From Larry Gavin’s new collection The Initiation of Praise: My Reader My reader is part of a small club like those who fancy terriers and the taking of game to ground. My reader stumbled on this book by accident because of a mistransposed order number or an absent minded librarian that was thinking about fishing …
Author: Steve Bodio
Quote
This one is the only one by Bertholdt Brecht I like, at least outside of his collaborations with Kurt Weill, and one of only two great quotes by diehard Marxists I can remember. Anyone know the other? Hint: it was by the most interesting old Commie ever… Brecht, though: “Would it not be easier In …
Weekend Doggage
The imperturbable Almaty Ataika, Queen of the universe and still looking young, surveys her Brokedown Palace.
Cowboy Humor
Montana writer and third generation rancher John Moore has a good new novel coming– which somehow led to this photo by and of his friend, western cartoonist Wally Bagdgett (who is also a thinly disguised character in the book): I am not sure who wrote the caption… “Wally Badgett, creator of the “Earl” cartoon, announces …
Overland Traveller
My sometime neighbor for almost 20 years, Rolf Magener, is sort of a professional traveler (at least when he is not stopping at the apartment of a Swedish countess in Buenos Aires, where I just sent my copy); two years ago he was sailing across the South Pacific, and he sent me my treasured photo …
Turkmeni Falconry
Some of you know Vadim Gorbatov’s painting of a Turcoman falconer waiting out a sandstorm with tazi and saker. Sir Terence Clarke just sent this excellent little video of hunting there. My Ataika, though born in Kazakhstan, is rather a Turkmeni type. And the falconry is almost just like the kind we practice but for …
Salt Marsh Spring
Sister Karen and brother in law George Graham check in from the Massachusetts coast about their excellent interface with the wild; the sea’s edge borders wilderness even near the biggest cities. George says: “We’ve been enjoying the wake up in our back yard, Great Esker and the Back River. We’ve identified at least three nesting …
Peter Matthiessen, RIP
Peter Mattthiessen has died at 86. the word had been out that he was not well, but he had been a figure on the horizon for all of us who write about nature for a lifetime, and like Patrick Leigh Fermor it seemed he might go on forever… I thought as a writer he could …
Weekend Doggage
Shiri just took these photos of the ever- amazing Larissa. Can’t believe how she has blossomed since she got out from under the domination of her slightly tyrannical mother Ataika. It also shows the skills and stamina our dogs must display to hunt successfully in this harsh country. Go Riss! And I am starting to …
Motto
It was “Isaak Dinesen’s” as well as one that was quoted a bit in many venues in the 70’s. Can’t fault it: Navigare necesse est; vivere non est necesse… From Plutarch , if a borrowing; even then; also recently attributed to everyone up to William Burroughs, who did not say it first– though he used …