Category Archives: Inspiration

Inspiration, self defense

A Walk On The Dark Side

by MamaLiberty

(Previously appeared at The Price of Liberty.)

Sally had worked much later than she intended, and hurried as she crossed the dimly lit lobby to the front. The old security guard shuffled toward her to unlock the door, wishing her a good evening and admonishing her to be careful. She stepped outside and listened to him lock the door behind her, wishing she could have requested an escort to her car a block away. He was too crippled, and couldn’t leave his post anyway, but she still wished someone was with her.

Standing in the small pool of light from the doorway, she looked carefully in all directions. The old fashioned street lights were close to the ground and gave only a warm glow, but she could see that many were no longer working. A full moon peeked out from behind scudding clouds now and then, but the moonlight seemed to result in more shadows than anything else. A damp wind carried a promise of rain, or snow.

The street to her left sloped down to the river and abandoned docks, where rumor had it gangs were hanging out these days. The whole area had deteriorated in the ten years she’d worked there, and she noticed especially that more buildings than ever were dark and closed tight. Looking to the right, she could only see about a hundred yards to where the street crested the rise and vanished over the other side.

Tucking her big purse firmly under her arm, under the good Berber coat she wore, she set off with far less confidence than she normally felt, trying to look in every direction and beginning to feel more apprehensive the farther she walked. Maybe she should have called a cab? But that seemed silly to go just a block, and she walked a little faster.

There were no restaurants or bars in this particular stretch of commercial and office buildings, and no traffic this time of the evening. She suddenly realized she was very alone, and far too vulnerable. Her stomach felt like a rock in her belly, and the hunger that had finally driven her to quit for the day was forgotten. They had just completed a very important project, one that would ultimately allow the company to find better quarters, and the deadline had been tight, but all that lost it’s importance as she contemplated the lonely walk to her car. She gave a fleeting thought to her decision not to use the company parking garage behind the building. The fact that it was dark and gave her an overwhelming sense of claustrophobia had been reason enough in the bright light of the morning. Not that it would have been much safer, of course. Several cars had been stolen there over the last few months, and one woman had been mugged early in the morning as she came to work.

Her footsteps echoed faintly from the concrete walls as she walked down the hill. She wished she’d brought a pair of walking shoes with her, since her stylish 2 inch heels had already reduced her toes to a painful mass over the long day. And then, contemplating a stretch before her with no streetlights, she wished she’d brought a flashlight as well. Coming closer, she could see in the moonlight the sparkle of broken glass on the roadway and sidewalk, telling her that the lights had been destroyed rather than just burned out.

Walking carefully, she watched her footing instead of looking around her, and was startled to feel something brush her leg from the rear. Absolutely unable to decide whether to stand still or run, she turned and saw a scruffy cat vanish into the gloom between two buildings. Her mind knew that the cat posed no danger to her, but her heart rate remained high and she began to sweat under the fine silk of her best blouse. Then she could feel it on her face and in her hair as the breeze freshened.

Her steps quickened, and she avoided the larger chunks of glass while the smaller ones grated under foot, once almost causing her to slip. She was fortunate to catch herself on a nearby bus bench, and scraped the glass off her shoe bottom on the curb. Only half a block to go to reach the municipal parking lot, but she was dismayed to see that only a few lights remained intact there either. She re-positioned her purse under her arm and discovered that her fingers were painful from the tight grip she’d held on it.

Suddenly aware of a police siren in the distance, she was dismayed to realize that it was at least a block or more away and fading fast. She thought about how she had always assumed that the police would be there to protect her if necessary. And then she knew that she needed to revisit that assumption soon, just as soon as she got to somewhere safe. She realized that she was the only person in the world right then who could do anything about it, and this was a very new and disturbing reality. She remembered all of the conversations her brother had tried to have with her about it, and how he had urged her to take some self defense classes, but she’d always put him off with assurances that she was perfectly safe in the city. It hurt her to admit it, but she had been wrong.

Sally had put her keys into her coat pocket before she left the building, and she was grateful that she didn’t have to fish in her purse for them as she approached her car. Unfortunately, it was parked under one of the broken lights and she peered anxiously into the back seat as she unlocked the driver’s door. Sudden shouting nearby made her hurry to get in and lock the door, but she hadn’t even gotten the key into the ignition before several young men rushed toward her. One had what appeared to be a baseball bat, and he swung it in a wide arc that ended with the smashing of the windshield of the car sitting next to her. Terrified, she twisted the key and the engine roared.

