Seems the older I get, the more I love a just outcome. I like it when things work out the way I believe they should — not always neatly or immediately, seldom without struggle, but in the end, for the best.
Evil should suffer. Good should triumph. The righteous — defined by their conduct, not by their beliefs — should prosper.
Deb and I watched the final episode of Yellowstone last night. While I wasn’t as invested in the series as some of y’all are, I paid just enough attention to appreciate what unfolded on the screen. Ultimately, I was satisfied with how Taylor Sheridan wrapped things up.
He made sure that evil not only suffered, but perished. (You knew that “the train station” would figure into the last episode, right?) He didn’t leave me wondering about much. And he gave me a couple of genuinely happy endings.
Overall, I’m good with all that. It made sense.
On the same day, and in real life, I heard news of murder in Madison, Wisconsin — a teacher and a teenage student at a Christian school were killed, and several others were wounded.
The murderer was a 15-year-old girl. She committed suicide before she could be apprehended alive.
There are all sorts of rumors and claims and theories about the murderer. Chief among those is that she suffered from gender dysphoria — that’s right, another trans-indoctrinated kid shooting up a Christian school. Also that she hated babies, men, and old people, and that she had a manifesto. (Of course she did.)
I don’t know that any of these rumblings are concrete, corroborated or confirmed, so I won’t say anything more about it.
Because this happened in Madison, Wisconsin, we’re now being tortured by an endless stream of progressive propaganda, every spokestool and pundit blathering leftist jargon, every one of them calling for “gun control.” You’ll have that.
But we have to come back to the disturbing fact that this possibly mentally ill, reportedly hateful murderer, dead now by her own hand, was just 15 years old. That doesn’t make sense, does it?
Well, I’ll tell you what — it makes sense to me.
This is the natural result of the poison coursing through the veins of a generation, the youngest and most impressionable among us transformed into ticking bombs. Fear the children.
I don’t feel the least bit sad that this post-pubescent killer took her own life. I offer no perfunctory compassion, no understanding, no pat rationale.
All I have for you is the assurance that this incident makes sense. It’s what we should’ve expected, what we can expect.
You don’t have to be good with that. I’m not. But fabricating complex explanations is pointless. Simply, this is where we are.
After finishing my morning rounds today, I considered several other tasks I wanted to get done before rain returns tonight. I made it a game of sorts, trying to arrange my work as efficiently as I could.
Logical. No backtracking. Each task would lead to the next.
I began by grabbing the ash bucket and shovel and cleaning out the (cold) woodstove. I prefer a tidy firebox — too many ashes can block fresh-air intake. Besides, I needed those ashes for something else later. I got about a half-bucket’s worth and set it aside.
Next, I set up my chop saw and pulled a couple of eight-foot red cedar boards from under the cabin. I cut them into two-foot lengths and took them over to our outdoor firewood rack, along with an impact driver and a tub of deck screws.
My purpose was to correct a flaw in the rack’s design. The space between the 4×4 uprights is several inches wider than our firewood is long, so unless I stack everything perfectly, I’m flirting with a collapse each time I pull wood from the rack. (It’s happened twice.)
Today I attached four horizontal slats between the uprights at each end, using a chunk of pine 2×4 to set my spacing. Two cedar boards, eight cuts and 16 screws later, the modification was complete.
I re-stacked the wood I’d moved to do the job. We were down to a third of a full rack, which meant it was time to bring up more.
I backed the Ranger out of the shed, but instead of driving straight to the wood yard, I swung by the cabin and the camper and gathered combustibles. I loaded and lit the burn barrel, then stepped over to the woodpile — right next door — and started tossing cordwood into the bed.
Back up top, I stacked the wood and tarped it, then put the Ranger back in the shed.
The last to-do on my list wasn’t exactly the most pleasant. While dumping waste-water tanks on Thursday, my senses detected a problem. First I smelled it, and then I saw it — the run of sewer hose closest to the camper had sprung a leak. I have no idea what caused the two-inch cut, but it’s not the sort of thing that’s easily (and effectively) repaired.
I’d have to replace the hose. I did that today.
Remember the half-bucket of ashes that came out of the woodstove earlier? I spread them over the area where the hose had leaked, to neutralize any lingering nastiness.
(That felt damned rustic.)
And then I was done. It was early this morning when I started, and I didn’t finish ’til well into this afternoon. I cleaned up after myself and put my tools away as I went.
The work was simple and gratifying. Good thing I enjoy it, ’cause it never ends.
I’ll close this post with images captured just after sunup this morning. From the driveway, we could see white, cottony clouds packing the valley. Deb snapped these photos as she rolled off of The Mountain.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB