American kestrels

Since I did some time on the couch this week, I had the pleasure of picking up our Matthew Mullenix's American Kestrels in Modern Falconry. I didn't put it down until I had read it from cover to cover - it's simply that great a read for kestrel fans like me. The fact that it's a guide for the training and care of kestrels only provided additional insight into kestrel particulars for me, a falconry observer rather than participant. Highly recommended.

Catching Fire

A review in the NY Times of this new book, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, made it zoom right to the top of my "to buy" list. The author, Richard Wrangham, is an anthropologist at Harvard, and takes an evolutionary approach to the advantages of cooked food. Some enticing quotes:

Apes began to morph into humans, and the species Homo erectus emerged some two million years ago, Mr. Wrangham argues, for one fundamental reason: We learned to tame fire and heat our food.

“Cooked food does many familiar things,” he observes. “It makes our food safer, creates rich and delicious tastes and reduces spoilage. Heating can allow us to open, cut or mash tough foods. But none of these advantages is as important as a little-appreciated aspect: cooking increases the amount of energy our bodies obtain from food.”

He continues: “The extra energy gave the first cooks biological advantages. They survived and reproduced better than before. Their genes spread. Their bodies responded by biologically adapting to cooked food, shaped by natural selection to take maximum advantage of the new diet. There were changes in anatomy, physiology, ecology, life history, psychology and society.”

Take that, you raw food fadists!

Bio shorts

Komodo dragons (and their recently- extrict giant Australian relatives) may actually be venomous.

Carl Zimmer directs us to not just one but two galleries of zombie- creating parasites.

Writers & Debt

An excellent Read- The- Whole- Thing piece by Megan McArdle in the Atlantic:

Sample:

"...writers are, as a class, extraordinarily at risk. They spend their twenties, and often their thirties, living paycheck to paycheck. They are extremely well educated, and all that education is not only expensive, but builds expensive habits. You end up with a lot of friends who make much more money than you--who don't even realize that a dinner with $10 entrees and a bottle of wine is an expensive treat, not a cheap outing to catch up on old times. Our business is in crisis, and we lose jobs often. When we do, it's catastrophic.

(Snip)

"Until we're comfortable with talking publicly about the fact that we don't make much money and likely never will, that our lives are risky, and that this has obvious impacts on our ability to consume on the level of our educational peers, writers will keep getting into trouble. "

Sage advice. But would I have listened in my twenties or even my thirties?

Hybrid review

A scathing but side- splitting car review from Jeremy Clarkson, the guy who brought us car shoots earlier:

"It’s terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I didn’t have to drive it any more...

"The Honda’s petrol engine is a much-shaved, built-for-economy, low-friction 1.3 that, at full chat, makes a noise worse than someone else’s crying baby on an airliner. It’s worse than the sound of your parachute failing to open. Really, to get an idea of how awful it is, you’d have to sit a dog on a ham slicer...

"The nickel for the battery has to come from somewhere. Canada, usually. It has to be shipped to Japan, not on a sailing boat, I presume. And then it must be converted, not in a tree house, into a battery, and then that battery must be transported, not on an ox cart, to the Insight production plant in Suzuka. And then the finished car has to be shipped, not by Thor Heyerdahl, to Britain, where it can be transported, not by wind, to the home of a man with a beard who thinks he’s doing the world a favour...

"But let me be clear that hybrid cars are designed solely to milk the guilt genes of the smug and the foolish. And that pure electric cars, such as the G-Wiz and the Tesla, don’t work at all because they are just too inconvenient...

"The only hope I have is that there are enough fools and madmen out there who will buy an Insight to look sanctimonious outside the school gates. And that the cash this generates can be used to develop something a bit more constructive."

There is a LOT more-- RTWT.

HT Iain Murray at NRO .

Joys of Home Ownership

While we were in California for our daughter's wedding - actually during the reception - the young lady who was house-sitting for us called to tell us that sewage was flowing out of the shower drain in our basement bathroom. She called a plumber us and we found there was a blockage in the line between this bathroom and the septic tank.

This picture shows some of the extent of the flow of the "black water" in the stain on the concrete, but doesn't show all the wallboard or the installed cabinets that were affected. All of the carpet has had to come out.

