Town Hall: The Sky is Falling

Image by Adam Zubek-Nizol

Remember this: Things have a way of coming back to haunt you. 

Where is the knee jerk reaction that dog hunting in South Carolina is under attack coming from? Is it fear of law enforcement?

I am in your comment section looking for clues. My best sniffer states that supposedly there is no pending legislation and they are just gathering feedback. There is no proposal. Changes to the states hunting laws must be made by the South Carolina General Assembly. So the recipe is: 

Public Input + Point of Conflicts = Potential Solutions

Are these hunters dramatic? Why are you scared? Knees are jerking everywhere.

I am looking at the town hall videos and sipping my Replenish Zero thinking, WTF?

I see this one post where someone named Greenswamp is telling another person he is in NC and "they not finna stop us we goin dump them damn dogs anywhere anytime they not taking my shit away."  

Just in one statement you can see the reason why. I was watching one well-meaning man pleading for them not to take it away from the kids. No one said they were. The SCDNR has plenty of programs for teens and kids.

If anything is threatening the future of dog hunting it is the steady spread of infrastructure, housing, and businesses. It eats away at the forest and runs the creatures further and further away from their breeding grounds. Myrtle Beach is gone in the way of hunting. You have to go on the outskirts of town and that is landlock.

Lets hits some points on the function of the South Carolina Department of Natural Resource in these shenanigans. 

They are not your surrogate mother or father. It is a Law Enforcement Agency that enforces hunting, fishing, and boating laws, taxes and registration. They enforce laws over wildlife such as alligators, bears, manatees, and sea turtles. Did I mention crime? They help other agencies with missing persons, drown victims or body recovery.

Anyone not securing a privilege and abiding within those laws and regulations will be cited per offense and go before a judge for a verdict and pay a fine. Each generation of the public is a target recruitment to funnel financing back into the Agency as either a law-abiding citizen or a criminal of sorts based on what services you get rendered.

The SCDNR is asking for input to help make an informed decision that will be advised to the legislatures so they can amended existing regulations, add or delete. 

The South Carolina General Assembly is the department that handles the actual law-making the SCDNR executes. You need to speak to your legislator and directly ask them what is being built as regulations and put before the Assembly to be transitioned over into a law or regulation. 

You can travel here: 

To look up legislation  https://www.scstatehouse.gov/

To look up your legislator:  https://www.scstatehouse.gov/legislatorssearch.php

It follows this:

1. State Legislature: The South Carolina General Assembly, which consists of the House of Representatives and the Senate, is responsible for enacting laws that govern natural resources and environmental regulations. 
2. Committees: Specific committees within the legislature, such as the Agriculture, Natural Resources and Environmental Affairs Committee, focus on issues related to natural resources and can influence legislation affecting the SCDNR.
3. Regulatory Authority: The SCDNR itself has the authority to propose regulations based on laws passed by the legislature, which are then subject to public comment and legislative approval before becoming effective.

With all this being said, I think the South Carolina dog hunting knows that given the growth of human habitation and the dwindling landscape that shrinks smaller and smaller every year.

If you cannot get satisfaction from the SCDNR or your legislature, then maybe the dog hunters can form a coalition that will buy land and turn it into a hunting property that is shared by members and put in Trust or something like a trust to manage the upkeep and continual use of its members and their heirs. Talk to a lawyer about the particulars. 

~Courtesy of the AOFH~

The Pond is Dry and other Conundrums

                                                      Photography by Yulia Gapeenko

 

Remember this: Migratory birds fly for miles. They remember and learn what to avoid. So do I.

Lately, life has been a distraction from my conservation efforts due to other people's health conditions. Today, I sat down and tried to review what the mind should be preoccupied with. 

Basically for me, being nosy and writing.

A duck hunter who previously rented land to peruse stopped me in the local store and informed me that he rented but didn't go on the property because the pond was dry. Its not even migratory fowl season and people are looking for perfection. I thought about this. How would he know if he didn't go on the property? I went on the property and took photos months ago. During the one day snow storm, I trucked back into the woods and took photos of the frozen pond and the water in the duck pond that was frozen as well. The reason for this is to make sure there was a hole in the ice on the sump pond so the gases would not build up in the water and form dire consequences. The ice thawed out in that week so it wasn't a long freeze. 

