Smoke That Skeet

 

Someone once said, famously, Speed is fine. Accuracy is final, and skeet shooting's a bit of both, not that I'm any kind of expert. The orange bird zips out fast and you have to be on to get it. A typically quick, accurate, snap shot.

And how good when you connect and smoke the clay challenger. There's something especially satisfying about hitting that small moving target and watching it dust off. Big fun, but here's the thing, readers.

You may think, because shotgun, that pointing in the general direction and letting loose is going to work, street sweeper style. Think again. It helps to aim. Seriously. Don't forget, in the shotgunnery excitement of all, to aim.  Put that bead on the bottom edge of the clay, "popsicle" it, and squeeze the trigger. A fast movement for sure, but an accurate one.

But what am I saying. All you competition shooters out there have forgotten more about the sport than I will ever know. Regardless, the misnomered White Flyers took a right beating today, not least from the kid. Great result.

Then, after a headshot plinkathon against small steel at 150 yards, .22 WMR, we headed back to base. And what a good day out in the country with guns, just sheer enjoyment. Thanks, CR, for the invite. And now?

Pork chops, Yorkshire Pudding(!), roast potatoes and all the rest. A delicious end to a great day's shoot. It's raining too, another plus. Thank you, Climate Change.

Your Pal,

LSP

Shoot The Guns

 

A new day, a new opportunity to shoot, so off we went to the range with a few guns, a 20 SxS, a 12 OU and a Marlin .22 WMR. Idea being to get some remedial shotgunnery in, and then a little plinking with the Marlin.

The range was overgrown and semi-flooded but we made it through, get a 4x4, LSP, and set up on dry ground next to a field, baking under a big Texan sky. The erstwhile Cadet went first, on the 12, and started smoking clays like a good 'un.

I followed up on the 20 and was more or less on, unlike the Specialist who specially smoked the clays with the same gun. Hmmm, improve your game, so-called "LSP." I did, and got in the zone, shooting far better to the right than left, curiously. Perhaps there's a moral in that.

A box of  orange "White Flyer" over, we moved on to the little magnum, shooting off the bed of the truck. Take that, fifty yard adversary, and the kid's offhand was impressive, right in the zone. Nice work. Then it was time to head back to the Compound, a good morning well spent.

I love shooting and file this tale under guns and country life in Texas.

Shoot straight,

LSP

Fish And Fossil

 

"Dad, can we go fishing?" I thought for a moment, for maybe a second, "Yes, we can." Some coffee, two bacon and egg sandwiches and a relined rod later we were on our way to the lake, Lake Whitney. And after a brief pit stop at a lakeside Pick 'n Steal for fried cherry pie and a fishing license for the kid, we were at Soldiers Bluff, casting off.

Would the fish be on? Sure enough they were, right from the get go, with voracious predator perch going at the worms we were throwing into the murky, minnowed water. Tug, snap, light rod down and boom, out comes a fish. The soldier caught first, nice, and I came in not far behind.

And so passed a pleasant hour or so in the Texan sun on the side of the lake, what a lot of fun, especially given a late bite in the last half hour; fish after fish till you started to lose count. Some of them were big too, but all Bluegill. Come on, Bass, get your act together.

As we clambered up the rocks to get to the rig and home, I reminded the world that this was once the bed of a primeval, Mesozoic sea and there were fossils to be found. Sure enough, there was a junior ammonite and some petrified shells, easy to dig out of the clayish strata.

Then, "Look at this!" Lo and behold, there was a section of fossilized shell, sticking out of the rock. Pretty cool, so we went back to the truck to get some tools to excavate it. 

Some well placed taps with the hammer end of an old axe on a sturdy screwdriver and there it was, freed from the rock. "What if there's more?" We tapped away, removing the stone which had once been mud, and there it was, the fossilized spiral of an ancient crustacean.

Great excitement, and the fossil's back at the Compound. The Bluegill, on the other hand, were put back to fight again another day, and maybe to keep. Tasty.

Fish On,

LSP.

KAR

 

Years ago, I asked a powerful lawyer, please don't spit, if he'd ever served. He replied in that I wish you weren't here kind of way, "King's African Rifles." Boodles forever and sometimes a picture's worth many thousands of words.

Your Friend,

LSP

Thank You

 

I'd like to thank the Commentariat for all the good wishes. I was especially struck by this, from Anon:

A Soldier's life is a hard life. But there is instruction in this, for the Soldier.

This is exactly why Soldiers are necessary for freedom to survive. The minions of Myrmidon will not be driven from the land by angry girls waving posters, nor will they suddenly see the light, unless and until, the Soldier forces them to give up.

Forces them to give up. As it always was, so it is yet.

A true Soldier serves his people, an automaton serves the Power, oppressing his own people. It is ultimately the Soldier who frees his people. All the rhetoric in the world is for nought. It wasn't talk that drove the Persians from Greece, stopped the Ottomans at Lepanto, or took back Europe from the Nazis.

We are truly sorry Troop didn't get to see his kin, but, a Soldier's life is a hard life.

Well said, Anon, yes, and whoever said it'd be easy? That said, the Compound's about to enjoy the pleasure of pounding the mahogany (table), a good day had by all, not least at the sacred mysteries of the Mass. 

But that's today, tomorrow we advance to contact with the Canadian consulate in Dallas. Let's see how that goes.

God bless,

LSP

Utter Disaster

The kid didn't get through Terminal B this morning because of insufficient Canadian id. You know, copies of his citizenship card, mother's birth certificate, Alberta Health Services card etc. weren't sufficient. No, sorry, can't come in. 

