Greetings one and all. Are you are sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin.
Statistics continue to support the impression created by the grim sequence of mass shootings in this country that such incidents are becoming more common. These are frequently highlighted by the ramshackle system of background checks for gun-buyers. Gun lobbyists and their allies say the answer is for more law-abiding Americans to carry guns in colleges, or shopping malls, or churches. This impulse to self-defense in kind is natural, but surely mistaken. Does keeping guns or carrying them around make people safer? All research suggests it does not. In fact keeping guns at home doubles the risk of a resulting homicide. This holds not just for homes, but for states and countries: more guns means more gun-related murders, tragic accidents and suicides. And when it comes to those who carry concealed weapons, it is far more likely for someone to perpetrate a mass shooting than to be called upon to defend themselves and prevent such occurrences. Gun-wielding bystanders rarely curtail killings. However, we now have a situation wherein well-meaning, fearful individuals take the seemingly rational decision to arm themselves. Almost all of them plan to be prudent with their guns. Alas, that is not always the case.
So here are some comments on guns and gun control. First this confused ramble from the inexplicably reestablished Ronald Reagan: “As long as there are guns, the individual that wants a gun for a crime is going to have one and going to get it. The only person who’s going to be penalized and have difficulty is the law-abiding citizen, who then cannot have it if he wants protection; the protection of a weapon in his home, for home protection.” Johnny Carson: “You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.” Robert F. Kennedy, almost 50 years ago: “With all the violence and murder and killings we’ve had in the United States, I think you will agree that we must keep firearms from people who have no business with guns.” Sigmond Freud: “The very emphasis of the commandment: Thou shall not kill, makes it certain that we are descended from an endlessly long chain of generations of murderers, whose love of murder was in their blood as it is perhaps also in ours.” Not very comforting, is it?
Public Service Announcements. #718. The Vets from the Mendocino Animal Hospital will be here on two occasions this month: Thursdays, August 13 and again next week, August 20 at the usual time, 2pm-3.30pm, at the Anderson Valley Farm Supply on Highway 128, north of Philo. #719. There will be a special event to benefit the Senior Center on Saturday, August 15: the annual Summer Roasted Pig Luau. Happy Hour is at 5pm, dinner at 6pm featuring Molokai Shrimp salad, Roasted Pig, Potato and macaroni salad, Asian slaw, and Pineapple Upside Down cake. Mai Tais and Strawberry daiquiris plus local beer and wines will be available. Tickets are pre-sale only for $35 — includes dinner and one complimentary drink plus your donation to the Senior Center. Buy them at the Center, Rossi’s Hardware, Lemons Market, or the AV Market. #720. Also on Saturday, August 15, it’s Open Mic at Lauren's Restaurant in downtown Boonville. Dinner served 5 to 9 before the Open mic at 9pm. All are welcome: musicians, singers, poets, writers, impressionists, magicians, comedians, actors, fire-eaters, pole dancers, sword swallowers, ventriloquists, raconteurs, exotic dancers, animal callers, etc. No clowns, apparently they would scare any kids who might be there, and no mimes, please. they scare me! For more information call 895-3869. #721. The Boonville Farmers Market continues every Saturday at the Boonville Hotel, 10am-12:30pm, featuring locally grown and produced vegetables, herbs, fruit and meat, as well as crafts and the last of the plant starts for your garden. Plus knife and tool sharpening some weeks, music and conversation, and other featured events. For more info, call Cindy at 895-2949. #722. The AV Lending Library run by The Unity Club is open Tuesday and Saturday at The Fairgrounds. Tuesday 1.30-4.30pm and Saturday 2-4pm. #723. The County Dump on Mountain View Road, a mile or so outside Boonville, is open from 9am-4pm Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday. Remember, no dead animals! #724. The AV Food Bank is every 3rd Tuesday and that’s next week, August 18. Gardeners, farmers and produce growers of all kinds, please remember Food Bank days as a place to donate your extra produce. It will be greatly appreciated. Please drop off on the Monday before, behind Boonville Methodist Church. If you need someone to glean your produce to take to the Food Bank, contact Valerie Kim at valerie.h.kim@gmail.com. Denisse Mattei is the Food Bank director: 895-3763. #725. An early heads-up for the next Lions Club fundraising bbq at the Fairgrounds in Boonville on Sunday, August 23 from 4pm-7pm, abenefit the Volunteer Ambulance.
