Still hoping someone somewhere has an "extra" Goshawk--!!
Facts: no more permits available for NM birds until next year.
Colorado won't let its birds out. I don't have a vehicle that would make it to, say, Idaho even if I had no obligations.
I haven't enough money to buy a breeder's bird outright (though I'd be prepared to pay installments if there are any chamber birds still around).
I thought of local passage birds of other species but most of my quarry seems to be in at least some pinon- juniper, which makes it hard for Prairie falcons and Ferruginous hawks. Cooper's are a remote possibility but are spooked by my intimate living quarters , and small for fur especially jacks. It really gets too cold here in December and january for Harrises.
I don't want a screamer (see"intimate quarters", or any old pic here) or half- blind WNV survivors, but would consider all other honest offers, and would of course pay shipping (to Albuquerque).
It would save my season. Friends of friends anywhere?
Friday, September 28, 2007
What Remains
Or "Culling II".
I find the specificity of (very diverse) categories left in what I must call my "nature" section fascinating. Before there was so much stuff in there that it would have been hard to see categories beyond that vague term. Maybe negative as in "not too much botany or herpetology" though both exist (birds & bugs have their own large sections, much of it fairly technical).
Now I have:
English "lyrical" (lousy term but I'll get back to it-- think Pluvialis, Rob MacFarlane, J. A. Baker).
Hard evo- bio by scientists who can write (more on this later).
Microbiology writing mostly by scientists like Paul Ewald and Robert Desowitz (I have become utterly fascinated with the evolution of disease and parasites since I got malaria in Zimbabwe years ago).
Weird bird books, like Maurice Burton's out of print Phoenix Re- Born about anting (including with fire, which Wiki misses).
Off- trail true science, like anything about or by the Dysons (those are two links, for "the" and "Dysons").
Odd anti- romantic nature writing like Tom Palmer's classic urban herpetology Landscape with Reptile, Jordan Fisher Smith's spooky Nature Noir, Mary Mycio's oddly optimistic Chernobyl book Wormwood Forest,and Gordon Grice's The Red Hourglass.
And even po- mo urban compendia like Concrete Jungle by artists Alexis Rockman and Mark Dion (though I don't necessarily share their politics-- I probably have a bleaker view of humans than Dawkins, not a rosier one).
Oh, and-- everything about dinosaurs especially bird emergence, and everything about the late Pleistocene.
Soon-- that MacFarlane review and why I generally prefer contemporary Brit nature writing to American-- and exceptions & why.
I find the specificity of (very diverse) categories left in what I must call my "nature" section fascinating. Before there was so much stuff in there that it would have been hard to see categories beyond that vague term. Maybe negative as in "not too much botany or herpetology" though both exist (birds & bugs have their own large sections, much of it fairly technical).
Now I have:
English "lyrical" (lousy term but I'll get back to it-- think Pluvialis, Rob MacFarlane, J. A. Baker).
Hard evo- bio by scientists who can write (more on this later).
Microbiology writing mostly by scientists like Paul Ewald and Robert Desowitz (I have become utterly fascinated with the evolution of disease and parasites since I got malaria in Zimbabwe years ago).
Weird bird books, like Maurice Burton's out of print Phoenix Re- Born about anting (including with fire, which Wiki misses).
Off- trail true science, like anything about or by the Dysons (those are two links, for "the" and "Dysons").
Odd anti- romantic nature writing like Tom Palmer's classic urban herpetology Landscape with Reptile, Jordan Fisher Smith's spooky Nature Noir, Mary Mycio's oddly optimistic Chernobyl book Wormwood Forest,and Gordon Grice's The Red Hourglass.
And even po- mo urban compendia like Concrete Jungle by artists Alexis Rockman and Mark Dion (though I don't necessarily share their politics-- I probably have a bleaker view of humans than Dawkins, not a rosier one).
Oh, and-- everything about dinosaurs especially bird emergence, and everything about the late Pleistocene.
Soon-- that MacFarlane review and why I generally prefer contemporary Brit nature writing to American-- and exceptions & why.
Culling the Library
In a recent discussion with Chas he spoke of culling his library and I recoiled in horror. I do so in an ongoing context, and I thought there was no need to do any more. Then one restless and sleepless night I was prowling my library and realized that there was a corner I had not been able to reach into for three years, and that, in my natural history and biology/ science section (everything from nature writing to dinosaurs and cladistics), I had not seen the back row in as long except when searching for a particular volume.
And I cant even WALK in there.
AAARGH! I am a bookoholic!
I started looking around and realized my library contained a lot of my past (and past dreams of the future), frozen in books. Some of that was important, but some was irrelevant or burdensome. For instance: I have bird guides, some outdated, to places I will likely never go. New Guinea? (I DO want to keep books on birds of paradise, out of biophilia, but in my present financial state I'd better keep my Asia and China guides-- should fortunes change, guide prices would be the least of it!) Ditto (many) for South America, relics of a slightly more prosperous and perhaps idiotically optimistic past. Africa? I want to keep my heavily- annotated guide from my Zimbabwe trip, but will I ever go back? Probably not there at any rate, with friends dead and the country in ruins. With my more- than- limited funds Eurasia, with southern Asia, plus Alaska, contain my first choices in travel...
Real past records continue important-- my half- wrecked (by the Mongolian airline) and scribbled- in Birds of the Soviet Union from my first Mongolia trip will never go. I am a more enthusiastic bird watcher than ever (arguably NOT "birder" or "twitcher") but books on birding mostly bore. OUT!
My literature and poetry sections, my travel and Central Asia, remain intact-- virtually no cull but the constant and ongoing. Now, on to sport. A lot of deadwood in shooting & such. I don't do much classical bird hunting these days, though may again. Some classics are, some aren't, some may be but bore. Jack O'Connor-- sorry, his Wiki is empty but all shooters know him-- was a great rifle writer but didn't really get shotguns. Out with The Shotgun Book, though two other titles remain...
At the end of two days I have removed a couple of hundred books. My back hurts, but I can walk around and see my entire nature section. Almost nothing is on the floor, and I am contemplating enlarged shelf space, which I now have the room to put in. I see books I had forgotten, that I need to read again. Ideas are popping into my head. I realize that I had begun to dread the chaos of the library, and that now I can enjoy it again.
And with the books soon to sell, and most non- necessary guns to be sold as well (don't worry, the 16 and Mauser and Big Darne and a few other fan favorites remain) there may soon be a nest egg for Kazakhstan...
And I cant even WALK in there.
AAARGH! I am a bookoholic!
I started looking around and realized my library contained a lot of my past (and past dreams of the future), frozen in books. Some of that was important, but some was irrelevant or burdensome. For instance: I have bird guides, some outdated, to places I will likely never go. New Guinea? (I DO want to keep books on birds of paradise, out of biophilia, but in my present financial state I'd better keep my Asia and China guides-- should fortunes change, guide prices would be the least of it!) Ditto (many) for South America, relics of a slightly more prosperous and perhaps idiotically optimistic past. Africa? I want to keep my heavily- annotated guide from my Zimbabwe trip, but will I ever go back? Probably not there at any rate, with friends dead and the country in ruins. With my more- than- limited funds Eurasia, with southern Asia, plus Alaska, contain my first choices in travel...
Real past records continue important-- my half- wrecked (by the Mongolian airline) and scribbled- in Birds of the Soviet Union from my first Mongolia trip will never go. I am a more enthusiastic bird watcher than ever (arguably NOT "birder" or "twitcher") but books on birding mostly bore. OUT!
My literature and poetry sections, my travel and Central Asia, remain intact-- virtually no cull but the constant and ongoing. Now, on to sport. A lot of deadwood in shooting & such. I don't do much classical bird hunting these days, though may again. Some classics are, some aren't, some may be but bore. Jack O'Connor-- sorry, his Wiki is empty but all shooters know him-- was a great rifle writer but didn't really get shotguns. Out with The Shotgun Book, though two other titles remain...
At the end of two days I have removed a couple of hundred books. My back hurts, but I can walk around and see my entire nature section. Almost nothing is on the floor, and I am contemplating enlarged shelf space, which I now have the room to put in. I see books I had forgotten, that I need to read again. Ideas are popping into my head. I realize that I had begun to dread the chaos of the library, and that now I can enjoy it again.
And with the books soon to sell, and most non- necessary guns to be sold as well (don't worry, the 16 and Mauser and Big Darne and a few other fan favorites remain) there may soon be a nest egg for Kazakhstan...
Thursday, September 27, 2007
California Fall Ritual
The New York Times today tells us of a Fall ritual in the town of Columbia, California: the Annual Poison Oak Show. Apparently there is fierce competition in a variety of categories:Best Arrangement of Poison Oak, Most Potent Looking Green Leaves, Most Potent Looking Red leaves, Best Photo of Poison Oak Rash, Best Poison Oak Accessory or Jewelry, and even Biggest Poison Oak Stalk
Sounds like a great time, doesn't it?
I was surprised that I had never heard of this as I used to live in Sonora, the town immediately to the south of Columbia. Apparently this annual celebration began after I left in 1980. All I can say is this is probably tied with Frozen Dead Guy Days for Best Original Quirky Small Town Festival Theme.
UPDATE
The NY Times has provided a slide show of the Poison Oak Show here.
Owl
I saw this Great Horned Owl while driving home from work yesterday afternoon. He (she?) was hanging out on a cottonwood limb waiting to fly out and hunt for breakfast. Connie and I had seen this fellow several times over the last couple of months. These birds are so big they really stick out.
Here's a closer shot, pretty near the limits of our little point and shoot. I'm sure the Bayou Gulch bottoms where he was located provide good hunting. We had sort of a staring contest for a few minutes. Finally he was sick of it and flew to the next tree where he perched on a limb with his back to me.
Hunting and Alligators
I meant to comment a while back on Patrick's post here, in which he considers the difference in fatal alligator attacks on people in Florida (a small number) with that figure in Louisiana (none). What's up with Florida? Patrick says:
Reid asked for my take on this as one who lives in Louisiana and used to live in Florida.
