Habla English or Hit the Pavement

Making your Taos hotel employees speak only English on the job -- and firing linguistic malefactors -- sounds to me like a fairly stupid business decision, but someone nearby should make the point to the protesters that no one is forcing Spanish-speaking people to work for this guy.

Every once in a while we should use these little dustups to remind everyone that the Constitution and its Bill of Rights are crafted to protect the stupid as well as the wise.

Arfin' tired

Two days in the brush and brome sap dog energy. Buda of St. Cloud hogs the hearth. Storm of Davenport warms the carpet.

(Not shown: Five humans with beverages in hand, looking slightly less ambitious than the dogs. )

I can't think of why I didn't add New Jovian thunderbolt to my blog roll earlier. He's there now.

Wow. I shot a plastic gun.

Field Report:

The Glockish semi-auto was brand new and brought to the Great Pheasant Shoot-At by a friend of my son, a good man fairly new to hunting and shooting. His first handgun, it was a product of Croatia marketed by Springfield in Geneseo.

We were stowing the shotguns as shooting hours closed. He showed us the new pistol and invited me to shoot it. We put five 9x19 rounds in the magazine, and I scored one hit on a 12-ounce plastic Coke bottle at ten yards or so. My spotter, Ryan, 13, a man with a good eye, thought the rounds were going a little low and left, and a Kentucky windage shot suggested he was correct.

I liked the grip ergonomics and the three white sight dots. I hate the look and feel of plastic where God intended man to use steel. But I respect the gun. For its purpose, self-defense at a reasonable range, (What's that? Aww, I dunno. Ten yards, 15 maybe?) it is a perfectly acceptable tool. More to the point, the new owner likes it. Even more so, he is committed to mastering it.