Here is the menu for the Community lunches over the next week at the Senior Center at the Veterans Building in Boonville. The Center asks for a $6 donation from seniors and charges $7 for Non-seniors. Tomorrow, Thursday, August 13, the lunch, always served by Marti Titus and her crew at Noon, will be General Tso Chicken, with Orange Cream Dessert for dessert. Then, next Tuesday, August 18, the lunch will feature Ground Beef Tacos with all the fixings and Coconut and Lime-berry Cake for dessert. All meals include vegetables, salad bar, and fruit, plus milk, coffee, tea, and lemonade. What a deal. it maybe the best $7 you’ll spend all week! Hopefully you will be able to attend, and remember — ALL ages are welcome! Hope to see you there.
Time to take my leave. Besides I’ve got see a man about a sheep. So, that’s enough, “Take me drunk, I’m home.” Until we talk again, “Keep the Faith’; be careful out there; stay out of the ditches; think good thoughts; be wary of strangers with more dogs than teeth; please remember to keep your windows cracked if you have pets in your vehicle; and may your god go with you. A final request, “Let us prey.” Sometimes poking, often stroking, but almost always humbly yours, Turkey Vulture. Contact me through the Letters Page or at turkeyvulture9@gmail.com. PS. Keep wagging that tail, Fred. … Hi, Silver Swan; behaving yourself? Hopefully not! … Keep up the good work, Round-eyed Robin.
For the gun crazies their weapons have phallic symbolism.
Given that approximately half the “gun crazies” are women, what are you suggesting?
re: the gun deal…
Freud’s assertion that we’re descended from a long line of murderers makes about as much sense as his notion that psychiatry is an orderly science of the human mind…that is: not any. I suggest that somehow, Siggy was placed in his room with a little too much cocaine and wild hair ‘ideas’ that the psyche (Greek for Soul) could be segmented, compartmentalized, divvied up in ways more accessible to ‘science.’ That scissoring system of suppositions looks so much like a string of paper dolls, it should have been obvious from the start how looney it is. Why do you suppose the practitioners of psychiatry and psychology, as defined largely by Dr. Freud, commit so many times more suicides than other ‘professions?’
Human inventiveness has long served us well in the Survival department, and beautifully in the Arts department, but alas, we were looking the other way when it overpowered and overran us, some time back. Recall all the Hollywood versions of ‘Indians’ referring to guns as ‘firesticks,’ …implements separate and distinct from the hands that might grasp and use them? And the infinitely more civilized white folks who called those implements ‘firearms,’ a more personal, anthropomorphized object? Accepting ‘firearms’ as integral to human anatomy, symbolically placed as ‘real’ appendages is clearly freighted with obvious hazards. But back to the movies: Who strolls off into the sunset with the girl, after the dust settles and the blood soaks into the ground? But getting a bang out of your own personal piece isn’t all of it. We’ve also been encouraged to internalize mass production, mobilization, aggression and offense as personal attributes, the marks and trappings of success…as individuals, as a ‘nation,’ and as the pinnacle manifestations of the race of homo sapiens sapiens. Yeeha.
So, instead of defining our artifacts, our artifacts (and their beneficiaries) now define us.
One of the first things one learns in the NRA course in gun safety is which end of the goddamned thing is which. Looks like people would get the idea in the ‘larger picture,’…don’t it?
Women may own 1/2 of the guns but it is the male animals who are the gun crazies A good example of their bizarre behavior is the current situations in Texas and Missouri.