Winners Laugh

Sarah asked for my advice on how she should proceed with Mom - give her peace and quiet or confront her about the two of us not being invited to visit her at the same time. Actually, it is our sister Rebecca who doesn't want Sarah and me out to Hayden Lake, Idaho at the same time. This is because Rebecca knows there will be hell to pay from me if she is abusive toward Sarah. Mother is taking her cues from Rebecca because Rebecca is taking care of her and including her into her family. This is an old pattern of behavior as Mom was Dad's - whoops! Rooster's - doormat as he took care of her when he was alive. She was a stay-at-home mother to six kids. Mom is very secretive about her upbringing, but I learned from a neighbor of my grandparents, after my grandmother died, that my grandmother would have arguements with my grandfather, collapse onto the floor, and men from the neighborhood would have to come in and carry her upstairs to bed. Mother did not like me finding this out so it's obvious that she is used to hiding dysfunctioning.
I need to give Sarah advice. I think advice is terribly under-rated. Lord knows, I would have benefitted from it. Remember, I had a father -whoops! a rooster- who sometimes would crow with glee when I was having problems. He was no advice-giver. I think the first thing I will tell Sarah is that winners find a way to laugh while losers keep their frowns. The next thing I will say is that we need to be very honest, and that means recognizing that I may make trouble for Rebecca in her hometown of Hayden Lake, Idaho, if she is mean to Sarah. Several times I've been railroaded by various government officials and have been unable to protect myself both because I could not afford a lawyer, but more importantly, because of my great fear of public speaking. I have a great deal of experience from these misadventures and would not hesitate in using my experience to try to stop Rebecca's abuse. I would go to Rebecca first and then her husband, but if that failed, I might try to organize a family intervention. But I don't have much hope for that as my family is very timid, detached, and cold. Money is the standard, and the answer to every problem. Anything else is shrugged off. Money talks and everything else walks. So I would probably go elsewhere too, possibly to Rebecca's minister. Rebecca runs a Christian private school. In my last call to Mom, she blamed her heart palpitations on Sarah's two-day withdrawal into her room after Susan scolded her for not taking care of Mom. Notice that Mom did not blame her heart palpitations on Rebecca who came into Mother's home and falsely accused Mother's guest - Sarah - of not taking care of Mother. If Sarah's reaction to Rebecca's attacks caused Mother to have palpitations, can you imagine what Mom would have when she saw my reaction to Rebecca's attacks?
I will continue this next posting.
There were a couple more assertins made by Captain James Ashcroft (UK): One was that in the early years of the occupation of Iraq, if a U.S. Army convoy was shot at, the American soldiers would immediately lay down a circle of automatic fire around their convoy. They would riddle cars, chickens, dogs, and children with their bullets. It didn't matter. This was in the book "Making A Killing." Ashcroft's first explanation for why the U.S. went into Iraq is that in 1999 Iraq stopped selling oil for the dollar and asked for Euros. This caused the Euro to get stronger, and started a policy that other nations might follow. This would have jepordized the American dollar. To back this up, Ashcroft notes that one of the first things the coalition forces did in Iraq was to change the trading in Euros back to American dollars. It is interesting to see what people outside the American box, so to speak, say about us who are inside the box.
I hope you have enjoyed your visit here today, and as they say in the South,
Y'all come back now, you hear! Peter "Two-Guns" Nickerson at peternickerson12@yahoo.com.