I've been owning houses since 1984 and this is the first homeowner's insurance claim I've ever made. Based on that record, I went with a high deductible on the policy for this house - something I'm regretting now.

There's always something.

Spring Shift at the Feeder

Though much delayed by our cool wet spring, in the last week or so we've had a number of our seasonal visitors finally making their appearance. The winter residents like the chickadees and juncos have moved back to the mountains, while this male black-headed grosbeak showed up on Sunday.


He was accompanied by this female. I also saw a male blue grosbeak over the weekend, a new bird for me, and of course the camera was far out of reach.

This American goldfinch, in full breeding color, made his first appearance of the season yesterday.

Brown-headed cowbirds are common around here, but they had never come to our feeder before last week. I am familiar with their famous parasitical nesting practices, but had never really seen the strange head-bobbing behavior they are displaying here. Maybe some of you know more about it.

A Fisherman

I suppose the Memorial Day holiday made me think of it, but I wanted to put up one of my favorite pictures of my grandfather, Travis Reid. Quite a while ago, I posted a picture of him as a young man, and what I said about him in that post still stands.

As near as I can tell, this picture was taken a few years before I was born, probably somewhere during 1948 - 1950. He was still using the minnow bucket, water cooler, and tackle box in the picture when I started going out with him. Fishing was his favorite thing.

I also did another post about a time we actually caught some fish.

Cuddle

I went down this morning with a flu bug, so was negligent in getting all my chores done. I swear this happened because I drove to town and went to the grocery store, which was packed full of people on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend.

So husband Jim did the early check of the lambing ground and found a lamb that wasn't doing well, bringing her to the house. As soon as the lamb and I met, we both started feeling better, and you can see from this photo that we were pretty content with our nap on the couch.

I spent most of the day taking it easy and taking care of the 11 orphan lambs that share the dog kennel with the big dogs. It's been raining today, which is fabulous, and our horses really enjoyed the cool weather.

I don't know that I've ever mentioned it, but the horses we use on this ranch are all wild horses we've adopted off the range here in Wyoming. They are very energetic and intelligent, and only partially "broke." I'm sure one of these years Jim and I are going to figure out that we are too old to be riding broncs, but we aren't there just yet. Soon, though. Doesn't matter what I ride (dirt bike or horse), I always wreck a time or two every year. Our horses aren't nearly as well behaved as those we rode in Mongolia ...

Blue angel?

Jim and I sat down in our living room late this afternoon for a break from the lambing ground and chores, leaving the front door standing wide open so the dogs could wander in and out at will. As we relaxed and talked, a male bluebird came in and sat atop the door, looking around the room, and behind the door. The bird flitted in and out over the next few minutes, then the female appeared in the open doorway, hovering. She was shaped like an angel and inspected us through the doorway. The male attempted to woo her into the house, but once he went into the bathroom to continue his inspection, Jim shooed him out the door and closed it.

It’s always nice to know you have potential, isn’t it? I guess we have potential as bluebird hosts.

Camarillo Connie

While we were in California for the wedding, Connie and I made a quick run up to Santa Barbara (before the fires started!) to see our son, Travis. We took the scenic route on US 1, through Santa Monica and Malibu and past Point Dume and Point Mugu. Highly recommended - I swear the water turns a different shade of blue once you round Pt. Dume. Also you get to drive past Naval Air Station Point Mugu, and you never know what you'll see coming in or out of there. A few years ago I saw an Israeli Kfir (in US livery) coming in to land here.

We stopped for lunch in Camarillo, which is where we turned back inland to pick up US 101. Looking across the fence into the Camarillo Airport I saw this well-kept C-121 Lockheed Constellation. You can click on the picture to enlarge it. That appears to be a black radome undernearth the plane which would officially make this an EC-121, I suppose. Like many others who remember this plane from their youth, I've always liked its distinctive triple-tail and graceful lines. Connie was intrigued to learn that Constellations have always been affectionately known as "Connies".

Also saw this sadly neglected Convair CV340/440 parked at the end of the runway. These pressurized, tricycle landing gear planes have never felt the love that the aviation world has for the unpressurized Douglas C-47/DC-3 tail-draggers they were built to replace.

