Extremely Hard To Believe

Extremely Hard To Believe!

but

Miracles Do Happen!

The woman on the left is Jessica Robles, a mother from Miami who was so desperate to feed her hungry family that she was trying to steal a lot of food.

The woman on the right is Miami-Dade County Police Officer Vicki Thomas. Officer Thomas was about to arrest Jessica Robles but changed her mind at the last minute.

Instead of arresting her, she bought Robles $100 worth of groceries:

“I made the decision to buy her some groceries because arresting her wasn't going to solve the problem with her children being hungry.”

And there’s no denying they were hungry. Robles’ 12 year old daughter started crying when she told local TV station WSVN about how dire their situation was:

“[It's] not fun to see my brother in the dirt hungry, asking for food, and we have to tell him, ‘There is nothing here.’"

Officer Thomas says she has no question that what she did was right:

“To see them go through the bags when we brought them in, it was like Christmas. That $100 to me was worth it.”

But Officer Thomas did have one request:

“The only thing I asked of her is, when she gets on her feet, that she help someone else out. And she said she would.”

And guess what? The story gets even better.

After word got out about what happened people donated another $700 for Jessica Robles to spend at the grocery store.

And then best of all a local business owner invited her in for an interview and ended up hiring her on the spot as a customer service rep.

She started crying when he told her:

“There's no words how grateful I am that you took your time and helped somebody out: Especially somebody like me.”

And to think it all started with one veteran police officer trusting her “instinct” instead of going “by the book”

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Unfortunately “Instinct” is not contagious

Cops are trained to ignore it.

As happened in Victoria today

Shoot First! Ask Questions Later!

Blaine Barrett

TheSmeeGoanGuy

The Big Footed Snake

 

The Big Footed Snake

A Bringer of Blessings

 

When I was a young man growing up in Alberta one summer I worked for the Forestry Department and was part of Stand by Crew to fight Forest fires. I was stationed at the Entrance Ranger station north of Hinton just up the road from the Entrance Trading Post.

It was a crazy job where you sat around painting rocks along the driveway until the siren went off and we went to work. 6 of us all with 70# of backpack, shovel, pick, food, water plus plus plus pile into the back of the Forestry Truck with Siren flashing lights and crazy Ranger Joe Pasamera at the wheel.

We would race to the end of goddamned nowhere to drag another 100# of Mercury Fire Pump over hill and dale for a couple of hours to get to the fire and then get to work. That was usually non-stop for a couple of days or so but if we couldn’t handle it the major crew arrived to relieve us. We were first responders: First in, first out and back to painting rocks. Hard bloody work but the company guys and a lot of beer made it a good remembrance.

The Entrance Trading post was sort of the community meeting place for all the local Indians. I was fortunate enough to make a large number of them friends and was welcome all over the little village. I was able to join in ceremonies as a welcome guest and had a seat as a front row observer. I am a detail freak and one of the first things I noticed was the beauty of their traditional costumes: Particularly the buckskin, bead work and best of all porcupine quill patterns that were a marvel of precision design. I wanted to have one

I spent almost a quarter of my summer pay ($125 a week and found) and managed to find a friends mother who made me a complete outfit of buckskin with a really beautiful array of bead and quills. It hung in the corner of my bedroom where I could always see it for seven years until marriage forbade its use. I was a dancer and wore my warrior outfit when I was on the hunt at all the local Country dance halls. I was a good looking young guy, a master of bullshit and pretty good with my dukes if any of the local boys resented me trying to romance his baby out to my car. Unfortunately if you take your wife to the dance you put on your good clothes and act nice to everybody. The lady frowned on fisticuffs and there went the Warrior.

I always looked at my breastplate and moccasins and wondered where the designs came from particularly the porcupine quills. Now 50 years later I finally found out the source in a collection of Native America Lore at

http://www.ilhawaii.net/~stony/lore16.html

It’s all the fault of a Snake

 

The Snake with the Big Feet

Native American Lore

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Long ago, in that far-off happy time when the world was new, and there were no white people at all, only Indians and animals, there was a snake who was different from other snakes. He had feet-big feet. And the other snakes, because he was different, hated him, and made life wretched for him. Finally, they drove him away from the country where the snakes lived, saying, "A good long way from here live other ugly creatures with feet like yours. Go and live with them!" And the poor, unhappy Snake had to go away.

