was watching a cow, trying to decide if she was getting ready to have a baby or not. When cows enter the first stage of parturition (birth process, from the Latin parturire, to desire to bring forth) they often isolate themselves from the herd and begin to show signs of nervousness or agitation. This cow was off by herself, a good half-mile from the rest of the cows and over a hill, out of sight of the herd. She wasn't acting a bit nervous or agitated though and was simply cropping new grass with obvious relish. Furthermore, she hadn't yet "made bag," that is, she didn't show a lot of udder development.

Be that as it may, she was off by herself, and I've seen cows calve without making obvious bag and without isolating, so you never know. I was curious. I enjoy learning about cattle by watching what they actually do, which is always just a bit different than the books and experts say. Those differences, and seeing new things, or old things done a different way I suppose, bring me a lot of joy and enjoyment.

So. I was watching the cow through my trusty Shopko-sourced binoculars. I was getting bored and thinking about packing it in. The cow just wasn't doing anything -- other than being isolated -- that made me think she would calve in the next few hours.

Are you feeling the suspense yet?

My phone dinged, telling me of the arrival of a new email. I dug it out of my shirt pocket and did the swipey-tappey thing and brought up my email. I had a message from Blogger, telling me of a newly published comment. That happens all the time.

But this was different. Blogger said that the commenter was Chris Parry.

I think that my jaw actually dropped. I know I shook my head several times and refocused on the text. It still said Chris Parry. My heart started to pound a bit and a big grin erupted beneath my nose.

You might be wondering why a simple name elicited such a reaction.

Well, it's like this, see.

I've never had an Admiral stop by the blog before. And not just any Admiral, but Rear Admiral, CBE, Royal Navy (Retired). And not just any retired RN Rear Admiral. Chris Parry was Mentioned in Despatches for his actions as Observer in a Westland Wessex helicopter "Humphrey" assigned to HMS Antrim during the Falklands War. In addition to being part of the crew that inserted and then rescued SAS Troopers (and aircrew) from Fortuna Glacier on South Georgia, Chris Parry literally fired the first British shots of the war when he salvoed depth charges on the Argentine submarine Santa Fe (S-21, formerly USS Catfish, SS-339), just off Grytviken, South Georgia on April 25, 1982.

Somehow, some way, thanks to the wonders of modern communication technology (not, in fact, invented by algore), Chris Parry found my blog post from February 3. And commented!

Why is this such a big deal?

Well, several things, really, all mixed together in an interesting mishmash. For one thing, I've read his book about his 1982 experiences, 'Down South, A Falklands War Diary.' It's a fantastic book, and if you've any interest in the Falklands War I urge you to give it a read.

Also, I was a USN helo bubba in 1982. The Falklands was a huge topic of discussion and speculation. Most of us were very impressed with the press accounts we read of the RN helo crews. As it turned out, the press didn't even scratch the surface.

Much later, when old BBC videos became available on the "Tube 'O You," I had the opportunity to watch the series 'Sailor,' which documents the 1976 voyage of HMS Ark Royal. You can find the series here. As I watched episode six, I noted the presence of a young Sub-Lieutenant named Parry. Could it be? It was.

So there's a bit of time travel there. I find it fascinating to be able to get a glimpse of a young man who in six years time will be tested in battle, then go on to a very successful and influential career and retire as a Rear Admiral.

And not just any Rear Admiral. One who receives invitations to lecture at the US Naval War College and other prestigious venues.



Finally, there's the whole scale and distance thing. I was sitting in my pickup in the middle of the Nebraska shortgrass prairie at 5 p.m. Somewhere in England, where the time was 1 a.m. of the next morning, a retired Rear Admiral clicked "post" and sent me a message. Which I received pretty much instantly. How cool is that?

What does it all mean, this brief communication between people who are roughly the same age, who have had a few similar experiences, but who have never met? I have no idea really.

But I can tell you one thing for sure. I'll never wash my blog for as long as I live!

Renewal and expiration

Quite a day so far and it looks like busyness will persist so only a brief post today.

It's now officially spring, and as we all know spring is a time of renewal in the annual cycle of life. In spring new seeds germinate, trees and grasses and forbs and shrubs break dormancy and begin to leaf out, birds mate and nest, mammals have babies, some mammals and most reptiles and amphibians emerge from hibernation. Spring is a new beginning. Winter is left behind and the world is bright and new and full of promise and possibility.

But, as I've written before, not every seed germinates, not every egg hatches, not every calf makes it. And in the fullness of time, even those seeds and eggs and babies that do make it come to the end of their mortal road.

