That old woman has more grit and realistic attitude than most. I pray that her death will be a natural death, rather than by barrel of a gun, or a lobbed shell.
JackApril 20, 2022, 6:57 AM
Courage and acceptance of a thing, without anger, she knows she cannot change. I doubt you’d see much of that in Americans, blacks and women in particular, were they subject to the same conditions.
“Only the dead have seen the end of war.”—Santayana
billrlaApril 20, 2022, 9:01 AM
I can identify more with that woman than with those who walk their dogs on my own street in Los Angelesistan. In fact, my great grandparents came from what is now Ukraine, but was then, Russia and Galicia.
If our beloved leaders have there way, soon coming to a neighborhood near us, as well as the other three horsemen.
Casey KlahnApril 20, 2022, 11:32 AM
I was composing a Wikipedia style history of the Russia-Ukraine War in my head, and wondering if the ones we do read in the future will start in 2013 or 2022. This Babushka wants you to know she’s already in a war. I must admit the take-over of the Crimea and the Donbas region was textbook perfect.
Can’t say the same for the Rooskies now. An historic example of corruption and mismanagement of a war. As a former army officer, I cringe at the incompetence and outright stupidity I observe coming out of the Russian armed forces. This 50 plus day current battle is an epic-level failure, so far, for Ivan. I am more interested in this observation than even in the politics of whose right and whose wrong.
Gene Hackman in The Unforgiven, when someone claims innocence: “Innocent of what?” No one is righteous in this war. If I read the phrase: “Russia’s security needs on its border with NATO” one more time, I’m going up on the roof with a .44. That is absurdist.
Anyway…calming down. I want to write a brief on 5th GEN Conlict and it hasn’t got a side in this dog and pony war in Ukraine. It might interest you, the citizen living in your private abode. Tolstoy said you may not be interested in war, but it is interested in you. If I’m not mistaken, I think he was writing this after The Crimean War. Quote one of my drill sergeants from 1976 (fresh from Vietnam) “War is hell, but actual combat is a mother fucker!”
I’ll be sighting in my new Mike One Alpha, after a mandatory cooling off period of 12 days. Funny, I wasn’t angry when I bought it, but the 12 days do get on your nerves, don’t they? Any suggestions of how to PBZ with the absolute minimum of ammunition (three oh eight)? Gone is the luxury of shooting box after box. I made the acquisition on Patriot’s Day, which is a sacred day for national guard veterans. Enough said.
MarvinApril 20, 2022, 2:11 PM
re: sighting in your new .308.
You can do it with only 2 or 3 rounds. You need an absolutely solid way to clamp the weapon to a heavy object (large table, workbench, big heavy picnic table, etc.) Clamp the gun so it will not move due to recoil when you fire the gun. Use a large piece of paper or cardboard as a target and fire one round at it. DO NOT MOVE THE GUN. Wherever the first shot hits on the paper, adjust your optics so they are zeroed at the hole the first round made. Then fire another round to double-check that your optic is sighted in at the same place and you’re finished calibrating with only two rounds. Both holes in the paper should be within one MOA of each other. A third might be good to double check your work but is technically unnecessary. Stability and solidity of the base and clamping method is the key here. The gun must not move during the first shot. Be creative. Use woodworkers clamps with good padding, or a vise mounted to a heavy table, etc. Any movement during the first shot nullifies the whole process.
ghostsniperApril 20, 2022, 5:37 PM
In theory I agree.
The trick is in the DO NOT MOVE THE GUN part.
How is that possible?
I have a heavy Caldwell sled and even clamped down with a ratchet strap my 223 still jumps a little.
I used one of these, cept in 223, and zero’d my hard sights on it.
Then I took the gun to the neighbors range and was stunned to see the bullet hit right where it was supposed to. It was a brand new gun build, never fired before.
Casey, I can vouch for the quality of the device in the link as I have purchased and used 2 of them. Make sure to take the batts out after you’re done.
JackApril 21, 2022, 6:54 AM
That’s the way you do it in a perfect world but I’ve never been there. With a new rifle and a standard rifle scope I’ll shoot it 3-4x to dirty the barrel and then I’ll barrel sight it at 25 yards to get it on paper, adjust the optics and fire a round. If I’m in the bull I’ll move the target to 100 yards and shoot again. Typically the 2nd shot will be low but wherever that 2nd round hits, I’ll measure the distance (and I usually use a ruler) and then adjust the windage and elevation. It may take a few more shots to get it to hit where you want but in the end, like Jack O’Connor recommended, I’ll try to put that round 3″ high at 100 yards.
gwbnycApril 21, 2022, 7:35 AM
return to aim point, then zero to where the shot landed.
I called this the “hasty zero”, served my purposes for several decades.
Casey KlahnApril 21, 2022, 10:57 PM
Yes
ghostsniperApril 20, 2022, 5:39 PM
What’s this 12 day business? A waiting period? Is this a Washington thing?