For days and days, he travelled. The weather grew cold and food became hard to find. At last, exhausted, his feet cut and frostbitten, he lay down on the bank of a river to die.

The Deer, E-se-ko-to-ye, looked out of a willow thicket, and saw the Snake lying on the river bank. Pitying him, the deer took the Snake into his own lodge and gave him food and medicine for his bleeding feet.

The Deer told the Snake that there were indeed creatures with feet like his who would befriend him, but that some among these would be enemies whom it would be necessary to kill before he could reach safety.

He showed the Snake how to make a shelter for protection from the cold and taught him how to make moccasins of deerskin to protect his feet. And at dawn the Snake continued his journey.

The sun was far down the western sky, and it was bitter cold when the Snake made camp the next night. As he gathered boughs for a shelter, Kais-kap the porcupine appeared. Shivering, the Porcupine asked him, "Will you give me shelter in your lodge for the night?"

The Snake said, "It's very little that I have, but you are welcome to share it."

"I am grateful," said Kais-kap, "and perhaps I can do something for you. Those are beautiful moccasins, brother, but they do not match your skin. Take some of my quills, and make a pattern on them, for good luck." So they worked a pattern on the moccasins with the porcupine quills, and the Snake went on his way again.

As the Deer had told him, he met enemies. Three times he was challenged by hostile Indians, and three times he killed his adversary.

At last he met an Indian who greeted him in a friendly manner. The Snake had no gifts for this kindly chief, so he gave him the moccasins. And that, so the old Ones say, was how our people first learned to make moccasins of deerskin, and to ornament them with porcupine quills in patterns, like those on the back of a snake. And from that day on the Snake lived in the lodge of the chief, counting his coup of scalps with the warriors by the Council fire and, for a long time, was happy.

But the chief had a daughter who was beautiful and kind, and the Snake came to love her very much indeed. He wished that he were human, so that he might marry the maiden, and have his own lodge. He knew there was no hope of this unless the High Gods, the Above Spirits took pity on him, and would perform a miracle on his behalf.

So he fasted and prayed for many, many days. But all his fasting and praying had no result, and at last the Snake came very ill.

Now, in the tribe, there was a very highly skilled Medicine Man. Mo'ki-ya was an old man, so old that he had seen and known, and understood, everything that came within the compass of his people's lives, and many things that concerned the Spirits. Many times, his lodge was seen to sway with the Ghost Wind, and the voices of those long gone on to the Sand Hills spoke to him.

Mo'ki-ya came to where the Snake lay in the chief's lodge, and sending all the others away, asked the Snake what his trouble was.

"It is beyond even your magic," said the Snake, but he told Mo'ki-ya about his love for the maiden, and his desire to become a man so that he could marry her.

Mo'ki-ya sat quietly thinking for a while. Then he said, "I shall go on a journey, brother. Perhaps my magic can help, perhaps not. We shall see when I return." And he gathered his medicine bundles and disappeared.

It was a long and fearsome journey that Mo'ki-ya made. He went to the shores of a great lake. He climbed a high mountain, and he took the matter to Nato'se, the Sun himself.

And Nato'se listened, for this man stood high in the regard of the spirits, and his medicine was good. He did not ask, and never had asked, for anything for himself, and to transform the Snake into a brave of the tribe was not a difficult task for the High Gods. The third day after the arrival of Mo'ki-ya at the Sun's abode, Nato'se said to him, "Return to your own lodge Mo'ki-ya, and build a fire of small sticks. Put many handfuls of sweet-grass on the fire, and when the smoke rises thickly, lay the body of the Snake in the middle of it."

And Mo'ki-ya came back to his own land.

The fire was built in the centre of the Medicine lodge, as the Sun had directed, and when the sweetgrass smouldered among the embers, sending the smoke rolling in great billows through the tepee, Mo'ki-ya gently lifted the Snake, now very nearly dead, and placed him in the fire so that he was hidden by the smoke.

