Arthur Wilderson, who knows more about guns that almost anyone, reminded me that Vladimir Nabokov died 36 years ago this week. After I praised his English, more fluid and colloquial than his only rival as a non- native English- speaking novelist in the language (VN would have said American I think), Arthur agreed: “I was …
Author: Steve Bodio
Storm
The weather is nothing less than hideous. It is the hottest I have seen here; I have experienced daytime temps of 100 once or twice in the past 30 years but it is not cooling off at night, even in our high desert village perch at 6500 feet. It is simultaneously humid and dusty, veiled …
No Expectations?
Not much courage, anyway. From the excellent long essay “Poetry Slam: Or, The decline of American verse”, by Mark Edmundson, in Harper’s for July 2013: “I found myself once talking with a fiction writer, a woman of considerable achievement and reputation, about the MFA program in which she taught. I put forward the idea that …
Classic
Lucky John Wilson has been presented with a classic TR3; a late one with the better TR4 engine at that, but with the “wasp- waisted” body that always reminds me of a miniature Jag XK120. Don’t you think so? His expedition to bring it from Ohio to NM was more arduous than planned. He had …
Query
I need a new header quote; the current one is one of the best ever but I like to rotate them. I have seen many good quotes but none universal or broad enough; they would qualify for a post but not as a header. With a readership like ours surely somebody can come up with …
Another Litter
These are longhaired working mini- dachshunds, descended from Teddy Moritz’s dogs, like the late Diamond Lil but with a different coat; these will resemble short legged tazis. Watch this space. Babies Relatives, hunting with Teddy:
Two Falconers
Tim Gallagher, whose new book Imperial Dreams I have reviewed below, is visiting England and just sent this fine portrait of two generations of falconers. John Loft, on the right, is the living master of merlins,; he literally wrote the book on them, A Merlin for Me, a delightful but almost daunting combination of experience, …
Summer Sound
La cigale ayant chanté Tout l’été … (La Fontaine) Wyoming cicadas photographed in Laramie by Carlos Martinez del Rio.
Appleby
Reader Darrell Mason brought this link on the Raven Gun and its history with the Tower of London to my attention. In the 80s I corresponded quite a bit with Malcolm Appleby, who engraves a lot of things, not just guns. At the time he was doing his series of magical “totem” guns for David …
Wildlife In Your Yard
In the depths of the drought (which is real, even if our town well crisis is man- made), wildlife comes to town. Human activity tends to make a green oasis composed of the non- native plants that come with civilization, not to mention gardens, flowers, leaky wells, and other sources of plant nourishment. Deer and …