The rest of the weekend

Update: I forgot to mention #2 and #4 son went fishing with me Sunday afternoon. #2 caught 2 seven inch or so Bream in about 30 minutes. #4 son (who is usually our most prolific fisherman) came away empty. All the others were home making a 3 minute short movie based on an episode in a Zane Gray book. Good times...

Butchering the pig went quite well on Saturday morning. We started at 8:30 or so and were finished by noonish. DE and son came over to help butcher. Mrs. Curley wrapped meat, and CT again took the lead in making the cuts. (I took my turn at the hack saw when required and otherwise trimmed sausage meat-and observed, for next time is my show.)

A few notes on Friday's slaughter: the books say to get your best marksman to shoot the pig. You wouldn't figure it like that-after all, it is a close shot right between the eyes. But pigs move around and can weave their heads while eating. An inch or so off and you have to take a second shot (not to mention the pain inflicted). I really took my time this time. I would have like to been a 1/2 higher, but it went down properly.

We are learning. With less man power (and a heavier hog) we rigged up a pole and come-along to hoist the back end of the pig so we would have to lift the whole pig onto the truck ourselves. Our slaughter house could use a drain and a shelf (not mention lights that don't flicker, or just plain go out, when the AC surges...)

I think we are all agreed that in the future, pigs under 200 lbs are big enough. This last was easily over 280 lbs.

We had the picnic shoulder off the freshly butchered pig for Sunday dinner. Wow! It was good. CT brought over some bacon from the last pig (from the jowl). We will have it this morning.

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Have finally finished Third Ways by Allan Carlson. The final quote I give is similar to the previous one-this one coming from the conclusion.

All of these Third Way architects faced the same dilemma: In the face of coercive violence, do we hold to our ideals and so fail? Or do we bend democracy and abandon nonviolence in order to save both in the long run? The first questions was usually answered "yes" with tragic results.

This is the way of the Christian and not just Third Way agrarians and/or Distributists. (For example: How does a Christian combat false accusations, jealousy, gossiping tongues and back-biting? Hopefully with love and prayer-and often silence because the only way to fight back effectively is to become one of them.)

So where are we?

The new slavery triumphs, just as Chesterbelloc predicted. Rather than liberty, it aims towards security. The newly enslaved are allowed the illusions of freedom and independence-illusions nurtured by a popular culture promising sexual delights. This marks the cruel genius of the triumphant Servile State.

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Have also been reading An American Family-The Buckleys by Reid Buckley. I have never read anything before by my fellow Kershaw County resident, but am enjoying it. He has many footnotes-apparently so he can impart some further information without disrupting his own narrative. However, he interrupts is own narrative often enough that I am not sure it wouldn't have been just as fun to put the footnotes in the text.

Of course I grew up in a family of twelve children. The writing bug is not so prominent in my Irish Catholic family as in the Buckleys, but it is there. Two of us have books in print. Three of us have published articles here and there, and one of us (separate from the others) is a published poet (she really should write more.)

I really need to get through the Buckley book quickly. I have ordered via inter-library loan the first volume of Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago. It is due in any day now. I have never read anything by him; it is time.

Oremus pro invicem!