{"id":3398,"date":"2015-12-06T17:59:01","date_gmt":"2015-12-06T21:59:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/?p=3398"},"modified":"2015-12-06T17:59:01","modified_gmt":"2015-12-06T21:59:01","slug":"mustblockoutbswithsomethinggood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/mustblockoutbswithsomethinggood\/","title":{"rendered":"MUST\u2026BLOCK\u2026OUT\u2026BS\u2026WITH\u2026SOMETHING\u2026GOOD"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Murderous religious fanatics who identify with a self-declared caliphate that subsequently cheers and embraces them, slaughter 14 innocent people and pump bullets into another 21 or 22 before being righteously killed by police.\u00a0 The leader of the Free World declares that it might be premature to call it a fanatic terrorist problem and declares it instead to be a <span style=\"text-decoration: line-through;\">gun control <\/span>\u00a0\u201cgun safety\u201d issue requiring prohibitionist laws that only law-abiding American citizens will obey.\u00a0 A newspaper once considered the august standard for impartial news in our country takes the unprecedented (in most of its readers\u2019 lifetimes) step of printing an editorial on its front page. The editorial demands that law abiding citizens turn over their guns to the government, presumably without compensation, for the good of the order.<\/p>\n<p>Aauugghh!\u00a0 <em>Bullshit overload!!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Time for something positive, the sort of thing that defensive firearms are intended to keep good people alive to enjoy. Like, oh, <em>Christmas.\u00a0<\/em><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/1MWc4rv\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/winter-cover-rgb-72dpi-200x300-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"winter-cover-rgb-72dpi-200x300\" alt=\"Winter of the Wolves\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-3403\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nI\u2019m putting a Christmas tree up this weekend. One of the gifts I\u2019d have liked to see under it for me, if I hadn\u2019t just read it already, would be our own Jackie Clay\u2019s third novel in her Jess Hazzard series, \u201cWinter of the Wolves.\u201d\u00a0It\u2019s a particularly bad season in the northern American heartland where it\u2019s set in a time long ago, and Jackie\u2019s evocative prose makes\u00a0 you feel as if you\u2019re there in the howling blizzard, and helping the mare foal, and going through the myriad other torments of self-sufficient life. I haven\u2019t actually <em>felt<\/em> writer-created hypothermia in fiction like this since I was a little kid reading John Greenleaf Whitter\u2019s poem \u201cSnow-Bound\u201d inside a warm house with mom and dad and sister while looking out the window as we actually <em>became <\/em>snowbound during a northern New England blizzard.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not surprising. Jackie lives where she writes about, in much the same homesteading, horse-riding, self-sustaining rural lifestyle, and is living proof that \u201cwrite what you know\u201d is a wise mantra for those who live by the pen. She also understands human nature, and this volume\u2019s theme of redemption and judging people by what they do, not who they are or what they proclaim themselves to be, is likewise well sustained. Order in time for Christmas from <a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/1MWc4rv\n\" target=\"_blank\">Amazon<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Murderous religious fanatics who identify with a self-declared caliphate that subsequently cheers and embraces them, slaughter 14 innocent people and pump bullets into another 21 or 22 before being righteously killed by police.\u00a0 The leader of the Free World declares that it might be premature to call it a fanatic terrorist problem and declares it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,12],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3398","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-current-events","8":"category-reviews"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}