A topic perfectly–perhaps uniquely–suited to the particular mix of interests here: Who were the first falconers? In a flurry of emails between us, Steve pulling in the expert testimony of his friend John Burchard and adding his own considerable insight; Reid, the ever-sober archeologist, providing lines of evidence from peer-reviewed literature and I wildly speculating …
Author: Matt Mullenix
Note From The Web-Geek
Regular readers (if such people exist) might notice “surprise posts” sometimes popping up beneath bits they’ve already read. Let me explain: Steve’s machine won’t let him post images (I’m sure that’s not personal, but Steve seems skeptical). So I post them but usually after a day’s delay. When they move from edit mode to prime-time, …
LPK Open for Business
There’s a joke among my friends, persistent but no longer very funny after fifteen years, that I’ll eat in only one New Orleans restaurant. It’s not true—I’ll eat anywhere, especially in New Orleans. But if you know The Pizza Kitchen, the one in the Quarter between the old federal mint and the French Market, you …
More On “Daddy Kills…”
This reply from Roseann Hanson of the Alpha Environmentalist sheds some more light in a dark corner:Since Matt wrote that he hadn’t verified the comic book and the website – and, like him, I was hoping it was fake – I went to the site http://www.fishinghurts.com/ that’s listed on the cover of the comic. Lo …
Message from the Frontier
Every phone call from New Orleans is of interest. Andrea, first introduced in this post, surprised me yesterday with a call from the Garden District where she now lives and plans to stay for a couple years at least. It’s not the same place she remembers, says Andrea, having moved to the city just weeks …
Daddy Kills Animals
My friend Russ (a local attorney, falconer and father of two) sent this interesting image from PETA, Inc. …For the sake of this post, I’ll give PETA credit for the art but admit I didn’t check for independent verification. In its continuing battle for the next generation of paid subscribers, this well-recognized (but poorly known) …
Seeing Is Believing
My first impression of New Orleans, circa summer of 1986: This is a dirty city. I was sixteen, traveling with my friend Ricky, who was half a generation my senior and my falconry mentor. He warned me about the place. “No good looking women, either.” We were still half an hour’s drive from our destination, …
John Carlson On Penguins
Wildlife biologist John Carlson, last seen in a tux in Antarctica (go here for reference), offers some reasons why penguins are admirable, despite the fact they are not “cute:” …I totally agree with the young lady concerning the nasty nature of penguins, but I also feel I must defend the little buggers too. Any wild …
On Falconry
My introduction to Steve’s writing was from the falconry side of it, a popular article in Smithsonian, sometime in the mid-80s. I was surprised to know anyone wrote so well about the sport, then surprised again to discover he writes well about a lot of things. I’m sure various pigeon fanciers, gourmands, world travellers, writers, …
Stranger in a Strange Land
Reading Wendell Berry’s collected stories, That Distant Land, is like viewing a geologic record of American culture—or maybe its medical record from birth to an early death. Berry writes the history of fictional farming town Port William, Kentucky, from the 1880s forward. Whether his period representations are accurate, I don’t have the credentials to know, …