09:44 – We’re already getting rain from the outer bands of Matthew. Half an inch (1.3 cm) overnight. Depending on Matthew’s track, we may get anything from another inch or so down to nothing. Lori just picked up the mail. Her daughter is home from UGA in Athens, Georgia to await developments. I suspect most kids from colleges near the coast whose family homes are inland and within driving distance are home for the weekend, many of them with friends or roommates whose family homes are too far away to make it practical to drive home.
We cleaned, sanitized, and dried 44 three-liter bottles, which we’ll be filling with bulk staples over the next few days. We used the double kitchen sink, with each side filled with six or seven gallons (~25 liters) of water, with dish washing detergent and half a cup (120 mL) of chlorine bleach added to each side. One unanticipated side effect was that our white porcelain sinks are now pure white. Scrubbing with abrasive detergent gets them reasonably clean, but chlorine bleach diluted one tablespoon (15 mL) to a gallon (4 L) of water gets them really clean. Our hands were also a lot cleaner than they’ve been in years. Having them in that solution pretty much constantly for an hour or two probably killed every microorganism that had been on them.
In the interest of getting to know more people in the community, I called the 4-H representative yesterday and asked if they needed volunteers. She fell all over herself encouraging me to volunteer, particularly once I told her about my background in science. The woman who actually coordinates volunteers was out of the office for a week-long training session, but she’s going to call me when she returns.
One good thing about 4H or FFA, you’ll meet the best kids around.
n
Yep, that’s what I was thinking. And I’ll probably also meet a fair number of their parents. I want to know *lots* of farmers, aka Field Scientists.
Incidentally, up here just about *all* the kids are good kids.
Up in Wiiiiisconsin as a lad, we had Future Scientists of America. I don’t know if that was a national thing or not. We had lots of fun with our science teachers after school.
/rant on/ To the best of my knowledge the 4H and FFA have not been invaded by the LGBTQ+++ whack-a-doos. Hopefully I am remembering correctly.
I have seen the LGBTQ+++ whack-a-doos destroy the Episcopal Church, Cub/Boy Scouts, Brownie/Girl Scouts and many other institutions of morals and values. This is the legacy of several decades of malfeasance by the Democrans and Republicrats, all of whom need to be locked up.
Hopefully the chaos caused by a Trump Presidency will turn this ship around. He needs to start with Executive Orders/Directives/Letter that repeal all past Executive Orders/Directives/Letter and declare all Amendments past the 10th null and void. He then needs to remove all the Supreme Court Justices and replace them with Constitutionalist laymen (eat shit you feminists), not other lawyers or judges.
Us Deplorables need to be ready to muster at a moments notice. Locked and loaded.
Many are called, but few are chosen. (Yes, it is Matthew 22:14)
@Dad is in a foul mood this morning. /rant off/
@MrAtoz said: “We had lots of fun with our science teachers after school.”
Today we seem to only hear of the science teachers who are having “fun” with students. No science involved.
biology
Yeah, our neighbor down the street in Winston was a biology teacher who was sentenced to 14 years in prison for his actions with a female student. He never even touched her. He was convicted and sentenced based on things he talked to her about. I said at the time that he should have been fired and never allowed to be in contact with students again, but any prison sentence was grossly excessive for what he was accused of doing.
Mr. Dad Cooks, your microaggressions are heading back to normal.
Keep up the good work!
Porcelain sinks in the kitchen? Never seen that. Every kitchen sink I’ve seen, without exception, in my 58 years has been stainless steel.
@Miles_Teg said: “Porcelain sinks in the kitchen? Never seen that. Every kitchen sink I’ve seen, without exception, in my 58 years has been stainless steel.
For most of my 66+ years I have seen way more porcelain sinks than stainless steel. Good quality stainless steel (what you would want) used to be very expensive. Today most stainless steel is cheap and of poor quality. Porcelain sinks are making a resurgence in today’s up scale homes, you know, the ones with fancy kitchens where on the microwave is occasionally used. Porcelain sinks do take proper care, use the wrong abrasive cleaner and you remove the top seal and have problems from then on.
