David Zincavage sent me this striking image of a Kazakh girl and eagle. The rather formal gold- braided pattern on her coat is common among all the Turkic peoples of Central Asia, from Uzbekistan through Kyrgizstan to the (Kazakh) western “Aimag” of Mongolia. Jack and Niki wore Uzbek versions for their wedding in Santa Fe. …
Month: October 2014
Quotes and a thought
Bear with me… Henry James appears, in this quote from this article , to be on the “Art”, not the “Theory” side: “We must grant the artist his subject, his idea, what the French call his donnée; our criticism is applied only to what he makes of it. Naturally I do not mean that we …
Excavations at the Lost City of DeMille
Long ago, I put up a couple of posts about a unique archaeological site on the California Central Coast: the movie set for Cecil B. DeMille’s 1923 The Ten Commandments buried in the Guadalupe Dunes (has it really been eight years?). I just ran across this article in the LA Times that tells how archaeologists have …
The wilderness next door
Back in the 1970’s Thomas McGuane was giving an interview and was asked why he lived where he lived, in Montana and (then) Key West. One of his reasons was proximity to wilderness and big predators– “megafauna” to use today’s popular term. He cited grizzlies in Montana and a less obvious choice– great sharks in …
Unlikely?
From Lauren McGough: a rather sweet photo of the late Christopher Hitchens that doesn’t fit any stereotypes, just because:
Malcolm
I ma hoping you are all reading Malcolm Brooks’s Painted Horses, at least as much for your pleasure as because he is a friend who deserves it– for why would I be saying such good things about a bad writer? (There is a Russ Chatham story about beautiful women who are not quite as bright …
Quote
Something sent by Teddy Moritz, who read it in a book called Defending Jacob, though the quote itself is from the 1921 textbook A General Theory of Human Violence. Despite its seriousness and truth there is just a bit of an air of Wodehouse in the language… “Let us be practical in our expectations of …
A Familiar Place…
The road runs straight south from the ancient city of Sanliurfa in Turkey (actually “Urfa”– the title is a post- Ataturk designation) to a border, or, in our fraught times, perhaps, a BORDER, like our southern one. The land is almost flat, dry, but productive since the dam on the Euphrates, which drowned may old …
Roman a Clef?
Two characters from John Moore’s Looking for Lynne reading about themselves:
The New York Carriage Horses
Jon Katz is doing such a serious, informed, and fundamental service in documenting what may turn out to be the landmark Animal Rights case of our time* that anyone who breeds, trains, or otherwise is involved with all our ancient ways and “memes” of human- animal interaction should subscribe to Bedlam Farm Journal and get …