This morning I had a dead cow. She was about 2-3 weeks from calving. She appears to have died of bloat. It's one of the potential problems of having a four-chambered stomach where cellulose is fermented by bacteria. Sometimes, for various reasons, fermentation gasses can build up in such a way that the pressure cannot be relieved, or relieved quickly enough. It can be fatal.

We seldom have bloat problems, but this cow sure did. She was fine at sunset, but dead at sunrise. Judging by the evidence she died only a short time before sunrise.

These things happen. It's a blow; you don't want to lose animals for any reason, but they're living beings and their continued existence is predicated on many more things than those you can control.

Some of the sting of loss was eased by the birth of two new healthy calves, a bull and a heifer.

The heifer was quiet and easy to tag and vaccinate. Her mama was quiet too -- until I whipped out my phone to take the pictures that go with herd records. Once she saw the phone she started shaking her head and pawing the ground. I'm anthropomorphizing there of course. More likely she was willing to allow my close proximity for a limited time, and when I crossed that time threshold I began to look like a threat to her baby. No harm, no foul.

The little bull calf was quiet too, and so was his mama. He took the tagging and vaccination like a trooper, and mama was interested but not agitated. When I went to band him, though, the problems began. First of all, he became very squirmy. Then he sucked his gonads up into his belly and wouldn't let 'em down. And finally, when I got him under control with his testiculos in the right place at the right time, the emasculating band broke. As did the second band. And the third!

So I left him be, returned to the shop for a new bag of bands, then went and caught him again. This time it went smoothly, and he was quiet about it. I could just imagine him thinking, "get it over with, please!"

I drove back by the first cow and calf and noticed a coyote slinking in the treeline. I'd seen him earlier and he'd run away. This time though he was acting like he was stalking the calf. He ran off toward the treeline, but turned around and began slinking beck toward the cow and her baby. Might have had something to do with her agitation.

I didn't have a rifle with me, but I did, as always, have my Sig P229C on my belt.

The coyote paused and looked right at me as I carefully aimed. He was facing me square on and slightly crouched. I guessed it was a 50 yard shot and put the tritium dot of the front sight right on his nose. He began to turn just as I fired and I heard the solid thump of a body hit. He spun and took a couple of bounds, then flopped over on his side just on the other side of the trees.

The 180 grain Federal HST took him just inside the left shoulder joint and did not exit.

I had to look pretty hard to find the wound, and there was almost no blood.

I don't particularly like to shoot coyotes, but when they trip my threat-o-meter I don't mind at all.

It's all part of the big round adventure of life.

Walk on the wild side

It was a gorgeous first day of spring in this part of the world. Warm and with only a light breeze. Meadowlarks singing, calves scampering around, thirteen-lined ground squirrels out of hibernation, grasses greening up, trees budding -- the works. In the afternoon clouds were building in the west with a weather-guesser's promise of a chance of rain.

Having a slow leak in the left front tire of my pickup, I dropped it off at the tire shop for repair. With time on my hands and no wheels I decided to give the LPC's a bit of an excursion.

I thought I'd stroll a couple of miles but by the time all was said and done I'd gone seven. It was just too beautiful to stop sooner.

Come on along... :)



















One downside. At the six-mile mark I started to get hot-spots on the balls of my foots. Wearing the wrong socks you see. By the time I finished I had bilateral big blisters.

Well, stuff happens. What doesn't kill me toughens my feet.

But wait, there's more!

While I was off hiking a calf was born. Sore feet or not, she needed to be tagged. And so she was.

As the sun was fading from the day another cow took herself off to have a baby. Which she had successfully, though it got hip-locked in the pelvis and needed just a bit of manual adjustment to become fully independent.

And now I'm off to bed.

For the fun, for the challenge, for the responsibility

I've been gestating the idea of a local shooting facility for several years, and the idea is finally starting to take shape.

Not everyone has access to land and a place to shoot. I grew up with both and I tend to take my good fortune for granted.

In my mind it would be nice to have a place where people could go to shoot at short or long ranges, shoot pistols, rifles and shotguns, to do serious marksmanship training or to simply plink at cans and paper targets. A place for enjoying guns and the shooting sports, a place to teach, to learn, to gain skills, to improve skills.

Perhaps most importantly, a place to learn about, think about, talk about and practice the moral and ethical responsibility that comes with our Constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

I don't want to simply build a public range. Nor do I want to simply give people access to a place to shoot. There are too many problems with those approaches.