/@Dad’s farmer hat on/ For you preppers who are going “whole hog” here is some general advice for you:
http://countrysidenetwork.com/daily/livestock/pigs/5-hog-breeds-for-the-backyard-homesteader/
Modern mass market bred pigs are not what you want for your prepper homestead. You want to find heritage breeders that have maintained the breeds original characteristics (fat/lard, flavor, and hardiness). Today’s mass market bred Hampshire/Berkshire/Yorkshire are corruptions of once great breeds and really do not deserve to carry the breed name IMHO. Once you have had real old fashion pork you will want no other.
Final note, pigs are smart so you will have a challenge keeping them enclosed. /@Dad’s farmer hat off/
Me, too, until this house. The main advantage of SS is that it doesn’t show the scum film that’s always present on any sink.
The Survivalist Blog has a good article today on a topic that has been discussed here before:
http://www.thesurvivalistblog.net/ensuring-your-survival-through-solid-neighborhood-outreach/
Mom’s house was built in 1957 with a porcelain double sink. Twenty five years ago they had it striped to the walls and redone. She put the sink back in albeit with new hardware. Everything else was new. It still looks good.
My wife and I redid our counter tops about the same time. House built in 1964 and we replaced the double ss sink with a ss with one large sink and a small one. We never use the small one just keep a small dish strainer in it for hand washed items. I prefer the large sink over the smaller double ones.
“Modern mass market bred pigs are not what you want for your prepper homestead.”
Just consider that mass market boar are not even capable of copulating successfully without human help, and you’ll be going for the heirloom breeds. A friend of mine did a four-week stint in a piggery while he was a vet student, during which his task was to assist several stud boar in their duties. Decades later he still won’t touch a pork sausage.
Geez. These stupid Libturdian and their climate change “the science is settled” “the science is clear” is destroying the world thanks to mankind. Can we just line them up and machinegun them all? Fucking pandering to the stupid with “we’ll save you, just give us all your votes and money”. Geez.
“Teamsters, unions question Dakota Access reconsideration”
http://www.ogj.com/articles/2016/10/teamsters-unions-question-dakota-access-reconsideration.html
“The Obama administration’s decision to withdraw and reconsider permits it issued for the proposed Dakota Access crude oil pipeline raises serious questions about the future of building US systems and the livelihoods of the project’s construction workers, general presidents of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and four other labor unions said.”
Even the Teamsters are complaining about the Dumbocrats. I do not know why the Dumbocrats even have a chance of winning any election.
What is Obola gonna do, get the Teamsters jobs licking envelopes ?
“Trump Warns Immigrants Are Pouring Into the U.S. to Vote”
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-warns-immigrants-pouring-u-160849652.html
“”Immigrants are coming over the U.S.-Mexico border to vote in the American election, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said Friday.”
““They’re letting people pour into the country so they can go and vote,” Trump said at a roundtable meeting at Trump Tower in New York with members of the National Border Patrol Council. “You hear a thing like that and it’s a disgrace.””
Kalifornia is gone. Texas is next and that will ensure that the Dumbocrats win forever.
“Can we just line them up and machinegun them all?”
It may eventually come to that if they cannot be re-educated, but even that may not “take,” as their brains have essentially been “rewired” and we can’t even reason with them anymore.
Back yesterday from unpleasant and uncomfortable MRI, though the VA techs did their best to make it less so; flat on my back doesn’t work, and my right leg was on fire throughout. I was tempted to have them pull me out several times but I cowboy’ed up and managed to get through it. So they have that now, and the new x-rays. Hope to find out this next week what the next step is.
Wife off to Denver tomorrow for a week, then SF East Bay to visit grandkids again, and then back to Hartford, CT for a gig and then the wunnerful Capital District down in the Vampire State for a third straight gig, after which she drives G-Grandma to the Montreal airport so she can fly out to see the grandkids for a month. Then we have to pick her up again, and maybe she’ll stay through the holidays, after which she’ll insist on going down to Floriduh for several months, followed again by the summer months in northern NB. She’s 88. And between her travels, wife’s travels, and the international gallivanting by Princess, it’s truly amazing. I rarely leave the village/town/county here, and my trips to the Big City mean Burlap, pop. 50k, maybe once or twice a week, and I hate doing even that.