The concept for most endeavors that I do when it comes to habitat construction and maintenance is to let it take its natural course. I guess people expect me to fill nature's duck bathtub up for them? 

Maybe I should toss in some decoys?

I began to have thoughts on water economy and scarcity. It has been on my mind since I heard about the projected AI data center in my county reported by local news. Ergo, its shroud in secrecy so I expect there to be something else going on in those six buildings. 

Now I got a disillusioned duck hunter, a dry pond, a drought of some sorts, and a data center looming in the distant future. 

Here I was thinking of buying some duck eggs and hatching them. Let no good intention go to pot. 

Its not bad enough I have to see the influx of deer into my county because the county over is so overrun with humans, buildings and their activities that the deer are now trying to hide across county lines. It looks like an alien invasion at night. I feel sorry for the deer because all the hunters do is drive around day and night trying to figure out how they can capitalize on watching a herd of ruminants get jammed up in a small area of farm and woodland. The pressure on them is incredible. Yet on rolls the wheels of progress, right over us all. 

Its a struggle. I am waiting on people to complain we need a killing because the deer are pooping in their yard. I have actually heard this non-sense from a person that was trying to request a permit to snipe them off her property. Wasted meat, what a shame.

Those deer's only crime was existence and having to have a bowel movement. Can you imagine what her thoughts were on human beings. 

It is more of a pain in the posterior when you are trying to manage a location that is a breeding ground for those little 20 lb sukies the hunters with their kids indiscriminating go out an shoot because everyone needs to have an experience. They won't even allow them to have a moments piece with their progeny. Its like the feeling people must have had back in the day when they were smoking bison and stacking them high. I sound so bitter. Guess I am?

                                                 Photography by Hamim Fadillah

I am not even gonna get into the other raging disappoint in my life when it comes to agencies that fall short of grace, character, and valor to be a bunch of punk barney's running around in the woods. All they are about is the bottom line.  

The plan is to go assess the situation and figure out if I can improve it but unless the tears of God fall from the sky, I don't expect a surplus of water to fill a hole in the ground to fulfill another person's expectations.

Southern Gothic Festival 2025

 

Remember this: "Terror made me cruel." ~Emily Bronte~

I went to the local Southern Gothic Festival in Camden, South Carolina over the weekend.  I am side questing. The weather was showing out with its dismal dreary rain that overcast the Historic Camden Revolutionary War Park. I am out looking for scary moments and ghosts in old wartime haunts. This is a free literature festival with several names so next year pen it down and come out. 

I met Kassidy Plyler of the Catawba Cultural Center. Her talk, Catawba Stories & The Trickster Spirit-History, Folklore, and the Unseen, is an overview of Catawban folklore and storytelling traditions centered around the trickster. Miss Plyler reflected on oral histories, mythologies and cultural resilience and how it shapes indigenous identity. She is an absolutely wonderful person to talk to. 

I tried to use my time wisely due to the overlap in different speakers giving their talks in different buildings on the campus.  

The next panel I sat down for is Folklore, Fear and the Family, Crafting the Modern Southern Gothic. The authors speaking are Allison Gunn and Emily Carpenter. Their talk is centered around how inherited myths, haunted landscapes, and family legacies continue to shape Southern Gothic.  Allison Gunn drew from Appalachian and Deep South folklore. Both authors were referencing generational and regional storytelling through the lens of trauma and how it creates a framework for writing on the line between fear and inheritance and how it is evolving with each new generation of Southern Gothic writer. 

Allison Gunn is debuting her novel, Nowhere. Emily Carpenter has been tapped to have her novel, Gothictown, turned into an AMC television show, so that is in the works. Their panel talk is very informative and encouraging to the new writer to Southern Gothic. Great questions were asked in reference to how each went about their process for developing the driver of the stories. 

I did sit in for the panel, Spirits of the South-Religion, Ritual, and the Southern Gothic Imagination. Dr. Jeffrey E. Anderson, Professor of History at University of Louisiana-Monroe, did bring a lot of clarification to the different questions that were asked. His book, Hoodoo, Voodoo, and Conjure: A Handbook, focuses on black southern communities, resistance traditions and African American spiritual practices. 

