News and Views on Meat

A friend recently gave us some antelope tenderloin, shot with a bow in Wyoming last fall. I grilled it last night, along with some venison sausage that my wife added to her catch-all pasta and feta dish. A Meat-lovers Tuesday.

Having never grilled this particular critter, I kept it simple: cut to small steaks, let sit overnight in olive oil, pinch salt, ground pepper and red pepper flakes. I grilled on low for about 20 minutes, turning every 5 and basting frequently with clarified butter and a little Mr. Stubbs. Result? Tender enough to eat with a fork (although we ate most of it with our hands) and delicious. Now I know why they have to run so fast.

This morning our reader Arthur Wilderson forwarded two links of interest, here and here. The first begins a discussion of "meatless meat," the Soylent Green concoction some posit as a substitute for animal protein. Evidently PETA is offering $1 million to the first mad scientist who invents the stuff.

The second is a discussion thread from a hunters' group who wonder if there's anything they wouldn't kill? Shades of our question about eating dogs, below. However, read a few comments--some are quite unusual. Hard to imagine what sort of hunters' group this might be?

Samples:

"Some animals I would kill in a pinch for food, but there are a few different species that I simply will not kill at all. Primarily, rabbits, chipmunks and skunks. For one, I am not fond of eating scavengers, none of them taste good IMO and I really have a soft spot for all 3..."

Rabbits? My daughters share your soft spot for them, but both agree with me they're delish!

And these folks (some of them "senior members" of the hunting group) seem somewhat conflicted.

"Me being quite squeamish when dealing with the blood and guts part of hunting, I stick to varmints...."

"I don't like the taste of any game save it be fish. Yes, I know that someone has a recipe that would make me change my mind but I've tried most of them and just don't like it. I used to hunt, elk, deer, pheasant, duck, dove and most any game that Utah has to offer. I found that I usually had to find someone to give my kill to as I didn't want to eat it. This typically wasn't a problem there is usually someone you are hunting with that will take the game. I guess for lack of a better description I had a streak of morality hit me..."

"I'm not really a fan of hunting ducks because they mate for life. Just seems weird. Not against other people doing it by any means, just not my thing. Don't really like bird hunting at all, come to think about it..."

Huh! Sounds like there might be a larger market for meatless meat than I thought!

Forthcoming..

Many readers seem to have responded to my Amazon Wish List, but only a couple- Lauren's Colin Simms and Mike's Joe Brown-- have come in yet. Books by mail are notoriously slow, but I shall personally thank each donor as they come in, and review every one.

I also have some non- gift reviews coming up-- for instance, Ray Troll and Kirk Johnson's wonderful Cruisin' the Fossil Freeway, which I found via Brian Switek at Laelaps. (Troll is an old acquaintance from Bozeman days, when he worked the book and museum circuit there.)

Finally, with a little luck, some gun, falcon, and writing blogging- all yet in flux....

Spring Duck Hunting

Cat Urbigkit provides a splendid sequence of a young Bald eagle taking a shot at a Merganser.

Hare Hawking

Tom McIntyre (his most recent book is here) sent this You Tube of a Saker falcon attempting to catch a hare in Arabia. It is much like we do, except that WE still use salukis to help (ok, Asian tazis) and we don't chase the hare with the truck!



The hare still gets away though-- which also happens with us more often than not.

Sunday Links

Busy busy busy which is good, but lots of stuff out there as well...

The BBC discovers that places with guns are more peaceful and safe than London, though they can't quite believe it. HT Reid.

Relatedly, the Atomic Neds have a pleasant encounter in Los Alamos. I agree- if you have pistols at all you MUST have a 1911.

Alphecca links to a great quote, from Canada no less: "Gun control is the only kind of policy that we have where the proponents of it will point to its utter failure as evidence that we need even more of it."

Paleontology: any of us who follow dinosaurs or have an elementary knowledge of cladistics know that T- Rex and birds are more closely related to one another than either is to lizards or snakes, but public opinion is beginning to catch up, albeit with cutesy headlines. Brian at Laelaps provides some only slightly exasperated clarifications.

Humans nearly became extinct 70,000 years ago-- they definitely achieved endangered species status, at least. They also nearly split into two species. Some classical speciation and origins stuff going on here. (HT David Zincavage for the second.)

Archaeology: Peculiar & Mrs. visit a spooky Gallinas culture ruin. These stones would tell strange tales, I suspect, and mysteries still abound. Their neighbors didn't like them, all trails turned away, and virtually every one found was murdered. A bit about them in this good book.

"Do as I say..."? From an essay in the Boston Globe(!): "This year [RFK Jr. is] pushing wind farms, as far as the eye can see. You mean he no longer opposes the Cape Wind project off Uncle Teddy's mansion on Cape Cod? Not a chance! Kennedy wants to plant wind farms all across states like North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas. No Beautiful People live there."

HT Annie Hocker-- RTWT. Though I must add that I see fur as pretty green...

AR, Nanny state and other offenses: Mike Spies sends the good news that dog owners in LA are fighting back. According to the American Sporting Dog Alliance (anyone have a link to the actual story?):

"...Concerned Dog Owners of California filed a lawsuit this week against the City of Los Angeles, seeking to overturn a new ordinance mandating the spaying and neutering of all dogs.

"The lawsuit is primarily based on constitutional grounds, and alleges that the ordinance violates the civil rights of dog owners in several ways.

"The American Sporting Dog Alliance believes that the importance of this lawsuit extends far beyond the City of Los Angeles. It marks the first of several anticipated legal challenges to onerous laws and ordinances as dog owners turn to the courts to fight for their rights on constitutional grounds. This lawsuit is based on legal issues that exist in every state."

Here is a link to a story that is pretty funny on some levels. But what the story AND MOST COMMENTERS seem to miss is: you need to present your papers if stopped in New York City??

"Pliss to present your papers, Kamerad.."

Molon labe.

And of course, Random Weirdness. From Doc H: Purple Hair and Bad SF covers; which leads directly to: Imaginary Romance Novel Covers-- the funniest thing I have seen this month. This one's for you, Rebecca.

Pollan Channels Berry

My cousin Marnie, recalling the chat about sustainability we enjoyed over pricey cappuccino at a seaside resort last summer, sent this recent piece by Michael Pollan.

Marnie writes: "Either Michael Pollan is channeling you or you are channeling him, and you're both channeling Wendell Berry."

