Large Fierce Mammal

Sex sells, and no mistake! Click to enbiggen. (Mrs. LFM Photo)

As I write, we are in the midst of a predicted three day fall of light, drifting snow creating conditions ideal for living exclusively off the avails of Hearth and Home. Never one to regard an equine endowment in the dentition, the exquisite Mrs. LFM (a sweet diversion in her own right) looked out upon the expanse of fresh powder and saw the gift of a key ingredient.

But first, to set the mood.

Bradford Angier‘s excellent book How to Stay Alive in the Woods was the text book for the hands on, and on the ground teachings of the Mentors I was deemed Worthy to grow up among. Coming from a way of being in the woods as known and practiced around the time I was personally too busy being born to care much about the outdoors, the book has gone through several editions since then and is not surprisingly still in print.

Mr. Angier had a tendency to begin chapters with bits of Wisdom by way of quotations relevant to the point about to be made, a favourite of which came to mind as today’s lesson was gelling toward fruition:

“There is usually little object in traveling tough just for the sake of being tough.” ~ Hudson’s Bay Company

Another is …

“A party living off the country must know how to get full value from everything available especially in the way of food.” ~ Royal Canadian Mounted Police

In recognition of those iconic expressions of Northern Spirit we will today look at Mrs. LFM’s deft use of resources. (more…)

Previously from Weihnachtsjäger School of Charm:

• Introductory Pontification
• Getting Your Head Right

Today’s Lesson

Timely Advice is Never Too Late

By LFM

Your use to the World comes from skills that you have,
And the things that you know how to do.
Some come by Nature, while others are learned,
Adding Value to all that is you.

But whose acts aren’t a match for the words that he speaks
Needs must hark to this lesson of old —
If you prove that you can’t or won’t do what you say,
There’ll be nought but to do as you’re told.

If you’ve spent much time here, and certainly as these lessons progress, you will know that I use terms, examples, and metaphors that may be controversial among those parts of the population prone to focusing on the wording instead of the meaning.

Whether your family, friends, colleagues, heirs, successors, or assigns agree with any specific utterance, singly or en masse, should be of no consequence to you for everyone is the villain in someone’s story, no man is of a piece, and even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while. (more…)

If you go out in the woods today, you’re in for a big surprise … (LFM Photo)

For your delectation today I’m taking you on a walk in the woods while running off at the mouth on an assortment of related topics from preparedness to garniture, how not to die of the shits, wardrobe, and do please try to be a part of the solution instead of the problem? (more…)

Previously from Weihnachtsjäger Charm School:

• Introductory Pontification

Today’s Lesson

“Think of your death now. It is at arm’s length. It may tap you any moment, so really you have no time for crappy thoughts and moods. None of us have time for that. The only thing that counts is action, acting instead of talking.

“Our death is waiting and this very act we’re performing now may well be our last battle on earth. I call it a battle because it is a struggle. Most people move from act to act without any struggle or thought. A hunter, on the contrary, assesses every act; and since he has an intimate knowledge of his death, he proceeds judiciously, as if every act were his last battle. Only a fool would fail to notice the advantage a hunter has over his fellow men. A hunter gives his last battle its due respect. It’s only natural that his last act on earth should be the best of himself ….” ~ Master At Arms James A. Keating, Hermitage – The Power of Solitude

I will begin today’s lesson with an overarching statement of facts.

I am not …

1. A guru;
2. A “life coach”;
3. An adherent to any Abrahamic system of religious belief;
4. A physician;
5. A lawyer;
6. A psychologist;
7. An academic in any discipline;
8. A dietician;
9. A pharmacist;
10. A Farmer;
11. A member of any First Nation; nor
12. Merely an “expert” on anything and will be called that at your peril.

I have not served …

1. In the military forces of any nation;
2. As a sworn member of law enforcement; nor
3. As a firefighter, wildland or otherwise.

I am an accredited and practicing professional of 41 years standing in …

1. Risk management;
2. Emergency plans and operations;
3. Emergency communications;
4. Life safety systems design, implementation, policies, and procedures; and
5. Security and surveillance systems design, implementation, policies, and procedures.

I have also been a Provincially accredited instructor but have since retired from teaching …

1. The Nova Scotia Hunter Safety Course; and
2. The Canadian Firearms Safety Course.

I am most importantly, including those of my attributes that by the grace of Mrs. LFM adorn the masthead of this website …

1. A Man;
2. Happily Mated and married to a Woman;
3. The Father of three Sons;
4. Honourable;
5. Dangerous;
6. Successful in all ways that matter to me, mine, and those who have cause to look to me for assistance;
7. Charming;
8. Competent; and
9. Better in every way than I was yesterday.

