Nice article. Laurel has the story. There is even a picture of Sarah Palin sitting on the bed of her University of Idaho dorm room. The article is here. It starts out like this:
They tell me that about one person in 50 on the streets of Moscow, Idaho, is legally carrying a concealed pistol. A lot more have them in their cars. I rather approve of this, though I don’t think I’ll join in.
I voted!
Xenia
8:17 AM, November 4, 2008
Via a text message to me.
[Barb called me, as usual, about 45 minutes ago and gave me the latest news from home. She had just dropped Xenia off to vote. It was Xenia’s first time at the polls. Xenia just sent me the above text message. Barb said Xenia was wearing her elephant earrings.–Joe]
We blew up a bunch of pumpkins today. No time for the whole story or any pictures. Just a link to Barrons post (which has pictures and video) and the best of the video (from Kris who made it as a day trip from Seattle):
Update: Kris has a post about his little “day trip”.
I have been having pain in one of my teeth off and on for about three weeks now. Over the weekend it got bad enough and persistent enough that I decided it was time to seek medical attention.
I called the dentist yesterday but they couldn’t get me in until this morning. I made it through the night without much difficulty. I woke up a couple times and had trouble getting back to sleep but not that big of a deal.
Today was pretty much consumed with visiting the dentist, doing paperwork at the doc next door who would do the root canal, handling a few things at work, going back to the dentist office and getting the work done.
Hunter006 has some more details from an email exchange and there are some more details on Twitter.
All is better now but I need to catch up on some sleep.
According to new research done at Oxford University, people who eat meat are less likely to suffer from shrinking of the brain than those that stick strictly to a vegetarian diet.
…
This doesn’t mean that vegetarians need to immediately start eating meat; it just means that when they decide to attack meat-eaters they should think about their small mindedness before hand.
Jaclyn Cousins
October 13, 2008
Vegetarianism Shrinks Your Brain
[H/T to Phil.
I’m in agreement with Kevin Baker on the topic:
Kevin Baker at the 2008 Gun Blogger Rendezvous on Friday October 10.
Xenia, be sure to eat your eggs and drink your milk.–Joe]
I’m always a little embarrassed and uncomfortable when someone says something nice about me or something I did. This is no exception and for more than the usual reason. The number one reason was that Mark made his post on Friday and I didn’t notice until this morning.
Mark gave me a “Superior Scribbler Award”:
He had this to say about me:
Joe Huffman, who blogs The View From North Central Idaho, as well as trenchant observations of the political scene from the perspective of a well-trained and -experienced gunny. Joe always seems to have the bons mots for the moment, whereas I generally have the esprit d’escalier.
Additional reasons number two and three were that I had to look up two phrases to figure out exactly what he was saying.
As per the rules of the award I have to post the rules:
The five most-deserving Bloggy Friends deserve some thought.
In terms of “Superior Scribblers” I would have given the award to each of my three children had they actually put their best writing works on blogs. From the time they were old enough to write essay’s and papers I have been super impressed with the quality of their work. But only Xenia has a blog and it’s more social than representative of her writing. Here is something from James and Xenia. I also have stuff from Kim that would definitely qualify but none of it is on the web (hint, hint).
They must have inherited this from their mother. I always had an extremely tough time writing until I was in my early twenties. It was just extremely painful and difficult for me to think of anything worth putting into words.
Barb on the other hand wrote lots of stories and got excellent grades on her writings all through school. And then there was the book she wrote but never bothered to try and get published. She said, “It was just for practice.” Here are some samples of her work:
She would definitely get an award–if she had a blog and put her best work on it.
Enough with the potential nepotism.
In line with having to look up words, as I did with Mark’s work, to understand the post I have to give an award to Roberta X for The Adventures of Roberta X. She writes with a vocabulary a little bit above my comfort level at times but she puts interesting twists on things.
In terms of “interesting twists” (extreme snark is a better description) Tamara K with view from the porch also gets an award.
Alan Korwin and his blog Page Nine gets an award for inspiring a lot of my alternate ways of viewing things in the world of gun politics. And that doesn’t even count all the books he has written.
I don’t know who it is but the VPC Blog has to get an award. Wow! Just Wow! He or she really does a number with the satire.
Yeah, I know, that’s only four. But with all the recognition to my family members can’t each of those count as 1/4 of an award each?
