QST de N7GMT

A friend of a friend sent this to my friend, who gave me a hard-copy and was promptly asked to forward the electronic version so I could post it without having to retype it. (I would have; I want a perma-copy.)

Yes, this is somewhat divisive. So is divorce. I do not think they are evil, those to whom this letter is addressed. In as much as I can make a blanket statement about the group, I think they’re well meaning, and that they think they’re doing good.

They are just misguided.

In my opinion.

That’s why I think this resonated so well with me.

Enjoy.

Dear American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists and Obama supporters, et al:

We have stuck together since the late 1950′s or the sake of the kids, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce…. I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has clearly run its course.

Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right for us all, so let’s just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.

Here is a model separation agreement:

Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a similar portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.

We don’t like redistributive taxes so you can keep them. You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU. Since you hate guns and war, we’ll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military. We’ll take the nasty, smelly oil industry and you can go with wind, solar and biodiesel. You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O’Donnell (You are, however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them).

We’ll keep capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street. You can have your beloved lifelong welfare dwellers, food stamps, homeless, homeboys, hippies, druggies and illegal aliens. We’ll keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO’s and rednecks. We’ll keep the Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood . You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we’ll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us. You can have the peaceniks and war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we’ll help provide them security.

We’ll keep our Judeo-Christian values.. You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism, political correctness and Shirley McClain. You can also have the U.N. but we will no longer be paying the bill.

We’ll keep the SUV’s, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Subaru station wagon you can find.

You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors. We’ll continue to believe healthcare is a luxury and not a right. We’ll keep The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the National Anthem. I’m sure you’ll be happy to substitute Imagine, I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing, Kum Ba Ya or We Are the World.

We’ll practice trickle down economics and you can continue to give trickle up poverty your best shot.

Since it often so offends you, we’ll keep our history, our name and our flag.

Would you agree to this? If so, please pass it along to other like minded liberal and conservative patriots and if you do not agree, just hit delete. In the spirit of friendly parting, I’ll bet you Answer which one of us will need whose help in 15 years.

Sincerely, John J. Wall Law Student and an American

P.S. Also, please take Ted Turner, Sean Penn, Martin Sheen, Barbara Streisand, & Jane Fonda with you.

P.S.S. And you won’t have to press 1 for English when you call our country.

Amen.

Ok, so here it is, middle of January of the new year, and I haven’t posted a single thing.

It’s not that there haven’t been things for which I thought, “Gee, I outta put that on my blog.” No, sheer laziness. And distractedness. That’s my excuse (recognizing it for what it is, an excuse), and I’m calling it like it it. (Wait, was it laziness or distractedness I was admitting to?)

Now if I could just remember what the other things were I wanted to blog about…

I was reminded recently that there was an entry that wanted writing. Since it’s Thanksgiving weekend and the kids are in bed I might as well get it out of the way, eh? (Now if I were really on the ball, I would have a nice new laptop, with functional WiFi so I could sit in the living room with everyone else while I write this, but I’m an anti-MS curmudgeon, and it can be difficult to convince Linux and WiFi to behave themselves on old hardware.)

Anyway…

I read a post over at my mother’s site about men up on roofs. (Shouldn’t that be “rooves?” Oh wait, this is English; it’s not supposed to make sense.) No good deed goes unpunished, so I left a comment on her entry, which stirred up memories of a weekend not too far past.

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Rexburg. Synonymous with cold. Seriously; don’t believe me, go look it up. It’s not really all that cold outside right now—a mere 30° F … but somehow it feels colder. When we got here on Wednesday it was 24° but it didn’t feel this cold. Must be all the turkey.

So we’re all up at Grandma and Grandpa’s for Thanksgiving. We left very early on Wednesday—so early in fact, that no one thought we had really left yet. I mean, really, we’re Snyders, for goodness sake. We never leave for a trip on time. Once in my youth, I think we were two days late. Yes, days. (more…)

Before you get your twisted hopes up, I was recently introduced to a wicked cool screen saver. Those familiar with classic science fiction will recognize the reference to Philip K. Dick‘s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, from which the movie Blade Runner was made.

A bunch of folks wondered what computers do while they’re waiting for us to tell them to do something. Really; your computer, right now, is incredibly bored and just idling away the microseconds. (If you’re running Windows, it is listed as “System Idle Process” in the task manager; usually it’s running 95% of the time. Go ahead and look to see if your computer isn’t bored.)

So. Bored computers. Inquisitive programmers … programmers who have read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and seen Blade Runner a few too many times. (more…)

One of the perks of being an active Ham in the community is getting to work some fun assignments. Among the several groups I volunteer with is TERT. We basically sit up on the mountain on weekends during the summer and help folks that get themselves into trouble. [You wouldn't believe how many people think sliding down the rock-strewn snow-field found on the back (north) side of Mt. Timpanogos is good idea. Talk about "road rash!" Well, rock rash, anyway.]