Rescued Dogs' Behavior

Last Tuesday night, one of the dogs pranced by me in the kitchen proudly holding the ski cap I wear to bed. I quickly rescued it, showing no humor at all. The cap was wet and had holes in it so I put it around a light fixture so the light bulb would dry it before I went to bed. Two ski caps have already disappeared this winter so I must hang onto the last one.
Tasha and I took Page, a rescued rat terrier, to a foster family to have a reunion with her daughter, Bitty Bit. When the two dogs saw each other, they literally embraced, standing on their hind legs and embracing each other with their long, thin front legs. We will keep them together until it's time for one to come back to the mother ship for medical monitoring or socialization with other dogs. All these dogs belonged to a pack of about thirty dogs before the neighbors from hell complained about the number of dogs we had. Then we had to find most of them foster homes where we continue to provide the food and medical care with the right to cycle the dogs in and out of the foster homes.
Gloria is one of our foster homes even though she and Tasha are not speaking at this time. I still am. This rift between the two women has happened before. Tasha says that Gloria thinks that just because she takes care of her mother who has a severe case of Alzheimer's, she has done her Christian duty and can say anything she wants to whenever she wants. There is no doubt that Gloria shoots from the hip and is impulsive: one time the three of us were eating dinner at Sonny's in Alachua City
(Florida, and Tasha went to the restroom. Gloria said to me, "Tasha's gone to the bathroom for a couple of minutes, let's go to it right now!" Gloria's mother walks around the house naked, pees on chairs, and defecates on the floor. That's a tough job for Gloria to be monitoring her mother constantly and cleaning behind her, but I'd consider it for five hundred or so a month. After all, that's exactly what I do with the dogs. Gloria's mother would fit in.
Recently, Gloria saw two abandoned pit bulls on the side of the road. She called Tasha immediately to see if Tasha would accept them into her network, meaning that Gloria would take care of them, but Tasha had to provide the food and medical care. Gloria has a small horse ranch and plenty of room for more dogs. Tasha responded that she could not afford to pay for the care of any more dogs. Gloria countered with, "The humane people are going to pick them up, and you know they put pit bulls to sleep!" But Tasha didn't budge. Gloria who has more money coming in than Tasha does relented and picked up the puppies, caring for them herself. They were emaciated and needed worming as well as their starter shots. Gloria did a great job with them. I've seen the puppies, and they are precious. They are red pits with a long strip of white between their eyes, making them look like calves. They wriggle with friendliness, and Gloria has already found homes for them. Good job, Gloria!
I hope the homes are good and beyond that, stable. Because of overspending and obsessions with sex, money, and drugs, stable families are a rarity. Still, it's wonderful that we're still free to make mistakes and haven't traded our freedom into the government for a more equal hell on earth. For this I give thanksgiving.
Last summer, I read a book but was unwilling to discuss it. It seemed unpatriotic, but I decided patriotism to truth superceded patriotism to the party in power in Washington. "Making A Killing" was written by Captain (UK) James Ashcroft, and one claim he makes is that the Iraquis learned to give up their custom of firing rifles to celebrate a wedding because the American soldiers on patrol responded by opening fire on them. It was one reason the locals hated Americans (page 14). He also said that right after the fall of Saddam, American convoys demanded that all vehicles on the roads in front of them make way. If vehicles didn't, they would first get a warning burst of gunfire. If they still didn't pull over, gunfire would disable their vehicle. Ashcroft claimed that the warning bursts were often followed by the disabling bursts so quickly that it was just one long burst. Of course, this was another reason the Iraquis hated us (page 21).
I hope you have enjoyed checking in today and will do it again soon. Peter "Two-Guns" Nickerson at peternickerson12@yahoo.com.

Two Too Many?

I called Sarah, and as I predicted, she did not read my blog. She said she got to the library and found it closed. Considering Sarah has done her tutoring there for years and should know the library's hours by now, that might have seen odd but remember that Sarah is a sixties hippy. She did get a friend to read her parts of my blog for about an hour over the telephone. Sarah remarked to me, " It was very interesting. I didn't know you did so much black panther research like talking to that man whose family had seen ten or eleven black panthers." I hoped that her friend would find this blog interesting enough to read it regularly. Sarah commented, "If Meme (our mother's mother) had told Mom that she and Ron (Mother's brother) couldn't come see her at the same time, she would never have stood for it. What do you think I should do - I know you'll just say I should do what I think best - but should I just accept this or should I confront Mom about it?"
"Sarah, I've been thinking about that myself. I want to give Mom peace and quiet, but she's not a bump on a log. She saying and doing things that are very upsetting."
"Exactly!" Pam confirmed. "As I've told Mom, I want peace and quiet myself!"
"Touche! That's brilliant! In all my thinking and writing, I've never thought of that myself. Sarah, Kando is coming down the lane with the horse trailer. I've got to help load the horses. You take care, girl."
"I will. Call me. Bye."
"Bye, bye."
In other news, I found these items in the "Wall Street Journal": This past spring the Swiss government mandated that geneticists must do their research without trampling on a plant's dignity. How do you do that, and who decides if you're doing it or not? More government bureucrats, I'm sure. Also, I read that last September the people of Ecuador voted for a new consititution that is the first in the world to recognize an ecosystem's rights, and those rights are enforceable in a court of law. Therefore, the nation's rivers, forests, and air are no longer just property but are right-bearing individuals with "the right to exist, persist, and regenerate."
Will this paralyze people and give them less rights than other animals, and how far will people carry this - to molecules, perhaps?
Two-Guns at peternickerson12@yahoo.com.