I agree that controlled alligator hunting (and also trapping of nuisance animals) plays a part in reducing attacks on humans, but note that Florida has an alligator harvest program, too, running since 1988. According to Florida Fish & Wildlife Commission data, almost 23,000 alligators were legally harvested in the state between 2000 and 2006.
When I worked for FWC, I shared an office suite with the state harvest coordinator, a very smart and affable man who really knew his gators. I remember well the alligator habitat map posted on his wall: It basically blanketed the state of Florida, pockmarked as it is by hundreds of thousands of bodies of fresh water, more or less evenly distributed. Gator hunting opportunities are widespread in the Sunshine State.
So I look elsewhere for the difference between the Florida and Louisiana experiences of living with alligators. My guess is that if Louisianans suffer fewer alligator attacks, it's likely because more Louisianans are "natives," whose families have four or five generations of local history, if not more. Alligator lore is widespread in Louisiana and woven into its folktales, family memories and its recipes. The people who encounter alligators here are more likely to know something useful about them.
As Steve quipped with the equivalent observation from his part of the country, "Few cowboys get eaten by cougars."
The situation in Florida is different, of course. There are relatively fewer natives and more recent immigrants. And the development of real estate differs, too, as anyone knows who has driven south on I-75. Florida is basically a huge suburb, except where it is a huge city. There are pockets of wild land left, much of it managed by the state, and some surprisingly beautiful cattle country surviving from the Cracker era. But for the most part, people are as evenly distributed in Florida as the alligator habitat and the gators themselves. Since much of the human landscape is suburban, suburban people (actually urban people who commute) share lots of space with large, hungry reptiles.
With such an urbanized population of newcomers living in an ancient, epoch-spanning gator-pit, I'm surprised more Floridians and their pets are not eaten than are.
Louisianans, by contrast (though this is changing fast) live either in cities proper or tidy small towns, or the countryside. The suburban model of housing development is a relatively recent fixture here. Traditionally in Louisiana, those who might know least about alligators lived in places where they would rarely encounter one.
Those who knew them well and saw them often, knew what do with them (C'est si bon!...sauce picante!)
Perhaps such attacks are not too surprising in a state that has an alligator population of over one million and a human population of nearly 19 million, but it turns out that they are not necessary.
You see, you can have a LOT of alligators and no attacks on humans. That's the score in Louisiana. The reason: unlike Florida, Louisiana encourages licensed hunting of alligators, and alligator hunters go after the largest alligators in the easiest-to-find locations, i.e. the ones that are most likely to attack people and pets.
Louisiana actually has more alligators than Florida, but Louisiana alligators have never killed a human in that state's recorded history, while 11 people have been killed by alligators in Florida since 2001 alone.
The secret to Louisiana safety is that state's legalized hunting and harvest program called "Alligator Marsh to Market."[snipped]
In truth, of course, alligators are not huge killers of people. In Florida, alligators kill fewer people than swimming pools and lawn mowers. That said, the number of alligator attacks in Florida is on the rise, from 78 people in the 1980s, to 159 people in the 1990s, and 97 people in the five years between 2000 and 2005 (suggesting about 200 attacks can be expected in the first decade of this millennium).
Reid asked for my take on this as one who lives in Louisiana and used to live in Florida.
I agree that controlled alligator hunting (and also trapping of nuisance animals) plays a part in reducing attacks on humans, but note that Florida has an alligator harvest program, too, running since 1988. According to Florida Fish & Wildlife Commission data, almost 23,000 alligators were legally harvested in the state between 2000 and 2006.
When I worked for FWC, I shared an office suite with the state harvest coordinator, a very smart and affable man who really knew his gators. I remember well the alligator habitat map posted on his wall: It basically blanketed the state of Florida, pockmarked as it is by hundreds of thousands of bodies of fresh water, more or less evenly distributed. Gator hunting opportunities are widespread in the Sunshine State.
So I look elsewhere for the difference between the Florida and Louisiana experiences of living with alligators. My guess is that if Louisianans suffer fewer alligator attacks, it's likely because more Louisianans are "natives," whose families have four or five generations of local history, if not more. Alligator lore is widespread in Louisiana and woven into its folktales, family memories and its recipes. The people who encounter alligators here are more likely to know something useful about them.
As Steve quipped with the equivalent observation from his part of the country, "Few cowboys get eaten by cougars."
The situation in Florida is different, of course. There are relatively fewer natives and more recent immigrants. And the development of real estate differs, too, as anyone knows who has driven south on I-75. Florida is basically a huge suburb, except where it is a huge city. There are pockets of wild land left, much of it managed by the state, and some surprisingly beautiful cattle country surviving from the Cracker era. But for the most part, people are as evenly distributed in Florida as the alligator habitat and the gators themselves. Since much of the human landscape is suburban, suburban people (actually urban people who commute) share lots of space with large, hungry reptiles.
With such an urbanized population of newcomers living in an ancient, epoch-spanning gator-pit, I'm surprised more Floridians and their pets are not eaten than are.
Louisianans, by contrast (though this is changing fast) live either in cities proper or tidy small towns, or the countryside. The suburban model of housing development is a relatively recent fixture here. Traditionally in Louisiana, those who might know least about alligators lived in places where they would rarely encounter one.
Those who knew them well and saw them often, knew what do with them (C'est si bon!...sauce picante!)
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Science Proves Keen Interest in Animals "Vestigial"
Well, not really.
But a conclusion to that effect was drawn from research published recently in the (online) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
From the story by Jeanna Bryner of LiveScience.com:
This study should surprise no one, not even "modern, urbanized people" in more danger from large cars than from large animals.
Certainly everyone in advertising knows that people stare at other people and at animals. How many commercials can you recall that don't feature either? Cutout ads for wheelbarrows and car tires can run without a smiling face or a puppy, but those are pricepoint appeals to the head. When the goal is basic, visceral reaction---heart and gut---smart ads feature emotive people and cuddly or cool-looking animals.
Consumers of great literature will concur. How many classic stories can you name with neither people nor animals in them? And how many have both?
The preponderance of people, plants and animals in other works of art is obvious. Isn't it, in fact, the absence of these familiar subjects that partly defines "abstract" art, and partly what makes it a challenge for many to enjoy?
Despite the curious conclusions of some, human interest in living things is hardly comparable to our appendix or coccyx---it is central to the human condition.
What else is there? Should we fall in love with buildings or keep telephones as pets?
Can we eat rocks?
But a conclusion to that effect was drawn from research published recently in the (online) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
From the story by Jeanna Bryner of LiveScience.com:
The research...reveals that humans today are hard-wired to pay attention to other people and animals much more so than non-living things, even if inanimate objects are the primary hazards for modern, urbanized folks.New's conclusion is based on the measured speed and accuracy with with test subjects correctly identified changes to projected scenes of animate and inanimate objects: Subjects tested better at identifying changes when people and animals were present.
'We're assuming that natural selection takes a long time to build anything
anew and that's why this is left over from our past,' said study team member Leda Cosmides, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).
Immersed in a rich, biotic environment, it would have been imperative for our ancestors to monitor both humans and non-human animals. Predators and prey took many different forms—lions, tigers and bears—and they changed often, so constant eyeballing was critical.
While the environment has changed since then, with high-rises emerging where forests once took root and pampered pets taking the place of stalking beasts, our instinct-driven attention has not followed suit.
'Having this pop-out attentional bias for animals is sort of a vestigial behavior,' said study team member Joshua New of Yale University's Perception and Cognition Lab.
This study should surprise no one, not even "modern, urbanized people" in more danger from large cars than from large animals.
Certainly everyone in advertising knows that people stare at other people and at animals. How many commercials can you recall that don't feature either? Cutout ads for wheelbarrows and car tires can run without a smiling face or a puppy, but those are pricepoint appeals to the head. When the goal is basic, visceral reaction---heart and gut---smart ads feature emotive people and cuddly or cool-looking animals.
Consumers of great literature will concur. How many classic stories can you name with neither people nor animals in them? And how many have both?
The preponderance of people, plants and animals in other works of art is obvious. Isn't it, in fact, the absence of these familiar subjects that partly defines "abstract" art, and partly what makes it a challenge for many to enjoy?
Despite the curious conclusions of some, human interest in living things is hardly comparable to our appendix or coccyx---it is central to the human condition.
What else is there? Should we fall in love with buildings or keep telephones as pets?
Can we eat rocks?
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Bilibin
Artist friend Nance McManus sent me this wonderful image by the 20th century Russian artist Ivan Bilibin.
I wasn't aware of him, but there is a lot on Wiki here, including many wonderful paintings and other images.
I won't be owning one soon-- Sotheby's asking price for "The Hunt" was in the middle hundreds of thousands of pounds.
I won't be owning one soon-- Sotheby's asking price for "The Hunt" was in the middle hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Another Travel Essay..
... from Phillip Grayson, who will soon be reporting from Poland.
The Number 1 Most Secret Best Part of Istanbul
The first thing one should do on arriving in Istanbul is hop in a cab and head to your hotel in Taksim, the downtown heart of cosmopolitan Istanbul. There are cheaper hotels in the center of the tourist district, and you’ll probably want to stay there the bulk of your trip, but on this first night in town you need to go all the way into the belly of the beast.
Taksim itself is nice enough, crawling with shops and well-stocked with an endless supply of basically-pretty-similar bars and restaurants, but that’s all beside the point. Before you even arrive there, the best part of your visit may well have already taken place.
The airport is on the outskirts of the European side of the city, and the road that winds from it to your overpriced hotel will take you along the seaside for several miles, giving you plenty of time to take in the manicured parks that line the shore and the warships, freighters and cruise ships that commiserate in the harbor, as well as schizophrenic piecemeal architecture that defines the majority of the city, houses cobbled together and repaired as they required it, and not a bit more. An apartment building, for example, may date back to the mid-70s for the first two or three floors, and then have a few more above them about a decade younger, with a single wall that came in after the earthquake and a brand spankin’ new roof. You’ll also get a chance to see a few of the “historical” wooden houses of Istanbul, dilapidated and slowly collapsing, these cannot be torn down, so even later, as you cruise down the Bosphorus toward the Black Sea, you’ll see a couple stuck in amidst the modern mansions in a sort of scaled-up version of these cut-and-paste apartments in the suburbs.
