How Much Should You Pay for a Small Chicken.

I was at dinner last night when I had a chance to chat with a friend.  I would say “old” friend, but at this point in our lives we tend to get a little sensitive about that term.  He is an avid outdoorsman who hunts, fishes, hikes through nature, and used to ride his unicycle around the base we worked at.  This is his story, if I err or embellish in its retelling the fault rests solely with me.

I had asked him how his hunting has been going and he related an episode during a recent Elk hunt.  It was bow season, and they were astride horses when a Grouse flushed and flew into a nearby tree.  He told his mates he could take that Grouse with his bow and arrow.  They, of course, doubted his ability so the challenge was laid. 

As he notched his arrow and as he began to draw the bow he slipped just a bit and the arrow flew into the brush near the ground.  He mentioned these were $20-dollar arrows with broad-head tips.

He notched a second arrow, took aim, and let fly.  It sailed true, but clipped a branch and struck the limb the Grouse was sitting on.  The bird took off but came to rest just a few feet away, apparently satisfied that William Tell was done.  We are now at the $40-dollar investment level.

But he was not done… Taking the third arrow, he took careful aim, considered John Wayne’s advice to Marian McCargo, who played Ann Langdon, in the 1969 movie Undefeated, “windage and elevation Mrs. Langdon, windage and elevation” and let loose a third shot.  This one sailed past the Grouse as well, but the bird fell to the ground.  He told his comrades he had shot the head clean off the bird, they laughed, until he dismounted and retrieved the bird, sans its head.

So, this is how a Grouse dinner comes to sixty (plus) dollars on an Elk Hunt.

Language

I find I am less willing to suffer fools than I was even a few years ago.  The last thing I saw as I left work last evening was a poorly written, fragmented, and incoherent e-mail from a software technician lambasting me for questioning the potential of a project he was working on.

Now if I had sent my concerns to him, or I had actually called into question his ability to write the routines that are suppose to make all the pieces work I think he may have had a reason to engage me in this issue.  But I didn’t, I wrote to the program manager, or the one who is supposed to function as the manager -- asking if we are going to continue spending money on a project that is ill defined and as a result unlikely to succeed.

This exchange, as minor as it was, got me to thinking.  We have become a nation of intolerant fools.  We form our opinions, build the walls of self-righteousness around them and hurl whatever weapons we have from the parapets.  We no longer talk and we no longer listen.  I wonder, as we lose our grasp on the fundamental English language structure and merge into some kind of hybrid of English, Electronic shorthand, "ghetto" and Spanish will we actually destroy one of the threads that has historically bound us as a nation?

The History of Mankind (as best as I can figure) (part 1)

Billions of years ago (5,775 years on the Jewish calendar) there was a garden, everyone in the garden was happy until someone named Fig Newton dropped an apple and there was a big bang when it hit the garden shed’s steel roof.

Eve found the apple, and eating it she immediately realized she was naked.  She ran looking for Adam to complain about not having any cloths to wear.  She then got her girl friends to take her to the mall and get the latest in fashion. This is known as original sin. 

When the bills started coming in Adam realized gardening was just not a profitable line of work and went into hunting.  He and Eve moved around a lot chasing dinosaurs and rabbits, but still found time for a lot of begetting.  So their family grew and each one of them set out to do their own begetting.

Then at some point someone named Fanny May talked the Pharaohs into a building boom where everyone was supposed to have their own pyramid, but this led to a collapse of the pyramid market and Moses was elected to lead the Israelites on a 40 year tour of the Sinai looking for the promised land.  This was the beginning of the Democratic Party and it continues to this day to seek out the promised land of milk and honey.

Then, due to the burning of carbon based fuels the sun was blotted out and we entered the dark ages where the feudal system was invented.  Some guy named Machiavelli taught everyone how to be subtle in politics by killing off the opposition and is credited with the development of the Republican Party.  The feudal system was carried to its ultimate state when the Hatfield’s and the McCoy’s had their feud. After that the McCain-Feinstein act limited the amount of people could spend on feuds so Marvel Comics invented  Super PAC man.

