Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If we were to go through our life without any obstacles, we would be crippled. We would not be as strong as what we could have been. Give every opportunity a chance, leave no room for regrets
No man is greater than his Nation
Inline at lunch, I cross my fork and spoon to ward off complicity the ordered life our leaders have offered us.
Thin as a knife, our chance to live depends on such a sign while others talk and The Pentagon from the moon is bouncing exact commands:
“Forget your faith; be ready for whatever it takes to win: we face annihilation unless all citizens get in line.” I bow and cross my fork and spoon: somewhere other citizens more fearfully bow in a place terrorized by their kind of oppressive state.
Our signs both mean, “You hostages over there will never be slaughtered by my act.” Our vows cross: never to kill and call it fate.
~ Objector – William Stafford
Perhaps a timely thought for American 
Peace and goodwill
Amen
#AceNewsReport – Jan.10: Dominion Voting Systems has filed a lawsuit in Washington D.C. against President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Sydney Powell. The Denver-based voting technology company is pursing $1.3 billion in punitive and compensatory damages. Dominion Voting Sues Former Trump Lawyer Sydney Powell For $1.3 Billion (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images) […]
(DENVER, Colo.) JUST IN: Dominion Voting Sues Former Trump Lawyer Sydney Powell For $1.3 Billion according to CBS4
How blest the land that counts among Her sons so many good and wise,
To execute great feats of tongue When troubles rise.
Behold them mounting every stump, By speech our liberty to guard.
Observe their courage-see them jump,
And come down hard! ‘Walk up, walk up!’ each cries aloud, ‘And learn from me what you must do
To turn aside the thunder cloud,
The earthquake too.
‘Beware the wiles of yonder quack Who stuffs the ears of all that pass.
I alone can show that black Is white as grass.’
They shout through all the day and break
The silence of the night as well.
They’d make–
I wish they’d go and make–
Of Heaven a Hell.
A advocates free silver,
B Free trade and C free banking laws.
Free board, clothes, lodging would from me
Win warm applause.
Lo, D lifts up his voice: ‘You see The single tax on land would fall On all alike.’
More evenly No tax at all.
‘With paper money,’ bellows E,
‘We’ll all be rich as lords.’ No doubt– And richest of the lot will be
The chap without.
As many ‘cures’ as addle-wits Who know not what the ailment is!
Meanwhile the patient foams and spits
Like a gin fizz.
Alas, poor Body Politic,
Your fate is all too clearly read:
To be not altogether quick, p
Nor very dead.
You take your exercise in squirms,
Your rest in fainting fits between.
‘Tis plain that your disorder’s worms
Worms fat and lean.
Worm Capital,
Worm Labor dwell
Within your maw and muscle’s scope.
Their quarrels make your life a Hell,
Your death a hope.
Godsend you to find not such an end To ills however sharp and huge!
Godsend you to convalesce! Godsend You vermifuge.
~ The Statesmen – Ambrose Bierce
Editors note: No one man is greater than his Nation perhaps 
East Bay Times Letters to the Editor for January 10, 2020
Letters: Done with Trump | Flag defiled | Radical change | A poor trade | Delay project | Talented pool
Liberty, God-gifted
Young and immortal maid
In your high hand uplifted, The torch declares your trade.
Its crimson menace, flaming Upon the sea and shore, Is, trumpet-like, proclaiming
That Law shall be no more.
Austere incendiary,
We’re blinking in the light; Where is your customary Grenade of dynamite?
Where are your staves and switches For men of gentle birth?
Your mask and dirk for riches?
Your chains for wit and worth?
Perhaps, you’ve brought the Walters
You used in the old days
When round religion’s altars
You stabled Cromwell’s bays?
Behind you, unsuspected,
Have you the axe, fair wench,
Wherewith you once collected
A poll-tax for the French?
America salutes you-
Preparing to ‘disgorge.’ Take everything that suits you, And marry Henry George. ~ To the Bartholdi Statue – Ambrose Bierce
“One blade, Dragomirov – warranted never to fail!”
–Richard Sharpe, ‘Sharpe’s Peril’
A package arrived the other day from Creative Texts Publishers, who not only printed my last two books but have also provided needed advice and encouragement as I stumble my way through this writing gig.
There were other publishers I could have signed a contract with, but I chose Creative Texts. As time goes by that decision has proven repeatedly to be the right one. Upon opening the box, it did so again. Inside was a custom Benchmade folder.
