It's National Tartan Day, the annual celebration of Scottish heritage. Many states have registered district tartans that residents can wear, including both the state in which I was born and the state in which I currently reside.
I met this gentleman, whose name is Jim, along with his daughter Dakota and his granddaughter (who is 7 and introduced me to her puppy). The horses were Frank and Jesse James, Frank being the one who was blind in the right eye. My son and I were out on the motorcycles, and met him on a mountain road. He offered us another kind of ride, which of course I took. He's a cool old character: blacksmith, farrier, and rebuilder of classic muscle cars. He took us over to his barn and showed us some of his collection.
Below the fold, some video from the fire scene the other night (taken after the fire was out).
It is an honor to once again join this august group of bloggers. To commemorate this auspicious event, I would like to introduce you to a favorite band of mine. Wytch Hazel is a band from Lancaster, England. Their sound is heavily influenced by bands like Thin Lizzy, Deep Purple, and Iron Maiden. Their lyrics center on Christian themes. They describe themselves in the following way:
"In the parallel universe where the New Wave of British Heavy Metal happened 600 years early, WYTCH HAZEL are the band of choice for the discerning Plantagenet headbanger."
They had me at Plantagenet headbanger.
The first song is from their upcoming album,
"Sacrament," out on 2 June. The other two songs are from their
previous album, "Pentecost."
And this one:
You get a lot of country music, Western music, and roots Americana on this blog, but that's not all we do around here.
Harry has said he’s “not religious,” but he is spiritual. Christianity leaves him cold, but he pursues enlightenment with a zeal that would have warmed the heart of a Puritan divine. He travels this path alone, guided by drugs, spirit animals sent by his late mother, Diana, and daily yoga and meditation....At around 15, Harry experienced a ritual induction into manhood. Guided by Sandy, a family retainer, he shot a stag. Sandy slit the dying animal’s throat and belly and told Harry to kneel.... Sandy pushed Harry’s head inside the carcass and held it there. “After a minute I couldn’t smell anything, because I couldn’t breathe. My nose and mouth were full of blood, guts, and a deep, upsetting warmth.”“So this,” Harry tells himself, “is death.” Yet he’s ecstatic. “I wasn’t religious,” Harry writes, “but this ‘blood facial’ was, to me, baptismal.” Finally, he has lived the “virtues” that had been “preached” to him since childhood. Culling the herd is being “good to Nature” and “good to the community.” Managing nature is “a form of worship,” and environmentalism is “a kind of religion” for his father. For the first time Harry feels “close to God.”
This reminds me of another insight of GKC's:
The only objection to Natural Religion is that somehow it always becomes unnatural. A man loves Nature in the morning for her innocence and amiability, and at nightfall, if he is loving her still, it is for her darkness and her cruelty. He washes at dawn in clear water as did the Wise Man of the Stoics, yet, somehow at the dark end of the day, he is bathing in hot bull's blood, as did Julian the Apostate.
The thing about being an apostate from the Church of England is that there's no peril in it. You can be a witch or a druid without fear in the lands consecrated to the Church of England; you can be a witch or a druid without ever leaving the Church of England. It's an easy faith, whether ardently beloved or rejected. It hunts no heresies and no heretics.
I'm reading currently a very similar book, though, by a young Muslim woman who has adopted a similar path to rethinking Islam. I'm struck by how similar the paths are: she speaks of studying other religions for syncretic purposes, seeking wisdom from Native American elders, becoming a witch, taking magic mushrooms to appreciate the mind of God. Their paths are unique -- there is no room for orthodoxy in the religion of the youth, which every man or woman makes up for himself or herself -- but they are not dissimilar.
Yet she is to be praised in a way that he is not to be, because what she is doing requires real courage. Even though she lives in America and is relatively buffered from the perils, that buffer is in no way absolute. It takes a brave woman to try to live an Islam that incorporates witchcraft; it takes genuine courage to publish a book about doing so.
