SPRING IS SPRINGING IN COLORADO! PRIVATE LAND STEWARDSHIP & RESPONSIBLE MANAGEMENT

Spring is springing in Colorado.  Mother's Day is coming and gardens are being planned and landscaping ideas are being discussed.  It made me think about responsible gardening, that lead to looking for information and it ended with writing about responsible small acreage management.  That is how my brain works over coffee in the morning.

A South Carolina friend posted a story on Facebook about the evils of the “Bradford Pear.”  I thought, “How can a pear be evil? Pears are yummy!” Having never lived further east than I do now on the Front Range of Colorado, the "Bradford Pear" didn't mean a thing to me; I had ever heard of it. The story was an ever-more-familiar one of “landscaping gone bad.” The story from Greenville.com (SC) actually said that the pear was worse than kudzu; I KNOW what kudzu is and it is really bad! I loved learning and hope that little by little folks "get it". It is amazing that once I learn the truth about something that is outwardly beautiful (as in pretty flowers or trees in bloom) it loses its loveliness. What is true though is that this story can be repeated across the nation; just different plants in different places.

On the Central West Coast, where I lived so much of my younger life, you can pluck out "Bradford pear" and plug in "Scotch broom". It is beautiful with bright, yellow, tiny flowers and the aroma is sweet and amazing. Until you learn it is invasive. Then it becomes a vast sea of "yellow hell" with a sickly-sweet, worse than church-lady perfume. It is hardy as a Scotsman. Some municipalities now require that a land owner fully eradicate all Scotch broom on their land before they will issue a building permit.  This is a tall order for some and can cost in the 1000s to 10s of thousands of dollars.  It can be negotiated as part of the closing when you buy land; you can ask for allowances for it much like carpet that needs replacing or an aged roof.

Scotch Broom

In Colorado it was once the Russian olive tree. Note these names “Scotch”, “Russian”? Pretty clearly non-native! People did get wise of the olive trees long ago and do not plant them like they once did; they also make a mess. Colorado is that we are not Greenville, South Carolina -- we are "High Desert-Ville.” Even the stuff that you really WANT to grow, is hard to grow. So when you destroy the native environment on your land it is very hard to regain.

The bane of our existence on the Front Range are not so much trees but noxious weeds. Most of the proliferation of these weeds stems from poor small, farm/ranch acreage management. Folks come to Colorado for a "lifestyle". Some are “townies” or urbanites who pick Denver as their new urban stomping-grounds surrounded by a playground. It is definitely an up-and-coming urban experience and it has become wildly expensive to live there. These tend to be younger, professional folks sans kids. Then of course mountain ski folks who can live 10 people to a condo just to ski! There are some are hard core athletes who relocate here to train and then lots are pseudo-farm/ranch dreamers, “let's raise the kids in the country" folks. It is laudable and I wish more kids grew up in the country -- even though where these folks live isn't really the country it still has some of the great country experiences. If you can buy a latte within 15 minutes of home it isn’t really “the country” but I digress!

Some of these ranchette subdivisions seem a far sight better than the scrape-the-ground, postage-stamp-lots with-cookie-cutter-clutter where there are four styles of home, with a slight orientation variation and 6 shades of beige paint. There they are allowed to call their drainage system and retention ponds “open space”.  Developers are getting much better about creating real variation and designating meaningful open space but the massive growth that Colorado experienced in the last 20 years moved far faster than planning regulations did. The five-acre ranchette subdivision is financially unsustainable but what is already here is here to stay.  These developments cost far more to support than they ever pay in property taxes – there are too few tax payers per mile of roadway. This sort of development sprawls down the Front Range from Fort Collins to Pueblo – there is rural sprawl on top of rural-sprawl. I have seen some of the worst land planning policies ever here in Colorado. In planning there is a balance of private property rights and jurisdictional planning regulations.  We are all “in this together” to a certain extent.  You don’t have to stray very far from city limits to find a free-for-all environment when it comes to county planning. People think they live in the sticks if they don’t have curb and gutter…but they don’t and what they do does affect the native environment greatly.

Now back to invasive species. So these people buy their little 5 acres on the Front Range; they get 3 horses and maybe a 4-H critter or two. I love the idea of kids raising animals – the life lessons are valuable and profound. They fence their 5 acres and turn them all out. They look so pretty and pastoral out there grazing! They think they have grass. They do not have a CLUE.

On average in Colorado it take 40 acres of ground to support a SINGLE cow-calf pair or a SINGLE horse. Some places a little less -- some a LOT more. There are years we are so dry that you can't rely on grazing stock much at all unless you have big, BIG land.  So often people graze their 5 - 35 acre "ranchettes" to the point that it looks like a bomb went off. In the livestock world this is called “dry-lot.” No grass. No grazing. Just dirt. If left on the ground unchecked horses will eat the slow-growing, native bunch grasses and leave the weeds alone. Now there is far less competition the next year for the noxious weed seeds that blow in, come in with the Kansas hay or that drain off the dirt road when the county last put imported “gravel” on it. The next year less grass, more weeds and so on and so on... It is awful. You can see it from space. Use Google Earth and scroll around some of these ranchette subdivisions in Elbert and El Paso Counties and without knowing a thing -- you can see who does and does not manage their ground well and you can see exactly where the fences are.