What makes sense to me is the idea of forming a group -- a community if you will -- of people interested in having shooting fun, but also willing to take up the challenge of learning, teaching, growing skills, gaining proficiency, and most of all, of vigorously embracing the responsibility that goes hand in hand with our Constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

Punching paper and plinking cans is all well and good, but there are other shooting sports as well. One that really intrigues me is the two-gun action challenge match. Ian and Karl explain it better than I can.



And Karl does a very fine job here bursting the "Tactical Timmy" bubble. As he said in the previous video, the gear is cool and fun to wear and try out and learn about. But the gear isn't the point.



Here is a series of videos I put together to demonstrate a mock-up stage of a two-gun ACM. Now here are some things I already know. I'm not a professional internet video producer. I'm not a "tacticool operator." I'm old and fat. Nevertheless...

First of all, gear. Two-gun means rifle and pistol. You don't have to use an AR and a black pistol. It can be a single-shot .22 rifle and a gate-loading single action revolver.



Overview.



Very first run-through. Warts and all.



Second full run-through. Some improvement, still an old fat guy though. Sorry about the wind noise; it's Nebraska in March.



The next three are pistol only. Still old and fat, still windy.







So. If you're from around these parts and are interested in putting something like this together, respond in comments (I know, it's tricky with Blogger), respond in koobecaf (read that backwards) comments, call or text me, or look me up. I'll set a date and time for an initial meeting to kick the idea around. I'm thinking a weekday evening in the library meeting room.

Thanks for reading and watching. Hope to hear from you.

Hogs at the slop in paradise

If you've ever slopped hogs you've seen a genuine feeding frenzy. It starts quietly, with all the pigs getting their snouts in the trough. As they gobble, though, they start swapping positions. Soon they're in a frenzy of shoving each other aside while inhaling as much food as they can.

It always looks as if they think their fellow hogs are getting the better deal, and they want that deal, dammit! That's anthropomorphizing though, attributing human thinking to animal behavior.

It's more likely that it's simple instinctive competition, a drive to get the most of a limited food supply. In some sense that meets the criteria for survival of the fittest, with all that that concept entails.

Humans do evidence similar behavior and it's impossible to disprove the notion that it comes from our animalistic past. We developed reason long before we developed civilization and cooperative behavior, and those survival rules of "me first at all cost" were business as usual for at least hundreds of thousands of years.

In today's modern first-world society such animal behavior is held in check by only the thinnest veneer of civilization. And much of our so-called civilized behavior is simply a more sophisticated form of getting more than our neighbors.

A couple of days ago I talked about health care costs. I believe that most people living in this country today are perfectly fine with being swindled so long as they imagine that they are getting stuff for free and -- most especially -- as long as they think they're getting somebody else's stuff for free. I'm pretty sure that describes the very superficial thought process involved in the American medical transaction.

I also think that my proposition is worth thinking about. Give it a five minute think and discipline yourself to do so without any yabbuts. What could it hurt?

And now that you've endured the lecture...

##########

Two calves born yesterday, both in the early evening.

Now yesterday was a long, hard slog. I did a lot of physical labor and amassed about 6 miles of walking during the process of laboring. More on that in the not too distant future. Anyway...

By the time early evening came around I was on my chinstrap, very tired and very sore. The first cow to calve had a big heifer calf which was already up and nursing. I rather wanted to get her tagged, mostly because I prefer to get jobs done rather than letting them wait until later.

But mama had other ideas. She let me know that I wasn't going to get close to her calf. Well, good enough. The calf was still damp and was probably halving her first nurse, so the smart thing was to leave them alone and tag the calf in the morning.

The other cow I must confess had a calf about the same time and I completely missed the event. Had no inkling.

Anyway, when next morning rolled around I went out to tag the new calf with the owly mama and to check the rest of the cows.

As I approached owly mom, she charged over to a calf on the ground and defiantly stood guard, keeping a close eye on me and shaking her head menacingly.

Now the interesting thing was that the calf she was guarding wasn't hers, it belonged to a different cow and was three days old.

Owly mama's calf was about 200 yards to the north. I carefully and slowly drove around to the big heifer calf which was laid up in some tall grass, snoozing off a heavy breakfast. Owly mama gave me the stink-eye the whole time while bravely standing guard over what she almost certainly believed to be her calf.

I got out and snapped an ear tag into the big heifer, which immediately launched her into rodeo mode, bawling loudly and kicking up a fuss.