This is by no means an exhaustive expression of my character, nor of my CV, but rest assured that unheralded aspects of both will announce themselves as and where I deem it necessary to what is being taught here.

As to that, for today’s lesson I would redirect your gaze to the passage quoted from the pen of Master At Arms James A. Keating that appears at the top of today’s piece. With that in mind, read the following including any links you find embedded therein:

• Perfection
• The Best of Yourself

To conclude, I refer you to Item 9 in the final list set forth above, and hereby charge you to begin working its magick upon yourself as though your very life depends upon it. For those who have no idea where to begin with that, be back here next time, on time, and at the very front of the class.

Dismissed.

LFM Photo

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” ~ Lao Tzu

Within the framework of First Principles, Tools are born of Competence. For just as it is rightly said that, “Necessity is the mother of invention,” so must Competence first exist to recognize Necessity so the inventing can begin.

Competence further enables evaluation of problems in measure of their solvability within the Natural Framework:

1. Tools (your Garniture of skills and artifacts);
2. Energy; and
3. Time.

When a problem has no solution within that Framework, it’s not a problem — it’s a fact, and those fall under the Natural Rule of Three:

1. Adapt;
2. Migrate; or
3. Die.

It should be obvious that within those options, Competence will lend itself to devising acceptable workarounds where such facts as unacceptable stress and conflict come to roost, in service of options offered by the first two, and avoidance of the third.

“Everything in Nature is about efficiency and balance, which is why life is, first and foremost, an exercise in energy management. For example, the Way of the Wild demands of each parent that their offspring be made self-sufficient as quickly and efficiently as possible. A tool need not be a physical artifact – rest assured that skilled parenting is a Tool – but to be True it must help, not hinder, such processes, and must never represent a brilliant answer to a question that was never asked.” ~ Worldly Wisdom Wednesday — Tools

In devising a Tool, first know what the Tool is for. At its most basic, it exists to leverage Competence, and not to compensate for lack of it.

“Competence and favourable outcomes in the face of hard problems, both personally and professionally, is what we’re after, and what one brings to the BYOT (Bring Your Own Tools) party we call Life needs to support that goal.” ~ EDC — TMI

And how does all this have anything to do with Charm?

I once defined some absolutes by which the Trueness of a Tool may be measured, and posit here that they serve equally well in defining Competence:

• It must be maintainable.
• Its durability and longevity must not constitute a built-in guarantee of waste.
• Life with it must be superior to life without it.
• Neither its use, nor the job it was devised to perform, shall represent the creation of an equal or greater problem while solving another.
• It must not represent the lesser of two or more evils.
• For any given task, it must provide a dividend in the form of time expended, materials used, and/or energy required.
• It must exist to do a job that is necessary within the context of sound ecological and ergonomic practice.

Nothing is more charming than Competence, and these foundational matters underpin the syllabus for lessons to follow.

Welcome to School.

Funny shadow we cast. (Mrs. LFM photo)

Frohe Weihnachten!

From the House of LFM

On this clear Yuletide eve
May your plans be well laid,
As was my Fine Wyfe —
See these things that we made!

Sons One, Two, and Three,
With their Dad and fair Mum,
Wish you all a fine night,
Don’t do anything dumb!

L-R: Lukas, Viktor, and Maksim (Mrs. LFM photo)

Source: The Go-Between and The George! by Eva Jordan

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” ~ L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

The line quoted above simultaneously introduces L. P. Hartley’s tale relating hard-won lessons of youth, and offers a concise package of advice for all who feel a calling to redefine history in a “modern” context.

The times, and most particularly the Season in which we find ourselves, are prone to expressions of revisionist history. YouTube and similar platforms abound with authoritative videos about who stole what tradition from whom, what is authentically “traditional’ in THE classically original sense, who is right, who is wrong, and who is to blame.

I look askance upon the term, “universal human experience”, not just because of its obvious ignorance of cultural perspectives on the universality of anything experienced by humans, but most particularly because in any group of humans who are present when an experience is simultaneously shared, it will be impossible to find a consensus on what happened, who experienced what, why everyone but the person describing it in the moment got the details wrong, or even if any kind of experience was experienced at all by anyone.

Redefining and discounting history — anyone’s history — is not a path to finding Truth if there is any hope for a cohesive society anywhere. I posit this in full understanding that recent history is rife with evidence that ancient hatreds, like volcanoes, are never extinct, and sometimes violence is the sole answer of choice.

The following is inspired as much to those known to be living the legacy, near or far, as it is the pontifications of opinionated onlookers.

