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From Shirley MacLaine’s autobiography “My Lucky Stars”/1996, “Traveling back to California in his plane, across country, after our last stadium show in 1992, Frank Sinatra was 76 years old. Frank didn’t want to sleep. It was late at night. He thought everyone else was asleep. I watched him. He went to the back of the plane, quietly retrieved snack food from the galley. He got down on his hands & knees, surreptitiously stuffed everyone’s shoes with popcorn, peanuts, jellybeans, gumdrops, crackers. Frank Sinatra, my friend, legend, glorious survivor would do anything to have fun.”

Doing some gun room cleaning this weekend . And I Open up some spots I have not been in for quite a wile . And to my surprise ! Wow look at what I found stashed away . A Stash From The Past .

Oh I knew that, just trying to be funny.

It’s Gee-Dunk and that guy on the video was wrong.

Bush Dunny

Actually, a place with pups and kitties doesn't look like such a bad spot.

If you are responsible and shoot at a club or on public land, to the best of your ability, you leave it as you found it. Anything else is slob behavior.

If you’ve ever had a stealthy feline sneak up on you, you might have had the same idea the CIA once did: that cats would make good spies. Indeed, the intelligence agency spent millions of dollars on a program to that end in the 1960s. But as any cat owner can tell you, it probably shouldn’t have bothered: However sneaky and/or intelligent cats might be, they know no masters but themselves. Operation Acoustic Kitty was essentially a disaster, with only one subject making it into the field before the ill-advised — and, quite frankly, cruel — program was scrapped. The idea was to create a sort of cyborg cat by implanting a microphone in the animal’s ear, a radio transmitter at the base of its skull, and an antenna in its fur — “a monstrosity,” in the words of Victor Marchetti, a former CIA employee who went on to write the tell-some book The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. On paper, the Acoustic Kitty agent’s first test was simple enough: sit near a park bench and capture a conversation between two people on a park bench. Instead, according to most accounts, the unfortunate feline was hit by a taxi and killed. Writing of the operation’s failure in a heavily redacted memo, the CIA concluded, “Our final examination of trained cats… convinced us that the program would not lend itself in a practical sense to our highly specialized needs.”

BEFORE THE ALTAR OF THE LORD Dana Keller, the pale eyed daughter of that pale eyed old lawman with the iron grey mustache, didn’t step into an Iris with her siblings and take advantage of her mandatory, post-shooting administrative leave, by going on vacation offworld. She set her course eastward instead. Dana was a singer, and a good one. Her voice was remarkable in its range, her vocal control was phenomenal, she’d been encouraged to become a professional singer. She preferred to hide her voice among the many in the Firelands Church Choir. There was an ache in her – when she realized how beautifully she could actually sing, she had a need to release the beauty she contained. She found that release in her grandmother’s closet. She found a white nun’s habit, a veil. This used to fit. I wonder if it still does? It did. A pale eyed nun smiled quietly at her reflection in her Gammaw’s tall, oval mirror, then slid the white silk veil in place, completely hiding her face. Nuns don’t giggle. I’ll have to work on that. Dana read in her Gammaw’s handwritten Journal, where the pale eyed ancestress used disguises of various kinds, just as had the legendary Sarah Lynne McKenna: after Dana and her sister had the line of duty shooting, where each of them punch malefactors’ tickets to the Hell-Bound Train, after each was given the mandatory leave after such a shots-fired incident, Dana picked up a Sheriff’s Office phone and called a number, arranged to have a friend of the Sheriff fly into the local mountaintop crash patch – which they jokingly called Firelands International Airport, one barely long enough to accommodate a C130 with a damned skillful pilot at the controls – and she departed Firelands County via the Lear jet her father used on occasion. She flew to the East, toward the rising of the sun, with a disguise in her suitcase and a desire to see, and experience, one of the oldest pipe organs in existence. It was not unusual to have visitors in the Barrington church, especially with its restored, and completely functional, Roosevelt organ. It was, however, rather unusual to have a Catholic visitor in the First Congregational Church. It was even less common for the visitor to be a nun … a nun in an all-white habit, a habit that included a white, silken, full face veil. She bore a letter of introduction from someone known to the Senior Pastor there, a wartime associate whose name opened the doors and bade this silent Sister welcome. Her visit was timed with the rehearsal of a noted organist, one who could bring the full, soul-gripping strength of the organ’s thousand voices into passionate, powerful reality. It was not until the deep and majestically-voiced rhythm filled the mostly-empty Church, not until the few visitors’ souls were stirred, powered, impassioned by the driving rhythms sung in notes so low many were felt, rather than heard, that this visitor, this solitary, veiled, White Nun, rose. The other visitors sat in the very rear of the Church, furthest from the magnificent organ with its shining, hand-burnished flutes. She sat in front, as close as she could get to this magnificent instrument. She’d glided up the aisle, she’d knelt and crossed herself before the Altar, after the custom of her Order: she’d seated herself slowly, carefully, gracefully, in the front pew, her expression hidden by the white silk veil. She’d sat with head bowed, hands hidden in her sleeves, until her soul was filled: as the music compelled the listeners in the back of the Church to joy, it compelled this White Sister to dance. A woman, a Sister, silent, danced: she rose, she turned easily, silent on the balls of her feet, one arm rose, pointed toward the Heaven she hoped to attain, the other arm down, pointed to the Earth where she served: her dance was simple, she moved in perfect rhythm with the music: beauty there was that day, as the sun slanted colorful beams through the stained glass, as music soared and lived, joyful life in audible form, and a solitary figure danced before the Altar of the Lord. She spun with a slow majesty, she swayed: her dance was simple, stately, graceful, an expression of the consuming joy she felt, the joy she heard, the joy of the music that moved through her, that powered her very soul, and when the organist came to the final bars, so did her dance: her final turns were perfectly timed; she finished, facing the Altar: she knelt, she crossed herself: she bowed her head, her shoulders were shaking, and she bent lower, until her forehead was on the hard floor. She wept. A kindly old clergyman came up, knelt beside her: he gripped her shoulders and she fell into him, still weeping: she cried as if a terrible wound were burst open in her, and its contents spilt out in sorrow and in tears: the old man, having just heard music more glorious than anything this side of the Heavenly Choir, having just seen an earthbound angel dance more beautifully than he knew any human possibly could, held her as she buried her veiled face in his shoulder. He looked at the Altar, and he felt helpless: he had absolutely no idea how such profound, concentrated, distilled grief, could be contained where there’d just been such utter and absolute beauty. The Sister – who had spoken not one word thus far – slipped a kerchief from a sleeve, lowered her head, lifted her veil enough to blot her closed eyelids. “My dear,” the gentle old man said softly, “what brings you such sorrow?” The young woman lifted her veil, revealed a face that had once been beautiful: he saw a reddened, puckered, terrible scar, from the corner of one eye, diagonally across her face, another across her throat: he saw her swallow, she chewed on her bottom lip before speaking. “Forgive me,” she whispered in a husky voice. “I used to sing opera.” She lowered the veil, dropped her head back onto his shoulder: he held her and rocked her a little, the way he would a sorrowing child, a kindly old man who did not realize she wept, in order to heal. Her wound had to be opened. She’d known this. Her strength would not let her open it, for she would have to see it again. Her pale eyed soul was too strong, too proud in its strength, to admit to its hurt. It took this beauty, it took the stress of this continent-wide journey, it took the disguise, the pilgrimage, it took the surging, flowing strength of this audible joy, to break through her hard-walled reserves, and so a pale eyed young woman, whose wounds were soul-deep and festered, sought another means to reach through walls and wards and defenses she’d built to keep the horror at bay. Dana wept for the cleansing, this sudden emptiness: she’d put so much work and so much effort into containing a monster, to confining the festering evil that she knew would eventually insinuate through her walls and her wards and would silently, secretly steer her with its poisons, its subtle evils that escaped her guard. Brutality and force had done this to her. She could not defeat it with brutality and force in return. She wasn’t that strong. She sought sunlight through stained glass, she sought joy in audible form, she waded into a powerful river and danced in its singing waters: the organ’s voice shattered her own defenses and, like surging whitewater shoving boulders before it and washing away any puny obstruction that thought it could stop a river, blasted away a terrible black flood with color and with rhythm and with harmony and with melody, and now she was weak, she was spent, she was utterly without strength, her wet face pressed into a stranger’s shoulder as surrendered her strength, surrendered the efforts that had so utterly exhausted her, as the memory and the blackness and the infection washed away in that powerful river of a Roosevelt organ’s deep-voiced, compelling song.