Positive Things, Love Lost

Since I am very hard on myself, I am forcing myself to note some good things: First, this weekend we tried to move the horses to Kando's four and a half acre pasture. There Odessa and Dually will be able to graze on grass, run, and have the company of other horses. We keep them in the woods where there is no grass and very limited space to run. We took down the corral which was made of metal horse panels and put them into the bed of a pickup Kando borrowed. I was the one who figured out how to put the last panel into the bed. Kando thought it should be another way, but Tasha supported me. Kando has about a half acre around his house. There's grass there, but there is one dog poop after another everywhere. I clean up the poop around our house which makes for a lack of grass and a plenitude of sandy dirt, but at least you and the dogs aren't constantly stepping on poop. Kando waters his horses out of an old bathtub. It was loaded with scum, and I was surprised he let the tub go that badly. I wash the tub and bucket we use for the horses every weekend with Clorox and wipe them clean with paper towels.
That was on Sunday, and on the previous Friday night, I was about the last person to leave the gym. I leave 5 minutes earlier than the closing time to give the workers time to put the weights away. As I was leaving, one of the workers came over and wished me a pleasant evening and shook my hand. I was touched by this show of respect because I have lived so much of my life so far out of the box that people would shake their heads at me. No one shook my hand.
Audrey asked me what was wrong, and I told her she knew very well. When she persisted, I told her, "You had no business saying that Rose was a big of s---!"
"Well, that's what I think she is!"
"I'm not taking you to Toastmasters' again. You are too hateful!"
"So are you!"
I muttered "Stupid!" to myself and walked away from her car.
She yelled something at me as she drove away.

Florida Frigid, Love Lost

The Florida temperature has been as low as 28 some mornings.Since I have not heat, I am going to bed with two pairs of longjohns.I have never used heat unless there was a woman in the house. I do have about ten candles in the bathroom which I light when I take a shower. But showers are not a daily thing now. There are three dogs on the bed with me - Pogo, Maggie, and Rambo. Rambo has to bark when he wants to get onto the bed because Maggie, the little Bassett hound thinks she is a lion and will not let him onto the bed. I have to call her to me, and then Rambo, the yellow lab, can jump onto the foot of the bed. I have a space blanket under the bottom sheet on the dogs' side of the bed so it will be warmer for them. The cold weather is making the horses frisky: Dually, a horse rescued from a cop who was starving him, was prancing around the fence this morning, provoking the dogs into a frenzy, and then kicking the fence. I chased the dogs away before he destroyed the fence.
I called Sarah to leave a message for her to look at my blog. She was at home, and we talked briefly. She was very surprised to hear that Mother is now saying that she doesn't want the two of us coming out to Idaho together. Sarah said Mother had just told her that it would be so nice if the two of us could come out together. "Yeah," I remarked, "And then she told Rebecca, and Rebecca put the kabosh on it." Mother had said to me, "Let me talk to Rebecca when I told her it would be much easier to come out West with Sarah.Nowebecca is taking care of her, and Mother has become Rebecca's doormat. Sarah asked, "Isn't it awful that a mother can't let two of her children come together to see her because another child is against it?"
"It's pitiful, Sarah," I replied.
"That's exactly what it is - pitiful!"
Sarah was going to spend the day in the library so that her son's band could use the house to practice in. She said she will look at the posting I wrote a couple of days ago, but I don't know if she will. Sarah is quirky about using the computer: she says she has 750 emails she hasn't read.
I went to Toastmasters yesterday with Audrey and only gave Rose, the hippy, the reason Audrey wasn't there. After the meeting, I followed Rose to Budda Belly in Gainesville along with another Toastmaster. We spent almost three hours talking, and it was so different than being with Audrey. We had real conversations. The other Toastmaster told us at length about buying the patent rights for a premium coffee from the University of Florida and how he was about to use $3.25 million of his own money to bring the coffee onto the market. When he told Rose and me about building a place for his roasters, I asked for directions to it. I wanted to see if it were there. After lunch, I found it, and the workman said it was being constructed for roasters.
As I followed Rose to the Budda Belly, I noticed that her bumpersticker read "Shift Happens" not "S--- Happens" as Audrey had claimed. Audrey cannot read very well. I don't even plan to mention that to Audrey as I simply cutting her out of that part of my life.
Two-Guns at peternickerson12@yahoo.com.

