We Should Not Jail Levi Johnston

However if congress should pass and His Obamaness sign a law permitting Sarah, her husband, and her daughter, singly or in concert, to horse whip him to within an inch of his vainglorious life, I probably will somehow forget to rant against such an assault on the Constitution.

Do WHAT for the Emperor?

On this day 65 years ago Japanese grunts on a certain Pacific atoll began getting confirmation of the rumors that the most godawful hordes of primitive barbarians were about come and eat their lunch. It would turn out to be mostly our Marines against theirs. Ours were better.

We learned some lessons on Tarawa/Betio. Maybe the most important one was not to screw around with invasions across fringing reefs.

Nature in the raw

If, late at night, nose in a book, you get hungry and burn some popcorn by pushing the wrong microwave button, and if you toss the sorry mess into the front yard near the big window, why, then, the next morning a beautiful downy woodpecker may retrieve a large kernel and perch a brief moment on your window sill in what I assume to be a gesture of thanks.

Little b******d won't hang around long enough for a picture though.

Loopy Holes on Potomac

You're the President. You want to tighten your control over undesirable persons. One easy way to do it is to write a bill "for the kids." As a nation, we love kids, although for the life of me I can not figure out why.

In the issue at hand, His Obamaness persuaded his captive parliament to tax Holy Hell out of tobacco to fund his new "child health" programs. The One is especially anxious to control the undesirable element known as smokers, especially those with little money and less clout. So he kicked the tax on roll-your-own tobacco from $1.10 a pound to $24.75. Smokers and the tobacco barons called that bunch of bull durham, and the latter promptly relabeled it as pipe tobacco, taxed at $2.83 a pound.

My moral betters are outraged. "This is a direct challenge to the federal government," said Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids."

No kidding. Matt? Thanks for sharing the good news.

It won't last, of course. Even as we speak, Obama's Washington word processors are full-bore bent on closing this loophole*. But at least private, tax-paying business has annoyed the masters again, and that's worth something.

---

Disclaimer: Your humble scribe is a recovering two-pack-a-day smoker, clean for close to nine months. He has no special respect for the tobacco industry except in narrow cases when it faces official repression for its very existence.

---

* A word too often misused and overused. In the statist mindset, any dollar in your private pocket reflects a tax loophole on one kind or another.

Quote of the Day

You can claim Libertarians are "batshit crazy," but it's still better than death-camp pragmatism.

It's from Roberta in her comments section as she continues to object to the notion that Constitutional guarantees should be contingent on a religious test.

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.

Aw. Dammit all.

I don't care how late I am on this. I want to formally note the passing of Ms. Mary Jean Loutsenhizer who died a couple of months ago.

If you knew her at all you knew her as Chris Conner -- a voice and a presence created by God to demonstrate what He meant by "jazz."

If the only music in the world were Gershwin and Porter as sung by Miss Conner, we wouldn't be out all that much.

"There's a boat that's leavin' soon for New York..."

Kids in the cabin. More kids in the guest cabin. Vizla and shorthair giddily primed to go to work. Look out pheasants. Fly at your peril of death by fear -- avian heart failure -- as the heavy shot loads pass near you.

(The foolish and unhealthful overeating part of this little annual fest is already well begun.)

The Nancy Pelosi Charade

Grandma Nan pounded dozens of her weaker members into politically dangerous ground Saturday, and now the media are reporting that, duuhh, her health care bill has about the same chance of Senate approval as Osama does of a B'Nai B'Rith brotherhood award.

Is there anything to this woman besides ego and Maybelline?

The Wall

Twenty years ago this week I was standing over the Model 15 Teletype printer in my Utulei office on a Pago Pago harbor beach. Crowded around were Samoans, Europeans, and Mainland Americans. It was the only AP ticker on the island, the only source of current credible information on the amazing teardown of the Berlin wall.