Grazing Patterns -- Colorado

If someone wants to trash their own ground in some ways it is none of my business (although I am so passionate about soil, native foliage and ground that it hurts my heart). It IS their land. BUT when what THEY do with their land adversely affects me and MY land? We gotta talk. If my neighbor has a glorious crop” if Canada thistle, musk thistle or toadflax, it will plunder my property and become quickly my problem. Once you leave the more dense areas and get into a county just outside the metro area you will find there is little over-site and even less education.  It is nearly impossible to “patrol” these vast, scattered counties. The little university extension offices in the counties have no meaningful way to reach all of the residents with the small land, ground management information they DO have. The fact that these developments already don’t pay their way, makes the county budgets where they exist even tighter.  There is no revenue stream tied to code or weed enforcement so it goes undone.  The miles involved in patrolling these areas is also prohibitive.

ABOVE: Canada Thistle RIGHT: Yellow Toadflax

 
Real estate brokers in Colorado are often, clueless about land management and zoning regulations.  A broker from a city just 10 miles away may know nothing about rural land use. Some don’t care; they simply want to make a sale. I know only a handful of truly brilliant brokers.  As a former county planning director I was often stuck being the “bad guy” when a new land owner came in to talk about their plans for their land.  I would be rich if I had a dollar for every time I heard “Well my real estate broker TOLD me I could.”  I always told brokers how much I appreciated them when they came in to do research for a client. They would apologize for taking so much time and I will tell them it was time well spent for both of us!

  

I believe that part of the land buying process, of ANY land that is zoned to have equine or livestock of ANY kind, should require a visit to the local planning department for a “land buyer” meeting.  It would be a requirement of the broker due diligence and it would mandate a sign off from the designated authority. The buyer and/or seller would pay for this meeting so the county tax payer did not.  It could even be a conference call with the broker and buyers reading the regulations online together with the county staff person. After the call, the county could email a certificate for closing to verify completion of that requirement. Part of that would also include a willful and specific sign-off from the buyer stating that they understood their land use rights and land management best practices. It is a buyer beware state. If we did this, the buyer would not buy something that wasn’t going to work for them and would not destroy his own land and damage the lands around him.

The stories I have heard brokers tell to make a sale are mind-blowing more sad really. I don't mean to vilify all brokers; I too have been a broker!  I just find that some brokers are willing to represent clients when it would have been more appropriate to refer them to a regional expert.  Even I know that is a hard thing to do. What I have also found is that even when a buyer learns after the fact that they are not allowed to have 27 horses on 5 acres, they do it anyway – since their broker told them they could – and we end up in a “watcha gonna do about it?” situation.  If everyone is fully informed prior to closing, it makes enforcement a lot more possible and it sets expectations appropriately.  It also educates brokers and that is a good thing. We are stewards of our land and while I am an ardent defender of private property rights, it is part of the fabric of this nation. I am also passionate about land stewardship and defending my own property rights from being damaged by my irresponsible neighbor. 

Just an idea.

THE TALE OF TWO DEMS – THE DOUBLE STANDARD OF COLORADO DEMOCRATS

A Colorado state Democratic lawmaker was expelled on March 2, 2018 amid allegations by female colleagues about sexual harassment and abuse. Rep. Steve Lebsock was expelled by a 52-9 vote after five female state House members took their turns at the podium to come forward as victims of sexual harassment or abuse. His abuse was not physical – his was “hitting on them” and making unwanted advances even after he knew they were unwanted. I don’t believe there is any doubt that Lebsock is a creep. What must be made clear here is that Lebsock had NO DIRECT authority over any of the women who accused him of his lecherousness.  As a state representative he was “one of many” in his elected role and had NO singular authority.

Lebsock of course contested the claims, saying his accusers were lying and accusing an independent investigator of bias in concluding that the claims were credible. This case was 100% “he said-she said” and there was no documented proof against him; these were interactions that no one can prove.  He “lost” because there were five women who accused him and we must assume they were highly credible.

So to sum up Lebsock: There is no documented proof against him.  There has been no trial. No sworn testimony. No judge, no jury. Nothing.  BAM! He is gone by a vote of his peers.  Mr. Lebsock may or may not be a complete creep; I don’t know the man.  It is true that the Colorado Dems in office never really liked him.  He was one of those law makers who bucked his party from time to time and he wasn’t a “team player”. In fact 10 minutes before the vote to oust him he changed his party affiliation to Republican. Why? Because when someone leaves office prior to his term being up, that person’s party gets to appoint his replacement for the remainder of the term.  It was his last jab at his party.

NOW WE HAVE THE BELOVED DEMOCRATIC MAYOR OF DENVER…

Denver Mayor Michael Hancock is the Dem party’s darling.  He is liberal, he is smooth, he is “likeable”, he is black, he is young, he is handsome…  They simply love him to pieces!  He is ALSO accused of sexual harassment and intimidation.  The accusations against him came out at nearly the same time as those against Lebsock.  In this case however we have proof against the accused.  We have the text messages that he sent to his head of security – a stunningly, beautiful woman.  He was very clear about his feelings toward her in texts. After spotting her on TV while watching a Denver Nuggets game he texted: ‘You look sexy in all that black.’

