Get Out in the Field and Break your Gun

Drove out in the scorching, parched, doveless countryside for the customary Thursday morning ride and shoot; rode JB about for a little while but the ground is full of deep and treacherous cracks, which curtails things a bit. Still, it keeps the hand in.

Before plinking about I took the old JC Higgins 103.13 .22 (essentially a Marlin 81 - I think) down for a clean. Very important; if you don't clean your firearms they don't work, even if they're .22s. Trust me. So I cleaned the thing and it broke anyway, because a pin fell out of the trigger mechanism onto the ground. It probably fell down a crack.

Nothing daunted, I pulled out the handy "Leatherman Wave" multitool and a piece of fencing wire -- always carry both in your EDC (every day carry) loadout. That's my advice. Tools in hand I fashioned a new pin, which seemed to do the trick.

Except that it didn't because working the action simply decocked the rifle, rendering the thing useless. 10 out of 10 for in the field gunsmith ingenuity, 0 out of 10 for a working solution. Annoying.

Still, the JC Higgins is ancient, its had many thousands of rounds through it and perhaps the time has come to bite the proverbial bullet and get a new .22 for plinking and shooting the odd rabbit. The broken rifle can be fixed at leisure but in the meanwhile I think I will get an...

Entirely predictable Ruger 10/22 -- birch stock, iron sights (I like the bead front sight) semi-auto, all for the grand price of $200. Thank you, Walmart, for helping me out.

Don't lose bits of your gun down gaping cracks in the earth.

Happy Michaelmas.

LSP

King of Terrors

When not riding, shooting and going about the business of several country missions, I've been sorting through some of my father's writing, including an unpublished book on Canon Henry Scott Holland.

HSH became Dean of St. Paul's in the late nineteenth century and was a leading light in the Lux Mundi school of the 2nd Oxford Movement. He was a great priest, not least in his work for the poor.

Lytellton had this to say about him, in The Mind and Character of Henry Scott Holland:

"In writing a tentative estimate of a great personality there is a danger of profanity, the attempt to probe what is intended to be a mystery. How can anyone dare to discriminate between any natural character and that which grows from a man being 'born anew': or to indicate the nature of the hidden struggle against temptation; how all fleshly desires are more and more turned into stepping stones to higher things; how the single heart takes the place of the perverse and distempered will; how the craving for approval even of good men 'melts like wax' before the light of the Divine Countenance, as it is lifted up before the wondering eyes; what, in short, is the nature of the self-conquest which is needed if the Holy Spirit is to achieve the miracle of transformation?"

HSH is mostly forgotten now, perhaps that will change. The name of the upcoming book is The King of Terrors, the Theology of Henry Scott Holland.

God bless,

LSP

Market Meltdown - Anglican Church of Canada Launches Stimulus

As investors fled today's market, dumping everything from equities to gold, ACoC, the small-footprint Canadian Anglican franchise, launched its own brand of stimulus - handing out free tokens in Toronto.

Led by top ACoC official, Bishop Mark MacDonald, clergypersons gave away gratis invites to commuters on the metro area GO Train, asking them to "go back to church." 

Dressed in full bishop's regalia, including a "button blanket" depicting an eagle, a wolf, a raven and a killer whale, MacDonald acknowledges he shocked some passengers. "People aren't used to seeing somebody dressed like that, especially at seven o'clock in the morning," said MacDonald in a statement to press.

According to Bishop Patrick Yu, who handed out tokens at Agincourt GO station, ACoC's giveaway gambit might not result in more people going to church. "The success isn't how many people come," said Yu to the Toronto diocesan website, "it's how many people do the inviting."

Others are less optimistic. "Is this Halloween?" remarked one commuter.

NASA scientists predict that ACoC, or similar space debris will fall to earth on Friday, but that's one chance in thousands. "We take in about 450,000 observations per day, and that helps us track the 22,000 space objects that we track currently. The small Anglican Church of Canada is one of them," said Major Michael Duncan at the Defense Department.

Experts are unsure as to whether ACoC's efforts to boost value in time for Back to Church Sunday will coincide with the tiny ecclesial body's possible re-entry into earth atmosphere.

ACoC leader, Fred Hiltz, was unavailable for comment.

Cheers,

LSP

Feast of St. Matthew

It's the Feast of St. Matthew today and after Mass we discussed that bit in the Bible which goes, "Verily I say unto you, that the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you." (Matt. 21.31)

When I was younger this used to puzzle me. I thought the "publicans" were pub landlords, you see, and where's the evil in that? Well, some might be, but it doesn't necessarily go with the territory. Then I learned that the term means tax collector - and all became clear.

