Octopodial Chrome

…that the current Bishop of Rome had a cousin his age who was killed by the Nazis for having Down’s Syndrome. Nowadays, of course, we’re not nearly so coarse as to euthanise 14-year-olds; instead we quietly tear apart or poison about 60,000 children a year.

I went pheasant hunting the last few days in Kansas with Bill B—— and Rick ——. It was ab-so-lutely amazing: there were more birds out there than I’d ever seen. Even my seasoned party-members commented that it was as good as any hunting they’d ever had. In one particular spot, we flushed so many birds that it sounded like a firing line at an English hunt: one shot thundered out after another, with birds flying in every direction.

We all did pretty well. On Thursday we each shot two birds, making it halfway to the limit. Friday wasn’t too great; one of us bagged three but the other two got none. Today I managed to pick up the only bird of the day, which made me pretty happy. Since my friend had already hunted this year and was under an absolute directive from his wife to return with no pheasants, we split the bag two ways and I now have two birds in my freezer, one in my fridge and two hanging on my balcony.

I’ve been thinking a lot about hanging game recently. Darina Allen’s cookbook Forgotten Skills of Cooking praises hung game extremely highly---so highly that I figure it’s worth a shot. Supposedly the aging process really brings out the flavours of the animals, taking them from not-much-more-than-chicken to something altogether different. Hank Shaw and others seem to agree. So I didn’t skin or draw my birds from Thursday at all, but simply put them on top of the cooler and tried not to get them too wet. They stayed in the truck overnight in the freezing Kansas weather, which I’m pretty sure didn’t hurt them, and now they’re on my balcony. If my research is right, they should be ready to eat in a week or two. We’ll see if it’s astounding or if I just ruined 40% of my first hunt in two years.

Hunting really is great fun. It’s hard work: one walks probably something like two or three miles for every bird, and while some walks are across grass-like winter wheat, others are across rough and irregular corn and wheat stubble, and still others are in prairie grasses over one’s head. It’s expensive work: last time I totted up the numbers it worked out to something like $20 an ounce. But it’s also rewarding work. There’s something about being in the great outdoors. There’s something about walking the farmer’s fields which produce the food we all eat. There’s something about seeing one’s food in its natural habitat. There’s something about actually having to work for one’s supper, not just buy it on a plate, where the animal actually has a fighting chance (literally, in the case of pheasants: the roosters have nasty spurs on their ankles). There’s something about seeing all the old farmsteads, abandoned now that farmers live in small towns and drive to work like the rest of us.

I would never have gotten to see a herd of mule deer prancing in the grass if I’d stayed at home. I’d never have seen Greg W——’s old barn, hand-built and likely older than my parents, unused now but still straight out of an old picture. I’d never have seen the fresh deer leg or the old deer jawbone, remnants of four-legged hunters who work that land every day. I’d never have seen a herd of cows feeding in a corn circle, every head turned to watch us approach a tailwater pit. I’d never have gotten to spend time with Greg & Dave M——, two of the nicest, finest fellows I know.

$20 an ounce is cheap.

Former United States Attorney General Ed Meese argues that we have too many federal crimes and that more oversight is needed. I think it says something when someone who dedicated his life to enforcing the laws calls for fewer of them.

The state of Colorado has made $2.2 million from medical mariajuana sales taxes, and the city of Denver has made the same amount.

What’s interesting to me is how much money that implies the average Coloradan or Denverite spends on marijuana. Crazy stuff!

Over at The Chronicle of Higher Education Richard Vedder notes that 60 percent of the increase in college grads from 1992 to 2008 work in low-skilled jobs that only really require a high-school diploma or less. Fascinating stuff.

We need to ask ourselves why jobs that don’t require much more than an eighth-grade education are being filled by folks who have studied. What’s awry with our employment economy?