Pollan's piece quotes my hero WB in defense of virtue as a dissapearing commodity in American culture and specifically on the virtue of self-reliance that planting a garden embodies. Pollan, who writes often about his own gardening, sees that effort as a more substantive response to climate change concerns than say, changing a light bulb.

After seeing Al Gore's 'Inconvenient Truth,' Pollan says the most frightening moment for him came after the closing credits, "when we are asked to . . . change our light bulbs. That’s when it got really depressing. The immense disproportion between the magnitude of the problem Gore had described and the puniness of what he was asking us to do about it was enough to sink your heart."

Pollan develops his theme in an effort to explain why, after we've given away so much personal responsibility to various specialists ("...our meals to agribusiness, health to the doctor, education to the teacher, entertainment to the media, care for the environment to the environmentalist, political action to the politician...") we are left with such pitiful "solutions" as switching to other kinds of light bulb or auto fuel as the only actions we might successfully take on our own behalf.

"Indeed, to look to leaders and experts, to laws and money and grand schemes, to save us from our predicament represents precisely the sort of thinking — passive, delegated, dependent for solutions on specialists — that helped get us into this mess in the first place. It’s hard to believe that the same sort of thinking could now get us out of it. "

Wendell Berry's writing and thinking, suggests Pollan, points to a better way:

"[Berry is] impatient with people who wrote checks to environmental organizations while thoughtlessly squandering fossil fuel in their everyday lives — the 1970s equivalent of people buying carbon offsets to atone for their Tahoes and Durangos. Nothing was likely to change until we healed the 'split between what we think and what we do.' For Berry, the 'why bother' question came down to a moral imperative: 'Once our personal connection to what is wrong becomes clear, then we have to choose: we can go on as before, recognizing our dishonesty and living with it the best we can, or we can begin the effort to change the way we think and live.'"

Amen, Brother Wendell!

But what a shame that Mr. Berry needs a spokesman. I read the Pollan piece and wrote back to my cousin:

Berry is the prophet of our age. You’ll see him quoted more and more over the next decade, I’m sure. And after he is safely dead (also likely in same period), his lauding by pundits and politicians of every stripe will soar. Somewhere in the ground on a Kentucky hillside, Wendell will be spinning in his grave.

I think Pollan is an important figure and I enjoy reading him. He speaks for the urban/yuppie set for whom references to carbon footprints, hybrid SUVs and fair trade lattes have real-time relevance. That demographic (which is mine, to some extent) needs him. But Berry himself does not need translating. If you read his novels you’ll enjoy them and understand them perfectly. If you read his essays you’ll feel empowered and inspired and ashamed, all without needing anyone to parse out the reasons for it. I am getting into his poetry and theology now and know there’s yet another opportunity here for enjoyment and enlightenment.

We did get a garden in this year, but it’s small. We’ve got 7 tomato plants, 2 basil and 2 peppers. But these are the things we will actually eat, so we’ll get a good return on investment. I’d like to keep it going this year into the fall and winter with salad greens, just to experiment. As for “giving up the beef,” we’ve largely done that but still of course eat meat. We ate a lot of local game this year (including last night's grilled deer sausage) and will be eating more I suspect as the economy tanks.

Art in Action

Artist, falconer and blogger Carel Brest Van Kempen posts a series of fascinating and beautiful short films of his art in the act of creation. Music (I believe) also composed by Carel.

Hawk Poems

Steve's post below with hawk-infused poetry brought another poem to mind. It's by one of my favorites, Georgia native David Bottoms, and it appears in the most recent edition of LSU's famed literary journal, The Southern Review. Enjoy!



Old Man and Neighborhood Hawk

Vague silhouette, like an idea
forming, then a shiver on the pine branch and the hawk takes shape.

It props against twilight to scrutinize the yard, the hedges
and flower beds smudged into gray pools.

My old man, elbow on his walker, stares from a kitchen chair.

The hawk rolls his head, probes hedge, patio, monkey grass,
rhododendrons heavy with black blossoms, trellis of roses.

The old man noses the window, his caught breath clouding the pane.

Something has grabbed an eye, some old impulse
trembling down the nerves. On the bar of the walker his hand trembles.

Then a dive from the branch, a bursting under brush,
and up the hawk rises on wing slashes, pine straw, flurry of leaves—

over lawn, fence, street, dragging through streetlight
something pale and squirming—

and my old man’s hand flapping toward the window
falls again to his knee.

New material

Regular Q. readers: Just a note to check "below the fold" for some new posts by Steve. I just got around to uploading the pics...

Swan song, et c

Me, ever since I saw my grandpa chop a chicken's head off (complete with the runnin' 'round spectacle that followed) one day, and then the next day saw him chop of a rattlesnake's head (with the follow-up warning that the head was still deadly, for a long time after life itself was gone), I've been what you might call suspicious about the whole denogginizing process. Word is, guillotined Frenchmen blinked a whole lot without the benefit of their bodies, in the name of science.

So imagine this:

Your intrepid reporter is in pursuit of something Eastern European, y'know, werewolf bread, Soviet yams, something. He's heard mysterious tales of a soup made from blood. Yes! Blood! No kidding! So I looked long and hard. I mean I asked around casually. And guess what, reader, it's not actually hard to find a czarnina (blood soup!!) recipe. Everyone has one. They're even like, 'You have blood pudding in England, don't you?,' and I'm like, 'I don't, no!' and they're like, 'You use too many exclamation points!' but in any event, it turns out that the difficulty isn't in finding something mildly exotic to eat, but rather, in discriminating between the different recipes that every single person gives you. Which is actually the best? And how much homecooked blood can a man eat in a week in the name of psuedoscience? (Or psuedo-psuedoscience, as it were)

Turns out, a lot.

And a whole lot of the whole process involves birds getting their heads lopped off.
I'm actually a picky eater, kids. If I can shake a piece of bacon without breaking it I put it back in the pan. I'm almost positive I ate nothing but chocolate milk and Kraft Cheese n' Macaroni for at least two months straight at one point in grad school. But I'm traveling, I'm trying to be up for anything, I'm trying to be at the mercy of new places.

So I set out to eat any and every bit of blood soup I could manage to convince a student or student's mother to serve me.

Have you ever had a really bad bloody nose? With celery in it?

