We figure you were about sixteen-and-a-half when you passed away on Monday. I don’t need to tell you about the immense number of people whose lives you touched over those years. You were there and you had that experience, conscious for every moment, until your final day. What you may not know, is the impact you had on the world – because you were good. I wanted to tell you why you were so special.
Did you know we may never have met if it weren’t for the sad death of a puppy? My partner Jackie and I adopted a very young Pit Bull mix puppy from the Humane Society in Florida, where you’re from as well. She was only a couple of weeks old and surely she’d have been as sweet as you, as being a Pit Bull doesn’t mean she’d have been a bad dog. But tragically she died within a couple of weeks. Turns out her whole litter was missing organs, purportedly due to inbreeding, and she was the last of them to die. It was sad, but that door closing quickly led to you being brought into my life.
I’m not a dog expert. Maybe some dogs are really born bad, but I’d be willing to be that a bad dog is usually thanks to a bad owner. Not necessarily that the owner is purposefully abusive, but perhaps just ignorant, not realizing the consequences their actions or inaction might have on their dog. Perhaps they also underestimate animal intelligence. I always presumed you understood me and that you were smart. You never disappointed me.
Photo from September 2004 – you were about six months old.
When I got you in 2004 I did some research into dog training methods. I came across the “no free lunch” method and it felt right. Dogs need to be in a hierarchy – they are a pack animal. The “no free lunch” method is all about establishing the dog’s position as beneath the humans and rewarding it with love for its good behavior. Unlike independent-minded humans, a dog needs to be able to find its place and be comfortable there. In your case, you were directly beneath humans and on top of the pack of dogs, ever the alpha.
“No Free Lunch” is simple and effective. Anytime you wanted something, you had to give me something first. When you sat, I said “good sit”, and praised you. I gave you love and attention – not food, as some do when attempting to train their dog. So, any opportunity I had, I’d employ “no free lunch”. If you wanted to go outside, I’d ask you to sit first. Same thing when we’d come back inside the house. If we were playing with a toy or something, I might ask you to sit before giving it back to you. We quickly expanded to a multitude of things you could do in order to get what you wanted.
I figured you were smart, so anything you did that I named with “good” in front of it, I presumed you remembered the word and its associated act the very first time I spoke it. I don’t think you ever disappointed that expectation. Of course, just because I said “no free lunch” is simple doesn’t mean its always easy. You definitely pushed the envelope to see what you could get away with. You’d act like you didn’t know what I’d said, doing the wrong thing, on purpose. I remember the times when I’d already successfully taught you several commands and you’d run through your whole inventory of tricks – EXCEPT the one I asked you to do, expecting I was going to give you what you wanted. You were frequently testing me. Training a dog with the “no free lunch” method, in my experience, requires significant discipline on the part of the trainer. You were trying to beat me at the game and I had to hold firm on not giving you the thing you wanted, no matter how adorable you were.
Eventually, you were performing multiple tricks on command in order to do special things, like receive a meal. You could sit, stand, roll over, wait, come, lay down, roll over, bow, give kisses, speak, shake right, shake left, look, back up, and probably some more I don’t recall off the top of my head. At some point, you realized that you were well fed and you weren’t going to run out of food, so we moved to an open bowl where we just kept adding to it daily and you decided how much to eat and when.
Renee Spinella and Jazzy on the UCC Rainbow Bench!
You were indeed quite beautiful. You regularly received compliments from total strangers who frequently commented that you had an unusually expressive face and raved about how pretty you were. You had collected a large number of fans including neighbors, libertarian activists, people in the area lucky enough to encounter you, and even people on the internet who watched you on the Free Talk Live Jazzycam during our nightly radio shows. You mostly slept through the shows, but hey, talk radio’s not for everyone. Free Keene blogger Garret Ean even named you Keene’s #1 Dog Activist and you deserved it. You were regularly my secret weapon to get hundreds of Keene State College students every year to accept CopBlock know-your-rights flyers. You participated in and helped bring attention the United Church of Christ’s rainbow bench situation, were a regular attendee of the Porcupine Freedom Festival and Forkfest, the official greeter at Keenevention, and of course were at my side through countless instances of freedom activism and beyond.
Even more impressive was that bulk of your amazing activism & outreach career came in your senior years, since you didn’t move back in with me until you were 10. When Jackie and I broke up in 2006, after being with you and training you for those first two years, I chose to let you go. They say if you love something, let it go. I love you and I loved her, and I’d always rather a breakup go as smoothly as as possible, so I made the choice to let Jackie have you. As it turned out, she was unable to take care of you immediately, so we got to spend another six months together, until Jackie was finally ready, then I sadly gave you to her. That happened to be right around the time when I moved to New Hampshire as part of the NH Freedom Migration. (more…)
Longtime democrat Cheshire county sheriff Eli Rivera better look out – there’s a new challenger this year in the form of “the Anarchist Shemale”, Aria DiMezzo. In 2018 she ran as the libertarian candidate for Cheshire sheriff in a three-way race against multiple term incumbent Rivera and his longtime losing republican opponent, Earl Nelson. This year, 2020, Nelson did not file and Aria, who’d been planning to run for state rep as a republican decided instead to file in the sheriff’s race. It’s going to be epic, for sure! Stay tuned to Free Keene for the latest.
Want a yard sign to show your support? They are available now! Reach out to Aria directly via the contact info at her campaign site, Aria4Sheriff.com. Don’t miss her previous video, which was all about how to sell Bitcoin online.