Is It Selfishness?

Sunday I called Mom, and she reiterated how wonderful it would be if I could come out to visit her. I have a fear of distance and have never been out to Idaho to visit her even though she's been there about thirty years. I replied that I had just talked to Sarah, and she would like to go with me. This would make such a trip much more possible to me. Mom replied firmly, "I don't want you and Sarah out here at the same time. Rebecca is very good to me, and I don't get between my children (even to stop them from fighting, Mom?) and I don't want the two of you out here together. Obviously, Mom and Rebecca know that there would be hell to pay with me if Rebecca was abusive toward Sarah, and I was there. I admitted to Mom, "I am protective of Rebecca, and even though your style is not my style,at this point in your life I want you to have peace and quiet, and I respect that." About five years ago, Mother confronted me about not seeing Tasha when she was in the hospital for heart surgery. Tasha had made it abundantly clear that she was not interested in seeing me, probably so I would not run into her boyfriend. Mother's confrontation released a torrent of anger from me that included writing her a letter asking if she ate her children and sending copies to my sibs. That is not what I wanted to do as Mom is an old, sick woman, and I want her to have as much peace and quiet in her remaining years as possible. But she had provoked me. Again, I am very disappointed but not at all surprised with Mother's statement. Rebecca is good to her so she is not going to upset the applecart. It's all about Mother, and it is very selfish and hurtful to the rest of the family (even to Rebecca because it allows her to get away with abusive behavior toward Sarah without being reprimanded by Mother). But it's a very superficial selfishness. The deeper selfishness, that is, doing something for her self would be to have higher principles and insist that Rebecca stop being abusive toward Sarah. Rebecca abused Sarah in my mother's own home when Sarah was my Mother's guest, and Mother did not intervene. A higher principle, a principle that would contribute to Rebecca life and to the lives of the rest of our family and to Mother's involved friends, as well as to Mother's life, would have been an immediate intervention to tell Rebecca she was not free to talk to Sarah that way in her home, and shouldn't talk to her that way anywhere, and that what she was saying was not true. Doing that would be an act of doing or saying something that furthered Mother's life in the highest sense. It would have been the deepest selfishness possible, I think. Wouldn't Mother been proud of herself if she had the guts to do that? Wouldn't her family and friends have been proud of her and proud to have her as a Mother or a relative or a friend is she had done that? JFK famously said that a rising tide lifts all boats. I say that a high principle acted upon elevates everyone concerned. Again, it would have elevated Rebecca by showing her the right way to behave. Instead, my mother chose to continue in the groveling position of accepting whatever Rebecca did because she was "good" to her. No, Mother, Rebecca is not good to you: She abuses your guest in your own home. I am speaking rhetorically because I have no desire to disturb my mother. She got shingles during our confrontation five years ago. She deserves to eke out her ending in peace and quiet. I guess.
Two-Guns at peternickerson12@yahoo.com.

Arrows In!