One thing that seemed to be a constant was vinegar. Many questions and increasingly fat Polish-English dictionaries finally revealed that it prevents clotting. I'm almost sad to say that the 'goose' blood made the best soup, to my mind. (By goose I almost certainly mean swan, but my chef disagreed, so who am I to argue).

Discard guts, or do whatever tickles your fancy with them, the 'goose' isn't going to mind at this point.

Chill the blood and vinegar.

Pluck the 'goose,' then put the meat and organs (sans lungs, as far as I could tell, but with liver, gizard, and heart) into a big pot, pour water over it until it's full, then boil it all. You take the goo off the top (and I'm sure there's a name for this stuff, but I don't know it), then mix in whatever's in the garden, apparently, for example: onions, celery, peppers, stuff that I couldn't pronounce in a thousand years and lots of it, with the goo, put it in a little cloth bag and let that cook with the 'goose' meat at a low temp for about 3 hours.

Sorry I don't know the exact cooking temperature, but it was a gas stove and the cook was an 80-year old woman whom I was physically afraid of anyway, and who seemed to like to swing a cleaver around whenever she talked to me (or anyone, for that matter), not necessarily threateningly, but threateningly nonetheless.

Once everything would seem to be done, throw in whatever fruit you have, we had prunes, cherries and apples.

At this point the blood/vinegar came out of the fridge, was mixed with (I think) sour cream and (I know) flour at an excruciatingly slow rate, to prevent, by my translation, 'life via air,' which better translators (ie:people who can actually speak both Polish and English) have since called' curdling', but whatever. Pour some water from the boiling meat into the blood, stir it, then pour it all over the 'goose' meat.

This woman threw a small fistfull of sugar into the pot like she hated it and said something I could only construe as a curse on my flesh as she did.

Serve and eat.

Sorry my measurements are either nonexistent or totally unspecific, but the whole 'goose' fed four of us, which included one smallish woman, me (something like 200 pounds) and two elderly folks who ate more than me, with marginal leftovers.

Ducks, chickens don't make much of a difference, so far as I could tell, but beware, I'm not much of a gourmand.

Enjoy if you dare.

Two Poems with Hawks in Them

I mean to post more poetry. Two short whole ones here. First, from Colin Simms' Gyrfalcon Poems, "Hesitates at the Apex" :

Hesitates at the apex, hovers wind his acceptance
until he topples over the edge of his calculus;
stoops as an arrow will fall, the archer lifted to cross,
clear, and drop vertical behind their defences
perhaps no faster than peregrine but far heavier
great wings opening creaking to platform one deathsever
one claw for the merganser's neck; left talon, rear toe.
Aftershock felt in my cheek followed by warmth as he sends
dead duck down in its own down. He staggers air as if with the bends
but his skill and spine are strong though organs float in the force
he has to gravity, to beauty of form endorsed...

Thanks also to Lauren McGough, who sent his American Poems-- reviews coming.)

And from Les Murray's Learning Human, "Ariel":

Upwards, cheeping, on huddling wings
these small brown mynas have gained
a keener height than their kind ever sustained
but whichever of them fails first
falls to the hawk circling under
who drove the up.
Nothing's free when it is explained.

More from both, probably soon.

.. And: Art of the Week

The "Quote" below reminded me that I had promised an "Art of the Week" post and have been remiss.

So, its choice inspired by recent correspondence on woodcock with Doc Hypercube , an exquisite hanging dead snipe watercolor by Thomas Aquinas Daly. These birds were shot by Tom in Colorado, a departure for the artist, who usually paints subjects from his upstate New York querencia or sometimes New Brunswick salmon streams. He told me that he gave me this particular one not because they were western but because "you love this kind of thing and everybody else hates it." What can I say?

Quote of the Week

In Comments in the post "At War with ARistas?" Patrick writes irresistibly:

"Aerial shots of the yard show some rubbish, which is not a good thing to be able to see from outer space (I'm just saying). "

I mean, I'm all for Yard Cars in Magdalena, especially as "Yuppie Repellent", but I hear ya...

Domestic Animals: Diverse Phenotypes Imply Diverse genotypes

As anyone who reads this blog knows, I distrust the narrowing of the gene pool that comes from closed studbooks. Right now the Central Asian sighthound gene pool is vast and diverse; many want to cut it into several standardized breeds. One reason i fear regulation is because I work against this trend with dogs.

I do the same with pigeons. Pigeons do not have closed studbooks but do have standards, and to win in shows many do the same as dog breeders, ending up with exaggerated pigeons that are almost clones of each other. I breed several old Mediterranean and Spanish breeds but try to keep them as diverse and healthy as they were in the 19th or even the 17th Century, outcrossing if necessary. I can show you in my loft and library.

Here is a"good" specimen of a Spanish Barb, a favorite, but not a show Barb. This is a functional bird that can raise its own young. Show Barbs have much more wattle and cere (eye ring) and a VERY short beak. Nowadays, you rarely see a crested or feather- legged Barb; I have both. Mine also vary considerably in size.



Here is a crested Barb from Aldrovandi's Ornithologiae, ca 1600:



Here is a similar one, slightly more realistic-- Willughby's Ornithology, 1688:



Here is one from Darwin's Animals and Plants Under Domestication, almost like my "good" one:



And here are a few of mine including a crested one, black and white, with a little Catalonian for scale (though these are related breeds with a "link" breed, the Ojo de Fresa, and I have Barbs almost as small as Cats.



I will NEVER breed these, or my dogs, to anyone's standard.

A Few Links

I thought James McMurtry's anthem of dysfunctional but merry Oklahomans was the ultimate redneck tale, but Anne Pearse Hocker sent us this story which outdoes it. Start with the title: "Gator found in burglary suspect’s car". It then gets better and better.

He had been burglarizing his neighbors, stealing a video game control, a hair trimmer, and TV. He asked another neighbor to help him carry the TV to the car, which had a six- foot alligator in it.

The day before, he had been stopped with a water moccasin.

It had bitten him. (He warned the cops, but declined treatment.)

He was drunk. Mr. McMurtry, I believe you have another song.