We’re told a lot of vets tend to “isolate,” and I find myself still doing that decades later. Happy to be at home and not much interest in going anywhere else, although we took some side roads back from the VA Med Center yesterday afternoon and riding as a passenger I got to see the awesome foliage near peak on the way back up here. Truly amazing. Found nowhere else in the world. Also lotsa outta-state plates.
and then back to Hartford, CT for a gig and then the wunnerful Capital District down in the Vampire State for
We were just there. worked for Travelers insurance. They tooks to Salute! downtown and I had the oven roasted cod. Pretty good!
In our kitchen, we have a double-sided stainless steel sink with typical kitchen hardware, plus a separate sink, much lower, with a faucet that puts out water like a garden hose (no aerator or flow-limiter).
That separate sink gets used a lot: If you want to fill a pot or a watering can, for example. The height is handy, for washing large objects that would be awkward with the normal sink.
“We’re told a lot of vets tend to “isolate,””
You know, ever since the first time I heard the initialism PTSD, I’ve wondered if there’s anything to be done about it. Fixing physical issues, sure, but we’re all formed by our experiences, good or bad, and I’m not sure that anything can “fix” what you guys who were combat troops experienced.
I’m a solitary, suspicious cuss myself, and that’s without ever having people try to kill me, watching friends get blown up, etc. etc. If I’d had those experiences, I’d probably be living as a hermit right now, shooting anyone who came onto my property.
I’d guess that the purpose of sitting around talking with others who’ve had the same experiences is intended to let everyone know that they’re not alone, but I really wonder if ultimately that does any good. I think the real solution to PTSD is to stop putting our young people into combat, period.
I think the real solution to PTSD is to stop putting our young people into combat, period.
+1,000,000,000,000
Presidents need to stop this “in interest of national security” nonsense. Some tinhorn dictator a President doesn’t like? Launch the 82d Airborne. Geez. We cause more problems than we solve.
Why place troops into a meat grinder. We have plenty of tech to blow away any threat. Someone just needs the cajones to show we mean it. But it should be a real threat, not an ego trip for our own tin-horn. Real threats have a popular backing, anything else will bring scorn from both within and out.
“…I had the oven roasted cod. Pretty good!”
I’m guessing it was lightly breaded and seasoned fillets roasted for all of ten or fifteen minutes and presented with a sprig of parsley and slice of lemon. Maybe some kind of light sauce.
“I’d guess that the purpose of sitting around talking with others who’ve had the same experiences is intended to let everyone know that they’re not alone, but I really wonder if ultimately that does any good. I think the real solution to PTSD is to stop putting our young people into combat, period.”
Yeah, it helps to know we’re not alone and these other guys are pretty much the only ones we can talk to about certain things, but most of the time those certain things are left unsaid and assumed, and we spend the vast bulk of our time talking about current problems and issues we’re having. Like VA paperwork, can’t pay our bills, family problems, suicidal thoughts, substance abuse, house and vehicle issues, etc., but we’ve had to gently shut down some chat recently when it began to veer into politics and religion, amusingly enough. Guys get upset and angry, and one dude got up and left.
Digression: the chat about religion is either one of our peer support specialists (former door gunner like me) yakking about his visits to Japan and Buddhist stuff, etc., which he knows doesn’t float our boats, or it’s one of the guys who got sucked into fundie Prod stuff and they start rapping about how this is the Last Days and Jesus saves. (He does save but their POV is a little skewed.)
The political stuff is, as might be imagined, about the current “campaign,” and stuff like guns, immigration, musloids (“dune coons” according to the Middle East vets), etc. and this gets heated fast.
I tend to STFU unless I can provide humor to defuse stuff, but I don’t get into my own beliefs which would blow their minds a bit, religious and political. (to the right of Pat Buchanan and just about in-sync with Ann Barnhardt.)
As RBT says, and I have said many, many times, we have to stop putting our kids into combat situations, esp. in wars that bode no one any good. Self-defense is one thing; economic adventurism and jingoism is another. So I say this sometimes at the group meetings and get crickets. They don’t like having their own service somehow invalidated or dissed, which I’m not doing, but the fact remains that in almost all cases, we made a mistake signing up. So let’s tell the next generation of kids not to sign up, let’s see ’em run a war with no troops.