Grateful that the lot was mostly empty, she backed out of the slot wildly, changed gears and then floored the accelerator, trying hard to watch where she was going while not losing sight of the men who were obviously rushing toward her from several directions. The utter chaos of smashing windshields, screaming and cursing people, and the sudden downpour of rain had her reduced to near hysteria by the time she turned the car onto the road. Whatever shred of reason she retained caused her to turn up the hill rather than down toward the docks, her usual route. The presence of the gangs was obviously no longer merely a rumor.

Behind her she saw the flash of police lights and heard sirens again until she crested the hill and descended into an area with strip malls and more traffic. The sight of people and vehicles helped her to calm down some, and by the time she reached her own neighborhood nestled in the foothills, she was ready to think about her experience and do some serious reconsideration of long held beliefs about who was responsible for her safety and what she might do about it. She recognized fully that she had been incredibly lucky, and that if she’d left the office just a few moments later she might well be dead, or worse.

The apartment should have seemed warm and safe, she thought, but after hanging her coat and turning on the light in her home office, she looked out the window that overlooked a wide swath of the city below. For perhaps the first time, she truly noticed all of the areas that had gone dark in the last few years. She could see flashing police lights here and there, distorted by the rain, and a police helicopter hovered in the distance, quite possibly over the parking lot she’d come from. She had avoided listening to the “news” for a long time, immersing herself in her work and her narrow world of research. And now she realized that much of the world she’d thought she inhabited had never actually existed.

Booting her computer, she opened an email blank and began to type:

Dear Derrick,
I’m taking some vacation time next week and, if it’s ok, will fly down to stay a few days with you. I want to talk to you about this self defense thing, and I want you to take me to buy a gun and show me how to use it.

Your loving sister Sally

Ed. note: This commentary appeared first on TZP’s weekly email alert. If you would like to be among the first to see new commentary (as well as to get notice of new polls and recaps of recent posts), please sign up for our alert list. (See sidebar or, if you’re on a mobile device, scroll down). Be sure to respond when you receive your activation email!

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defense of others, gun control, Inspiration, Politics

Constitutional carry and the art of skinning cats

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On Friday, March 25, Governor Butch Otter signed SB 1389, making Idaho the ninth state to adopt constitutional carry (aka unrestricted carry or permitless carry).

Back in the day, we knew this as Vermont carry, after the one-and-only state whose residents were legally free to tuck guns in their pockets or purses or under their clothing without first asking their state government for permission. Vermont had been that way for generations. And for all those generations, they remained alone.

But now … oh my.

In some ways Idaho’s bill isn’t a huge change from its existing laws. Idaho residents already had constitutional carry outside city limits; SB 1389 merely extended it to cities — over the objections of police chiefs, Bloomberg’s Everytown, and the usual hoplophobes who cried the usual cry of “blood in the streets!”

In other ways, what a very, very big deal this is.

For one, the bill explicitly acknowledges the individual right to bear arms and that said people grant only limited powers to state governments:

The legislature hereby finds that the people of Idaho have reserved for themselves the right to keep and bear arms while granting the legislature the authority to regulate the carrying of weapons concealed. The provisions of this chapter regulating the carrying of weapons must be strictly construed so as to give maximum scope to the rights retained by the people.

Like all such bills, it’s full of legalisms that hardcore freedomistas won’t appreciate (for instance, permitless carry is only for those 21 or above; those 18 to 20 must still get permits, though those permits are “shall issue”).

But for some of us who’ve been around a long time … it’s a bloody miracle.

Let me take you back to the day

It was a dark day. 1993 and 1994. A rabidly anti-gun president held the White House. A Congress composed of rabidly anti-gun Democrats and wishy-washy Republican “leaders” like Bob Dole stood ready to give Bill Clinton more service than Monica Lewinski ever did.

Wham! They hit us with the Brady Law. Wham! They hit us with the Ugly Gun Ban. Over the next several years, they hit us with more laws to restrict guns, give more funding to anti-gun enforcement, and in general extend the powers of both the federal government and local police against We the People.

Dark days indeed.

In 1993, I used my smoking-hot 1200-baud modem to dial into a gun-rights bulletin board in Colorado — half the country away from my Pacific Northwest home. And for me, that’s where I first encountered hopeful change — though I didn’t recognize it at the time.

