Big Sky Country

Craig and I went on a backpacking vacation to Glacier National Park in Montana. Beautiful place. Not the raw altitude of many other parks in the Rockies so you can still breathe, yet, the trails and terrain are quite rugged and beautiful. Bears everywhere. We saw or had encounters with nine bears in our short stay. We took two days to hike in to Red Eagle Lake, stay overnight, and hike back out. About a 12 mile hike using the long trail around the back end of St. Mary Lake. Really gorgeous. There are two campgrounds at the lake. When we got to the first campground the only other people there were three guys who were just morons. They had a huge smokey fire going (they had cut down a small green tree and were trying to burn it, rather than using the dead wood) and for dinner they were cooking ham and bacon. Friends, Glacier is bear central. Their dinner was a big red warning flag. Plus, they were cooking right next to their tents and all of their gear was piled nearby. Craig and I looked at each other and decided we didn’t want to hear the screams in the middle of the night as those three jerks were eaten. We moved on to the back campground. We were the only one’s there and we set up shop. That night, it was a New Moon so it was really dark. The entire sky was clear except for a thunderstorm over the mountain across the lake. Stars in the sky above, while we watched lightning flash over the mountain peak and hear the low rumble from the thunder. So bloody cool !!!!

Craig and I made a good team camping. I’m a morning guy and Craig is an evening guy. As I faded late in the day, he was setting up camp and being productive. In the morning, as Craig sat comatose with his coffee, waiting for consciousness to arrive, I was taking the camp apart and packing up. Synergy.

We also took a day hike back to a campground where we spent a day enjoying the scenery. Again, no one in camp. When we came out later we checked in at the ranger station and had a conversation that went kinda like this.

You boys have a good hike?
Yep. We spent all day back at this campsite (pointing to map). It was really nice there.
Um …. You were at that campsite?
Yes.
All day?
Yes. Why?
Weren’t the chains up?
Chains? No. Why?
Yeah. That campground’s been getting ripped up by Grizzlies lately. We closed it. Chains and signs should have been up to keep everyone out.
No chains or signs we saw.
Hmm. I’ll have to go back and check later. Bears probably ripped them down. I’ll have to put them back up. You say you spent all day back there?
Yes.
Well, you boys had a run of good luck then.
OK. Well, nice talking to you.

Dale Addendum - Stupidity II

Dale liked blowing things up. Well, everybody needs a hobby.

One day we decided to try to make a bomb out of a can of butane used for refilling lighters. Not one of those little skinny refill cans. In those days you could get a can about the size of a spray paint can. We used duct tape to attach an M100 to the can. Although reckless, we were not stupid or suicidal. We recognized the potential explosive capabilities of the butane and decided we needed to find a way to set it off with a large safety factor. About a half-mile from Dale's house they were building new homes. Several lots had the hole dug for basement and foundation but nothing had been poured yet. Just a couple of big 'ol holes in the ground. We attached an electric model rocket igniter (or several, I forget) to the M100 fuse. We then put the thing into the bottom of one of the holes (this was about 1:30 am - night stealth can be good) and moved a long way away from the hole. As far as we had wire for the igniter. When we pressed the igniter button it took our breath away. The entire foundation hole filled with a red fireball that billowed out and looked every bit like an
atomic mushroom cloud as it rolled up to the sky. We booked out of there as we expected the neighbors would be calling the police. The next day we slinked back and checked out the hole. The walls were peppered with metal shrapnel from the can.

Impressive and cool ..... but we never even discussed ever trying it again

Surprises Ain't Always Good

Joe and Randy had built a nice darkroom in Randy's basement and Dale had a darkroom in his too.  Each one was set up slightly differently and occasionally one group asked the other to do some processing for them.  Joe and Randy, in particular, asked Dale for special processing because Dale, good scientist that he was, liked to buy the photographic chemicals and, using a formulas book from Kodak, he mixed whatever developer was good for the film or papers he was trying to process.  

Also occasionally, since we were all pranksters, one group or the other would sabotage the other for a little fun.  Joe and Randy asked Dale to process a roll of film one day and I went with Dale to help.  After carefully mixing ingredients and going through a good half-hour of work to get the "perfect" negatives for Joe and Randy, we were finally able to open the developing tank and discover that the film was bogus.  It was actual film, but there were no photographs.  It has been completely exposed and the message "Ha Ha to You Too Sideburns" was scratched into the emulsion.  Dale had some rather large and bushy sideburns in those days so the reference was true, but the time we wasted to discover this was irritating.  Dale decided to strike back.  

