Large Fierce Mammal

We all know that children naturally imitate adults, and how important it is to make sure that whatever it is your kid sees you doing, it’s something you can safely shape into play that’s gauged to their present level of understanding. There comes a time when the child’s development imparts the ability to grasp that there are some things only adults can do, but until that day, we must exercise creativity, wisdom, and stealth.

This is my first real foray into writing song lyrics, and I picture this performed by a man with a drawl in a sort of country rap delivery to guitar or banjo accompaniment. Any LFM loyalists out there who would like to give it a go will be most welcome, and your efforts will certainly be posted here once received, so be warned! Takers?

The song tells a story based on the interest SFM Viktor is showing in my training in the Blade Arts, and my philosophy of Fathercraft in general. He has taken to picking up one or two of our rubber training knives, which in proportion to him are more like swords, and wielding them in imitation of what he sees me doing. His performance of some techniques is incredible, and all of it is simple imitation with over the top encouragement from Mum and Dad whenever he does something truly outstanding. Of course, no hitting the Dogs, who are never anywhere nearby when I am training anyway, and no hitting any other person who isn’t prepared and inviting you to do so.

Yeah, He Did

By LFM

My little boy child likes a watchin’ me train
With my sabre and épée, my cudgel and cane,
But the big rubber Bowie really lights up his eyes,
And to work on his swordplay, well it’s just the right size.

Yeah, it is.

Last night I was trainin’ while he sat on the ground
When he picked up that Bowie and he waved it around.
I saw how he held it in a fine sabre grip,
Then he set up a back cut and he let the blade rip.

Yeah, he did.

Well my eyebrows shot up and I let out a yell,
My Wife came a runnin’ to see what the hell.
Our little boy usin’ that knife like a sabre –
The laughin’ and the clappin’ nearly put her in labour.

Yeah, it did.

I fenced him a spell ’til he started to tire,
And his eyes started droopin’ from the warmth of the fire,
Then we put him to bed with a smile on his face,
And his wasn’t the onliest one in the place!

It still ain’t.

He slept through the night ’til an hour from dawn,
I heard the bed creak and the sound of a yawn.
More rustles and knocks sped me spry up the stairs,
And I laughed when I saw me the state of affairs.

Yeah, I did.

Well, he’d got into the bin where the trainin’ blades live,
And he got him a Bowie and he grabbed him a shiv,
He met me at the baby gate armed to the teeth,
With a full mornin’ diaper hangin’ down underneath.

Yeah, he did.

Now some of you are thinkin’ this is right off the wall,
And what a little boy needs is toy trucks and a ball,
But don’t you be thinkin’ we’re violence prone,
A blade ain’t the only thing needin’ a hone.

No, it ain’t.

Our boy’s got toys of the usual kind,
But don’t forget playin’s ’bout shapin’ the mind.
A boy needs shapin’ ’til he stands as a Man,
And his Mama and Daddy, they’ll do what they can.

Yeah, they will.

All times of the day, a boy watches his Dad,
And he’ll copy that man, all the good and the bad.
So whatever the man your boy grows up to be,
You can say to yourself, “Well, he got it from me.”

Yeah, you can.

A boy is a boy, but for only so long,
And there ain’t too much time fer to play out the song.
A Man owns what he does and he navigates strife
Finer tempered and sharper than any old knife.

Yeah, he does.

So I’ll teach him to think and I’ll teach him to fight,
How to Love and to build, and to put what’s broke right.
I’ll teach him to drink and I’ll teach him to curse,
And I’ll know in my grave that he coulda did worse.

Yeah, he could.

I recently came across an article published a couple days ago on a Gizmodo blog called Indefinitly Wild, and more specifically, one by Wes Siler titled What Knives You Can Carry Where In The United States. I don’t live in the United States, but notwithstanding that I found it to be a pretty good article with wide application, well written and with a lot of insights that are far too rarely understood in today’s world. For example:

“A knife is a tool. As evolved apes with opposable thumbs, we’re pretty good at grabbing stuff, pretty good at pushing stuff and even pretty good at twisting or pulling stuff. The thing we aren’t really good at is cutting stuff. At least not without putting it in our mouthes (sic), which leads to all sorts of other problems. A knife gives you the ability to cut stuff and carrying one with you gives you that ability in a package that’s accessible almost instantly and with a single hand. Carrying one is just an essential part of being a capable human (Emphasis added).” ~ Wes Siler

A capable human – AH! There it is! – by concise definition meaning (at least to my mind) not one who would rather tear their lunch open with their teeth or the tip of a Bic pen than be in the same room with a sharp blade, regardless of size. Well said Mr. Siler. we are indeed on the same wavelength.

