Oh, what a wonderful weekend... Appleseed!...

   I am in driving distance 1h 45m from Port Townsend and the rifle range for our Appleseed. Dark from start to finish of the drive, Winter is coming. I meet 'Janer', the Shootboss, and we are setting up in the pistol bays but maybe squeezed, over twenty with walk ons signed up. 'Never on Sunday', and Yankee Terrier are in IIT positions and we begin to check people in, set up equipment line and firing line. The fire is lit in the warm up shed, we expect cold but not freezing weather. I miss putting Josh on the right side of the line, for his left hand shooting. But we moved the instruction right along, just enough words to make the points. The morning was prone, and the afternoon was full of sitting and transitions. and the first Appleseed Qualification Test, and one former Rifleman, repeated and became our first Rifleman of the weekend. He wasn't going to be the only one, but Sunday would show that two others were hiding on the line.
  Sunday was the day of the wind, and the wind won. We had the canopies erected for keeping the rain off, and they decided to try flying away... almost made it. So took them down and moved to another range where the wind would be behind us, closer to the warm up hut and cover in case of rain, but the rain held off.  There would be target corners and sheets lifted by the wind, the chill would stay with us, but all instruction was given, and one AQT before lunch, Dangerous Old Men stories and back out to shiver on the line and we need to anchor the mats better, since they would lift and try to move the rifles on them.
   I must be getting old, didn't spend much time on the line just covered up and called the line commands. Didn't do too much instruction and no demonstration at all... hmm... My overall feeling was that the shooters overcame the wind and the chill, we didn't give them too many things to remember and they performed wonderfully. It is all a shared learning experience, and we could take the memory home and put it to bed.
   Off the line and away from the shooters the discussion was often about the threat of more constraints against the range by local forces that don't really know anything about shooting, the ranges nor safety. Just GUNs are bad. Never ending ignorance. Now to get ready for Christmas.

The government can't control guns, they can't control spending and accounting....

 Really, the list of things they are supposed to control: immigration, drugs, education, justice, welfare, taxes, retirement, secrets, aviation, transportation, scientific evidence of ______, and such. They can't control and for some reason, they think success in gun control will be wonderful.

  Why allow them to try? More people are dying of drugs -- suicide is killing more, but then guns are sometimes used for suicide. Anyway, my point is don't strain the government, they haven't caught all the killers yet. They need tax money and they haven't caught all the tax cheats either. They haven't caught all the liars in Washington, DC. That should be grounds for an appeal for all convictions for false testimony in Washington, DC. Not uniformly prosecuted, all those lying politicians.

  Report from Australia, the guns aren't all gone yet, and automatic weapons are coming in, or being manufactured in country. They aren't that difficult to make.

   I don't think that Gun Control will work. I know that I haven't decided to use a semi automatic rifle to commit crimes, most gun owners are with me - but lies on entertainment, news media and politicians' lips will try to make you believe that only the government is moral enough to control gun crime... not true. The government is not moral, the people in it maybe, but probably not.

Not nice to fool Mother Nature... nor mess with her...

  I have been having a doomsday feeling since Prayer Group last Saturday evening. Good study, fine prayers and great fellowship and food... and still I couldn't help thinking the end was near and we are not close to prepared for it. Brought on by the missionary that was shot by an arrow and returned the next day to get killed by more arrows - trying to bring enlightenment to the heathen, in an area put off limits by the local civilized authority. Can't help but wonder if it was a gun free zone. Very poor joke, but the missionary was certain that he could bring peace to the savages, and they were sure he was bringing destruction. According to modern Liberals, he was a token white man bringing all the civilized ills they had brought to the New World in 1492.

  Some fine point on the Facebook feed on the internet I found out that the windshield dead bug count is way down and efforts are being made to get a real count and difference from the counts done thirty or more years ago. You will notice, in the Spring and Summer, the decided lack of insects, except most of us only think of them as something to clean off the radiator grill and windshield as we drive across the country. But they feed lots of bigger feathered flying friends, and slithering long tongued almost slimy things... when enough go the whole food chain is in peril. Remember the beast at the top of the food chain? Yes, your local tyrant/ruler/representative/member of Parliament the one on top of the food chain... they will be the one that will ration, order, regulate and guide you into destruction based upon their need for other useless mouths to feed.   

  There will be many to jump upon the Climate Change bandwagon, and they could be correct. It could be a new bug from space, due to lack of a space force and a cosmic dome. Could be, my best guess, the weed and bug killers are winning. I am canceling all future business with Terminex. It could be that there are too many man made things that aren't food in all kinds of food and trash left around to be consumed by bugs that haven't found the proper acids to render and reduce them into basic real usable compounds. Evolution does take surviving and adapting and lots of time. Jump to the genetic manipulators and you have my other culprit - stuff that isn't real, but that fools (almost) Mother Nature.

