The Pickering Chronicles – 2018 Loose Ends

“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
Winston Churchill

The past number of months have not been particularly kind to our family; thus, I haven’t posted anything for quite a while. This is to sort out some of the pending items and to set out what I hope will be forthcoming next year. We are all susceptible to bad luck and adversity, but I hope each of you can avoid most of it and will persevere in spite of it all. Life ain’t fair and it ain’t fun; we’ve just got to push back however we can. Enough of that.
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This particular post will be a bit scrambled, as are my brains right now. We are not in Calgary this moment, we are in Arizona. We’ll be here just a week, and I hope I’ll be able to side-chat with some of you folks over the coming weekend. Maybe, maybe not; we’ll see. In any event we’ll be back in Calgary, Alberta, Canada before the New Year.
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I got my Marlin 1895 Govt 45-70 sighted in, and I’m happy with it. As soon as possible I will share with my readers some small details that might make attaching a Lyman peep sight a little bit easier.
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I am indeed back from Zimbabwe and will tell y’all about the rest of my safari soon. Look for Killing the Elephant Story for all the details.

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I have belatedly realized that my mind is somewhere back in the 19th Century. Therefore, I have committed myself to finding a way into the 20th Century. (The 21st Century is too far away for me as yet.) So, I intend to commence a YouTube channel called The Pickering Chronicles beginning next year. This is partly a reaction to those who have notified me that they have subscribed to my YouTube channel when, in fact, I DON’T HAVE ONE! There is a teenager somewhere in cyberspace who has set up a YouTube channel called “Thomas Pickering”. It is NOT ME. My new channel will be The Pickering Chronicles. Once it is set up (maybe next week) I encourage you to subscribe.

It will consist of whatever I want. To the extent that a particular chronicle relates to reloading, shooting, hunting, etc., I will bring that content to The Reloaders Network. To the extent a particular article has nothing to do with this channel, it will not be sent here. Ignore that content if you like, but it will be darned good!

One of the things I hope to show you folks is my beautiful, tiny, reloading room. You can compare my technical, carpenterial splendiferous edificational effort with that of Nathan (The Reloading Press).
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I had a brilliant idea for The Reloaders Network to make some keychains (plan to ask some of you to contribute TRN-colored powder-coated bullets, etc.) and brought a sample to the USA when I travelled last week. TSA took it from me. “Those aren’t bullets,” I said. “But, they LOOK like bullets,” she said. Land of the Free. They took my toothpaste, too.

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On a totally unrelated topic, with all the talk about business cards I thought I would share this with you. I have drafted a business card that I hand out to people (surrepticiously) when they are interacting with my wife. It says:

ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE
This Lady has moderate dementia. Please
Show courtesy, try not to sell her things.
She may repeat herself. Do not let her see
this card. Thank you for your consideration.

If you know anyone with dementia, or friends who have a relative with Alzheimer’s Disease, you might consider making a few business-card sized cards like this. If The Reloaders Network decides to go ahead with printing cards for the members and you can use something like this, maybe modified for certain circumstances, consider having some made. Having these available can help avoid some embarrassing situations.
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Finally, some GOOD NEWS!

After Africa we travelled to China for a couple months. A lot is happening there, most of which is not reported at all in North America. Here are a couple examples:

O North America is WAY behind China in terms of consumer technology usage. We spent a week in Nanjing and I was probably the only person out of 11 million people that tried to use MONEY to pay for things. Everyone else uses phones.

O I have lived and/or worked in China for many years. With all the infrastructure development over the past decades it is wonderful to see that all cities I have visited with populations above 2 million people, all have been outfitted with Braille sidewalks so that blind people can make their way around towns without help.

O Something I predicted fifteen years ago has come to pass within the past five years: the population of practicing Christians in China is now larger than the population of Communist Party Members; and, the persecution of Christians is NOTHING like propagandized by the Fa Lung Gong people. Christians are free to practice in China; if you don’t believe me, go see for yourself. Big changes are coming in the next century.

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More later. . .

P.S. – Merry Christmas to All, and Happy New Year, too.

Thomas Pickering

If Uncle Jim were a few years younger, he’d be old enough to be Thomas’s son! Nevertheless, Thomas enjoys hunting, freehand shooting, and reloading. He’s looked for challenges all his life and continues to seek them out. He agrees that everything goes better with Loads of Bacon!