It all makes sense with a snootful of Jagermeister

Jagermeister, well I suppose that is not all that different from reading the back of a cereal box. Cereal boxes used to be full of uplifting messages for us kids who it seemed like everybody was looking to be the leaders of tomorrow. I don’t know, they were probably just saying that as a way to pat us on the head and feel proud while they duped us into buying their products. Now that I think about it I first heard that phrase watching the Mickey Mouse Club, so there you go.

I’ve always had a particular dislike for the whole Disney thing. People have their own myths and lore and Disney takes that and wraps it into a movie that is just like every other movie they make, and kind of write over folk tales and myths and bleach out everything that was odd and interesting and make it into just another loaf of white bread. It’s like those Hallmark cards with the bland picture and the fancy calligraphy inside with some hackneyed message expressed flawlessly, and people read it and go awww, but it’s just something a stranger wrote, something their friend bought, why didn’t they just give them the three or four bucks? And then that hackneyed message gets put against a black background, or maybe some clip art and gets pasted up on fb, and I dare not rant lest I lose all my friends.

Well what about a guy who doesn’t hunt? What about a farmer? What about a school bus driver? What about a guy who collects stamps? Are they not honoring the creator? Are they dishonoring the creator, by not going out and shooting something? And if they are, as I’m sure Disney and Hallmark would claim, in their own little way, all of us like a glowing mosaic, like the stars in the firmament, all of us honoring the creator, then what makes Elmer Fudd so special, and why is he stumbling through the woods so all-fired proud of himself, especially after he has had a snootful of Jagermeister?

Ah but I suppose once he has that fine buzz going and stumbles into his comfy blind and rests his eyes for just a sec he is off to deer dreamland, where his creator leads the deer before him and then gently pulls on the trigger for him. How is the blind kept warm? Doesn’t it bother the deer that here is some warmth coming out of that shed? Well I guess not. He knows he can walk right up to that big warm house and that when Beagles spots him and takes hold of Old Betsy, the hypothetical wife will say, “Now Dear, you put that away.”

What happened to the wabbits? Did they get a disease? Too many coyotes? Something they liked to eat disappeared? Some other animal is filling their niche? You know, if He is so careless in tending to his created, I don’t see why you should take your responsibility so seriously.

Yes indeed, I did join the other side when I started subbing. I was a little bit soft, but I think I did a pretty good job, as per my motto, nobody ever got hurt. But some of the other subs, they had that voice of command, which didn’t always work, but it was better to have than not to have, and I never had that voice, maybe because I never really believed in authority and I was always faking it.

Funny too how loyal I am too the democrats now. I know most of them are lying sacks of shit, which doesn’t make me all that bitter because I know that you have to be a lying sack of shit to get anywhere in politics. An honest man is never going to go anywhere in politics because the voters basically want something for nothing and they are too lazy to think things through so the wool is easily pulled over their eyes, and bringing integrity to politics is like bringing a pocket knife to a gun fight.

Funny, I bet you would say the same thing. The politicians on both sides would never say anything like that, but their backers say it all the time. Both sides think if the voter was only more idealistic and knowledgeable, why their side would win all the time. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.

Honor, Productivity, and Authority

That quote from Riesenthal comes from the label on the Jagermeister liquor bottle. It's written in German, but I found a translation on Wiki, actually two translations. The other translation says, "honors the Creator in the creature". That one is probably more clearly understood, but I like the one I used because it can be taken two ways. One interpretation is that the hunter honors the Creator by honoring the creatures that He has created, and the other interpretation is that he honors the Creator by doing a little creating himself. Well, I'm not really creating anything in Beaglesonia, I'm just taking what's already there and trying to maximize its potential. This is congruent with my Deist beliefs, that you should try to make the most of what God gives you.

