Pictures of a near past...

   Photos are history, and we do spend a lot of time taking them and sharing them and then suddenly forgetting about them...
    But they do capture a moment, when you were young and beautiful, and your smile had real teeth. Do they capture your joy, your love, your quietness in the dark?  Maybe not, but then you are quick to change as the time moves right along.
   As I do repetitious exercise my mind is moving much faster than any of my muscles and I can go from thought to thought faster than the speed of light. Honest, I have measured it, NOT. Just seems so.
    When is it going to be normal to see Appleseeds on the evening news? Not any time soon, the safety record is nice, the problems with marksmanship can be measured in inches, converted to minutes of angle and on your rifle into clicks of your sight adjustment. We don't even measure if the heritage of Liberty and standing your ground gets through to the shooter, we just want to set an example of change that can improve your ability with a rifle, and your interest on how we got to the America of today, from the Colonies of yesteryear. 
     Still finishing A Race to Remember: the Peter Norman story interesting how current culture ruins a great story and lives. Seems to happen everywhere that God is forgotten or denied.

  Next objective on my plate seems to be in Idaho, a Known Distance Appleseed, the Shoot Boss expects his crew to shoot, and I like to see if I can handle my 1903A3 the way it should be treated. I tried to buy six hundred more rounds from CPM, but my credit cards don't seem to work on their software, no purchase made, although I have plenty for the preparation and the shooting on the Appleseed, ammunition remains a sound investment before the End of the World as we knew it.

   

Struggling with Microsoft... badly...

   After my last update one of my software programs had disappeared, so I had to work with MS and find a way to find my pictures downloaded from my camera. Ugh! Bill Gates created a company that hates me, if Apple products weren't so dear.

What did I learn while teaching Sunday school, by Tuesday...

   It does seem that the software hates me, it didn't even save the three paragraphs I had written when my finger bumped one of the marvelous fast keys on the more better super sexy keyboard. I went away to a glass of warm milk, and a few solid hours of sleep.

      Again:

   So teaching on Sunday the subject got around to cursive, and all the children tell me that they all write cursive which I thought was fine. Then we went into when they use it, and I demonstrated my signature. Then I attempted to write a sentence, to see if I still could and found it painfully slow...
do you remember that cursive was a faster smoother way to place in ink, words and ideas upon paper?  Not without use it isn't.

  So I started looking for some proper paper to send a hand written letter off to Juan Williams of The Five.  One would think I could just email, but really, does anyone not against Hillary save emails from strangers?  As I wandered the little storage areas of my oldest desk, I found a file folder full of print outs from 1996 through about 2001, not everything sent through my computer, but the favorites and best and the last evidence I have of doing something besides checking in on Facebook. Even pre blogging period stuff.

   As I read through the mail, some from my sisters, mother and me, I noticed real people and emotions and cares and support and stuff that is so different from today. The first thing I noticed the format was of the weekly letters we wrote for snail mail. And that as my list of people to be bothered by my missives grew the receiver addresses grew ponderous - pretty vain to think that many would like to receive my thoughts. I had to hand write my aunt, like I had my parents, until they all got computers. But we didn't change the format, care nor the content as we reached out.  But then maybe we had been weeks or months between messages in the days of boat and rail delivery of mail. One set of my grand parents lived and worked in South America. Boat mail for years and years.

   Very rich, and since my mother is in Heaven the memory even better.  How would that be to one day have my great grand children read and understand more about how she felt about the time after my father past away? So I watched a Chinese movie, titled Home Coming, subtitled just for me. The plot was of the father turned in by his daughter to the authorities - yes, that did happen. He was found guilty and sent to the Northwest to re-education and work camps. While there he wrote letters to his wife, that were on any scrap of paper he could find in the dark and kept secret. Finally some many years later a letter was sent telling her that he was returning on the fifth. She would go down on the fifth and hold a sign with his name waiting, each month. When he showed up, she didn't recognize him. So he pretended to be a neighbor that would read letters from this big box full of letters. Very sad, but very powerful story.

Anyway, back to what I was writing about:

I posted on Facebook this statement:
      "Oh, that was fun, looking for some writing paper and finding a fat folder of emails from ago. Mother, sisters and my exchanges from when we still wrote like it was just the different type of writing and conversation on our loves and lives. Real treasures there for me, since life isn't the same."

reply: "We are all the poorer for the loss of intimately personal correspondence."
reply: "Too true, we pretend not to have time. It seems to be the best way to capture time and the people in their era."
reply: "Imagine if we didn't have the correspondence of our forebears. All we would have, as an understanding of their motivations is the record of their actions."
reply: " We find we may not share their fears nor their values." 

