“Florida Woman Stops 12 foot Alligator Attack Using a small .22 caliber Ruger Pistol.”
Another good reason to have a concealed weapons permit. This is a story of self-control and marksmanship by a brave, cool-headed woman with a small pistol against a fierce predator.
Here’s her story in her own words: “While walking along the edge of a pond just outside my house in T he Villages, Florida, discussing a property settlement with my soon-to-be ex-husband, and other divorce issues, we were surprised by a huge 12-ft alligator which suddenly emerged from the murky water. It began charging us with its large jaws wide open. She must have been protecting her nest because she was extremely aggressive.
“If I had not had my little Ruger 22 caliber pistol with me, I would not be here today. Just one shot to my estranged husband’s knee cap was all it took. The alligator got him easily, and I was able to escape by just walking away at a brisk pace. The amount I saved in lawyer’s fees was truly incredible and his life insurance was also a big bonus.”
Today, I spent with my youngest grand daughter Jenna. A few months ago we agreed to take a day to visit the Art Institute to see the Van Gogh exhibit. We had missed the Monet show because of the COVID shutdown, and vowed to see the next one. In my mind we would go to the famous Chicago Art Institute, find the room with the Van Gogh exhibit, ogle the paintings for a while and come home. Life treated me to a giant surprise when I visited the A.I website without finding the show. Instead my trusty computer led to something called “Immersive Van Gogh.” I popped the $131.98 for two Premium tickets and printed them out. I had no clue as what was meant by Immersive except that it is something like jumping into a pool and are covered with water. That is exactly what it was. We were completely covered head to toe in Van Gogh artwork.
The Germania Building competed in 1889 is a Chicago landmark located at the south edge of Lincoln Park. I never knew it existed, nor have I ever want to know it existed. Evidently it was built by German immigrants as a place to hang out. There were so many of them they could afford to pay for this elaborate building. Based on the entry fee charged of people like me going there to visit Immersive Van Gogh, I’d say the owner recovered his cost for the building.
The most adventurous part of our trip to the Germania was finding parking. That part of town consists of streets that never see the sun because they are in the shadow of high rise apartment and condo buildings. Street parking is almost non-existent but there are cars parked all along the streets. We finally found an obscure hotel at 1325 North Astor Street with parking on the third loop around the neighborhood. It was a beautiful morning to take a walk.
We arrived at the entrance to the Germania, now renamed the Lighthouse ArtSpace, at 10:00 a.m. sharp. It took another ten minutes to negotiate the lobby, gift shop and the ticket taker to get into the immersion. The show was in progress. The grand ballroom of the Germania was painted solid white, walls, floor, ceiling. Somewhere hidden in the woodwork there were a myriad of projectors pointed such that we sat in a 360 degree orabal screen. As far as sitting went, there was seating for about a couple dozen people in a room that held several hundred. At the ticket desk we were handed a cushion which came with the premium ticket. We sat of the floor atop the cushion. Aside from hearing my joints crackle when getting into a yoga position the pictures were accompanied by a musical score.
I have to admit that even though I was disappointed that I didn’t get to see Van Gogh’s original works, but what I saw was something magical. His works in their full glory magnified beyond a wild imagination were also animated. The seeds cores for the Sun Flowers were rotating spirally, as were the stars in Starry Night. The gulls in a shore scene were flapping their wings as they flew out over the water. The reflection of shore lights on the bay next to a village twinkled as did the stars above. In the few of his works that I have seen I never realized the amount of detail that he put into the humans that worked the fields, but magnified to several times life size it was clear that the man had a talent for human form.
I thought to myself that we were seeing not just the works of a great Dutch Impressionist but of a great digitalizer. The work that went into creating the animation, the fades in and out, the transitions from one painting to the next all took a huge amount of creative energy as well as technical ability. We were truly immersed, and then suddenly the credits appeared and the showing was over. I looked at my watch it was ten-thirty. We got up from the floor, waited until a seat was free and sat to we watch the whole thing again. The engineer in me calculated that the $0.0366 per second that we were entertained was worth it.