The Internet, though it existed in the scientific and academic communities, was not yet a thing for ordinary people. But we were reaching out to find each other, anyhow. Some via FidoNet bulletin boards (BBSes) like the one I mentioned, which had been set up by and for fans of writer and gun advocate L. Neil Smith. Or a bigger FidoNet operation, the Paul Revere Network (PRN — where I first met TZP co-founder Brad Alpert). Others gathered local friends and huddled around short-wave radios, where a handful of firebrands (some as crazy as moonbats, but that’s another story) were beginning to agitate against the looming federal takeover. Many began to gather in the real world to form militias.

I was soon running up $300-a-month phone bills dialing cross-country to various gun-rights and Bill of Rights bulletin boards. (My wallet and I were both so relieved when subscription Internet came along shortly thereafter.) But that first Colorado bulletin board remained my mainstay as long as FidoNet ruled the dawning e-world.

Quirky little Vermont and the people who saw bigger things

It was on those primitive BBSes that I first heard the term “Vermont carry.”

Maybe it was the term itself, which hinted at the quirk of one small and quirky state. Or maybe it was just the hopelessness of the times. But it never dawned on me that Vermont carry had a chance of slipping outside the boundaries of Vermont. If asked to give odds, I’d have put it at a thousand to one against.

The “shall issue” concealed carry permit movement was the only bright spot for guns at that moment. It had been gaining ground since the late 1980s. But for me that was no bright spot at all. I saw state-issued permits not only as unlawful government control, but worse, as a sneaky way to gather data on gun owners for eventual confiscation.

On that Colorado BBS, a Wyoming activist, Charles Curley, had a lively debate going on with L. Neil Smith. The two were friends, but on one issue they ardently differed. Charles was working with fellow activists to get shall-issue concealed carry permits in Wyoming, which Neil saw as a betrayal of true freedomista principles.

I was privately in Neil’s camp, but I liked Charles (with whom I soon had a seven-year romance) so I didn’t say much. But where Charles really made my head spin was with his claim — preposterous! — that he and his fellow Wyoming ccw activists were consciously and deliberately setting things up to move eventually from shall-issue to pure Vermont carry.

I simply didn’t see how giving state governments more control (as I viewed it) could ever result in less control, eventually. Just did not believe it possible. Especially in those dismal days.

But these steady, patient activists were beginning a major change. I just couldn’t see it. They worked. And they worked. And they got major court judgments in their favor. And they worked some more.

Now

Today, seven states have permitless concealed carry for every lawful gun owner and two (Idaho and Wyoming) have it for their own residents, though visitors still require permits from their home states.

It began in 2003 with Alaska, and continued through Arizona, Arkansas, Kansas, and Maine. Successes were far between at first, but the pace is picking up. This month alone, both West Virginia and Idaho got on the freedom train. The West Virginia legislature had to override their governor’s veto. Although Idaho’s Butch Otter signed without quibble, both houses of the Idaho legislature passed the bill with impressively veto-proof margins (27 to 8 in the Senate and 54 to 15 in the House).

And there’s more. Oklahoma allows residents of constitutional carry states to carry discreetly within its borders. Puerto Rico has constitutional carry (following a lawsuit), though that’s being appealed. Other states have permitless concealed carry outside of city limits or allow it if the weapon is unloaded or in an “enclosed case” (and a woman’s purse or a man’s backpack counts as an enclosed case). Or on a motorcycle. Or on horseback.

Yes, the laws remain quirky and imperfect. (There’s no such thing as a perfect law.) But virtually every change has been in the right direction. And activists continue the march toward constitutional carry in many more states.

Are we likely to see constitutional carry in Massachusetts, New York, or California any time soon? Ha! But I can tell you that a lot of us who were around in the dark old days of 1993 and 1994 never thought we’d see even this much, ever, in so many places.

And “this much” is a lot. A hell of a lot. Better yet, we’re going to see more.

Do I now approve of the “shall issue” permits that laid the groundwork for this? Nope. No way. But even I have to admit that the grassroots “shall issue” ccw movement gave birth to the constitutional carry movement. And constitutional carry is an unreservedly good thing.

