Return from Tanzania

Connie and I returned last night from an amazingly wonderful trip. In the coming days I will put a lot of material up on the blog on some of the experiences we had while there. Like watching these two old bulls devour an acacia tree in the Endumet Wildlife Area. Or seeing this dark-patterned giraffe …

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Quote

Via Jim Spencer: “”Write it, damn you, write it! What else are you good for?” (James Joyce)

“Better than Bacon”

This painting, in which Carl Rungius does his own version of a Charley Russell theme, is in the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole. Most of Rungius’s late great oils  have a distinctive theme or style, which I characterized rudely to two of my friends, art historian Jim Moore and museum curator Toby …

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Image again

Here is the full image of the painting that contains the detail I blogged on below. I await the book, but as far as I know it is in Chinese, so it may still be enigmatic. It is both beautiful and sinister, and its title is “Clearing the Mountains”. Who is clearing whom out of …

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Quote

“No science without fancy. No art without facts” (Vladimir Nabokov, via Carlos Martinez del Rio)

Old Timers

Our annual fiesta seems to have taken on new life, and despite threatening (pre?) monsoon  clouds staggering  by, nothing is getting  cancelled. It SMELLS like O t’s. Now we just need the metronymic rhythm of 4 pm daily storms (with hail!) and maybe this will be the best “real”  rain in a decade… Pics, random …

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Upcoming Trip

Connie and I are leaving later this week on a two-week trip to Tanzania. Our itinerary includes visits to Tarangire National Park, Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Oldupai (used to be Olduvai) Gorge, and Serengeti National Park.  We hope to have lots of photographs and stories to share when we return.

Pedersen Rifle

But for  the preferences of General MacArthur and a big supply of WWI Springfields, we might have had a more elegant, if complicated, rifle for WWII than the Garand. Nathaniel F, gunblogger, scholar, and expert on military weapons and their history, first showed me a cartridge for the legendary Pedersen when he visited with Arthur …

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