My buddy the middle-aged Dane started crying. He tried to control it, couldn't, and left. Later he told me one parent was German and this entire side of his family had been locked in the Communist East since August, 1961. That's time enough for one generation to be be born and grow to adulthood while another one rots away and dies in a Peoples Republic where everything was decided by government for your own good. There was universal military service, universal government health care, universal employment, universal civilian gun prohibition, universal misery.

As I remember my friend's tears, I hope everyone can find a way to help our young people absorb the notion that things like The Berlin Wall are very real with very human consequences. They are not made for teevee movies.

Abby on the Ft. Hood massacre

I find a lot to agree with here.

Messing the troops

The electric teevee showed a busy mess hall during the moment of silence. I don't know where it was, but the on-camera troops were predominently Air Force enlisted men. There wasn't enough detail to identify the actual chow as the troops stood reverently, but it had nice color and was served on plates. The drinks (coffee, Coke?) were in stemmed glassware. Table cloths. Copious condiments. Carpet on the deck.

Ladies and gentlemen, today's military establishment is different from the one I knew.

As if Obama and his Team Left cadre aren't enough to mangle what remains of our economy, the bastions of American individualism, rural conservatives, are now looking for another way into your pockets.

It's the ethanol shysters again, and their PR operation won this front-page lead in the Des Moines Register :

"Now that its losses have ended, the ethanol industry needs the federal government to increase the amount of the corn additive in gasoline, industry leaders say."

What the boys are after is a federal law requiring gasoline sellers to boost the pecentage of ethanol from ten to 15.

The ethanol backers, already firmly ensconced at the public trough, concede that drivers are not demanding more booze in their tanks and therefore the state should use its police function to make them. They find logic somewhere in that statement.

The big player here is an outfit called POET of Sioux Falls, and the company brass showed up at its big plant in Emmetsburg, Iowa, yesterday with former General Wesley Clark in tow. Spurned for a high policy position by the Democrats he's been sucking up to since his retirement, the general is supplementing his pension by hawking positions and products, as in:

""We want you to stand up and tell Washington that we need E15," Clark told about 250 farmers and implement dealers gathered in a chilly tent beside Poet's plant Tuesday. "If the EPA won't make the ruling, then Congress should do the job."

Makes a fellow glad Wes is no longer commanding armed Americans.

For Glenn Adams and David Crary of The Associated Press

Gentlemen,

May I relate a short tale? Thank you.

The world was younger and I was covering a legislative session for the AP that we three all cherish. Republicans outsmarted minority Democrats on a parliamentary maneuver. I wrote that the Democrats "howled angrily" at the ruse. It never occurred to me that gratuitous figurative language in straight reporting might rightly be considered editorial comment.

My bureau chief, Dan Perkes, later head of AP News features, called me into his office and gently corrected me. I say gently because the bleeding was well controlled with a tourniquet improvised from used Model 15 ribbons.

Glenn, David, I wonder if you could keep that in mind next time you are tempted to write something like dealing the gay rights movement a heartbreaking defeat in New England, when reporting an election result. I'm sure you would bristle at a challenge to produce for public inspection a gay movement (which I suppose could consist of as few as two gays, but that would be damned lame) whose hearts are demonstrably broken. But that is precisely what good editors did to green reporters in the days when we still had and deserved a little respect.

"Jim," Bureau Chief Perkes said, "next time you write shit like that you'd better have a picture of Democrats on their knees, their eyes raised to the moon, and a tape."

Heartbreaking my ass, boys. In the first place the voters' decision was so widely expected that the heartbreak would have taken place weeks ago and hence been old news. In the second, heartbreak is, by definition, a subjective condition of the innermost soul, a place hardly ever revealed, even to crack wire service men.

If you really wanted to use the term, all you had to do was dial a couple of your gay contacts and quote them as saying they were suffering heartbreak. Then you would have been reporting, not emoting.

Cordially,

Jim

Important Edit: Or did some dim desk jockey insert the word into your copy?

Election Day

Go vote no. Unless unusually special circumstances apply, an anti-incumbent vote counts as a "no."

