Rainy Days
Rainy days are rare here.
One must take advantage of
any opportunity to give
One must take advantage of
any opportunity to give
your favorite red tractor and your favorite Little Pig
(the one who lived in the house made of sticks)
a chance to experience
an adventurous
walk in the rain.
We’re dressed and ready
to show off our
pink boots, pink slicker, pink leggings
as we head out for
a fashionable
walk in the rain.
So many red trucks
in our neighborhood!
Funny what we discover
while enjoying
a simple
walk in the rain.
Look! A pen! Floating along the street…
it seems there’s a current!
This has turned into quite
an educational
walk in the rain.
Rosa has her own idea
of how to enjoy her time
when people go out for
a completely unnecessary
walk in the rain.
And soon we too are inside
where it is
warm and dry,
after all we did get thoroughly soaked
on a truly delightful
walk in the rain.
1 Comment
Gunsmoke
In Afghanistan… those were some BIG, mean-ass guns. And not like the ones you see on cops along the US-Mexico border or in various airports around the world. Those guns, to me, look shiny and sleek … like business equipment. The guns in Afghanistan are dirt-smudged, dusty, camouflaged, hulking… thug guns. And they aren’t held in businesslike black holsters. The soldiers cradle them, caress them… it’s disconcerting. I get the purpose, and have been grateful on too many occasions, it’s just … odd, in a ‘Dorothy, you’re not in Kansas anymore’ kind of way.
September 30, 2009, 6:32 PM
Filed under: Arizona
Filed under: Arizona
When I was about 10, my father took me duck hunting (he’d given up on having a son by then). All I really recall was riding on his shoulders through the swamp in pre-dawn darkness, freezing and trying to stay dry, then sitting for hours in the blind while he and his friends blasted away. I fired the shotgun a few times and had a bruise on my shoulder for weeks. Later,my boyfriend’s father gave him and his brothers guns for Christmas one year — big, heavy, shiny silver handguns. It was the first time I’d ever seen a handgun in person, and it seemed so much scarier than the shotgun did.
Today, my stepdad keeps a shotgun in his house, but it’s unloaded and the shells are in another room. So I figure it’s a win-win when I visit: he sleeps better because there is a gun under the roof; I can sleep because I know guns are useless without shells. And I check this… frequently.
What can I say … except that I grew up in the south.
Today, my stepdad keeps a shotgun in his house, but it’s unloaded and the shells are in another room. So I figure it’s a win-win when I visit: he sleeps better because there is a gun under the roof; I can sleep because I know guns are useless without shells. And I check this… frequently.
What can I say … except that I grew up in the south.
In Afghanistan… those were some BIG, mean-ass guns. And not like the ones you see on cops along the US-Mexico border or in various airports around the world. Those guns, to me, look shiny and sleek … like business equipment. The guns in Afghanistan are dirt-smudged, dusty, camouflaged, hulking… thug guns. And they aren’t held in businesslike black holsters. The soldiers cradle them, caress them… it’s disconcerting. I get the purpose, and have been grateful on too many occasions, it’s just … odd, in a ‘Dorothy, you’re not in Kansas anymore’ kind of way.
So of course, with a huge gun phobia, I am distinctly uncomfortable living in Arizona. A lot of our state is health spas and art shows and retirement communities and the Grand Canyon, but a fair amount of our population seems to think this is Texas.
Including, apparently, our legislature. What is UP with this new ruling? I mean, what can it possibly accomplish?
Essentially, people with concealed-weapons permits can carry in bars unless the management has put up a sign expressly banning guns (and the sign has been up at least a month and has not fallen down, and the gun carrier is not an AZ resident).
At least the sign can be downloaded from the Internet. I think I’ll get one.
And of course, you can’t DRINK if you have a concealed weapon. Which, of course, no one would know about. So weed out the criminals who will do whatever anyway and the jillions of folks who come here from out-of-state and, for sport, the nondrinkers who carry. We’ll assume people only shoot people when they are drinking.
All I can see it accomplishing is perhaps … perhaps making bartenders think about the issue and attend more closely to whom their patrons are. Along the lines of holding bar management responsible when someone leaves a bar drunk and does something stupid. Community law, in essence.
Which, here in the Wild West, can look a lot like vigilantism.
From what I’ve read, bar owners have offered quite a few points of view. The signs themselves, interestingly, get consistent flak. http://www.nytimes.com/Guns in Bars?
“I hate to have to put them up,” Mark DeSimone, owner of the Hidden House Cocktail Lounge in central Phoenix, said of the signs. ”It looks scary. It looks to somebody like, should I go in this place because they obviously have a problem with people bringing weapons in.””You don’t want people to even have a stick,” he said. ”When I take steak knives out (for customers), I look for the ones that don’t have pointy ends.”
And the equally salient point:
Marc Peagler, owner of the Silver Spur Saloon Restaurant in Cave Creek outside Phoenix, said he will allow people with concealed weapons permits to carry in his business, and Silver Spur will be safer because of it. ”It’s a deterrent,” he said. ”In the criminal element, there is some logic that says when people look at a place that they might want to rob, the ones that have big signs up that say ‘We do not permit firearms’ would be the first target. ’They know there’s not going to be anybody in there that can stop them,” he said.
Thanks, legislators. Sheesh.
