Literary Quote

In art, one is not compelled to choose sides, one poet or novelist at the expense of another. Beckett and Larkin are not mutually exclusive tastes. One feels no pressure to be consistent. Aesthetic love is promiscuous without being unfaithful. One loves Swift and Henry James, Italo Svevo and Barbara Pym. Rigorous consistency in matters …

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No Boletes

Our strange hot year and its half broken drought left us no boletes. Below, Bear Trap campground in the San Mateos this weekend, and (see tree for position) 2006.

Muscaria

I actually don’t know many mushroomers; in southern New Mexico, just we and the Armijos, and the blogger MDMN and his wife at Sometimes Far Afield; and since they moved to Roswell we don’t even see them that often. It is a mixed blessing; no “mushroom jams” at the side of the Forest Service roads, …

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Poem

Nero’s Deadline Nero wasn’t troubled when he heard the Delphic Oracle’s prophecy. “Let him beware the age of seventy-three.” He still had time to enjoy himself. He is thirty years old. It’s quite sufficient, the deadline that the god is giving him, for him to think about dangers yet to come. Now to Rome he’ll …

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Quote

Because books contained most of the sorts of answers he hoped to find in life, he became attached to them in their every aspect while very young. He loved their look, their feel, their type, their presence singly or in great quantities, as in libraries. His origins were lost in mystery, so nobody could explain …

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Mycology

Going out to look for Boletus edulis this weekend. Here is a collage from previous years. (I am enjoying these photo posts to set the season; never fear, writing will return soon). I assume any reader knows me; others, in order of appearance: Lib, daughter-in-law Niki Mazzia Frishman, Connie Farmer, Della and Simon Armijo (the …

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Opening day, Dunhill Ranch, with New Mexico Miscellany…

 2012 and 2014 (what were we doing in 2013?), both with no game in the bag, though this year we saw plenty and expect to get some doves, and with luck GOOD quail. Best grass in years, food plants everywhere, cottontails same, and probably more jacks. Deer sign. If we have a snowy winter we …

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A little more photoblogging…

From Scott McNeff,  to cheer us all by demonstrating how a bird (Sharpshin “Boomer”) and a dog (viszla “Fran”, after Fran Hamerstrom) can bond quite on their own. He writes: “… One day last week, “Boomer” caught a bird on the wing – the dog had steadied up at the flush, and I watched as …

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