Now if I am to be honest, and with no disrespect intended, this otherwise good article falls afoul of an iteration of a widely espoused misconception that for some reason seems impossible to exorcise. One that I would like to highlight now, and not in the spirit of taking Mr. Siler to task. Nay! Rather in thanks for giving me this most splendid opportunity for public education.

“But, yes anything can be a weapon. Here’s instructions on how to fold a newspaper into a weapon. A ballpoint pen can make a fairly effective impact weapon. But in the hierarchy of stuff you’d grab to fight someone, knives aren’t really high up there. Not if you know what you’re doing (Emphasis added). The trouble is that, while they are capable of inflicting fatal injury, they aren’t capable of stopping someone quickly; the fatality tends to come later. That’s a bad combination for any weapon, potentially exposing you to much liability and doing so without saving your own butt.” ~ Wes Siler

Let me repeat that sentence I highlighted above just to cut it out of the herd so we all can take a look at it – “… in the hierarchy of stuff you’d grab to fight someone, knives aren’t really high up there. Not if you know what you’re doing ….”

Now, at this point, people who don’t know me “in that way”, and possibly even a few who do, are thinking that my problem with the sentiments expressed in that excerpt lie in its discounting the knife as a candidate, “… in the hierarchy of stuff you’d grab to fight someone …”, and most particularly with the implication that the knife would never really even be considered for the purpose, “… if you know what you’re doing ….” . To those I would say you are only partially right.

I’ve addressed the efficacy of the knife as a tool of conflict resolution, even by those who do, in fact, know what they’re doing, in previous articles, and I would direct your attention to two in particular:

• Dark Sentiments 2011 – Day 6: Cold Steel; and
• Forsooth, Is’t Better to be Shot or Stabbed? THAT is the Question!

But I would particularly like to highlight that there is a particle of accuracy to Mr. Siler’s reference to the knife not necessarily being the first choice of those who know what they’re doing. Let me illustrate with a fictional scenario.

It’s a beautiful spring day, and I’m standing at my ironing board, hot iron in hand, getting the wrinkles out of my kilt. So I’m probably bare assed but what of it? Nearby, on the sideboard (lacking a laundry room I’ve set up the ironing board in the kitchen don’t you know), lies the chef’s knife I was just recently using to slice the onions that are now fragrantly frying in my weighty cast iron frying pan, on my belt (which I’m wearing in spite of being bare assed) is my 10 inch hand forged Bowie knife that I have trained with daily for years and moves like an extension of my body, and opposite that, the equally familiar .44 calibre hand cannon that my concealed carry permit allows me to take everywhere with me. As to that last bit about the hand cannon and the carry permit, we don’t have that sort of thing here in Canada unless you’re a REAL good friend of the Prime Minister, which I am not, but this is an illustrative fictional story intended for educational purposes, so just shut up and listen.

All of a sudden, the kitchen door bursts open as two miscreants charge through in a cloud of profanity, bent on robbery and who knows what else. In a room full of options for the inflicting of fear, pain, and even death, what do I do?

Sad statistics show that many people who train with a particular defensive weapon – like a gun – will abandon more immediately available defensive options in favour of a delay inducing reversion to what they hold in their minds as their go to option. In this I find similarity to the way people die in theater, night club, and restaurant fires because they trample one another trying to evacuate using the same door they entered through, routinely ignoring much nearer alternative exits.

So speaking for myself, I’d start braining those motherfuckers with the hot iron before they had a chance to take a second breath, and work out organically from there. Thus endeth the lesson, and thanks again Mr. Siler.

Taking me back to my earlier piece called Great Pith an’ Moment, today’s poem was also inspired by actual events that played out in their dark drama only the nicht … eh night … before last. While this sort of thing has been anticipated for quite a spell, it has only just happened, to a Father and his wee lad all of 19 months in age.

A shower ensued, for all involved.

Th’ Nicht We Shite th’ Bath

By LFM

Wee Viktor was a shiter,
An’ a shiter’s what ‘e was.
‘E’d shite fer reasons usual,
An’ sometimes, just because.