Sleeping in my deer blind doesn't have a lot to do with all that. It's just that I found out a long time ago that you generally see more deer when you're sitting still than when you're walking around. The old fashioned way to hunt deer is to walk slowly, stopping frequently, and remaining alert at all times. This is certainly more interesting than sitting on your ass for hours at a time in a plywood box, but it's not nearly as productive. Before I had my heated blind I could only sit for an hour or two without getting cold and/or getting a backache. I would walk around until I felt better and then sit for another hour or two. By making my blind warm and comfortable I was a able to sit for six or eight hours, although four hours is about all I have time for nowadays. The trouble is, as soon as I get warm and comfortable, I tend to fall asleep. I decided not to fight that because sleeping in the woods is more productive than sleeping at home. I suppose I have slept through some deer visitations, but I have also woken up just in time on several occasions.

Before and after deer season we have several small game seasons, the longest one being for rabbits and hares, September 15 - March 31. Hunting rabbits with hounds is a lot more fun than deer hunting, but shooting a deer is more exciting than shooting a rabbit. With deer hunting you have hours and hours of boredom and then one thrilling moment. With rabbit hunting the excitement is spread out over several hours, but its not as intense. The trouble is that our rabbit (actually snowshoe hare) population crashed about 20 years ago has never recovered. There just isn't enough small game around here anymore to justify keeping a dog so, when my last one died, I didn't replace him. Since then, I keep busy all winter cutting firewood and plowing snow. For some reason it doesn't take nearly as much to keep me busy anymore as is it used to, so I don't know where I'd find the time to hunt rabbits if there were any rabbits to hunt. I suppose I would have to cut my firewood in the summer, which would cut into my fishing time. So there you go.

I agree that you and I have different attitudes towards authority. I don't understand how you can be resentful of all authority, especially since you eventually joined the ranks yourself when you became a teacher. I have no problem with competent, duly constituted authority that stays within its duly constituted limits. In a way, those people are actually working for us. All power originates with the people, and the people delegate some of that power to their leaders because they are supposed to be better at it than we are. If they are not better at it than we are, they need to be either retrained or replaced. I have been in leadership roles a few times myself and, while I kind of enjoyed it, I don't really need it to be productive or happy. If somebody doesn't know what to do and they ask me, I'm happy to tell them. If I don't know what to do, and I know somebody who does, I'm content to have them direct me, as long as they do it responsibly. I don't know if that's a conservative thing or not, but it's my thing.

hunting season running out?

So, you guys need a stinking badge after all. Maybe you could have that printed up on your hunter’s license. Certainly you raise rye to nourish your prey, and I don’t imagine the game warden could enter your property to count your deer, but I don’t believe you would take over the limit, and I suppose you are always honoring your creator in that deist thing you have going.

I suppose I nourish my cows inasmuch as I pay the restaurant who pays the meatpacker who pays the farmer who buys the grain to feed the cows. I suppose I eat sportingly inasmuch as once I have eaten my Italian beef I don’t try to distract my friend and grab a bite of his sandwich. I don’t even know what honoring the Creator in creation means, but I don’t guess I dishonor Him so I guess I’m okay in that department.

Always struck me as odd how these puny humans think God wants them to kiss His ass every time a drop of rain falls. Well I suppose He wouldn’t have given us the urge to kiss ass, if He didn’t want His bussed.

I see where the limitations you have put on yourself for hunting have made it so interesting that you are asleep half the time. Well there is nothing wrong with sleep, it’s almost always a good time, and you hardly ever get in trouble doing it. So I assume there is only one doe sighting, and there is about a week to go on the muzzle loading thing (they should make you do the whole thing with the funnel and the powder and the rag, and it wouldn’t hurt none to dress up in buckskin and honor ol’ Dan’l, but that’s just my thoughts), and then will that be it? Is there another hunting season later in the year?

I think we are in substantial agreement on Ferguson, though on opposite sides of the do black people get the shit end of the stick and should the government do something about it question.

You know I just heard something on the radio about those bodycams for cops. They compared one city (I don’t remember which one, somewhere in the northwest I think) where the cops are well regarded and discovered that complaints had dropped 90 percent, presumably because both sides knew they were being watched and behaved, but then in New Orleans, which is widely agreed to be the worst police force in the nation, complaints didn’t go down much at all, but then the cams had mysteriously stopped running most of the time there was a incident.

What about that where I said in the last letter that maybe the reason that we are so different is that I resented all authority while you resented authority only when it didn’t play by the rules?