Another time, he complimented her haircut and said: “You make it hard on a brotha [sic] to keep it correct every day.”

Another text asked her about pole-dancing classes: ‘So I just watched this story on women taking pole dancing classes. Have you ever taken one? Why do women take the course? If not have you ever considered taking one and why? Your thoughts?’

When she didn’t respond, the officer said, she received a follow-up text from Hancock: ‘Be careful, I’m curious. LOL!'”  So what is a direct-report to think when your boss says, “Be careful, I’m curious?”  Are you serious dude?  Be careful of what? 

She sought a transfer to be away from him.  She, at the time, feared retaliation so she just decided distance was her best solution; after being told to “be careful” I would have feared retaliation too. Considering that he had already proved to be a bit “Teflon” during the election (more on this later), her concerns were reasonable. Hancock and his team somehow got out in front of these allegations and went into a multi-day lock down to work out the PR plan to save Mayoral face.  And the smooth Mayor executed it perfectly.

In this case we have seen the texts; there is irrefutable proof of Hancock’s misdeeds. We have heard directly from her and she is highly regarded and credible. At the time of his advances, Mayor Hancock was her DIRECT boss, she was the head of his security detail -- oh and yes, he was married at the time. 

A Mayor has a great deal of SINGULAR power.  He is NOT one of many; he is THE boss. While he may not be able to fire everyone on his own, he has a great deal of power to influence the lives of City and County employees (Denver is a City-County). 

These allegations against Mayor Michael Hancock came out within DAYS of the Lebsock ordeal… and the Dems are doing nothing to force this Mayor out of office.  Because he got out in front with his ARMY of PR professionals coaching him – he is somehow being given a pass.  It might be important to note that prior to his election, while just a regular councilman and just the “mayor-elect”, his name and personal cell number were found in the appointment book of an escort service that was later busted as a prostitution ring.  So we have some sort of character inkling?  Maybe?  We also got a very clear message, early on, that Mr. Mayor was somewhat untouchable, that he would be protected. He went on to be sworn in as the Mayor of the largest City in the Rocky Mountain Region despite appearing to have been a married customer of a prostitution ring.  Not quite “Marion Berry” but still…

In closing, it is interesting to have these two events perfectly timed with one another and stunning to see how differently they are being handled by the Colorado Dems.  The double-standard is PROFOUND and can’t help but slap one in the face.  I have heard that local Democrats are feeling a bit disillusioned – they are not happy with the way their elected leaders are handling, or MIS-handling this issue. I don’t blame them.  The double standard is THAT glaring. In addition to all of this against the shining mayor is a 2012 cover up involving lawsuits, the same officer, settlements and the firing of a one-time good friend of the Mayor’s for his inappropriate behavior.  The shenanigans of that time certainly stimulate the notion of “cover up”, “smoke screen,” “diversion” and “fall guy.”  None of that debacle makes any sense.  But as it is a messy, convoluted story, I shall not go into it.  This simple story of double-standards doesn’t rely on it anyway.

The Colorado Fraternal Order of Police has demanded Mayor Hancock’s resignation and a rally was held at the Capitol, organized by Lisa Calderon, co-chair of the Colorado Latino Forum. Their rally cry was “"Time's up" in a direct message to Mayor Michael Hancock.  But still the only sound we hear are crickets from the party…

HOW WE BROKE OUR BOYS

America has a “boy” problem. Boys and young men are being negated and neglected in America and they are understandably frustrated.  In fact, they might be angry and not even know why they are angry.  The trend of gender-fluidity completely ignores that there are differences in the sexes.  Your gender, is what you identify as.  Your sex is your biological assignment at birth.  To pretend they are the same is ignorant.

I taught Montessori preschool in my mid-20s.  I was studying child development at a local college.  I was blessed to be given this opportunity at such an amazing school. I learned about kids of course but what I learned even more, was how different little boys and little girls were; it smacked me in the face it was so obvious. It was so STARKLY clear to me what boys could and could not do at 3 to 5 years old. Fortunately for the boys this was a Montessori PLUS school on 2 acres of grass and trees and mud... they really got to be BOYS!  On hot days we would fill a huge galvanized tub with water.  The kids could each take pails of water and do their own thing OR they could band together and do something collectively with the whole tub.  They usually opted for the latter, dumped the big tub in the dirt and wallowed in the mud.  It was glorious. 

After that teaching experience I became a strong believer in all-boys’ schools and all-girls’ schools.  They can be on the same campus and have shared recesses, lunchtimes and social functions – but in the classroom no. Boys are simply set up to fail in the American school system.  I believe it is an experiment worth trying in a public charter school.

What is true is that the myelination of the nervous system in little boys completes itself years later than in little girls.  Think of myelin as the insulation of an electrical wire.  Boys have “bare wires” or poorly insulated wires that are sparking, arcing and shorting out in their bodies because they do not have full insulation yet.  This is a COMPLETE over simplification of the nervous system – but illustrative.  Think about that though – when we say, “Little boys can’t control their impulses,” we are being 100% accurate – they literally CAN’T.  Imagine a 6 year-old boy who is sitting there “shorting-out” being told to overcome his own electrical system that is going haywire.  It is impossible and he isn’t a “bad boy” – he is just a boy.