As suggested by James (not our son) and enabled by Tony I finished Freehold last week. It was slow reading only because I would only read a few pages every few nights before I would go to bed. It was a great book. I cried when Kendra was awarded her medal. I love strong female characters.
I started The Weapon last night. It’s looking good so far.
I saw this while looking over daughter Kim’s shoulder when she was studying for her class Riddles and Paradoxes: How the Culture of Markets Shapes our World: Past, Present, and Future.
The Functions of Government
Which of these four items are found in the U.S. Constitution? I agree with number 1 but the others are out of bounds. Some other governments do claim these to be within their legitimate areas of power. We call them socialists, communists, tyrannical, genocidal, and losers. Perhaps the Power Point slide deck I found this in or the instructor in class makes the point that this isn’t within the legitimate domain of our government but a quick scan through the slides certainly doesn’t make it obvious.
It appears one can assume we have a discrepancy in philosophical viewpoints. Kevin illustrates it with cartoons better than I can with words.
Daughter Xenia called me a few minutes ago. She was crying and could barely talk. She was crossing the street as she walked to class and a car turned a corner, didn’t see her, and missed her by a couple feet.
Other than the psychological aspects she is fine but it sure makes you think. What a difference a few seconds can make…
Update: Xenia has more details.
Barb and I are sitting in the Reno airport waiting for our plane. I’m pretty sure I’m the last of the gun bloggers to leave town. Barb and I had dinner last night at the Black Bear Diner with The Conservative UAW Guy, his wife, Mr. Completely, and Keewee. Back at Circus Circus I chatted with them and Ride Fast, the last hanger ons, about airport security theater until about 21:00 when most of us said our good-byes. Mr. Completely, Keewee, Barb and I had breakfast together this morning and the Gun Blogger Rendezvous was over.
I have a few pictures and will post more later, particularly about our day at the range, but for now here is an odd gun I saw at the museum today with Barb. This gun was part of an exhibit on bootleggers:
Sawed off pistol. (Click for bigger.)
[Please excuse the poor photo quality. I used my cell-phone camera.]
I noticed one of their exhibits was mislabeled and they seemed very grateful when I corrected them. A device used to clean wheat had original markings saying it separated wheat from wild oats. But was labeled as tool for separating wild oats from chaff.
Barb and I are currently in the SeaTac airport eating a late lunch. Soon we will be on the plane to Reno, then from there we will rent a car and drive to Tonopah. We will spend a few days looking around at historical and genealogical things. Her father lived and worked there in the ’30s.
Friday we will return to Reno for the Gun Blogger Rendezvous.
If you are interested follow the boring details on my Twitter account. Please ignore the typos. My Pocket PC has problems with rapidly typed letters hence “looking” comes out as “loking” and I often make an update while walking or doing something else and don’t check for errors as well as I should.
In the right column I have a list of the bloggers I have met. I just found out a friend from way back (nearly 25 years) just started a blog. I’m not sure the general population of readers here will find all that much to agree with her on politics but she does take pretty pictures and says she will be posting her pictures there.
I have referred to her in my posts here a few times as one of my lesbian friends and she is the one that wrote the email referenced here. I tend to avoid discussing politics with her. Chess, places we have worked together, and other geeky stuff can keep us happily chatting for a long time however. And then there was the time I took her and her friend to the nudist club…
I got a call tonight from Barb’s sister who lives in California. I had talked to her and her husband about guns in years past and while not really opposed to them they wouldn’t want one in their house.
Barb had talked to her last weekend and I knew she were planning to join the NRA just to annoy her liberal friends and neighbors. I also knew their daughter who is in college in Missouri wants to get a gun so she can defend herself. I didn’t know that Barb’s sister and her husband are planning to take up shooting as a hobby. She asked me about ranges and do they rent? And she wanted a recommendation for a gun to start out with. I told her a .22 to lessen the chances of picking up bad habits and reduce the cost.
I also sent her a link to the NRA yard signs so they can tweak the neighbors without even flashing their membership cards.
I need to get them up here for Boomershoot next spring. That will give them some goals.
Last night the cops visited to try to help resolve an incident when Boyfriend From Hell of the landlady at my underground bunker kicked in her bedroom door. I was at work at the time but Barb was there and called me to let me know what was happening. I left work immediately and told Barb to tell the cops I would be entering through the rear tunnel and that we would stay away from the action going on above ground.