“We cause more problems than we solve.”
Exactly. This is known as “blowback.” Repeatedly over the past century.
“We have plenty of tech to blow away any threat.”
Pretty much. Do we all remember the first Gulf War? We had shut down the Iraqi command-and-control infrastructure totally and made them dead, dumb and blind. The Russians watched this in real time and knew then the game was up; they did not have that capability then. Now imagine how the tech has progressed since then, nearly thirty years ago.
We’ll always need strike teams of stone killers to murder specific enemy targets somewhere at a minute’s notice, but I’d like to see us really ramp up our cyber-war, robots and space war capabilities.
We should try to engage other countries on a friendly basis, a level economic and financial playing field, and jaw-jaw rather than waw-waw. If somebody fucks with us, like, say, they did on 9/11, we obliterate them immediately. Most of those scumbags came from Saudi Arabia, which to this day finances and promotes Wahabi terrorism and jihad worldwide. I would have blasted Mecca and Medina to Kingdom Come and good riddance to a bunch of jumped-up dune coons and slimy fucking pigs.
Meanwhile keep droning the ringleaders around the world and targeting THEIR families and friends. Send in the Seals and Delta teams when appropriate and SPARINGLY. With regard to the musloid black flags? OK, we’ll go black flag, too.
I was going to suggest our host do something with amateur radio, if only to listen to the local 2 meter repeater to find out more about the local community. Sadly, it appears Sparta used to have one local repeater which is offline indefinitely.
Good suggestion, Mr. Dave; I wonder if there is another repeater close by down there…
I need to ramp up my license studies and get involved with the local ham club up here, as well; trying to find the time and juggling a bunch of stuff, which won’t improve if I end up taking a job again full-time.
We all gotta get more involved with our neighbors, like or love them or not.
“As RBT says, and I have said many, many times, we have to stop putting our kids into combat situations”
As I wrote soon after 9/11, “Never send a man where you can send a warhead”.
I’ll set up a 2-meter repeater myself if it turns out to be needed.
“I’ll set up a 2-meter repeater myself if it turns out to be needed.”
I’ve thought of doing that myself here, so as to have a repeater between the Saint Albans ham club’s tower on the ridge overlooking the “city,” (I’m four miles west of that) and another repeater across the lake over in the Vampire State. A fly in the ointment is our frequent very strong winds from across the bay, all year long.
I’m guessing it was lightly breaded and seasoned fillets roasted for all of ten or fifteen minutes and presented with a sprig of parsley and slice of lemon. Maybe some kind of light sauce.
Nope. Some kind of seasoning, roasted well, on a large bed of rice pilaf with tons of leaks in it. No inedible sprigs. Very tasty. It was a special of the week, so not on the regular menu.
Well, my boy, you hit the jackpot! My description would seem to fit most of the times I’ve seen it on menus and served; sometimes no breading or crumb coating. Old farts would order it thusly: “I’ll have the scrod and coffee.” Standard on the menus back in the day. Fish usually also works well cooking in the microwave, like vegetables and rice, but little else does, other than for re-heating.
Got the multiple fem travel plans and arrangements up here for the next month and it boggles my mind to the extent of thinking it all needs a database or spreadsheet to keep track of. Wife just said “Well, you never wanna go anywhere, anyway,” and she was right.
With repeaters in hilly areas, location really matters.
We’re on top of the mountain.
I’ve picked up a transmission from a two meter repeater 20 miles away with a handheld radio. Which probably has to do with the repeater being on a 500 foot tall tower.
Good on ya, but be prepared to be required to be fingerprinted and get a background check done.
I’ve withdrawn offers to tutor, drive kids on a field trip, and so on because background checks were required. Sometimes they would even be at my expense. Mmmmnope, not gonna happen.
I will from time to time offer up some of my limited free time and extremely limited goodwill for the benefit of others, but will put a stop to that immediately upon anyone giving me so much as a suspicious look. (That exact scenario happened about ten years ago. I was tutoring an immigrant girl, about 12 years old, in English and NYS history, and her grades improved to passing, but I said to hell with it after a few weeks when her mother started glaring at me the entire time … while the girl and I were sitting in plain sight in a room with a couple dozen other people. I told the kid why I wasn’t going to help her anymore, which apparently led to a lot of screaming between mother and daughter, as well as a grade drop of more than 10 poinst.)