From some dark corner of his darkroom he produced a glass bottle with a NASA label.  I have no idea how he acquired this, but, the bottle contained about six ounces of 80 molar hydrochloric acid.  I went out to find an old plastic film can and, while I was gone, Dale donned a mask and poured a little of the HCL into a stainless steel developing tank and dipped the film we had just processed into it.  The emulsion just liquified.  I didn't know Dale had done this and when I got back, before he could warn me, I walked into the darkroom and in less than one second, with a single breath, my lungs just locked and I literally fell backwards out of the darkroom.  The HCL was so reactive it was fuming and my first breath burned my lungs and made my body decide not to breath anymore.  I went outside to recover while Dale cleaned up.  Later, after the basement had cleared, we took the blank cellulose and the remnants of the melted emulsion and shoved them into the film can and returned the film to Joe and Randy.  What a mess.  

It hurt every time I breathed for about three weeks, but I never told anyone and never went to the doctor.  How could I explain it?  "Yeah doc, I burned my lungs with some fuming 80 molar HCL acid stolen (most likely) from a NASA government facility." "No problem kid.  Take two aspirin and call me from jail."

Dale also tried to destroy his neighbor's house one day.  His neighbor was having his yard graded and shaped and there was a front-end loader/grader working in the yard.  The operator would bring the bucket, very carefully, right up to the side of the house and grade the soil back towards the street.  Dale hated his neighbor.  He took a metal garbage can out and put it by the street next to his neighbors yard.  As the grader driver was approaching the house, Dale threw a lit M80 into the can and slammed on the lid.  When it blew the noise was tremendous and the can lid flew into the air.  The grader operator literally stood up in his seat and turned around to see what had happened as the grader continued forward.  He then realized he was still moving and sat down just in time to stop the bucket of the grader about two inches from the neighbors wall.  Disaster had been averted and Dale was PISSED that it had.  He sooooooooo wanted to see that thing go through the wall.  

Dale also got a copy of a formula for smokeless gun powder.  He mixed a huge batch in his garage and, with confidence that the formula was good and he had mixed it correctly, he put a big pile on the garage floor and threw a match in it.  Pea-soup fog is transparent compared to the blindingly thick smoke cloud that filled the garage, and then his house.  Minutes later his dad came home from work and ... well ... let's just say that "it" hit the wall.  

Thus, some of the adventures of Dale.

How Do You Spell "Rod Serling?"

After our snow adventure, Joe and I decided we wanted to see Coffeyville, Kansas on the way home to see the site of the Dalton shootout. The quickest way across to kansas cut across Colorado on some rather dubious roads. We decided to do it anyway and, with a full tank of gas (no services for well over 100 miles) we set out to cross Colorado. Late in the evening, after seeing nothing but fences and fields for hours, we saw a huge glow of lights in the distance. Soon we drove into La Junta, Colorado.

We thought we had entered the Twilight Zone.

La Junta is situated roughly in the middle of no damn where. Yet this speck on the map was brightly lit by streetlights. There were large buildings, major hotel chains, and restaurants. People were everywhere. There were theaters, movie and live. We saw ladies in furs and diamonds and real-live Rolls Royce automobiles driving next to us on the road. Mercedes Benz, Aston-Martin, and Jaguar were also common cars on the streets. We were convinced that if we looked on the right corner, we’d see Rod Serling laughing and waving. As they say today …… WTF !!!!

We stopped at a restaurant and went in to eat dinner. There we were in Levi’s work shirts and jeans and the place was filled with people in suits, tuxedos and evening dresses. We asked the waiter if we were supposed to be there, were we dressed ok, and he smiled and said sure.
We later found out that all of the fences and fields we had passed were huge ranches. The road we took in was used as a back access road to many of these million-acre ranches. La Junta was where the roads and the railroads met. It was where all of the obscenely rich ranchers in this part of Colorado went to hobnob, show-off, and talk business. We had walked into “Cattle Central” and didn’t even know it. We stayed the night just to say we had, and moved on the next morning. Still in shock over this discovery in the Colorado countryside.