Boys develop gross motor skills before girls – running, jumping, balancing, etc.  This is what they are good at. Girls develop fine motor skills first, beading, drawing, writing, linguistics (the tongue is a “fine motor”).  

Boys’ first auditory excellence comes in LOUD, gross (large) noises.  Such as mimicking sirens, bombs blowing up, crashes.  These “sounds” are not often okay at school ever.  So he can’t even use the tools he has. The sad thing for boys is the ONLY place they get to do what they are GOOD at is recess and recess is maybe 15-20% of the school day…  they are set up from day one.

Ever wonder why boys have such horrible penmanship?  It is a fine motor skill and the possibility for it doesn’t develop in boys until about age 9 – the very time most public schools used to stop penmanship drills and lessons.  I don’t even know if they teach penmanship anymore.  But if boys were required to practice loops, and draw the regular shapes of letters into middle school – we might be able to read their writing! Boys develop spacial relationship excellence sooner than little girls – they can judge the speed of an approaching baseball better, they can play a video game where they have to imagine a world from a video that shows only part of it.  What they are GOOD at are the extra-curricular things, not modern classroom things.

The corpus callosum – the thing that joins the two halves of the brain – in boys is larger.  I have also heard talks where they discussed the in-utero “chemical/hormonal” bathing the boy brains undergo that makes the corpus callosum in boys more challenging for nerve impulses to cross. The corpus callosum is what divides the thought processes too – we do certain things using our right brain and other things using our left. To switch sides the impulses must cross that corpus callosum. It is thought that the corpus callosum in girls being smaller/more easily crossed allows the female brain to “multitask” better.  In women, our brains allow us to bop back and forth between hemispheres of the brain – we women can listen to 5 conversations at a cocktail party, learn who is pregnant, who got a promotion and who is moving to Botswana.  Our husband learned that “Joe turned 50” because that is what the party was for.  A man will tend to be more bore sighted and focused on THE task and do it very, very well without distraction; he stays in one hemisphere while he works.  He has to give up that task to then use the other hemisphere of his brain; little boys don’t “bop”.  Don’t try to talk about feelings while he is focused – it doesn’t work and we women get upset because he doesn’t do what we can do.  This is profoundly true in developing boys and girls. 

In an all boys’ school that little boy would be surrounded by other little boys who were developmentally at his level.  Lessons could be designed for him to succeed.  He would not be chastised or punished for not being able to do things the same way as a little girl.

In closing, little girls learn to drive their brains earlier than boys do because their developing brain is closer to being a road worthy car.  Little boys are driving on 3 wheels with a transmission that shifts itself from forward to reverse to overdrive at will.  Oh they catch up of course but not until the US School system as left them behind and made them feel badly about themselves because they couldn’t keep a three-wheeled car that was stuck in reverse on the road.  I think I would be frustrated and angry too.

SPANISH MUSTANGS -- A MOUNTAIN HORSE LIKE NO OTHER

This is a story I wrote for Trail Rider Magazine in 2005

We went elk hunting this weekend in the West Elk Wilderness near Gunnison, Colorado in October. It was my first elk hunt. I noticed quickly there aren’t many female hunters out there – I was the only one I saw the whole trip. We packed in with six horses. I rode Zitali, my 6 year old registered Spanish Mustang mare. My boyfriend at the time was an outfitter; he was a little nervous bringing her as she has only been on one overnight trip and that was rather near home in Buffalo Peaks Wilderness. She wasn’t one of his seasoned mountain horses. But I thought she would be good and I wanted to really test her mettle. This was rugged, unforgiving country. No room for error. We got in on Thursday, drove miles in on a rutted, two-track road and then a three mile, often-muddy steep trek in on horseback, set up camp, scouted on Friday and the season opened on Saturday.

Saturday we rode out in the dark with headlamps at 5 AM. The first climb was up a ridge, a spine of rock that fell away 100’s of feet on both sides into dark timber abysses. There was dead-fall everywhere, rocks and snow – there was no trail. That was the scariest horseback ride I have ever been on. In the first mile we realized the mule that Donny was on just couldn’t do it. We were tackling a 45-degree slope of scree, rock outcroppings and nothing but the grade to guide us in the direction we needed to go. Donny had to turn back to get another mount. Zitali and I waited, in the dark on the windblown ridge. Donny came back in a half an hour on another mount. We continued up the ridge. We got near the top and the dead-fall became too much. We tried to drop off the sides to get around it but it was too steep and dangerous. We ended up having to drop off one side and side-hill to the next ridge over through a deep canyon and through dead-fall h%$l. There was snow, there were downed trees everywhere and the slope was still extreme. Zitali balked at NOTHING. I had to lead her through the maze of rock and trees and dead-fall and she willingly followed, never even crowding me. Even I had to duck and scramble. This climb and traverse took over four hours. The horse was flawless. She never lost her footing, never refused anything I asked and she was my rock when I was on the edge of my own sanity.

