About a month ago, Tim Murphy, de facto poet laureate of North Dakota if not of the entire west, sent me this poem teasing me for not going hunting with him this year. Before I reply or even make a wisecrack, I got the following: “Dear Hunting Buddies, I have Stage IV cancer in my …
Month: January 2018
The “Mother of Dragons” gets her tattoo
Lauren’s amazing ink:
Mass Saiga die- off
Two thirds of the population of the Saiga, a Central Asian Antelope, died almost simultaneously. The event was somewhere in seriousness between the Indian vulture crisis and the death of the passenger pigeon. Turns out it was a seemingly benign combination of humidity and a previously harmless microbe. A harbinger of things to come? Thanks …
Why I like the “Plain Gun”.
The seriously flawed first edition of Good Guns, rife with errors and badly illustrated by me, i(s a …perhaps justifiably… rare book. But it does contain a line drawing of the Platonic ideal of a boxlock gun, and despite the pernicious French influence, as seen in the exaggeratedly curved”shadbelly” stock, it looks a lot like …
Eulogy
My wonderful sister Anita’s eulogy for Mary. I would not change a word. “If thou of fortune be bereft, and in thy store there be but left two loaves, sell one, and with the dole, buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.”- John Greenleaf Whittier This quote by John Greenleaf Whittier was my mother’s favorite and …
” I ain’t dead yet!”
I cant help but think the cowboy defiance is a little forced- but here are Libby and me at the Bar last night to celebrate her 71’st, Parkinson’s, broken teeth, and all.
A few Tributes to Mary
From Margory Cohen: “dear Steve – Thoughts with you. When my Ma died, I felt it in my skin. I still do – They stay with us, they’re in us. And we remember – and that’s the best tribute. Being remembered. Please take care of you. Annie Davidson: I was sorry to read your mother …
Because it Can
Courtship of Satyr Tragopan:
Building art by Mary
Mary often accepted architectural art projects for money, and word got around, so it wasn’t all houses for vain rich people. Easton, Mass, where we grew up, has more architecture by the Gilded age architect Richardson than Boston, because he was a friend of the Ames family, the town squires. Many years later, Mary bcame …
Good Bones
Several people have sent me links to Nora Krug’s Washington Post essay on Maggie Smith’s poem “Good Bones”- you know, the one that begins “Life is short/ Though we keep it from our children” (sorry, no link- still hypertext challenged). Although I agree with everything she says, and recommend the essay, which also features Smith …