If you look closely, you'll see some new cars shrink-wrapped in white plastic parked behind the Convair. They are part of a large collection running out of the field of the photo. Apparently new car sales are so slow now that many of the cars coming off the boat from Japan or Korea are being parked and preserved like this.

Petition

Click here to sign a petition against PETA and HSUS.

Sandhills

The sandhill cranes are nesting now. The arrival of these birds is a true indication of spring's arrival. Usually we hear them before we see them, and the sound always brings a gladness to my heart. Crane fossils about 10 million years old have been discovered in Nebraska, indicating that cranes are our oldest surviving bird species.

Web Miscellany

I predicted it here several months ago: the NY Times discovers the deep freeze! Also that manure can be good for your garden!

In a work of staggering genius, an Australian invents a process to make paper from wombat poop.

In barbeque-mad Memphis (my old home town), the Italian community has accomodated local tastes by inventing barbeque spaghetti and pizza. I know the article says barbeque pizza was invented at Coletta's Restaurant, but the current best is made by my high school friend Mike Garibaldi.

In the current economic environment, French investors are giving new meaning to the term cash cow.

You've heard me complain many times about the food world's neglect of that Southern staple, grits. Now people are starting to pay some attention to another one: buttermilk.

FOD and Bird Strikes

A concept I became intimately familiar with during my aerospace days was foreign object damage, commonly known as FOD. Objects such as

rocks, tools, garbage, etc. left on the runway can be ingested into a jet engine and cause damage. In the common way we have in English, FOD has become the term for the ingested material itself. When I worked at Garrett Aviation, the typical way to begin a shift was to line up all the mechanics and conduct a "FOD walk" on the flightline, picking up any FOD encountered.

I was reminded of all this earlier this week, when the mother of all FOD incidents (see picture) occurred at LAX. A Japan Air Lines B747 sucked up a large metal baggage container. Who missed that on the FOD walk?

The first cousin of FOD is a bird strike, something I posted about a couple of years ago. Bird strikes have risen in public notice since the dramatic story of the US Airways A320 that was forced to crash-land in the Hudson River last January after its engines ingested geese.

Also this week I saw this story on efforts to avoid bird strikes here at DIA, along with a story about how the airport in Bend, Oregon uses a border collie to scare birds away from the runways. I was surprised to learn that DIA leads the nation in bird strikes. I would have expected an airport near one of the coasts, with its attendant sea birds, to have that distinction.

I was also surprised that neither airport uses falconry in its repertoire of techniques to discourage birds.

Farmer - Wilson Wedding

My participation here has been a bit light lately, due to all the activity involved with our daughter Lauren's wedding which took place last Saturday in Long Beach, California. Here she is with new husband Zachary Wilson.

Embarrassingly enough, I don't have my hands on a decent picture of the ceremony, but will post one when I do.

A fine time was had by all. Fair warning, Matt - with two daughters you'd better start saving now.

Paradox of Localism

Localism, not a new idea, seems to be gathering steam. I think it's fair to describe Querencia (the blog) as somewhat ahead of this bandwagon on the Internet, and Steve well forward the main group since Querencia (the book) and before.

Writer Rod Dreher of my generation has helped advance a notion of localism in the bloggosphere, adding the term "Crunchy Con" as a way to describe political conservatives who embrace also the conservation of natural resources, wilderness, human-scale concerns and traditional lifeways.

An irony of Dreher's life, familiar to his readers and touched upon by Rod himself, is that while he hails from the small Louisiana town of St. Francisville (about an hour's drive north of me) he lives now in the megalopolis of Dallas, Texas.

In a recent post he writes:

Dallas is where I'm from now, in the sense that the roots that I've put down as a father, husband, church member, and friend are in the soil here. I have been a rootless cosmopolite for most of my life, but the changes that have taken place within me as a result of growing into fatherhood, and finding a good church, have forced me to realize that, without quite realizing what was happening, this city became my home. I don't like the heat, I don't like the government, I don't like the city's landscape ... but this is my home. If I lost my job here -- and that's certainly a possibility -- I would strongly consider a career change, just to keep my family here. The best things in my family's life -- our friends and our church -- are right here. Except for our immediate family members back in my hometown, we are strangers there. We're not strangers in the same way we'd be strangers in, say, Jeremy Beer's hometown, but still. So, in that sense, would picking up and moving back to my hometown be to embrace localism, or to run away from it?

