First, read Tam here for the background: “On Friday evening, a gunwriter who was apparently tired of his 42-year career put his word processor in his mouth and pulled the trigger.” Old hunting writer Jim Zumbo called semiauto rifles “terrorist guns”, and said they should be banned. Dumb, and ignorant. As anyone who knows me …
Doom and Gloom
American this time, and maybe too slight and early to blog. But I was reading James Lileks this morning and came to a mention of what Minneapolis grade school kids would like for us all. “…the other day when I went to read a book in her [his daughter’s] class I noted the exhibit outside …
Dad’s B -17
Reid’s post below on the weather vane reminded me of a sketch he and Matt and other visitors have seen in my library. In 1941 my father was a scholarship student at the Museum School of Fine Arts in Boston. A year later he was a first lieutenant in the Army Air Corps, a bombardier …
Reid Moving Update
I told you all back in mid-December that Connie and I are moving to Denver and at that time gave our ETA as sometime in January. We made a house hunting trip in December but couldn’t come up with anything. In the subsequent weeks our attempts to continue looking were interrupted by the holidays, the …
Pluvialis Abroad (Again)
Pluvialis is at large again in Central Asia. She blogs on the road from Tashkent and tells us she’s on her way to Khiva. Pluvi is giving many of us a bad case of travel envy.
A Parrot for Life
Congratulations to Rebecca O’Connor who has a new book out on raising and training parrots, “A Parrot for Life.” Get your autographed copies here.
Weather Vane
While house hunting in Colorado a couple of weeks ago, I saw this unique weather vane on a barn outside of the town of Parker. A very realistic model of a B-17!
Tool Making Chimpanzees
We’ve know for quite a long while that chimpanzees use expedient tools – rocks to crack open things and twigs to pull termites out of mounds. But a new report on chimps in Senegal takes this to a whole new level. Female chimps there have been observed making spears and using them to hunt bush …
Neanderthal Doom
According to this piece in the BBC News, some late Neanderthalers were wiped out by a cold snap even they could not survive: “…a climate downturn may have caused a drought, placing pressure on the last surviving Neanderthals by reducing their supplies of fresh water and killing off the animals they hunted.” (Snip) “These creatures …
Not a Vegetarian
The ever- carnivorous John McLoughlin sends a quote, which he attributes to one Jethro Trogo: “If ever the world will be ruled by vegetables, I can truthfully say,“I never ate your kind willingly.”