Walter Hingley sends this link to all the Sports Illustrated stories ever written. What younger readers may not know is that once, up well into the seventies, it published the best writers in America on hunting, fishing, and nature. You can find here everyone from Hemingway on bulls, Bil Gilbert on nature, and the McGuane- Harrison gang on everything from fly fishing to bull riding. I am particularly fond of the Patricia Ryan years, from the late 60's to late 70's (she also published the first review of Rage for Falcons, in People--!-- when she ran that mag in the 80's) but the earlier years are rich too. Unfortunately the site is as about as far from user friendly as I have ever seen. Don't bother to use anything but "Advanced Search", by author or title. Then you get article text, a page at a time (and to print, you must select each page separately.) Link to "issue" and you get nothing but a series of thumbnails that you must scroll through to find your page, each of which loads slowly. And though they have all the nice original art, you can't print them!

Derb attends a conference on consciousness in Tucson and reports here and here. I do sort of believe the dog thing BTW, but so does he I think.

Jessica at Bioephemera has a post on what might be called "Dead Bug Couture". (The site she links to is almost as wonky as SI's, at least on Firefox.) I can't resist quoting her; it is the best line in a blog so far this year:

"I have to be shamelessly indulgent toward anyone who cites Rasputin, Seamus Heaney, and Evelyn Waugh as his inspirations for encasing dead insects in giant balls of resin, draping them on Pre-Raphaelite models, and framing them with blather about the Russian aristocracy."

Sad: Iraqi insurgents using pigeons to target troops. All sides seem to use pigeons there, maybe a sign of their ubiquity in Middle eastern urban culture-- this is the third (NYT?) story I have read on them, at least.

Anonymous sends a quote from one Christopher Roach: "...you can count on a gun to work if you keep it clean. The same can’t be said for the promises of the federal government. "

Luisa has an inclusive post on Livestock Guardian Dogs. It links to Cat, and us, but has a lot more. Check out the "Guardian" link for big crossbreds working against wolves up north. One of these days we'll do a big wolf post here.

Funny signs. No, I can't speak Chinese; yes, the Chinese ones are funnier than the misspelled English ones, partly because some are not necessarily wrong, only unabashedly literal (the ones about bodily functions and "cripples"; "Infested by bears").

I'll leave you with this one from Mike Spies, in Jamaica:

At War with ARistas?

I usually think it is not quite this bad yet, but when Phyllis McDonald sent me this from the UKC I nearly choked. RTWT, but here is an excerpt.

"Robert Attleson lives in Littleton, Colorado, where he and his long-time partner, Melissa, raise English Setters. In addition to breeding and showing dogs, Bob is active in an organization called “All Setter Rescue.” Bob has lived in his home long enough that his mortgage is paid off, so about 18 months ago, he bought the house next door, partly as a tax shelter. The number of dogs at Bob’s house fluctuates as he raises and sells his litters, and moves the occasional rescue dog in and out. In the decades that Bob has lived in Littleton, not one complaint has been lodged against him for barking, for smells, or for letting his dogs run loose. When the Littleton city leaders passed a dog limit law, Bob thought his second property would keep him within the requirements of the law. The city fathers didn’t see it his way. Instead, Bob became a target for harassment by animal control. Like most citizens who have never had to fight their own government, Bob tried to be reasonable, but he soon realized that he would have to leave Littleton altogether.

"He purchased property 60 miles outside of Littleton, but couldn’t move his dogs immediately because he needed to put up fencing. On February 14, Bob told city officials that he would have all of the dogs out of Littleton by February 18. Animal Control insisted on a meeting with Bob on February 19 to verify that the dogs were indeed gone, so they agreed to meet at 10 a.m. Having settled this, Bob and Melissa headed out to the Plum Creek Kennel Club dog show the following morning to show their English Setters, Pig and Jo, in the Best Brace competition.

"Meanwhile, animal control, knowing that Bob was out of town at the dog show, requested an emergency court hearing on Friday, February 15. The Court called Bob’s home and left a message informing him of the hearing. When he failed to show, the Court issued a fugitive warrant and authorized animal control to seize Bob’s dogs. According to a neighbor, animal control staked out Bob’s home to ensure that Bob and Melissa actually left the house before the raid. Neighbors told Bob that animal control came to the house, and when no one answered the door, departed quickly. What the neighbors didn’t know was that animal control was going back to the judge to request a forcible entry warrant. About four in the afternoon, four police cars, two animal control vehicles (one from out of town, since Littleton only has one animal control truck), six police officers and two animal control agents arrived at Bob’s two houses. A battering ram was used to break down the front door of the first house and the back door of the second. A window was broken so that officers could hand a litter of nine four-week-old pups through the window to waiting animal control officers. In total, four adult dogs, including the dam of the still-nursing pups, were removed from the two houses, and sent to the Colorado Humane Society. (Note: Just a few months ago, the Colorado Humane Society was the subject of a criminal investigation by the state Attorney General because of questions of financial management and care of the animals. As a result, the city of Littleton actually canceled its contract with Colorado Humane. Interestingly, the current Littleton animal control officer is a former employee of Colorado Humane.)

"Melissa came home about 6:00 to check on the puppies. Seeing her doors broken down and windows broken, she raced inside to discover that her dogs were gone. There was a note telling Bob that when he came home from the dog show, he was to turn in his three show dogs to animal control. The note included an order from the judge that none of Bob’s dogs were to be returned to him or to any person who may be a friend of Bob’s. Melissa finally reached Bob on his cell phone. He was happily telling her that their brace of English Setters had won Best Brace in Show when Melissa told him that he needed a criminal lawyer, and fast. Bob took the three show dogs to their home in Strasburg.

(Snip)

"During the pre-hearing negotiations, the prosecutor agreed to let Bob have all of his dogs back, but he had to plead guilty and agree to an outrageous sentence. This deal allowed Bob to meet his top priorities - he got his dogs back and he didn’t have to go to jail. However, he got three years deferred jail time, $3,000 in fines and another $1,000 to reimburse the county for the “care” of his dogs. In addition, for the next three years, animal control may make unannounced inspections of his two homes in Littleton, and Bob is not allowed to bring a dog into Littleton, even to go to the veterinarian. Finally, Bob was forced to agree to an inspection of his Strasburg property by the city of Littleton."

As the late Charlton Heston said, from my cold dead hands. Read it all, before they come to your town. And look at Nightmare's comments in "Links" below-- -it now costs $500 a YEAR in Dallas to keep an intact dog.

Update: the North Carolina PETA activists who took dogs from animal shelters, killed them,and dumped them in dumpsters, were convicted only of littering, apparently because their intentions were "benign". They had been charged with 21 felony accounts of animal abuse, but the judge threw most charges out. (Remember, animal hospital officials said they thought an effort would be made to put the animals up for adoption.) Now, even the littering charges have been overturned, because a dumpster is a perfectly good receptacle for rubbish. PETA is crowing and implying it will do it again. Be very afraid.