I struggle with a bad shoulder and do rows and rotator cup exercises to build it up. Still, I have to use BenGay-type ointment and Aspercreme on it daily. Recently, there was an archery instruction program on one of the outdoor channels, and the archer was demonstrating a two anchor system of shooting which would enable you to make your shot from the same position every time. One anchor was the cheek, and the other was putting your nose on the outside vane of the arrow. I tried it, and instantly my grouping of arrows was much tighter. Two arrows lost vanes, and another arrow got split by an incoming arrows. For about two weeks I have been using the double anchor concept in my practice. I have also adopted a standard I saw on another archery show: shooting from a close distance to put 10 out of 10 arrows into the target and then moving back about a yard. Then you practice at that distance until you can do 10 for 10. At that point, you got back another yard. Today, I went from about 15 yards to 16 yards. I hope I can accomplish 10 for 10 at that distance in a week.
It is cold in Florida now, but last week I encountered a black snake about four feet long on the archery range. I am slowly cleaning the range becuase I have lost several arrows on it. If I miss a shot, I immediately stop shooting and go down to the back of the range where I rake up leaves into the Yard Cart and then carry a handful of limbs back to the pile. Using only my left hand gives my right shoulder a break.
Last Tuesday in Osceola National Forest, I was driving along a sand road and saw a thin snake about eight inches long in the road in front of me. I stopped the car and got out to see if I could identify him. I couldn't, but he did not move. His head was a couple of inches off the ground, but he appeared frozen. I scuffed some sand at him. The sand actually moved him, but still he didn't move. It was a cool day, and I guess he was frozen. I had never seen a snake in such a condition. The snake and a doe deer were the only animals I saw that outing. You do not see a lot of game in the Forest, and I think it is because they are shot at from the roads. I think that is why deer in Florida are very skittish about beng viewed from the roads, and in Virginia they aren't. I speculate that the interest in that sort of thing is less intense in Virginia, and law enforcement is more pervasive. That's just a guess, as I found out years later that my step-son, Spike, had been an avid road hunter, even killing deer at night with the bumper of his car. A lot goes on around you that you are not aware of.
Two-Guns at peternickerson12@yahoo.com.

Dissing A Toastmaster

Audrey has a major problem: she goes postal when I talk with another woman. I am sure this is a habit she acquired with Henry, who at fifty is still living with his mother and not seeing another woman. A year or so ago when she exhibited this bizarre behavior, she made an attempt to justify her outburst by saying, "I don't know what I would do without Henry or you." I've gone fishing with Henry, and his talk is punctuated with crude but lewd remarks about women, so I know he's interested in women but doesn't dare to do anything about it. It's been beaten out of him. Even if Audrey and I are in the Osceola Forest, and I stop at a country store, often with only dirt floors, and get a black panther sighting from the female clerk working there, Audrey will not acknowledge the sighting when I come back to the car and tell her. It's like I'm talking to the barn wall, and while I try to remain differentiated, it takes a lot of the joy of being out in the woods away.
Ida has been coming to the Toastmasters' meetings with me because I did not have Tasha's truck available for my use when I started attending. One of the Toastmasters is an ex-hippy about my age. She is gray and overweight, but she reminds me of my hippy sister, Sarah. I enjoy talking to her, but Audrey gets livid. Last Thursday, I spent some time with her after the meeting as she was quitting Toastmasters as she found the rules too constraining. Typical hippy. When I finished, Audrey's face with contorted with feral rage. We got into the car, and she slammed the door and then slammed the sun visor around. As we drove out of the parking lot, she hissed, "She's got a bumper sticker on her car. It says, "S--- happens. She should know, because she's a bag of s---!" I decided Audrey was no longer coming to meetings with me. I will simply tell her that I have some people to talk to and am taking Tasha's car. I've already talk to Tasha and obtained her permission. If Audrey asks if it's because of what she said about the Toastmaster, I will say yes.
This is nothing new: I stopped going to church with her several years ago because of her jealous outbursts in the car after I said hello to another woman after services. Once again, I've had enough of her insane dissing. This is a rough time of the year for Audrey because her family ignores her through the holidays, but neither my acquaintances nor I are going to bear the brunt of her primitive rage.
Two-Guns at peternickerson12@yahoo.com.