One mourns for Harry, who was once a soldier who knew virtues and courage. Not so for her, who is living such things even now. It is strange, really, how such similar paths can be so essentially different.
Having mostly learned the history of WW II from the American perspective of the expected final victory, movies like April 9th, about Danish soldiers tasked with delaying the German invasion in 1940, or Uprising, about the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising, give me the very different perspective of the good guys losing.
In April 9th, a Danish platoon of bicycle infantry is tasked with holding off an invading column of German motorized infantry until reinforcements can arrive.
It does not work out that way, of course. The bicycle versus the armored car is a fitting metaphor for the fighting that ensues, but the actions and character of 2LT Sand drive the story. He is repeatedly given questionable orders, faced with setbacks and shortages, and forced to fall back, and fall back, and fall back. Sand is an honorable man who must balance his duty to follow orders with doing what he believes is the best thing, and he must handle the tension of men vs mission when the mission seems increasingly impossible.
I found the movie compelling, but I'm interested in this kind of story. It only has a rating of 6.6 out of 10 on IMDb, so apparently it's not to everyone's taste.
It is free on Amazon Prime right now, if you are interested.
Addition, 4/2/23: I guess to make the review complete I should address some other film aspects. I'll put these below the fold, and there are some slight spoilers.
Mike Lindell Draws Sword, Cuts Off Ear Of Officer Attempting To Arrest Trump
In other news:
Media Calls For Moment Of Silence For Shooter Who Was Misgendered
FBI Vows To Get To The Bottom Of What Christians Did To Provoke Attack
I thought the Bee only did satire.
UPDATE: According to criminal defense lawyer Toni Messina over at Above the Law, it was originally New York Judge Sol Wachtler who said that “If a district attorney wanted, a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich.” According to the Wikipedia page "Ham Sandwich," in the cultural impact section, this sentence was then quoted by author Tom Wolfe in his novel, Bonfire of the Vanities.
This is the moment a male coach claims to be a woman and smashes the female bench press record at a powerlifting competition in Canada.Bearded Avi Silverberg is shown calmly approaching the bench in men's clothing as part of a protest against gender self-identification policies in sport.Silverberg then unofficially breaks the female bench press record for the 84+ kilograms women's category, which was a 270lbs press - officially set by a trans lifter.
Hell, I could break that record this afternoon in my warmup sets. (Note that it was set by a trans lifter, too, not a biological female).
The North Carolina legislature came together recently to pass strong anti-rioting legislation that will increase the penalty for those arrested in Antifa-style riots.House Bill 40, which passed with bipartisan support, contains the same provisions as a bill that was vetoed in 2021 by Democratic governor Roy Cooper....The legislation increases the penalty for those arrested for rioting where deaths or injury occurred, or significant damage was inflicted on property. It also increases penalties for anyone convicted of assaulting a first responder during a riot. Since radical organizations supporting Antifa rioters with systematic bail funds has resulted in revolving door justice, the bill also tightens bail and pre-trial release requirements.
Among the provisions of the law is a heightened penalty if you riot while on drugs (or while brandishing weapons). The prohibition against attacking emergency personnel (the term used in the law, rather than 'first responder') is a Class D felony, equivalent to being a member of a terrorist organization, trafficking in serious quantities of cocaine, train robbery, intentional arson, or voluntary manslaughter.
If we must have laws, at least let them be good laws. Until and unless actual revolution is justified, this kind of rioting is utterly destructive.
EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, any person seeking to purchase or transfer a handgun in North Carolina is no longer required to apply to the sheriff for a pistol purchase permit. All pistol purchase permitting laws in North Carolina have been eliminated by the enactment of Senate Bill 41, Guarantee 2nd Amend Freedom and Protections.Background checks will by done by the dealer when purchasing a handgun.
More important to my way of thinking was the church carry; you could already have dodged the difficult sheriff by getting a concealed carry permit, which would also serve as a pistol permit but which was 'shall issue' rather than 'may issue' from the perspective of the sheriff. Letting parishioners protect each other is a big deal.