For those who do not know knives, these are some of the best on the market. I have carried one of their automatic folders faithfully since I was a peace officer, and have used it in all sorts of situations. They don’t come any finer.
Flicking the knife open, I was nigh stunned to see my name inscribed on the blade, as well as the ranch brand I had designed for myself while sitting in that one room school house in Terlingua.
Daniel Edwards, owner of Creative Texts, had contacted me prior to this; saying they wanted to send me a little something for Christmas and apologizing for the delay. Believe me, it was well worth the wait.
You can see the knife and inscription in the first photograph, along with some of my other essential ‘tools of the job’ while prowling through the lower Big Bend. Standing with gift in hand, I knew it was time for a maiden voyage.
The recent heavy snow was still melting last Wednesday morning, even in the Tornillo Basin. The ensuing reflections on the Chisos Mountains gave them a starkly different persona, bluer and more like something one would see in the Rockies in late spring.
Saddling up with pack and gear, I pointed my nose roughly south to those mountains and to what lay in between. Drifting across the bottoms I kept to my usual to and fro sort of course, angling my way to Avery Canyon that snakes along the southeastern edge of the Grapevine Hills.
My first goal was Quail Spring, near the head of a fork that leads due south from the Avery. The spring is well named, as the headwaters sit in a small pocket covered with knee-high grazing grass, near perfect for quail.
There was water, too, which is always a plus with so many dry springs this year. Eyeballing the high ground around me, I noted the trails of antiquity leading off to different points on the compass; trails long abandoned by man but still used by generations upon generations of wildlife. Yes, this was a reliable spring for sure.
From there I set course due west, to where the ruins of Camp Neville lay. Along my route were the last, fading vestiges of a wagon road that ran from the camp itself to Bone Spring. Halfway across I found the forlorn remnants of a wire gap where the road once passed through, rotting wood and rusting barbed wire slowly retreating from the ravages of time.
Camp Neville had been a small, isolated Army outpost in Apache country, and served as a base camp for Black Seminole Indian Scouts such as Isaac Payne and Pompey Factor. The site was reportedly abandoned in 1883, though later used as a stopping point for Army patrols.
There was no groundwater present at Neville Spring. But the leaves of a majestic copse of tall, mature cottonwood trees whispered that water did lay just beneath.
I began the second half of my loop back, following the Neville Spring arroyo to the northeast and on to Avery Canyon, still working my zig-zag course from high ground to high ground. As night gathered around me and the sounds and sights of the day faded away, I eased quietly through the soft desert soil and tall grass along Tornillo Creek.
Day was done and soon enough this maiden voyage for my new personal treasure.
It could not have been a better one…
Ben H. English
Alpine, Texas
USMC: 1976-1983
THP: 1986-2008
Author of ‘Yonderings’ (TCU Press)
‘Destiny’s Way’ (Creative Texts Publishers)
‘Out There: Essays on the Lower Big Bend’ (Creative Texts Publishers)
Facebook: Ben H. English
Webpage: benhenglish.com
‘Graying but still game’
Museum of the Big Bend
Big Bend Saddlery
Crockett County Public Library
Medina Community Library
The Twig Book Shop
Old Town Books
The Boerne Bookshop
Hill Country Books
Marta Powell Stafford
Lone Star Literary Life
Historic Fort Stockton
Clueless Gent
THOUGHT TO THINK ABOUT:
“Few of us ever live in the present. We are forever anticipating what is to come or remembering what has gone.”
~ Louis L’Amour
THE STORY BEHIND THE PHOTO:
When this country has a dry year, as it is wont to do, you tend to see the land from a different perspective. Like any living creature bent on survival, the desert adapts to these circumstances by changing its routes, its behaviour and its daily activities.
What is frivolous is ignored or forgotten, what is of little importance is sacrificed and what can be saved and built upon is guarded, even at cost of living, with renewed determination and zealotry. In turn every living thing; every animal, bird, plant or insect, also adapts to these changes.
If it does not, it will die and something more adaptable will take its place. As I have said to others many times before, the lower Big Bend is a place where the ball marked ‘Darwinism’ is always in play.
But the observant man, the man who sees what is happening in the here and now, uses these deviations in nature to learn more of what is around him. He pays attention to animal tracks, the flight of birds, the buzzing of bees and the sight of anything green that tips the desert’s hand as to where water can be found.
In this, he learns where the most dependable sources are hidden away, be it seep, spring or tinaja. For even these are in a sort of battle with the desert, as well as each other.