Which prompted this posting from a Fb friend:
  "To my friends, family, and loved ones: Please, write each other. Send a letter to someone you know. Talk about things that are intimately personal. Connect with one another." 

   I do need to get prepared to write that letter. Yes, there is email, telephone and all kinds of almost face to face, but if you don't put it on paper only the heartless NSA will have an idea of what was sent when... and that isn't your heart's history. 

What can be controlled? That is what you will have to control...

   One of my facebook friends is out to control his growing abuse of fast food joints... I told him to carry a sack lunch of apple, pickle and sandwich to a park bench - that he can control, and it would work.  In everything there might be something one could control.

  The fool terrorist bomber from NJ and NY, where they really do such a fine job of controlling guns that only law enforcement and the criminals have them always, has difficulty controlling pressure cookers and home made bombs. And I do understand that, they do very well when finding the bomber, confronting and taking him down and into a fine Christian Hospital system and then a secular jail. Great job folks. But they can never control the madmen and terrorists that randomly attack.

   In a traffic investigation, some policepersons, taze and shoot to death a big man. What was his crime? He wasn't listening nor following orders, I can't tell if the man was deaf or hadn't time for stupid police out of their box, was wanting to get back to taking care of his own life. Maybe if the police stopped you to ask questions they should pay for your time, instead of shooting you? Everyone gets to watch the video, the police need to investigate and then get ready to lose one former officer to the criminal justice system. For sure everyone with an interest in the victim should do a civil suit of the law enforcement agency and the shooter.

  Only Hollywood gets to write the story, from beginning to end, and then present it to warp everyone's ignorance in a particular direction, as entertainment that is fine and useful. But as education it isn't.

   Don't lay your motorcycle down, ride it until you stop. Gravity rules, always.  I do recommend Sully, for lots of reasons - none of which have to do with gratuitous sex, loud pistol shots and lots of blood. Just good guys and gals doing the very best they could when it got out of hand.  Really, see the film and remember, keep flying the plane.

I have been trying to get this out for days...

  I go to the YMCA for a place I can sweat and pretend I will get ripped. Okay, I no longer am concerned about looking as good as those they hire upon the media - what those men and women look like is all part of the illusion, not a reality. Yes, they can be in most excellent health and at the peak of their athletic ability but Tom Cruise is still short. Good actor but vain and arrogant and short.

  One of the better parts of going to the YMCA is talking with the other old guys, we are constantly solving the world's problems and enjoying the tales of yesteryear in wars and service in foreign parts. No WWI vets, but we cover WWII, Korea, Vietnam and the later adventures in failed foreign policy. We also have people that just want to talk a little about anything without getting into an argument. Hmm, not a bad place to do that.

  Still, I get more out of listening to the stories, tales and ideas I would never hold with than I do from watching the media presentations of what they want me to view for their upcoming commercial interruptions. And you know there are hours and hours of ideas I would never hold with in MSM. So if you are worn out and discarded by the world, do go to the YMCA, you may find similar folks just happy to tell you a story and listen to your own.

You really don't know History, just whatever media feed decides you should know...

  So there is one, or many football players and other celebrities that want to make a statement. Go right ahead and make it, make others that have honor, respect and just good manners and kindness so very sad at your problem with reality.

  So more are going to knee, fine don't stand kneel, that is what serfs, slaves and lesser folks  have always done in the presence of 'greatness and nobility' and other high mucky-mucks. To stand in the presence of the King was just like carrying a firearm around the President, something that could very much get you killed or whipped.

   You don't have to stand with me, and if the terrible America you live in continues to oppress you, I probably won't stand for the oppression, but then maybe I don't try to replace my relationship with God, with idols of nationality, tribe, gang or goofs. The America I live in allows you to be a fool, or just an earnest protester of all that the sinful self-centered nature of man displayed in your life. But Prince Estabrook stood with the rest of the men of Lexington against the King's troops in the raid upon Concord. He wasn't sitting in protest, he took up arms to defend his town, part of the training band since 1773. Freed by his owner at the end of the Revolutionary War because of his service. 

  I am so happy to tell you that people aren't all as terrible as you have been led to believe, will be happy to have you stand beside me in all efforts to be better in our lives and as citizens of a country founded upon Liberty, that needs some more heroes.

Just us Americans from the baskets of Deplorables... ah, the ruling elite.

