Hines Farm to Reopen

Thumbing through the local bird cage liner, I fat-fingered the keyboard and discovered the following:

Historical blues club to reopen
From the article in The Blade:

The original owners, Frank and Sarah Hines, died in the 1970s and Henry Griffin, who grew up near Hines Farm, bought the property in 1978 and patiently worked to restore it over the years.
He continued to host occasional blues concerts in the club, and a yearly blues festival in an adjacent outdoor venue called the Pavilion until his death in January, 2013.
Steve Coleman, the new owner of Griffin Hines Farm, said he knows rumors have been swirling about the legendary blues club near Swanton since his father, Henry Griffin, died more than a year ago.

Steve says he's going to reopen Hines Farm and have it operating by this spring.  There's more information on the web site: Griffin Hines Farm

I like Hines Farm and I intend to make their very first show.  I'm hungry for ribs, whiskey and blues. I wrote about Hines Farm several times.  Here, in The eagle flies... and another article here, Griffin's Hines Farm Blues Club - Revisited. There are plenty of photos so you can get a feel for the place.

Here's a hoist of the morning bourbon glass and a tip of the old fedora to Steve for getting the place open and running again. Here's how!

Stand Your Ground and The Bully Pulpit

One way or another I stumbled across Lethal Lessons from Florida, a post on a blog by Jeff Gerritt and sponsored by the local bird cage liner.  For a solid explanation of stand-your-ground law, read Much Confusion Around Both Stand-Your-Ground and Castle Doctrine by Andrew F. Branca.

I wrote a brief response which will probably last until the censors see it, and so was inspired to write a more lengthy response here.  Keep reading to find out why I disagree with Jeff and his anti-freedom agenda.

Foster Care and Violence

You may remember that my brother, Shotgun Bob, has a houseful of critters to include three or four dogs and an equal number of cats.  He also has a wife, The Girl, and a son, Albert.  You'd think this would be enough to satisfy, but The Girl wanted to stay in the foster care business (Albert is the result of foster care) so Shotgun Bob acquiesced for reasons I neither know nor care about.  The latest foster care child is a 13 year old boy we'll call Dim.

Things went along pretty smoothly for six months or so, then yesterday Shotgun Bob found out just what had been living in his house.