Who needs a Manifesto?

OK, here's mine - I don't give a shit, and none of you - or the mysterious 'them' - are worth a bullet.

I just thought I'd put that out there in blogworld, since 'people clinging to their guns and religion' are all apparently terrorists or potential terrorists, always on edge, just waiting for the opportunity to snap and go on a wild and purposeful (to them) killing spree.

Thanks, I have enough to deal with here. The garden went in late, due to some late killing frosts and freezes, and I just picked my first zucchini today. Yay - grilled zucchini! Yummers. It has been hot Hot HOT here, but we got a raging thunderstorm last night and more are predicted all this week. The cattle are loving it, the horse too, even the chickens are happy. It is cooler in the 60 mph breezes and icy rain. Something that a lot of people don't know is that lightning enhances plant growth - it stirs up nitrogen in the air and makes plants 'go fool' rapidly absorbing it. I was a little unsure about putting the whole garden under heavy-duty garden cloth; but it works out REALLY well, almost no weeds and the plants really seem to love it.  The calves are getting big and the chicks are growing; we'll fill the freezer this fall.

So Jasper County hired another deputy administrator, George Hood, for $80K a year, and the job was never posted or published? I don't care. So this group is fighting that group in Beaufort County over taxes and schools? Nothing's changed. So the local and national media are still desperately clinging to their firm belief that a redistributionist marxist government "TAX THE RICH and give it to the lazy!" is the best choice for not only Beaufort, Chatham, and Jasper counties, but the US? Nope, still don't care.

So an idiot editor from the Savannah Morning News drives out to Montana for a week, never leaves the Interstate, and disrespects every single state he crosses as 'bland and boring'? Yay, Frank! Thank you, thank you! You always were a superficial moron, the type that thinks that Olive Garden and Applebee's are fine dining, believes that renting a cheesy motel room that looks like every other cheesy motel room in every other city or state is the only way to travel, and that the people who live in bland and boring places must also be bland and boring. Keep driving, Frank. Like the "Ugly Americans" who take the "39 countries in 19 Days!" bus tours of Europe, and then come back and tell their friends, "Europe ain't so hot", you are totally blind to everything but yourself. Don't tell your superficial readers that it's glorious and beautiful and amazing out here, if you ever get off the Interstate and explore and actually learn about the areas,  because then they might all come out here, panting over the latest "in" spot or things to do. Stay away, and keep your hordes of drooling mindless lemmings there with you. I don't want you, or the people to whom you grandly pontificate, to ever discover the glorious diversity and wildly intense beauty of the Western Plains.  "No vacancy" signs are permanently up for simpering self-satisfied morons, TYVM.

My guns are loaded and often cleaned and fired - not because I'm looking to kill anyone, but because occasionally a mountain lion strolls through, or a pack of coyotes thinks my cows look like dinner, or because snakes, raccoons, skunks, and badgers think my yard or pasture might be a smorgasbord. Deer and antelope actually do play out here, and the turkeys are huge - I might have a hankering for turkey even before Thanksgiving. But shoot people? Nah - not worth the waste of copper and black powder. 

You all go do whatever it is that you do, fight and argue incessantly over whomever and whatever is your assigned topic this week, worry about your jobs, your car payments, your house payments, whose screwing you this week or next month. Yawn. "Talk amongst yourselves. Here's a Topic - the mainstream media is neither mainstream nor an honest use of media. Discuss!" As for me, it's time to chop down the tops of the twenty-or-so, four-foot-high potato plants, so that their roots are ready to be dug up and screened next week for storage. I have a life, thanks so much. That's my Manifesto - I have a life, I love it, I don't care what self-inflicted trauma you're courting, leave me alone. River tubing tomorrow! YAY!

Happy Fourth of July!

So the news is saying that only heavily-political-red-states are celebrating the Fourth of July.
No shit, Sherlock.
Out here we have a town picnic potluck, where everyone brings a bowl or a casserole dish. Then everyone goes over to the ball field where the Fire Department puts on a fireworks display - after the American Legion Honor Guard marches on to the field, everyone says the Pledge of Allegiance, they play the Star Spangled Banner, and then the show begins. Yes, Mike is in the Legion, and I am in the Auxiliary - between his USAF service, my father's and son's USAF service, Mike's father's service in the Marine CORPS (not "Corpse") - we qualify for membership. Mike doesn't get to march and carry a flag; between his disability and trying to walk with a cane AND a tall flagpole, it just wouldn't be safe - for the flag.

Most folks carry guns on their hips out here. I know I've said it before - but it just tickles me pink that they do - and no one has been shot around here in 40 years. Lots of coyotes have bit the big one, of course; as well as snakes, skunks, badgers, and pretty much everything else that tries to kill or destroy folks' property. No one stands out in the middle of the street and fires off shotguns like they did in California; to shoot a gun without a purpose is a waste of ammo, is de classe. No one reaches for their guns at all, unless they plan on killing something. No play, no threats, here; just pure responsibility.