 I thought I was on to something there. I’m always interested in why some people become liberals and some conservatives. There have been theories floated around from time to time, but not much in the way of hard facts, and most theories that have been floated around by my side, because we are the type who float theories around, and not surprisingly they tend to cast us in a good light, and you guys in a bad light.

Badge of Honor

"This is the hunter's badge of honor, that he protects and nourishes his game, hunts sportingly, as is proper, and honors the Creator in creation." - Otto von Riesenthal
Unlike Otto von Bismarck, his adopted father, Otto von Riesenthal took no interest in war or politics, preferring to spend his time drinking and hunting with his friends. I want to be just like him when I grow up.

Sport hunting differs from subsistence hunting in that the sport hunter deliberately puts limitations on himself. This is partly to make the sport more interesting and partly to conserve the game for future generations. Game and fish laws are mostly enforced by the honor system, as there are not enough conservation agents in the field to effectively enforce them. The fact that there are any conservation agents at all is due to the sportsmen who originally lobbied for them and support them by buying hunting and fishing licenses. Of course all sportsmen are not as virtuous as myself, but neither is the general public.

Michigan does not allow 15 round magazines to be used in deer hunting rifles, and I think most other states don't either. When you buy a hunting rifle it usually comes with a five round magazine, which leads me to believe that is the standard all over the country. You can buy larger capacity magazines separately for the tactical models, but you're not allowed to use them for hunting. My regular deer rifle is a single shot, which I have come to prefer because it's easier to load, unload, and clean. You're right that you seldom get more than one shot at a deer in the woods and, if need be, I can reload my single shot in about the same time it takes to work the bolt on a bolt action rifle. A muzzle loader takes a minute or two to reload so, for all practical purposes, you only have one shot. I suppose some people like to use primitive weapons for the same reason that some boaters prefer sails to motors, and some people prefer horses to motorcycles.

Police work, however, is not a sporting event. The cops have a job to do and sometimes that job can get pretty dangerous. It's a lot easier for us to sit here and say, "He should or shouldn't have done that." after the fact than it is for the cop who has to make a life or death decision in a few seconds. Nevertheless, rules is rules, and the cops should have to obey them just like everybody else. A case like this should be judged on the facts alone, not on somebody's political or social agenda. In all criminal cases, it's "innocent until proven guilty", and the burden of proof is on the accuser. If the prosecution doesn't believe they have sufficient evidence for a probable conviction, they shouldn't bring the case to court. This doesn't mean the guy is pure as the driven snow, it just means that there is not enough evidence to convict him. It would be helpful if all the witnesses told the same story, but maybe that's an unrealistic expectation.

petitioning authority

Petition to Stop Exercises does not have a ring to it, like Declaration of Independence, and I’ll wager Reggie Revolution did not put a lot of Whereas’s in it. Kind of a hard word to spell. I can just see Reggie Revolution raising his hand and asking Tilda Tyranny, “Hey Teach, how do you spell ‘Whereas?’ and her asking him why he wanted to know, and him replying, “Oh no reason.”

I’m surprised that the faculty didn’t use it as a teachable moment, and examine the petition in the Chicago manner where this name would be ruled off because it crossed the line, and this other because it was in pencil, and this other because it really looked more like printing, so that in the end there would be no signatures left and hence no problem.

It was always a dicey situation for me, the sub, to have complete domination (the ability to win any argument by saying ‘because I said so,”) over the kids, solely because somebody in the office had called me and I had showed up. I learned on my second gig, that I couldn’t touch them. I knew I couldn’t hit them because nobody could hit me when I was a kid (I also knew they could and did whale on kids in the Catholic schools, but I didn’t learn till later that in suburban and downstate schools they could also hit them, shocking), so the only avenue of enforcement I had was buzzing the office. And sometimes you would buzz the office and nobody would come and that was like the scene in The Wizard of Oz when it’s revealed that the wizard is just some little guy.

But I digress. You know we were both rebellious types, but in different ways, I guess the reason I am a democrat in the middle of the city and you are a libertarian/republican in the middle of the frozen wastes. Maybe here’s a difference: I objected to any teacher having authority over me, whereas you were okay with that, but they had to use their authority in the correct way.