Once he finds or rediscovers these spots, another view of the world around becomes readily evident, be it in the past, the present or the future. For where water is found signs of man are found with it, no matter how unlikely the location may be.
Whether ten thousand years ago or only a century past, the remains of those prior lives are present if you know how and where to look.
More so, this epiphany of sorts will also point to where life will be found in the future, no matter how challenging the surrounding environment might be.
For it is the way of the desert, and the way of the desert born…
AUTHOR’S NOTE:
Today I have been accepted as a full member of the Western Writers of America. Founded in 1953, this premier group is made of those who are intricately involved in stories of the west.
Numbering now around 700 individuals, the list runs the gamut of authors of fiction as well as non-fiction work, poets, screenwriters, songwriters and an occasional historian.
For men of a thrill going back to my childhood years.
You see, I can still remember my grandfather resting in the evening after a hard day’s ranch work. He’d be sitting in his old recliner with his feet up, boots off and crumpled black socks showing.
On either side was a large cardboard box, one containing westerns he had read and the other those he hadn’t. In his hands was usually bookmaking the trip from one box to its opposing mate.
He let me scrounge through both of those boxes for my reading material, and I learned that some of the best had some mention of the Western Writers of America.
That or a blurb about being a winner of the WWA’s prestigious Spur award.
And now I am a full member of that same organization.
I would like to think my grandfather would have been a bit thrilled himself…
Merry Christmas to All,
Ben H. English
Alpine, Texas
USMC: 1976-1983
THP: 1986-2008
Author of ‘Yonderings’ (TCU Press)
‘Destiny’s Way’ (Creative Texts Publishers)
‘Out There: Essays on the Lower Big Bend’ (Creative Texts Publishers)
Facebook: Ben H. English
Webpage: benhenglish.com
‘Graying but still game’
Creative Texts Publishers
Crockett County Public Library
Medina Community Library
The Twig Book Shop
Old Town Books
The Boerne Bookshop
Hill Country Books
Marta Powell Stafford
Lone Star Literary Life
Historic Fort Stockton
Museum of the Big Bend
Clueless Gent
Renard helps us to figure out if we should be deeply concerned about the types of people that follow our blog.
Are You Picky About The Type Of People That Follow Your Blog?
This is Bolg written today may answer some of your issues you may encounter at times, but there are some other thoughts to
And yes you have other opinions too and that’s ok to
Blogging platforms are on public domain
All of the humans are able to read your blog, follow you and remark and that’s ok too
Today Bloggers have Settings you may activate yourself. Aren’t you lucky little people
Some bloggers feel like they are being invaded if you read and like and that’s ok too
What you need to consider why you need to write
Do you know you are able to password each little blog you wish. Look at your settings and hit private. No one can see that unless you issue your gang with an email 
Do you understand you may turn your blog into a private blog too in your settings and only invite specific people to engage with you. Then you don’t have followers taking up your time 
Think of it as your own little social media platform ( be very selective when you create your private corner.
Your ” tags” are important tool to find folk with common interest if you only have time to interact with
Authors on creating blogs need to purchase Business 
Business Enterprise is affiliates or product vendors. These are Corporations. Yes, of course, they follow everyone they employ people.! Selling in cyberspace is vast.
We love to follow them too.
If your a new kid on the block visit me at https://mydaz.blog when you are lost and share our stuff happily.
Read as many blogs as you’re able WordPress is the Giant Library 
Seasoned bloggers are here to help you
We were all new kids once
All you need to do in cyberspace is the be kind, gracious, unpretentious.
Kindness is sharing
Bloggers come and go for all reasons.
Many died this year
Thank very one for sharing
Instead of words maybe would be nice to share a heart or two
At the end of the day we are all trying to fit in together
Keep writing 
Bloggers use a Pen 
Together, we can make this world
We are all brothers and sisters on this magic planet
Come on bye for hugs, likes and comments whatever you need to make you smile
@acenewsservices @bestofnatureblog
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#AceNewsReport – Jan.05: The accumulation of snow, high winds and below freezing temperatures have restricted the ability of stations within Big Bend Sector, which includes territory stretching from Sierra Blanca Station to the west to Sanderson Station in the east along the U.S./Mexico border, to safely patrol and respond to distressed individuals: Winter Storm Leads […]
(TEXAS, Ariz.) CBP Report: West Texas experienced a severe winter storm with snowfall accumulation of over 24 inches in some areas on Friday and agents responded to rescue a number of individuals on the US/Mexico Border bringing them to safety #AceNewsDesk report