The practitioner, Tayannah Lee McQuillar, on the panel wasn't helpful due to lack of verbal content. Her input would have been better if she would have separated her sacred practice and spoke more on the use of impostor Hoodoo and other cultural practices to develop story and ambiance without sacrificing personal practices. If she would have spoken from that perspective she would have been more engaging for the audience. Her tarot card deck is, The Hoodoo Tarot and The Sibyls Oraculum. Her stance as I was hearing her talk in short sentences is one of a person that believes different races have a separate supernatural world and we are all divided up based on race when we die but then maybe not but that is how it came across. I don't subscribe to that train of thought. I respect her point of view as it pertains to her. 

There was a third speaker on this panel, Dr. Heather Freeman, who is a Professor of Communications and Media Studies and creator of the podcast, Magic in the United States. She explores esoteric and spiritual  traditions across American history through media, storytelling, and scholarship. She didn't speak much either but some of the questions were not address to her. I guess everyone is into Voodoo? 

Image by Yulia Gapeenko

The best of all the speakers was Dr. Abigail Lundelius Smith. She current serves as instructor of Rhetoric and Literature at New Aberdeen College in Charlotte. Dr. Lundelius's talk is Flannery O' Connor-See the Sacred In the Grotesque. Flannery O'Connor used the grotesque to uncover that point between the sacred and the profane where redemption is hiding around every page, or corner. 

She talks about O'Connor picking up the baton of gothic horror by Edgar Allen Poe, who was a walking embellishment of all things descriptive that could happen to a character in the gothic genre.

Even though Flannery O'Connor had lupus she went on to live to 39 before she exited the world. One of her best quotes is, "The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it." She has several works to read from such as, "The Complete Stories" and "The Habit of Being."

The final speaker of the day is Dick Harpootlian, the prosecutor of Pee Wee Gaskins. Harpootlian's talk is on his release of his book "Dig Me A Grave." Pee Wee Gaskins was a notorious serial killer from South Carolina. I remember he once pulled up to the gas pump at my grandfather's store and he was driving his hearse. People would always ask him what was in the coffin in the back. Terribly enough, it was probably a victim of his. Harpootlian spoke of how charismatic Pee Wee was and how he somehow could talk people into doing things for him such as blowing up a law office with C4, and reaching out to Harpootlian himself to speak to him and subsequently try and plan the kidnap, ransom, and murder of his daughter by having his son do the reaching from jail for Pee Wee. Pee Wee was a hot mess. He would burn down his father's tobacco barns and lurk around hunting victims. There was one moment where Harpootlian stated that Pee Wee Gaskins had took the officers out to a location to lead them to the body. When they got there, the officers found a group of men waiting. They felt like somehow Pee Wee had communicated to the outside and those men were there to help him escape. This made me ponder, if those men were willing to help him escape, then it wouldn't be to far of a jump that those same men, who were privy of his killings, were probably in on it with him, or at least were complicent in his dastardly deeds.

If you would like to ready more about this case try Harpootlian's book. There are other books you can reference for this period in South Carolina history.

Overall, it was a great time. I ended it with a seafood boil and hit the road back home. 

Wonder what else I can get into?  

~Courtesy of the AOFH~

Copyright © 2012 All Rights Reserved.

The Transmission: Nancy Drewing CWD Part I

Remember this: Sometimes where you get that itchy twitch of intuition that something is not right-you have to go with it. 

I am on a research bender one night at a job I was experiencing. This job was an eight hour stint of watching Barneys in the woods, phone calls, coloring, and a lot of free time looking at all things wildlife. The nature of the rabbit hole I am free-diving into is rabies. After swimming around that paddling pool, I decided I had a bad case of the lets-go-look-sees.

I began to read about Chronic Wasting Disease. It was a thing during another job I worked over a season at a wildlife processing facility and brain samples were being turned in to local wildlife agencies for their biologists to examine and study on the hunter time-dime. 

Much like any other online Nancy Drew, I started the old keyboard up and pulled up more tabs with different reseach and ideas that my screen started to look like a dating application. Read-click the X-goodbye info.

I began to follow the trail. This began my reading into the Adventures of the Suspicious Researchers of 1967's Colorado Division of Wildlife's Foothills Wildlife Research Facility a.k.a. The National Wildlife Research Center (NWRC). All I can say is vague. There is no real definitive paper on this burp in time. 

Let me set the scene. 1967 Fort Collins, Colorado is the origin story or legend of where this went down. Some captive Mule Deer were taken from the wild in Northeastern Colorado to a specific facility  as part of a winter survival and nutrition research study. The deer appeared in good health per researchers. They get put in with some sheep and disaster ensues.