You’ll turn away from the seaside just before you begin approaching the Bosphorus, which separates Europe from Asia Minor, guarded over by Topkapı palace and a few thousand tourists. Instead you move straight toward the Golden Horn, the inlet that runs into the European side of the city, and which, as you cross it, will be lined with Mosques, filled with jellyfish and a few fountains, and crossed over by two long bridges full of fishermen. Before you even get there though, with an almost alarming suddenness and grandeur, as you emerge from an underpass, an Ancient Roman aqueduct reminds you that, for all the natural beauty you’ve seen and will see, this is a human city, fought over and fortified and overpopulated and restructured in sometimes amazing ways to perfect it away from whatever nature’s original intent might have been.
On the other side of the Golden Horn you ascend one of the seven hills the city was built on (and what is it with building cities on seven hill?) and get the best possible view of Istanbul, looking over the sprawling, undulating city, either decked out in a million lights of surprisingly varied colors, or scorched by the sun to something so perfectly exotic and massive as to make reality seem just a little less stable.
Immediately after this world-class tableau, on the right, is a street and runs away from you and is filled, completely, top to bottom, end to end, with nothing but chandeliers, small chandeliers, big chandeliers, gigantic chandeliers, cheap chandeliers, expensive chandeliers, a chandelier to suit any mood, budget and home, believe you me, all lit and undeniable and designed, it would seem, to shatter your newly enfragiled sense of reality. It could well be the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen the Grand Bazaar).
With that pesky sense of equilibrium out of the way, you’re now in Taksim, whose main road, ostensibly pedestrian despite the dozens of cars and motorcycles honking their way through the thronged crowds, is said to see almost a million sets of feet every day. There are McDonalds and Pizza Huts and Burger Kings aplenty, but you’ll want to try some authentic Turkish cuisine, but beware, because Turkish food is Greek food without pork or sauces, and your already repeatedly affronted, oh so delicate sense of reality might not be able to fight of the sense that there is much better Turkish food in America than there is in Turkey. Try not to think about it too much. Keep your wits about you and step back out into flood of humanity that is I_tiklal Sokak remembering these last few things: the men arm in arm are not gay, it is not rude to walk (or drive) directly into someone without apology or hesitation, you don’t want to buy perfume off the street, and once your luggage has been successfully lost, the best part of your trip is over, you will never be this disoriented again, so you might as well take a nap.
The Number 1 Most Secret Best Part of Istanbul
The first thing one should do on arriving in Istanbul is hop in a cab and head to your hotel in Taksim, the downtown heart of cosmopolitan Istanbul. There are cheaper hotels in the center of the tourist district, and you’ll probably want to stay there the bulk of your trip, but on this first night in town you need to go all the way into the belly of the beast.
Taksim itself is nice enough, crawling with shops and well-stocked with an endless supply of basically-pretty-similar bars and restaurants, but that’s all beside the point. Before you even arrive there, the best part of your visit may well have already taken place.
The airport is on the outskirts of the European side of the city, and the road that winds from it to your overpriced hotel will take you along the seaside for several miles, giving you plenty of time to take in the manicured parks that line the shore and the warships, freighters and cruise ships that commiserate in the harbor, as well as schizophrenic piecemeal architecture that defines the majority of the city, houses cobbled together and repaired as they required it, and not a bit more. An apartment building, for example, may date back to the mid-70s for the first two or three floors, and then have a few more above them about a decade younger, with a single wall that came in after the earthquake and a brand spankin’ new roof. You’ll also get a chance to see a few of the “historical” wooden houses of Istanbul, dilapidated and slowly collapsing, these cannot be torn down, so even later, as you cruise down the Bosphorus toward the Black Sea, you’ll see a couple stuck in amidst the modern mansions in a sort of scaled-up version of these cut-and-paste apartments in the suburbs.
You’ll turn away from the seaside just before you begin approaching the Bosphorus, which separates Europe from Asia Minor, guarded over by Topkapı palace and a few thousand tourists. Instead you move straight toward the Golden Horn, the inlet that runs into the European side of the city, and which, as you cross it, will be lined with Mosques, filled with jellyfish and a few fountains, and crossed over by two long bridges full of fishermen. Before you even get there though, with an almost alarming suddenness and grandeur, as you emerge from an underpass, an Ancient Roman aqueduct reminds you that, for all the natural beauty you’ve seen and will see, this is a human city, fought over and fortified and overpopulated and restructured in sometimes amazing ways to perfect it away from whatever nature’s original intent might have been.
On the other side of the Golden Horn you ascend one of the seven hills the city was built on (and what is it with building cities on seven hill?) and get the best possible view of Istanbul, looking over the sprawling, undulating city, either decked out in a million lights of surprisingly varied colors, or scorched by the sun to something so perfectly exotic and massive as to make reality seem just a little less stable.
Immediately after this world-class tableau, on the right, is a street and runs away from you and is filled, completely, top to bottom, end to end, with nothing but chandeliers, small chandeliers, big chandeliers, gigantic chandeliers, cheap chandeliers, expensive chandeliers, a chandelier to suit any mood, budget and home, believe you me, all lit and undeniable and designed, it would seem, to shatter your newly enfragiled sense of reality. It could well be the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen the Grand Bazaar).
With that pesky sense of equilibrium out of the way, you’re now in Taksim, whose main road, ostensibly pedestrian despite the dozens of cars and motorcycles honking their way through the thronged crowds, is said to see almost a million sets of feet every day. There are McDonalds and Pizza Huts and Burger Kings aplenty, but you’ll want to try some authentic Turkish cuisine, but beware, because Turkish food is Greek food without pork or sauces, and your already repeatedly affronted, oh so delicate sense of reality might not be able to fight of the sense that there is much better Turkish food in America than there is in Turkey. Try not to think about it too much. Keep your wits about you and step back out into flood of humanity that is I_tiklal Sokak remembering these last few things: the men arm in arm are not gay, it is not rude to walk (or drive) directly into someone without apology or hesitation, you don’t want to buy perfume off the street, and once your luggage has been successfully lost, the best part of your trip is over, you will never be this disoriented again, so you might as well take a nap.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Soon..
A book review (Rob MacFarlane's The Wild Places).
Why public land ranching has one major environmental GOOD effect.
Related: while it is good to bring back wolves it is also good to kill (some of) them; and why how you reintroduce them is also important.
Doves Wyatt Earp.
Why public land ranching has one major environmental GOOD effect.
Related: while it is good to bring back wolves it is also good to kill (some of) them; and why how you reintroduce them is also important.
Doves Wyatt Earp.
Alumni
Far Away and Long Ago (in Craftsbury Common, Vermont to be exact) Annie Proulx started a writing workshop and talked me into being the first instructor, though I had never taught anything before.
Two of my students published good books this year. Both are far wiser and older than I, and have written before, but at least I didn't ruin them!
Ron Lanner is a retired botanist, originally from Brooklyn but who taught in Utah for many years. He now lives in the Sierras, so it is appropriate that his latest, The Bristlecone Book, is about that legendarily long- lived Great Basin conifer.
And WHY are they so long- lived? I had never much thought about it, but the simple answer is amazing. "Unlike most other living things, they show no signs of senescence, or degeneration over time. These trees do not die of old age; they die when something kills them".
You might also take a look at this one, about the symbiosis between birds and nut- bearing pines, i. e. birds & food. Any wonder why it is a favorite? But any and all of his are worth getting.
Another book by a Wildbranch alumnus came out earlier in the year when I was deep in the eagle work. Carl von Essen is an MD and fisherman who has worked and fished all over the world (he is the only friend of mine who has caught the legendary Mahseer* of India), while employed by the W. H. O. . His latest is called The Hunter's Trance, and is a discussion of the altered state of awareness familiar to all of us who hunt and fish consciously. He compares it to other "mystical" experiences and theorizes that it fosters Biophilia. The originator of the term, Edward Wilson, agrees, and says so on the cover.
Carl's other book is pure fun: The Revenge of the Fishgod. It is about fishing around the world, from New Mexico to India. I blurbed it.
* A favorite book title: "Circumventing the Mahseer".
Two of my students published good books this year. Both are far wiser and older than I, and have written before, but at least I didn't ruin them!
Ron Lanner is a retired botanist, originally from Brooklyn but who taught in Utah for many years. He now lives in the Sierras, so it is appropriate that his latest, The Bristlecone Book, is about that legendarily long- lived Great Basin conifer.
And WHY are they so long- lived? I had never much thought about it, but the simple answer is amazing. "Unlike most other living things, they show no signs of senescence, or degeneration over time. These trees do not die of old age; they die when something kills them".
You might also take a look at this one, about the symbiosis between birds and nut- bearing pines, i. e. birds & food. Any wonder why it is a favorite? But any and all of his are worth getting.
Another book by a Wildbranch alumnus came out earlier in the year when I was deep in the eagle work. Carl von Essen is an MD and fisherman who has worked and fished all over the world (he is the only friend of mine who has caught the legendary Mahseer* of India), while employed by the W. H. O. . His latest is called The Hunter's Trance, and is a discussion of the altered state of awareness familiar to all of us who hunt and fish consciously. He compares it to other "mystical" experiences and theorizes that it fosters Biophilia. The originator of the term, Edward Wilson, agrees, and says so on the cover.Carl's other book is pure fun: The Revenge of the Fishgod. It is about fishing around the world, from New Mexico to India. I blurbed it.
* A favorite book title: "Circumventing the Mahseer".