The Seal Is Angry

Kando, the Navy Seal and best friend of Tasha's is about six foot tall and six foot broad. I knew that Gloria and Tasha had a run-in recently, and I asked Kando about it while Tasha was in the feed store. "Gloria started yelling at Tasha for using a needle that was too big, and Tasha said something back to her. We had brought dog food over to her, and she told us to take the dog food and get off her land. I drove Tasha home, and then I went back. I was going to break her neck with one hand."
"And spend the rest of your life in prison," I added, surprised at his anger. "It's not worth it."
"And spend the rest of my life in prison. You're right; it wouldn't be worth it."
"But I could shoot her from 600 yards with a sniper rifle, and no one would know."
"Now you're making me insecure," I laughed.
"Nah, nah, nah," Seal replied.
He was still angry, and I let him calm down. He talked about where he could get the sniper rifle and other weapons. This was a side of Kando I had never seen. I had heard that Seals were deadly about anything said or done against America, and now Kando seems to have transferred that to Tasha. Gloria had not just blown up at Tasha, but had also said some hurtful things about her to others. That was going to be very hard for Tasha to forgive. Gloria has suddenly become very mad at Tasha before, but she had never gone to other people to try to hurt Tasha. Thats human behavior; it never stays the same, it either gets better or worse. It usually gets worse.
Two-Guns at peternickerson12@yahoo.com.

Bigfoot Hunt, Love Lost

Yesterday, Audrey and I drove up to Osceola National Forest, a huge flatland that is often flooded with runoff rainwater. It was dry, and we had no problem driving around. I asked about six hunters if they or their friends had a Bigfoot story, and none did. I also asked a man who is apparently an employee for Plum Creek Land Company, the largest landowner in America. He wasn't paticularly pleasant and hadn't seen one either. All these men admitting they've never seen a Bigfoot leads credence to the reports I get of men seeing black panthers. Obviously, people aren't just making up stories when I ask about sightings.
I lost my phone several months ago, and Tasha generously bought me another one last week. It was great to be in touch with my mother and my sister, Sarah, again.
Rebecca fell off a ladder while she was painting the top of one of her porches and broke both bones in her leg and sprained her right hand. Consequently, I found her at home both times I called her. She reviewed the difficulty she had with our sister Rebecca when she visited our mother in Idaho. I suggested the reductio ad absurdem approach and played the role of Sarah when Rebecca told her she wasn't taking care of Mother. I said, "Rebecca, I am so glad you have pointed out how I have been abusing and neglecting Mother and thereby causing her great injury. You can see what terrible shape she is in as she sits there with Uncle Ronnie, drinking coffee and eating cookies, chatting with Uncle Ronnie, and enjoying herself. I strongly suggest we dial 911 and get an ambulance here immediately to take her to the hospital where she will undoubtfully be placed into the intensive care unit! Meanwhile, I would appreciate it if you would call 911 again and have the police come over and arrest me for mother abuse or neglect!"
Sarah said, "I don't know what Rebecca would say to that, but she would just go around and tell the family about it."
I didn't know how to respond to that, but next time I will say, "Let her. She knows you weren't neglecting mother. She knows her charge that you were was a lie. She's not going to tell other people that she told you that you were. That would expose her as a liar. She's too smart to do that, but even if she did, everyone would know she was lying." Instead, I said to Sarah, "If you were stronger, you could just say, 'Rebecca, you are lying. I am not neglecting Mother, so just get off your lie and move on." To show me that she was stronger than I thought, Sarah said, "Well, I did tell her something. The day I left, she came by in a big, red convertible. I walked over to her as she sat in the big car and said, 'Rebecca, you are the sister from hell!' I could tell she was taken aback.
"Sarah, the two of us have the same problem: we are very serious, and we take things very seriously. That is how Tasha hooks me, and that is how Sarah hooks you. I will bet there are times when they have gotten together and said let's hook Sarah and Two-Guns, and then let's get back together and laugh about it. Tasha and Rebecca are able to slip from the role of being very nice or very charming to being very nasty. You and I can't slip out of roles: We are always very serious. That's our hook, and it's a very easy one for them."
"Yeah, that's very true. We are serious."
"Well, how about this, then: When Rebecca starts getting nasty and making up untrue things about you, why don't you just say you know she has a split personality, and you want to talk to the nice Rebecca."
"Yeah, I could do that," Sarah replied enthusiastically. "I can see myself doing that."
I learned from Tasha that Rebecca's daughter, Flowers, was mailing me a picture her hunter-husband had taken of a large, black cat at his hunting camp. Since I didn't know Flowers' number, I called Rebecca asking her to give me the number. That was several days ago, and I haven't heard from her. Is Rebecca reading my blog, and seeing herself in what I write? Wonder why.
Two-Guns at peternickerson12@yahoo.com.