In Strictly Speaking Edwin Neuman conducts an election-day interview with a man on a London street. The citizen tells the reporter he anxious to vote and Neuman asks why.

"To get the buggers out," he replies.

If those aren't words to live by I'll kiss your arse on top of the U.S. Capitol dome and loan you a telephoto lens to boot.

Gun Show Report

Windom was the gun show of diggable boxes. Seems everyone in Minnesota decided to tidy up the gun room and peddle the detritus to gullible outtastaters. TeeHee. I am please to enjoy a few castoffs of Lutefiskia

An excellent 1981 air crew sheath knife, $3 including a light patina, now removed to reveal Camillus 1981. I had assumed the makers spoke Oriental. It was part of a package deal with a Kabar USN Mk 2, same price, The K has PTS as bad as you'll ever care to see, evilly pitted with marks barely readable and about half the leather rings missing. This will become the base steel for a custom.

How 'bout .452 -- 230 grainers FMJ, 100 for three bucks, loose in a baggie from a seller who said he sorta thought they were for a .45 but wasn't sure. Also two factory .257 Roberts at $10 per box. This caliber is getting a little hard to find.

The Queen of the Hop is Miss High Standard, a pumper in perfectly fine shape save for the remnants of a Bubba varnish job. At $75 I'll always find room for a spare 12 gauge.

Couple other goodies, but this is probably already more than you want to know.

I can't offer you an interesting Windom history fact because there isn't one.

EDIT: The prices in general were unremarkable, about the same as we've become used to, but I think everyone selling has become much more willing to negotiate.

Republicans

Within my lifetime, being a conservative Republican has meant something other than figuratively rolling queers and turning personal abortion decisions over to the politicians and cops.

The latest fiasco -- Stazzawhosis withdrawing in NY23 -- serves to remind us that Republicans have only themselves to blame for the Saint Barack era. For as long as the GOP demands theological purity in its subjects, Republicans in office will rarer than honest used car peddlers.

Stazza may have been a bad candidate from the outset. It seems to me she was. But that, too, illustrates the flibberdegibbetry of the Republican party which nominated her.

Kiwi wisdom

Our libertarian buddies down in New Zealand are wrestling with the

South Pacific versions of Gorebamaism. F'rinstance they link us to a site calculating the cost of ETS -- Emission Trading Scheme -- the local version of cap and trade. Among other things, the unworkable response to the nonexistent problem will add $21 to the cost of a sheep. That's baaaaaahd. Pendleton shirts are expensive enough already.

Another weekend, another show...

In Windom, Minnesota. This one is a miniature, usually about 70 tables but I've always managed to spend modestly and enjoyably there. It seems to attract a lot of hobbyists and tinkerers -- guys with interesting stuff they're just tired of or have no immediate use for. For instance, from a very similar little show recently:

I consider two grip safeties, a hammer and a mainspring a prudent purchase at $15. One of the grip safeties is GI, the other hollowed for a commander-style hammer.

There's no special want list for this show. I'll depend on the spirits to alert me to what needs buying. A brick of small pistol primers would be nice.

(The gratuitous book porn is just a response to Brigid and some other lady gunnies going on about how they're Irish and Celtic and all -- like I'm not or something. :) It's by Seamus McManus. It's fat and jammed with useful information presented in a style guaranteeing unreadability. Stick with Cahill.)

We are not alone

Libertarian allies abound. A New Zealand libertarian has a picture and comment on the Brit bobbies pottering about with automatic weapons

(From there you can get to the "Libertarianz," home page.)

Some gun nuttery economics

1. A libertarian is thrifty because rational self interest mandates getting maximum practical value for any expenditure.

2. A shooter understands that the stronger the hand/arm assembly, the better the shooting, ergo training weights are useful.

3. Copper is a weight, and is found heavily in pre-1982 United States pennies and, to a lesser degree, in U.S. nickels.

4. Confining the coins in a stout bag relieves the thrifty libertarian shooter of parting with them in order to purchase ferrous metal weights -- usually foundry iron which brings more than $1 a pound when cast into dumbbells.