A Bodio Connection to the Whydah
Last month I posted on some new underwater archaeology discoveries at the wreck of the Whydah, a pirate ship that sank off of Wellfleet, Massachusetts in 1717. Steve's sister, Karen Bodio-Graham, visits the Wellfleet area often, saw the post and sent us an e-mail and pictures about her and her family's interest in the Whydah:
This July while staying in Wellfleet and Provincetown, MA, George (my husband) took off early on his bike to catch the sunrise over the harbor. Using his smiling personality and intellect he got himself on the Vast Explorer (new and better), took pix and had a tour, and then met Barry Clifford and the 60 Minutes crew heading out for a 4 day cruise to try and recover the "hunk of metal". He was ready to take cover and go for the trip!
Whydah is our family's fun research project - since I watched them from Cahoon's Hollow dig up the booty years ago. My kids are still looking for a doubloon of their own.
Here are some pix of the new Vast Explorer with George, and others plus the original vessel which found the treasure -sold and being used out in the harbor.
Keep you posted,
Karen Bodio-Graham and family
This July while staying in Wellfleet and Provincetown, MA, George (my husband) took off early on his bike to catch the sunrise over the harbor. Using his smiling personality and intellect he got himself on the Vast Explorer (new and better), took pix and had a tour, and then met Barry Clifford and the 60 Minutes crew heading out for a 4 day cruise to try and recover the "hunk of metal". He was ready to take cover and go for the trip!
Whydah is our family's fun research project - since I watched them from Cahoon's Hollow dig up the booty years ago. My kids are still looking for a doubloon of their own.
Here are some pix of the new Vast Explorer with George, and others plus the original vessel which found the treasure -sold and being used out in the harbor.
Keep you posted,
Karen Bodio-Graham and family
George on vessel next to the 60 Minutes camera
Captain Barry Clifford
Vast Explorer heading out to the wreck
Here's the original Vast Explorer (I like the Jolly Roger on the side - RF)
Evan hoping its gold...on Marconi Beach (Knowing there's a wreck out there must add immeasurably to your motivation for beach combing! - RF)
Steve posted last month on some of Karen and her family's other beach combing activities.
Karen couldn't have sent this to us at a better time as today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day.
More Mule News
Today's Denver Post has a follow-up on their story of a foal born to a female mule in western Colorado. I posted on this back in July and we added Dr. John Burchard's comments on it a bit later.
Further research on the foal has shown that he is a genetic lawbreaker:
"Genetic tests have found that the foal, named Winterhawk's Kule Mule Amos, has cells containing 63 chromosomes, as his mule mother has, and other cells with 64 chromosomes, as the donkey believed to be his father has.
'When we look at Amos' cells, it's very odd,' said Lee Millon, the research associate who unraveled Amos' genes in the veterinary genetics lab at the University of California at Davis. 'It's mind-boggling that this could occur.'
'It disproves Mendel's law of independent assortment,' opined Dr. Roger Valentine Short, a reproductive biology researcher at the University of Melbourne in Australia. 'This could make the front cover of Science.'"
Very interesting - RTWT as the saying goes. I guess I have to state that I have a problem with the name "Winterhawk's Kule Mule Amos." I'm sure he's just plain Amos around the barn.
Further research on the foal has shown that he is a genetic lawbreaker:
"Genetic tests have found that the foal, named Winterhawk's Kule Mule Amos, has cells containing 63 chromosomes, as his mule mother has, and other cells with 64 chromosomes, as the donkey believed to be his father has.
'When we look at Amos' cells, it's very odd,' said Lee Millon, the research associate who unraveled Amos' genes in the veterinary genetics lab at the University of California at Davis. 'It's mind-boggling that this could occur.'
'It disproves Mendel's law of independent assortment,' opined Dr. Roger Valentine Short, a reproductive biology researcher at the University of Melbourne in Australia. 'This could make the front cover of Science.'"
Very interesting - RTWT as the saying goes. I guess I have to state that I have a problem with the name "Winterhawk's Kule Mule Amos." I'm sure he's just plain Amos around the barn.
Querencia- The- Book
Posting on Peter Bowen reminds me of something potentially important. With the help of Peter and his lawyer, Mark Hartwig, I have regained not only the rights to the book Querencia but also to the remaining physical books. I'll doubtless start selling them here, and who knows what else? Suggestions encouraged...
Rat Hunting Men
Many years ago (1980) Peculiar's late father, Harry Frishman, was a member of the first American climbing party in China since the Thirties, in an attempt to climb Minya Kanka in Szechuan.
The trip turned into an epic of adventure and disaster-- I'll let Libby or Mr. P tell it somewhere. But before the climb they were in a village while a great drive on rats was being held-- they even paid bounties. This led to our favorite pic of Harry:
Yesterday, Odious, who with Mrs. O is also living the farming life (I assume you know Mr. & Mrs P. are) was taking care of business in his chicken coop. He has known us a long time and knows Harry's portrait well, so I guess you could call this a tribute:
He writes: "If only there were a bounty, I'd have a fistful of yuan--you can't see the (full) five gallon bucket in this picture."
The title of the post is a tribute to this wonderful book -- this is "my" edition, apparently the only affordable one.
The trip turned into an epic of adventure and disaster-- I'll let Libby or Mr. P tell it somewhere. But before the climb they were in a village while a great drive on rats was being held-- they even paid bounties. This led to our favorite pic of Harry:
Yesterday, Odious, who with Mrs. O is also living the farming life (I assume you know Mr. & Mrs P. are) was taking care of business in his chicken coop. He has known us a long time and knows Harry's portrait well, so I guess you could call this a tribute:
He writes: "If only there were a bounty, I'd have a fistful of yuan--you can't see the (full) five gallon bucket in this picture."
The title of the post is a tribute to this wonderful book -- this is "my" edition, apparently the only affordable one.
What a Man's Gotta Do
Recently, Popular Mechanics published a distinctly odd list of Skills Every Man Should Know. Some are good ones, but..
Extend your wireless network?
Retouch digital photos?? (I can, by the way).
I don't think there are many capsizing boats within 75 miles.
Bolt action rifle? Why not, for instance, an auto pistol?
Nothing about cooking?
I won't even touch the feminist issue, for most of these should be good for either sex. Many commentors do, anyway.
The brilliant Yankee curmudgeon who writes at Sippican Cottage, under the heading of "You never met a man. Stop writing about them", listed his own simple rules:
1. Know how to do whatever the hell you feel like doing
2. Learn how to take your lumps for doing #1
Myself, I always like Heinlein's (unisex) set:
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
And then there are the various "Cowboy Codes", which I also enjoy-- maybe because I know several men and at least one woman who still embody them. Here's one.
"Remove your guns before sitting at the dining table."
"No matter how weary and hungry you are after a long day in the saddle, always tend to your horse's needs before your own, and get your horse some feed before you eat."
And another, this one a shade less serious:
"Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance."
And:
"If it don’t seem like it’s worth the effort, it probably ain’t."
I'll add a pic later of friend and "cousin"-- long tale-- Sissy Pound Olney, female cowboy ("I am NOT a cowgirl!"), first female brand inspector in the US, rancher, mother, houndswoman, lion hunter, and early admirer of Cormac McCarthy. I could tell more stories-- how her mother, who is made of the same stuff, shocked a Texan friend of mine when we arrived at a ranch barbecue thirty miles off the pavement by declaring herself broken- hearted that Bruce Chatwin had died-- but this is getting too long for now.
Extend your wireless network?
Retouch digital photos?? (I can, by the way).
I don't think there are many capsizing boats within 75 miles.
Bolt action rifle? Why not, for instance, an auto pistol?
Nothing about cooking?
I won't even touch the feminist issue, for most of these should be good for either sex. Many commentors do, anyway.
The brilliant Yankee curmudgeon who writes at Sippican Cottage, under the heading of "You never met a man. Stop writing about them", listed his own simple rules:
1. Know how to do whatever the hell you feel like doing
2. Learn how to take your lumps for doing #1
Myself, I always like Heinlein's (unisex) set:
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
And then there are the various "Cowboy Codes", which I also enjoy-- maybe because I know several men and at least one woman who still embody them. Here's one.
"Remove your guns before sitting at the dining table."
"No matter how weary and hungry you are after a long day in the saddle, always tend to your horse's needs before your own, and get your horse some feed before you eat."
And another, this one a shade less serious:
"Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance."
And:
"If it don’t seem like it’s worth the effort, it probably ain’t."
I'll add a pic later of friend and "cousin"-- long tale-- Sissy Pound Olney, female cowboy ("I am NOT a cowgirl!"), first female brand inspector in the US, rancher, mother, houndswoman, lion hunter, and early admirer of Cormac McCarthy. I could tell more stories-- how her mother, who is made of the same stuff, shocked a Texan friend of mine when we arrived at a ranch barbecue thirty miles off the pavement by declaring herself broken- hearted that Bruce Chatwin had died-- but this is getting too long for now.
Two Good Quotes
"A man of action rarely keeps a journal; it is always later on and in a period of prolonged inactivity, that he does his recollecting, makes his notations, and, very often, has cause to wonder at the course his life has taken."
Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian
(HT Terry Teachout, About Last Night.
“They know everything. Unfortunately, they don’t know anything else.” (Marshall Foch on the graduates of France's St. Cyr military academy).
Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian
(HT Terry Teachout, About Last Night.
“They know everything. Unfortunately, they don’t know anything else.” (Marshall Foch on the graduates of France's St. Cyr military academy).
Doggish Blogstuff
In a post forthrightly called "Nannying Idiots Continue to ignore real problems", Patrick starts with the case of someone arrested for docking a terrier tail in England and then gets REALLY wound up.
"Women are getting breast implants or breast reductions, and men are getting hair transplants and scalp reductions.
"Noses are bobbed, fat is sucked out, teeth are capped, botox is injected, and ears are being pierced, ringed, barbelled, and pinned.
"Ever been to a PETA rally? If you look around, you will see a lot of metal hanging out of nostrils, off of eye brows, or rammed through tongues. Every other girl will be showing off her "tramp stamp" tattoo on the small of her back. God only knows what you might find ringed, belled and pierced if you were foolish enough to ever see one of these PETA lunatics standing before you naked. The mind shudders.