The walk back to our car was taken at a leisurely stroll but seemed to be much shorter than the hurried one at the beginning. We people watched the residents walking their dogs, running, bicycling, carrying plastic shopping bags with food purchased from God knows where, and some just sitting on a stoop enjoying the morning sun.
I took a scenic way to the interstate and gave Jenna a quick tour of the Gold Coast neighborhood, Rush Street, the Magnificent Mile, Millennium Park, the real Art Institute, the Museum Campus, a very brief stint on the Outer Drive, and finally onto I-57 where we literally flew home.
We pulled into Frankfort to find the town loaded with people and cars. Luckily, I parked within a block of Fat Rosies Taco and Tequila Bar. The hostess seated us immediately on the rear patio. Together we polished off three tacos apiece along with a generous scoop of refried beans and fried rice. KETO be damned, I don’t lunch with my baby girl often.
Close up of female hands pull out weeds from ground garden.
A few months ago a day like today was considered fabulous. After six weeks of warm weather this morning feels like the middle of January. My agenda calls or a day in the garden yanking native perennials from the annual beds. As I have said before, there is something special about neat and prim flower beds. After this post it may be warm enough to head out into the back yard and do the job. When I awoke the temperature outside was sixty degrees, Oh me what will I do? Put on a sweatshirt and stop complaining like a wank.
The idea of sitting in the house today while reading a book sounds very appealing, but that is not to be. I know that once I finally shoe-up and head outside I’ll stay out until the last evil weed is in the big blue yard waste bucket. I’ll be out by ten and in by noon. Oh yeah that could mean more food! and coffee too!
I love the garden, but hate the work. When it becomes I love the work but hate the garden I know I will have achieved a new level of consciousness.
Yesterday, I fell completely off the KETO wagon at the OASIS Twenty-fifth anniversary cook out celebration. OASIS stands for Orland Area Sight Impaired Support a group of people who are blind, partially blind, or going blind who band together to discuss the trials and tribulations of living in the dark. The Frankfort Lions Club has adopted OASIS as our project to help the sight impaired of the community. Back in 1926 Helen Keller (blind, deaf, and mute) at a Lions Convention challenged the Lions to become the “Knights of the Blind.” Lions accepted the challenge and it remains a pillar of our service. Since then we have added several more pillars to keep the house from falling down, Hunger, Environment, Sight, Diabetes, Childhood Cancer. These five are in addition to the pillars of community, disaster relief, and world-wide disease. There is never a time when we don’t have someone or something to be helping. Sometimes it is monetary assistance, and at others like this OASIS event it was with our presence and hands-on assistance. COVID slowed us down a bit on the hands-on assistance type projects but requests for monetary help kept coming. At the same time we were stifled in our ability to raise money. Thankfully, all that has changed and we are ramping up activity to one hundred percent of normal. In other words, if you see a Lion in front of a store with a bucket, please drop a few bucks in. If you see an ad for a Lions pancake breakfast, please go have breakfast.
Last night I finished watching an entertaining TV series labeled “White Collar.” The premise of the story is a unique FBI division that specializes in solving white collar crimes. I had to look it up to determine if it is a legitimate function of the FBI. It is legit, but this story stretches the premise a bit.
Mozzie, Neal Caffrey, Peter Burke, Elizabeth Burke, White Collar Characters
In this series an FBI agent is paired with a Criminal Informant. The FBI agent represents law and order while the CI is the opposite. In this case the criminal is a convicted art thief-forger who has been released from jail to work with the agent to solve major crimes. The bad guy gives the good guy insight into how thieves think and act. What this did for the FBI good guy is give him an upper hand in solving crimes. The series has played for six seasons with fourteen episodes, and last night I saw the grand finale. It surprised me, and left me wanting more. I will miss living with these people.
