God Bless You Terri

Time to speak up on the Terri Schiavo killing. God Bless you Terry. I went back and forth on this in discussions with my wife. On the one hand I feel that my wife should have the ultimate decision in a situation regarding my life or death. If there is a chance for life, I feel I would like that chance, but I want my wife to have some say on pulling the plug.

While I feel that Terri Schiavo’s husband has the right to act on her behalf, in this case it is not a matter of pulling the plug. It is a matter of killing someone slowly by with holding food. Since the beginning I have felt that this might not be the right thing to do. She is alive and can feel. She is not brain dead and being sustained by a machine. Today I heard something that makes up my mind that this is wrong. They are giving her morphine to ease the pain. She’s not like a cancer victim who is on morphine for pain, they are giving it her because they are causing her pain and this is simply wrong.

I am fearful of the precedent being set by our courts in this case. There are thousands of people in nursing homes that can do little for themselves and many babies born every day that will never have the quality of life that I have. What of them? In Nazi Germany and based on one case where the government stepped in and allowed a child to be euthanized, over 70,000 were killed over the next 5 years because their “quality of life” was too low according to the government. What is next for us?

Whoa Baby!!! It's muddy

Whoa Baby… I went out today to drive around a new hunting lease that I have been considering. Problem is we had a hell of a thunder storm last night and I didn’t realize how much it had rained. I get out to the country and am on some back gravel roads driving around. The ditches on both sides of the road were full and flowing pretty fast, but the road was in gravel and in pretty good shape. I came upon a couple of fallen trees along the way so it must have been pretty windy last night too, but I was able to drive over the branches of the fallen trees.

When I’m about two miles from nowhere, the road goes from gravel to dirt. Well guess what? I did not notice the change in time and the next think I know, my Explorer is sideways and I’m getting ready to go for a swim. Well I managed to straighten out and swerve back and forth a couple of times and then I got into a rut left by someone else and straightened out. So I’m driving down the road thinking, hmmm, if I stop, I’m stuck, so I can’t go back. But maybe the road gets better. About that time the rut I’m in swerves into the ditch so I have to plow through the thick mud straight ahead and I swerve a little more until the rut comes back on the road. I guess someone had been out earlier than me in a four wheel drive vehicle. If I had gone in the ditch, I would have needed a tow truck and I’d be damn lucky if I could even get one to out this far.

Well, finally the road goes back to gravel and I’m thinking that I am home fee, but just ahead, I see another fallen tree and about the top 1/3 of the tree is across the road. It looks like mostly 1 to 3” branches so I just plow right over it and finally get to a side road that joins the highway.

The amazing thing is that my Explorer does not have four wheel drive. Thankfully, it does have positive traction rear wheel drive and that is what kept me moving through the mud. If it were a standard differential, I would have been stuck as soon as I hit the mud. My next vehicle will be a four wheel drive!!!

Cool Product

While walking around aimlessly in Home Depot, I came across a pretty cool product. A root feeder for trees from a company called Ross (Easy Gardener, Inc.) I have an anemic pine tree in my front yard so it will be interesting to see if this product is effective in greening it up.

Feeding tree roots is normally a real pain. You have to auger a hole and fill it with granular fertilizer and water in.

The Ross Root Feeder connects to a hose (or as they say in Louisiana, a "hose pipe") and inserts about a foot into the ground. You load it with fertilizer tablets and turn the water on and let the water pressure do the work. A simple and good idea.

See this link. Price was about 24 bucks for the feeder and then you have to buy the tablets and a package of 54 tablets is $8.67 at Home Depot. It took 24 tablets to feed my pine tree that is about 12" in diameter.

Trigger Weight

I was at the range today and decided to ask the resident gunsmith to check my trigger weight. So I go up the store and ask if he can check and he agrees. I hand him my case and he opens it, picks up the gun, racks the slide and pulls the trigger and says about 5.5 to 6 pounds. I look at him funny and he says, well I don’t have my gauge with me. Then I ask about the double action pull and he de-cocks like a 1911 (the gun is a Beretta) and pulls the trigger and says, man this thing has long trigger pull, “lots of creep”. I say, well it is supposed to. Then he says 6.5 to 7 on the DA trigger pull and qualifies it with I’m never more than ¼ pound off. Go figure!

Anyone know where I can get a trigger weight gauge?