"Consider PETA spokes-idiot Pamela Anderson, who not only married the walking Erector Set known as Tommy Lee, but who also got her own body repeatedly tucked, sucked, injected, lifted, dyed, bobbed, and implanted. And these people are worried about a ten-second tail nip? What on earth for?"
On a slightly more serious note, Eric at Classical Values ponders doggish souls:
"It strikes me that there cannot be a definitive answer to whether dogs have souls until there is a definitive answer to whether humans have souls. But I think if we do, then they do. When you spend fifteen years together with a loyal being, and the familiarity, intimacy, and emotional interdependence develops and deepens, that's real life you've got invested. Life lived. A dog becomes a part of you, and you become a part of that dog. I can't prove souls, but I am convinced that if we've got 'em. they've got 'em."
"Women are getting breast implants or breast reductions, and men are getting hair transplants and scalp reductions.
"Noses are bobbed, fat is sucked out, teeth are capped, botox is injected, and ears are being pierced, ringed, barbelled, and pinned.
"Ever been to a PETA rally? If you look around, you will see a lot of metal hanging out of nostrils, off of eye brows, or rammed through tongues. Every other girl will be showing off her "tramp stamp" tattoo on the small of her back. God only knows what you might find ringed, belled and pierced if you were foolish enough to ever see one of these PETA lunatics standing before you naked. The mind shudders.
"Consider PETA spokes-idiot Pamela Anderson, who not only married the walking Erector Set known as Tommy Lee, but who also got her own body repeatedly tucked, sucked, injected, lifted, dyed, bobbed, and implanted. And these people are worried about a ten-second tail nip? What on earth for?"
On a slightly more serious note, Eric at Classical Values ponders doggish souls:
"It strikes me that there cannot be a definitive answer to whether dogs have souls until there is a definitive answer to whether humans have souls. But I think if we do, then they do. When you spend fifteen years together with a loyal being, and the familiarity, intimacy, and emotional interdependence develops and deepens, that's real life you've got invested. Life lived. A dog becomes a part of you, and you become a part of that dog. I can't prove souls, but I am convinced that if we've got 'em. they've got 'em."
I was just outside...
But I need to catch up a bit-- hope I still have some readers. The stress of finding illustrations for Eagle (not to mention paying for them!)-- has been acute, and I have needed large doses of dog- running and hunting to keep me sane. I think things are getting under control.
Let's see, bloggish links-- mostly science- themed first. Patrick has a post on "Cool Sites" all of which are worth a look. I was particularly taken by Bioephemera, an amazing compendium of biological art, old and new. I'm getting the beautifully illustrated Darwin book for kids.
A somewhat similar compendium, but of books, can be viewed at the online bookstore of the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Some must- haves there, too.
The Camera Trap Codger posts on a dead whale that washed up on the coast near Ventura, where Libby used to work, and wonders if there are enough big scavengers in the sea? I know that when the bones arrive on the sea bed they still attract hagfish, but i think he means BIG scavengers. ??
(UPDATE: Forgot another good BioBlog I wanted to point you at: Neurophilosophy.)
From the NYT: a story by a slightly clueless, apparently rich, and very "Green" guy who wanted to build a family retreat in the Massachusetts Berkshires but was stopped by rare salamander. Money quote: "To make matters worse, we were a family of composting, recycling, eco-lodge-visiting, Al Gore-loving liberals. How was it that we were readying for battle with the environmentalists? Yet it wasn’t long before some members of the family had turned into the sort of grouchy, libertarian champions of private property that I usually associated with the panhandle of Idaho. On one family outing, when we all walked the land together, I can remember someone saying, “If you see a spring salamander — step on it!” On the street, if I saw a car with an “I Earth” bumper sticker, my gut would tighten. What was happening to us? I soon realized that it was one thing to endorse environmentalism and perhaps even to donate a few hundred tax-deductible dollars in its name but that it was quite another thing to surrender a dream."
He finally came up with the money-- apparently as much as a house!-- to build two environmentally sound footbridges over the creek in question. I'm happy for the salamander-- and I guess for the writer (selfish rich navel gazing !@#$%). But I do wonder once again at rich folks thinking there are two standards-- one for them and one for everybody else. As a character in one of my friend Peter Bowen's Montana mysteries says, "Poor folks act like folks, rich folks act like government".
Let's see, bloggish links-- mostly science- themed first. Patrick has a post on "Cool Sites" all of which are worth a look. I was particularly taken by Bioephemera, an amazing compendium of biological art, old and new. I'm getting the beautifully illustrated Darwin book for kids.
A somewhat similar compendium, but of books, can be viewed at the online bookstore of the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Some must- haves there, too.
The Camera Trap Codger posts on a dead whale that washed up on the coast near Ventura, where Libby used to work, and wonders if there are enough big scavengers in the sea? I know that when the bones arrive on the sea bed they still attract hagfish, but i think he means BIG scavengers. ??
(UPDATE: Forgot another good BioBlog I wanted to point you at: Neurophilosophy.)
From the NYT: a story by a slightly clueless, apparently rich, and very "Green" guy who wanted to build a family retreat in the Massachusetts Berkshires but was stopped by rare salamander. Money quote: "To make matters worse, we were a family of composting, recycling, eco-lodge-visiting, Al Gore-loving liberals. How was it that we were readying for battle with the environmentalists? Yet it wasn’t long before some members of the family had turned into the sort of grouchy, libertarian champions of private property that I usually associated with the panhandle of Idaho. On one family outing, when we all walked the land together, I can remember someone saying, “If you see a spring salamander — step on it!” On the street, if I saw a car with an “I Earth” bumper sticker, my gut would tighten. What was happening to us? I soon realized that it was one thing to endorse environmentalism and perhaps even to donate a few hundred tax-deductible dollars in its name but that it was quite another thing to surrender a dream."
He finally came up with the money-- apparently as much as a house!-- to build two environmentally sound footbridges over the creek in question. I'm happy for the salamander-- and I guess for the writer (selfish rich navel gazing !@#$%). But I do wonder once again at rich folks thinking there are two standards-- one for them and one for everybody else. As a character in one of my friend Peter Bowen's Montana mysteries says, "Poor folks act like folks, rich folks act like government".
Monday, September 17, 2007
Constitution Day in the U.S.
A copy of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, presented for your browsing pleasure on this day celebrating what it means, or might mean, or what some once might have meant for it to mean to be an American. Print it out; it's yours to keep.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Nature Morte
The phrase is used for "Still Life" in French, though it has other obvious connotations,
I went out with the 16 bore but without a dog yesterday, in a brief work break, to try to bag a cottontail for dinner. I though the doves had mostly left "downhill" to the Rio but a flock rose as I approached the dirt tank on the ranch. I fired once and one fell-- first quarry of the season.
I went out with the 16 bore but without a dog yesterday, in a brief work break, to try to bag a cottontail for dinner. I though the doves had mostly left "downhill" to the Rio but a flock rose as I approached the dirt tank on the ranch. I fired once and one fell-- first quarry of the season.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Peaches
Our peaches ripened this week and we've started picking. We have a dozen peach trees but only one of them really bore fruit this year. Not sure if this is due to the condition of the trees or the vagaries of the frosts we had in the spring. But overall the trees have been neglected and need to be pruned and fertilized for next season. The peaches sure taste good.Friday, September 07, 2007
Pavarotti and..
I'l forgive Dreher his pitbull post for his link to this utterly surreal You- Tube video (and catch that otherwise inexplicable shot of Grace Jones at the beginning and the one of-- I think-- Lou Reed at the end).
Dog Trials in Russia and Asia
I am probably going to stir up trouble here but I am feeling a bit ornery after all that below. Besides, I am missing the Primitive and Aboriginal Dog Breeds Conference in Almaty, where many of my friends have gone.
I have heard a lot of talk lately about some images going around that lead me to believe that misinformation is circulating.
A series of pictures of Kirgyz taigan dogs-- a mountain relative of my tazis-- ran in a German paper, apparently alleging that the dogs killed tethered wolves (I don't read German) and demanding an end to the practice.
I honestly don't know if the Kirgyz killed that wolf but I rather doubt it. In Russia and Kazakhstan, field trials for dogs are much more rigorous (to say the least!) than they are here. Every hound, laika, and teckel (dachshund) must stand up to and face its traditional quarry. But at least in those two countries the "quarry" is kept more or less as a pet, and they try not to injure them. I have been told that the intelligent bears in particular learn to be noisy and scary without making contact-- as do experienced hounds. They become "actors".
Not my way; I gave up even coyote coursing long time ago. I am too sentimental. But I think this is one case for some real cultural relativism. They certainly make some fine dogs over there.
(Actually I find the Mongolian Kazakhs use of wolf cubs-- which ARE killed-- to train eagles to be much crueller. But herders do not like wolves, especially when they are common. These are nomads in hard landscapes, not rich ranchers.)
Here are some trial photos from Kazkhstan.
A teckel goes after a badger.
Scooping up the badger after the trial.
.JPG)
A bear and Laika.
Maybe later we'll get to how some nomads demand that the FEMALES of their herding breeds fight for twenty minutes before they are allowed to breed!
I have heard a lot of talk lately about some images going around that lead me to believe that misinformation is circulating.
A series of pictures of Kirgyz taigan dogs-- a mountain relative of my tazis-- ran in a German paper, apparently alleging that the dogs killed tethered wolves (I don't read German) and demanding an end to the practice.
I honestly don't know if the Kirgyz killed that wolf but I rather doubt it. In Russia and Kazakhstan, field trials for dogs are much more rigorous (to say the least!) than they are here. Every hound, laika, and teckel (dachshund) must stand up to and face its traditional quarry. But at least in those two countries the "quarry" is kept more or less as a pet, and they try not to injure them. I have been told that the intelligent bears in particular learn to be noisy and scary without making contact-- as do experienced hounds. They become "actors".Not my way; I gave up even coyote coursing long time ago. I am too sentimental. But I think this is one case for some real cultural relativism. They certainly make some fine dogs over there.
(Actually I find the Mongolian Kazakhs use of wolf cubs-- which ARE killed-- to train eagles to be much crueller. But herders do not like wolves, especially when they are common. These are nomads in hard landscapes, not rich ranchers.)Here are some trial photos from Kazkhstan.
