Large Fierce Mammal

Portrait of the Artist as a young Man … complete with graphite smudges from working on the latest addition to his oeuvre. (Credit: Mrs LFM)

Six years ago today, Maksim Cezary Whynacht presented all 8 pounds and 1 ounce of himself fit for duty as third in line to the Chieftainship of Clan LFM. Time does not permit utterance of the creative outburst such an occasion inspires but until that gets unleashed upon the world, today’s pictorial essay will have to do. (more…)

Source: Here!

Our title today is drawn from the oft spoken (and not without more than ample provocation) sage words of my Esteemed Friend James Keating. Their application should be obvious as you read on.

This poem was placed in my head a couple days ago by two Crows acting on behalf of whatever Force of Nature had chosen in the moment to use me as Its scribe.

Point of View

By LFM

On a morn o’erlain by a blue-grey sky,
A large black Crow came flying by,
And as it passed, another flew
From a high fir top in a shower of dew.

Yet as the second took the air,
The first showed not a jot of care,
Even as ’twas passed behind,
And thence above, seemed not to mind.

Now, beak and talons stretched before,
The chasseur, stealthy, lower bore,
First surely set upon its prey
Thence watched it tuck and dive away!

Now glorious combat, wheel and gyre!
By turns beneath, and others higher,
All gleaming beak and flashing claw,
And yet, no feather plucked, I saw.

A passer by observed my gaze
And squinting through the morning’s haze
Now gestured to the wheeling flight
And said, “Those crows are in a fight!”

“I think it sad,” was my reply,
As now the speaker drew my eye,
“Of all the things that dance could mean,
“A fight is what you think you’ve seen.”

“What do you mean?” his protest came,
“What other option would you name?”
I smiling looked back to the fray,
“Foreplay,” ere I walked away.

A gentler rendering of the profane bit of verse at the end. (Artist: Reddress)

If you have learned anything about us by now, it should be obvious that Mrs. LFM and I are very Old School. Notwithstanding what Tools and technologies we may choose to enable us in a task, First Principles will be the guiding influence in their application.

Another guiding principle seeing heavy use around this Household is that no situation is so dark as to resist illumination by the cold hard light of Humour, in the proper timing of course which is yet another of those First Principles I mentioned.

This age of widespread self-proclaimed enlightenment has cast a pall over everything fundamental to Truth, regarding everyone and everything in the world as being of its own compartmentalized piece, free to be nurtured or excised absent consequence to the whole. Blessed as they are with a Mother for whom the epithet Superb offers apology for its own inadequacy in describing such a Woman, our Sons are clearer of eye and sensibility.

I make no pretense of knowing what kind of mother or Mother you have or had, nor what kind of offspring had she. What follows is an observation running as close to a basic Truth as most can accept with minimal argument. Your mileage may vary.

Mother’s Day

By LFM

You owe your Mother many things,
And one thing is persistent,
But for her you’d not be dead,
Just fucking non-existent!

Taken on reconnaissance in Summer 2022. The Hunter strives at all times to be worthy. (LFM photo — Click to enbiggen)

A Dose of Reality

By LFM

Who would thrive shall not disgrace
His worthiness for Nature’s grace.
In service of what needs befall,
What he would take, he takes not all.
The first he finds, he moves on past,
So he will never take the last.

In our last conversation On Hunting, I said in part,

“To have never participated in the process by which an animal becomes food is to miss a great deal indeed. Be it on the farm or the hunting field, there is nothing trivial about it.” (emphasis added)

We will begin today with some photographs of successful shots taken during my Hunt in the November of last year. (more…)

Not even remotely reflective of actual Hunting.

“Everything in Nature encapsulates as part of its being certain dictates that are beyond its control. These exist first and foremost to facilitate the perpetuation of its kind in keeping with all that is desirable in progressive mutation — the kind that makes something better at what it does, and at sticking around a while longer than everybody else to do it. You see, Nature doesn’t care about individuals, nor does She feel remorse over evolutionary dead ends. In a healthy and stable ecosystem, all the necessary jobs get done, and all the participating species will survive coexisting with each other. Notice I said species, not individuals, because even the best and brightest in any group will die eventually, but more likely after the inferior specimens do.

“To Nature then, and at the greatest risk of sounding political, no individual lives matter because She deals exclusively with the BIG picture. However, all deaths certainly do, for the ending of every life improves the lot, the survival, and/or the viability of another.” ~ Dark Sentiments Season 7 – Day 22: All Deaths Matter

I Am

By LFM

I am a Killer.

Over my many years upon this Earth, I have studied and practiced the methods and instrumentalities of inflicting sudden death upon fellow creatures, while learning the strengths and weaknesses of my Prey.

In this, I have willfully and willingly conspired to take every advantage in skewing the contest to my favour.

I admit to killing without remorse, and having every intention of doing it again.

Yet, I kill with Respect and Humility.

I seek not the conquest of lesser beings for within this contest they do not exist, any more than does good or evil.

There is no place within my Garniture for malice.

I do not carry Death in my hand for the sake of it, but mindful of its weight and the sacrament of its wielding in honour of Life.

I am the Best of Myself.