T’was just last nicht, in bath ‘e was
An’ Father pulled the plug,
‘Is wee bum spoke a bubblin’ fart –
Th’ drain a mournful glug.

An’ so it came to pass th’ lad,
Tho’ rescued from th’ goo,
Was found transformed from freshie fresh
To smellin’ like the loo.

The Knight Errant , Sir John Everett Millais, 1870 (Click to enlarge)

“The Knight Errant is a large painting in which the figures are almost life size. When shown at the Royal Academy in 1870, it was accompanied by a text of Millais’s own invention which was printed in the exhibition catalogue: ‘The order of Knights errant was instituted to protect widows and orphans, and to succour maidens in distress.’ The moonlit scene apparently depicts an act of medieval chivalry in which one such Knight errant, clad in armour (based on examples that Millais had seen in the Tower of London), is on the point of freeing a woman who has been stripped and tied to a tree. The tree, a Silver Birch, was commonly identified with the female gender in the nineteenth century and was sometimes referred to as ‘Lady Birch’. Birch twigs were also traditionally used in flagellation. The woman’s clothes lie on the ground to the left and her molesters, assumed to be robbers by one critic, are seen fleeing the scene in the top right corner of the canvas. There is blood on the Knight’s sword and the torso of a dead man is visible behind him.” ~ The Tate Gallery

Today’s poem was inspired by a couple of things, but most notably by the painting that appears at the top of this piece. In decades of close examination, I’ve always felt the knight’s sword to be poised in a moment of hesitation, and his facial expression to be reflective of lascivious second thoughts. Ah well, that’s probably just me, and … well, you know how I am. (more…)

Only slightly tongue in cheek snow melt prediction map for Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, courtesy of CBC Meteorologist Kalin Mitchell. (Click to enlarge)

“For my own part, I’ve been around long enough to know the Winter just past as the normalcy of my childhood, when we kids were playing “king of the castle” flinging snowballs in defence of battlements built atop the lofty snowbanks thrown up by the plough that cleared the school parking lot, and this all before Christmas break. I remember hiking in to fish lakes and stillwaters when the blooming of May Flowers, the swarming of Blackflies, and a few deep and persistently slow melting snow drifts, all coexisted in the deepest woods of a Nova Scotia May.” ~ Nature’s Jocularity

Under the headline Maritime snowmelt may not happen until May, says Kalin Mitchell, that worthy explains the inexact science of predicting how long it will take for Nature to reverse the pasting She gave the Maritimes in the comparatively short interval from the start of February until now. Considering what I wrote yesterday, and quoted above, you will understand that predictions that fall near the middle of May come as no surprise to me.

In that vein, I have another picture for you that I took just yesterday morning in my back yard, after the previous day’s sun and slightly above freezing temperatures had succeeded in revealing the top inch or so of my chopping block. That would be the dark oval object in the middle of the picture. This inspired the poem that follows.

Chopping block revelation, 1 April 2015 – a foot and a half high, and sitting on top of a two foot retaining wall. (LFM photo – click to enlarge and make the snow look even deeper)

Deep Thoughts

By LFM

Here you see my chopping block
Revealed just yesterday.
It’s not been seen in all the months
That snow and ice held sway.

It stirs my heart to see it now,
Its brow above the snow,
But n’er forget that this decrees
How far we’ve yet to go.

Full eighteen inches doth it stand,
This chopping block of mine,
Atop two feet of garden wall
Of which there’s still no sign.

The rising Sun reveals jewels of ice tipping the branches of Maple trees at the LFM Enclave on the first calendar day of Spring, 2015. (LFM photo – click to enbiggen)

“Oddly enough, this poem was born from an intention to write something with a pretty beginning that set the reader up for a funny punch line involving the way Spring unveils just how much frozen dog shit has been slumbering under the snow and ice in our yard, and that blessed day when Nature does Her Big Reveal. As it turns out, today was the day.” ~ Spring

With those words, I introduced my poem titled Spring back on 6 March 2011, and that you might want to read or reread before going any further. I wrote it when the arrival of that season was still consistent with a decades long perception of normalcy that had spawned a sense of Natural entitlement, at least among the Human population of the World. That has now been more or less put to rest as we plod snow-shod toward a very different Spring. One that will require the melting of more than 6 feet of snow depth in some places before the true measure of Winter’s privation can be revealed in the form of remains left behind by those things that simply couldn’t wait any longer.

