PLF 2: Letters from Geoffrey Household

Sadly, I never corresponded with Patrick Leigh Fermor, but I did for many years with the adventurous old “suspense” story writer Geoffrey Household (as so many perceptive critics wrote, he was so much more than that, including a naturalist, a regionalist, and a chronicler of the same old lost Europe that Leigh Fermor also celebrated). …

Read more

Patrick Leigh Fermor 1915- 2011 RIP

Too burnt on obit- writing to write a proper tribute to one of my (and Betsy Huntington’s; she left me all my early first editions; and Q’s) favorite writers and examples of a life well- lived. But readers and nomads everywhere should observe a silent moment: Patrick Leigh Fermor has died at 96 in England. …

Read more

Readings

On a hot dusty day, we buried Patty Adam in Fairview Cemetery on Cerrillos road in Santa Fe, with a small crowd of friends in attendance. The cemetery, on the National Historic Register, is odd, small, old, and dry, with 19th century tombstones and a general air of benign neglect– think New Orleans with prairie …

Read more

Climbing Heritage

As I mention in her mother’s obit below, Libby was a second generation climber and a guide from the Rockies to the Himalayas. Her husband Harry, who died in a “backyard” fall in the Tetons after a far more frightening climb in China, was a serious one. Harry was father to my stepson, wilderness photo- …

Read more

Avian Drama, Home Version

In remote, dirt- road Magdalena, wildlife comes into town. Deer track through the central arroyo, followed by mountain lions. An adolescent lion got himself cornered and darted in the High school yard a couple of years ago; a bear went up an electric pole and was electrocuted the same year. Coyotes challenge the hounds from …

Read more

Gun Butts

Not art photography but: the Ithaca NID 16 gauge, my “Elmer Keith” gun, is back with an authentic 30’s- era Art Deco “Rising Sun” butt pad- wouldn’t have one without it. And the perfect little 20 is also back from Beretta in NY courtesy of Andrew Campbell, with a leather- covered pad that makes it …

Read more

Katharine “Patty” Lucas Adam, 1917- 2011

Libby’s mother, Patty Adam, died June 3, 2011, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She was born on November 23, 1917, to American parents then living in Anking, China. (As many friends know and in one of the coincidences too weird for fiction,she was raised with Betsy’s oldest sister, Jane Huntington; they were the first two …

Read more