Skip to main content

A Wall of Thoughts and Prayers

I am applying to our County administration for a permit to build a gun range in our back yard.  I know a lot of you think that is crazy, that a lot of neighbors are going to have to hunker down a little, but I have a tried and true plan to take care of that.

I am going to build a wall of thoughts and prayers.

Oh, I know that you might wonder if I have finally lost it, but I haven't:  I have learned.  Every time some idiot with an arsenal attacks a school or a parade, our elected officials, and let's admit it, some of our neighbors, too, offer their thoughts and prayers for the people who got shot.

People believe that thoughts and prayers will do the job!  They just get around to it too late; after the fact.  What good is a wall of thoughts and prayers after the gunfire has ended?

The wall has to come first, and I am going to do that.

There is no shortage of thoughts and prayers.  They are everywhere.  They are cheap.  People are good-hearted enough to offer them freely.  I am going to make use of them; completely enclose the gun range in our back yard with them.  It will be free.  Won't cost a thing.  Thoughts and prayers do not cost anybody anything.  And, and nothing about a wall of thoughts and prayers will interfere with our god-given right to own an eighteenth century musket just in case . . . say . . . we are attacked by North Korea and have to mobilize.

I am looking for the use of a piece of property somewhere, quite a ways away, where--once I get the permit from the County-- I can test-fire the wall of thoughts and prayers.  I don't want to do that in my back yard, naturally.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. ...

AT YEAR'S END, 2014

Ah!  There you are!  And so are we! After more than thirty years, sometimes Mari and I look at each other and say how surprising it is that we have found each other.  It often happens when we have decided that neither one of us wants to go adventuring: you know, to the grocery, or to a movie; or least of all, to a party designed to disguise gravity, deny arthritis, and display bottomless good humor. At the same time, sometimes Mari and I look at each other and say how surprising is everything that has happened to us.  The world we grew up in has gone, and now there is another, and that we are still here, as we were, and altogether new. It is Jao we are thinking of. This year, more than any other in our lives, has been the year when a grandchild has occupied a significant portion of our ordinary lives.  We have, in our various ways, come to have several grandchildren, but this time one of them has lived so nearby that we could walk to where he...