Randy | February 19, 2018
The first firearm I came to own was a Lee Enfield No.4 Mk.1* service rifle built in 1942 by the Savage Arms Company as part of the U. S. lend lease programme in aid of the British war effort against Nazi Germany. In 1973, at the age of 16 and with the approval of my […]
Randy | February 4, 2018
The most fulfilling moments in my so far 37 year career as a security consultant have involved engineering nasty surprises for miscreants, mostly human but occasionally from other tribes, who thought they were smarter than everyone else but weren’t. Oh, sure, along the way we’ve saved a few lives, but that was just collateral un-damage […]
Randy | January 21, 2018
The year I got my first coveted pair of snowshoes for Christmas, we had over half a meter of snow on the ground before school closed for the holidays. I was stoked! Then the rain and springlike temperatures came, starting Christmas Eve and persisting until all the snow had melted. I recall watching it vanish […]
Randy | January 14, 2018
Our title today paraphrases G. K. Chesterton’s observation that, “An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.” The poem was inspired by a combination of current meteorological realities here in Nova Scotia, and some reading I’ve been doing on daily life of British and Commonwealth soldiers in […]
Randy | December 29, 2017
The Fire Without and the Fire Within By LFM It’s only just started, but coming to pass Is a Winter as cold as a well digger’s ass. Yet it’s still not extreme if the truth’s to be told, For it used to be worse, just go ask someone old. Its fury brings failures of power […]
Randy | December 27, 2017
If you live in my neck of the woods, a lot of you lost electric power Christmas afternoon, and some will still be waiting for it until some time tonight. If you lack more “natural” means of heating your dwelling, things have gotten a bit cold, and the usual mid-season burnout has turned into quite […]
Randy | December 26, 2017
Culturally, the hospitality aspects of festivities prevailing at this time of year exist in a maelstrom of ill considered and contradictory drives. Year after year, many will attempt to answer seasonal motivations to visit people who sometimes live at a great remove and may be reached at no small peril to life and limb, even […]
Randy | December 24, 2017
Someone most of us here have enjoyed the benefit of “knowing” since our childhood embarks on another perilous journey tonight, and few have every paused to consider the strategic, tactical, and logistical realities of a Grand Mission that, done half-assed, could end up being Nick’s last ride. He’s been at this a while so it […]
Randy | December 23, 2017
In the early morning hours of 17 January 1994, a 6.7 magnitude earthquake and subsequent aftershocks knocked out power to much of the city of Los Angeles, California, plunging at nightfall some of the most light polluted portions of the globe into a deeper darkness than most of its denizens had ever known existed. Named […]
Randy | December 21, 2017
Winter in Nova Scotia will arrive at twenty-eight minutes past noon Atlantic Standard Time today when the Solstice heralds the start of the long, slow plod to Spring. For those of us of whatever species who haven’t already migrated or gone into hibernation, this is a time of uncertainty tempered with incipient joy. The Black […]