A teckel goes after a badger.
Scooping up the badger after the trial..JPG)
A bear and Laika.Maybe later we'll get to how some nomads demand that the FEMALES of their herding breeds fight for twenty minutes before they are allowed to breed!
Dog News Around the Web
The California Mandatory Spay- Neuter bill may be on hold, but affluent Huntington beach wants to enact an ordinance of its own, complete with microchips. "Competition dogs" ie show dogs--see below-- would be exempt but at higher fees.
Also:
"The council asked that the program's annual cost to the city be no more than $50,000 and that no citations be given in its first year. After that time, the council would review the law and discuss whether to put rabbits under its jurisdiction."
As Matt says: "THEY WANT TO CONTROL THE FERTILITY OF RABBITS!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Meanwhile, Crunchy Con blogger Rod Dreher, with whom I often agree, is I think dead wrong on pit bulls (as is anyone who calls for any single breed ban- remember the Californians who wanted to ban all coursing breeds last year?). Part of this is the remarkable sentimental modern and especially American trait of justifying any governmental tyranny if it supposedly contributes to the safety of 'the children'.
But part is sheer ignorance. People with room- temperature IQ's make policy. Consider this well- intentioned but-- to say 'clueless' would be kind-- commenter in the thread:
"So why did God create pit bulls? Were they intended to be predators? Was it a mistake to domesticate them?"
Perhaps he is an anti - evolutionist? WhatI keep thinking of is those packs of pinkish- white miniature poodles rampaging across primordial France, or those Boston bulls competing with wolves in the forests of old New England.
I like Rod so I tried to be polite but I fear a bit of my exasperation showed through:
"Animal Rights groups are using single breed bans and mandatory spay neuter laws to undermine all animal keeping in the country. You might start at Activist Cash.
A good book to understand the issues is the late Vicki Hearne's Bandit: Dossier of a Dangerous Dog.
"Anyone interested in a "Crunchy" life must be wary of the weird interlinking of Big Ag and the Animal Rights Movement, which would make any small scale, backyard, or urban agriculture impossible. Look up "NAIS" and "No NAIS".
"The same people inevitably want to ban all dogs that are large or are used for hunting, and sterilize everything. I have been involved in hunting issues in California, mandatory spay neuter in California and New Mexico, and other intrusive animal regs in Montana (!) and NM. We have won so far but it gets exhausting.
"You cannot allow breed bans in the door because the "everything must be safe" crowd immediately asks for more. When some Californian anti- hunters found that my gentle hounds hunted hares I received letters saying they must then be dangerous to children, and should be put down."
Meanwhile, in a long post titled The Kennel Club's Scheme, Patrick Burns details the ongoing game of those who would guard breeds for the mandatory spay neuter folks. This is definitely a RTWT, but here is a good summation:
"In other words, you should buy a Kennel Club dog so that the Kennel Club can perpetuate itself and the closed registry system that is wrecking dogs.
"That's the scheme! And you are being invited to partipate."
Love that DNA made of money, by the way.
Also:
"The council asked that the program's annual cost to the city be no more than $50,000 and that no citations be given in its first year. After that time, the council would review the law and discuss whether to put rabbits under its jurisdiction."
As Matt says: "THEY WANT TO CONTROL THE FERTILITY OF RABBITS!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Meanwhile, Crunchy Con blogger Rod Dreher, with whom I often agree, is I think dead wrong on pit bulls (as is anyone who calls for any single breed ban- remember the Californians who wanted to ban all coursing breeds last year?). Part of this is the remarkable sentimental modern and especially American trait of justifying any governmental tyranny if it supposedly contributes to the safety of 'the children'.
But part is sheer ignorance. People with room- temperature IQ's make policy. Consider this well- intentioned but-- to say 'clueless' would be kind-- commenter in the thread:
"So why did God create pit bulls? Were they intended to be predators? Was it a mistake to domesticate them?"
Perhaps he is an anti - evolutionist? WhatI keep thinking of is those packs of pinkish- white miniature poodles rampaging across primordial France, or those Boston bulls competing with wolves in the forests of old New England.
I like Rod so I tried to be polite but I fear a bit of my exasperation showed through:
"Animal Rights groups are using single breed bans and mandatory spay neuter laws to undermine all animal keeping in the country. You might start at Activist Cash.
A good book to understand the issues is the late Vicki Hearne's Bandit: Dossier of a Dangerous Dog.
"Anyone interested in a "Crunchy" life must be wary of the weird interlinking of Big Ag and the Animal Rights Movement, which would make any small scale, backyard, or urban agriculture impossible. Look up "NAIS" and "No NAIS".
"The same people inevitably want to ban all dogs that are large or are used for hunting, and sterilize everything. I have been involved in hunting issues in California, mandatory spay neuter in California and New Mexico, and other intrusive animal regs in Montana (!) and NM. We have won so far but it gets exhausting.
"You cannot allow breed bans in the door because the "everything must be safe" crowd immediately asks for more. When some Californian anti- hunters found that my gentle hounds hunted hares I received letters saying they must then be dangerous to children, and should be put down."
Meanwhile, in a long post titled The Kennel Club's Scheme, Patrick Burns details the ongoing game of those who would guard breeds for the mandatory spay neuter folks. This is definitely a RTWT, but here is a good summation:
"In other words, you should buy a Kennel Club dog so that the Kennel Club can perpetuate itself and the closed registry system that is wrecking dogs.
"That's the scheme! And you are being invited to partipate."
Love that DNA made of money, by the way.
Air Force Academy
A couple of weeks ago Connie and I made a quick visit to the US Air Force Academy, just north of Colorado Springs. The Academy "campus" is a couple of thousand acres set in the Front Range foothills. The dormitories, classrooms, dining hall, etc are all set in a surprisingly compact area on a mesa top in the middle of this as shown in the photo above.
The mascot of the Air Force athletic teams is the falcon, as Pluvialis pointed out at length in her book. This exhibit in the visitors center talks about the active falconry program that the cadets have on campus. Gyrfalcons are brought to the sidelines of Air Force football games by cadets in the falconry program.
I thought some of you practitioners might be interested in this closeup of some hoods done up in Air Force colors.
Here is a display of a very nice wooden carving of a gyr that was donated to the Academy.
We also were able to see some of the aircraft on static display, like this ginormous B-52 done up in SE Asia camo.
Also this T-38, a trainer and not a very sexy aircraft, but it was located near the Academy's air training field. It's painted up in the colors of the Thunderbirds aerobatic team - apparently they flew T-38s for a while in the 1970s as a fuel cost savings measure.
Finally we saw this A-10 Warthog. The Warthog is of course a close air support aircraft used for attacking ground targets. According to the plaque at the base of the display, this particular A-10 is famous as the only one to bring down another aircraft in combat - an Iraqi helicopter during the First Gulf War.
Here's a pic of nose art on the Warthog.
Sacrifices to the Sky God
Matt found and sent along this item that tells how the Nepalese national airline deals with aircraft maintenance problems:
"Officials at Nepal's state-run airline have sacrificed two goats to appease Akash Bhairab, the Hindu sky god, following technical problems with one of its Boeing 757 aircraft, the carrier said Tuesday. "
We of course, found this an intriguing custom and it turned out that Libby Bodio, who has spent considerable time in Nepal, had some first hand experience of it:
" The first time I went to Kathmandu (October 1972) we arrived just as Desain(I'm pretty sure that is what the main fall harvest festival was called) was starting. At that point there were only two flights a week into Kathmandu from Delhi. When we landed and pulled up to the airport buildings (the planes still used ladders to exit), there were several people in airport uniforms with a goat ready to be offered up to the airline gods...considering the state of the plane, it needed all the help it could get, and we figured that a goat sacrifice wouldn't hurt its chances of staying aloft any. They slit its throat, and dragged it over to the front of the plane (a small jet -- 727 maybe?) just under the pilot's seat, and smeared blood on it while reciting some prayers, and the stuck marigold flower petals on it.
On the taxi ride into town we saw lots more goats being led along for the family feast as well as chickens being killed under the opened hoods of the few cars (mostly small Datsuns and Toyotas then), the blood being directed towards the valve covers. Everyone was very happy -- it had been a good harvest and relatives dressed in their finest were traveling to all corners of the country to give thanks and share in the bounty. And the smells coming from the houses were mouth-watering. All government offices were closed for several days, and there were no flights anywhere because they figured (correctly) that all the pilots participating in the festivities would be drunk.
So everyone had a splendid time, and so did we, enjoying extra time in Kathmandu -- everything was new to us, and the sights, sounds, and smells really sucked us in. I'm glad to hear that goats are still being offered up to the airline gods-- God only knows what might have happened without the help of the goats."
Well, this sounds like an interesting custom in a culture very different from ours, but my experience working in aerospace showed me that we really aren't all that different. In fact, in this country the Federal Aviation Administration requires animal sacrifices to certify jet engines!
Great hazards in operating aircraft lie in bird strikes and bird ingestion. Birds sucked into engines can cause them to stall and planes to crash. Actually one of the early operational B-1B bombers crashed because of geese that were sucked into the engines.
So during the testing to certify new engines there are requirements to simulate bird ingestion. You can see the FAA regulation that tells of the size and number of birds that must be used here. Test engines are run out in the open on the ground in test stands. To simulate ingestion at altitude, chicken, goose, and game hen carcasses are fired by a gas cannon into the engine intake at the speed that the airplane would be going. Here is a YouTube clip of a bird ingestion test on a Rolls-Royce engine.
The tests have to show that the engine can take that and keep running or if it causes internal engine rupture that the dislodged parts stay within the engine nacelle (housing) and don't emerge to cause "fratricidal" damage in other engines or to the fuselage. Most modern nacelles have a light layer of kevlar armor in them to try to contain the worst of these.
