Old Drum

I was thinking about my unsuccessful hunt on Sunday, and how totally unaffected by my failure was my dog Rina. She was just as happy at the end of the hunt as she was at the beginning, and was still busy finding birds long after my hawk had given up trying to catch them. I …

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Winner

…..of the January odd-ball band name contest. Salt Martians?

Glimpse of the Future

Have Toyota Prius taxi-cabs made it to your town yet? This is the first one I’ve seen here. Actually, my previous general observation about taxis in this town has been what a high percentage here are made by Mercedes-Benz.

More Public Art

Last Fall I posted on some unusual sidewalk art that we sometimes see here in town, but I was taken aback at this inflatable, multi-tentacled, organic-looking thing installed on the top of an art gallery downtown. I suppose it might have been put up in honor of the annual Santa Barbara Film Festival that had …

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Letter To a Friend

Like catch-and-release fly fishing, there is such a thing as catch-and-release falconry. It is not so widespread a practice among falconers as it is among anglers, but its practitioners espouse many of the same arguments in support of it. For what it’s worth, I strongly disapprove. This week I received a very cordial letter (actual …

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More Maynard Dixon

I have continued reading the book about Maynard Dixon that I discussed in an earlier post and discovered that in the spring of 1930 he spent some weeks sketching and painting near the town of Tehachapi, California. Tehachapi is set in the Tehachapi Mountains, the southernmost range of the Sierra Nevada, and is a beautiful …

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PETA and the Gay Sheep

They just won’t quit! Margory Cohen just sent me a link to this NYT piece on how PETA has distorted the research efforts of a biologist working with sheep, leading to misrepresentations of his work and even death threats! “Dr. Roselli, a researcher at the Oregon Health and Science University, has searched for the past …

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Flight Medal?

You may have read about the National Guardsmen who fled their post under the threat of invasion by armed intruders from Mexico and are now being rewarded for it. Reader Bruce Douglas suggests a proper medal:

Evil Wolves? (and Other Predators)

Reid sent LAT article on wolves returning to Germany which seems to indicate that wolves are as polarizing there as here. “..Joachim Bachmann, a hunter with a wall full of trophies, is not so lyrical when it comes to the wolf’s reappearance amid the birch and pine of the eastern woods in Saxony. “In today’s …

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Eating Hares

The post below reminded me that I never posted pics of our hare meal a couple ofweeks ago. Here are four quarters of hound- caught hare, courtesy of John Burchard and his dogs. Tigger is becoming extremely intelligent– John tells me she is learning to read. As you can see, utterly un- shredded by the …

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