Terry Eagleton says that in the end, we are what we cannot bring ourselves to leave behind. In that sense, I am a guy from Me, Myself and I who is surprising himself by becoming a guy from Dallas, and all that entails. What's making the change is the kenosis of being a father, and realizing that my kids need stability, and that includes good friends, a good spiritual home, and so forth. And you?

Like Dreher I have been rootless, raised an Army "Brat" and a ward of the US Department of Defense. And like him I eventually adopted as my home an unexpected place (I never would have guessed Baton Rouge). We are both husbands and fathers and have pledged allegiance to family as well as to our places.

Dreher suggests (probably in response to a frequent question of him) that going back to his small town life might be in some way a rejection of local loyalties, his new ones.

I think localism can certainly encompass a big city like Dallas. Big cities have always had their champions and aficionados. But I wonder about Dreher's metaphor of "roots" and "soil," and whether localism--with all its attendant connotations--is quite so meaningful in a place that is mostly asphalt and steel?

The question may be whether built landscapes can be "organic" and alive in the way rural places are naturally so. Steve has described his childhood Boston as such a place, where even in the city his grandparents could manage a tiny farm and produce a surprising variety of plant and animal fare. To me, this is the soul of localism: the self-sufficient household, feeding its family.

And yet, the modern urbanite with localist leanings might be more likely to gather his harvest from Whole Foods than from his backyard or the field. Is he missing out on something important?

The missing elements for me, if facing a move to any big city, would be the actual, non-metaphorical soils and roots. I would need larger spaces than cracks in concrete through which to see things grow. And I would need direct, tactile access to them, not as a visitor to a park but like a predator in a meadow; I would need a role to play.

Baton Rouge is for my family a compromise of positions. My wife is an mega-urban native (Miami, Fl) and I'm a retrofit rural provincial. At present this town can accommodate us both. As it changes, pouring more asphalt over its soil, I will have to work at keeping the cracks open and the concrete at bay.

Smart Corvids

And for pleasure: A BBC feature on the always- amazing abilities of Corvids, with videos. HT Jonathan Hanson.

Felony Duck Shooting

There is still ANOTHER House bill, HR 2188, which increase penalty for illegally taking a migratory bird (duck, dove etc.)to a felony with up to $50,000 and two years in prison.

This seems draconian to say the least, and especially worrying to falconers who cannot always MAKE their hawk take the "correct" bird. (HT David Williamson).

I asked Rebecca, who works for DU, and she graciously allowed me to print her reply.

"Interesting. My bigger problem is that the money is going back to whoever
tattled as reward money. I don't agree with this as a means of fixing a
problem (if there was one.) We all know that punishment that happens after
the fact doesn't work. It's just going to make law breakers better at
breaking the law. So why don't we focus and spend on education and PR for
the migratory birds? And destroying someone's life over the destruction of a
bird is nonsense. I didn't agree with this when it was originally suggested
as backlash toward the pigeoners.

"And I'm trying to shirk that feeling of paranoia that I get as a falconer
when I see things like this. Theoretically, if you don't break the law you
have nothing to worry about, but we have a history of being led to
entrapment and getting busted on arbitrary reads of the law.

"I guess I could drop a line to Dale Humberg who's representing Ducks
Unlimited at this hearing to see where we stand on this. I know we fully
support the increase in the cost of Federal Duck Stamps. I'll be in
Washington in December and plan to stop into our DC office and meet our
policy guys. Hopefully that will help me offer tidbits of information from
the falconer's stance."

Guns, Freedom, threats to...

According to David at Never Yet Melted the last elections had one mighty ironic effect:

"Americans responded to the election of a democrat-dominated federal government by buying enough guns in 3 months to outfit the entire Chinese and Indian Armies. We also bought 1,529,635,000 rounds of ammunition in the month of December 2008 alone."

That's one healthy part of the economy.

Meanwhile a boneheaded Republican from New York has introduced a bill that could take your guns away for-- well, hardly any legal justification at all.

"A new gun law being considered in Congress, if aligned with Department of Homeland Security memos labeling everyday Americans as potential "threats," could potentially deny firearms to pro-lifers, gun-rights advocates, tax protesters, animal rights activists, and a host of others – any already on the expansive DHS watch list for potential "extremism."

"Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., has sponsored H.R. 2159, the Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2009, which permits the attorney general to deny transfer of a firearm to any "known or suspected dangerous terrorist." The bill requires only that the potential firearm transferee is "appropriately suspected" of preparing for a terrorist act and that the attorney general "has a reasonable belief" that the gun might be used in connection with terrorism."

I am beginning to think that the present House of Representatives is more of a threat to liberty than any terrorists.

New Carel Video

Carel Brest van Kempen has a new time lapse YouTube here,, of a painting of a brown anole. I love these things. You are supposed to vote but I can't figure out how. If you can, please do-- not everyone is as cybernetically inept as I am.

Update: here is a link to vote.

New Rabies

I seem to be visible again.

Dr Gail Goodman and Teddy Moritz sent this biologically fascinating but scary link to a National Geographic story about a mutated version of rabies in the Flagstaff, Arizona area. It apparently originated in bats, which is not unusual, and has manifested in skunks and foxes. What is frightening is that it appears to be transmitted in those two species WITHOUT biting. Could be a serious problem, obviously.

I believe some "Lyssa" virus rabies relatives spread like this in Australasian bats-- anyone know?

And I love "often fatal in humans"-- yeah, at least two humans in history have survived!

Make sure your pet's rabies shots are up to date.

Blogger off?

Can anyone see this? Suddenly I am getting a Yahoo page that says Querencia does not exist! I get a similar page when I click on Steve Brown's Rants and Raves. If you can read this do you have an explanation? All the template etc seems to be here...

Paradox of Nutrition

A piece in our local paper seems timely: "Healthy, affordable food frequently hard to find for poor."

The article by Sarah Chacko brings to light a paradox of nutrition, health and poverty that results in millions being simultaneously overfed and undernourished, a common condition in my state:

"Poor nutrition is linked to many health issues that are especially prevalent in low-income populations.Families often turn to food banks, churches and other nonprofit organizations to supplement their monthly food needs. But nutritionists question the types of food poor families are getting.In 2007, 65 percent of adults in Louisiana were overweight or obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta."

[snip]

"Carol E. O’Neil, a professor of human ecology at LSU, said she and other professors researched the diets of a group of lower-income women. She called the results 'appalling.'

“'They’re setting themselves up for some sort of dietary failure,' O’Neil said. 'Foods that are recommended as being healthy, like fish, are expensive. It takes a fair amount of skill to put together a balanced diet with not a lot of money.'”

"A fair amount of skill" is another way of saying "culture," which has been responsible until recently for transferring the skills of self-sufficiency from those who inherited and honed them over lifetimes to the younger generations in need of them.

Since my grandfather's time (i.e., Brokaw's Greatest Generation), American social movement has been toward greater mobility, urbanization, and careerism---three trends that explain most of my personal history, and of course my father's, and his father's. The result is perhaps a greater wealth per capita, in terms of merchandise and cheap transportation, but a clear loss of cultural wisdom that would have made life with less stuff and fewer escape routes a possibility.

Put another way, now that the chickens have come home to roost, we no longer raise chickens and don't know how. It's a kind of cultural poverty, shared by the cash-poor and the rich alike.

It's not a problem you can solve with money alone. Fortunately, some of the same programs that seek to pay our way out of poverty suggest other possibilities. As Chacko notes:

"Aside from groceries, food stamps can be used to purchase seeds and seedlings...

"A significant increase in seed sales nationwide indicates a growing interest in gardening, said Bobby Fletcher Jr., assistant director of the Louisiana Cooperative Extension Service.

"AgCenter staff and 'master gardeners' are available around the state to help people start gardens by showing them how to prepare a bed and care for gardens and by teaching them what produce will flourish in their area. The AgCenter is also teaming up with 4H programs to create community gardens at schools.

"Fletcher said students are more likely to eat what they grow. 'If we can start that at a younger age, over time, we can have a positive impact on childhood obesity and adult obesity,' Fletcher said. 'Personally, I think school and community gardens are going to be to this generation what Victory Gardens were to World War II.'”