The result of this reasoning is shown in the photograph. The Ruger in .45 Colt is dedicated to slaying the wily whitetail and weighs a little more than three pounds. The black bag is full of copper pennies and of nickels. It weighs a bit over five pounds. You hold it in your extended hand(s) in your favorite stance and thereby gain strength and endurance. And you have an appreciating asset rather than a rusting hunk of iron and a receipt from WalMart.

Abort puttering

A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. And when an artesian well pops up in the driveway AND registers on a man's water meter, a man's gotta dig. With luck, the first hole hits the leak. When stars misalign, a second hole is necessary.

Water is now restored to the Commandant's quarters.

Puttering is to resume forthwith.

Here's mud in your eye

When a troubled youth with a knife decided he wanted Caleb's stuff, our man reacted with a java toss and followed up with sterner stuff. Go see Caleb.

(H/T to Tam)

Putter

That doesn't refer to the golf stick that makes people cuss. It's the verb form and the activity I intend to pursue today. Puttering is important. It helps a fellow find things -- pocket knives, the three-screw Single Six, a letter he meant to answer in August and didn't, and probably some stuff he even forgot he lost.

Nothing new here

It's just that I suddenly realized I haven't bitched about it before.

An area hardware chain is hawking antifreeze as "50-50" (half water) as though it a very special thing. Ready to pour, y'know. Price is $4.95 per gallon. Full-strength stuff is $5.95. Water being somewhat profitable at c. 1.95 per gallon, you just know that Bomgaars is solidly behind the NEA and others dedicated to producing a dumber America.

Uh-oh

A little local news here, but as you read please keep in mind that Ruby Ridge and Waco were certifiably planned by certified and/or certifiable government planners.

This little county is composed mostly of two middlin' towns and a clutch of tiny contiguous burgs strung around the lakes. The result is that some 18,000 people are governed and taxed by at least seven mayors, seven city councils, the county board of supervisors, and gawd knows how many special taxing units for the sewer, greedy green groups, and so forth.

I just learned that we're beginning another efficiency drive to combine services and all that crap that will either (a) never happen or (b) incur costs higher than "savings." We've heard it before, but this time we've hired an expert, and the radio says, straight-faced and without a hint of irony:

"Alvin C. Blatnik the Fourth (not his real name), who leads the ISU Extension GIS group, will be the lead researcher. He is also a certified planner with the American Institute of Certified Planners."

If all that certifying doesn't curdle your spit with fear I'll kiss your arse at the courthouse flag pole and give you an hour to round up every tax-sucking bureaucrat in the area.

Maytag One-Lunger?

An email friend asked me what that was. Ahh youth.

Okay, squad. School circle.

By about 1949, the Rural Electrification Administration had wired up most of the farms in Calhoun County, so the prosperous Mrs. Kaddidlehopper of Rural Route 1 was able to replace her smelly, noisy, inconvenient gasoline powered washer with a plug-in model. That meant that she could, among other things, do laundry in the house, very handy in a Midwest winter.

Generally, the old gas Maytags went to People's Hardware, aka the junk yard where, as lads, we shopped.

The engines were cute, no other term for it. With a single cylinder, developing in the vicinity of one or two horsepower, and a horizontal shaft they demanded a second life in the transportation industry, and eight- and nine-year-old boys who went wow over newsreel clips of Mauri Rose and his Offenhausers were suckers for them. They pooled their dimes and quarters and negotiated with the junk man.

Now, ol' Elmer Maytag understood you could make a nifty 8 mph racer from his engine, but he probably didn't understand how poor kids could do it. To wit:

Assemble materials. -- engine; 2 x 12 plank about five feet long, (chassis); piece of pipe about 3 feet long, (clutch control); four wheels, preferably all the same size or nearly so; board (front axle ); steel rod (or water pipe) (rear axle) clothes line rope (steering device); flat belt (transmission); pulley for a rear wheel; wood apple box (seat); lard can full of nuts, bolts, washers.

