Day: July 2, 2022

Guns–I Remember When

With the horrific shooting that just keeps taking the lives of children and innocent by-standers….I got thinking about history (go figure) and the GOP.

I remember because I am an old fart when the GOP and the NRA embraced the concept of gun control (for lack of a better word)……the time was the late 1960s……

OMG!  Blacks with guns!

In the wake of two high-profile mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, the gun control debate in America continues. Mass shootings in the U.S. occur at an alarming rate. In the first 22 weeks of 2022, there were around 246 mass shootings in America. Even with outrageous numbers like that, gun control is still a divisive point of discussion in American society. But this discordance around guns is nothing new — gun restriction debates have always been part of America’s history. 

The Second Amendment in the U.S. Constitution gives Americans the right to bear arms, stating: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” And while the amendment is arguably ambiguous, one organization has explicitly honed in on the “right of the people to keep and bear Arms” clause. Within the last few decades, the National Rifle Association has been an adamant force for gun rights — insistent that the right to bear arms trumps any attempts at regulation. 

Days following the tragic killings at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre vowed that the NRA would continue to fight to expand gun rights — “and not just in the face of tragic, horrible events when politicians and demagogues try to scapegoat us … but every day — for weeks, for months, for decades.”  

No matter the circumstances, one might assume that the NRA has always been a stark gun rights advocate that is positioned against gun control. But you may be surprised to learn that there was actually a time in American history when the NRA was in support of strict gun control regulations. 

In the late 1960s, the Black revolutionary organization the Black Panther Party was beginning to spread its message of Black empowerment across the U.S. Among various causes it supported, the BPP was determined to combat the rising number of police attacks against Black people by arming themselves with rifles. Using their Second Amendment rights, members of the BPP would often openly carry their rifles in the streets. But in a social and political system that was heavily based on racism and fearmongering, this made many white Americans uneasy, including the NRA. In an attempt to disarm Black Americans, the NRA took a racially motivated approach to gun control. 

https://blavity.com/did-you-know-the-nra-supported-gun-control-when-the-black-panther-party-was-armed

There be your history lesson.

Funny how things change….now ain’t it?

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

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Usual Saturday News

It is useless and for the most part worthless so it is perfect for a post on Saturday’s when I step back from the major news of the day….a short period to feed my brain worms and cleanse the mind of crap.

Did you know there is a Museum Of Hangovers?

Just outside the city center of Zagreb you can find Muzej Mamurluka, or the Museum of Hangovers Inside this small museum are about 50 drinking or hangover-related stories and exhibits which connect to each story. The stories range from funny to educational; some stories even help audiences reflect on their own drunk/hangover stories. 

Muzej Mamurluka opened on December 1, 2019, as a small exhibition of items and stories that people left behind. Since then, it has grown into a modestly-sized museum. The reason for the museum’s existence is to provide an educational message for young people saying, “they did it so you don’t have to.”

You can play drunk darts while wearing drunk goggles and or experience driving drunk in the drunk car simulator. You can also grab a drink while walking through the museum! There are pictures, videos, visitors’ stories, and a board where people can share their own drunk stories and read the stories of others.

(atlasobscura.com)

I am a wine drinker now the news this year is that climate change is damaging the crop….then there is those pesky birds that rape the crop….but there is a savior of the fruit….

Three birds of prey hunker down in the light drizzle falling on Bouchaine Vineyards in California’s Napa Valley. Rocky, a beefy Harris hawk with long white-tipped tail feathers gently preens his marbled wings while E.B., a hybrid barbary and saker falcon with a dappled white-and-brown chest, keeps his gaze trained on a row of neatly plaited grapevines. Hootbert’s eyelids flutter sleepily over his big yellow spectacled owl eyes.

The trio are the first line of defense against the invading armies of starlings, red-winged blackbirds and house finches that feast in Bouchaine’s ripening vineyards each summer and early fall. Falconer Rebecca Rosen is the general leading them into the fray.

From July through October, as the grapes ripen to maturity, small birds are drawn to their sweet, sugary juices. “You can see them in the morning moving from vineyard to vineyard to vineyard, these massive, mega flocks that can totally devastate the crop,” explains Rosen.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/birds-of-prey-at-vineyards

I get my exercise early mornings by walking with my canine companion…..and city ordinance says that she must be tethered when out of her property but yet almost every morning I have to deal with cats running free…I have bitched about this several times….then I read a story about the nation of Iceland….

In the early months of the coronavirus lockdowns, my wife shared with me a daily dose of cat videos. By shared, of course, I mean she flipped the screen of her phone and thrust it at me across the table: “Look!” And for the next 10 minutes, we’d scroll—cat taking a bubble bath, cat robbing a fishmonger, cat playing the piano to an audience of two cats and a dog. One afternoon, as I came in the door, covered in snow, she greeted me with “Cat Lawyer”—a video of a Texas lawyer stuck on kitten filter during a court case on Zoom. The snow melted off my hat, all over the mobile screen, but we kept watching.

“Cat Lawyer” went viral in February 2021, a year into the pandemic, when we had tried for several months to get an actual cat to live with us in northern Iceland. Animal shelters were empty, with hundreds of disappointed people yearning for the comfort and joy of a feline friend. Icelandic cat breeders did not answer their phones, and the local veterinary authority cracked down on illegal kitten dealers for the first time. Cats were having the best year since the invention of the internet—it seemed. Today, as Icelanders embrace freedom again, Icelandic cats are fighting for theirs.

In April, Akureyri—the largest municipality in the country’s north, with a population of 19,000 people and some 2,000 to 3,000 cats—decided to ban their feline residents from night roaming outside. Neighboring Húsavík banned cats several years ago from going outdoors day and night. Other Icelandic towns are considering bans as the issue of free-roaming cats increasingly makes its way from online forums to local politics, with the arguments generally falling into two categories. Some people—the “no animals in my backyard” or NAIMBY-ists—proclaim free-roaming cats are nuisances that should be confined like any other pet. Others think beyond the anthropocentric: Cats kill birds and disrupt ecosystems.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/iceland-cat-ban-law

I love Iceland!

Not only did they jail the bankers for their part in the 2008 econ0omic collapse and now they are doing something about wandering cats.

I Love Iceland!

Finally, is the prices of food drive you to scrap and pinch to make meals?

Here is an idea from out Native American brethren….

That an acorn, given water and time, will grow into an oak tree is a well-known fact. Fewer know, though, that acorns can also be made into a delicious meal. Arrow Sample, founder of Arrow’s Native Foods, is working to change that.

Sample identifies as Mono/Yokut and is an enrolled tribal member of the Big Sandy Rancheria Band of Western Mono Indians. Growing up in the Central California foothills between Fresno and the Sierra Nevada Mountains, it was not until adulthood that Sample first learned that the region’s towering oak trees had once provided a staple food for his tribe.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/california-acorn-mush

Enough for today….please enjoy your weekend and be safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”