Not Even Wrong

“Not even wrong” is a phrase you hear  a lot if you hang out with scientists; it came up constantly last week in conversations with Arthur Wilderson and gunblogger- writer  Nate Fitch (photo below). I think I first heard it when I hung out at MIT — no, I never studied there, just hung out, …

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Quote

“Promoting novels in a soundbite culture is like selling elephants from a gumball machine.” Barbara Kingsolver

Local Artist

Libby’s friend Happy Piasso is a Navajo silvermith who is not always traditional. The belt buckle design is based on a Japanese Goshawk portait in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (notice the red coral eye); the ring is built around a silver bat skull.

Firewood

There is something soul- satisfying about getting firewood when you are in the midst of a real winter… Libby supervises Tyler Scartaccini and Tom Rupenacht’s delivery of a good load of what we call “cedar”. It is actually a juniper but locally the common name is reserved for alligator juniper. This is the species with …

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When Man Becomes Prey

Cat Urbigkit’s newest, When Man Becomes Prey, is extremely relevant to the matter of the home- invader coyote below.* I rather thoughtlessly quipped “Ask Val Geist” because I have been corresponding with him on such matters for years, and the old zoologist’s theories about too- bold urban predators are bedrock. But Cat is a pastoralist …

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Winter

Last moonrise out our front door. I don’t know why coastal people think this is Phoenix… Right or double click to enlarge…

Ataika and her mother in Almaty; Almaty life

Could it be ten years ago? More? Ataika at 6 weeks, in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in Konstantin and Anna Plakhov’s back yard, the day we met her, with mother Oska. A month in our apartment, with days riding around in Askar Raybaev’s (Mitsubishi!) stretch limo; visiting museums and supermarkets and restaurants and archaeologists; then to New …

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Happy New Year Hunt

I try to hunt at least a little on New Year’s Day, which is a bit superstitious (Thanksgiving too, another story). I have been worried that Ataika, best of all dogs, was getting depressed from lack of activity; hell, I was, beleagured by, first, lack of feedback and misleading written advice from the new Rheumatology …

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