I was watching owly mama with one eye, and as soon as she heard the bawling she did a double take, then came on the run. It was quite amusing, that double take. I could almost see the "WTF?" balloon form above her head.

While this antic was amusing, she was still coming hell bent for leather. I had a devil of a time subduing the calf long enough to vaccinate her. But I did, and I did so in plenty of time to avoid being turned into paste.

Mama closely inspected her baby, gave me a serious glare, then the pair trotted off to quieter pastures.

Just another morning in paradise.

What's that? The other calf?

That one was a heifer too, and her mama was a lot more understanding.

Like I said. Paradise.

Four-Leaf Clover

Just a brief post today I'm afraid. It's just a teensy bit busy out today.

Yesterday was, of course, St. Patrick's Day. Today is the day of the Irish-American headache.

I do not have a headache for it's been some years since I took any form of ethanol into my system via my drinking apparatus. Which pretty much means, I believe, that while almost everyone is Irish on March 17, I am not. Don't qualify you see.

But I do appreciate the Irish and my Irish forbears, at least a couple of whom avoided the gallows long enough to procreate, else I'd not be here.

Yesterday we had three calves on the ranch, and filled with the spirit of Erin Go Braugh! (Ireland Forever or something like that) I decided to give the calves good Mick names. So here we have:

Donal

Fergus

Colleen

But wait, there's more!

Sometime after sunset another calf was born. I'm certain enough that she was born before midnight, so she makes the fourth leaf of the charmed four-leaf clover. Or something like that.

Sinead

Interestingly, a couple of days ago we had calf 715 born on the 15th of the month, and yesterday we had 717 born on the 17th. What are the odds?

Hope you all have a fine day. Don't worry, the headache will fade. :)

And btw, sometimes blogger refuses to get the caption fonts right. Just refuses. Bloody Mick barstid! Grrr!

Comments and calves

I deleted a comment the other day. It's impossible to know what goes on in the mind of any commentator. Sometimes it seems we end up on different wavelengths. When that happens it's always at least partly my fault for not being more clear. The one I took down was pretty unpleasant. Of course it hurt my feelings and made me mad, but once I got over that I couldn't help but wonder. Was it an attempt to be funny? To be shocking? Was it made in rage, in spite? Was it intended to hurt? Or was it something else?

You just don't know. Can't know really. It's worth thinking about, worth examining the assumptions I made and seeing whether they hold up to reason. None of them do, really, they're nothing more than speculation. The best course seemed to be to delete the comment. If the commentator wants to add anything, they know how to do it.

##########

Night before last the first one of the new-new cows (as opposed to not-so-new-new cows, if you follow me) calved. I noticed her in stage two labor just as the sun was going down. She's a three year-old cow, so this would be only her second calf.

The younger the cow, the more likely she is to have calving difficulty. A second-calver is much less likely to have problems than a first-calver (heifer). I wasn't really worried; the cow was in excellent health and she's got all the attributes of a good and successful range cow. I left her to her business and decided to return in about an hour. This would give her time for a normal delivery (and take away the stress of my presence) and also leave plenty of time for me to intervene if needed and before intervention might become an emergent imperative.

When I returned the sun had gone and left only the faintest glimmer in the west. It was nearly fully dark, and out in the country, away from streetlights and with the moon yet to rise, that's pretty dark. Especially when searching for a nearly-completely black cow having a black calf.

It's not that hard though. I find it best to drive with lights off, using my natural ability to see at night. Once a person's eyes are night adapted, with pupils dilated to gather as much ambient light as possible, his or her night vision is actually quite keen. Of course it helps to know the pasture, to have a sharp mental picture of the lay of the land and have a very good idea of where not to drive.

Entering the paddock where I'd left the cow I set my course so that the cow's last location would be betwixt me and the faint, fading glow in the west. Sure enough, I soon saw a slightly dark lump in about the right place. As I drew closer the lump resolved into a big lump and a small lump.

Success!

The calf was fine, mama was taking good care of it, and my work -- for the night anyway -- was done.

The next morning I tagged, vaccinated and banded him.

He got a little bit confused for a moment, but it was after all the first time he'd experienced the world -- including light...

And colorful stuff to see!

Later on I checked on little Nip and his mom. He's going kind of slow yet but seems to be gaining strength and mobility. His mom has become VERY protective. Which could be a problem at some point, but isn't a problem just now.

In the arena

We've all read this, right? All been stirred by the soaring rhetoric?