It took an act of Congress to find the human suspects: Mike, Terry and I. Mind you, when I look for these three people in other research you can't find them. It is like they are part of some secret military operation where whatever happened has been buried somewhere, never to be seen again. Infect, Deflect, and Deny. 

I perused an article entitled, "Chronic Wasting linked to Fort Collins for 50 years", by Miles Blumhardt on The Coloradoan website. The person Blumhardt initial fingers as the guy is Gene Schooveld. Schooveld is a retired Colorado Division of Wildlife Senior Wildlife biologist who lived in Fort Collins.

On this website you can hear Mike Miller, Colorado Parks and Wildlife senior wildlife veterinarian is informing the reporter about the goings on. It does appear he isn't so clear on the retelling of historical events, probably due to the absence of info. He does go on to say that the deer dying kept ruining good research experiments. This made me think that they must have re-upped with a couple more clutches of deer before hair pulling and gnashing of teeth ensued from the frustration. If you watch the video provided you see that it is an area with grass set against hills and some protection from the elements. The area appears to be unproblematic as shown. We don't know what the conditions were at the time of the research. 

My understanding there were twelve deer in with unnumbered sheep. You don't know how long these deer were alive but if it takes 1.5 to 2-2.5 years for Chronic Wasting to bring an animal to its end, how is it that these deer died so fast. Mike Miller states they appeared healthy. That would mean that those deer were infected in 1965-66 because this is noted as an event in 1967. The research was suppose to be on nutrition over wintering and natural deer history. Upon closer inspection, it reads like an ill-handled scientific inquiry where the ball was fumbled for lack of a better word. 

What areas specifically did these sample deer come from? How did they bring them to the facility? Were they in a cattle trailer that wasn't sanitary? Was there no physical exam? Why were they not quarantined from other species due to their designation as a sample group? What were the researchers feeding those animals that was suppose to help them over winter? What exactly was the structure of the research? What happened to the sheep that was being used by CSU to conduct Scrapie research? What was really going on there? Why is it that in 2025 you can look at a map and it still a hotbed of eyestrain? What is everyone missing like the nose on their face? 

Here look at this (click on it to make it bigger):

I sat back and thought there is someone out there doing the dissection and sample collecting for sampling but what about the other factors that go into solving this mystery? There is no location except Fort Collins. If they are stating the deer came from different areas of northeastern Colorado then one of the deer had CWD. Their exposure comingling with the sheep, human hand, or some other unknown could have caused the exposure. Were the deer there long enough to indicate the CWD gobbled them up after they were put together in the pen with the sheep. Information lost to history or in the annals of the NWRC.

This situation moved through time and space to that map above. I am going to tell you now this is where my research car goes off the road into a rabbit hole(s). 

I looked at the above map and thought, it is still there like a blazing field of red poppies. Why? The only thing I could think of is birds. Think about it. The mass migration of birds that appear in spring leading up to winter. Then you have the pockets of CWD far away places like Norway that had a reindeer infected, Canada, and South Korea. There is even an article from the Coloradoan that is about the mass migration of birds from all over. 

I wondered what birds could migrate from Norway or South Korea and what about those areas around Canada? 

The examples are the Black-faced Spoonbill and artic tern:

Arctic Tern

Blackfaced Spoonbill

 

These are marsh or shore birds and require to some degree a water body.

The birds that are around Fort Collins as an example are Common goldeneye, American tree sparrow, and lesser scaup.

Lesser Scaup

 

Common Goldeneye

American tree Sparrow

My first untested hypothesis is that somewhere in these birds migratory plans, something might be contributing to the CWD. Stopover locations that give migratory birds a pitstop are subject to scrutiny. There is the idea of migratory birds that practice fecal sac business. My research on this is there is not a lot of testing done. The birds either gobble it or dispose of it outside of the nest at some location. The reason I state this is, "For example, the widely held belief that all CWD occurrences can be traced back to a single Colorado research facility has precluded wildlife and animal health professionals from considering that some outbreaks may be arising from unrecognized exposure events that occur repeatedly over time." (e.g., Williams & Miller 2003, Greenlee et al. 2015) 

My second untested hypothesis is during the 1967 research shenanigans something was done or not done that elicited a situation where the twelve mule deer met with a moment of destiny that has changed the course of cervids history either through poor research practices or secret research practices of the military and biological warfare plot twist. Trust me that crazy rabbit hole exists to the Nth power. 