I have a permit and get the gun on the spot. As it should be, unless ruled by criminals.
Wash, Ore and Calif, are all communist. I’m often amused when I here the words Democratic Socialist. Boys and girls of the DS party, you nothing more then a scum bag communist.
Oddly enough every time the conversations over. They look at me like I got a dick growing outta my forehead. Those are proud moments for me!
VanderleunApril 20, 2022, 9:07 PM
They’re proud moments because even though, as your friends and family know well, you are a dickhead, you also have what the girls and the boys lack. Balls.
I view it as just being honest. When one frames those words, into what they really are, people seem to be kinda shocked. Calling another a communist public, tends to make their truth painful.
Most real Americans don’t want to be thought of as Communists.
KCKApril 20, 2022, 10:33 PM
Re: the 3 round point blank zero. I’m a sharpshooter and my shooting bench is, like, the world’s best bench. I can tolerate a normal bench rest firing. Also, this is going to be with the ghost sight. 2 dials, that’s it. If my eyesight is old-timer enough, I will get a reflex sight in 1x. A combat gun is not for LR shooting, and I have that spec covered with my deer rifle.
On another gun note, I have some legal questions for a lawyer type. If that is you, I will give you my email. Thanks ahead of time.
ghostsniperApril 21, 2022, 4:19 AM
Don’t shoot nobody if you don’t have to but if you do, do it good.
Did I put enough double negatives in there?
gwbnycApril 21, 2022, 7:41 AM
a police chief once told my brother, “if you drop him in your driveway drag him over your doorstep and make sure there’s only one side to the story.” then he asked if he needed a clean pistol.
KCKApril 21, 2022, 8:36 AM
John Wayne: “I never shot anybody that didn’t need shooting!”
King CoalApril 22, 2022, 9:00 PM
The coal bucket. The evil coal bucket full of dirty filthy black carbon. The truth is nothing is more efficient and simply sustainable way to heat. I know. Because I buy less than a ton from King Coal to heat all winter. Morso 1410 squirrel controls the process. The coal bucket is why I’d believe everything that lovely old lady had to say was truth.
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress.
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountains start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
– – WH Auden
from “1054 AD”
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
“Where to? what next?”
— Carl Sandberg
Camouflage
Sourdough Mountain Lookout
Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.
I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.
BY GARY SNYDER
Chimes of Freedom
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
“From a student radical/hippie/leftist of the Free Speech Movement/Vietnam Day Commitee era and a full-on Democratic Liberal in the decades after, I think I’ve evolved a politics that is neither right nor left but is, in its elemental nature, draconian. In the last 20 years, I’ve taken apart my beliefs with a sledgehammer. Now I’ve got to put the surviving parts back together with tweezers and other ‘shabby equipment, always deteriorating’.”
Byzantium
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
– – W. B. Yeats, 1865 – 1939
De Breanski
VAN GOGH
Hillegas
To the Stonecutters
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
from “1054 AD”
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
Life along the dividing line between Donbas and Ukraine. Interviewed two days before Russia invaded.
![That Was the Whopper Weekend That Was [Illustrated]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/welcometohell-150x150.jpg "That Was the Whopper Weekend That Was [Illustrated]")
![Allen Ginsberg: The Interview, <strong> ➡ 1972 ⬅ </strong> [Republished by unpopular demand]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/ginsbergnirvana-150x150.jpg "Allen Ginsberg: The Interview, <strong> ➡ 1972 ⬅ </strong> [Republished by unpopular demand]")
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Comments on this entry are closed.
That old woman has more grit and realistic attitude than most. I pray that her death will be a natural death, rather than by barrel of a gun, or a lobbed shell.
Courage and acceptance of a thing, without anger, she knows she cannot change. I doubt you’d see much of that in Americans, blacks and women in particular, were they subject to the same conditions.
“Only the dead have seen the end of war.”—Santayana
I can identify more with that woman than with those who walk their dogs on my own street in Los Angelesistan. In fact, my great grandparents came from what is now Ukraine, but was then, Russia and Galicia.
If our beloved leaders have there way, soon coming to a neighborhood near us, as well as the other three horsemen.
I was composing a Wikipedia style history of the Russia-Ukraine War in my head, and wondering if the ones we do read in the future will start in 2013 or 2022. This Babushka wants you to know she’s already in a war. I must admit the take-over of the Crimea and the Donbas region was textbook perfect.
Can’t say the same for the Rooskies now. An historic example of corruption and mismanagement of a war. As a former army officer, I cringe at the incompetence and outright stupidity I observe coming out of the Russian armed forces. This 50 plus day current battle is an epic-level failure, so far, for Ivan. I am more interested in this observation than even in the politics of whose right and whose wrong.
Gene Hackman in The Unforgiven, when someone claims innocence: “Innocent of what?” No one is righteous in this war. If I read the phrase: “Russia’s security needs on its border with NATO” one more time, I’m going up on the roof with a .44. That is absurdist.