Meanwhile, while all this was going on some of the other children of Adam and Eve figured out that Science was evil or that at least scientists were not to be trusted.  This led to the creation of the department of homeland security who were also known in the scientific world as peers.  These guys or gals were the only ones who were allowed to question the scientific theology.  Eventually the department began to question the people who thought science was evil, and this led to profiling.  To this day members of the department of homeland security can only be viewed from the side and can't see their image in the mirror.

I Wonder What He'd Think?

As we remember Dr. King this Monday, I wonder what he would think of us as a Nation, as we approach the 46^th anniversary of his assassination in Memphis?  He struggled against the real apartheid that existed in America, and labored to achieve equality of treatment for people of color.  These conditions were obvious in the South, but existed with subtlety throughout the nation.

There are a few words from his speech, given on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, in 1963 that will be celebrated and remembered by all.  We will all remember the phrase “I have a dream…” where he shares his vision for a South where intolerance and injustice are long forgotten memories, and where our nation will truly live up to its creed that “all men are created equal.”

But his 1963 speech was much deeper than just the inspiration from those words.  As a minister he spoke to his audience, composed mostly of the blacks that had come to voice their dissent with the status quo, to fight for change and the rights of full citizenship.  I would like to take other, lessor remembered, paragraphs from this speech and ask you to think about them for a brief time.

“But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone.”

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.

We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: “For Whites Only.” We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until “justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

In these past 46 years the nation has continued to transform, sometimes for the better and other times not.  The 1960’s were a decade of change and transformation with the rise of the civil rights movement to national prominence, and the beginnings of an anti-war movement that would ultimately lead to the messy end of US involvement in the Vietnam conflict.  It was a time where my generation was coming of age, and the veterans of WWII were becoming the leaders of industry and the nation.

So here we are in 2014, as a new generation comes of age, and my generation is now being replaced as the leaders of industry and the nation.  Have we, his audience on that hot August day, helped him achieve his dream or have we like our fathers continued on the path of a nation divided?  It is easy to blame others; we do it all the time.  That worthless so-and-so in Congress, those darn Democrats, that arrogant President, the pig-headed Republicans, illegal aliens, welfare, the 1%, etc., the list is endless.  We have so many others we can blame we stop looking in the mirror at our choices and ourselves. 

We are America, a nation of individuals each with his or her own mind.  Society reflects who we are, and what we tolerate or do not tolerate.  Some would have us believe the problems we see come from big business, big government, the media, the rich, the poor, the religious right, the liberal left, the uneducated, the over-educated, the elite, the masses, or some other outside influence.   It seems to me, if we each have our own mind then it is up to us as individuals to decide the America we want. Do we continue to accept those who take polarizing positions to tear apart this nation or do we as individuals make a personal choice to stop the polarization?  Do we continue to encourage violence or do we advocate for humanity?  To we accuse those with whom we disagree to be racists or some other term, or do we consider their rights and opinions to be as important as our own?  Finally, do we make a simple choice as Dr. King asked of his audience to help make America free or do we continue to blame others?

Pole Dancing

There was a feature on CBS news this morning that showed a woman “Pole Dancing.”  The movements were graceful and acrobatic.  It was a very nice act, worthy of the Cirque troop that performed it.  Someone I know made a comment that it should be an Olympic event.

I remember when I was first introduced to this fine art form.  It involved women with very little clothing and folded dollar bills.  It has apparently come along way, but I say if we can evolve two greased up Greeks rolling around in the dirt into todays Greco-Roman wrestling why not have Pole Dancing?  It has a lot more of the word athletic in it than curling doesn't it?

Black Friday

Sometime last week, or perhaps the week before, someone passed along a blurb in the news about Target workers complaining the stores would be opening at Midnight, Thanksgiving night, and they would have to come in a couple of hours early to set up, giving up a part of their Thanksgiving.  Of course several of my FB friends complained about how this “greedy” company could ruin the holiday for their employees.  Some hoped for action to teach Target a lesson.  I think the action they hoped for was an employee boycott, the action they got was increased sales for Target.

As I pointed out to the person who accused Target of being a greedy corporation, they are only reacting to consumer demand and its consumer geed that is, in this case, the controlling factor.  If shoppers were to leave the stores vacant until 7 am on Friday the next year they would open at 7 am.

So what happened on Black Friday, or Black Thursday night and Friday?  I think this video is probably pretty typical.