Wolf hunt with Berkut

Absolutely the best movie of hunting with eagles in Olgii I have ever seen. This is exactly how it is.. And it is the first time that filmmakers have caught an actual successful hunt for a wolf with eagles. All the others are “bagged”, and I can’t watch them. This is also exactly where we …

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Bobo

Yes, we have the new pup, and she is everything we wanted. Even ATAIKA likes her- perhaps she can smell familiar genes. (She is her great aunt). Of course she shreds everything, but she wouldn’t be a tazi if she didn’t… Thanks to Lane Batot, and especially to Philip Bailey and Kerry Cooper, who kept …

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Rockabilly Poetry!

I finally got Effigies II, the  London- published collection of five Native female poets that includes Ungie Davila;  Most are dutiful to OK, but Ungelbah’s are brilliant, partially because she draws upon the  cultural history of New Mexico as seen through the rhinestone – studded red sunglasses and sensibilties of a talented cowpunk artist and …

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Tom Cade

The oldest by a bit of the four Peregrine Fund founders, and the only man among them to be born poor (in the Depression era New Mexico Bootheel), my old  friend Dr Tom Cade is still going strong at nearly ninety, Tim Gallagher caught up to him at the Irish Falconers meet, accompanied by a …

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The Artist’s Son and his Discontents

I published a piece in the Angler’s Journal a way back, on the perils of your father’s being, or wanting in his heart to be, a sportsman and artist when you are one yourself. The published version is available. It is milder and more anodyne than my preferred version, which is as hard as my …

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Fran Hamerstrom

Experimental cut and paste here, from a yet- unfinished autobiographical essay called “A Braid of Memory”  If it works, there will be more, This one refers directly to the one below, and explains Dr Frances  Flint Hamerstrom’s connection to my old grammar school… The Letterman video runs long.Turn it on and jump to her segment. …

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Domenic “Doc” Conca, DDS- 1925- 2016, R.I.P.: on Conca’s Lawn.

 One of my unmentioned mentors died at 91 a couple of days ago: Dr Domenic Conca of Randolph, Massachusetts.  “Doc” was the father of my oldest friend, Michael Conca, who was my schoolmate from first grade through my first year in college (BC: I dropped out), as well as my housemate and partner in a …

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The First Eagle Huntress?

However admirable Ashiolpan seems (and she is), and however fine the movie the Eagle Huntress is (and I suspect it is, and I want to see it), SHE IS NOT THE FIRST EAGLE HUNTRESS. This mistaken belief is particularly promulgated by American reviewers and I know I shouldn’t expect much of them; I should only …

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Flyover Country- Who Knew?

Reading the WSJ, I was startled to encounter two old friends in an unusual context. The relevant passage:  I called Russsell, who is in California and recovering from a shoulder operation ( casting lead- core steelhead lines in deep water for 60 years has got  to have SOME effect!) and he was as bemused as …

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