   Humans hardly ever leave well enough alone - from forbidden fruit to communism - humanity has many original bad ideas that will destroy innocence, perfection and goodness for all. And as they say, we are all on the same boat, so be good, kind and at peace. Those that aren't going quietly will be loud and proud and dangerous. We haven't been paying enough attention and building stuff that we can use for power, but not love. And without love? there will be nothing...

Just another waking up at five morning... aren't they all?

  Adventures in the American court system are amusing, painful and not to be repeated. A whole level of government that should be very good by now, but really they tell me 1pm and they don't show up until 1:30, we are being treated like we don't count. And we don't. Allow that to set the tone.

  Interesting, to see a former coworker in town, and touch base later on Facebook. If I were a smartphone addict, I would likely have texted, shot a picture as we passed and later looked to see a response... could just have said 'hello!' with a smile, but it is all being recorded now - by our government, the Chinese or just trolls... who is watching over you? All I could do was smile a bit better and store the memory of the passing in my mind.

  Tennessee Ernie Ford's gospel got me started this morning, lovely to pretend I can match his bass and know all the words to all the songs. I am waiting to things to happen on my electronic game, so I am listening to The Gael, one window for music and the others for blogging, and another on a game, one for email, one for confusing our enemies. Remaining thankful that I don't really have enemies, just millions of people that don't love me because.... pick your reason - mine is fat old white man, and an American to top that mess off. I am chuckling, the false rage and anger about the imagined terrible type of person I must be.... My mother tried to make me be better than that. And good women have been trying ever since, don't give up, ladies. Just putty in your hands... ha, ha.

   I have some serious contacting to do on the internet today, seems the dental program is going and I must replace it... should we pay by the teeth remaining?

  I have a .58 dollar credit on my credit card, why don't they send me a check? Do they think I would lose it? First cup of coffee down, time to make a fresh pot... warming and waking magic. So Gandalf.Rx hit me hard with a spy and supply raiding, but I have 20k of his best this morning. Nicely rounding up my t5 which I can't create without some research. Not to worry, got to go, y'all be good. It will confuse them that are living bad, and badly.

Almost finished on my tenth year on the Appleseed trail, Custer Washington...

  So I signed up, prepared my vehicle and packed out and on the road north at 5 AM, it is dark and cold. Filled up at the Safeway and drove, and drove and drove and at 7:25 rolled into the parking lot at the Custer Sportsman range... been here before always interesting.
   Ben and Matt are on site, Ralph rolls up and we begin to set up. I have check in and t-shirt issue. Ten shooters to work on marksmanship and their heritage from our history presentations about April 19, 1775. I like to pretend anyone reading that date would automatically, if an American, know what happened and why on that date. But most Americans have no idea, they could google it or find it on Wikipedia, if they thought it important.
   Introductions, history lessons, safety and expectations of the two days are presented. There is a plan, a course of instruction that guides the instructors, and the shooters all have their personal expectations. Some of the shooters are back for improving what they learned on another Appleseed some times ago. Family and friends gathered to learn, practice and test their skills in a common, American heritage, marksmanship with a rifle. Something my American History teacher showed me in ninth grade Junior High Rifle Club, in the high school gym on Thursday afternoons.
   So, we start, building on little stuff, adding more, repeating the words, pointing out what we see, helping adjust the shooter, the sling and the rifle to the target with our techniques. I am sure they have much better ones in high power, competition and Olympic match levels. But we can bring you into 4 MOA at five hundred yards with our twenty-five meter targets... if the shooter pays attention and corrects one flaw at a time. And lots of dry practice, lots of dry practice.
  Gus joined us on day two, while we waited on Alec to return from border crossing adventures. In the end several cleaned Redcoats and three new Riflemen made. The future Riflemen were all around but darkness comes early in the wintery Great NorthWest, and my hands were chilling.

End of days...

  I went to my aunt funeral in Minnesota, she had a long and full life, I always thought of her as a wonderful lady, my father's sister. That was last year, December. My wife had to return to Korea, for maintaining her parents's grave mounds and paying respects, and seeing her sisters and brothers and all their children and grand children. Each of the graves took a day and she traveled the Republic to see her family and friends. Her tales of the changes in the last seven years in high rise apartments, cutting all the trees, getting rid of rice paddies. Most of her travel was bus, rail and air, taxis are too small since she was always with others.  When she went to her home village it was like a ghost town, and the farms had gone from rice to black beans - low maintenance high dollar value crop? Times change, excess rice comes from the two crops in Southeast Asia instead of the one crop in Korea. But farming isn't looked upon favorably, working in a factory, starting your own business, being highly educated and in politics, justice, medicine or science.