HT Bob Kane at SAOVA.

Reading Wish List

First addition re New Ideas: my Amazon Wish List, some selections with comments, is now available below the photo-- scroll down on some servers. I promise to review any selection readers provide right here!

Teeth

Polymath scientist- archaeologist- artist- writer- rancher Joe Hutto blew through the other day after running down to Catron County, on his way to home in Wyoming via the Carolinas. He brought us a beautiful dark Late Pleistocene mammoth tooth he had retrieved from the black waters of the Auscilla River on the border of Florida and Georgia.



I am holding a cast of a mastodon tooth given me by Laura Niven, and I really have to get out more this spring-- even given my puffy down vest I look like I outweigh Joe by fifty pounds-- yikes!

Joe's amazing turkey book can be found here. He has one forthcoming on bighorn sheep that may be even better.

Bill Buford did a good piece on Joe in the New Yorker last year but I can't find it online.

Hair

Recently rediscovered: not the caveman from the ad but yrs truly early seventies, giving a talk on hawks to schoolchildren. I WAS living in a coldwater beach shack....

Some Real Dogs

A few of us who love the primitive sighthounds worry that the program of breeding them to standard and closing the studbook, as is being proposed in Almaty, could be the first step on their road to ruin. Vladimir Beregovoy has found a scientist and dog breeder in the far western Karatau range, 400 miles from Almaty, who apparently agrees and has some dogs to prove it.

Vladimir B translates V Shakula. I have not bothered to Anglicize further-- I think his passion comes through best this way.

"I will add some more about Afghans and Taigans. You see, they may have very related roots. Whereas Afghans appeared in Europe long enough and became well known there, in Russia and former Soviet republics they (the Afghans) appeared only 1970th-80th. Mainly in Moscow, in Central Russia and in the Ukraine. In Asia [that part, which is known to V. Shakula V. B] they are very rare. Afghan lovers brought several of them from Moscow in Tashkent and in Almaty. Nobody brought them into mountain regions, because it was a show dog. Longhair and stupid. One of my friends (rather his wife), brought two Afghans in our village in 1995-96. I love all dogs, but these were good for nothing. Stupid, whimsical, cowardly and inept. Finally, one of them died and another got lost; it was found later emaciated in the neighboring village (5 km from us) and they returned her back in the city. Not only for hunting, they were not good, they were not good for a life in general. How it is possible to compare with the Taigan, which is like made of steel and whose sole is burning eternal flame of indefatigable hunter, which makes to dog to pursue game for dozens of km and know direction under any weather conditions, even in winter in the mountains? Excuse me, but aboriginal dog is a dog written from a capital letter. I can recognize their past affinity, but taking a Taigan as a mix with an Afghan or with a Tazi or a Saluki or whom other dog is a mistake. I understand Sir Terence Clark meant the appearance. Indeed, eastern sighthounds are generally similar, because they are resembling each other. Another thing is surprising, I know well that 50-60 years ago Kazakhs and Kyrgyz had no culture of breeding at all. Now, there is more superficial activity in the restoration of national traditions, then real work. Speaking seriously, they were simply killing the breed (Tazi included). Aboriginal blood is so strong, anyway, somewhere in remote provinces a real eastern sighthound (unexpectedly) is popping up in all its former glory. The genotype is so constant! I am stunned and ashamed for people, who do nothing, like myself"

Says VB: "Now, he is going to get involved seriously."

Here is one of his taigans, likely the remote ancestor of today's silly show Afghan, He hunts WOLVES with these.



Here is a tazi with some taigan blood. I want one, only black, a common color.



This is our ultimate destination next trip, and I hope to bring back another pup.

Should You Eat Dogs?

My gut reaction: NO!! You are surprised?

Matt Miller pointed me to this piece in Salon by Ted Kerasote about a horrifying experience he had in China. My take is not quite the same as his but close enough, especially for dogs.

Matt wrote:

"Thinking about the grouse watching trip's participants: have you seen
Ted K.'s piece in salon.com, on Chinese treatment/eating of dogs. I had
mixed opinions but am still sorting through them. I agree 100% on the
Chinese human rights abuses, to say nothing of what is happening to the
wildlife. It is beyond belief, and criminal. But I don't know that I can
oppose eating dogs just because they're dogs. Couldn't someone with a
close connection to elk, or bears, or pigs, or whatever, make the same
argument against eating those species? What we hunt/kill/raise/eat all
comes down to our personal values and cultural attitudes. "I'll eat a
trout or a cow or a deer but not a mountain lion?" to paraphrase Quammen
from memory. Since you're a dog guy, I wonder if you draw a similar line
to Ted's--no one should not be eating dogs, period. Stephen Rinella ate
dog meat but found that he could not get past his own preconceptions. I
think I'd be the same way, but that doesn't mean everyone should live by
my choices."

I responded:

"Oddly I DO think dogs are different because I think the nature of the bond not only dates to pre- human times but that it is a deeper social one than with any other species. Dogs have evolved to "talk" to us and listen , quite literally. My old pal McLoughlin calls them a social hybrid of man and wolf which catches it exactly I think.

"Of course illegal and immoral do not always sort out exactly-- I'd likely rely more on social disapproval. Ted is a lot less small- l libertarian than I.

"Interesting note: in Vladimir Beregovoy's primitive breeds book he writes that the made- for- eating breed has far less social "affect" than normal dogs-- bred to be distant? Even some dog- eaters must feel bad!"

Kent Christopher RIP plus Sage Synchronicity

My old friend Kent Christopher died in a skiing accident at Targhee a couple of weeks ago. He was only 54, a great falconer and a vitally important voice for the sage grouse and the sage ecosystem. I had known him since he was a college kid in Maine.

I last saw him when frequent commentor Matt Miller of the Nature Conservancy brought him, Tom Cade of the Peregrine Fund, Ted Kerasote, Libby and me to see the sage grouse dance on their leks in Idaho.

THe same day that he died, frequent guest- blogger Cat Urbigkit sent me a wonderful bunch of Sage grouse courting pics-- I may post some later. Turns out she was at Targhee when Kent made his last flight.