Bonus points for knowing and using the correct noun.
Agreed. If the politicians and defense contractors want a war, let them haul their flabby asses to the front line.
Ditto, on the rare occasion that I talk with combat vets about military stuff. For one thing, I can’t legally talk about most of my experience. Mostly, though, it’s that my experience is totally different than typical combat experience. Driving in under cover, staying on location a day or a week, and then driving out or getting a helicopter are nothing like being on location for a year and having to worry about ambushes every time you go out and watching a steady trickle of your comrades getting killed or injured. It’s a little bit dangerous to have a couple dozen amateurs shooting bullets and RPGs vaguely in your direction, but even that lasted just a few minutes at a pop.
There are a few things I can share with most combat vets, but they’re things like going up and making sure the dead guy’s dead, or the smell of a pile of week-dead corpses, or the hatred that filled me when we walked into a town that had been sacked by a mob from the other side of the internal conflict, or the fury that filled me when a small group of women and children expected to be raped and killed because that’s what they’d been told American soldiers do. Or, for that matter, what I felt when I learned that slavery was an ongoing operation all along northern Africa. Believe it or not, I haven’t found any vets who want to sit down and talk about these things.
Dammit, now I’m all hungry. All I have are some leftover broiled pork ribs. Edible enough, but didn’t come out conspicuously well.
Good on ya, but be prepared to be required to be fingerprinted and get a background check done.
And supply your social security number for their records where any minimum wage intern can throw it around the place.
I’ll just tell them I’m a musloid refugee. They don’t have to put up with that crap.
[snip] or the smell of a pile of week-dead corpses [snip]
My dad, on more than one occasion, mentioned the odors wafting from a tank that had been hit with a white phosphorous round. He spent about 18 months under fire in Korea, most of it using a recoilless rifle.
“Believe it or not, I haven’t found any vets who want to sit down and talk about these things.”
It’s rare for stuff like this to come up in our group, actually. They’ll yak about fishing for the whole 90 minutes, or our various medical and physical ailments, the VA bureaucracy, family problems, etc., etc. Once in a blue moon someone will talk about their combat experiences. Loss of speech and weeping usually ensue, so of course it’s EMBARRASSING, and avoided. I’ve choked up myself, and let me hasten to mention that this sort of thing also happens with regular folks who’ve lost someone or been in a traumatic situation here at home. But we have tons of strategies for avoiding talking about all this chit, believe me.
Which is what a lot of World War II and Korean War veterans did when they got home. Don’t talk about it with the family, just keep it all bottled up inside. For DECADES. That can’t possibly cause any damage, can it?? So often it got acted out in episodes of rage, substance abuse and violence, striking out at those closest to us.
Or guys come back and suddenly become extremely busy, all hours of the day, seven days a week, with jobs, careers, home projects, hobbies, sports, you-name-it, all waking hours utterly consumed with activity, again for DECADES. Don’t have to think about chit, let alone talk about it. The activity becomes an addiction, like the booze or the dope. We have at least one guy in the group right now who is busy as a bee all the time with all kinds of chit; always on the move doing stuff.
Or classic chit like what I did; get out and join the cops. Keep that adrenaline rush coming. Other guys went to the fire departments. Eventually, though, the rush wears off and gets old and you get sucked into the same old routine, night after night; wrap up yet another shift dealing with the dregs and flotsam and jetsam of society, 90% of your contacts with other people being negative, including those of your own department brass, and go out with the boys and slam down gallons of booze at the cop bar.
I got out thirty years ago but kept up the booze habit anyway, which was a pretty bad mistake, as it turns out. And didn’t get any help from anybody concerning the PTSD and substance abuse and violent rage until 2009. And lucky to have it, too. Lots of other guys won’t come in; don’t trust ANYBODY, least of all the government. And we continue losing 22 a day to suicide.
Oog. That’s me. Almost everything I do has some purpose and most of it produces something, but the fact is that I don’t do “idle”.
Oog again. Hunting muggers does some good for the community and arguably for the species, but even I have to admit it’s not a normal hobby.