   Being of the unwanted common folk from Europe, I understand the term 'baskets of deplorables', they are the crude material that owes nothing to a ruling elite, whether royal, noble, beknighted or just special because they think they are and have a like circle of worshippers. The kind of folk that would build a new nation and keep it working, until bankers and barkers show up to make them all believe they need a special kind of leadership, or hero to make it all beautiful again.

 Having woken up sure I should be dead, I am always sure that beautiful is in enjoying not being dead.  Now, I am sure the bankers and barkers will still be the major problem when whomever has been selected to 'run' the country, or ruin the country.  Since no one is talking about making our currency sound, paying down or off the debt, or shrinking government the illness will continue, and the nation folds into a historic memory, and who studies History anymore? 

Fifteen years and we aren't celebrating American independence and self initiative.... why?

  So some mention on THE FIVE, at two o'clock in my afternoon on the West Coast, about Flight 93? You, of course know which flight it was, made me want to know more about the flight where the proper politically correct answers were ignored and the government regulations disregarded. God, imagine a world where men were at Liberty and responsible for their own safety. So I went to Amazon.com and ordered the two most frugal books for my kindle about that famous, you do know all about it, don't you?

  So, I have started on the cheapest of the two books, and love the retelling about an American life, most of us are foolishly in denial of.... hey, stupid, you have been wrong before!  I love the book and the writer, and do hope my buying her offering of a story the media fails to trumpet and examine will help her and her family in their grief and pain caused by stupid terrorists and government agencies in their lock step stupidity. Time to go to bed, God does love you, yes, you, more than you understand, you haven't turned off the telly yet, have you? I rest my case, there isn't a hero going to save you from your sinful nature, He already came and died for you, and now, God still loves you, stupid is always a choice.

I now know that knowing where Aleppo is is a Presidential qualifier...

   But I couldn't find it in the US Constitution, nor remember it from my public education, nor does it pose any threat to my fat old man idea of normal. But then I am sure President Nixon didn't know where Firebase Phoenix was either... and they elected him twice. Since he understood the Watergate Break-in, we all figured out how wrong the voters were, although he did get us out of Vietnam. No children, 'breaking-in' wasn't allowing the kids to bounce upon the mattresses until they fell asleep.

   Browsing the Facebook feed I find some glitter of interest, a well written piece about a firearm that I don't and won't own - just because I have limits on my expenditures and it isn't loaded and at hand for the defense of all I love and value... how do you decide which firearm to carry, train with and feed ammunition through on target? How do you that don't want anything to do with 'guns' save yourselves when ugly stomps into your life... Aren't we all glad that most of the ugly is only on the media feed showing us in our soft comfortable safe zones, showing us what to fear, and all the stupid ideas about how one doesn't want to be the new ensign on Star Trek. Don't worry, whomever is selected for the office of President is going to take us to places where such leadership is reactionary, and never addressing the rot in our nation that we could fix with or without a central heroic authority figure. Once a long time ago, I attended a house fire, and the neighbors showed up, the paid professionals showed up soon after and then the media reported about it the following day.  That worked for me, aren't I lucky that I don't attend home fires often in a lifetime?

   Our common shared values, which don't seem to be as many as there were when I was younger, hold us better than something that looks really attractive since the team worked on the image of the candidate, since the experts analyzed the thoughts, plans and opportunity for success and failure... what? failure? that is not an option, it is only how it could go wrong...

  But our lives are mostly, very correctly successful in our own small way - there just isn't enough drama in them, not enough for commercial sponsorship.  Well, maybe tomorrow another thought or two to share, my dreams were of motorcycles and riding around, good dreams.

Recycling, same stuff only harder... you liberals understand...

  years ago, when i was younger and lighter and beautiful, I purchased a 5.11 Tactical Series from the NRA, a fine 5.11 vest to carry concealed and labeled with an NRA over my heart. Sigh, like those looking for firearms would ignore me because of the NRA letters over my heart and ignore the prints of guns under canvas...  Well, I was smarter than that.  I went from a Large which is just barely enough to stuff a firearm under to a XXL, which will hide two and still be useful with pockets and opportunities to carry more and imprint less. Now I think I will donate all the extra fishing and other things vests to the Goodwill folks, for sale, cause I won't use what is impracticable.  I had an idea and much doesn't match it.

  If I could only get slimmer, says the fat man, who still remembers the boy from weddings ago, that said I wasn't fat. He was kind but still wrong, still I do think he was also very right - just not as critical on me as I should be. Love him, Lord.

   I finished my bottle of Drambuie tonight and the Blues are playing, another glass bottle to recycle.