Anyway…calming down. I want to write a brief on 5th GEN Conlict and it hasn’t got a side in this dog and pony war in Ukraine. It might interest you, the citizen living in your private abode. Tolstoy said you may not be interested in war, but it is interested in you. If I’m not mistaken, I think he was writing this after The Crimean War. Quote one of my drill sergeants from 1976 (fresh from Vietnam) “War is hell, but actual combat is a mother fucker!”
I’ll be sighting in my new Mike One Alpha, after a mandatory cooling off period of 12 days. Funny, I wasn’t angry when I bought it, but the 12 days do get on your nerves, don’t they? Any suggestions of how to PBZ with the absolute minimum of ammunition (three oh eight)? Gone is the luxury of shooting box after box. I made the acquisition on Patriot’s Day, which is a sacred day for national guard veterans. Enough said.
re: sighting in your new .308.
You can do it with only 2 or 3 rounds. You need an absolutely solid way to clamp the weapon to a heavy object (large table, workbench, big heavy picnic table, etc.) Clamp the gun so it will not move due to recoil when you fire the gun. Use a large piece of paper or cardboard as a target and fire one round at it. DO NOT MOVE THE GUN. Wherever the first shot hits on the paper, adjust your optics so they are zeroed at the hole the first round made. Then fire another round to double-check that your optic is sighted in at the same place and you’re finished calibrating with only two rounds. Both holes in the paper should be within one MOA of each other. A third might be good to double check your work but is technically unnecessary. Stability and solidity of the base and clamping method is the key here. The gun must not move during the first shot. Be creative. Use woodworkers clamps with good padding, or a vise mounted to a heavy table, etc. Any movement during the first shot nullifies the whole process.
In theory I agree.
The trick is in the DO NOT MOVE THE GUN part.
How is that possible?
I have a heavy Caldwell sled and even clamped down with a ratchet strap my 223 still jumps a little.
I used one of these, cept in 223, and zero’d my hard sights on it.
https://www.amazon.com/Chamber-Cartridge-30-06-25-06-Sighter/dp/B01J8S2DDG/ref=sr_1_7?keywords=GoZier%2BTactical&qid=1650501071&sr=8-7&th=1&psc=1
Then I took the gun to the neighbors range and was stunned to see the bullet hit right where it was supposed to. It was a brand new gun build, never fired before.
Casey, I can vouch for the quality of the device in the link as I have purchased and used 2 of them. Make sure to take the batts out after you’re done.
That’s the way you do it in a perfect world but I’ve never been there. With a new rifle and a standard rifle scope I’ll shoot it 3-4x to dirty the barrel and then I’ll barrel sight it at 25 yards to get it on paper, adjust the optics and fire a round. If I’m in the bull I’ll move the target to 100 yards and shoot again. Typically the 2nd shot will be low but wherever that 2nd round hits, I’ll measure the distance (and I usually use a ruler) and then adjust the windage and elevation. It may take a few more shots to get it to hit where you want but in the end, like Jack O’Connor recommended, I’ll try to put that round 3″ high at 100 yards.
return to aim point, then zero to where the shot landed.
I called this the “hasty zero”, served my purposes for several decades.
Yes
What’s this 12 day business? A waiting period? Is this a Washington thing?
I have a permit and get the gun on the spot. As it should be, unless ruled by criminals.
Wash, Ore and Calif, are all communist. I’m often amused when I here the words Democratic Socialist. Boys and girls of the DS party, you nothing more then a scum bag communist.
Oddly enough every time the conversations over. They look at me like I got a dick growing outta my forehead. Those are proud moments for me!
They’re proud moments because even though, as your friends and family know well, you are a dickhead, you also have what the girls and the boys lack. Balls.
I view it as just being honest. When one frames those words, into what they really are, people seem to be kinda shocked. Calling another a communist public, tends to make their truth painful.
Most real Americans don’t want to be thought of as Communists.
Re: the 3 round point blank zero. I’m a sharpshooter and my shooting bench is, like, the world’s best bench. I can tolerate a normal bench rest firing. Also, this is going to be with the ghost sight. 2 dials, that’s it. If my eyesight is old-timer enough, I will get a reflex sight in 1x. A combat gun is not for LR shooting, and I have that spec covered with my deer rifle.
On another gun note, I have some legal questions for a lawyer type. If that is you, I will give you my email. Thanks ahead of time.
Don’t shoot nobody if you don’t have to but if you do, do it good.
Did I put enough double negatives in there?
a police chief once told my brother, “if you drop him in your driveway drag him over your doorstep and make sure there’s only one side to the story.” then he asked if he needed a clean pistol.
John Wayne: “I never shot anybody that didn’t need shooting!”
The coal bucket. The evil coal bucket full of dirty filthy black carbon. The truth is nothing is more efficient and simply sustainable way to heat. I know. Because I buy less than a ton from King Coal to heat all winter. Morso 1410 squirrel controls the process. The coal bucket is why I’d believe everything that lovely old lady had to say was truth.