Shortly after I arrived and greeted Barb the landlady knocked on our door and wanted to talk. A couple of cops showed up a minute or two later and stepped into my bunker to offer some advice to the landlady. I was packing with the only thing concealing my STI Eagle and a spare 18 round magazine was my Boomershoot coat. It was much too warm in there and I wanted to remove the coat without alarming the cops. Even wearing the coat probably seemed a little odd and the cops might have guessed I was packing just from that but there was no need to openly display the gun on my hip. In full view of the cops, but hidden underneath my coat, I untucked my Boomershoot golf shirt and used the tail of it to cover up the equipment on my belt and then took off the coat. I draped the coat over the target on the back of a chair from my testing the Gun Blog 45 a few days ago:
About five feet away from the cops, leaning up against a dresser was a rifle case. About eight feet behind the landlady they were talking to were two IPSC targets on the wall I use for dry fire exercises.
I wonder if the cops suspected there were guns nearby? If so, they didn’t give even the slightest hint of noticing. I did find it a little odd that one of them gave me his card and told me his cell phone number was on there–but they didn’t give the landlady a card or even their names.
I find it hard to believe they were so incompetent to not notice and would rather believe they were cool with it. Especially since they said they couldn’t leave her there if she was afraid for her safety (which she said she was) with the boyfriend who can’t currently be evicted. My offers to give her advance rent money on the spot to stay in a hotel or to stay on our couch went over well with the cops and they finally left.
Barb and I took the landlady to a restaurant for some food and she slept on the couch in our room last night. She left my underground bunker this morning without Barb or I talking to her and I can only presume she is working on getting him legally evicted today since she called work last night to take a day of vacation today.
I’d offer to loan her a gun but Boyfriend From Hell manages to keep stealing cell phones and keys from her purse so I don’t know how she would manage to keep a handgun away from him.
More details will be posted as they become available.
If you have been following my Twitter account you will know there were five cops here at my Seattle area bunker tonight and that Barb, my landlady, and I escaped to the local Chinese restaurant without any shots being fired. And that the landlady’s boyfriend from hell can’t be evicted yet.
This has been building for a couple years now. I and a lot of other people are hoping she finally manages to stick to her position and actually gets the guy out this time.
Walking to bible study while listening to Disney music. I’m so badass.
Xenia Huffman-Scott
Via Twitter
[That’s my girl.–Joe]
As I reported a few weeks ago I did a bunch of earth moving at the Boomershoot range. Last Sunday Kim, Xenia, and I went back to plant grass on the fresh dirt, winterize the Taj Mahal and deliver 800 pounds of decorative concrete blocks to the Taj. Barb’s Jeep was sort of dragging it’s tail as we drove out to the range. We will use the concrete blocks as stepping stones around the Taj to keep the explosive workers out of the mud when it is wet. As a side note on Thursday Barb took her Jeep to be “detailed” which consisted mostly of removing mud and small pieces of concrete from the interior.
I didn’t take my camera but Xenia brought hers and I planned to post some of the pictures she (and I) took of the work we did. Unfortunately the mechanism involved in transferring the pictures from her camera to me failed with the crash of Barb’s desktop computer (it’s complicated, don’t ask because it’s not worth it). I could have worked around it in any number of ways but I had, and have, more important things to do.
I did want to get a post up about the grass planting just so people would know the chances of the area being nothing but mud next spring are less than 100%. Also this gives me an excuse to post a link to Xenia (our artist) pictures from the day. As you can see from the sample below it’s an artist taking the pictures and not her engineer father.
Xenia reflected in the solar panels on the Taj Mahal.
Maybe it’s his military training. I’m not sure. But Xenia’s fiancée John deals with one annoying situation appropriately.
Did you pick this guy or did your daughter?
Mike Brown
September 7, 2008
While at a USPSA pistol match after having a particularly well informed conversation with John, Xenia’s fiancé, on carry options for people under 21 (John is 19) and on college campuses.
[My response was that it was Xenia’s pick. I had nothing to do with either daughter’s choice in spouses. I occasionally wonder if it is my “boy blood for daughter’s tears” policy that causes them to suck up to me a little but I don’t see enough evidence to justify validating that hypothesis.–Joe]
The good looks came from my mother’s side. And of course witchcraft.
Xenia Huffman-Scott
August 27, 2008
Referring to the looks of herself and her sister Kim in their back to school pictures.