A few months back I told you a cute story about a good local cop. Here are a few additional local cop tales. Wish more could be like this: Not long ago one of the nearby town cops took the initiative to close off a two-lane state highway. A mama raccoon was crossing the road with a line of tiny babies. Said cop angled his cruiser across both lanes and kept his lights flashing until the little family made it into the underbrush on the other side. —– Last year, a teenage girl who felt unwanted by both her screwed-up,…
Category: Rural and small-town living
Life far from freeways, Starbucks, malls, and other benefits/distractions
Well, maybe it’s actually the one-and-only Girls-Only Peep Shoot and Melon Exploding Expo. It was kind of an impromptu thing. Yesterday, my friends Gerri and Lorri (not their real names) and I braved rain and ankle-deep mud to spend a couple hours at a local quarry blowing away paper targets, those obnoxious little Easter Peeps, and (finally) rotten cantaloupes. The main purpose of the excursion was to get Lorri shooting again. Between the ages of five and 13 she was quite the marksgirl, taught by a loving father who liked to take her hunting. Then her dad dropped dead. She…
Prosecutorial misconduct brings a mistrial in the Roger Clemens never-talk-to-the-feds case. How come we never see the feds on trial for lying to us? (ADDED: Good commentary.) Gary Marbut — bless his bold and principled heart — does it again. This time, he makes the Wall St. Journal. “The Good Short Life.” Touching. Cops are at it again, too. Portable facial-recognition and iris-scanning devices. Another gift of USACorp’s perpetual war machine. While junque shopping, I really would have bought that set of five poker-playing dog prints (especially “Pinched with Four Aces.”) They were too expensive (and does anybody really need…
This wasn’t actually intended as part of the “Responsibilities” series. But it’s related and I had to get it off my chest. So consider it a mini rant within the larger rant, an interlude, or whatever you like. —– I have a question for the folks who are always saying we can end tyranny (or corruption or government overspending) by a) keeping an eagle eye on “our” politicians and b) voting the rascals out of office. Ready for the question, you advocates of politician-watching? Here goes: The governments of your city and your county are as uncorrupt and responsible as…
This wonderful story found by Jim B. must be rescued from the comment section. Oh, don’t you wish this woman could be your doctor!
… and on private property. Though I’m trying to move the blog away from knee-jerk reporting of Bad Government News, when S. sent this, I realized it said as much about the resilience of the victims and the obvious fear “their” government feels toward them (armored teams for code violations?) as it says bout the outrageousness of L.A. County bureaucracy. So read it and weep: “A County’s Private Property War.” You desert rats might want to take special notice.
Darned clever strawberry beds: A friend took me into the hills where people she knows made these neat raised strawberry beds. Around here, if you plant strawberries, what the slugs don’t eat the birds will. So these folks found (or as my friend put it, “found”) a culvert, sliced it lengthwise and built it into raised beds. The beds are lower on one end for drainage, and the contraptions on top are covered with hardware cloth and rigged so that they can be raised at the plants grow. Since every one of my hoity-toity certified-organic strawberry plants disappeared without a…
Back from the Mother Earth News Fair. It was a huge, fantastic event. If Mother throws one of these anywhere near you, you might consider attending even if you have to travel quite a way. I was also fortunate enough to connect with several delightful “friends I’ve never met” and to enjoy my time with Dave and Ilene; this is the first time I’ve met them despite all my years of writing for BHM, and they are great people. I’ll have tales (and tails!) from the fair later this week (and will also continue blogging “Middle-class shrugging”). But for your…
I can now confirm that the rumors are true. The rumors aren’t as exciting as the ones about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s love child or even the ones about Botox Mom. But they are true. I’ll be with the Backwoods Home gang at the Mother Earth News Fair in Puyallup, Washington, on the weekend of June 4 & 5. I’ll be there signing copies of Hardyville Tales and (if the Duffys permit) taking orders for any and all of my books from other publishers. (I can also take advance orders and hand your autographed copies to you at the fair.) The event…