We finally reached the southern-most ridge which had a shear 1000 foot drop off to the valley below. We tiptoed down that ridge working our way through the rock formations. If I had not been so scared I would have been awestruck with the beauty – okay so I was anyway. We scouted a couple of elk parks over there but realized we had burned the best park of the morning feed in that climb. Donny had been up the ridge countless times, but it had been several years. The dead-fall this year was more than ever before. We didn’t know it was that bad until we were actually IN it. I can’t describe what it was like other than to say it was like a big box of kitchen matches had been dumped on the sheer, stunningly, steep side of a snowy mountain and we had to weed our way through it.

We worked our way down the ridge and dropped into the dark timber below. We wound our way through it and finally came into some open grassland. We checked for sign but found the lower parks had been inundated with other hunters. Not an elk or fresh track to be found. We decided to call it a day and worked our way back up to camp. All told that first day we covered about 18 miles – most with no trail and NOTHING remotely easy and NOTHING flat. My little horse did everything. Donny was floored by her ability and her heart. In 25 years of outfitting in the Rockies he has never seen a better horse. Nothing blew her skirt up – she was never edgy, never anything but stoic.

The next morning I hunted alone on foot and then did an evening hunt in some lower areas to see if we could figure out where all the elk were. Still nothing. We knew we were going to have to get to the high parks to find elk.

The last day we took the horses out early afternoon to hunt the farthest "finger" of the elk parks. We had a narrow trail that traversed the bottom of each of the basins. These are not really basins but are avalanche chutes off the face of the mountain where nothing but grass grows – the bottoms riddled with broken timber from the last avalanche piled on top of the remains of a 100 years worth of avalanches. There were areas that the "trail" was an almost imperceptible traverse line across a rock face at a 45-degree pitch…truly it was no wider than a single hoof carved into the rock. These were places where we dismounted and lead horses across -- never stopping for fear that one second too long would cause them to lose footing. We made it to the base of the park we wanted to hunt. We turned up the ridge and climbed again up a face that would have been a challenge to simply stand on. We worked our way up as high as the horses could go and tied them in the trees only to climb the rest on our own.

From there it was a foot hunt – it was hard, it was steep, it was long, it took hours. I finally did get a crack at a 5x5 bull from 485 yards but the shot was uphill to boot and my shot was 4" low – for me close enough to be proud of under the circumstances and with respect to the distance. I corrected for the distance but not for the extreme slope. It was near last shooting light when I made the shot and then I tracked the bull on foot for another mile or two again in dead-fall, snow and down the backside of that park into the ravine behind it. They were covering some country though and were headed into really dense timber so I had to throw in the towel. We had to turn back in order to be able to find the horses before it was too black to see.

We got back to the horses in the dark where they were waiting patiently tied. We picked our way down the ridge and then worked that side hill trail back through the chutes, across rock-slides and into the forest trail. Zitali actually found the trail for us a number of times as we wound through that black forest. She had been on it once in those three days and already knew her way back to camp. We rode that last hour and a half in blackness, she, always stepping out with ears forward.

We packed out camp the next day – without an elk but with newfound knowledge about my horse. There is NOTHING I will not trust this horse with. She wore saddlebags, a scabbard with a rifle and me with a full backpack on – most of that totally new to her. She is an "old soul"; she has been on this earth far longer than her six years. She has seen it all and done it all – it really felt like she already had. She was, yes repeating myself, STOIC. This was the most challenging, scary, physically demanding riding I have ever done, and I have done quite a bit. She was the leader and basically told me, "don’t worry, I’ll take care of you." And this Spanish Mustang did – like no horse I have ever known. 

PERSPECTIVE -- FOR MEANINGFUL CHANGE WE MUST

From 1982 through today, February 26, 2018 -- 816 people have been killed in mass shootings. This averages out to 31 deaths per year over 26 years. [Mother Jones, data - link at bottom of page].  Of the 31 people who are killed, 10 of these 31 die in school shootings.

When these horrific events happen we are pummeled by media, we are hammered by activists, we are heartbroken for families & communities and we are outraged. We are inundated with images, arguments, public protests – we are made to feel as though this sort of the thing is THE NUMBER ONE DANGER IN AMERICA TODAY. Researchers at Northeastern University that found mass school shootings are extremely rare, that shootings involving students have been declining since the 1990s, and four times as many children were killed in schools in the early 1990s than today. The victims in these events are true and utter innocents so even if it is not the number one danger in American today – it should NEVER, EVER happen! It is at the hands of a madman that these lives are taken. 

But, and here is where we cannot lose sight of reality – these events are rare, regardless of how many times you see a headline. THEY ARE RARE; kids marching, people screaming and pundits "punditing" do not make them any less rare. The numbers of victims are a tiny subset of the nation’s population. It gets really hard when we are forced to convert lives, especially young, innocent ones, into numbers and statistics. But for policy to be made for a nation of 330M+, we must.

In 2015 alone in the United States, over 800 bicyclists died in cycling accidents I know to the very depth of my being that working on perspective when dealing with a horrific event is hard and feels heartless. But we have to do it. Since 1994 an average of 99 people die every single day in automobile accidents on America’s roads; that is over 35,000 per year. And again, based on published, non-political numbers roughly 31 people are killed each year in the United States in mass shootings. [all accident data is National Highway Transportation Safety Administration FARS data - link at bottom of page].

“There is not an epidemic of school shootings,” said James Alan Fox, the Lipman Family Professor of Criminology, Law, and Public Policy at Northeastern University. He said more children die each year from pool drownings or bicycle accidents.