Dogs, Panthers, and Freedom

THE DOG CREW STORY: The Alachua County, Florida ordinance is unfair, ignorant, and arrogant because a person living on a quarter of acre can have the same number of dogs - 6 - that I can have on a little less than nine acres. Why? We had to "get rid of" most of our dogs. Of course, they went to family and friends as they were beloved creatures, not just expendable things as viewed by the county politicians and bureuacrats ( let me add that there were plenty of kind bureaucrats who were just following orders, and I hope they are able to find other work before their government jobs eat their hearts). Most of our dogs are rescued dogs who have been abandoned by subhumans. We even adopted some out early in their stay with us, but they were too disturbed by the trauma inflicted by the subhumans to make it and had to be returned to us. To save the canine crew, we developed a network of homes for the dogs with Tasha providing the food and veterinary care. We cycle the dogs back to our house where we monitor them, and they get to see the other dogs. Each time a dog cycles back to our house, the mother ship, he meets old friends and often family members. In addition to our rescued dogs, we have a core of labrador retrievers we had been breeding for about twenty occasionally for twenty years. We don't breed any more because it is not only too painful to see puppies we love being bought by other people but also because not all these placements work, and we worried about the puppy's welfare. We only sold our puppies to about a third of the people who came to by one, but in spite of that, there were still puppies who were not treated well. Tasha can be very sociable, and she has developed many contacts who were able to tell us about the puppies we sold. Hearing that one was not being treated was heartbreaking, and although we resolved every case, we are still worried about the ones we don't hear about.
THE BLACK FLORIDA PANTHER STORY:
A few days later, I went to Orlando to Disney World in Orlando with Tasha' office crew. Disney World is not my cup of tea so Tasha bought me "Wildcats of the World" by Barbara Sleeper, and I was content to spend the day with the crowds and artificial phoniness.
FREEDOM'S VIGIL:
What was Obama calling "selfish?" It was a family's income for itself instead of wanting to give a portion of it to the God-state to disperse as it wished. I believe taxation is one of those things that show God deliberately constructed this world to be imperfect. Taxation appears to be a necessary evil for how else can you raise the money needed for government? Lotteries? I say that taxation is evil because it is based upon force. If you doubt that, see what eventually happens if you don't pay your taxes.

Dogs, Panthers, And Freedom

THE CANINE CREW: Two mornings ago, one of the crew knocked my Timex digital clock off the dresser and onto the concrete tile. This has happened several times, but this time the clock did not survive the fall. It will be a while before I can replace it.
Four years ago, our neighbors from hell complained that our dogs were too noisey, that we had too many, and we abused or neglected them. I tried to keep the dogs quiet, but Tasha would not help. She said the neighbors from hell deserved the noise. Three times their trained attack dog, a German shepherd, had jumped on our dogs whle Tasha was walking them down the lane. Once, they were still on our part of the lane, our property, that is. This was the second trained attack dog the neighbors had, and neither of them would work with the neighbors from hell. That should tell you that they really were from hell. The dogs both disappeared. Tasha said she had bad dreams from the attacks, and I advised her to see a therapist. If the problem became severe, we could initiate a lawsuit. But Tasha can be very brittle about anything I suggest, and she did nothing but have bad dreams. I was sure that the neighbors would not complain about the dogs for two years as they would be waiting for the statue of limitations on a suit to run out. Sure enough, within a month of it running out, they were out making complaints. When they carped to the county authorities we found out that we could have only six adult dogs. Alachua County has a very intrusive government. What business is it of theirs how many dogs, children or horses a person has?
THE BLACK FLORIDA PANTHER STORY:
I told Dr. David Maehr, author of "The Florida Panther," about finding the dead "black panther" in Capps, Florida and asked him, "I guess that's pretty classic, isn't it?"
"Not really. It's usually an otter. They have the same shape, you know, and people can't judge at a distance."
I'm going to put up signs at some of these country stores like in Raiford where they are seeing him. I'm going to offer $100 for a confirmed sighting."
"Why don't you offer $10,000," he asked, laughing, "You wont lose it!"
"Well, I'm going to keep trying.
"Good luck."
FREEDOM'S VIGIL:
Obama in an obvious slam at Ayn Rand's "The Virtue Of Selfishness" said last week that there was no "virtuousness in selfishness." I've written that he has no standing on this as he has been very selfish toward his half-brother living in Kenya in a dirt floor hut making do on $12 a year. He's been the same way toward his aunt who lives in a ghetto in America. He made millions from a ghost-written book that included passages about his love for his aunt, yet she has received very little if any proceeds from that book. In addition, the amount of money the Obama give to charity as reported on their income taxes is very low.