In the local paper, his obit said that " Christopher was one of the organizers of Dubois Grouse Days, an annual celebration of sage grouse in eastern Idaho. He also helped establish the North American Grouse Partnership, a group that lobbied for the conservation of grouse. He was also a nationally known falconer. “He was one of those champions for wildlife who never tired,” said Terry Thomas, an Idaho Department of Fish and Game biologist who worked with Christopher for more than a decade. “He did whatever he could to help. Always. Every time I met up with him, I was more impressed.” "

Matt added, in a note to me:

"A very sad loss for us in Idaho. Kent was a great man and so passionate about falconry, sagebrush country and sage grouse. He put conservation on the ground--some of the most successful grouse conservation projects in the West happened on his watch."

For more on one of Kent's two favorite birds (can you guess the other? go to this post at John Carlson's Prairie Ice.

More on Spaying

Dr John Burchard writes on mandatory spay neuter, resurrected in California. I had said:

"Only Americans (and perhaps Canadians) have this neutering thing. I think
European members [ of our list-- they did] will confirm that neutering of purebred dogs is much rarer there.

He replied:

"It is beginning to catch on there too ... but at least when I lived in or was
based in Europe (1958-1996 inclusive) desexed dogs were an anomaly there.
People managed their intact dogs, mostly without problems. Of course Europeans
tend to be less complicated about "the facts of life" than Americans. Those
crazy Puritans still cast a long shadow over here.

"I think there may still be some European countries where spay/neuter is
considered "unnecessary surgery" and actually prohibited except in case of
medical necessity?

"It is amazing that some of our own people (I mean, for example, Saluki breeders
who hunt with their dogs) do not see the illogic here and actually think
breeders should be licensed (of course, only the "good" ones) and everyone else
forced by law to sterilize their animals. That is problematic at many levels
... for example, who is a "good" breeder? Laura Sanborn has pointed out that
would mean the immediate end of the supply of police dogs and search-and-rescue
dogs, because most of those come not from "professional breeders" but from "pet
homes" - people who discover, when the dog is a year or two old, that they have
too much dog on their hands. Most of those dogs - who of course become the
parents of the next generation of good working dogs - were not originally
intended for breeding, and were not in the hands of a "breeder" at all. All
those dogs would have to be sterilized. Police patrol dogs are, anyway, nearly
always intact males, because most bitches and nearly all neutered dogs of either
sex don't have enough "drive" for that job. Police dog training is a long and
expensive procedure and you don't want to begin it with animals nearly all of
which will "wash out" during training.

"That's only one of many reasons AB 1634 and its very numerous kinfolk are a very
bad idea. They won't have much effect on the supply of "pets" but they will
practically eliminate the supply of working dogs (including hunting dogs). And
of course they will cause a dramatic *increase* in the animal shelter numbers,
the euthanasia rate, and the costs of animal control. That has been the effect
everywhere such regulations have been enacted."

Links

I want to do more original content (and maybe therefore post less?) but have a lot of linkage stored. Onward!

I like Rod Dreher's version of a Doomsday cult.

Guns for vasectomies? Interesting priorities! HT Tam.

High- end eagle hunting video here at Patrick's. Best flights I have seen on film yet, though I once saw one toss up like that flying at a fox in Mongolia.

Sippican says there are some good things about the modern world. I believe SOME of those (are good that is.)

Ideas for Change?

This past year has been a tough one economically, mostly because of the sorry state of mainstream publishing. If the story ever gets resolved for the better (which it probably will) I'll tell it all here. Suffice to say that it fulfills every dire statement that Michael Blowhard ever made about the business. For now, all you need to know is that I am paying $3200 for getting a partial advance of $1800, and looking for another publisher.

I will not abandon the mainstream entirely-- the potential rewards are too great for an aging, well- reviewed writer with no pension plan But the examples of Mary and others have made me decide to do some more web stuff. Dr Hypercube and Matt have been particularly helpful, in both comments and the mail.

Here is Doc:

"Some random thoughts (more will come along if I ever get my post on it finished-- connection to the artist is important. Folks want to feel that link.

"Niche/uniqueness/customization is another key.You're in excellent shape on both counts - the magic trick is turning that into $$. I don't think hiding stuff behind a paywall is a good model - tip jars, subscription (in the old sense of prepaying for a project), limited run books all may work.... I would instantly paypal over $10 or $20 bucks for a copy of 'Bodio on X' - for those less trufannish, you could sweeten the deal w/ signatures or bookplates or whatever for pre-payers."

More:

"Another idea (will comment on Q as well, to get Matt's take): your taste in books and your book reviews? Killer. Leverage it to reduce the amount of money you spend on books - assuming you aren't up to your neck in review copies now. [ Not for anything but birding and--!-- fishing SB] Set up an Amazon wish list of books you'd like to read and put a sidebar widget on Querencia with a bit of explanation. Readers of the blog can buy you books from the list (I think if you set it up correctly you'd get a tiny commission on the sale), you read, post review to Q with a thank-you link to the sponsor (and maybe allow your review to be cross posted on the sponsor's blog). Part of what seems to be successful on the web is trying quite a few different small things and seeing what develops..."

I like the idea of a link to my always- long wish list. Readers? I'd promise to review anything bought.

Matt now:

"I think you're right on with something Steve could and (as he knows I've told him) should do, self publish. But not necessarily for the larger market. Tailored reprints of his own work with some original material added to update---but more importantly, to make unique and add appeal.

"Steve could gather a heap of of his best writing on falconry into one pub. He could do the same with any of his many passions and areas of expertise, fracturing them into even smaller wedges that will fit little niches.

"Doc you'd pay 10-20 for Bodio on X. But how much would you pay for Bodio on X, in hardcover, with a personalized introduction to you?"

Doc again:

"Matt - can't resist repeating my theme. Short answer - heck of a lot more than $10 or $20. Long answer - couldn't agree with you more - the internet allows width (meme of the week occupies a million people for 1 minute each) and, more importantly here, wicked depth. The opportunities for personalization - intros, omakase chapter selection for those poor souls who don't want to read everything - you've clearly thought this through more than I have, but yes - what you said."

OK: all the above are possible-- and I think we'll link the wish list permanently as soon as Matt is able (and I'll make comments on books in there also.)

Two things more or less ready to go: a huge 1865 book on Siberian hunting by Cherkassov, a Russian classic, translated by dog scholar Vladimir Beregovoy and smoothed by me, with an attempt to retain its folkloric Siberian diction, full of esoteric knowledge. This needs some design and it's a go.