Back in the day — those dark old days of seemingly unstoppable federal overreach — I thought we’d have to fight (real “blood in the streets”) to restore our gun rights. Of course, we may yet have to fight to preserve our freedom.

But thanks to the new and expanded gun culture across the land — a culture in part built and normalized by the very activists I doubted — We the People are becoming an ever more formidable power.

I wouldn’t have thought it possible. I wasn’t a part of making it happen. In my eyes it will forever remain a mystery of darned-near miraculous proportions.

It definitely goes to show that there can be a lot of ways to skin the proverbial cat.

—–

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defense of others, genocide, Inspiration, Jewish history, resistance, self defense

Whispers from the Nabiloka

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Guest commentary
Exclusive to The Zelman Partisans
by Historian

During the Second World War, a variety of partisan groups arose in the territories occupied by Nazi Germany. In the East, Poland, the Ukraine and Byelorussia, and into Russia itself, some of these partisan organizations were partially or primarily composed of Jews who had fled German attempts to concentrate them into ghettos or who had fled the ghettos themselves. One of these was made famous by the movie Defiance, starring Daniel Craig as Tuvia Bielski, the leader of this partisan group. This fictionalized account of the Bielski Otryad, which hid in the Nabiloka forest in what is now western Byelorussia I found compelling, and it awoke an ongoing interest in the history of the partisan groups that arose from the German invasion.

These groups varied considerably, as one might expect. Some were comprised of mainly young more or less healthy males, and geared towards military action against the Germans. Other groups, such as the Bielski Otryad, were more inclusive, taking in any Jew that wished to join, regardless of their fitness or prior employment. I was impressed at the survival of Bielski’s group in the face of both anti-semitism from the Soviets and ongoing attacks from the Germans, but I found it surprising to learn that partisan groups composed almost exclusively of young strong males, dedicated to fighting the Germans and resisting the invaders, fared much worse than groups like the Bielski Otryad whose members had widely varied backgrounds, and whose primary goal was survival.

Most of those young fit men died and their groups were wiped out, while the Bielski Otryad survived the war, growing even as the Nazis chased them through the Nabiloka forest. Some of the Bielski Otryad members died during the war, but when they were met by advancing Russian troops, they numbered 1200 Jews, the largest number of Jews saved by Jews during the war. Two of the three Bielski brothers (Tuvia and Zus; Asael was killed in 1944 fighting for the Soviets) survived also, traveling to Israel and ultimately emigrating to these presently united States in 1956.

It appears that there were two key factors at play; one was that the primary goal of the Bielski Otryad was not to kill Germans, but to help Jews survive. The other was that even deep in the taiga, there was survival value in having a wide range of skills available to the group. A wide range of outlook, experience and opinion allowed the group to better cope when conditions or circumstances changed.

There is a lesson in this for the Liberty Movement.

Today, I see a wide range of opinion about the path forward for individual freedom. Many of those espousing these various opinions bitterly attack others in the Liberty movement for their ‘impure’ or ‘imperfect’ ideas, or slather acid criticism on those who disagree in one particular or another. Topics ranging from the ideal caliber for pistols or rifles to whether or not we need or should have a Constitution and everything in between are viciously debated, and barbed words fly back and forth growing more heated with each exchange.

To what end? Cui Bono?

What is the goal of the Liberty Movement? More personally, what is YOUR goal, in the pursuit of freedom? Each one of you will have to answer that question for yourself, but my goal is: to create a system that allows each person to do as they wish, to speak as they wish, to do with their bodies, their lives and the fruits of their labors as they choose, as long as they grant others the right to do the same. As Enlightenment philosophers put it- Life, liberty and property. If someone who shares this goal with you disagrees with you as to how best to accomplish that, so what? Isn’t the whole point to allow others their otherness? Aren’t we trying to help individual Liberty survive?

Or are we?

Tuvia Bielski made his goal the survival of Jews. He did not cast out the old, the infirm or those whose politics differed from his, and as a result, a community of 1200 Jews, anarchists, socialists, communists and individualists survived the Holocaust. He made a place for a wide range of opinion, and the Jewish community he built in the Nabiloka forest was stronger and more resilient as a result.

There is much to be said for earnest discussions about the paths forward for individual Liberty. This is, after all, a war of ideas. There is no doubt that the American experiment is in trouble and we need to carefully consider how we went wrong, and what must be done to make things better. But are the paths leading to the restoration of American Liberty to be found in the stifling of dissent, or in bitter vituperation among those who agree on the big issues? This country was founded on dissent and disagreement; rather than weakness, it may be our greatest strength.