Each weekend we have a group of about a half-dozen TERT members who hike up and camp near the basin below the summit. They’re there to help folks who are up on the mountain. We have two trail-heads stations, Aspen Grove and Timpooneke (tim-poo-NEE-kee). We help the folks on the way up, and on the way down.

Many of those up at High Camp are amateur radio operators, many are medically trained (EMTs, First Responders, we even have an ER doctor on the team), and many are both. We also have rock-climbers and runners to round out the skill sets. The radio operators at Trail-head are support for High Camp, responsible for communications with the Sheriff’s Office (in case SAR has to be called out, or to call for emergency helicopter extraction), to apprise hikers of conditions on the mountain, and gently suggest that they might want to take more water, clothing, etc. before setting out.

I usually man Timpooneke Trail-head on my weekends. I find myself saying things like

“The weather up high is pretty bad today; do you have jackets you could take with?”

“Those flip-flops don’t look like they would be very comfortable crossing the scree fields; do you have better footwear?”

“There isn’t any drinkable water on the trail; you might want to take more [than that half-empty 16-oz bottle] with you.”

“Well, our 9-am weather report from the summit this morning was ‘horizontal rain, with wind-chill to 30° Fahrenheit’ …” [that was the real weather report from my last weekend] “…so you might not want to go very high in your tank-top, shorts, and sandals.”

“Are you planning on hiking very far today? Your three year-old looks study enough to make it to Scout Falls—a little over a mile up the trail—but it gets pretty steep after that.”

“Oh, really; just in from California? Today? And you’d like to summit? Well, OK then. The summit is at 11,749 ft so let me give you a couple of pointers about altitude sickness and what the symptoms are. …”

“Hydrate or die!”

I was on duty a couple of weekends ago (17.-19.Jul.2007). We had some good storms roll in; lots of thunder and lightning early Saturday, heavy rain with high winds, and the like. (There’s a saying we have on TERT, “If you don’t like the weather on the mountain, just wait twenty minutes; it will be something completely different.”)

Anyway, I spent most of the day watching cold, tired, soggy hikers come down off the mountain. (Did I mention a popular thing for the students from the local university to do is start up around 0100h [yes, 1:00 a.m., as in one-hour-after-midnight] so they can be at the Summit for sunrise. I think it’s supposed to be romantic to take your significant other. It gives you a common—sometimes traumatic—experience to share. I guess.

By early afternoon, most of the sodden hikers and soggy campers had made it down. I had brought a spy novel up to read, and was making good progress, as there were few folks to talk to. [It also helped that this 290 page novel only had about 150 pages worth of material. It was spread as thin as a Junior High School report: double spaced with large margins; each chapter number thingy was on a page by itself.] I had spent most of the day in the Trail-Head shack—a little six-foot square deal with a couple of antennas on top, and windows to look out and watch folks on the trail. The rain had let up and it was turning into quite a nice day.

I was sitting in the doorway reading when I felt something on my shoe; it was a brazen little chipmunk looking for something to nibble. He came by several times all afternoon, so I would toss him a few sunflower seeds; he would nibble for a minute or three, and then disappear for an hour or so.

It was during these breaks that I had the most unusual encounter I’ve ever had with wildlife—and the point of this entry, for which I’ve made you work so hard.

During one of the quiet moments, one of the hummingbirds that had been zipping past trail-head on and off all day long came for a visit. He flitted about the doorway, about an arm’s length away. He was in no hurry, and gave the impression of just sight-seeing. He was so calm about it that I gently raised my arm to see if he would lite. He hovered near, maybe two inches above my palm, buzzed over to the other side once more, then took his leave.

A little later I was standing in the shack, leaning against the door jamb. Suddenly, another hummingbird buzzed up and stopped about five inches from my nose. Just hovered there, nose to nose, staring at me for what seemed like a hummingbird eternity. It was probably only a second, maybe a second and a half, but for a hummingbird?! That’s a very long time. He buzzed from side to side, looked me square in each eye a couple of times, as though sizing me up, and then blitzed off. The whole thing lasted probably ten seconds, but it was a very surreal encounter.

Near the end of the afternoon, I think one of this friends was a little liquored up on nectar or something and came blazing in aimed right at my left eyeball! I ducked to the side, just as he came arrowing in, and he zipped around inside the shack, having himself a good look around. I stepped into the shack, up against the wall, and helped him find his way back out.

I wish I could have gotten photos of any of these little dare-devils, but the only camera I had was my cellphone. Since there is virtually no coverage, you don’t leave your phone turned on, because it drains the battery trying to find a cell tower to link to.

So, brazen chipmunks and cheeky hummingbirds. A “loverly” weekend all around.

OK, what idiot decided dumping left-over concrete and burying it in the yard of the house you’re building was a bright idea?!

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