Prairie Mary found this nice paragraph in Cook’s Illustrated: “Home is an overused term but still a powerful idea….The concept of home even applies to horses. In Argentina, gauchos refer to the region where a horse is born as the querencia. (Querer means “to love.”) In the days before fences, a horse would always try …
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PLF
The other New Yorker profile is on the man who, if my arm were twisted, I might claim as my favorite writer of the 20th century. Patrick Leigh Fermor’s life reads like slightly improbable fiction. In his teens he walked from Holland to Istanbul, eventually reulting in two of the best travel books ever written, …
Heroes and Villains
I let my sub lapse for two weeks and the New Yorker publishes articles on two of the most fascinating characters of the 20th century– Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen and Patrick Leigh Fermor. I’ll take “M” first. As an excellent bio by Mark Cocker has it, he was a “soldier, scientist, and spy”. For some reason …
AR Updates
Mercifully, short ones! Loni Hancock, author of the failed bil to ban coursing in California, has this to say: “There was controversy created by people who wouldn’t acknowledge that (field coursing) has nothing to with traditional hunting.” That’s right: A Berkely councilwoman knows what is hunting and what is not, better than all the non- …
Lose Some…
But in Chicago, a similar dog “protection” bill to the LA one I blogged about below has been proposed. Chicago, curiously, is a big “ban” city. It notoriously bans handguns. And last winter it banned all pigeon- keeping (it was formerly one of the great pigeon racing cities, as its old ethnic communities, like those …
Win Some…
I am delighted to report that the California anti- coursing bill, AB 2110 , did not make it out of committee and is dead, at least for this year. Thanks to many California dog people and sportsmens’ associations, and especially to Margory Cohen and John Burchard. This was a victory for more than Californians. But …
Blogs, Eagles, Synchronicity
Eagles suddenly seem to be ganging up on me in some kind of Jungian synchronicity.. First, reading this Odious and Peculiar post this morning, I was directed to an amazing blog by an English evo- bio scientist. It is the best zoological blog out there, period. Try Peculiar’s links for a sample– the wonders of …
Great Quote
Another in the continuing series. This one is from Derb, whose excellent new book on algebra I am reading now. “English persons, therefore, of humanitarian and reformist disposition constantly went out to the Balkan Peninsula to see who was in fact ill-treating whom, and, being by the very nature of their perfectionist faith unable to …
Good News for a Change
The title says it all: “Federal Law Negates D.C.’s Suit Against Gunmakers, Judge Rules”. Washington DC has never figured out that heavy gun control means that only criminals have guns. So they acted sort of like the Bozeman lawmakers in my dog post below, figuring the popular law against making it impossible to sue gunmakers …
Bad News for Wilderness
Reid just sent me a link to this LAT story about energy “corridors” being proposed in the West. It is nothing less than appalling. It begins: “Under orders from Congress to move quickly, the Department of Energy and Bureau of Land Management will approve thousands of miles of new power line and pipeline corridors on …