The single great challenge was attaching the drive pulley to the rear axle, and sometimes the boys would seek the mature assistance of a high school kid who had passed shop.

Other than that, it was a piece of cake. Attach rear wheel assembly with U-bolts if you had them, fence staples if you didn't. Bolt engine to plank just slightly loose in the elongated holes so the whole thing could be moved back and forth a little to tighten or loosen the drive belt. This was the clutch mechanism. Lag screw the front wheels to the board and secure it to the plank with a centered and barely tight bolt. Drill two holes in the axle ends to hold the steering ropes (think horse reins). Nail the seat in place and paint your logo on it. ("Varoom!" was popular because you could vary the numbers of "o"s to achieve an aesthetic symmetry.)

You kicked the starter until the engine caught, ran around to the side and jumped on the seat. You grabbed the ropes, reached back to the clutch pipe and pulled it and the engine forward to tighten the belt. Then you were underway, terrorizing any stray dog, cat, or adult in the alley, trying to steer with two ropes in one hand, the other being occupied maintaining belt tension. Yeah, it was a design flaw.

Vibration was a problem, and the braking system primitive and very hard on the soles of your PF Flyers. We made a few improvements over the years until creatures in dresses started flouncing past the front gate, catching our eye and making us feel kind of squishy in the head. About then, for some reason which escapes me, we started losing interest in one-lungers.

I understand this sort of thing has been replaced by television, texting about Paris, and video games.

That is all. DisMISSED

Hippie time

I just quoted a line from the Kingston Trio to Tam, and that kick-started the old Maytag one-lunger that serves as my memory.

Joan Baez. I was actually thinking of Joan Baez and remembered how a whole damned generation -- Young Republicans to Abbie Hoffman -- lusted to embrace that body, either despite of or because of the Aquarian-age nonsense she sang so sweetly.

But she did give us one great moment of defiant libertarian resolve:

"My daddy made corn whiskey

"Grandaddy made it too.

"We ain't paid no whiskey tax since 1792."

For a long time I assumed my 18th/19th Century Appalachian ancestors sat around the fire and sang Copper Kettle while the moon shone bright. I was crushed to learn that the song may have been written as late as 1953.

Grump

(1) The furshlugginer weather continues and is now compounded by the discovery that I have an underground water leak which will deplete the gun fund by a disheartening figure.

(2) Still can't make the new wireless router work in a wireless fashion.

Domestica redux again

1. The weather dismality index is approaching 8, shutting down outdoor endeavors. Fortunately the last of the firewood chain saw work was finished yesterday.

2. I must go shopping. By the time I put the Stihl away my innards were screaming "Meat!" but had to settle for the the closest thing in the reefers, two frozen brats and a half-pound of bacon. That's meat, in a way, of course, but the aforementioned innards had their heart set on about 18 ounces of medium rare cow.

3. Given the cruddiness outside, I have no excuse to further delay trying to set up the new wireless router. Digitalitis looms, and I wish I had more faith in the power of prayer.

William F. Buckley; Armed and Dangerous

Inspired by an interesting New Jovian Thunderbolt post, I got to thinking about conservatives in general and William F. Buckley in particular. NJT finds it disappointing that The National Review, sired by Buckley, seldom carries pro-gun articles. He attributes this to the preponderance of NR's "Metrocons," a nice term for our citified brothers and sisters who, it is argued, push all the freedom arguments except the ones embodied in the Second Amendment.

Now I'd enjoy more from NR on one of our favorite issues, too, but let's make sure we understand that Buckley himself was not a gun-rights lukewarmer.

Buckley delivered one of the all-time great pro-gun snarks about antigun bills that popped up like toadstools after the 1960s assassinations. Someone like Abner Mikva was hooting that private citizens simply had no need for handguns.

Buckley: "A person who sees an armed thug coming down the hallway toward him may desire a speedier means of relief than a call to the American Civil Liberties Union."

