I want a couple free to use before the fateful 4000! One on his own death by critic Clive James, who has been entertaining us with the subject for several years and three books- really! And a funny one by my old friend Marilyn Taylor in Wisconsin, who used to hire me to run …
Month: March 2016
They’re Killing Pigeons Again
Tyrants end up killing pigeons; I don’t know why, but they do. Franco almost made the traditional old- fashioned competition “thief” pouters of southern Spain, like the Rafenos I keep, extinct. The Taliban’s mere sixteen “Commandments”, including ones against sorcery and NOT growing beards, include one, the fourth,”To prevent keeping pigeons and playing with birds. …
Harrison Poem
They used to say we’re living on borrowed time but even when young I wondered who loaned it to us? In 1948 one grandpa died stretched tight in a misty oxygen tent, his four sons gathered, his papery hand grasping mine. Only a week before, we were fishing. Now the four sons have all run …
Another Wind River Poem
From Tim: Wind River Justice Alan riding his first horse from Big Sandy to celebrate his thirty-seventh birthday: his mare reared in the lodgepoles when a spruce grouse flushed and nearly pitched him down a switchback. My own gelding stampeded through a meadow, and our young wrangler called those ponies “gentled.” We braved Pyramid’s boulders, …
Wolves, Brucellosis, & Elk
Wolves have blown elk off western Wyoming’s elk feedgrounds on numerous occasions – it’s something that we’ve come to expect with Wyoming’s protected wolf population. Jim and I learned about the 19 elk that had been killed in one night by a wolf pack on an elk feedground in the northern portion of the county …
When we were young- Pat’s Boys
Most photos of Jim you see now have him as a battered old monument: And Tom McGuane looks like a member of the Yale Club, or an old timer rancher, which as a character says in his last book of stories, “is I guess what I’m getting to be.” It may be hard for the …
More Tim–and Johnny UK, and Kazakhs, and the Urbigkits
Tim says to John Hill, on “Huntress”: “Johnny UK, my late partner Alan Sullivan, who attended the death, always choked up at that last line.” I agree, but the one that really gets me is the end of “Perro del Amo”: Vaya con Dios, love/ you were the dog of God.” Here is the Magdalaenian …
Jim Harrison RIP
Jim died today, at 78. “We loved the earth but could not stay.” (Dalva) He was also responsible, more than any other individual, for getting Querencia the book published. More tomorrow, and more from Tim Murphy, including one for Cat, and a reply for Johnny UK, who is– not sure if Tim realizes- another Lab …
A Mongolian Progression….
Most books by Roy Chapman Andrews are interesting, but inexpensive. In his day he was a popular writer, and even early titles like Whale Hunting with Gun and Camera (!) and Camps and Trails in China are not too hard to find. Not so The New Conquest of Central Asia. As it is the record …
Random Doggage
The German dancing girls– dancing with a three legged Anklebiter!