Steve has an article in the September/October number of Gray’s Sporting Journal, titled “The Power of the Dog”. Sorry this doesn’t link to the article, available only in dead tree version. And you should check out Pluvialis’ review of Mark Cocker’s “Crow Country” in the New Statesman. I’m doing my best to save them from …
Month: August 2007
Said Spider to the Hummingbird
While it is a documented fact that everything is larger in Texas, some things in neighboring Louisiana are also large. For example, take the Golden Silk Spider. Picking up my new hawk from his breeder a few weeks ago, I spotted one sitting in her characteristically large web strung between two hawk rearing pens. These …
Manioc at the Ceren Site
The NY Times and the Denver Post both have articles today on a significant archaeological discovery at a prehistoric Mayan site in El Salvador. Dr. Payson Sheets of the University of Colorado has been excavating at the Ceren site since the late 1970s, a 1,400 year-old site with miraculous preservation due to its burial by …
Sheep Dogs and Draft Horses
Yesterday Connie and I went to some sheep dog trials at the Colorado Horse Park, a large, beautifully maintained, multi-purpose facility that is just under two miles from our house. Though we’ve owned herding dogs for years and seen these sorts of events on television, it was our first time to see one in person. …
Snakes in a Box
This story tells of two Denver men who planned to murder a man who owed them $60,000 by forcing him to put his legs in a box filled with rattlesnakes. Sounds like I moved to a tough neighborhood.
Recommended Reading
Fellow falconer, writer and digger-to-dogs, Teddy Moritz of New Jersey, offers her recent fave reads and allows us to share them with you: “After reading Lyall Watson’s wonderfully informative book ‘Elephantoms‘ about his youth in South Africa and the disappearing herd of elephants, plus a knowledgeable but shadowy native figure named Kamma, I read his …
International Falconry Festival
A carnival of pics of things we love here. Thanks to Jevgeni Shergalin.
Zaca Lake Fire
The LA Times today reports on the Zaca Lake Fire that has burned 116,000 acres in the Los Padres National Forest north of Santa Barbara. The fire has been burning since July 4 and is about to spread east into Ventura County. The USFS estimates that it will be sometime early in September before it …
A Farewell to Alms
Last week the NY Times’ estimable Nicholas Wade had a review of a new book by economic historian Gregory Clark, A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World. Apparently the crux of the book deals with how the English economy was able to benefit from technological change during the Industrial Revolution at …
Fear and Loathing
In a recent comment, Black Dog Lady (BDL) said of animals, “They are born knowing.” A great line that reminded me of another one from Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, which my kids are listening to on CD: “God had given men reason, by which they could find out things for themselves; but He gave animals …