Because the word transmit is used for the mobility of the prion, something within or outside of the life of the ungulate is making it susceptible for infection even though this is a sub-viral protein. Sub-viral meaning agent are pathogenic, can cause disease but lack viral properties. Subviral agents are satellites, viroids, prions, defective interfering particles, viriforms, and obelisk. 

I most likely will revisit this because I am still researching on the topic. Strange things are definitely happening at Fort Collins. If its not the deer, it is the rabbits. What is next?

If you can learn anything from this it is building a sound research study with plenty of documentation and observations no matter how futile or stupid it might appear and communicating forward in time if the problem at hand becomes a persistent ghost in the future. If an exposure begins all it will do is spread. If you can't stop the spread, therein lies the problem because if Nature can't stop it on its own, then who or what will?

~Courtesy of the AOFH~

Copyright © 2012 All Rights Reserved.

Citations:

Miller, M. W., and J. R. Fischer. 2016. The First Five (or More) Decades of Chronic Wasting Disease: Lessons for the Five Decades to Come. Transactions of the North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference 81: in press.

Chronic Wasting linked to Fort Collins for 50 years. 2018 August 30.The Coloradoan.https://www.coloradoan.com/story/news/2018/08/23/cdc-tse-mad-cow-chronic-wasting-disease-linked-fort-collins/878097002/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2680674/#ref-list1

https://www.defenceiq.com/air-land-and-sea-defence-services/articles/prions-as-bioweapons

https://ndupress.ndu.ed/Portals/68/Documents/occasional/cswmd/CSWMD_OccasionalPaper-12.pdf

https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/27449/chapter/3

2024 Duck Stamp Contest

Remember this: Talent can win more than once. Reading the directions are important.

Every year I follow the United States Fish and Wildlife Duck Stamp Competition. I usually follow Kira Sabin and her process as she selects the duck of choice to paint and her wins and struggles for getting to final shippable submission. She has sat as a judge for the juvenile duck stamp competition and provides excellent input. 

At first glance, you understand this is a lump of 300 or so entries that are of different levels of artistic ability and growth. In good purpose, giving someone the opportunity to attempt, and try again another day, is a learning curve of how not to give up but to come back to the drawing board and try again after improving one's skills as an artist, more so a wildlife artist.

Time and practice can cure a lot of problems. 

With that being said, a lot of the submissions were probably cut due to not reading the requirements. 

In the instructions, it stated something to the effect that you could choose from the migratory fowl, but you had to put in the conservation aspect and the habitat. Alot of these are migratory fowl swimming or suspended on water with some sprigs of grass. Its starts looking like a Sears portrait studio photo shoot. 

It views, "I am a beautiful duck, watch me swim."

2025 Winner by James Hautman 

Three Buffleheads

Here are some entries I wanted to review:

(Click on images to enlarge)

This image provided light and color and action with the above-below water line visuals. There is a hint of the cattails in the background. 

Several of these were hyper-realistic but lacked the conservation and habitat or action.

This image was camera worthy for realism but was portraiture with no story behind it.

This was a nice little photo with the underwater foot and bubble with the ripple of the reflection.

These two entries were cool neutral but still lacked conservation and habitat.

I thought this entry dabbled in the folklore and stop action imagery but had a suggested story, migratory fowl on the borderline of human habitation and industry. It looked intentionally different visually.

This entry was a great action shot with complimentary background.

These two entries I adored for the attention to detail and how much work it must have took.

This little entry right here was different. It is different to me because here you have the known and unknown where Conservation isn't always right there in your face. 

The questions to ask are:

Why is there a decoy present?

Is the decoy implemented for wildlife conservation science or active hunting?

What happens if the little fowl disappears forever from the landscape due to over hunting, disease, or limiting factors that will cause there to only be the remnants of floating fowl decoys that will drift till they get caught up in the mud, moor themselves in the grasses, or sink to the depths?

Will there be another image like this for the future or will this be a reminder reaching out from the past that illustrates the loss we will have as a country when a political pen swipes a paper and slowly but surely rubs it out like No 2 lead on paper? Because of revenge? Retribution? Religious fanaticism?

It is quite an image to ponder on. You travel from pristine, beautiful healthy fowl to what if it were to all end tomorrow?