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

We know this guy, we know his story. Born a sickly child, Teddy Roosevelt determined to make himself physically fit by embracing a vigorously physical lifestyle, and to make himself mentally fit by embracing a vigorously curious and learning lifestyle. This dude went places. He was a cowboy and a boxer and a big game hunter. He wrote books and became the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, then joined the Rough Riders and charged up Kettle Hill. He fell short of becoming Mayor of New York City, but did become Governor of the Empire State. He became Vice President of the United States, then President at age 42 following the assassination of President McKinley in 1901.

Surely a man in full.

##########

I stopped by our local food store yesterday at about noon. I'd just finished tagging a calf and wanted to make a couple of quick purchases for to make a recipe I'd been thinking about.

Now noon is the wrong time to go to our food store if you want to get in and get out. A lot of folks eat lunch there, and even more have the same idea I had, only they're slaves to a time clock and are on their lunch hour. Me? I arrived at noon entirely by coincidence.

Be that as it may, there was no one in the checkout line when I approached. Hooray!

But wait a minute. There was a young woman approaching checkout, pushing a cart filled with groceries, a young boy, and an infant. Firetruck!

All I had to do was take a few quick steps. I could beat the woman easily. Besides, I had five items and was in a hurry to go do important stuff. It wouldn't hurt her to spend an extra minute or two behind me in line. It's not like she wasn't gonna be there for a while anyway, right?

It wouldn't have been a crime or really even rude.

But I waved her ahead. Sigh. Sucker.

"You've got your hands full," I remarked with a smile.

On closer examination I wasn't exactly thrilled by the woman's appearance. She was dressed sloppily and had metal studs sticking out of her face. She was also clutching a couple of checks (presumably to cash) and an EBT card.

Shit. One of those.

As it turned out, she did want to cash a couple of checks. Which takes extra time. And her EBT card had a balance of only $1.75. Which I couldn't help but overhear. To add injury to insult, she had selected the wrong milk, and wanted to dash back to make the switch. Firetruck!

Well, I was committed. I'd had my chance to beat her to the finish line.

As she went for the milk I took a closer look at the kids. Clean and well dressed. The cart was filled with groceries. No cigarettes. No lottery tickets. No booze or pop or "you don't really need that" items.

The little boy was munching on what looked like a rice krispy treat. A homemade one if I'm any judge of such things. And I am. The infant had bright eyes and a fat face and was examining the world with obvious curiosity.

The little boy caught my eye and said something I didn't quite catch. I smiled through my impatience and asked, "What's that?"

"Thank you for letting us go first," he said.

Yeah. That's what he said.

As I drove away I thought of TR and his charge up Kettle Hill. And I thought about the young woman with clean, well fed and well behaved kids, with $1.75 on her EBT card, and with checks to cash.

She had bolts in her face and was dressed like a hobo.

I'm old and fat, with shit on my boots and amniotic fluid on my hands and I'm dressed like a hobo.

So who's the man in the arena here?

##########

What's that? The recipe? YGTBSM!

On the other hand...

I was reading Jackspeak the other evening. It's a guide to Brit Naval slang and other delightful things, written by a fellow named Rick Jolly. He's a cat worth reading and reading about, imo.

Anyway, he had a couple of entries that piqued my gustatory curiosity. One was for "grenades" and the other was for "jockanese cackleberries."

Both of which, in The Andrew, or the Grey Funnel Line, mean Scotch eggs. Apparently Scotch eggs are a staple food in the RN.

To the best of my recollection I've only ever had Scotch eggs one time. They were prepared by my very German-Russian grandma. As I recall, they were delicious. So I thought, what the hell, it's almost St. Patrick's Day, might as well give Scotch eggs a try.

A quick perusal of online recipes confirmed my suspicion that they're easy to make. So I did so.

You will need:

10 eggs
1.25 pounds of bulk breakfast sausage
4 cups of bread crumbs
Oil for deep frying

Hard boil and peel six eggs, then chill

Whisk four eggs in a bowl, and place bread crumbs in another bowl. This is for coating.

When chilled, lightly dust the eggs in flour (optional)
Wrap each egg in one-sixth of the sausage

Roll the sausage covered egg in bread crumbs, dip in egg to cover, then re-roll in bread crumbs

Refrigerate to firm them up for frying

Heat oil to 375 degrees 
Deep fry the eggs two at a time for 10 minutes

Drain on paper towels

When ready to serve, warm the Scotch eggs in a 350 degree oven for 10 minutes
Serve with fresh chips and mustard

Mmmmmm!