Bloody Foreigners

By LFM

In the course of shared experience
Much will be left behind,
Some by right of conquest,
And still more just lost to mind.

Those things that are remembered
Aren’t remembered all the same,
In deciding when to celebrate,
Or cast the stone of blame.

Some suffer still the rights and wrongs
Of generations past,
Who’s now to stand as culpable
For rolls of dice long cast?

Attacking what societies
Have chosen to extol
Depletes the REAL objective —
That those dice no longer roll.

So remember while you’re naming blames,
And choosing what is “fair”,
The past’s a foreign country,
They have different customs there.

One Eyed Man by MiveRastSmidge9966-0 (Jose)

Having left you last night with a cautionary carol, I feel it only proper you be greeted this evening with an equally and more Hobbesian one.

The Golden Rule

By LFM

Advice comes down from years agone to suit each come what may,
Some is tried and tested, but the rest more nay than yea.
The former kind reveals itself to questing, thinking mind,
The latter from the one-eyed king who rules the Land of Blind.

That kingdom has no army, and no maps were ever made.
No notion has its citizens of how the land is laid,
And everything they need, or want, or wish to know about
Is begged for from their one-eyed king, the one with all the clout.

The Royal Laws sound simple, clear, and even quite benign,
As befits the blind obedience required to toe the line,
Like things to never say or do on given month or day,
Gifts you must not ever give, and games you mustn’t play.

Cures to never make or use no matter past success,
And places you must be, or not, ignoring your distress.
Foods you mustn’t ever eat, and drinks to never drink,
Words to never speak or write, and thoughts to never think.

Every want and need is served, exclusive of travail,
To those deemed “law abiding”, and there’s no such thing as jail,
For any misbegotten few who’re found to be of mind
Soon grope for food and water that’s bestowed, but hard to find.

The Last White Christmas by Vablo (2013). Click the title of the picture to read its uplifting tale.

As I write to you this evening Goode Reader, it is to the clamorous accompaniment of the Wild Hunt shredding the very tops of the Hemlocks. Most appropriately timed, for 23:27 Atlantic Time this Midwinter Night marks the moment of our embarkation on yet another pilgrimage upon the steep and slippery slope leading up to sweet, sweet Spring.

Unveiling my all seeing eye and gazing back across the expanse we’ve just travelled to get here, it has not escaped my notice that beyond minor changes in cast, nothing of substance has changed. As always, and no matter the label, the scapegoat, or the angular velocity of the narrative, everyone who has ever been born can still expect to be the villain in someone’s story, and human beings as a species are still the single biggest contributor to putting the brakes on having nice things. (more…)

Letting your mouth run on autopilot is as fraught with peril as disengaging what sentience you may possess from the interaction at hand. Notwithstanding that, today’s world abounds with meaningless utterances — prattle — that are offered as an introductory course to the drivel du jour before someone either takes the money for your purchase or tells you why they can’t help with whatever issue brought you there.

It will come as no surprise to our regulars here that I have days when I’m feeling particularly game and enjoy derailing an autopilot or two, and I do have a few never fail favourites.

For example, when Mrs. LFM was pregnant with our first bairn, and very close to due date, we waited an unconscionably long time for service in an establishment where we simply wanted lunch and had even ordered from the “speedy” menu to ensure a quick in and out. We were ultimately served along with an apology and a query if we had been waiting long. My reply was, “Well, my Wife wasn’t even pregnant when we came in here.”

Now that we’ve got our three strapping lads at 10, 8, and 6 years of age, the line still works.

A related utterance to asking if I’ve been waiting long is, “Sorry about the wait,” to which I occasionally reply, as evaluated on a case by case basis, “Why? How much do you think I weigh?”

One more example comes when someone has been asking too many questions bordering on nosiness. It’s amazing how easy it is to steer someone into asking if you have siblings:

Them: “So, do you have any siblings?

Me: “Yes, one. A sister.”

Them: “Older or younger?”

Me: “Neither. She’s dead.”

Them: “Oh my God! I’m sorry!”

Me: “It’s fine. She wasn’t a very good sister.”

An alternate ending is, “You were in no way implicated.”

For those non-game days though, this bit of verse fits the prevailing mold.

Prattle

By LFM

“How are things?”
People ask as a matter of course,
Which could mean, “How’s your day?” or,
“How is your horse?”
Because horses are “things”,
So are days come to that,
They might as well ask me
The fit of my hat.

What they’re asking, of course,
Is far less specific,
And solicits no more than,
“Oh, just terrific!”
For doubters I’ll offer this sure way to tell —
Just answer, “My toilet’s a portal to Hell.”
If your tone is upbeat they will answer in kind,
And no word that you’ve uttered will enter their mind.