So just comparing these two numbers for perspective, in the WHOLE 25 years 25% FEWER people were killed in mass shootings than people died in bicycle accidents in a SINGLE CALENDAR YEAR. There are around 55 million schoolchildren in the U.S., the Northwestern study said, and over the past 25 years, about 10 students, TEN STUDENTS, on average per year were killed by gunfire at school. Again, I do not minimize the trauma, the loss, the shock and the pain; I am not heartless.

Each DAY in America 4 children are killed by abuse or neglect. [childhelp.org - lower estimated numbers) (see link at bottom of page also footnote 3]. 

THAT IS FOUR CHILDREN A DAY OR 1,460 A YEAR.

Let’s go back:

816 people killed in mass shootings between 1982 and 2018 (26 years) – that is roughly 31 people per year and 10 of those die in school shootings. DURING THAT SAME TIME PERIOD APPROXIMATELY 36,500 CHILDREN DIED DUE TO ABUSE OR NEGLECT.

I wish no one died for any of these reasons. Here is a snap shot of this discussion in the raw, unemotional numbers.

AVERAGE ANNUAL DEATHS & CAUSE

Mass Shootings: 31 people, 10 in school shootings

Child Abuse/Neglect: 1,460

Bicycle Accidents: 800+

Auto Accidents: 35,000+

We have GOT to have perspective on things like this. When we lose perspective we do two primary and huge disservices. First we make hasty, emotional decisions with knee-jerk reactions. We think we are going to change outcomes with these hasty decisions, rules and laws. We are dismayed and angry when we find that NONE of our changes positively affected anything. We cannot legislate for a nation when the reality of the issue does not warrant it.

The 2nd disservice we do is that we neglect addressing much more profound issues. Some of the above stats seem to be somewhat acceptable to us; tragic but tolerable. We accept auto and bicycle fatalities to some extent as part of the inherent dangers of engaging in the activities. But what about the child abuse and neglect numbers? They dwarf the mass shooting numbers – but they, because they happen one or two at a time, ALL the time, seem to be invisible.

I don’t proffer to have solutions here other than to be rational when every fiber of your being is to scream “NO”. I encourage people to work hard to use rational thought and to work toward perspective. Without it, meaningful changes are all but impossible.

Life is inherently a dangerous activity to engage in. But because we had no CHOICE on whether or not we were blessed with life at the time of our birth, we had nothing to do with it, we somehow think life should be safer since we didn’t willfully opt-in. Life is not a safe activity at all. Life is however FAR safer today than at any other time in history – no matter what anyone tells you.

Footnotes:

1. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data/
2. https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx

3. American Society for the Positive Care for Children -SPCC has child abuse fatality numbers as high as 1,670 to 1740 deaths annually.
4. Northwestern University researchers  used data collected by USA Today, the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Report, Congressional Research Service, Gun Violence Archive, Stanford Geospatial Center and Stanford Libraries, Mother Jones, Everytown for Gun Safety, and a New York City Police Department report on active shooters

The Book of Genesis and Science

I have a theory, maybe not really a theory but an idea.  I have to reconcile things.  I just do.  It is the way my brain works.  I am a Christian -- by my own definition.  I know that there are certain Christians out there who would argue my self-definition because I don't think exactly like they do.  But I feel quite comfortable with my definition and so does God.

I am also a lover of science.  It would be a stretch to call myself a scientist -- although I love the idea! I have yearned since I was young to understand things.  Why things are. How things work and how they came to be that way. I devoured biology, struggled a bit but LOVED physics and while math is still sometimes a foreign language it thrills me!  Everything in the universe is math!  From music to light!

Wicked cool.

The reason this is not a "theory" in a real sense is that it can't be tested and it can't be proved but at the same time it cannot be disproved!  To be a theory one must be able to apply the scientific method to it -- for this, that is impossible.  I will then refer to it as my personal "explanation".

I have explored the dilemma of Genesis vs. evolution.  How can they both be true?  I firmly believe in science.  I believe that God gave us brains to understand our world. He gave us free will and inquiring minds.  He created a challenging creature when we were "born".  But what about Adam and Eve?  Is that story literal? It is true?  Is the universe only 6000 years old?  If I believe that when applying today's literal definition of time must I close my mind to prehistoric discovery? What about the dinosaurs, what about quantum physics and what about carbon dating? That is just too much for me to give up.

Can both stories be true?  In my mind, definitively, YES.

The evolution of man did happen.  The human species did have ancestors that were "non human". Keep in mind it is we who have defined the word "human".  We evolved and learned and as progress was made, the smartest survived and reproduced making smarter ones and so on and so on.  That happened over the course of millions of years.  Remember, God it timeless and ageless.  It was God who created the ingredients all the way back to the Big Bang. It was He who set up the dominoes. There is no better explanation. He is energy.

So from the Big Bang forward, God sat back and watched His creation grow and change.  At some point He introduced the ingredients that were to become us.  He watched His children learn and evolve just as one would watch an embryo become a fetus that becomes a baby that becomes a child that becomes an adult.  So He has always been there. Six times throughout the process of creating, God stopped, sat back and examined his work and saw that it was "good" and herein is our evolution story. On final inspection of all that he had made, God regarded it as "very good."

