with increased demand please expect shipping delays summer of firearms
With the number of shootings across America that have been reported again and again and again in the past weeks, I have to point out that a local gun shop has summoned up the gumption to apologize.
That’s right, apologize.
They offer daily deals that, “… aim to provide our customers with new products and best sellers at amazing prices. Daily Deal product offerings include American Made firearms, AR-15 parts and accessories, 9mm pistols, bulk ammo, magazines, optics, and so much more.”
They also sell flame throwers with the pledge, “Flamethrower ownership is generally legal in the United States without requiring any sort of background check. This is America, and freedom is something we stand for.”
But they include the disclaimer, “As the product name states, it is simply a long range torch. However, Maryland and California do have restrictions regarding such devices. The city of Warren, Michigan also prohibits possession via local ordinance.”
As I said, of late, on their webage is an apology.
They are sorry but to increased demand, shipments may be taking more time than usual.
It should also be mentioned that their products have a lifetime guarantee.
has nearly worried the life out of me at times I should be sorry
Sometime history can come alive for me and I have to talk about it.
I have been fighting my way through the Civil War campaigns of Ulysses S. Grant this summer.
I started Chattanooga and have worked backwards in time through Vicksburg and am now in the middle of the Shiloh campaign.
In my reading, I came across a minor character by the name of Col. Thomas Worthington, of the 46th Ohio Volunteer Infantry.
By all accounts the Colonel, a graduate of West Point in 1827, was a perfect pest of a person.
General Sherman especially found the man to be beyond belief and took pains to describe him in ways so that others would understand how unbelievably bad the feller was.
The accounts in the books I was reading were so overwhelming in both their statements on the man’s inability and the total agreement of all the authors that the man was useless and his own worst enemy that I had to stop for a minute.
Could this Colonel Worthington have been such a jerk?
Or, after the passage of time, when history revealed that General’s Grant and Sherman were great officers, that it became open season on anyone who didn’t recognize their virtue at the time and everyone is just jam piling on poor Colonel Worthington.
I had never heard of the guy to be honest and I thought could he really have been so bad?
So I searched him out.
With the wonder that can be the World Wide Web, I found copies of two letters about the Colonel that were written back in 1864.
The first one is hand written and states simply:
“Today I verbally told Col Worthington that I did not think him now fit for a Colonel; and now upon his urgent request, I put it in writing.”
The note is on letter paper printed with the heading, EXECUTIVE MANSION, Washington.
It is dated, March 31, 1864.
It is signed, A. Lincoln.
Okay.
So maybe the Colonel was unwell and was requesting permission for sick leave and that is what Mr. Lincoln meant when he told him he was ‘not fit for a Colonel.”
Yeah, maybe.
The Colonel came back later to see Mr. Lincoln a few months later and this time, the President tried send him off to someone else.
The other letter is actually a transcription of a telegram:
It is dated: (Recd Cipher – 6:30pm) City Point, 3:10pm August 29, 1864.
It is addressed to:
His Excellency., A Lincoln, President of the US.
It states:
Your dispatch of 1.40 p.m. in relation to permitting Col. Worthington to come here is received.
I should be very sorry to see the Colonel. He has nearly worried the life out of me at times when I could not prevent an interview.
It is signed, US Grant, LT General.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
I can imagine Mr. Lincoln laughing as he sent off his message to the General.
I can hear him say, “Grant will love this.”
It took the General less than 2 hours to get the telegram from the President, think about it and dictate his reply and get the reply encoded and say, nope, not me, don’t send him here.
That those two guys took time out from the Civil War to play guess who’s coming to dinner made me laugh.
It made them a little more real.
All respect to Colonel Thomas Worthington, but if Abraham Lincoln and US Grant felt this way I have to feel that the verdict of history has been just.
Colonel, you must have been one world record of a pest.
Belle Riviere – the french named it – a woman easy to look at
We crossed the Ohio River again recently.
I was reminded of the poem, Whiffs of the Ohio River at Cincinnati, by Carl Sandburg from the collection, Good Morning, America.
The part in particular that goes:
When I asked for fish in the restaurant facing the Ohio river, with fish signs and fish pictures all over the wooden, crooked frame of the fish shack, the young man said, ‘Come around next Friday — the fish is all gone today’
So, I took eggs, fried, straight up, one side, and he murmured, humming, looking out at the shining breast of the Ohio river, ‘And the next IS something else, and the next is something else’
The customer next was a hoarse roustabout, handling nail kegs on a steamboat all day, asking for three eggs, sunny side up, three, nothing less, shake us a mean pan of eggs
And while we sat eating eggs, looking at the shining breast of the Ohio river in the evening lights, he had his thoughts and I had mine thinking how the French who found the Ohio river named it La Belle Riviere meaning a woman easy to look at.
The story deals with the complex of idea of the benefits derived from the re-release of near extinct predator animals back into the wild.
What I found somewhat refreshing in the article was one, its use of language and word along with the near blasphemous concept that science might be and maybe should be questioned.
Question the science?
Gosh!
This haiku is one of a couple or more in a series based on this same article.
There were so many good word combinations that I couldn’t pass them up.
And readers of this blog will know that from time to time I struggle with the weight of effort of producing a daily Haiku and any thoughts I may have about the words and time that went in the Haiku that day.
This daily schedule of missing a day can bring on a personal mental paralysis wherein writing these entries becomes impossible.
I learned to deal with this by not dealing with it and let it go.
Then when I look at my register of entries and see blank days with no post, I will grab a topic or book or poem for a source and produce a series of Haiku to fill in those blank dates.
This is one of the great benefits of this effort being my blog and my blog, my rules.
It IS cricket because I say it is.
It is ‘according to Hoyle’ because I say it is.
Thus I have this series of haiku based on this article and the Ms. Weston’s word choices.
I should also mention that this ‘lack of output’ coincided with a trip up to see our son and being away from a computer keyboard for a long weekend and I am playing catch-up.
but old truths will out as citizens also want to be governed well
Based on the amalgamation of words in the article, Hillary Clinton is right: the age of the showman leader has damaged politics, by Will Hutton in the Guardian on Sunday, June 5, 2022.
Mr. Hutton, in a commentary on politics in the United States, uses combinations of multi-syllable words and sentence construction makes me take my hat off and yell, SALUTE!
The paragraphs of the article in questions read thusly:
Political leadership in the 2020s needs to be recast, but old truths will out. Alternative reality may have allowed performative politics to trump content for a period, but for all the collective appetite to be entertained, citizens also want to be governed well. That means a firm grasp of what does and doesn’t work and how matters can be improved.
That in turn requires a viable political philosophy backed by evidence and turned into a programme that can be consistently applied across government, taking on power, privilege and vested interest where it is plainly necessary.
It’s palpably not what we have, but it’s obviously what we need and the wheels are already spinning to deliver it
And, readers of this blog will know that from time to time I struggle with the weight of effort of producing a daily Haiku and any thoughts I may have about the words and time that went in the Haiku that day.
This daily schedule of missing a day can bring on a personal mental paralysis wherein writing these entries becomes impossible.
I learned to deal with this by not dealing with it and let it go.
Then when I look at my register of entries and see blank days with no post, I will grab a topic or book or poem for a source and produce a series of Haiku to fill in those blank dates.
This is one of the great benefits of this effort being my blog and my blog, my rules.
It IS cricket because I say it is.
It is ‘according to Hoyle’ because I say it is.
Thus I have this series of haiku based on this article and the Mr. Hutton’s word choices.
I should also mention that this ‘lack of output’ coincided with a trip up to see our son and being away from a computer keyboard for a long weekend and I am playing catch-up.