----

Beyond that, a death threat moved him to get a carry permit during his run for mayor of New York. He took a Mini-14 along on his Pacific passage (see his Racing Through Paradise) and allowed as how it was primarily for recreation but also had "a survival aspect."

And somewhere he wrote "I must have three of four of the things (firearms) around home."

It isn't the kind of high rhetoric which draws recruits to the barricades, but it's not bad for a Metrocon, a man totally of New York who just happened top own a spare bedroom in New Sharon.

---

All from memory, but I suppose I can dig up the cites if anyone seriously challenges.)

Your $700 Billion at Play

An AP story this morning carries the judgement of a gummint inspector on the TARP program. You may know it better as the Big Boy Bailout.

Watchdog Neil Barofsky says the TARP program sorta worked but, "Treasury's actions in this regard have contributed to damage the credibility of the program and of the government itself, and the anger, cynicism and distrust created must be chalked up as one of the substantial, albeit unnecessary, costs of TARP."

Hold that thought as you continue:

Then he noted the "decision not to require banks to report how they used their rescue money and (the Fed's) 'less-than-accurate' statements describing the financial condition of nine large banks that benefited from large infusions of aid."

I don't quarrel with either Barofsky or the AP report, though they're really telling us nothing new in the first cited paragraph which says, "We're all well and truly pissed" or in the second which says "Because when dealing with the feds you can have them stupid or you can have them crooked. Take your pick."

---

Deeper in the story there are some enticing hints on how much of your TARP money is being used for kennel fees, Dom Perignon, tux rental and so forth.

Shop tip

When you're tidying up your shop and stumble across an old tooled leather belt worth restoring and saving, be sure you do not use Gorilla Glue just because it is in a little bottle quite similar to the one where you keep your neatsfoot oil.

Fun Show AAR

The show was worth the drive to Mankato even if we bought little. The ratio of plastic gun-like things to real stuff was about the same as any other Midwest show, but there was a satisfying number of tables with steel and walnut and more parts than we're used to seeing. I scored GI 1911 parts -- two grip safeties, a hammer, and a mainspring for $15.

The gun prices were astoundingly high, and JohnW may grin at hearing that a Model 99 in .300 Savage and of no distinction whatsoever was offered at $1,350.

There were other adventures in weekend spending. At a neighborhood auction yesterday I paid a little too much for a c. 1900 Hopkins and Allen .22 bolt rifle, an odd design, tube fed but requiring manual cocking after chambering a round. The real coup was theft of a good knipco-style heater which will make winter shop work toasty pleasant.

----

"Mankato" tickle your memory? There, on Boxing Day of 1862, our forefathers staged the largest mass hanging in our history. Thirty-eight mostly Sioux men were strung up for being on the losing side in Little Crow's war.

Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer; side note

Just for anyone who happens to be new to the study of this, the disdain apparent in the two preceding posts is based on a couple of things. This guy divided his force twice before knowing what he was facing -- or the terrain in which he was operating.

And while Marie Sandoz may go too far, Custer did have visions of being nominated by acclamation after wiring news of his glorious victory to his political backers at the Democratic Convention in St. Louis.

Custer's complete tactical failure in a situation an experienced company grade officer could have been expected to handle competently is apparent from reading the published histories, but to really get a feel for it you need to walk the land.

Happy Interlude

When contemplating the folly of which famous military heros are capable sickens you, it's therapeutic to find some nice horses to whisper to.

(Private range abutting Custer battle field, September 2009)

Custer's Genius

Just beyond the river, in the dusty flat to the right of the cottonwoods, Major Reno's command started dying. He had been ordered there to guard against Lt. Col. Custer's supreme fear that the raggedy-ass Indians would escape to the Big Horn Mountains.

Reno and other survivors of the Indian counter attack west of the Little Big Horn retreated up this ravine and occupied a shallow depression, the position of the camera in this photo. Later that day he was reinforced by Major Benteen who, himself, had been ordered on a vainglorious escape-prevention mission.