Blue Light Means Snow Plow

My sister lived in Colorado for about eight years. When she moved there, she enlisted myself and Joe to help her move. I had a full-size van (the White Rabbit) and she had very little stuff, so it all fit into the van. We left with Joe and I in the van and my sister Connie driving her car and following us. She drove sooooo sloowwww that we had to keep slowing down and waiting for her so we wouldn’t lose her. This lasted until we hit the state line and then we’d had enough. We pulled over, put her in the van with me, Joe drove her car, and we got to Colorado without aggravation or incident.

After we dumped her stuff, we decided to take a couple of days extra and see some of the sights in Colorado. This had been planned all along and, since we were moving her in February, we brought along stuff to survive winter in the Rockies. To our surprise, they were having an exceptionally light winter and we were just cruising along. We saw Black Canyon of the Gunnison and then drove down to Silverton to spend the night.

Since it was not tourist season, Silverton was basically deserted except for a few locals. We found a motel and went to the office to check in. There was a sign on the office door, “In town for dinner. Back soon. Rooms are open. Pick one and we’ll get square later.” We found a room and moved in. Sure enough, about an hour later, the owner came by and we registered and gabbed a while. Like a majority of Coloradans, he was an import from another state. Sometime during this talk he looked up into a perfectly clear mountain sky and said, “Yeah. Looks like it might snow tonight.” Joe and I looked at each other and thought, “Yeah … right!”

About 4:30 am I was awakened by Joe kicking the bottoms of my feet while I was sleeping. I asked him what he was doing and he said, “Get up. We have to leave NOW!” I was still half asleep and asked him what the $&% he was talking about. He threw open the motel room door and there was a blizzard going on outside. There was already four or five inches in the doorway and it was snowing incredibly heavy.

We threw our stuff in the van and took off. Here were a couple of flatlanders trying to crawl through the San Juan Mountains, on a road we couldn’t see (but we could see the dropoff at the edge) in the middle of a blizzard. It took about four hours to inch our way to Durango. With our eyes shot and our minds exhausted, we stopped at a little restaurant in Durango for breakfast. The place was packed. We couldn’t figure out what so many people were doing there, but, it was a nice diversion. About halfway through breakfast some guy came walking in the front door of the restaurant and yelled “plow’s coming.”

The place emptied in minutes!

They weren’t stupid like the flatlanders. They were waiting for the plows to clear the roads before they attempted them. Joe and I looked at each other, took the hint, paid, and got the hell out of there and headed east.

BLUE LIGHT MEANS SNOW PLOW!

We had to stop before we went up to Wolf Creek Pass and put chains on the van (required). Luckily we had brought some anticipating a problem like this. We had put them on in a dry run back at home at everything worked fine. When we tried to hook them up in the snow, they appeared to be too short. They wouldn’t go around the wheels. We stood flabbergasted. Then it hit us. We had gone up several thousand feet in altitude from home. The tires had expanded from internal pressure. We checked the pressure and, indeed, it was high. We let out some air to make them normal and the chains fit. We crawled through the pass.

On the back side of the mountains, the skies cleared and, within a few miles, the only sign of a snowstorm was the foot of snow on the van roof. We stopped at the base of the mountains for gas in a little station. The owner came out and asked if we had seen a red jeep off the side of the road a few miles up. We said no. He said his son had called him because he had run off the road “again” and he’d have to take the tow truck up later to look for the car. We wished him luck and took off. When we started the van to leave, the radio was on, and we heard that Wolf Creek Pass had just been closed because of an avalanche. We’d decided that was enough adventure for this trip and headed home.

Dealin' Cards with the Old Men in the Club Car

From what I’ve been able to gather over the years, our class in high school was remarkably unique. Most high schools are very “cliquey.” You have the popular people and the druggo people and the geeks and the sports folks and they keep away from each other and hate each other.

Not in our class.

We had one of the most un-cliquey and unified classes I’ve ever heard of. We seemed to understand that each group had strengths and weaknesses and we organized and worked together to cause massive mayhem in our high school. We discovered early it was MUCH more fun to torture the teachers and administration as a unit than waste time screwing each other over. I am convinced that the teachers and administration had a huge party and celebrated when we graduated and they were able to get rid of us.

This meant that we had a lot of friends and connections and, years later, when we began having reunions, we all got together and had a great time. No cliques forming around the sides of the hall. Everyone just moving around and visiting and reliving great old stories. It went on for hours and everyone had a great time. It also means that we all have a lot of connections across a myriad of professions. Auto mechanics, teachers, lawyers, artists, doctors and other professionals all came out of our class and we all know each other. Good networking.