It’s official. New Hampshire voters will for the first time be able to cast a vote for Nobody for governor. Sick of Sununu and his insanely destructive “stay at home” lockdown where he tries to micromanage everyone’s businesses? Do you wish New Hampshire was actually a live-free-or-die place instead of an insane authoritarian medical state? Nobody should be your candidate of choice during the September primary.
Here’s footage of Nobody filing first for the republican primary gubernatorial election for 2020 and his answers to why he’s running and how differently he’d handle the COVID-19 situation from the tyrant-King Sununu:
Vist ElectNobody.com and vote for Nobody on the republican primary ballot on September 8th, 2020. Remember, if you’re registered as undeclared you can declare as republican when you go to vote, cast your ballot, then undeclare again as you leave the room.
Recently due to the ridiculous and tyrannical COVID crackdown on freedom that we’ve seen globally over the last two months, Murphy’s Taproom in Manchester closed its doors and the area’s longest-running Cryptocurrency Vending Machine (CVM) had to be moved to the other Murphy’s location in Bedford. Now, a month later, the CVM is back at Murphy’s Taproom in downtown Manchester at 494 Elm St as they prepare to reopen on Monday to their regular hours of 11:30am-Midnight, seven-days-a-week!
Originally installed back in 2016, the General Bytes brand CVM has been offering Bitcoin (BTC), DASH, Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and most recently Monero (XMR) to the community at competitive rates, with unparalleled privacy. Since then, the area has seen close to a dozen competing CVMs spring up, many of which are severely limited on the amount available to purchase and invasive of users’ privacy.
Given the economic ruin being imposed by the federal and state government gangs, now may be a really good time to start learning about and acquiring cryptocurrency. The CVM in Manchester makes acquiring crypto as simple as putting cash in a vending machine. If you’re new to crypto, install some wallet software like Edge Wallet or Exodus Wallet and drop by Murphy’s Taproom any day to purchase some cryptocurrency.
Mayoral Candidate Nobody and City Council Candidates Ian Freeman and Robert Call toke up at Central Square in 2019.
Yesterday, New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu announced that a “stay-at-home” order would be going into effect at 11:59pm tonight. As though he hadn’t already damaged New Hampshire businesses and economy with his previous tyrannical orders, this one instructs all “non-essential” businesses to close, putting even more people out of work.
Sununu claimed on his facebook post announcing the “order” that disrupting Granite Stater’s daily lives is only done in the greatest of emergencies. Really? This Coronavirus thing isn’t even as bad as the flu yet – even if you go by the government numbers, which of course are in no way trustworthy.
What is happening is government goons are grabbing power as quickly and as firmly as they can, and they are using fear to do it. It’s the same old scam, but this time they are going farther than ever. Though Sununu hasn’t gone as far or as hard as New York, he’s made it clear that “Live Free or Die” is just an empty slogan. Sadly, the fearmongering works, and many people are begging to be told what to do under the auspices of safety.
Tonight, Keene-area libertarians will be commiserating and protesting our lost freedoms, by gathering in Central Square at 12:01am, after Sununu’s “order” goes into effect. We will be bringing back a classic event from about a decade ago called “Keene Nightcap”, where participants are encouraged to bring a mind-altering substance to enjoy in the company of others.
Though Sununu doesn’t deserve much credit for his tyrannical moves, at least there are a couple of loopholes in the stay-at-home “order”, which may actually make such a gathering allowed, so long as people practice so-called “social distancing”. That said, it sure would be outrageous for police to arrest people who voluntarily choose to hug each other. If you’re not scared, come on out and join us tonight at midnight!
Nobody tokes at the Concord state house 420 – AP Photo
“Nobody”, the New Hampshire candidate for governor challenging incumbent Chris Sununu in the republican primary has already gotten coverage in the Boston Globe for his announcement of an event to challenge Sununu’s outrageous ban on free assembly of over 50 people. Actually, as I am writing this article, Sununu just announced at a press conference that he’s now restricting gatherings to no more than TEN people. We’re still waiting on the written “order”, but it will likely be posted here to the governor’s website later.
Last week, Sununu announced multiple “executive orders” that destroyed significant freedoms in New Hampshire, like the freedom to run a restaurant or bar as he threatened business owners if they dare to allow customers to eat or drink in their establishments. The hospitality industry is severely damaged as a result, with all servers out of work, volume of orders significantly down, and many restaurants choosing to close down completely as a result. It is an attack on the right to serve our neighbors who wish to take whatever risk and go out to eat. People who wish to quarantine themselves are free to do so without a “order” from the governor but those who wish to continue living a normal life or run their business are being threatened by state agents if they do, all under the excuse of “public health”.
Now-Illegal Gathering of Over a Dozen in Keene, Yesterday
On his official campaign blog, ElectNobody.com, Nobody announced the civil disobedience event and reminded people where the state’s supposed motto came from: “Live free or die; death is not the worst of evils.” – General John Stark. Before last week, New Hampshire was not a free state, but now all illusions of freedom have been completely wiped away and it’s become all-out tyranny. Something must be done. It’s time to stand up for the freedom to assemble.
Here is an event to which you can RSVP at Liberty.menu – please do. Bring your friends, signs, and your video cameras. See you at the state house steps at 2pm, Wednesday April 1st. Maybe we’ll go up and pay a visit to Sununu’s office while we’re there too!
