My sister and her friend, Johnny Morley,
used to go on Saturdays to the Bancroft Hotel
to visit his grandfather.One autumn, the beginning of deer season,
the old man told them,“Used to hunt when I was a boy,
woods all around here then,
but I never went again after that time…the men went out, took me with them,
and I shot my first buck.
It was wounded, lying in the leaves,so they told me,
take the pistol, shoot it in the head.
I went straight up to it,
looked right into its eyes.Just before I pulled the trigger,
it licked my hand.”
Category Archives: Security
Pigeon Smuggler Caught
A strange story from Melbourne’s airport customs describes a man caught with live pigeons down his pants:
They allegedly found in the man’s pocket a multi-vitamin container holding two birds eggs, and a further search revealed he was wearing tights with the two live birds stuffed inside, one in each leg.
Officers also seized a money belt containing plant seeds and undeclared samples of eggplant in the passenger’s baggage before he was handed over to Australian Quarantine and Inspection Services staff.
Eggs and eggplant? You don’t suppose he was hoping to grow more birds? Anything special about these pigeons? The photo is quite disturbing so I won’t republish it here, but you may want to click on the link above and look just to see how someone could carry two pigeons in his pants.
HMS Victory Case Closed
The BBC suggests the debate over the sinking of the “mightiest vessel of the 18th Century” can now be put to rest with the ‘Mighty’ HMS Victory wreck found:
The discovery of HMS Victory exonerates Admiral Sir John Balchin, who came out of retirement to command the ship, on what was meant to be his final voyage.
Historians believed the ship was lost due to poor navigation on the Casquets, a group of rocks north-west of Alderney.
But the wreck’s location, 62 miles (100km) away from the rocks, suggests the 74-year-old admiral was not to blame.
Who then? Who is to blame? Mother nature? The architects? How could this 2,000 ton, 175 ft, 100-gun entirely brass cannon First Rate ship of the Royal Navy sink just three years after being name the flagship of the Channel Fleet?
Sheila Bair and the FDIC
In my mind, Kansan conservatives are likely to rub against the Texans. There is far less bravado, and no ten-gallon hat; just speaking frankly and with a dose of common sense. It should be no surprise then to read Sheila Bair shakes up Washington.
“We have different perspectives frequently, and I think that’s a healthy thing,” she said. “You don’t want to get everybody in the room nodding.”
Critics say her record of helping consumers stave off foreclosures is mixed and that she has steered the FDIC into an activist role to the detriment of the agency’s traditional purpose of limiting the damage from failed banks.
“She’s off on a lot of social missions,” said Bert Ely, a banking industry consultant in Alexandria, Va.
Bair, though, said she remains “very much a capitalist.”
“Sometimes people misinterpret that as somehow I’m not a real Republican or something. I very much am. I guess I’m more of a Teddy Roosevelt kind of a Republican … It’s been said that Franklin would be proud of me, but I think Teddy would be proud of me too.”
Why on earth a capitalist and/or a conservative would not be allowed to instigate social missions is a real puzzler. Conservatives can regulate, believe it or not, and Bair makes an excellent argument why. The self-loving ten-gallon hat crowd might spin a good yarn about sunshine, but that won’t change the weather.
My favorite part of this story is how her podium manner affected the financial crowd:
The mortgage industry was sitting on a ticking time bomb and just didn’t get it. Pick up the phone, she said, and talk to borrowers.
“The sense of hostility from that audience was overwhelming,” said Howard Glaser, a Washington-based mortgage industry consultant who sat at Bair’s table that day in October 2007.
“I thought they were literally going to throw their desserts at her.”
Just desserts? Let them eat cake! Wait, that’s backwards. Anyway…
She gave them the Bair facts. Are they afraid of a Bair market? Haha
No doubt Kansas is conservative, but many women in public office from there seem exceptionally open minded with a firm grasp of common sense. Bair is no exception. Although she is close to the Dole family, she seems a world apart; more like Nancy Kassebaum or Kathleen Sebelius.