For my own part, I’ve been around long enough to know the Winter just past as the normalcy of my childhood, when we kids were playing “king of the castle” flinging snowballs in defence of battlements built atop the lofty snowbanks thrown up by the plough that cleared the school parking lot, and this all before Christmas break. I remember hiking in to fish lakes and stillwaters when the blooming of May Flowers, the swarming of Blackflies, and a few deep and persistently slow melting snow drifts, all coexisted in the deepest woods of a Nova Scotia May.

Dark thoughts for the introduction to a decidedly undark bit of verse, inspired by the serendipitous sighting of an oddly shaped Dog turd, but that’s the me you all have come to love, so here’s today’s rhyme.

Nature’s Jocularity

By LFM

A warming breeze blew through my yard
And showed me something funny.
A turd the melting snow revealed
Looks like a choc’late bunny.

The hair referred to in this poem was particularly glorious in this morning’s sunlight.

One Red Hair

By LFM

Since years agone, this time appeared
An auburn hair upon my beard.
A present from my Mother’s side,
And not a thing I’m wont to hide.

Instead, I’d rather raise a glass
To ancestry that’s come to pass,
And bless the day the Celt appeared
Who left this trace upon my beard.

“No man is an iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.” ~ John Donne, Meditation 17, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

Dark Sentiments 2014 – Home Invasions spoke of one example, drawn from personal experience, of the inevitable need to draw the line. Now, as Mrs. LFM and I are newly returned from our cellar and dealing with the aftermath of a late Winter onslaught, I offer this brief verse in memory of the recent fallen.

It Tolls for Thee

By LFM

Last night in my cellar,
A Mouse and two Moles,
Discovered the answer
For whom the bell tolls.

For many years now, it has been with furrowed brow that I have observed the world as it applies to the work of professional law enforcement. My troubled mind comes from having had the extreme privilege of a career that has led me to know and work with a satisfying sample of cops – some good, some not so good. Some ill suited to the job, and some exceptional as though born to it. Just like every other bunch of people, brought together to get a troublesome job done right insofar as possible, before hopefully going home alive and whole. Today we’ll talk about that.

Once upon a time, not so very long ago because, where I live at least, it overlaps some of the adult years of my own lifetime, a policeman’s job was easier, even if the paperwork and court room part of it was always there to haunt him. It was easier because people were people and it all made a sort of sense, even on those occasions when it didn’t. Occasional domestic disputes, people drunk in public and everything that can lead to, petty theft, intoxicated and lead foot drivers, delinquent kids who sometimes needed to be scared straight or at least sternly shown the path, and tavern fisticuffs pretty much covered it. Sure, it was risky work, but for the most part, every cop knew when shit happened who the usual suspects were. Everybody knew the cop gave a shit, but wouldn’t take any. (more…)

The involvement of Canada’s military services in the open warfare that has flourished since the events of 11 September 2001 has led to an unsurprising and historically inevitable outcome: Healthy people are dispatched on the mission. Some come back fine, some die before the end of their tour, while still others come back broken. Wars have always worked that way.

For a long time, culminating in “unification”; i. e., the dissolution of the Canadian Army, Navy, and Air Force into one body called “The Canadian Armed Forces” with its members wearing a generic green uniform bearing branch specific insignia; our politicians liked to gloss over the purpose of Canada’s military by focusing on it as a resource tailored to humanitarian missions instead of war fighting. Essentially, first responders to any international 911 call; ever ready to head off to trouble spots afflicted with any kind of shit storm running the full spectrum from bestiality to unsportsmanlike conduct.

The final phase of this travesty came to pass during the tenure of Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau whose very liberal philosophy of National government held Canada to have evolved beyond any need for war fighting, and that defence budgets were best spent setting a noble example for the rest of the world to follow. In this pursuit, who needed an Army, a Navy, or an Air Force as separate entities with all their pesky traditions and independent command structures when what the nation really needed was a glorified, cut rate, under respected police department? After all, if Canada were to ever come under attack, it would inevitably fall within the scope of all those expensive studies of Cold War Soviet military doctrine, therefore over the North Pole, and if Canada fell, the United States would be next, so they’d HAVE to come to our aid. Why should Canada pay for its defence when those south of the border have already been investing in the defence of North America? Yes well, Mr. Trudeau had his charms, but also had his head firmly lodged up his ass in more than a few matters of national defence. (more…)