The rain has been pretty steadily coming down this June; VERY unusual weather. Yet yesterday and today it is hot, Hot, HOT - 94 deg and 50% humidity. The hills - which by now are usually a dried brown - are green and covered in flowers, every type, from cactus and yucca to wild roses and marigolds. The grass is THICK in the West pasture; hip-high in some spots, the cows can't graze it down fast enough. Although the West trough area is mowed flat as a lawn, since they graze going to and fro...

Thursday night we had a HUGE storm, 80+ mph winds, heavy rain - we got 1.5 inches in 5 minutes. But, hey, it's the Sandhills - everything drained away within an hour. But it took a LOT of tree branches down, so Friday we spent cleaning and sawing. Saturday we hopped on the 4-wheeler and rode the fence line... 3 hours of checking posts and staples and barbed-wire, securing that which was loose, pulling tight and tapping in. All secure. We checked the washouts and the blowouts; the former we pulled barbed wire up out of and re-secured, the latter - well, they are filling in nicely and getting covered in grass.

Margaret is getting better with 'her' calf. Thursday it was so hot (before the storm) that I had her tie him to the fence and wipe him down with cool water and a curry brush. Ostensibly it was to cool him down - but really it was to get them both more familiar and comfortable with each other. She brought her little sister, Elizabeth, over, who is also afraid of but drawn to the animals. I taught her to scrub Gracie the horse down too. Gracie is the best creature for little ones to learn on - she will stand stock-still for hours to be petted and brushed, and never startles or takes offense at young ones.  Elizabeth's head doesn't even top Gracie's withers, and Gracie is (around here) considered a very short horse, only 13 hands. I believe in starting them young, though... Both girls were raised in the 'big city' of Valentine, (pop 2600) and have never been near farm animals before. It is a good experience for them. Yesterday Margaret went into the corral by herself, fed the cattle and horse, and didn't even have to corral her calf - just walked up to him and put the halter on. They are getting better and better. Now if we could just convince Billie Jean that no one is going to hurt her baby! Oh, well - it'll come.

On a sad note, my son is in jail in Savannah for non-payment of child support. Did I see this coming? Of course. Out of all my children and fosters, he was the only one who got a 4-year, fully-paid scholarship to pursue his dream in music - and three months later dropped out to get married to "the love of his life". He was also the only one who refused to work a job for even a year, jobs were "too demeaning" and employers "didn't respect him" - and who told us that it was our responsibility to work to support him and his love. Um, no. So 13 years later he has two kids that he never sees, can't/won't support, and a lot of friends who enable him in his superiority complex. They'll pay his bills, applaud his every move, and "understand" him and his endless self-inflicted trials and tribulations, because his mean ol' Mommy and Daddy wouldn't and still won't. "I told you so" is pretty much useless - he's 31 and old enough to be responsible for himself and his own decisions.

Love him? Of course, he's my son. Enable him? Nope, I stopped doing that years ago, when he told me he was an adult, TYVM, and would make his own decisions; I knew nothing, he knew so much more than I. Most kids feel that way, of course, for awhile; that's their way of cutting their apron strings and becoming adults. The only thing that cuts me to the quick is that Mike sacrificed so much for him and his brother; he took them in, worked 2 + 3 jobs to support them, raised them, loved them, treated them as his own (and everyone thought that they WERE his own!) and even adopted them - because THEIR biological father, my ex, was too good, too smart to work or to pay child support.  So I feel badly for my son, but not badly enough to pretend that he isn't responsible for his own life path. To us, the fact that he fell for Obama's "Hope and Change!" pretty much said it all... he's always felt that he was owed a living, and that won't change now. And in today's society, he can find an endless supply of folks who will continue to enable him in that attitude, partly because they share it. It's as if they all reached a point in their maturity and growth where they could choose between taking responsibility for their actions, setting goals, achieving them, and working towards overcoming the daily and yearly challenges of life - or slamming into a brick wall, over and over, while screaming "Life isn't FAIR!"

No shit, Sherlock. Who told you that it was? Why are you griping about the cuts and bruises and broken bones you have gotten from that brick wall - and returning to slam into it, over and over?

So as hot and bright and busy and bustling as our days are out here now, as proud as we are of what our children and foster children have achieved and accomplished, as happy as we are that we are still able to help and teach children what's important and good and satisfying,  that little cloud always hovers over us - there's always one whom you cannot save, cannot talk to, cannot convince, cannot teach. No play, no threats, here or ever, anywhere; just pure responsibility. And so this Fourth of July, we are proud to live in a land that is free, where individual rights to choose are still wide open - but that goes hand in hand with taking responsibility for those choices, something the 'blue state' people will never get - and, don't want to.