Put it another way. If this is a war of ideas, and ideas are weapons, don’t we want the forces of tyranny to have to face as many different threats as possible? Don’t we want to see statism attacked on as many fronts as we can manage? Do we want to let the perfect become the enemy of the good?

Tuvia Bielski welcomed Jews of all social classes, ideologies, ages or abilities. They followed different paths through the Nabiloka forest to reach their refuge with other Jews, and this was again, part of their protection. Imagine how easy it would have been for the Nazis to exterminate them all if they had all followed one path. Regardless of how they got there, where they came from, or what baggage they carried, they were all welcomed. As far as I can tell from my reading, Tuvia Bielski only asked that each person work as they could to support the goal of the group, which was to ensure that the Jews survive. And they did. He won.

What is your goal, gentle reader?

Will you be like Tuvia Bielski, and make your goal the survival of Liberty, welcoming and protecting all those who love individual freedom, benefiting from each person’s unique outlook?

Or will you conduct intellectual auto-da-fé against all who disagree with you, seeking to crush disagreement and to force all to goosestep to the truth as you see it?

Do you view differing opinions within the Liberty movement as a threat, or as an opportunity?

I wonder what Tuvia Bielski’s Jewish partisans would say to the enraged ideologues among us?

Can you hear the whispers from the Nabiloka forest?

With regard to all who serve the Light,

Historian

—–

Ed. note: This commentary appeared first on TZP’s weekly email alert. If you would like to be among the first to see new commentary (as well as to get notice of new polls and recaps of recent posts), please sign up for our alert list. (See sidebar or, if you’re on a mobile device, scroll down). Be sure to respond when you receive your activation email!

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defense of others, duty, Inspiration, spirit of rebellion

Take care of one who’s taken such good care of our rights

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As you go about your Monday (and your Tuesday through Sunday), please send your best thoughts toward Mike Vanderboegh, who got the worst possible word from his doctor last week.

And not only your thoughts, but whatever you can spare to make his last months and his wife Rosey’s future less dire. Mike has given his all — including his health and his financial well-being — for freedom. Without Mike (and David Codrea) the Fast & Furious scandal might have remained buried. Without Mike, the III Percent wouldn’t recognize themselves as such a powerful potential force.

I hope all freedomistas will give back to Mike in full measure.

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Inspiration, Israel, Jewish philosophy

Cleaning the Menorah for Next Year

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chanukah-michoel-muchnik

As the last cold latke gets tossed into the microwave oven, and the candle wax is scraped off the menorah, this year’s Hanukkah winds down. We look out into the world and see hope and fear, success and failure, as always.  Hmmm.

What is the “point” of celebrating Hanukkah, anyway?

A Jewish response to Christmas? An excuse to eat fried foods? A historical series of battles, defeating a military giant? Clinging stubbornly to one’s own culture, in the face of foreign challengers?

Yes, all of that…sort of. But that’s only the surface.

Columnist Daniel Greenfield declares it a “Dangerous Holiday”, and that it surely is.

In the end the answer is hinted at by the declaration “Am Yisrael Chai”; “The People of Israel Live”.  As the Jews survive, against all odds… indeed, contrary to all reason, then the world has hope.

Hanukkah, it’s successes, and it’s failures, shows us once again that everything exists because G-d wills it to be so.

Ein Od Milvado

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defense of others, genocide, hatred of Jews, Inspiration, Israel, resistance

Weekend links

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I’ve been saving these up, hoping to write something or somethings from them. But life has kept me from it. So here you go for your weekend reading …

  • “The Banality of Good.” A surprisingly decent piece from Slate on how people who rescued Jews during the Holocaust found it so hard to talk about what they did.
  • We tend to think of the Poles as being willing, eager collaborators with the Nazis in the extermination of Jews. As usual, the real picture was more varied.
  • Sometime-TZP-contributor Ilana Mercer says “cut the ‘cycle of violence’ crap and recognize what’s really going on with the latest round of attacks on Jews.
  • And the great Paul Rosenberg asks to look honestly on the anti-Jewish cancer in the liberty movement. (H/T ML)
  • Finally, on a more cheerful note, an Israeli hummus cafe gives substantial discounts to Jews and Arabs dining together.