When our class was having elections for class officers, we had a friend who was pretty much just a rebel and we decided we wanted to make him President. Since our class was pretty wild, the idea of having this guy as President was pretty appealing and he had a wide support base. However, the Administration was completely against this idea. They wanted some “young republican” type to be the class President, not some freakin’ hippy with long hair. To just aggravate the administrators more, we started a button campaign with the slogan “Put Some Life Into This Joint.” The buttons had fake “joints” on them. With our unified class, EVERYONE helped make and distribute the buttons. This really enraged the administration. They didn’t think drugs were anything to joke about and hated the buttons. They accused us of poor taste. Ha … fooled them …. We didn’t have poor taste ….. we had no taste at all. To make sure we had the widest possible coverage, we deliberately started a rumor that every 100th joint was real. Well …… you couldn’t keep them on the shelves after that. The school was buried in the buttons and the administration was ticked off beyond words. The final blow was that our candidate won by a landslide. We heard that the administration had a special meeting and considered nullifying the election for a number of reasons but, in the end, they gritted their teeth and took it on the chin.

The Quiet Sound of a Whistle, Far in the Distance

I plan on relating stories as they come to me, not in a chronological fashion. Live with it.

During this holiday season, I’d like to relate a little story. In high school, the “downstairs cellar gang” had a very strong feeling that Christmas had become way to commercial and greedy. We
felt that we needed to do something, as a group, to reject that commercialism and bring us back
to reality.

One Christmas Eve, we decided to take a night walk from our homes, to a state park about 25 miles away. The weather had been fairly bad for the week before, but, the evening that we
started the walk, it was cold, but clear with little wind and it was not snowing. We started in the evening and walked to the park. It was incredible.

When you drive a route, your mind sets up a timeline. This, then this in a minute, then this in
two minutes. Plus, because you are watching the road, you never look back and have a visual reference of what things look like behind you.

When we walked, we could see the distances between the intersections. We could look back to see where we’d been. Since it was Christmas Eve, the traffic was fairly light so most of the walk was quiet. The road to the park went mostly through country areas, not city, so it was dark and pleasant. You could hear trains and other sounds very far into the distance because of the quiet.
We went through one small town where the town center was a small park. The sidewalks around it were lined with the candles in paper bags (I forget the name for them) glowing in the silence. It was really very nice and very peaceful.

Yet, as a reminder of the intrusion of Man on the peace, at 2 am, when the bars closed, there was about 30 minutes of relatively high traffice flow as the drunks headed home. The activity surprised us, and, when we thought about what was causing the activity, it just made us sad.

When we got to the park, we spent a couple of hours hiking around and enjoying the peace far, far from the “commercial” world. Finally, at a pre-determined time, Joe’s brother Larry drove to the park to take us home. It took many quiet hours, full of surprises and new vistas to get to the park. It took less than a half-hour to zoom home back in the convieniences of modernality.

I will always remember that walk. It was a bold reminder of the peace and the lives that our ancestors would have had on this special day. It broke the modern mold of rushing, driving, and buying. It restored the soul. And I have thought of it every Christmas since, whenever the pace gets too quick and the demands a bit heavy. It always brings back to me the real reason for the season.

All Aboard

It’s been a while since I’ve written. Been busy.

In junior high, Don and I joined the school newspaper. This was the mid-to-late 60’s and we were very politically aware of the Vietnam War, environmental issues, etc. We joined the newspaper thinking we might get a chance to do some good articles on some of this stuff. That we might be able to spread a little of the information to help keep others aware. Alas, what a pipe dream. The school newspaper was about as boring and rigidly controlled as you could get. Articles were standard fare about school functions, teacher bios, sports teams, etc. We asked about doing more worthwhile articles and were told, in no uncertain terms, that that was not going to happen. Therefore, there was only one alternative ……… we went underground and started our own paper. THE VOICE.

At first we did it as a lark, figuring no one would really care. Boy were we wrong! As soon as the word got out that we were doing our own paper, and doing socially relevant and timely articles, we were swamped by people who wanted to contribute to it and read it. We soon realized that this was not something Don and I were interested in, it was something everyone was interested in.