I’ve managed to miss that one, at least. Growing up surrounded by alcoholics is good for something, surprisingly enough. But still…
Thanks heaps for the existential angst, Dave.
“Thanks heaps for the existential angst, Dave.”
Just another little service I like to provide here. No es nada.
“Trump recorded having extremely lewd conversation about women in 2005”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-recorded-having-extremely-lewd-conversation-about-women-in-2005/2016/10/07/3b9ce776-8cb4-11e6-bf8a-3d26847eeed4_story.html
I don’t understand the issue here. Didn’t Hillary already say that Trump and his supporters are deplorable ?
This does not change my mind to vote for Trump in the slightest. And I am Christian fundamentalist. I am not looking for a saint to lead us, just someone with a little common sense. Hillary has no common sense, she is a barking dog.
Notice how the fuckers keep dredging up ancient chit from Trump but never mention HER ancient chit? She’s been consistently up to her gob in shit for DECADES, pretty much since high skool, according to one of our esteemed correspondents right HERE. But she gets a totally free ride throughout; meanwhile I looked at a couple of our local commie rags today and they’re chock-full of visceral hate and loathing, not only for Trump himself, but his supporters and anyone who might vote for him.
Now, of course, the fems will see this latest story and go nuts over it, “SEE, what a PIG he is!!!” “HOW can YOU vote for this pig???”
Etc.
Now, of course, the fems will see this latest story and go nuts over it, “SEE, what a PIG he is!!!” “HOW can YOU vote for this pig???”
Nobody knows which lever you pull or which chad you punch in the voting booth. Say one thing and do another. Or if you don’t care where you sleep, tell the truth.
Does Princess have any large knives ?
Low bands alive tonight….
SWDX FTW!
“Nobody knows which lever you pull or which chad you punch in the voting booth.”
Thus the big push for electronic and online voting, that way they’ll mos def know. And with tiny cameras, they may know now, anyway.
“Or if you don’t care where you sleep, tell the truth.”
Yup. And for the past two weeks I’ve been sleeping in the recliner downstairs in the living room; can’t lie flat anymore. It takes me a bit longer to fall asleep but once there, I’m gone.
“Does Princess have any large knives ?”
Not that I know of, but a very selective memory.
“Low bands alive tonight….”
Another thing I have to step up here; listening. A little re-organization of the office and the radios and antennas is in order. Tx for the reminder.
Also finally got tired of the scroll button on the browser windows being the same color (white) as its background, and installed a nifty color-changing app for Firefox; now I can see the damn thing.
Notice how the fuckers keep dredging up ancient chit from Trump but never mention HER ancient chit?
This. One mention of Cankles or Larry’s past and you are ostracized. The MSM is so far up her ass they don’t need her medical records. I feel all we can hope for is for her to collapse. Maybe there is something to that leaky heart valve.
I continue towork on my plan of covert obfuscation with the fems here. Shhh.
I won’t count on it, my dad’s leaky valve hasn’t done him in and it’s been a while.
Maybe she needs some of that polonium soup?
n
“Maybe she needs some of that polonium soup?”
Oh, oh, oh…from your lips to some free-lance agent’s ears!
“I continue towork on my plan of covert obfuscation with the fems here. Shhh.”
Wife just mentioned again about getting over to the town hall to make sure she’s registered to vote in this precinct, but seeing how it’s Friday night….TOO LATE!!!
Because she’ll be gone for two weeks, only home for 12 hours on a weekend, and then gone again for a week. There’s still that first week of November when I think she’ll be home, but she might forget by then.
“Does Princess have any large knives ?”
Does she carry?
Background checks for working with kids? If our host is lucky, this insanity won’t have infected his rural area just yet.
I do remember that, though. Back, geez, 30 years ago, living near Boston. My boss had a daughter who was on a soccer team. They were absolutely desperate for coaches. I’d played soccer, if not particularly well, and I like working with kids.
“Single guy, wants to work with pre-teen girls, NOOOOOOOOOO”. I didn’t even get to talk to anyone, just categorically rejected. What idiots think that every male is a child molester? It’s not like I was some random stranger – my boss and I got along really well, I knew his family, etc..