   As major improvements in tech, and computation show up, my wife's smart phone service stopped at the American border, without some serious changes she wasn't prepared to do. She took pictures but had to use her brother in laws computer to comment on Facebook to me. I laughed. She had various adventures on her trip back to the USA. But I was patient and was there when she came looking for me. She had to get new luggage, the old set had problems with handlers and plastic parts breaking beyond easy repair. But the new stuff got stuffed until little old ladies or their husbands shouldn't pick them up at all. Almost, but wheeling them is nice.

   Church, Sunday school and a revival for us, then I went off to meet a Tennessee Appleseeder that I am a FB friend of.  Met him and his wife, a local family lady, and we talked about career and Appleseed. The new efforts to infringe on rights and how we got into Appleseed and where we are going from here. Good burger and cole slaw, and I drank coffee. We exchanged business cards, ha, ha. Busy Sunday, my neighbor told me that the Seahawks lost, but the game was close and worth watching.
 
    Monday plans don't include anything except one funeral, for a lady born in Japanese controlled Korea in 1923, married in 1944, widowed by the godless Communists in 1953, raised her daughter alone, daughter married an American, she moved to Hawaii and then Washington to help raise the grandsons. She became a Christian and a Baptist late but was always at church, a senior lady friend to my wife, and my wife knew her grandsons from youth choir trips she had supported for years. One of them gave a beautiful tale of his grandmother's life and meaning in his family, a wonderful tribute. I noticed how young she was in their wedding picture. 

   It was interesting to me, how pain free my foot was, and how well I walked across the cemetery grounds and back to my car. And when I got home, changed, napped and got up to get a cup of fresh coffee and return my tray to the kitchen, I fell catching myself about twelve inches above the rug. Dropping the tray, coffee cup and stuff - had my priorities correct.   

   You had your three day weekend, unless counting or making more ballots to count in Florida. So be of good cheer the Democrats are winning, we won't become Zimbabwe, but Venezuela maybe.

The day after the Vote...

  Yesterday, I went off to the YMCA, to get a coach to show me the new routine, but they aren't prepared. As I walked to towards the double doors I saw a couple leaving the old man slowly going to the car in the handicap spot, the little elder lady carefully, slowly placing her feet as she danced with her walker. She was not happy, so I gave her a bright cheerful 'Have a beautiful morning!' And her face lit up, with a smile saved for the gallant knights arrival - just in the nick of time. She was so beautiful in that welcoming of my greeting. That made my day.

  I often tell young girls that only their smile will keep them beautiful, but they are too young to understand, they believe in makeup, dieting, dancing and surgery and dental alignment devices. But it is the smiles men will come back for. Since they are often disturbed by some young fool's teasing and taunting - never realizing that it is to get the girl's attention and then a smile. I will have to go back to Tom Sawyer to find out how Mark Twain wrote about that.

  Washington's election results weren't published until 8 PM. Too many misinformed people voting about things they know nothing about. I guess we are going to the Supreme Courts of Washington and the nation. Both Constitutions prohibit government infringement of the right to keep and bear arms. Different words. The biggest problem is there are too many people living in fears of their entertainment and news media promotions of the dangers of Assault Rifles, semi auto rifles, mental health of humans being treated for mental problems. Lots of rich guys pushed it, but the entertainment and news media had prepared the minds for thinking that legislation would prevent the next mass killing. But it doesn't. Promoting love of all ones' neighbors, strangers at the gate and one's self -- even promoting good manners and quiet behavior would help. But they are going to send the law enforcement forces into battle against the law abiding citizens with these terrible dangerous firearms and people will die. But we are all going to die, and once you launch the ball, the attack, the raid, the action to win your game - it all comes up against the other side, team and their reaction. No one studies history any more. We will be going to court first but gun raids have already caused the death of the gun owner denied.  Since most of America isn't worried about President Trump, not the alien invading masses (you don't study history enough, folks) the extra voters in this state were in resistance to the i1639. Thirty pages of feel good legislation. I am sure some of the first ARs were hidden yesterday because of the legislation, a few families are looking to move to Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. When you got to go, you have to go.

   We aren't even sure about Texas now, the big money is going to get us all if we don't watch out. One of those fine science fiction paperbacks from long ago, talked about the godless communists taking over America, and then having control of money, work and schools - they turned to the independent of community folks - the small farmer with family and faith, that doesn't have to come into town, use a phone or communicate with the government. The ones not depending on the government... Anyway, the main character was attacked and killed, can't have any independence must be dependent on the government.

  Now I know that fools believe it could never happen in the United States of America - but rights never understood nor exercised may not be legal in the minds of many. And if you studied history, you would quickly see how many governments have failed to do more than kill off a lot of good citizens in their efforts to make better citizens living in the current enlightened rule of foolish elite. Killed off millions, and not too well reported. But like I said before, we all die, it is important to live well and do your best right to the end. Forgive them, for they know not what they do... nothing really changes, we forget why we wrote the law.  Gods of the Copybook Headings, Kipling?