St. Matthew is the patron saint of bankers.

I should imagine he's working overtime.

God bless,

LSP

Berdyaev Sunday

It's all very well to post dubiously genuine photos of Vladimir "Lord of Awesomness" Putin riding sharks and manning about but it is, I admit, frivolous.

So here's some 1917 vintage Berdyaev to get things back on track.

The soul of the Russian people will be tempered within a more austere morality. Russia has its own mission, distinct from the mission of Germany, France and England. But the fulfilling of this mission lies through culture, through a duty of obedience to the burdens of civilisation. We have mistaken our backwardness for a point of excellence, as a sign of our higher calling and our greatness. But the terrible fact is that the human person for us is drowning in a primitive collectivism, and this is nowise a point of excellence, nor a sign of our greatness. It makes totally no difference, whether this all-engulfing collectivism be that of the "Black Hundreds" or of the "Bolsheviks". The Russian land lives under the power of a pagan khlysty-like element. In this element gets submerged every face, it is incompatible with personal worthiness and personal responsibility. This demonic element can pull forth from its bosom no true face, save only the likes of Rasputin and Lenin. The Russian "Bolshevik Revolution" is a dreadful worldwide reactionary phenomenon, just as reactionary in its spirit, as the "Rasputinism", as the Black Hundred khlystyism. The Russian people, just like every people, has to pass through a religious and cultural discipline of the person. And for this, it is needful to repudiate Russian illusions. The perishing of these illusions is not at all a perishing of the world. For us it is not given to know the times and seasons of the end of the world. And is not the eschatological and apocalyptic investigation of the religious populists of all the Russian woes and the Russian sins -- is this not one of the Russian illusions and temptations, begotten of the Russian self-conceit?

Nothing like a bit of Berdyaev to get the Sunday going, I always think.

God bless,

LSP

London Riots - A Question

I won't comment on last month's disturbance in London and other British cities but I do have a question.

Just who and what is the blond bloke standing to the right of the 'feral youth' as they loot the Carhartt store in Dalston? Everything else is pretty self-explanatory, but what's he up to?

Curious,

LSP

Putin Peace Prize

Apart from tranqing tigers, riding horses and sharks, scuba diving, hunting, playing concert piano and flying jets, Vladimir Putin also has his own religious cult and is hailed as an emissary from God.

According to Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin's first deputy chief of staff, Putin "is a person sent to Russia by fate and by the Lord at a difficult time for Russia... preordained by fate to serve our peoples."

No wonder then that China has nominated the Russian leader for the coveted Confucius Peace Prize. That's not all, in July, a Berlin nonprofit announced plans to give the outdoors loving Russian Prime Minister the sought after Quadriga Award for being a "role model for enlightenment, dedication and the public good." The Award was later withdrawn, prompting Russian President Dimitry Medvedev to blast the Germans for "cowardice and inconsistency." 

American President Barak Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009.

Make of that what you will.

LSP

Choppers

It seems that Team LSP has been hard at work, sending in pictures of choppers. I think they hope I will buy one and roar about the countryside with all the other bikers.  It would be like Nam, Chelt'Nam that is, in the '70s, which I vaguely remember being fond of.

But I can't, looking after the live horse is enough for me and I need to save up for some kind of truck, the present Ranger being on loan - pref 4x4. Like a x-cab Z71 or F150 variant. Then there's always the Defender... 

On a different theme, it's good to know that unlimited dollar liquidity is being offered to Europe's stuttering banks.

That's solved that nasty little solvency problem then. Entirely.

And another thing, why is Piers Morgan still in power?

Cheers,

LSP

Horse, Gun, Liquidity

You probably think that the LSP August was all about excursions from Canada to dodgy parts of Detroit, but that was only part of it. 

There were horses.

There were guns.

And a visit from my brother and his family from Wales. They were hoping to ride but I didn't think that'd be too safe, so the kids got to give JB treats and attention. That horse has come a long way -- I would have felt very uneasy having children around her a year ago. 

But that's not all. Finally managed to read the excellent House of Cards, which is all about the gruesome Bear Stearns blow-up.

And lo and behold, it's happening all over again! But worse! Merkel tells us that we won't have another Lehman Brothers. Well you never know, maybe that magical German alchemy will transmute the radioactive lead on the euro zone balance sheets into fine gold.

Smart people are learning to ride, shoot and grow their own food.