My kids are, thanks largely to their mother, aware of the benefits of good nutrition. They know a surprising amount about fat, sugar and sodium contents, and the caloric values of different foods. But thankfully they also like good food. And for this, there's no substitute for eating it. Being able to share with them the growing (and hunting and cooking) of it adds that final and most important ingredient: culture.

Truth Be Told

I write occasional press releases and other promotional copy. I found the following disclaimer at the bottom of a piece released by local company rather inspired. I imagine a working scribe somewhere here in town smiling as she put this together...

"Certain statements in this release, and other written or oral statements made by ______, Inc. are 'forward-looking statements' within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements since they involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which are, in some cases, beyond the Company's control and which could, and likely will, materially affect actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements."

Revolution in the Subtropics

Is there something about the heat that stirs rebellion? We've hit 90 for the past couple days and the Revolutionary Garden is feeling it.


The tomatoes love it.





The beans love it.



But the lettuce just about died on me in a day. So after weighing my options, I tacked up some spare shade cloth.




The plants responded almost instantly. Perky again. And delicious.


Don't know how long I can keep the troops' morale high in this heat...

My Mother's Day

My wonderfully supportive guys asked what I wanted for Mother's Day this year. I told them I wanted Jim to be the mother for the day (tending to all my critters), allowing me to escape alone with my camera for what I had planned to be an all-day outing. As it turns out, I wasn't feeling all that spunky, so I left at daylight, and was home for lunch.

I headed north early, and encountered a couple of young bighorn sheep in the Hoback Canyon.

I drank way too much coffee, and had to stop at the Jackson Hole visitor's center for a bathroom break. It was too early in the day for the building to be open, so I had to use those stinky portapotties outside. Of course, I toted my camera with me, photographing birds along the way. When I turned back to the truck, I found this obnoxious Canada goose had claimed my truck. I bravely insisted that the truck was mine, and actually won! It was touch-and-go for a minute though, as I had flashbacks of the extremely painful pinches I'd received from domestic geese as a child.

"Er, excuse me, but you have a fish sticking out your butt," said one bald to the other. I saw these two bald eagles on a power pole overlooking the National Elk Refuge at Jackson Hole.

This moose cow is shedding out in big clumps. I saw several other moose rubbing and itching like crazy this morning, trying to get rid of all that winter hair. Appropriately enough, I photographed this cow at Moose Junction, in Grand Teton National Park.

I have never seen so many pelicans as I have already this year. It seems they are on every puddle of water in this region. This photo was taken at the oxbow at the foot of Mount Moran, in Grand Teton National Park.

People driving by me in Grand Teton National Park seem puzzled that I had my back turned to a herd of bison, instead looking at something small in a tree. But kestrels and golden eagles are my two favorite birds, and this kestrel kept me captivated for several minutes.

Sharing Mongolia's beauty

I've been thinking about Lauren, and her upcoming journey to our eagle friends in Mongolia. Thought I'd share some random images from there, from my trip seven months ago. Enjoy.

Rural views

There are three kestrels claiming territory on the lambing pasture fence this week. What beauty and fierceness.
Aziat Rant is a yearling now, and in charge of the bums. They are just getting up from a nap in the kennel in this photo:

And an old barn I drive past every now and then just so I can enjoy the view, and imagine the lives and adventures that it saw in days of old:

Santa Barbara Burns Again

Fire season has come early to California this year, and you may have seen news coverage of another destructive fire in the Santa Barbara area. We are currently in Orange County for our daughter's wedding, and have seen the big plumes of smoke that have blown out over the ocean. A number of our friends in the area have been evacuated from their homes, and we are all hoping everyone gets through intact.

This fire is doubly sad for me, as it (now officially named the Jesusita Fire) began in an area of San Roque Canyon that was my favorite place to hike. About three years ago, I posted on hiking with my dogs on the Jesusita Trail.

"Our" Fulbright Scholar

As Patrick Burns is fond of saying, "The kids are alright."

Happily I know a few who are more than alright. Our campus is full of bright young people, and heralding their accomplishments is one pleasure of my job.

But we encounter some rare souls who, like Steve and his blog partners (and our readers), are moved by strong passions, big themes, strange places and real people; who not only listen to other drummers but follow ancient rhythms to their source.

Lauren McGough is such a one. Steve has been keeping us up to date on Lauren's travels and adventures in these and other posts and happily hosting her visits as she passes through the little hamlet of Magdalena, New Mexico.