We got our first paper together and, in a stroke of luck, one of the other contributors’ parents thought our idea was great and supplied the paper and facilities to print about a hundred copies. The kicker was that the photocopies of our paper were better looking and more professional than the mimeographed school papers. The VOICE disappeared. Seriously. We brought them to school and in less than half an hour we were empty-handed. People asked us all day for more copies. We had another 50 printed that evening and brought them to school the next day. To our surprise, we were quickly called into the principal’s office, with the editor of the school paper, and grilled on what we were doing. We explained our situation and then were told that we were not allowed to distribute the papers on school grounds. They confiscated what was left of the second printing.

Those Nazi tactics pissed us off and the school populace was enraged when they found out. We decided to continue with the paper, even if it got us into trouble. We began work on issue 2. About a month later we had the next issue and brought 250 of them to school. However, we found out where the school property ended and set up a table near the front of the school about three feet from the property line. The papers went like hotcakes.

Less than an hour later we were back in the principal’s office. He told us we were not supposed to distribute the papers on school property. We pointed out that we didn’t. He said he didn’t want the papers in the school. We told him we were not responsible for what people did with the papers after they got them from us. He told us not to do it again and we told him he had no right to stop us from doing something that was not done on or within school grounds or using any school resources.

Two days later the school paper came out and, in an incredible show of support from the student body, the stacks of newspapers sat and rotted. No one wanted them and no one took them. They distributed them in home room and everyone walked out and left them sitting on the desks.

This scenario happened two more times with the same results. We were told to stop, and we continued. They printed, and no one read. We also found out that students were leaving anonymous notes in the principal’s mailbox and the teacher/editor’s room demanding they stop harassing us and let THE VOICE on school property.

We won.

The administration finally caved in and told us we could join the school paper and they would allow us to print socially relevant articles, but, that they would have the ability to censor or edit if they thought we were going to far for a public junior high school. We accepted and made sure we were careful with what we wrote, but, didn’t hold back any facts. We were challenged about facts a couple of times but, as long as we could produce the source, and it was legit, they went forward with almost no editing. I think the administration was astounded that kids that young would be so socially aware. They really didn’t understand the effect of growing up with the cold war and Vietnam on our TV screens had.

It was a great victory for the kids and Don and I got reputations as “anti-establishment rebels.” I liked that. When we graduated eighth grade, there was a tradition where the teachers got together and did a story about where the graduates would be in 10 years. In the story, several of the kids in class were lawyers, and their primary occupation revolved around getting me out of jail because I was in college starting campus riots. It was GREAT !!!!! To this day I have retained my social awareness and consider it my job to make sure I remind others around me of their social and moral responsibilities when I think they are losing that focus. It hasn’t always made me popular, but, I detest popular anyway. Time to move on to the next station.

Pile Up the Kindling

I have never been a social butterfly with hundreds of friends passing through my door constantly. I live in small groups of close friends that I hold on to tightly for support. In junior high this was primarily myself and Don. We turned into high-profile collaborators who had a great time taking on whatever we could. I also had a great friendship with Vicki. I was pretty shy around girls and Vicki was the first girl I felt comfortable enough to just talk to. She was always special to me. I like to think we could have been boyfriend/girlfriend in high school, and maybe further, if I hadn’t moved away. Don and I eventually lost touch over the years as we moved. I lost touch with Vicki for a while too but decided I wanted to try to track her down and see what she was doing. Surprisingly, it turned out to be easy over the internet because she was looking for me too. We reconnected and renewed our friendship and have kept up to this day. She lives on the other side of the country now, but, we have met and talked a few times when she comes home to visit her parents.

In high school I was accepted into the Brotherhood of Joe’s Basement. It was a small group of friends consisting of Joe, Randy, Elwood, and occasionally Joe’s brother Larry. We were all interested in travel, photography, music and astronomy and the gravity just pulled us together. Although we are all still friends, separated by distance, Joe and I were particularly close and I consider him my brother and his family and home were my surrogate family. He, Randy and I still keep in touch via email and phone. We get to see each other occasionally which is really nice.

I miss these groups terribly. I have several “friends” via my workplace now, but they are acquaintance friends, not brother friends. We talk a lot and we go golfing and stuff, but, I really miss my old “families.” I am very close to my wife’s family. Her sisters are mine and we all love each other very much as a family. My own family was not warm and affectionate so, although they are my biological family, my real family(s), the people I really learned caring from, are all families that have allowed me to join from the outside.