What? You say in amazed wonder. Hold that thought, here's the thing. Fully vaxxed Canadians with Canadian id can enter Canada. Anyone else can't, even if they're fully vaxxed. Why? Because science, because COVID. You see, a Canadian passport functions as a VIRAL SHIELD unlike a US passport, which most evidently doesn't.

Net result of this two-bit chicanery? My eldest son and soldier can't go home to visit his mother, brother and sister, whom he hasn't seen for a year and a half. He was a bit upset about that, so to make it up I put down some smoke and we ate burgers. This helped. 

I tell you this, there is a special place in Hell for the people who've foisted this wickedness upon us.

Cheers,

LSP

The Boy is Back in Town

 

It was Tuesday when I got the call, "Hey, dad, I've missed my flight." I paused, "Excuse me?" It was true, the Specialist had specially missed his flight from Osan airbase to Seattle and thence to Dallas. And he was freaked out at the prospect of, well, all kinds of trouble.

In a spirit of "no man left behind," I called up Camp Humphreys, explained the situation, and before you could say "Imjin Hill meets Glorious Glosters" spoke to a perfectly polite Korean woman who perfectly rescheduled the flight.

Typical Goucesters

Another call, this time to a soldier in a taxi returning to base, "Your flight's rescheduled to Thursday, it leaves at Noon." A shocked silence, "You got through? Wow, thanks." And the next thing you know, the kid was standing at the carousel at Terminal C. "Welcome home!"

Seriously, it's the first leave of any length he's had in one and a half years. Thanks, scamdemic. I took him out to an Irish pub around the corner for Guinness, fries and orange duck, of all things. "Look at this, orange duck, just like being in Ireland, eh?" Tasty, though.

Justine Trudeau The Face of Canada

He's off to Canada on Saturday, if they'll let him through the border, and then back to Texas in August before deploying to Fort Hood. And that, readers, is the story of that. I tell you, good to see my eldest son again.

Cheers,

LSP

Swamp Fox Awesome

I like this tune, "Hold on boys, don't lose your grip. When I give the word, boys, let it rip." And they did. But this is good too.

Swamp Fox, awesome, eh?

LSP

War

 

We've pulled out of Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, a happy day for looters, and an outward and visible sign of the end of our 20 year war in that country. Did we win that war? Apparently not, the Taliban look set to take over, which raises a bigger question. Why do we keep fighting wars we don't win.

Korea and Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, not exactly victories. It's curious, we're obviously up for a fight but we're not prepared to close the deal, and actually win. Why? Big question. Money, war is a racket, political chicanery, lack of will, the list goes on and we can parse the issue till the Eschaton, but I will say this.

If we're going to fight, we should fight to win, 100%, sure of the rightness of the cause. Anything less is a betrayal of our soldiers and the people they're supposedly fighting for. To say nothing of the betrayal of our country by its rulers, and the people whose lives they've catastrophically ruined.

Is the problem fixable?

Your call,

LSP

Happy Independence Day!

 

One of the many things I like about Independence Day, when it falls on a Sunday, is being able to say to the faithful, "Today we celebrate our freedom from the tyrannous yoke of the English." 

It's a good way to start a homily and sets you up for "what is freedom?" The positive power of thinking and acting according to what's right and true, of choosing the good. Hats off to St. Augustine.

What does this look like? I liked this, from LL: 

Embrace freedom... promote smaller government, and lower the decision-making to the lowest possible common denominator. Make representatives accountable to those that they represent. We are not their servants. They are ours. It is only this way that we can be independent.

 

And John Adams had this to say, via WWW:

It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.

 

Right on, and now for some pork chops, given that no one can afford steak apart from our elite "let them eat 16 cents" rulers.

#2A,

LSP

Get On Parade!

 

Years ago, get on parade would've meant lots of stamping, shuffling, as in open order right dress and all of that. These days it means stroll off the porch to cheer on this small country town's 4th of July parade, which was held on the 3rd, today.

Good result. Antique cars, floats, mini-motorcycles, a few horses and ATVs. No kidding, there was a squadron of the things and they weren't shabby. Not at all, and they played music, it went like this: I'm proud to be an American... 

I am, despite a second passport. Good work, boys. That in mind, there's something about a small town parade which I love. Maybe its overall awesomeness, see Randy Newman and beyond.

God bless,

LSP

Freedom

I found this remarkably prescient and excellent, you might too, from the then Cardinal Ratzinger:

"The feeling that democracy is not the right form of freedom is fairly common and is spreading more and more. The Marxist critique of democracy cannot simply be brushed aside: how free are elections? To what extent is the outcome manipulated by advertising, that is, by capital, by a few men who dominate public opinion? Is there not a new oligarchy who determine what is modern and progressive, what an enlightened man has to think? The cruelty of this oligarchy, its power to perform public executions, is notorious enough. Anyone who might get in its way is a foe of freedom, because, after all, he is interfering with the free expression of opinion. And how are decisions arrived at in representative bodies? Who could still believe that the welfare of the community as a whole truly guides the decision-making process? Who could doubt the power of special interests, whose dirty hands are exposed with increasing frequency? And in general, is the system of majority and minority really a system of freedom? And are not interest groups of every kind appreciably stronger than the proper organ of political representation, the parliament? In this tangled power play, the problem of ungovernability arises ever more menacingly: the will of individuals to prevail over one another blocks the freedom of the whole."

He continues:

"Freedom, if it is not to lead to deceit and self-destruction, must orient itself by the truth, that is, by what we really are, and must correspond to our being. Since man's essence consists in being-from, being-with and being-for, human freedom can exist only in the ordered communion of freedoms."

Wisdom. Read the whole thing here, and you should.

God bless,

LSP