And: a novel I wrote over ten years ago about the reintroduction of big predators into the southwest. Events have overtaken it, and I am disinclined to rewrite it, but everybody but publishers loves it including such writers as Charles Bowden, and many separate parts have been published (the jaguar tale in Gray's Journal last year was taken from it.) It is sort of a literary thriller with ranchers and lions and tigers and bears. Anyone out there interested? (Artists who might like to do a few dramatic black- and- white illos encouraged as well.)

What else? I have the rights to Querencia- the- book plus ownership of all the copies-- need to have a place to sell them here.

Need to get the falcon and pigeon books on POD, the second with a better cover.

And: should I start a "send us to Kazakhstan" fund, to get another dog and finish the book, here? The publishing companies are in no hurry-- one offered $3000 [this is corrected-- I had said $300 which is too cheap even for them] last year for the whole book, less than we have spent and less than it now takes to get there.

What else might anyone want? IDEAS!

Flood Stage

The snow melt and heavy rains upriver in the midwest have sent a huge bulge of water our way. Crest is expected on the 16th of April, and unless a spillway to our south is opened, it stands now to top the levee. I doubt that will be allowed to happen, but it's dramatic to think about.

This is an event that happens about once a decade, maybe a little more often in the latter part of the last 100 years. Back in 1997, some of Baton Rouge flooded, although I am happy to learn that my neighborhood (although less than a mile from the levee) remained dry.

Here are a couple pictures I took a while back from the top of the levee near the Louisiana State University campus. Note the first picture faces north; that same view is shown at the end of the second video (but with considerably more water present!)








Here's one from today, facing south.





Here are are couple short movies from earlier this afternoon. Note B's description of where the bank used to be (see second photo for example). The second video is a panoramic view of what would be underwater today without the 40 foot levee.

Domestic Post: Garden & Such

Spring! Especially nice after a long winter..

We had to really puppy- proof (read "Larissa- proof") the garden this year. Though almost two, she still has been chewing like a pup. Recent casualties include hoses, our cell phone, and Paul Theroux's Old Patagonian Express.

So:






It takes some figuring. Here Lib and Peculiar, who has returned with Mrs P to New Mexico, wrestle with the hoses.



Gos is on vacation, living in the loose box. Here he tips his head: hello!



We got about the right amount of good wood: here is what we have left:


The rose is about to bloom:



And Libby is in her element:

Latter Day New Orleans

Reid sent a recent story from the NYT with this headline: Big Plans Are Slow to Bear Fruit in New Orleans. He asks, "Knowing the history of the city, is this surprising?"

I quipped in reply, "No, nothing ever moved quickly in New Orleans except money from the pockets of tourists." And that's still true, from what I can see.

I spent three days last week at the Sheraton New Orleans, which is way down Canal Street by the revamped Harrah's Casino (ok, the casino did come back quickly), about a block from the French Quarter and the bank of the Mississippi.

I was there for the CASE Editor's Forum, a well-organized annual conference serving the university periodical community's editors, writers and designers. I'm a newcomer to this field; and after three days in the company of several hundred career professionals, I've decided I'm also a latecomer. (Evidently you can get degrees and certifications in this stuff. I wish now I had some.)

But in one area of expertise, I shined. I was one of few conventioneers of local origin; I think there were two of us, total. At an evening mixer, I met a couple guys, both editors of East Coast school alumni mags, and I found myself explaining the city to them. This is not a liberty any native New Orleanian would allow a guy from Baton Rouge to take, but as there was no native present to contest my version of events, I held the floor.

My schpiel goes something like this: the city is changed. Vast sections of its heart are scraped bare and no one knows who or what or if anything will replace them. Before the storm, the French Quarter was just one attraction, always entertaining but tiny. Outside the Quarter were dozens of distinct communities, each with its own charm, danger, magic and tragedy. You could live in New Orleans and never know it all, except by reputation; yet you could know many varied parts of the whole and could skip across their intersections to sample them.

New Orleans was always foreboding, but always welcoming. If you accepted a measure of risk, you could expect a reward that well outsized that risk, spilling over you riches of food and drink and strange, alluring people. I am not a native of the city, but I know and have known it well enough to drink that much in.

Now, what is the case? Now New Orleans may be recovering, in a way. But if it is, its recovery will be one that will for years be characterized by a kind of predictability that is alien to the old city. It will be more familiar to its tourists and less familiar to its own citizens, who as poet Andrei Codrescu says, are now tourists in the city themselves.

Codrescu delivered the closing address at the CASE conference. I spoke to him at a campus coffee shop earlier in the week, asking when he would be heading down. I mention that to drop a name, of course. But also to say it's possible to make small talk with him here, as his celebrity does not precede him. Professor Codrescu is a quiet, very gracious presence on campus. His persona is much larger than himself.

Codrescu read from his latest collection of essays, New Orleans, Mon Amour, containing twenty years of his stories about the city, all of them good. He sounds just like himself on NPR---the CASE audience obviously loved that. But without a local history of their own with which to hear Codrescu speak of New Orleans, I wonder if listeners heard the strain of his delivery? Codrescu is a victim of his city as much as its lover. Like many, or most, of its familiars, he was wounded by her flooding and her abandonment, and by her willingness to accept the attentions of national media and aid.

"I hate tourists," he said in reply to one question after his address. "But I know we need the money." Codrescu's own frank depression and repeated mention of mental illness in New Orleans was not shocking to me. It would not shock anyone listening who lives in or near this city where suicide and murder compete as chief causes of death. No one around here has really recovered.

But one woman, I forget where she's from, stood up to say that though she had never been to New Orleans, in just three days at the conference she had "fallen in love with the city." I wonder if she found Codrescu's dour take on things alarming. I wonder how he found hers.

Coursing with Sheepdogs?

Readers will remember writer, sheepherder, and guard dog breeder Cat Urbigkit of Wyoming. Her books can be found here.

A recent note from her to Steve reminds us that flock guardian dogs, thoseancient custodians of sheep and other flocks, don't just passively GUARD.

Cat writes:

I took the runt of the litter of guard dog pups last year and made her a house dog (except for tending to bum lambs around the house). She goes to schools and libraries for book readings and signings and at nearly a year old, Rena has never had the pleasure of tangling with a coyote. Usually my pups have their first encounters and kills when they are about four months old (with baby teeth!!).

