When we were young- Pat’s Boys

Most photos of Jim you see now have him as a battered old monument: And Tom McGuane looks like a member of the Yale Club, or an old timer rancher, which as a character says in his last book of stories, “is I guess what I’m getting to be.” It may be hard for the …

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Jim Harrison RIP

Jim died today, at 78. “We loved the earth but could not stay.” (Dalva) He was also responsible, more than any other individual, for getting Querencia  the book published. More tomorrow, and more from Tim Murphy, including one for Cat, and a reply for Johnny UK, who is– not sure if Tim realizes-  another Lab …

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Random Doggage

The German dancing girls– dancing with a three legged Anklebiter!

Tim Murphy

In a just world, North Dakota’s Tim Murphy would be not just the Poet Laureate of his beautiful Siberian state, our truest North; he would be the Poet Laureate of the USA. Good (but lesser) honored real poets, like Dana Gioia, know and say this,.. But like any cradle Catholic, even one lapsed or “relapsed”, …

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Petroglyphs– and an eagle– in Chalfant Valley

And some comparable rock art from other places. It wasn’t all disasters on our trip.Jackson  took us to the most remarkable petroglyph site I have seen since Tamgaly, north of Almaty in Kazakhstan, and quite different in subjects and execution. This sampling should give you an idea..        Jackson gives it scale. Many of …

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In need of correction…

From a recent Guardian, as reported in the PLF blog. These children can’t be serious– I have see better reporting by high school students in rural New Mexico…  A review of David Astor: A Life in Print, a biography of the former editor of the Observer, contained a number of errors (20 February, page 7, …

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George

Tomorrow my favorite brother-in-law George goes under the knife for his cancer. He has responded very well to the chemo and radiation; one of his tumors has disappeared, and the other has shrunk. He’s done so well that they made the operation earlier rather than later, and they give him very good prospects for total …

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Found Book

Once or twice, like any person who buys and occasionally sells books, I have  found a book on my shelves that I did not know I had. But only once have I found a really valuable one that I had no recollection of buying, and still don’t. It happened about two “book culls” past, when …

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