In 2010 Tim Gallagher went to Mexico to investigate the plight of the Imperial woodpecker. Various border hands I knew, like Chuck Bowden and J P S Brown (who had owned a ranch in the Sierra Madre) warned us that it might be a very dangerous trip. Tim went anyway, and encountered ecological devastation and …
Politics
Favorite conservative: : Michael Oakeshotte Favorite Bolshevik: Leon Trotsky Favorite Anarchist: Prince Pyotr Kropotkin
Creeps and Don Roberto
This painting is by Joseph Crawhall, a British artist who lived in Spain (in a brothel), stayed drunk, and died at 34. Nevertheless, he seemed to be a happy man. Of him, Don Roberto wrote : Although he spoke to no one, it was evident that he had seen not only every person in the …
They Had Feathers, Damnit!
…was what I wanted to call my last article for Cornell’s Living Bird A new team at the magazine, all under forty as all such people are, had decided that they could eliminate some of the magazine’s perpetual debt by firing all the nature writers. Nature writers do not make enough to relieve any excess …
Four Books
There of my friends have written good new books about the southwest recently. I hope to have more to say about them later; I thought you should at least know they existed. From Dennis Michael McCarthy, a novelist, biologist, and lawyer, comes the best treatment of Billy the Kid I’ve known in a long time. …
Andrew Haslen
That I have Parkinson’s disease is infuriating, depressing, and sometimes impossible. That Andrew Haslen, the liveliest and most original portrayer of birds of prey in England, has it is a crime against nature. Here’s a sample of his work for a new edition of Game Hawk.
Teaching literature to bird dogs
Tom McGuane’s dogs are very well read..
Teddy gets cancelled
One too many and you suddenly snap.. I have always considered the statue of TR outside the American Museum in New York to be part and parcel of the total Museum experience at my all time favorite museum- I mean , Teddy was among other things such a NEW YORKER. Even when I was a …
WANTED
Colt Officer’s model or clone, used, reasonable price I m am buying it for these:
Valerius Geist, RIP
Yesterday Alex Sharif emailed me news of the death of Valerius Geist. I had heard he was not well; but one’s own illness often blinds you to the troubles of others. His is a great loss. Nobody ever dominated the science of the great mammals like Val, especially on this continent, where a teen -aged …