LSP

Detroit House

Sensible Flag

Marthieu425 took exception to my post "Come on, Move to Detroit." He had 

this to say: "It's the most culturally diverse area in the United States. You need some culture sir. Maybe you should come visit before you comment on how "post apocalyptic" it is. It's coming back." Good call, Marthieu425. 


So off I went for a well needed dose of "culture" and who knows, maybe I'd find the Motorway City was miraculously "coming back" since I was there last August.

Red's House - no guns allowed...

Red's place on Commonwealth was better. No upended sofa on the front porch, well done, though the ceiling was still down in the "dining room" and the kitchen didn't seem to have any utilities. No change there.

Not much change anywhere, that I could see, with the exception of "Slows" which cooks good BBQ (the place was packed) and the best pint, maybe the only real pint, of ale I've had in the U.S. Not that I'm some sort of beer technologist.

But enough of that, here's some holiday snaps.

Nice

Occupied, oddly enough

Don't go in there

Greening of America

High Density

Strip Mall

Where are all the cars?

Deja Vu

Back to the Garden

Good old CPA building

No trains, sadly

There goes another one

Outlaws

Logan's Run

Back in the Dominion

Detroit catastrophe theorists will be mad at me for not taking any shots of spectacular brick mansions falling into ruin. There's plenty.

But is the place "coming back"? I'd say large swathes of the city have a post-apocalyptic, Nagasaki, forty years on, kind of feel.

You be the judge.

God bless,

LSP

Have a Blessed Sunday

golden void

Tried to get as much riding in as possible before flying off to the hopefully far cooler North. This means getting up earl and, on Saturday, driving to Miltdown Arabians with the sun at my back. Beautiful, there was even some rain, which was a godsend. 

Had a right workout, 'round poles and barrels at a canter/hand gallop, Western style. Total enjoyment and a good change to put some different horses through their paces.

ridiculous

Apart from horses, there was an interesting Gospel text this morning, in the feeding of the 5000, which serves as a type of the Eucharist. But why 5 loaves and 2 fish? 5 signifies the Law (5 books of the Pentateuch), which is fulfilled and sanctified by the twofold nature of Christ who is "true God and true man". The spiritual sustenance of this renewed Law is Christ Himself, who states "I am the bread of life", and is the acrostic in Greek for fish (Jesus Christ Son of God Savior). 

He will be the nourishment of the faithful whose number is 5000; as we are reminded in Acts, "The number of those who believed were 5000." These are the multitude of the new Law and constitute a new Israel, signified by the 12 baskets of food left over - fed by none other than Our Lord.

When I was a child, Rev. Ronnie Loyd, a Welshman, taught us that the real miracle and the spiritual meaning of the text, was that Jesus persuaded the 5000 to share their lunches, making it the "miracle of the bag lunches". 

hippys

Not dissimilar, I suppose, to a hippy "be-in" but without the thieving and general knavishness. I mentioned this interpretation to the congregation and denounced it trenchantly as, "Rubbish!"

God bless you all, not least in the Sacrament of the Altar.

Canada tomorrow.

LSP

Beware the Boar

Escape from New York

Team LSP NYC had to escape the summer rigor of 'the Isand' for Turkey and stumbled upon the ruined temple of Artemis (Diana). It was one of the Wonders of the classical world but not much remains today after successive earthquakes, fires and looting. 

Artemis could be difficult at times and wasn't above alliance with wild hogs. Here's an excerpt from Ovid:

"‘This shall not pass unpunished. No!’ she cried, ‘I may be seen unhonoured, true, but never unavenged!’

"The smarting goddess sent a giant Boar, huge as the bulls that grassy Epiros breeds, dwarfing the bulls of fertile Sicula (Sicily); his eyes ablaze with fire and blood; his neck solid and steep; his bristles long and sharp, rigid as spearshafts; his broad sweeping flanks flecked, as he hissed and snorted, with hot foam. His mouth flashed lightning and his burning breath seared the green leaves. Now the young growing corn he trampled in the blade... The people fled..."

And who can blame them? Then up springs Ancaeus:

"‘Learn how far the weapons of a man surpass a girl’s and leave this task to me! Even though Latonia [Artemis] shields him from the blow, despite Diana [Artemis], mine shall lay him low!’ Such was Ancaeus’ braggart brazen boast, and raising in both hands his double axe he balanced on his feet and stood tiptoe. Brave and bold! but the beast struck first and plunged both tusks high in his groin, the shortest road to death, and down he fell and, disembowelled, his guts gushed out and soaked the ground with gore."

Moral of the story? Kill the hog with the first shot and don't disrespect women. Or something like that.

Cheers,

LSP

PS. Why Piers must go back from whence he came - see Guido.