These online events and competitions can bring people to love it and study on the greater ethos of Conservation and those creatures and landscapes within it and to those people that wake up and go to sleep every night with its past, present, and future always on their minds.

Go ahead and put it on your calendar for next year, practice and save up that entry fee. You will not regret it!

If you would like to view images click the link: 

2025 Federal Duck Stamp Contest Entries | Flickr

Federal Duck Stamp Contest & Event Information | U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

Adieu!

Footnote: All images are subject to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service copyright. Images used solely to support contest and spread awareness of wildlife conservation, conservation law, and public service awareness through education and learning.

The State of the World

 

Remember this: There is always room for improvement even in the current Global climate.

Social media allowed the world to keep up with the truth, lies, propaganda and rhetoric at mercurial speeds of different subjects and topics. People, put in power by vote or other, has become the bane of existence for countrymen around the world. The power elected by vote, or power grab have unscrupulously besieged nations with the adjective of our time: Absurdity. The world entered an Age of Absurdity that could rival Alice in Wonderland. The people following in behind this are drunk off of the Wine of Folly that Dionyses himself could not have squeezed from a grape cluster. 

Not unlike the novel, The Counte of Monte Cristo, you have a person in power fueled by his need to avenge himself at any cost; for he has been done a great wrong. If you have ever read this piece of literature, you find our good character, Edmond Dantes, set on the path of avenging false accusation and his subsequent incarceration in the French Chateau d'lf, against himself by his beloved friend, Fernand de Morcerf. 

There are people in this life that can't handle being turned on. The Would-be Sage would tell you to choose who you have around you carefully to remind you that social circles can influence your character and destiny. You do not want to suffer the fate of the unlucky, or unfortunate person.  When you have someone making decisions on your behalf without your input, you could be subject to the outcome of whatever that decision is and suffer the consequence in a most painful and violent way. Imagine if the leader does this and you get the brunt of it, how do you think you are going to feel? Trust is a very hard thing to get back once it is lost. Some people throw trust right out the window with little care of the boomerang effect it has.

Why do I bring this topic up on this particular page? 

The behaviors of one followed by the many have become a Great Nothingness that wants to gobble up the world as we know it. It is spilling over into the dominion of the hunter, the fisherman, the hiker, game warden, park ranger, traveler, camper, naturalist, animal activist, botanist, anyone who loves a national or state park, anyone living in the vein of an indigenous spirit, and so on. 

This is an army of people. We pay our state dues to government agencies to have a privilege that is a God given right, along with water. We know it is limited and thus require someone to monitor our intentions to make sure we do right by ourselves, our kids, and the Natural World. Greed and apathy are not options.

So yeah. I am making it my business-unasked and unannounced. I have seen a mass of videos, writings, news reports and the concerned citizen reporting the ever-spiraling news around the Natural World's present state. The bulk of this is influenced by human activity. We live in a stratum of existence where each level is living in its own bubble of affairs with little thought to the effect it has on the other. Within those bubbles are entities inflicting harm based on petty childish lick-backs. 

Power is great but can lose itself when over-extended by fear of being powerless. We must think of what drives the need to seek power and how power can go unchecked and out of control to become a destructive force. 

Do we have to get to a point where we are sitting in the rubble of our own existence before we think it might be a good idea to stop and reassess the trajectory that humanity is going?

The next question should be: where is the character of Jacopo when he faces Edmond on the road he is following? Who are these people that appear to let the misguided soul bent on revenge to destroy his own reputation, good standing, and legacy? Why do they not step in and make reason and commonsense a stop-pause to the potential devastation that there is no back-tracking from?

This is what Jacopo had to say to redirect Edmond from his own disaster:

Jacopo: "I understand you are mad."

Edmond: "My enemies are falling into my traps perfectly."

Jacopo: "Mad your Grace for ignoring this. You have a fortune, a beautiful woman who loves you. Take the money, take the woman, and live your life. Stop this plan. Take what you have won." 

Edmond: "I can't!"

Jacopo: "Why not?"

(Lots of stares)

Jacopo: "I am still your man Zatarra. I swore an oath to protect you. I will protect you even if it means I must protect you from yourself."

If you are a person that votes, now is the time to recognize that what you hold dear is in jeopardy.

 

We need more Jacopos.

Jacopo: "I swear on my dead relatives-and even the ones who are not feeling to good-I am your man forever!"

Adieu!