A friend, a younger writer, asked my opinion on when one can be allowed, so to speak, to write about a place one was not born in. Here are his questions, and some thoughts of mine on the matter, those of a Bostonian who has lived in rural New Mexico for 25 or so years.. …
So that’s how they do it..
Anyone who has ever been in the far north knows that its greatest curse is not cold but blood- sucking summer insects, in numbers that can drain a caribou or a human. So maybe it should come as no surprise that evolution has fitted some birds with their own built- in mosquito repellent. “Hector Douglas, …
“The blazon of expressed shapeliness..”
Some very nice lines on domestication from poet, critic, and philosopher Fred Turner, from his The New World: An Epic Poem (1985). “We are the holy and dangerous beast who dared to domesticate not only our plant and animal servants but also ourselves: and not for usefulness only but chiefly for beauty, the blazon of …
Baby Otters
A little blogrolling here.
Some Travel Writing
The Brits– and those who have totally embraced their internal (imperial?) Brit– have a certain sardonic yet deadpan style I admire. First, the late great master Norman Lewis, from his 1951 A Dragon Apparent, about a totally- vanished Indochina: “These Chams were aboriginal Malayo- Polynesians, the only group of that race to have accepted the …
Doom and Gloom
Here’s a good one for falconers, hound- hunters, and, well, everyone: “Des chiens, d’oyseaux, d’armes, d’amours, Pour une joye, cent doleurs”. Gace de la Vigne (“In hounds, hawks, arms, and love, for every joy a hundred sorrows”)
Are all non- native species bad?
Ron Bailey doesn’t think they necessarily are. He also deplores the fact that you aren’t supposed to talk about it. ” “That kind of information is dangerous,” scolded Jodi Cassell. Cassell, who works with the California Sea Grant Extension program, was speaking at a symposium on “Alien Species in Coastal Waters: What Are the Real …
The Limits of Reason
Steve Sailer has an interesting post on the limits of reason, or why some intelligent people can embrace both Darwin AND religion, contra the brilliant but smug Richard Dawkins.
Writing Life 2: “Long Tails”
Scott Esposito at Conversational Reading has an examination of the publishing world’s current obsession with what we might call Big Safe Books, and why it is not the best or only business model. “I suppose that all this reflects the dominant business-model in commercial publishing right now: Put all your eggs in one basket. Publishers …
Writing Life #1
It has been a rough week– we lost Libby’s father Ken (see “Ken Adam” below) and a good friend, Bill Smiley, this week, so blogging has taken a back seat. But we are home now and things are returning to as close to normal as they ever get here at Casa Querencia. In that spirit: …