The Collard family of Glendale, California received a notice from the Fire Department ordering them to trim foliage from oak and sycamore trees around their house to lessen fire danger. The Collards agreed that their trees needed a trim and hired a tree service to do the work for $3,000. In the midst of the …
Month: November 2007
Updike on Dinosaurs
Novelist John Updike writes a good, short piece in the latest National Geographic on some of the “new” (and weirder) dinosaurs recently discovered. I mention this because topic and author tug at several lines of interest running through this blog, and because I’m fascinated by literary journalism, whatever you call it, the journalism written by …
Thanksgiving in Texas
My annual hunting trip to the Texas Panhandle is the highlight of my season. It splits the hawking year neatly in two: the building-up period, through late summer and fall, and the slide downward from winter into spring and the summer molt. Often the weather on the high plain reflects this split. Last week, we …
American on Horseback
If you hear of this fellow riding into your town, I hope you’ll tip your hat and feed his horse. From the story by AP’s Carl Manning: “When rancher Bill Inman decided to show there’s more to America than the gloom-and-doom on the nightly news, he hopped on his horse and started riding. “And riding, …
Neolithic Fashionplates
This report on excavations at a 7,500 year-old neolithic/chalcolithic site in southern Serbia doesn’t tell us lots of new information about that period in Europe. The article says this site may push back the initial date of the Copper Age by 500 years but doesn’t really give you enough information to assess the claim. However, …
Paris Hilton Tries to Help Drunk Elephants
The headline for this piece was so bizarre I couldn’t let it go. So now she’s the celebrity spokesperson for a big problem in India: “Activists said a celebrity endorsement such as Hilton’s was sure to raise awareness of the plight of the pachyderms that get drunk on farmers’ homemade rice beer and then go …
Thoughts on Taking The Dog
I’ve written a couple emails to friends explaining why, for Pete’s sake, I’m not taking Rina to Texas. My answers are many and are all over the map, which suggests to me that none of them are exactly what I mean to say. The bottom line is that I am afraid for her safety on …
Morning Run– Sunday
When we have been to busy to go out more than a couple of times a week, like now, our hounds get pretty rowdy. Plummer barks and the tazis “sing” all the way to Lee’s. This AM we went to the ranch. It is finally getting cooler. They chased one cottontail which immediately went down …
Tomatoes
Here are some heirloom tomatoes grown by Mr. and Mrs. Peculiar this summer in Colorado. The big ones in particular may have been the best I ever ate. It occurs to me that I, Libby, and the P’s were all born in cities, Lib and I in big ones, but we were not raised in …
Hounds
The Asian tazi gene pool continues to expand– Vladimir now has three, in addition to mine and their offspring. Puppy Urtak is somewhat related to my dogs, and is going to be huge. Here he is at only four months with the full- grown female, Adel, who is closely related to mine. Timur, a young …