Bird strikes are such a serious issue that many airports take serious measures to keep birds away from their runways. Here's a good rundown of some of these from the Wikipedia article:
"To reduce birdstrikes on take off and landing, airports invest in bird management and control. This includes changes to terrain around the airport to reduce its attractiveness as a habitat for birds. Things attractive to birds like landfill sites, water areas, and trees.
Other approaches try to scare away the birds using frightening devices, for example sounds, lights, pyrotechnics, radio-controlled airplanes, decoy animals/corpses, lasers, dogs etc. Firearms are also occasionally employed.
A tremendously successful approach in recent years has been the utilization of border collie dogs to scare away birds and wildlife. Another alternative is bird capture and relocation.
Falcons are sometimes used to cut down the bird population, as for example on John F. Kennedy International Airport. At Manchester Airport in England the usual type of falcon used for this is a peregrine falcon/lanner hybrid, as its habitual flight range is about the right size to cover the airport and not also much irrelevant land around."
You knew we'd have to get to falconry eventually, didn't you? Above is a picture of Steve's friend Tom Donald in Saskatchewan, a falconer, saluki man, pioneer in partnering hounds and hawks, and pigeon flyer. Tom makes a living clearing Canadian airfields with his birds. This pic shows him him with an airport control bird.
"Officials at Nepal's state-run airline have sacrificed two goats to appease Akash Bhairab, the Hindu sky god, following technical problems with one of its Boeing 757 aircraft, the carrier said Tuesday. "
We of course, found this an intriguing custom and it turned out that Libby Bodio, who has spent considerable time in Nepal, had some first hand experience of it:
" The first time I went to Kathmandu (October 1972) we arrived just as Desain(I'm pretty sure that is what the main fall harvest festival was called) was starting. At that point there were only two flights a week into Kathmandu from Delhi. When we landed and pulled up to the airport buildings (the planes still used ladders to exit), there were several people in airport uniforms with a goat ready to be offered up to the airline gods...considering the state of the plane, it needed all the help it could get, and we figured that a goat sacrifice wouldn't hurt its chances of staying aloft any. They slit its throat, and dragged it over to the front of the plane (a small jet -- 727 maybe?) just under the pilot's seat, and smeared blood on it while reciting some prayers, and the stuck marigold flower petals on it.
On the taxi ride into town we saw lots more goats being led along for the family feast as well as chickens being killed under the opened hoods of the few cars (mostly small Datsuns and Toyotas then), the blood being directed towards the valve covers. Everyone was very happy -- it had been a good harvest and relatives dressed in their finest were traveling to all corners of the country to give thanks and share in the bounty. And the smells coming from the houses were mouth-watering. All government offices were closed for several days, and there were no flights anywhere because they figured (correctly) that all the pilots participating in the festivities would be drunk.
So everyone had a splendid time, and so did we, enjoying extra time in Kathmandu -- everything was new to us, and the sights, sounds, and smells really sucked us in. I'm glad to hear that goats are still being offered up to the airline gods-- God only knows what might have happened without the help of the goats."
Well, this sounds like an interesting custom in a culture very different from ours, but my experience working in aerospace showed me that we really aren't all that different. In fact, in this country the Federal Aviation Administration requires animal sacrifices to certify jet engines!
Great hazards in operating aircraft lie in bird strikes and bird ingestion. Birds sucked into engines can cause them to stall and planes to crash. Actually one of the early operational B-1B bombers crashed because of geese that were sucked into the engines.
So during the testing to certify new engines there are requirements to simulate bird ingestion. You can see the FAA regulation that tells of the size and number of birds that must be used here. Test engines are run out in the open on the ground in test stands. To simulate ingestion at altitude, chicken, goose, and game hen carcasses are fired by a gas cannon into the engine intake at the speed that the airplane would be going. Here is a YouTube clip of a bird ingestion test on a Rolls-Royce engine.
The tests have to show that the engine can take that and keep running or if it causes internal engine rupture that the dislodged parts stay within the engine nacelle (housing) and don't emerge to cause "fratricidal" damage in other engines or to the fuselage. Most modern nacelles have a light layer of kevlar armor in them to try to contain the worst of these.
Bird strikes are such a serious issue that many airports take serious measures to keep birds away from their runways. Here's a good rundown of some of these from the Wikipedia article:
"To reduce birdstrikes on take off and landing, airports invest in bird management and control. This includes changes to terrain around the airport to reduce its attractiveness as a habitat for birds. Things attractive to birds like landfill sites, water areas, and trees.
Other approaches try to scare away the birds using frightening devices, for example sounds, lights, pyrotechnics, radio-controlled airplanes, decoy animals/corpses, lasers, dogs etc. Firearms are also occasionally employed.
A tremendously successful approach in recent years has been the utilization of border collie dogs to scare away birds and wildlife. Another alternative is bird capture and relocation.
Falcons are sometimes used to cut down the bird population, as for example on John F. Kennedy International Airport. At Manchester Airport in England the usual type of falcon used for this is a peregrine falcon/lanner hybrid, as its habitual flight range is about the right size to cover the airport and not also much irrelevant land around."
You knew we'd have to get to falconry eventually, didn't you? Above is a picture of Steve's friend Tom Donald in Saskatchewan, a falconer, saluki man, pioneer in partnering hounds and hawks, and pigeon flyer. Tom makes a living clearing Canadian airfields with his birds. This pic shows him him with an airport control bird.
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Possible Mastodon Petroglyph
A number of wire services have picked up the story of the discovery of a possible petroglyph of a mastodon, forty feet down in Lake Michigan off Traverse City. This is the best picture I have been able of find of it so far. Hopefully better ones will be presented soon. The assumption here is that the boulder this is on was on the lake shore more than 10,000 years ago when Lake Michigan's level was lower. I am not at all familiar with the rise and fall of levels of the Great Lakes during the Pleistocene to know if this depth "works" for the current lake-level models during human occupation of the area. At least that's the first technical question I would ask. I'm still looking forward to clearer images of the thing.
This would of course be very cool if true. I previously posted here and here and here on possible Pleistocene rock art and how rare it appears to be.
This possible new discovery comes on the heels of this little story and photo essay on a mastodon tooth that belonged to Benjamin Franklin.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Gobi Birds
Some wonderful photos on the Temujin Blog, a good blog about trekking in Mongolia. French helps but is not a necessity-- the pix speak for themselves. HT John Carlson.
(Temujin was the birth name of Jingiz. And no, I won't say it with a hard "G", which no one does in Asia, though otherwise spelling seems utterly arbitrary!)
(Temujin was the birth name of Jingiz. And no, I won't say it with a hard "G", which no one does in Asia, though otherwise spelling seems utterly arbitrary!)
Cairo Salukis
I knew that southern Illinois was called "Little Egypt" I knew its "capitol" was called Cairo (pronounced "Kayro".)
But I never dreamed that there was a football team called the Salukis.
But I never dreamed that there was a football team called the Salukis.
Goshawks vs. Depression
Pluvialis has been having a rough time.
I do not think she is 'whingeing', in the slightest; as she admits, 'Death, relationships, job-loss, moving: four biggies in the World of Stress.' The four I'd say-- dealing with only two has on occasion reduced me to near- catatonia.
What fascinates me is that she is finding some relief in manning a goshawk, a kind of falconry some (Matt?) feel is uniquely stressful.
Doing such 'inexpressibly difficult' things pull us out of ourselves. That phrase is from T. H. White, in whose footsteps Pluvi is following. He also said: 'As I put Gos to bed in the darkness, a new thought emerged. This time it was a quotation: to scorn delights and live laborious days. But it presented itself the other way about, saying: To live laborious days for their delight'.
Need I say that Pluvialis has also, once again, made a brilliant mini- essay out of it all? (With ballooning baby spiders!)
Oh and-- new edition of that book, which in my edition I called both 'a book about excruciatingly bad falconry' and 'the best book on falconry, its feel, its emotions, and its flavor, ever written', coming soon, with a brilliant cover by Bruno Liljefors, the best it has ever had.
I do not think she is 'whingeing', in the slightest; as she admits, 'Death, relationships, job-loss, moving: four biggies in the World of Stress.' The four I'd say-- dealing with only two has on occasion reduced me to near- catatonia.
What fascinates me is that she is finding some relief in manning a goshawk, a kind of falconry some (Matt?) feel is uniquely stressful.
Doing such 'inexpressibly difficult' things pull us out of ourselves. That phrase is from T. H. White, in whose footsteps Pluvi is following. He also said: 'As I put Gos to bed in the darkness, a new thought emerged. This time it was a quotation: to scorn delights and live laborious days. But it presented itself the other way about, saying: To live laborious days for their delight'.
Need I say that Pluvialis has also, once again, made a brilliant mini- essay out of it all? (With ballooning baby spiders!)
Oh and-- new edition of that book, which in my edition I called both 'a book about excruciatingly bad falconry' and 'the best book on falconry, its feel, its emotions, and its flavor, ever written', coming soon, with a brilliant cover by Bruno Liljefors, the best it has ever had.
"By morning, the mass of mewling fluff had become quite suffocating"
Words fail me.
Of course if you are not familiar with the works of Edward Gorey this will make no sense at all.
HT Odious.
Of course if you are not familiar with the works of Edward Gorey this will make no sense at all.
HT Odious.
Opening day
Libby here on our opening day (took the shotgun for doves too but intense dog activity sort of kept them away!)
"Yesterday we had a splendid, heavy rain here, which turned the streets into rivers, an then today we went out on our friend Lee's ranch (100 sections) with the dogs and had our first hare chase of the season. When we first let them out of the truck, the dogs ran amok -- they were SO happy to be out they just had to run as fast as they could to burn off energy. I put up a hare that they had run past, and it took off in the opposite direction. I almost didn't yell to the dogs as I thought they would never be able to close in on it. But I did and our youngest tazi, Larissa, spotted it first and took off after it, with the others following, from about 100 yards behind. This was her first real hare chase, and she poured it on, closing in on it. At first the hare was running with its ears up -- it didn't think it was in any danger. But as the dogs started gaining, it realized that it was going to be in big trouble if it didn't get moving. When it laid its ears back the serious chase was on, and they ran for about four minutes, turning it twice. Four or five horses in the next pasture came right up to the fence to watch...way more interesting than watching cows! Finally the hare, who had run to a corner of the fencing very intelligently ran through it twice, and lost the dogs. We had parked the truck by a water tank that had collected a lot of rain water around it from yesterday's storm, so the dogs all ran over to it and had a wonderful wallow to cool off, grinning at what fun they had had. Luckily it was a sandy are so they mostly got wet rather than covered with mud and cow shit, which they always enjoy but we, for some reason unfathomable to dogs, don't like. A good start to the season for all of us."
