John Keegan, RIP

The New York Times reported his death yesterday. As the Times obituary states he was widely regarded as “the pre-eminent military historian of his era” and authored more than 20 books. An Englishman, he taught at Sandhurst and was the military affairs editor of The Telegraph for many years. His later books sometimes took a …

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Quote on Writing

From Michael Gruber: “You may wonder, why research at all? It’s fiction, why not make it all up? The reason is that almost all readers have some expertise or experience, and will be irritated beyond reason by boners that they detect, and when they detect them, the bodyguard of truth will be penetrated and they …

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Grizzly wake

Attracted by the foul-smelling carcass of the calf he’d killed the day before, the grizzly bear climbed into the green metal box to resume feeding. As he grabbed the carcass with one huge front paw, the metal door of the cage slammed shut behind him. Trapped, the bear sprawled atop the carcass to wait out …

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Generations

A photo by Jackson taken a couple of weeks ago in Santa Fe, of his grumpy stepfather and inquisitive son– irresistible to me anyway…

Monsoon Clouds

Lately we’ve been getting the summer monsoon flow, bringing moisture in these big clouds up from the Gulf of California. When we’re lucky we get rain out of these in afternoon thunderstorms. As bad as the drought has been we need all we can get and have been fortunate to get rain the last three …

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