Perfect Day?

“The most appealing daily schedule I know is that of a turn-of-the-century Danish aristocrat. He got up at four and set out on foot to hunt black grouse, woodcock, and snipe. At eleven he met his friends, who had also been out hunting alone all morning. They converged ‘at one of these babbling brooks,’ he …

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Ain’t Dead Yet 2

!! Have been busy, broke, aNd sufferjng everything from wrong meds to (found, never fear; guess WHO? )lost dogs, to Libby’s becoming, I hope extremely temporarily , a non walking casualty; finally, idiotically, attempting TWO hawks. Nobody could say my life has been boring… More regular blogging will resume soon. Meanwhile a few images and …

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Peter Noone RIP

After a long battle, Peter Noone has finally come to rest… I can only guess how reluctantly. He spent his a whole life in outdoor retail, starting at Berkeley’s pioneering Ski Hut under the legendary catalogue pioneer George Rudolph (I believe they were the first outfitter to have a mail order catologue) ; then joined his …

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Those Who Abide

Sometimes this journal seems to be a chronicle of death and dissolution. This may be natural for 68 year old man with Parkinson’s ticking away in his breast, even if his prospects are better than some people’s. But whatever mortality lies beneath, Querencia is supposed to be a celebration, even when it does obituaries. This …

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Timothy Murphy,1951- 2018; RIP

I cannot do justice to Tim’s many interests and careers here even if it were not late at night. Farmer, businessman; poet and student of poetry, vigorous with unfashionable rhyme and meter (it was said that under the tutelage of his Yale mentor, Robert Penn Warren, he memorized 30,000 lines of Greek and English poetry); adventurer, …

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Robert Valenzuela June 2018 ; RIP

When we first knew Robert well, he was riding high. We called him “The Mayor of the Alley” then, and he ramrodded several Navajo work crews for us to build our yard, garden, loft, and outbuildings. As Libby said wonderingly he was “illiterate” in at least four languages. We met him at a Torres mattanza …

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Quintessence

There are no bird dogs prettier than Elhew poinIters, and no pointers prettier than Daniel Riviera’s. Young Maggie just oozes style, at home and in the field , Aad his slightly older male Ferd, masked against the ubiquitous and deadly foxheads that almost killed him last year {“California, land of killer grass”) And Daniel’s new …

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Ranch kids

John L Moore’s grandaughter learns to castrate from her mother…

Hauksbee?

“…Many of the stories, particularly those set in Simla, shared the high spirits of Departmental Ditties. Simla was Rud’s Illyria, a place where everyone fell in love, usually inappropriately; where identities were mistaken; where tricks were played on the self-regarding and the unwary; and where there were occasional glimpses of a darker undertow. A number …

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