Wiki sez foolscap is foolscap because of its length. Strikes me that its size makes it more like legal paper. Oh I love legal pads, that extra length, that cool canary color, writing on that makes you twenty percent smarter than foolscap. Wiki also has high praise for onion skin, though to be honest it has always looked a little chintzy to me, like a single sheet of paper somehow sliced into two.

But I digress. This muzzle loader is a new thing to me. I suppose I could see it for those guys who like to dress up and pretend they are in old timey armies, but I don’t see why anybody else would be interested. You know we try to get you guys to cut down to fifteen shot magazines and you are all like Give me liberty or give me death, and then along comes a gun that you have to load every single time it shoots and you are all like, oh how cool, I can’t wait to get one. Gun nuts.

So I guess the reason that they give these one-shot guys and bowmen longer to hunt deer because it takes them longer to kill as many. But there is also the idea that hunting is kind of a contest between man and deer. I don’t know if you think of it that way but some people do, and the harder it is to kill the deer the more fair it is. But I guess what would really make it fair was if you armed the deer. They are all law-abiding as far as I can tell and think of how much safer we would be.

So you have ten more days to shoot a deer, but you have to use that one shot thingy, which maybe isn’t such a big deal because how often do you get off two shots anyway. So let me know how it goes.

I didn’t keep up with all the details on Ferguson because it seemed like both sides were selectively leaking them. At first I was generally on the side of the kid because of those reports of him being shot in the back, but now that it is revealed that there were no shots in the back, I am rather on the cop’s side. The details are still somewhat murky, but in a potentially dangerous situation I am inclined to give the cop more leeway than most of my liberal ilk. Once the suspect is in custody you can’t go beating up on him, but during the capture I’m inclined to allow an extra swat or two.

But anyway it wasn’t about whether Wilson was justified or not, it was about whether you think blacks are treated fairly, or not fairly. The one side believing they aren’t and the other side believing they are, and that’s where people got their ideas about whether Wilson was justified or not.

Petition and Other Stories

We had this new gym teacher who was an ex marine sergeant. He had us doing these exercises that, I suppose, he had learned in the marines. It wouldn't have been a bad idea if he had gradually worked us into it, but he had us jump right in at the advanced level. He didn't last long, but I don't think our petition had anything to do with it. I seem to remember my mother asking me why I had been limping around the house lately and, I suppose, other parents expressed the same concern. Anyway, one of the kids was circulating this petition that said simply: "Petition to stop exercises". I remember thinking at the time that I could have come up with something more literate, but I signed it and forgot about it, assuming that nothing was going to come of it anyway. I don't think the petition was ever submitted, but the teacher got ahold of it somehow and brought the principal into the case. I was surprised that they both were so upset about it. To my knowledge, there was no rule against doing something like that. Indeed, we had recently been taught that the constitution guaranteed our right to "petition for redress of grievances", which is probably how the author had gotten the idea. I was amazed that they were mad at us for doing exactly what they had taught us to do, and I said so in my essay, among other things.

That foolscap paper was just like notebook paper, but it didn't have any holes in it, and I think it was a little longer. We bought out own notebook paper, but foolscap paper was passed out by the teacher for special assignments. I don't know why they called it "foolscap", although that spelling is probably correct because the spellcheck didn't flag it like it did "fullscap".

The regular firearm deer season ended yesterday, having run for 16 days. I only got out there eight days, which is less than I would have liked, but more than I did last year. I only saw one doe for a few seconds, and I never could have gotten off a shot even if I had a doe permit, which I don't. They only issue a limited amount of those, and my name wasn't drawn this time. The muzzle loader season starts this Friday and runs for 10 days, so it's not over yet. There is also a bow season that runs for three months, October through December, but I don't bow hunt. I tried it for a few years but I wasn't crazy about it, and there are lots of other things I need to be doing that time of year.