I have a pair of coyotes denning up on the mesa just off our place, so I've been turning Rena out after them when I see them. At first she had no idea what to do. She wouldn't let the coyotes come closer to the house, pens or sheep, but she wouldn't attack and kill either (so unlike her mother). She kept looking back at me to see what to do. I was no help at all, since I was busy behind my camera.


Yesterday was her second try. The female coyote started walking toward Rena with her hackles up, so Rena decided to be more aggressive, and got the coyote to run. Once the female got her further away, the male joined in, so I turned my big Akbash stud dog loose as well. Soon I had no coyotes and no dogs.

I finally retrieved the dogs about an hour later when they came back south. They hadn't made a kill, but had a lot of fun.

Coursing coyotes with sheep dogs, the new sheepherder sport? Or have I just stumbled across an old sport? On an even funnier note, I kept up with the chase in the flatbed ranch feed truck (with a 454) bouncing through the sage and melting snow. I eventually buried the truck in a draw that I've never been able to drive through when it's dry, so I walked back to the house, got on my dirt bike and then played in the mud. My son was so proud of me when he got home. "Yeah, I have a stay-at-home mom ....". Ah, peaceful days at the ranch.

Red Planet

Chas has a pic up he took while visiting what he call our "Operation Ocotillo terraforming demonstration project". You can see Libby and me in the background.

In this spirit, I thought I'd post pics of another Martian locus here, with the caption: "Though we hadn't yet added water, the dry habitat game was abundant, so we sent Lauren hunting anyway."




Photos courtesy intrepid falconer- adventurer Lauren McGough.

Starting the Garden

Steve mentioned he and Lib are getting the garden started. Here several thousand feet lower in elevation and so many degrees lower in latitude, we've already started.

We've got a small garden, just two plots, too-full with tomatoes, banana peppers and basil---the three edibles we four can agree on and eat often. This year I've got a new pet, a patio tomato in a single pot. It's awful cute, but I don't know if it's going to do as well as the Better Boys.

This is about one month's worth of growth in Louisiana. By June the 'maters might be higher than the poles.

The pen in the back is the hawk's weathering yard, which serves as a vine scaffold in the summer.

Pornstars for PETA?

Patrick has been kicking PETA's collective butt lately. In this post he savages the dim- witted celebrities who speak up for the animal- exterminating 'rights' organization.

"Then we have porn star and PETA spokes-idiot Jenna Jameson. Now I am not a connoisseour of porn, so I have to ask: is this picture of her the result of really bad plastic surgery, or has she always looked this way?

(snip)

"There's more, of course. Much more: Lindsay Lohan sporting a "No Fur" button on her leather coat, and lots of pics of her wearing fur coats everywhere."

(snip)

"Then there is Russell Simon's ex-wife who is a PETA spokes-idiot, never mind her own line of "Baby Phat" clothes made of leather and fur."

You don't NEED to make it up.

Late (Navajo) Barbie

Reid chips in late on the NM Barbie meme, via email:

"I have been so swamped I haven't had a chance to post my contribution to New Mexico Barbies.

"How about Shiprock Barbie, though her real name is Barbie Begay, and her boyfriend, Ken Yazzie. Options include Hosteen Begay's Hogan with loom and sheep pen. Also a 1979 Ford F150 with blue plastic water barrels in the bed - the radio is pre-tuned to KTNN and there's a "Meet me at the Crownpoint Rug Auction" bumpersticker."

There should be sheep in that truck too.

Walk

Last week's walk photos, as promised.



Libby on the "Rio" Salado. It can be frightening in summer floods, believe it or not, but right now we can walk in it.



Desert Bighorn tracks in the bottom of the box-- rounder in front than mule deers'.



The proprietors of Casa Q with desert tools-- pack, Swaro binocs, Kimber .45.

Photos by Daniela Imre.

Crow and Kitten

Annie D sent this remarkable video. It seems legit!

Links

Like Rebecca I have been out walking. Also gardening-- it is good for the souls. There will be pictures below. Meanwhile, the usual miscellany..

Patrick links to this Telegraph story about the use of pigeons to pay kidnap ransoms in Iraq. "One family attached $10,000 in $100 notes to the legs of five homing pigeons, which they found in a cage left on their doorstep." Pigeon keeping is more popular in the Middle Est than almost anywhere-- breeds include several I have, including black (Msawad) dewlaps, which I saw in turkey.

They even put jewelry on them; here is one with earrings Sir Terence Clark photographed in Syria last year.

He also has several posts on the endless idiocies of PETA-- more in a bit.

Larissa is back, with photos from Paris. I particularly like the one she calls (in comments) "I have nothing to wear"....

Like cooking with guts and such? We at Casa Q do. Here is a contest for the best offal recipe. I don't know if we have anything original, and we already have the prize-- but we may enter anyway. Grilled sweetbreads with Argentine hot sauce!

Readers: do you think I could make money with this blog? My financial needs are more modest than Anarchangel's.

Hate Big Oil? How about Big Oil plus Big China Government? (see Peculiar for more China re Tibet.)

The inimitable curmudgeon John Derbyshire has been kind to Q and company recently. Peculiar explains one essay here. And in his March Diary (second page), he comments on a forthcoming book we will be saying more about here soon. It is a good one.

"We Give Our Hearts to Dogs to Tear. That's the title of a book due out in April from Transaction Publishers. You can pre-order it from Amazon, and if you ever loved and lost a pooch, I recommend you do so.

"The author is Alston Chase, one of the more interesting and reflective writers about nature and the wilderness, one of the few who doesn't come at these topics from a position of Goreite "give-a-ton-of-your-money to-us-wise-leaders-and-stop-doing-all-the-things-you-like-and-then-we'll-fix-the-problem" leftism. He is a friend of Stephen Bodio, of whom I would say the same; and Stephen is a friend of mine, so I guess Alston and I are grand-friends. I hope so, anyway, because I really like his book. (Though with one quibble: I think he gets Kurt Gödel wrong.)

"Among the delights of the book are the snippets of poetry and prose Alston has used as chapter epigraphs. I did not know this one, for example, from Ogden Nash.

Ten years ago she split the air
To seize what she could spy;
Tonight she bumps against a chair,
Betrayed by milky eye.
She seems to pant, Time up, time up!
My little dog must die,
And lie in dust with Hector's pup;
So, presently, must I."