Glad you asked Deacon.....its to kill the armoured spiders we have down here.

An older child of a President sticking up for a younger one. They definitely have common ground. And good for her doing so.

I don't think I even want to know what the grinder is used for.....

I doubt that Schoolmarm would be very happy with that mini bike in the house!! Getting around the house IS one of the major challenges. I have rustic slate floors in the kitchen and vanity section of the bath. It really doesn’t handle well there! Operating in the kitchen really requires some extra effort! You can’t just turn around or take a couple steps to the side. I have to make three and four point turns or pick the stupid thing up and swing it around while balancing on my good foot! I spend a lot of my kitchen time sitting on a high stool and transferring back and forth to the scooter to get things done!! Lately, I’ve gotten more resentful of the thing and even the furniture is learning amazing new levels of profanity!!

The Big Aukubra in Cradock SA.

Not a photo but a pretty smart kitty.

If any of you remember Gander Mountain sporting good store . They went out of business about 10 years ago. The had 50% off everything in the store . Me and a shooting buddy went in with credit cards in hand ! I bought every can of APP & Unique Powder , Remington #10 cap , Federal , CCI and Remington LP & SP Primer they had in the store . I spent about 1000.00 that day 10 years ago at 50% off . And I'm still stocked for a very long time . My wife thought I went crazy when I spent that much on shooting supplies. But I can't even imagine what I have saved over the years . Rooster

.............. can't offer more than what I got available .........

Getting back to Alpo's original post. When producer are interested in a certain actor to play a part. They contact their agent with the script who then present it to the actor to read over and reason why he or her are wanted along with the offer for the part. The actors reads his parts. If he or her disagree on certain things in the part or script changes are forwarded and negotiated. Now on those that are cast members, changes can be requested when scripts are handed out, during rehearsel, or even if parts can be exchanged. That's why final scripts have different colored pages. Red changes made by directors/ producers, yellow for charcter changes, etc. Actors have and still turn parts down. One good example is present actor Neil McDonough who values, values in a script.

Any politician! There are no saints in Washington!

Small store, can be either on base or shipboard. Marines pronounced it GEE-dunk. It's where we got out pogeybait.

You might want to reconsider that one!! The Boobie likes fresh meat and Hatfield has a great arm with all the old parts and pieces from the stuff in the shop!! Two driveways and a sidewalk are the safest places for ya’!!

You're welcome! That scooter sounds dangerous. You'd be better of on HP mini bike! At least I'd be fun before the crash.

I thought the Bill of Rights are specific restrictions on the Federal government; they don't grant people "rights". People already have those rights and the government cannot "infringe" them. The 2nd Amendment doesn't give people the right to own firearms. It (should) prevent the government from passing laws that restrict that right. So a ruling by a District judge that the law is unconstitutional could lead to overturning other firearm laws. This could get interesting.