Ataika and her mother in Almaty; Almaty life

Could it be ten years ago? More? Ataika at 6 weeks, in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in Konstantin and Anna Plakhov’s back yard, the day we met her, with mother Oska. A month in our apartment, with days riding around in Askar Raybaev’s (Mitsubishi!) stretch limo; visiting museums and supermarkets and restaurants and archaeologists; then to New …

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More Doggage

Daniel Riviera’s younger pointer is not as well- mannered as Boone (see below). Meanwhile,  in Laramie, Carlos and his dogs take a walk and a nap: “They ran up the trail and came back, laughing the contagious laughter of dogs in snow…”

Found– no, SENT- image

From Toby Jurovics, a Titian, early 1500’s: “Giorgio Cornaro with Falcon celebrates Giorgio Cornaro the Younger’s election into the Maggior Consiglio or the Great Council of Venice. “ I had never seen it, and wrote to Toby that I preferred it to the better- known Holbein of Sir Robert Cheseman with a Gyr. Henry 8’s …

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Pluvi wins a big one

Helen Macdonald has just won the Samuel Johnson Prize, a VERY big deal. Nice to see prizes go to someone whose writing eminently deserves it, especially when her choice of subject is so quirky, even controversial, as falconry. It may say something about literary England– or nature loving England– that they would give a prize …

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Breakfast Club

Recently– last winter- an odd mix of ranchers, cowboys, artists, medical workers, teachers, and even less classifiable types started having Sunday brunch at Tita Dixon’s brief version of the Bear Mountain Cafe. It was so much fun that when Linda Rael Mansell and Kelly Kent opened a good cafe at the old Magdalena Hotel it …

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Random Doggage

Daniela tells us that Blaze is not coursing marmots; he is just diving off a steep slope– an arroyo?– in hot pursuit…