A good XKCD on one of our favorite subjects from Peculiar:
Month: May 2013
James Wentworth Day and big shoulder guns
Perhaps because I grew up on the New England coast, living a hunter- gatherer’s life and shooting magnum twelves and tens like my father before me, I have always been fascinated by England’s big bores– defined here as the gauges above ten that were made illegal when the first legislation to protect waterfowl from commercial …
Punt Guns
I have been in touch recently with Pete Humphreys, son of the man who brought Roaring Emma, the sporting writer James Wentworth Day’s 140- year old magnum 8 bore Joseph Lang, back to England. Pete is an all- round sportsman himself and heir to a rich heritage, especially in wildfowling, and a font of what …
On losing a dog
Unfortunately, as Kipling and (even) Ogden Nash knew, a recurrent event given our disparate life spans. Tom McIntyre’s Kaycee died suddenly at four last week, after a joyous bout of play. Tom reflects: ” P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }The death of a dog teaches what a tenuous, suspended by a silk thread thing life is. …
What is this?
A teaser– much coming but may take a few days; click to enlarge.
New Tom Russell Video
I have always loved this song. New album now available here.
Quote
From Michael Gruber’s blog, true and witty but not funny: “I don’t much like to talk about my work while it’s in progress or read reviews or give encouragement to people trying to enter a profession I know to be a miserable way to make a living, with a premature death rate that compares unfavorably …
My computer has just had a mental breakdown!
Apologies. Actually the blog and webs seem fine. The mail and some other things are off. I get but cannot receive mail (I get large attachments so that is not the trouble). Regular correspondents are being dumped in the spam file. And oddest of all, I can download photos from my camera, but cannot edit …
Gun Quiz Solution
It was (obviously?) an 1895 Winchester, most famed as Teddy Roosevelt’s lion gun in Africa, using its odd heavy load, the .405 Winchester. It was a relatively strong action, and because it had a box magazine* rather than the typical tubular ones on most leverguns, it could shoot modern spitzer type loads like the .30- …
Miles City is still in Montana*
I just saw the video below and am trying to give it some publicity. It is ostensibly an interview with Miles City writer, rancher, and horseman John Moore about the Miles City Bucking horse sale, but he touches on the strange way that difficult life skills have been transmuted into (often expensive) play. When he …