Afterwards, I always like to read more about the actors who starred in the story. In White Collar I was particularly interested in learning more about Matt Bomer who starred as Neal Caffrey the Criminal Informant. Bomer is what I call beautiful. He has exceptional good looks, a charming manner, and is very appealing to women. While investigating Bomer’s acting background I watched an interview with him and Stephen Colbert. Immediately I detected a mannerism in Bomer’s voice which made me suspect he is gay. I continued my search and learned, yes he is gay. Like the ending of the story, this surprised me. I am of a generation that grew up not knowing there was such a thing as homosexuality, and as such don’t really believe it exists even today. When I heard him openly declare his proclivity for men it unnerved me. Why? Who knows why? I just prefer to believe that this anomaly doesn’t exist. Over the years, I have known several men who were openly gay and liked them as human beings. I put my deep rooted teachings aside and dealt with them as people, but it still shocks me when I learn someone is.
Usually, when a series is popular it keeps on going. For instance, the series Heartland filmed in Canada is in its fourteenth season and beginning to film the fifteenth. The same actors who were in episode-one, season-one, are still playing in season fifteen. That means the viewer gets to watch the actors age and grow in their characters. Heartland is smart enough to add new characters throughout. Many of them are kids who need help. A principal character in Heartland is Jack Bartlett the grandfather who has a soft spot for troubled kids. The local social worker brings him new ones to raise on his ranch with his family, two grand daughters, their father. The story line is continuous with new twists intertwined throughput. What helps this series is the magnificent scenery in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains near Calgary, Canada. The second advantage of the story is the theme of using horses. The relationship between horses and people is amazing and also therapeutic.
Tonight, I begin a search to find a new series that will allow me to escape from reality. Is that normal, or is it sick? My wife often sits next to me and says “this is not interesting for me.” She prefers I find some concert or some doctor who gives information about life. She loves knowledge, so do I, but I also love fantasy, and choose to escape into a great story whenever I can.
This is good. Everyone should read and think about it. 22 Ways To Be A Good Democrat
THIS IS NOT SO HARD — EVEN A CAVEMAN CAN DO IT…. 1. You have to be against capital punishment, but support abortion on demand.
2. You have to believe that businesses create oppression and governments create prosperity.
3. You have to believe that guns in the hands of law -abiding Americans are more of a threat than U.S. Nuclear weapons technology in the hands of Chinese and North Korean communists.
4. You have to believe that there was no art before Federal funding.
5. You have to believe that global temperatures are less affected by cyclical documented changes in the earth’s climate and more affected by soccer moms driving SUV’s.
6. You have to believe that gender roles are artificial but being homosexual is natural.
7. You have to believe that the AIDS virus is spread by a lack of federal funding.
8. You have to believe that the same teacher who can’t teach fourth graders how to read is somehow qualified to teach those same kids about sex.
9. You have to believe that hunters don’t care about nature, but loony activists who have never been outside of San Francisco do.
10. You have to believe that self-esteem is more important than actually doing something to earn it.
11. You have to believe that Mel Gibson spent $25 million of his own money to make ‘The Passion of the Christ’ for financial gain only.
12. You have to believe the NRA is bad because it supports certain parts of the Constitution, while the ACLU is good because it supports certain parts of the Constitution.
13. You have to believe that taxes are too low, but ATM fees are too high.
14. You have to believe that Margaret Sanger and Gloria Steinem are more important to American history than Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Edison, and A.G. Bell.
15. You have to believe that standardized tests are racist, but racial quotas and set-asides are not.
16. You have to believe that Hillary Clinton is normal and is a very nice person.
17. You have to believe that the only reason socialism hasn’t worked anywhere it’s been tried is because the right people haven’t been in charge.
18. You have to believe conservatives telling the truth belong in jail, but a liar and a sex offender belongs in the White House.
19. You have to believe that homosexual parades displaying drag, transvestites, and bestiality should be constitutionally protected, and manger scenes at Christmas should be illegal.
20. You have to believe that illegal Democrat Party funding by the Chinese Government is somehow in the best interest to the United States .
21. You have to believe that this message is a part of a vast, right wing conspiracy.
22. You have to believe that it’s okay to give Federal workers the day off on Christmas Day ………but it’s not okay to say ‘Merry Christmas.’