He watched us begin to wonder about the world around us.  Prior to that, survival had been the ONLY motive.  He began to see us trying to understand things and to create explanations for why things are the way they are.  He knew we are almost ready. Then one day He decides we ARE ready and He introduces Himself to us.  Until that day and until we had grown and learned enough we would not have been able to comprehend Him anyway nor was our consciousness ready for "faith".

In the Bible there is no definition of what a day is or a night is.  A day can be a millennium or an epoch.  It is easy to imagine that God did create the earth and the heavens in seven days.  Seven of His days.  Today's modern calendar is an invention of man.

I have decided that "Adam" was the first human ancestor to meet God.  His brain, say like Steven Hawking's today, was so far removed from those around him that he walked away and truly became the first Man.  There had to be that first ONE. He may have even been outcast because of his differences. As God watched Adam walk away he followed him.  It was Adam who God introduced Himself to first; Adam was the first "man" when he met God.  Adam was created from mud -- from the primordial soup of the sea; then Eve walked away and met God. This was the beginning of our history as children of God with the awareness of Him as our Creator.

The elegant truth of the creation story is that God is the author of all creation from the beginning of time and before that. We are but a chapter in His story of Creation. As is the question: if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

Awareness is the key.

Our story began when we had evolved to the point where we could comprehend our story and comprehend our Creator. In Genesis 1 we are presented with the beginning of a divine drama that can only be accepted on the basis of faith.  So with this I accept both faith and science.

The End...or is it the Beginning?

A TALE OF TWO AMERICANS, ONE BORN TO IT AND THE OTHER PURSUED IT

Michael Moore was born in Flint, Michigan and raised in Davison, a suburb of Flint, by parents Helen Veronica a secretary, and Francis Richard "Frank" Moore, an automotive assembly-line worker.  At that time, the city of Flint was the prosperous home to many General Motors factories, where his parents and grandfather worked. His uncle LaVerne was one of the founders of the United Automobile Workers labor union and participated in the Flint Sit-Down Strike.

Moore dropped out of the University of Michigan–Flint following his first year (where he wrote for the student newspaper The Michigan Times). At 22 he founded the alternative weekly magazine The Flint Voice, which soon changed its name to The Michigan Voice as it expanded to cover the entire state. In 1986, when Moore became the editor of Mother Jones, a liberal political magazine, he moved to California and The Michigan Voice was shut down.

After four months at Mother Jones, Moore was fired.

Matt Labash of The Weekly Standard reported this was for refusing to print an article by Paul Berman that was critical of the Sandinista human rights record in Nicaragua. Moore refused to run the article, believing it to be inaccurate. "The article was flatly wrong and the worst kind of patronizing bullshit. You would scarcely know from it that the United States had been at war with Nicaragua for the last five years."  We don’t even have to wonder what the reaction would have been had Moore been the target of such censorship.  You don’t agree with my view so you refuse to publish me…

Hmmmm I see a pattern developing.

Yet Moore makes a living creating stories as “truths” based on his uneducated and skewed perspective on life in America of what built America.

Moore claims that Mother Jones fired him because of the publisher's refusal to allow him to cover a story on the GM plant closings in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. He responded by putting laid-off GM worker Ben Hamper (who was also writing for the same magazine at the time) on the magazine's cover, leading to his termination. Moore sued for wrongful dismissal, and settled out of court for $58,000, providing him with seed money for his first film, Roger & Me.

So he got started really buy suing someone for firing him for insubordination.

Following the Columbine High School massacre, Moore acquired a lifetime membership to the National Rifle Association (NRA). Moore said that he initially intended to become the NRA's president to dismantle the organization, but he soon dismissed the plan as too difficult. Gun rights supporters such as Dave Kopel claimed that there was no chance of that happening; David T. Hardy and Jason Clarke wrote that Moore failed to discover that the NRA selects a president not by membership vote but by a vote of the board of directors.

MICHAEL MOORE: Eh, no, it’s not about cursing. It’s about a profound question, which is, who are we? I mean, really, who are we, as a people, as Americans? You know, we are responsible at this point for so much death and destruction in certain places in this world that will be such a black mark on our soul for so many years to come, and we just want to try and not think about it, forget about it, stay away from it as far as possible. You know, there’s a lot of guilt.

This is Dinesh D’Souza’s resume.

Born in Mumbai, India, D’Souza came to the U.S. as an exchange student and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College in 1983.

Dinesh D’Souza has had a 25-year career as a writer, scholar, and public intellectual. A former policy analyst in the Reagan White House, D’Souza also served as John M. Olin Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the Robert and Karen Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He served as the president of The King’s College in New York City from 2010 to 2012.

D’Souza is a political commentator, filmmaker, and author. D'Souza is affiliated with a number of organizations and publications, including the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institution, and Policy Review. He also served as a policy advisor to President Ronald Reagan and, during 2010–2012, as president of The King's College, a small Christian school in New York City.

In 2012, D'Souza released 2016: Obama's America, a film based on his 2010 book The Roots of Obama's Rage, both of which posit that Barack Obama's attitude toward America derives from his father's anti-colonialism and from a psychological desire to fulfill his father's dream of diminishing the power of Western imperial states. The film has been the highest grossing conservative documentary film produced in the United States.