The Medicine-drum whispered softly in the dusk of the lodge: the chant of the old men grew a little louder, and then the smoke obscuring the fire parted like a curtain, and a young man stepped out.

Great were the rejoicings in the camp that night. The Snake, now a handsome young brave, was welcomed into the tribe with the ceremonies befitting the reception of one shown to be high in the favour of the spirits. The chief gladly gave him his daughter, happy to have a son law of such distinction.

Many brave sons and beautiful daughters blessed the lodge of the Snake and at last, so the Old ones say, his family became a new tribe-the Pe-sik-na-ta-pe, or Snake Indians.

The Art of Nikolai Aldunin

The Art of Nikolai Aldunin

A One of a Kind Master of Precision

If patience is a virtue, This guy is God

Nicolai Aldunin poses in the work area of his Moscow apartment. His tools include superglue, syringes and toothpicks. The microscope dates to 1985.

Ready to Go

Aldunin's work naturally leads to some frustration. While crafting a miniature rifle, he lost the weapon's butt after having worked on it for two weeks. "I had a sit-down and a smoke and calmed down," he said, then decided to start all over again. "You mustn’t get into a state or worry. Everything that you feel in your soul is transmitted to your hands."

Caravan

Who says you can't put a camel through the eye of a needle? Aldunin has fit seven through this one. The artist works between the beats of his heart, in order to keep his hands perfectly still.

Gun on a Matchstick

The artist worked for six months to create this gold AK-47. It consists of 34 individual parts.

Tiny Tank

This sculpture rests on the open face of a sliced apple seed.

Precious

Both the tank and the Kalashnikov are crafted of gold. So far, the artist has had a hard time finding buyers for his work.

Russian Samovar

This microscopic replica rests on a needle next to a grain of sugar.

 

Ready to Ride

Aldunin takes his inspiration from a famous Russian tale about Levsha — the name means "left-handed man" — a Tula craftsman so skilled he is able to put horseshoes on a flea. Aldunin's version features not only the shoes — all of them held in place by three nails — but a saddle and stirrups as well.

Great Master

A likeness of the novelist Leo Tolstoy has been engraved on this grain of rice.

Bicycle

To top this off he has all the spokes in the wheels

I hope you all enjoyed this

I guess he has to quit if he has to cut a Fart!

Blaine

TheSmeeGoanGuy

Some More Creative Needlework

Pharaoh

This dimensionally is my largest work. It measures 48” wide and hangs 54’ down on my living room wall. Once again I used my coloured thread like crayons to color the patterns carved in stone. This is the Tomb of Thutmose III and it was bare stone wall before I started stitching. I think it is one of my better pieces.

I want to apologize for the lousy photography.

I am currently trying for better and I have a new camera:

But the lighting of this panel is important

And I’m patiently waiting for sunshine!

Blaine Barrett

TheSmeeGoanGuy

The Aztec Calendar Stone

SOMETHING YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT ME!

SOMETHING I’M PROUD OF

God Gave Me a Gift

A Needle

A Thread

And

The Talent to Create Things of Beauty.

I do Needlepoint. It’s not cross stitch, embroidery, crewel or any other established way of doing needlepoint. There is no print or pattern that I work to and no rules to obey. I will have a very rough outline on paper of what I think my idea should wind up as but only as an initial idea. I just grab a needle, thread, and my choice of fabric to work on and I begin to sew freehand using the thread like a colored pencil drawing line after line after line of colors, threads, stitches and patterns as they emerge from my fingers and finally after possibly a year and a hundred thousand stitches later I get to see my creation and I amaze myself with what I have been able to produce.

I can no longer do my art because of finger and visual problems so I decided that since it has never been seen before, to put it on display and share it with the people who now make my life worth while: All of you.

The First Piece in this exhibit is a 30” diameter Wall Hanging.

Made of burlap and Embroidery Cotton it shows how I think

A massive stone Sculpture should have been painted.

The Aztec Calendar Stone

My Second Work is Titiled

PHOENIX RISING

AND WILL FOLLOW SHORTLY

Blaine Barrett

 TheSmeeGoanGuy