(H/T to colleague Y.B. ben Avraham for several of these stories.)

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hatred of Jews, Inspiration, resistance

Vehi She’amda

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It has been a difficult few of weeks for my people.  Stabbings, Shootings, Beatings.  Babies in car-seats hammered  by stone and sliced by glass and steel.  It is far from over.

The perpetrators name their children after murderers of innocents.  They spit on, and laugh at  the wounded. They wheedle their excuses to the English-speaking world, and roar in prideful blood-lust to their own.

The government response is schizophrenic at best.  Often, it emboldens the savages and bares the innocent to them.  More worried about how they are perceived by that smug imbecile in the White House, the pompous EU, or their leftist domestic press, than the mounting toll of maiming and death borne by their own people, they vacillate.

The powerful and influential abroad declare moral-equivalence between attacker and victim.  Mostly, the world looks away.

Yishmael and Edom, working in tandem.

Jewish blood, as always, is cheap.

Well, Hashem makes difficult lessons for us, but nothing we cannot withstand, learn from, or surmount.  Nothing.   Nothing.

Am Yisrael Chai.

וְהִיא שֶׁעָמְדָה לַאֲבוֹתֵיֽנוּ וְלָנֽוּ. שֶׁלֹא אֶחָד בִּלְבָד, עָמַד עָלֵיֽנוּ לְכַלּוֹתֵנֽוּ. אֶלָּא שֶׁבְּכָל דּוֹרוָדוֹר, עוֹמְדִים עָלֵיֽנוּ לְכַלּוֹתֵנֽוּ. וְהַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא מַצִּילֵנוּ מִיָּדָם

Vehi She’amda, La’avotainu Velanu Shelo Echad Bilvad, Amad Aleinu Lechaloteinu Ela Sheb’chol Dor VaDor Omdim Aleinu Lechaloteinu V’HaKadosh Baruch Hu Matzilenu Miyadam.

And this (Hashem’s blessings and the Torah) is what kept our fathers and what keeps us surviving. For, not only one arose and tried to destroy us, rather in every generation they try to destroy us, and Hashem saves us from their hands.

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authoritarian swine, duty, Inspiration, resistance, Schools and campuses, self defense

Four of the best comments on the Oregon campus shooting

2 Comments

Forget the pathetic little mama’s-boy murderer and remember Chris Mintz, the man who charged straight at him.

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Stop pretending that your “commonsense” anti-gunnery will end mass shootings. Although this piece by Trevor Burrus advocates paying more attention to mental illness — a dubious proposition when applied to gun owners in this age when 25% of the population is considered “mentally ill” — it also contains some questions we should ask everybody who wants more gun laws:

Perhaps you think all guns should be confiscated. Okay, tell us how you will do that without stormtroopers roaming the country systematically violating our Fourth Amendment rights in a way that makes Donald Trump’s call for the mass deportation of illegal immigrants look like taking a census. …

Perhaps you think that all guns should be registered and licensed. Again, explain how you will do that without a battalion of stormtroopers kicking down doors. Sure, some people will voluntarily register their guns, but they are unlikely to be criminals or would-be mass shooters.

—–

Time to talk about gun-free zones.

As details emerge, it’s clear some that Umpqua Community College students did, in fact, carry firearms despite the school’s weasel-worded anti-weapons policies. But too few — and none of them in that classroom where the little creep chose his victims.

—–

If there were no guns by Joe Huffman. Huffman doesn’t directly address the Oregon killings (though clearly his post was inspired by them).

He says, “Because of this change from a society of force to a society of reason one could, and should, go so far as to say the gun is civilization. Those who claim ‘civilized countries’ are disarmed have it exactly backward.”

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Inspiration

Rosh Hashanah 5776

shofar

Beginning tonight, at Rosh Hashanah (literally, the “Head” of the Year), all around the World, Jews celebrate the birthday of humankind and renew the coronation of G-d as our King.

The Gates of Heaven are opened.  The Court is convened. We are judged for our successes and our failures, not against some arbitrary standard , but against our true potential.

We ask that we be judged with an eye towards mercy and a sincere resolve to do better if given the chance.

Best wishes to all of our friends, sponsors, fellow writers, and loyal readers here at The Zelman Partisans.  May you all be inscribed in the Book of Life, and enjoy a year filled with blessings.

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