Dogs, Panthers, And Freedom

THE CANINE CREW:
Rambo amazed me Saturday. Rambo is a yellow lab with a huge, heavy head and pronounced jowls. His legs are short, but his body is stocky. He weighs about a hundred pounds and is not a beautiful lab because his legs are too short, and his head is somewhat like a pit bull's. Tasha and I kept him for his character because even before he could stand as a puppy, he was crawling around his mother to see what littermates he could push around. Puppies were often clumpedd together in two or threes, probably for warmth and companionship. Somehow Rambo would find these little piles of puppies even though his eyes weren't yet open, crawl over to them, push them apart, and move on. We would laugh at the bellicoseness of the blind, crawling puppy and for that I named him "Rambo."
But Rambo is now a mature dog of about eight years, and Saturday he showed an unexpected rare side: Redbones, a beagle about fifteen years old and now deaf was sleeping in the doorway of my bedroom. Rambo wanted out of my room, but he didn't want to disturb Redbones who is very cranky. So Rambo whined and then barked for me to come. I guided him around the undisturbed Redbones. After eight years, Rambo has learned the kindness of letting sleeping dogs lie.
THE BLACK PANTHER STORY:
I finished reading "Panther" by John Caras and called Dr. David Maehr to ask him about the book. He laughed and said, "Oh, yes! I read that, first in high school, and for the second time when I began catching panthers. He's got some ridiculous stuff in it - panthers killing a bear and a big alligator."
I asked David if he remembered meeting a guy in Costa Rica who was working with margays. He had supposedly met this guy at a cat conference there.
"I've only been to the Amazon," David replied.
"This man said he met you at a cat conference, and that you were quiet and introverted."
"That's not me," David laughed.
"I can't tell you his name without his permission because he is trying to get into graduate school. This whole thing about black panthers is very controversial. But he's the only professional I've met who's said he wouldn't be surprised, indeed would expect, there to be a black panther. He says there are black margays, black lions, and black tigers."
"Well," responded David, "I've said that there are dark panthers in South America and maybe there could be some black ones genetically."
"There is some organization that has several panthers. The staff takes them around to Wal-Marts and sells panther T-shirts. I saw one of the panthers and started pointing out the Florida panther characteristics to my wife. The staff guy thought I was from the Game Commission and said they had all the necessary papers if I wanted to see them. I was flattered. But their brochure stated that the Florida panther didn't have the necessary genes to produce black panthers. Was that a correct statement?"
"No," David replied, "They can't say that."
FREEDOM'S VIGIL:
Last week Obama aired his thirty minute commercial in which he said, "I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper." Later in the week, he asked, "What is the virtuousness of selfishness?" That could have been a slam at Ayn Rand's book,
"The Virtue Of Selfishness." Obama is a hypocrite. He is not his brother's keeper because his brother lives in a hut in Kenya. He lives on $12 a year! Obama is not his sister's keeper either for his aunt lives in a ghetto. Obama made over $4 million on his two ghost-written books (he's a hypocrite as an author too). Part of that book is about the warm relationship he supposedly has with his aunt. He sells the book which is partially about his aunt, makes millions from it, and his aunt stays in the ghetto.
Finally, to add insult to injury, Obama has ordered both his brother and aunt not to talk to anyone. No money, just force. Expect the same for yourself if Obama wins. Don't be a useful idiot; vote for John McCain, the Patriot.
Two-Guns at peternickerson12@yahoo.com.