There was an auxiliary group of friends in high school that also continued on afterwards. These were the motocrossers. We all rode dirt bikes and that commonality kept us together for quite some time. That group, eventually known as the “Husky Brothers,” consisted of Randy (same one), Mark, myself, and Dave. Again, we have kinda kept up with each other over the years, but, it was not the close brotherly group the other one was and the loyalties were not there.

The “downstairs cellar gang” also had a connection to another character named Dale. Dale was a genius level person, highly interested in science, photography, and astronomy, who found school to be a total bore. It was all too easy for him with his intelligence level. We were friends for a while, even combined resources to build a couple of great darkrooms for photography, but he always scared me a little because he was very unpredictable and violent. His family was a disaster and he was just on his own. We will save the stories of the 80 molar hydrochloric acid, smokeless gunpowder, playing “army” with M100s, trying to destroy his neighbors house, “ha ha to you too sideburns,” and throwing his brother out of a second story window for another day. He eventually got hooked up with some bad characters who got him into drugs and he spent many years in and out of jail rather than in college improving his mind. Years later he finally met a good woman, turned himself around by becoming a religious zealot (now he scares me more), and is now a working family man. I applaud the turnaround, but mourn the loss of a potentially great scientist who never reached where he should have.

At the end of high school, and afterwards for several years, I was close friends with Craig. He lived near me and we shared a love of travel and the environment. We went out West several times together. He eventually married a girl from Tennessee and moved there. We lost touch as we both became “family men.” Craig’s big issue was always that he took everything very personally. Because we lost touch for several years, he apparently considered that a personal rebuff, and later, when I tried to reconnect with him, he just cut me off cold. A real shame as his oldest daughter, Rachel, was a chip off the old block and I know she is doing some nice things in environmental work. Her name is easy to find on the internet. It would have been nice to reconnect and catch up on how the families are doing.

All of these will be characters in the stories I will relate on these pages. Just wanted you to have a little background.

World of Death

I was accosted at work recently by a Vegan who took exception to my wife and I going out for a great steak dinner on our birthdays. She preached about how superior she was over us because she had become a Vegan. She said she no longer had to kill to survive. Nor was she supporting an industry of cruelty and death. After I laughed at her, which seemed to annoy her for some reason, I asked her when she had become Vegan. She said about a year ago. I then told her if she had survived for a year after her miraculous conversion then she was still killing to survive. All she had done was substitute one form of killing for another and one form of industrial food packaging for another. She decided to only kill plants and bacteria to survive, rather than macro-visual sized animals. That got me thinking.

This is a world of death.

It's not a political statement or a religious threat, it's just fact. Life and death are inextricably entwined. No creature in this world can survive and live without the deliberate killing of others. Not one. Anyone who thinks they have beaten this system simply because they have stopped eating macro-visual meat products is simply deluding themselves in order to place themselves above others and exert their perceived "superiority." There are millions of species of animals, plant, molds, bacteria, etc on this planet and they are all living things. In order to survive you must kill, or pay someone else to kill, something. Vegetarians and Vegans simply substitute killing plants, molds, and bacteria for killing large animals. The superiority they feel over those of us who still eat as nature intended is in their own mind.

Some people have gone to vegetarian diets because of allergic or digestive issues with meats. That's fine. That's a medical reason, not a mental reason. My beef (pun intended) is with the hypocritical morons who make the choice simply so they can hold themselves in high esteem among others. Arrogant fools, all. There is even a Hindu sect that uses soft brooms to sweep in front of themselves so they don't step on or kill any insects. They believe they are superior because they don't kill anything. Then they cut down some wood and build a fire and kill more plants for nourishment.

Life is not "sacred." If life was preserved for all, all would die.

The natural cycle of this world is that you must kill to live. Natural selection. The weak, old and sick are prey for the strong, young, and healthy. It's how the good genes propagate and species survive. The arrogant presumption of most people is that, as individuals, they are important and "special" and their lives are supposed to have meaning. Again, nothing but selfishness. Nature doesn't care about you as an individual. Groups live and survive because they cull other groups for sustinence.

Humans have hidden this killing behind industrial processes so they can feel "clean" about it, and have invented strange moral codes where they are supposed to try to preserve every human life regardless of the quality of that life or the effects on the lives of others. That code was simply created by people who used it to exert power and superiority over others. It is not the way the world works. Nature does not support that code nor subscribe to it.

We'll discuss the facism, arrogance, and danger of organized religion at another time.
Vegetarians and Vegans .......... get over yourselves .......... go have a good steak.