Just got a photo of Ataika’s daughter Cleo from the Beregovoys. She looks remarkably like Atai. And for any pigeon fanciers, here is one of my new pairs, gold- necked Catalonian tumblers:
Category: Uncategorized
Book Pile
Dr. Hypercube mentioned his book pile in passing, and I told him I had not one but several. I love seeing what others are reading and asume readers of this site like the idea, too. So: Also a bookcase slice I took a while back. Obvious what part of the library this is taken in. …
Little Red Riding Hood Was Right
It seems an article of faith in American environmental circles that wolves are harmless. While (until recently) there was no record of modern North American wolves harming anyone, a bit of research shows this to be an anomalous situation. Wolves of the exact same species preyed on humans in Europe and Russia; wolves even smaller …
Working Like a Dog
In an email exchange following my post on Meet Mr. Grizzly, Gregg, Steve and I wondered whether such dogs as Stevens describes could be made today. Your opinions invited and welcome! Matt: “My question is: Without the lifestyle (ranching, cowboy-ing, big game hunting on horseback, life pre-electric and pre-internal-combustion) setting the challenge and the training …
Orson Scott Card on American Car Culture
Find linked at 2Blowhards a column by sci-fi writer Orson Scott Card pondering the elephant in the garage: how car culture impacts us, literally, and how a different sort of American landscape might look. Steve, Reid and I are all sci-fi fans of various pedigree. We spend a lot of time puzzled about how things …
Meet Mr. Grizzly
I’ve been dreaming of deadlines, typing memos and organizing items on my desk in my sleep. This has made of Matt a dull (or duller) boy. But like the time, three weeks after my twins were born, when I ate six grapefruits in a sleep and vitamin-deprived orgy of gorging, I’ve just devoured the book …
Excuses & Around the Web
Bear with me a bit, dear readers! I have just begun my eagle book, mentioned below, and am stll shaking down a schedule. Also doing last reread of my collaboration- in translation of Cherkassov’s 1865 Notes of an East Siberian Hunter with Vladimir — a labor of love that will not be an easy sell! …
Roseann is back!
Three Martini Lunch returns!
The Barnsdall-Rio Grande Service Station
I’ve always admired the architecture of this old abandoned service station, located on West Hollister Avenue in Goleta, out west of Santa Barbara. It was built in 1929, and must be one of the few, if not the only, remaining example of a service station built in the Mission Revival style so popular in the …
More on the Antikythera Mechanism
The latest issue of New Yorker has a longish piece on the Antikythera Mechanism that I posted on last fall.