"Yesterday we had a splendid, heavy rain here, which turned the streets into rivers, an then today we went out on our friend Lee's ranch (100 sections) with the dogs and had our first hare chase of the season. When we first let them out of the truck, the dogs ran amok -- they were SO happy to be out they just had to run as fast as they could to burn off energy. I put up a hare that they had run past, and it took off in the opposite direction. I almost didn't yell to the dogs as I thought they would never be able to close in on it. But I did and our youngest tazi, Larissa, spotted it first and took off after it, with the others following, from about 100 yards behind. This was her first real hare chase, and she poured it on, closing in on it. At first the hare was running with its ears up -- it didn't think it was in any danger. But as the dogs started gaining, it realized that it was going to be in big trouble if it didn't get moving. When it laid its ears back the serious chase was on, and they ran for about four minutes, turning it twice. Four or five horses in the next pasture came right up to the fence to watch...way more interesting than watching cows! Finally the hare, who had run to a corner of the fencing very intelligently ran through it twice, and lost the dogs. We had parked the truck by a water tank that had collected a lot of rain water around it from yesterday's storm, so the dogs all ran over to it and had a wonderful wallow to cool off, grinning at what fun they had had. Luckily it was a sandy are so they mostly got wet rather than covered with mud and cow shit, which they always enjoy but we, for some reason unfathomable to dogs, don't like. A good start to the season for all of us."
Season Opener
In the absence of cool weather or fall color, two things define the change of seasons in this part of the world: football and dove hunting.
The LSU Tigers won their season opener against Mississippi State in at 45-0 rout, which, best of all, occurred on a Thursday and left the long Labor Day weekend open for dove hunting.
I don't shoot but always notice the opening day of dove season; it's hard to miss here. I've seen hunters set up shop---blinds, dogs, blaze orange, the works---nearly in the middle of town. It's handy in the heat to hunt close to the corner quickie mart.
It's handy anyway to hunt near home. As a falconer I've had this pleasure almost everywhere I've lived. It's a strange irony of the sport that while the vast open spaces are nice places to hawk every once in a while, there is also plenty game in town and generally no restrictions to flying hawks. If you hunt often, as falconers do and must, there are a dozen common-sense reasons to hunt close.
For years the same held true for shot gunners. Steve remembers hunting woodcock in the sparse subdivisions of New England, just walking distance from home. And down here, as mentioned, dove hunters have been easy to spot along the road to Wal-Mart. But as Steve found on a more recent trip to his home woods, bird gun in plain view, the times they have a'changed.
I saw no gunners in Baton Rouge this weekend. There is no place left in town to host them. But a trip across the river to Port Allen found them out in force.
Port Allen, a tiny point of transfer for raw materials---sugarcane and petroleum---is growing. I was wrong in 2003 to predict its shrinking population to bottom out, leaving more of its choice hunting land open to me. A movie studio, of all things, 800 acres big, is going up on the north end of town. To the south, huge tracts of land are being cleared and turned into housing and industrial space at a rate that seems almost apocalyptic.
Yet Sunday, literally between the bulldozers, dozens of cammo-clad gunners staked out small territories and patches of overcast sky.
There was a black lab for every two or three men, and a jacked-up four wheel drive truck for every one. The vehicles sat along the road and crosswise in empty parking lots beside plowed fields. Men crouched behind blinds of sugarcane, or stalked along its rows or simply sat upright in the open on stools. All together, across both sides of Highway 1 just north of downtown, maybe two dozen hunters could be seen.
Above and around them, hundreds of mourning doves whirled and landed or tried to land in the newly turned earth. However many the guns killed, there seemed no shortage of birds and no particular hurry on their part to clear the area.
I was looking for a place to fly my hawk, so I didn't stop. But I wished them well, hunters and their quarry both.
Where will these guys go next year? It's likely they were citizens of Baton Rouge, not local to Port Allen. In recent years, some of them would have stayed within the city limits on opening day. Why not? All else equal, being home for supper is still the best way to build good will at home for another day of hunting.
This is where the rubber and the road meet on the downward trend in American yeoman hunting. Yesterday's AP story outlines the decline in hunters' numbers as if it's news. Everyone who hunts on his own time and own dime knows it's getting harder to do, and why. The article contains some important quotes:
In Baton Rouge (capital city of The Sportman's Paradise), residents are already driving west to hunt doves on opening day. Most have given up hope of hunting anything else in town and have either bought into distant deer and duck leases or got out of hunting altogether.
As the population ages, this will certainly continue. The number of people who grew up hunting will shrink to vanishing. Today's kids are otherwise distracted (and distracting to their parents), making interest and patience for hunting a near-equal problem to access. As Duda notes, knowing better than anyone the shape of the curve and of things to come, "You don't just get up and go hunting one day — your father or father-type figure has to have hunted."
So we might end up like Wayne Pacelle's pets after all, "one generation and out."
The LSU Tigers won their season opener against Mississippi State in at 45-0 rout, which, best of all, occurred on a Thursday and left the long Labor Day weekend open for dove hunting.
I don't shoot but always notice the opening day of dove season; it's hard to miss here. I've seen hunters set up shop---blinds, dogs, blaze orange, the works---nearly in the middle of town. It's handy in the heat to hunt close to the corner quickie mart.
It's handy anyway to hunt near home. As a falconer I've had this pleasure almost everywhere I've lived. It's a strange irony of the sport that while the vast open spaces are nice places to hawk every once in a while, there is also plenty game in town and generally no restrictions to flying hawks. If you hunt often, as falconers do and must, there are a dozen common-sense reasons to hunt close.
For years the same held true for shot gunners. Steve remembers hunting woodcock in the sparse subdivisions of New England, just walking distance from home. And down here, as mentioned, dove hunters have been easy to spot along the road to Wal-Mart. But as Steve found on a more recent trip to his home woods, bird gun in plain view, the times they have a'changed.
I saw no gunners in Baton Rouge this weekend. There is no place left in town to host them. But a trip across the river to Port Allen found them out in force.
Port Allen, a tiny point of transfer for raw materials---sugarcane and petroleum---is growing. I was wrong in 2003 to predict its shrinking population to bottom out, leaving more of its choice hunting land open to me. A movie studio, of all things, 800 acres big, is going up on the north end of town. To the south, huge tracts of land are being cleared and turned into housing and industrial space at a rate that seems almost apocalyptic.
Yet Sunday, literally between the bulldozers, dozens of cammo-clad gunners staked out small territories and patches of overcast sky.
There was a black lab for every two or three men, and a jacked-up four wheel drive truck for every one. The vehicles sat along the road and crosswise in empty parking lots beside plowed fields. Men crouched behind blinds of sugarcane, or stalked along its rows or simply sat upright in the open on stools. All together, across both sides of Highway 1 just north of downtown, maybe two dozen hunters could be seen.
Above and around them, hundreds of mourning doves whirled and landed or tried to land in the newly turned earth. However many the guns killed, there seemed no shortage of birds and no particular hurry on their part to clear the area.
I was looking for a place to fly my hawk, so I didn't stop. But I wished them well, hunters and their quarry both.
Where will these guys go next year? It's likely they were citizens of Baton Rouge, not local to Port Allen. In recent years, some of them would have stayed within the city limits on opening day. Why not? All else equal, being home for supper is still the best way to build good will at home for another day of hunting.
This is where the rubber and the road meet on the downward trend in American yeoman hunting. Yesterday's AP story outlines the decline in hunters' numbers as if it's news. Everyone who hunts on his own time and own dime knows it's getting harder to do, and why. The article contains some important quotes:
Indeed, the article continues, "hunting remains vibrant in many rural states — 19 percent of residents 16 and older hunted last year in Montana and 17 percent in North Dakota, compared with 1 percent in California, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Jersey."
"We hear concerns about land access," [New Hampshire Fish and Game Department spokeswoman, Judy Stokes] said. "People grew up hunting — you went out with your family, your uncle. And now you go back, and there's a shopping plaza or a housing development. Some of your favorite places just aren't available anymore."
National hunting expert Mark Damian Duda, executive director of Virginia-based research firm Responsive Management, says America's increasingly urban and suburban culture makes it less friendly toward the pastime.
[Duda] "...In a rural environment, where your friends and family hunt, you feel comfortable with guns, you feel comfortable with killing an animal."
In Baton Rouge (capital city of The Sportman's Paradise), residents are already driving west to hunt doves on opening day. Most have given up hope of hunting anything else in town and have either bought into distant deer and duck leases or got out of hunting altogether.
As the population ages, this will certainly continue. The number of people who grew up hunting will shrink to vanishing. Today's kids are otherwise distracted (and distracting to their parents), making interest and patience for hunting a near-equal problem to access. As Duda notes, knowing better than anyone the shape of the curve and of things to come, "You don't just get up and go hunting one day — your father or father-type figure has to have hunted."
So we might end up like Wayne Pacelle's pets after all, "one generation and out."
Saturday, September 01, 2007
New Dawg, Part Deux
Travelling duo Dan Gauss & Margaret Fairman own and operate Shot On Sight Photography, a provider of fantastic images of performance sighthounds and regulars on the lure coursing and OFC circuits. Dan and Margaret are obligate, itinerant RV enthusiasts and bone-deep longdog people, pursuing their dreams.
You can follow their travels at http://shotonsite.blogspot.com/, where you'll also find some great shots of their new pup.
Cheers, guys!
You can follow their travels at http://shotonsite.blogspot.com/, where you'll also find some great shots of their new pup.
Cheers, guys!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)