I am a Hunter.

To have never participated in the process by which an animal becomes food is to miss a great deal indeed. Be it on the farm or the hunting field, there is nothing trivial about it.

In the year just passed, and after some decades away, I returned to the hunting of Whitetail Deer. To the uninitiated, this may be seen as little more than dressing up in blaze orange, slinging my rifle, and heading off to the woods where Bambi’s beloved Mother awaits certain death. In Truth, and as I said, this is a decidedly non-trivial enterprise that, for me, begins in June as part of a sacred bond between Predator and Prey.

By then, the Does that were impregnated during the autumn rut have either given birth to their fauns or are about to, so the Hunter’s scouting at this time of year must be a sensitive, respectful, and noninvasive expression of presence, awareness, and most particularly, patience. It must also neither be forgotten nor discounted that the Deer as a part of the Forest does not exist alone and apart from other organisms that share its habitat and with whom it must inevitably coexist, as the Way of the Wild manifested by each will decree. So, just as a pebble dropped into a pond may cause sensitive ears to swivel in response, prey fish to flee and predatory ones to race toward it, waterfowl to take wing, and aquatic insects disturbed by the widening rings of its ripples to skate to calmer waters, so too may an animal make its presence known to the Hunter’s mind without ever showing itself to his eye.

The Hunter, likewise a part of the forest and regardless of species, is not alone in his predation, for the imperatives of competitors, his own kind and others, must be recognized and understood.

Mid-summer 2022. (LFM photo)

Each seeks a quarry that evolution has imbued with an absolute oneness with its place in the scheme of things, and that lives its life not in the expectation of being hunted, but in the absolute certainty that it is being hunted at every moment.

More on this when next we convene. For those who made it this far locked in a struggle against the urge to avert eye and mind, I will want you here most of all.

Source: Primal poo gives a glimpse into intestinal microbes from the past

The Gospel According to Saint Loo

By LFM

In a long ago place called Didgeridoo,
The very first thing wriggled out of some poo.
Who or what laid the poo has been argued for ages,
The cause of eight wars, and a ninth that still wages.

My Hunting Kit. Left to Right: Jerry Fisk Bowie knife, CRKT Minimalist Bowie, Jerry Fisk field knife, Thompson Sharps hand axe. Mrs. LFM photo – Click the picture to enlarge.

As has been made more than amply clear here lo these many years, I have been studying the Nature and use of the Blade, from chisels to axes, pen knives to sabres, scythes to ploughshares, épées to corkscrews; learning, teaching, and writing about it for a very big part of my nearly three score and six years upon this Earth. In case you missed it, there is entertainment and education to be found in the links embedded in that previous sentence, and some of those that follow, that you may not want to miss because, if you’ve read this far, you’re just the type.

With minimal commentary, what I have for you today is a (mostly) visual portrayal of a Man in his element, and in keeping with this:

“It’s said that a much handled tool takes on the soul of its master. There’s a truth in this that, as a blade guy, I discovered a long time ago and practice to this day – when a knife first comes into my possession, I use it exclusively for every cutting task it can possibly be applied to. It may be instantaneous, or it may take weeks, but eventually there will come a day when that knife suddenly seems sharper than before. Its use becomes effortless and all conscious thought is removed from any task it’s called upon to do so that it seems to know of its own accord what needs to be done. That’s the day when I know it has become a part of me.” ~ Essential Knife Skills

And also with this bit of practical philosophy in mind to set the mood:

Tooth and Claw

By LFM

More likely to be stabbed, is he,
In brawl or street melee
Who carries but a single knife,
At least that’s what they say.

I’ve heard the blade’s an awful thing,
More lives it takes than guns.
But as to mine, I’ve come to think
I have the lazy ones.

For none of this makes sense to me.
I’ve always one in reach,
My knife and axe n’er cry for blood,
Nor violence beseech.

The blade is but the tooth and claw
That Nature never gave,
So Man no longer hides in trees,
Nor cowers in a cave.

Why scrabble for what lives beneath
The rocks and rotting logs?
Take blade, go forth with Comrades bold,
And Trusty Hunting Dogs!

The power of a Man resides
in Spirit, Heart, and Mind,
And if he’s blunt in any one,
His blade’s not far behind.

For as the blade empowers Men,
It raises not the knave,
Nor can it grant wise counsel,
Or turn cowardly to brave.

The blade has power to destroy,
To rend and slay withal,
To take the lives of mighty Trees,
And make the meagre tall.

But notwithstanding all of this,
Do hold this to your breast,
When wit and wisdom aren’t enough,
A blade can do the rest.

OK, maybe the commentary is not so minimal. Anyway, it will not be lost on you, Good Reader, that what follows depicts use of the large blade in a defensive role, this representing but a tiny subset of its multitude of non-combative, workaday uses in the field. That said, it behooves the well rounded Man to know his tools in all the ways they may help him make his way in the world, and bring the best of himself to any task. (more…)

Previously in this series —

• Communication — Lessons Not Learned

“There is a tendency, based on a far too wide spread conceit of far too many, to learn of something that was done a certain way in “the olden days”, realize the reason is unknown to them but make no attempt to research why, deciding instead to derive contentment from the conclusion that it’s because the people back in those days simply didn’t know any better.” ~ Everything Old is New Again

Welcome back Goode Reader to this second installment of our ever so educational, and I hope entertaining albeit darkly so, series on the subject of Communication as it applies to winning instead of losing, and living rather than dying.

Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. 1983-1985:

On 3 May 1983, after two years as a consultant in Halifax, I hung out the shingle for the business I still operate to this day. The following year (1984), I spooled up its 24/7 staffed facility to provide continuous alarm monitoring services for our own client systems, mostly fire alarm in those days. It was the year after that (1985) when we were approached by the Lunenburg & District Fire Department to service all of its emergency dispatch needs. That marked the first of 17 trailblazing years spanning those prior to and after introduction of the Nova Scotia 911 emergency reporting system in 1997, that saw “Central Dispatch” handling emergency traffic for five fire districts (Lunenburg, Mahone Bay, Chester, Chester Basin, and Hubbards) and the Lunenburg-Mahone Bay Police Service.

Nova Scotia fire services were then, and still are, mostly volunteer, covering a mix of small town, rural, and woodland districts. In 1985, each fire department had a unique seven digit emergency number that, with few exceptions, rang simultaneously on extension phones located in the homes of its members, local nursing homes, the hospital if the community had one, and even the funeral home. True “centralized dispatch” in the form of a dedicated 24/7 establishment where emergency calls were answered and dispatched by anything more than a simple “answering service” represented terra incognita for most rural and small town fire departments before Lunenburg & District Fire Department (LFD) officially joined Central Dispatch on the fateful date of 3 June 1985. (more…)

Source

“Communication is at its most powerful when all extraneous noise is stripped away. Think on this.” ~ Worldly Wisdom Wednesday – The Way of Communication

I keep saying that the older I get, the more often I run into events and situations that get me thinking along the metaphorical lines of, “I’ve seen this movie before.”

Well here we go again.

In case you don’t already know this, my so far 40 year career as a consultant and practitioner in security and emergency management makes me an expert (in the ACTUAL and not the mainstream media definition of that word) in the field of emergency communications on the theoretical, operational, and most importantly, historical levels. (more…)

… I wonder how many times I can make this thing skip on the lake … (Mrs. LFM Photo)

“By now, those disposed to it will have proclaimed their ‘resolution’ for the ‘new year’. They may have proclaimed more than one. From there, as with all such things, the outcome will be, as we say, fuck all. How do I know this with such certainty? Well now Goode Reader, the answer is obvious, and lies in plain sight in the words “new year’s resolution”.

“One may successfully silence an incessantly barking Dog by means of a collar that administers an electric shock when the sound of a bark is detected, but without foreknowledge of what has motivated the Dog to bark so much, only the outwardly expressed symptom is erased while the reason for it remains. Remains to manifest in more destructive and toxic ways.

“One may have grown dissatisfied with one’s appearance as it has changed over time, and become caught up in squandering time, thought, and treasure in a fruitless battle to recapture a fondly remembered moment of perfection, and hold it in stasis forever. A moment of perfection that never existed; for perfection, for each of us, is not a thing that existed once upon a time, but in the moment that is now, and if you can’t find it there, you won’t find it anywhere.

“When one gets on an airplane, it is with no need to state an attendant intention to eventually get off of it. So it is that “going on a diet” is like going on a trip – the act comes with the presumption that when a specific goal is reached, the activity will end, even if the perceived necessity for the diet, or trip, is born of misfortune of the traveller’s own making.

“All ‘new year’s resolutions’ will fail because they are born of procrastination, and those self-deluding sods who proclaim and embrace the concept trumpet their lack of resolve by the simple act of putting off all their life changing actions for one magical day. A magical day that, like tomorrow, never comes, because in the end there’s always another New Year, right?

“Wrong. Find the moment and your perfection in it.” ~ A Long Winter’s Night 2014 – Day 11: Perfection

If you are reading this on a screen of any kind, then the inevitable negative outcome of a society far too reliant on delicate infrastructure has not yet descended upon either of us. Huzzah! I encourage you to read on, and then work on acquiring or improving upon your, “… Tools that can never be broken, worn out, stolen or legislated away. That are always with you even when standing naked as the day you were born ….”

You’re going to need them.

This marks my first utterance to be published here in the year 2023. A year affected to its core by artificial problems that, by their nature, can never be solved, and Real ones that already have, long ago by people nobody steeped in belief in the chosenness bestowed by modernity wants to listen to.

So, lots of Reality to come, Goode Reader. If you’ve “reached all”, as my Dear Departed Father used to say, then you have nothing to lose by sticking around here a while before offing yourself. What’s the rush? At least you’ll have absorbed a bit more educational enlightenment — mayhap even passed some of it along — before running down the curtain and heading off to join the choir invisible.

Now here is today’s closing word. Repeat it often until you understand what it means.

A Dose of Reality

By LFM

Who would thrive shall not disgrace
His worthiness for Nature’s grace.
In service of what needs befall,
What he would take, he takes not all.
The first he finds, he moves on past,
So he will never take the last.