In January 2014, D'Souza was indicted on charges of making illegal political contributions to a 2012 United States Senate campaign. On May 20, 2014, D'Souza pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to a charge of using "straw donors" to make illegal political campaign donations. The charge carries a sentence of 10 to 16 months according to the plea agreement reached between D'Souza and federal prosecutors. So indeed he isn’t sqeaky clean. 

From WND.com:

“Let’s assume Dinesh D’Souza is guilty, and I mean 100 percent guilty. What is he guilty of? Circumventing FEC dictates by directing [$15,000] to a Senate candidate of his choice. Big deal,” Bozell told WND.

“First, in a multi-million Senate campaign, this is a fraction of a fraction. It ‘buys’ a can of soda pop, and that’s about it. Second, and more importantly, compare this ‘crime’ with Bill Clinton, who raised millions of dollars from questionable at best, and illegal at worst sources, including felons and Chinese Communist generals. Compare it to Barack Obama, who raised millions upon millions from who-knows-who-or-where to this day. Nothing ever came of their fundraising abuses, abuses one thousandfold larger than anything attributed to D’Souza. And yet he was arrested and forced to post a $500,000 bond.

D'Souza demonstrates a willingness to give a full airing to his opponents makes a strong contrast to liberal filmmakers like Michael Moore. And when he does this, he doesn’t follow it up with a ridicule filled attack on the statements of his opponents.

D’Souza on Moore:

"Michael Moore is unfortunately going through a divorce and so his financials, and it shows he's fighting over nine homes and he's got tens of millions of dollars," says D'Souza. "In other words, anti-capitalism is a good racket. These people make money by denouncing capitalism within the capitalist system. And Michael Moore is not alone. You've got Obama railing about CEOs flying around in corporate jets. Well, Obama has the biggest corporate jet of all. And the difference is, the CEOs pay for their own jets, and we the taxpayers are paying for [his]."

In 2011 Moore was broadcasting from "Occupy Oakland."

"So, let's not use the old definition where we think -- when we say capitalism, we're talking about 2011. 2011 capitalism is an evil system set up to benefit the few at the expense of the many. That's what happened, and that's what people are tired of. Which is too bad for the capitalists because I think a lot of people, perhaps in this crowd, probably used to support the 'old-style' of capitalism," Moore said on CNN.

So by that rationale all the money that Michael Moore made PRIOR to 2011 through the evil capitalist system is okay?

From Forbes on Celebrity net worth in 2014:

How Michael Moore Made His Money – Filmmaker and Author

Estimated Net Worth: $52 Million

Moore is giving his estranged wife Kathleen millions of dollars in their divorce to buy her silence. An insider says he doesn’t want anyone to know that he is a 1-percenter himself. He reportedly has a staggering net worth of some $50 million, lives in a 10,000-square-foot waterfront mansion in Michigan with its own boat dock – and has another pricey home in Manhattan.

“Michael has denied he is in the top 1 percent of wealthiest Americans, but the truth is he is one of the very rich – the people he loves to hate,” said the source.

So anyway, I am just profiling two political film makers.  Why is it that Moore is taken seriously as an authority of any kind?  I mean he really has no basis for BEING an authority and he is a hypocrite of epic proportions.

What he does have is the right to his opinion and the American people have a right to buy tickets to his movies or not, hopefully much more “not”.  We have the right to reject the opinions of someone who so grossly lives “do what I say and not what I do.”  This is just one example of the left living high society lavish lifestyles based on the greatness of capitalism while denigrating “Wall Street” and people like the Koch brothers.  At least they don’t hide behind the curtain and pretend that they are anything that they are not. Here are a few more who denigrate capitalism and America.  How about them?

Here is a very short list of the liberal left celebrities who say they represent “equality” and “fair share” yet who have made their millions in the evil capitalist system of America.  How can anyone continue to listen to them as they talk out of both sides of their mouths? I don’t get it…

Matt Damon: $65 million

Oprah Winfrey: $2.9 Billion

Jane Fonda: $120 Million

Tom Cruise: $350 Million

George Clooney: $180 Million

During a recent interview with Diane Sawyer, Hillary Clinton claimed that Bill and her were “dead broke” when they left the White House.  And then Hillary told the Guardian that they are not “truly well off” despite having earned about a hundred million dollars since leaving the White House and owning a couple of luxury homes. Hillary Clinton net worth is about $21.5 Million.  How would be that dead broke sound to you?

It is sort of like when a person moves to a community and builds a new home, starts a business and then opposes all “new development”.  It was fine when they wanted to move it but after they got there they wanted the door to close behind them.

Marie Antoinette once said, “Let them eat cake.”  How does that cake taste?  A speaking of cake, let’s talk about pie.  Just because your neighbor has a larger piece of the pie than you do does NOT mean he has taken part of your piece.  The pie isn’t finite.  Everyone can have a large piece if they are willing to work for it.  Don’t let them tell you otherwise. It is a big fat lie and it doesn’t work that way.  In fact the irony is that MY piece of the pie and your piece of the pie is smaller because the left wants to continue to take chunks out of the piece of the pie you and I have worked for and give it to someone else who has NOT worked for it.