As SteveF puts it: “I will from time to time offer up some of my limited free time and extremely limited goodwill for the benefit of others, but will put a stop to that immediately upon anyone giving me so much as a suspicious look.”
Right on the money.
– – – – –
On the latest Trump tapes, I like Scott Adams’ comment: If the Clinton camp is going to start talking about misogyny and marital fidelity, they’ve already lost.
I think it’s quite sensible to be suspicious of guys.
Married. Single. Young. Old. Straight. Gay. Religious. Non-religious.
One of the reasons I’ve done my best to avoid working with kids is that I don’t want to have to be mortally offended if someone expressed suspicion of me.
@Miles: seriously? Or are you being sarcastic?
Sure, there are slimeballs in the world, but you can’t play Howard Hughes and lock yourself and your family into a hotel room. Being suspicious of all guys who want to work with kids is just nuts. The paranoia it engenders likely does more overall harm than it prevents.
I’d also point out that women can be abusive. As an example: I’ve probably mentioned that my older son works in a female-dominated area (child care, to be specific). At one point during his professional schooling in his mid-teens (at a school 99% female), we got a call to come in and talk with the school administration.
All women, of course. One of the teachers had been trying to psychoanalyze him, basically cornering him and looking for psychological scabs to pick at. This had apparently been going on for months. His reaction was to withdraw as much as possible. Outside of class, he would basically hide, by taking a book and going to read in some obscure corner, doing his best to avoid her.
Conclusion of the teacher, and the harpy who was head-of-school at the time: He’s a seething pit of violence waiting to erupt! He’s a danger to kids!
What a load of crap. It was all I could do not to become an immediate danger to harpies. WTF was this teacher doing, playing amateur psychiatrist? Why should the natural reaction – trying to avoid her – be any sort of danger signal? The one thing that was clear, was that none of these women understood anything at all about teenage boys. I restrained myself, and left the retaliation to my wife, only because I figured I would only confirm their obvious preconceptions about men.
Long story, and that turned out to be only part of it. The point is: What that teacher subjected my son to was classic abuse by a woman. A kind of abuse that doesn’t make the headlines, but at least as damaging as more physical abuse.
Maybe we shouldn’t let women work with boys…
Thoughts:
“I do remember that, though. Back, geez, 30 years ago, living near Boston.”
Around the time of a massive alleged child abuse fraud that put several innocent people in jail for years, thanks to zealous out-of-control prosecutors and a total witch-hunt atmosphere (Maffachufetts has a lot of experience with witch-hunting.)
“Maybe we shouldn’t let women work with boys…”
There has been a de facto war on boys in the skool systems and universities for decades now. They’re usually run by commie matriarchies and life as a boy or young man in those environments is fraught with discomfort and hassles. Well-documented, not least by Professor Christina Hoff Sommers, who I knew briefly around 30 years ago.
“If the Clinton camp is going to start talking about misogyny and marital fidelity, they’ve already lost.”
A Scott Adams sound bite. In reality, as we have discussed here recently, she can get away with murder, literally, but he gets called on every little thing, going back decades.
“Does she (Princess) carry?”
Yeah, she carries a Celtic harp. Wait, you mean a FIREARM??? Good one. When she discovered a while back that I have a shotgun within reach of the bed in the master bedroom she said “That’s sick!”
Yeah, she carries a Celtic harp. Wait, you mean a FIREARM??? Good one. When she discovered a while back that I have a shotgun within reach of the bed in the master bedroom she said “That’s sick!”
Bet you haven’t told her that it’s loaded, yet. Then she would *know* that you are sick 😉
Back before I lost them in the lake, all my guns were always loaded and, if applicable, with a round chambered. Cocked and locked.
I remember decades ago someone commenting that no one had ever been shot accidentally with a loaded gun.
I believe I’ve made it clear here over the years that all firearms are to be treated as though they ARE loaded, period.
The shotguns are loaded with the safeties off and no rounds in the chambers. Everything else has a round in the chamber.
Back before I lost all our shotguns in the lake, all of them were loaded with buckshot, round chambered, safety on.
Blatantly false on the face of it. Probably the statement could be reworded to be correct yet still contrast with “unloaded gun”.