Muzzle loaders are fun to shoot, but their range is limited to about a hundred yards, which is as far as I can see anywhere on the property anyway. They are not as accurate as a regular deer rifle, and they only hold one shot, so hunting with a muzzle loader is considered to be a handicap. Modern muzzle loaders became popular decades ago. The first models were reproductions of the old guns that were used up to about the end of the Civil War, when the first cartridge guns were developed. Because they were using primitive weapons, the muzzle loader fans were able to persuade the DNR to give them a special season like the bow hunters already had, but not as long. Almost immediately, gun makers started coming out with new improved muzzle loaders that had more reliable ignition systems. Some purists still gripe about that, but most hunters have embraced the newer models. In the muzzle loader season, you are  not allowed to shoot any extra deer, you can only fill any unused tags that you have left over from the regular season.

I usually spend about four hours a day in my blind, about half of that actually awake. It takes a half hour to walk out there and a half hour back, so the whole operation takes about five hours. I take a thermos of tea with me, but no food because I won't be out that long. It might seem odd that I walk a quarter mile into the swamp at 7:00 AM to take a nap but, if I wasn't sleeping there, I would be sleeping at home, and I'm not likely to get a deer that way. We do see deer out our windows occasionally, but my hypothetical wife has forbidden my to shoot through the windows, even if I open them up and remove the screens first, which is not as unreasonable as it sounds. I am the King of Beaglesonia, all 88 acres of it, and all she wants to be is Queen of the House, so I let her.

I looked up that Ferguson thing on Wiki, and I don't know what to make of it. Different witnesses have given different accounts, which is not unusual. Some say that the grand jury was rigged, which is certainly possible. It seems clear that Wilson was justified in shooting Brown the first time during the initial struggle through the car window, but I'm not so sure that Wilson should have pursued Brown after he ran away. He had called for backup, but it hadn't arrived yet, and so Wilson was abandoning his police car in a hostile neighborhood, which leads me to believe that he was angry and not thinking as clearly as he should have been. It's agreed that Brown was advancing towards Wilson when the fatal shot was fired, but some say he was trying to surrender, while others say he was not. Brown had been shot multiple times by then, so he probably wasn't thinking too clearly either. It's important to remember that the grand jury did not exonerate Wilson, they just declined to indict him at this time, so I don't think the "double jeopardy" rule applies here. I'm sure that we've not heard the last of this case, not by a long shot.

Beagles the outspoken deerslayer and thinker of deep thoughts

Wow what was going on in that Sawyer School? Someone had circulated a petition for redress of grievances, and it wasn’t you? You had an even hotter hothead in your class? What was the tyrannical move that prompted that?

Too bad that she ripped up your paper. I would have loved to read it. You know I did something like that in Gage Park, There was this guy, Mr Chadwick, who taught Spanish, but all he really did was sit at his desk with his feet on the table and talk about golf. I don’t recall my infraction, but I was assigned one of those essays about how I was all wrong and all sorry about it.

This guy Chadwick was so lazy that I assumed he would never read it, and I filled it with a rant about his telling golf stories all class long. But then he surprised me by reading it, and I got in trouble for that. I don’t remember what the outcome was.

Your writing on the top and the bottom of the top of the paper reminds me of a science fiction writer, I think it was Heinlen, who wrote that if they gave you lined paper you should write the other way. Sounded great when I was a budding young revolutionary, but not so much anymore.

I remember the name foolscap, but I don’t remember what kind of paper that was. Remember onion paper? I think it was mostly used in type writers. It was semi translucent and I think it was thought of as classy, though I don’t know why.

I reckon you must be about a week into deer hunting season, and I am wondering if you have been out hunting yet. So I guess while you are there you just sit there and stare and wait for the deer to appear. There are people on the train like that, they just sit there and stare at the back of the head of the person in front of them, and it just drives me nuts. I want to grab them and shake them up and ask them why they didn’t bring a book, a magazine, a newspaper, the box of the cereal that they were reading this morning.

But no sooner have those words left my mouth than I realize that it’s only half the people, probably less than half, who stare at the back of the head, the rest whip out their phones like they haven’t seen it in years, and boop, boop, bippety boop, their way into well I don’t know, that other world.

I suppose a guy could get a lot of thinking done, just sitting there staring out at a slit for hours, but I don’t know, so what do you do? Let’s have a deer hunting story.