Custer Battlefield September 2009

Fun Show

We're pointing ourselves northeast, about 100 miles this morning, hoping the Mankato show will draw some dealers and hobbyists from further Up North, guys we don't see often.

We're in quest of Something Different. At an extended board of directors meeting last evening, we decided we're getting sick and tired of 200-table shows with 150 of them groaning under tons of EBRs and plastic 9mm hi-caps. Nothing particularly against them, but our souls depend on milled steel, deep rust blue, and walnut.

I'll be allowing myself absolutely frivolous spending up to $250 -- the amount the new Nobel Laureate, His Obamaness, has promised to send me. Anything over that will require thought in view of a letter from my bank, telling me one of my CDs will renew at .04 per cent next week. Yeah, four-tenths of one per cent. Must be that the new Nobel Laureate, His Obamaness, is giving the banks some free money too. Maybe even more than $250?

Publish Post

On Seeing the WalMart-Amazon Price War

My bookseller of choice is Goodwill Industries, and I'll match the personal library here with most any one's for scope, depth, and sheer numbers of quality tomes. The investment of time can be heavy, but the monetary cost averages something under fifty cents a volume, including some rather good finds. How about a first of P.H. Sheridan's memoirs, both volumes, foldout maps intact?

Of course Goodwill offers me no best sellers until long past their Fifteen Minutes. Fortunately, this is ameliorated by my personal society which is composed of people who do not care to discuss John Gresham's latest lawyer any more than they would care to discuss television programs.

Still, I'm ambiguous about seeing best-sellers -- as bad as many of them are -- selling in hardback for $9. Writing is brutally hard work. Even ordinarily competent writing may offer us joy, enlightenment, wonder. I think of that as I consider the fact that the value society places on any endeavor is measured in dollars.

Journalism Can Be Fun

But how would the dipstick who wrote this headline for the Des Moines Register know?

Chase ends in shooting; classes at Seymour schools canceled

Oh the horror of armed Americans shooting up public schools and endangering the innocent waifs being baby-sat therein.

Or, if you read the story, maybe your single question is whether this cop (a) did his duty properly or (b) over-reacted in a trigger-happy fashion.

Elect Barry!

I know I'm late on this, but I desire to participate in making sure President Obama gets his well-deserved Heisman Trophy. You can help make it happen. Cast your patriotic ballot here.

Let's find Nate's rifle. He made the same mistake many (all?) of us have made and is now trying, against long odds, to redeem things.

(A nod to Tam)

Trevanian Had the Words for It

The Dismality Index around here is setting records. Color it gray, wet it down, fire up the fog machine.

In "The Main," which all should read, Trevanian's Montreal street cop called it "pig weather," and I've never happened across a better term.

Hubris in Red Cloud's War

A knoll just beyond Lodge Pole Ridge where 79 American soldiers died with their ball-enhanced, judgement-deprived Captain William Fetterman. On Dec. 21, 1866, the entire command was suckered into ambush and wiped out by Sioux and Northern Cheyenne warriors of Red Cloud and Roman Nose near Fort Phil Kearny on the Bozeman Trail in northern Wyoming.

Fetterman had earlier bragged that with 80 cavalrymen he could "ride through the entire Sioux nation."

September, 2009

Altitudes

Autumn yields to winter in the high

country of the northern Wasatch range.

(Southeast Idaho, October 2009)

Montana 2

Sacajawea, and so-spelled on the inscription with no revisionist "gaw" vulgarity.

This is one of the more moving representations I have seen. Bird Woman is depicted without contrived heroism, shown simply as a human dealing competently with the circumstances imposed by life.

The child is Pomp, probably the son of Pierre Charbonneau, a mixed-blood fur trader and guide. Beloved by Captain Clark, he would go on to frequent royal halls of Europe but return to live out his life on the American frontier.

Livingston, September, 2009

EDIT: The work is by Mary Michael of Bridger, Montana.

Montana

"If I could live away from the sea, I would live in Montana," John Steinbeck, "Travels with Charlie."

The Yellowstone near Livingston, September 2009.