No, by definition if someone is shot with a loaded gun it’s intentional. It’s only if someone is shot with an unloaded gun that it can be accidental. Of course, the gun’s status is what’s perceived rather than its actual condition.
I’ve witnessed numerous unintentional discharges, nearly all of them because the operator didn’t understand the difference between rounds in the magazine and a round in the chamber.
It’s the Glock decocking sequence for the careless-
Rack the slide, drop the mag, pull the trigger….
the aphorism above is like the observation that the most dangerous place in America is obviously ‘standing on a corner, minding my own business’, since that’s the description most ‘urban’ gunshot and assault victims give of their circumstances……
nick
I’ve seen firearms go off when dropped or banged. Sometimes even when the safety was on. No one was shot this way in my presence, but that was nothing but luck.
I’ve seen M-60s get hot enough to continue shooting even when the finger’s off the trigger. I’m not sure that would count under the “accidentally shot” criterion as the gunner intended to let off the first few rounds. (FWIW, the one time it happened to me, I grabbed the belt of rounds and twisted it over hard so it jammed when the twist got to the intake.) (Also, FWIW, the M-60 is a piece of crap and I don’t like it at all, but I was really really good with it, back when. Surprisingly so, since I was never more than OK with a rifle.)
Yeah, they took the excellent MG-42 and turned it into the crappy M-60.
Brad wrote:
“@Miles: seriously? Or are you being sarcastic?”
100% serious.
Of course I don’t suspect everyone but it would be unconscionable to give adults (especially guys) close contact with kids without doing some checking. Here in Oz we have a long running inquiry, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_into_Institutional_Responses_to_Child_Sexual_Abuse, that has uncovered a lot of vile abuse going back 50+ years. Simply put, some people can’t be trusted. The Catholic church has been one of the worst offenders, but Baptists, the Salvation Army, Anglicans and secular authorities have been either complicit or turned a blind eye to some really bad stuff.
On that basis I think that people shouldn’t be taken at face value but should have to prove their bona fides. In the Seventies I used to be involved with kids at my church without any sort of background check, nowadays I’d run for my life.
“…Also, FWIW, the M-60 is a piece of crap and I don’t like it at all…”
Did youse guys have current models or were y’all still using the stuff we had back in the late 60s and early 70s? As in, all beat to shit and poorly maintained.
I qualified as Expert with revolver, M16 and M60, but that was at stationary paper targets during daylight. I’d like to try that now under modern conditions at some point. In the case of the M60, it was also at yellow 55-gallon drums at very long distances, I forget the specifics, but get that ol’ T&E working right and it can be done.
I’ve seen firearms go off when dropped or banged.
Had that happen to me in youth. A .22 pistol, safety on, have no idea the make or model, was dropped by me onto a concrete surface, while I was shooting pigeons in the barn. Weapon discharged, bullet going somewhere unknown but for certain it did not impact my person. It did however cause a minor discharge of the bowels which did impact my person.
In Korea, 1985-6, in an infantry battalion in artillery range of the DMZ, we had a mixture of new and beat to crap. Other places I was stationed we had garbage. The irregular stuff I did was all with new, top-line weapons. (Even though I didn’t have to carry an M-60, I still got loaded down with lots of heavy stuff, including a machine gun, because I was the New Guy and not part of the team an there was some hazing and there was also some evaluation going on.)
In Korea, 1985-6, in an infantry battalion in artillery range of the DMZ
I knew I was taking friendly fire…
You weren’t the only one. I’ve mentioned coming under artillery fire before, but may not have mentioned that it was in Korea. And I was shot at by one of the (Korean civilian) perimeter guards when I did a nighttime inspection. (I’m certain, though I never could prove, that he’d been sleeping on the job and woke up when I repeatedly yelled and he was startled and he let off the shotgun. Whether he was aiming toward the voice or into the air was not especially relevant to me. After that night I brought a rifle-armed guard on my inspections.)
I’ve seen firearms go off when dropped or banged. Sometimes even when the safety was on.
A friend of my mom’s was shot in a restaurant by a CCW permit holder. He had a derringer in his jacket pocket that he “forgot” about and when he took his jacket off the derringer hit the floor, discharged, and hit the friend. She was at an adjacent table. Nearly died as the round went in her lower back and rattled around in her intestines.