We learned today (HT Annie Hocker) that Lauren, an Honors major in zoology and international studies at the University of Oklahoma, has received a Fulbright Scholarship and will use it to return to Mongolia's western province of Bayan-Olgii to resume her apprenticeship with the eaglers. She writes:

"As a falconer and aspiring ornithologist, preservation of the sport and the birds that make falconry possible is very important to me," she said. "I can't think of a better place than Mongolia, with all its unique wildlife, and arguably the very birthplace of falconry, to better understand human-animal relationships and effective conservation."

I hope Steve will chime in here with a good Lauren story. I've met her only once, but in that way you can recognize special people almost instantly, she stood out. We talked for a while after evening presentations at the last national falconers' meet. Her excitement to be there, around so many like-minded fanatics and fabulous birds, was clear. And yet she would not be intimidated; she has been around the world and our kind and seen things most of us have only read about.

She will surpass us and travel on to some unique destination in life. That much I know.

Congratulations Lauren!

Steve here. Lauren first came to us with a request to go to Mongolia when she was seventeen. She was a falconer, self- assured, and her father was confident. I knew Canat in Mongolia would treat her as his own daughter, so we "sent" her into the wilds of western Mongolia in deep winter to spend a month with the eagle hunters. She loved it. You have seen some of her photos.

After she was back she was staying with us. She was too young to go to the Golden Spur so I asked her if she took wine with dinner. She replied "I don't know-- I only drank vodka with the eagle hunters." A baptism of fire!

She later attended the eagle meets at Opocno in the Czech Republic, and spent a whole season flying eagles at blue hares in the hills of Scotland. She has also visited hunting cheetahs in Spain.

There are a lot of egos involved with eagles in the west, but Lauren is the real thing, plus a lady and a scholar. She will now become the first female berkutchi. And who knows what next?

We are proud of you, Lauren!

PS: Lauren's Blog here and at left in the rolls for future reference.

NPR Jumps Shark

As possible evidence of my mixed up political perspectives, I'm a long-time National Public Radio member. I listen to All Things Considered and A Prairie Home Companion on the way home from hunting and catch the business news on my bike commute to work. Is that weird? I'm still waiting for word on the development of my Liberal Carnivore Secessionist Party...

Part of the NPR appeal is it's occasional coverage of food, gardening, and organic or small scale farming; it's the one national news medium that might mention Wendell Berry (and did recently via an interview with Micheal Pollan).

It is also "non-commercial" radio, which is a rare and wonderful thing, although this distinction has been slip-sliding away at some speed over the past few years. Corporate sponsorships and statements of full-disclosure about coverage of them are more frequent at NPR than any time in my memory.

This morning, however, we have reached something of a NPR sponsorship nadir: Between the local and national news segments I learned that Monsanto, the global agribusiness giant largely responsible for the so-called Western Diet (and regularly vilified in NGO street theater productions) is "committed to sustainable agriculture."

I nearly fell off my bike.

That's like hearing that Chrysler is committed to sustainable transportation. Or government is committed to balancing its budget.

Oh, NPR, we the members have failed you.

Sheep shearing

We usually try to have our sheep shorn in mid-April, but this year, we had to keep putting off shearing as we were hit with spring storm after spring storm. Even after the rains stop, the wool has to dry before we can shear. We were finally able to shear this week, just in time for lambing to begin. The top photo is of me trailing the sheep to the shearing pen, complete with guard dogs and burro.

Trailing the sheep is relaxing. I walk with them, and laugh as they zig-zag through the sagebrush, flushing sage grouse and jackrabbits as we go. The photo below is of sweet Rena's dirty face after she swam in the river, thieved a fish carcass dropped by an osprey, then buried the fish out in the dirt.



The sheep turn to go into the pasture. That's a burro butt in front. Blue Rim in the back, husband Jim's head is somewhere in between.



Nice purple color on the sheep shearing plant, isn't it? That's a freshly shorn ewe coming out one side.

Shearing is a necessary evil. We have fine-wooled sheep, so the wool is magnificent. But shearing day is stressful on the animals, especially when they are so pregnant. The guy in the cool shades below is my son Cass, skipping school to help out.



We hired a new sheep shearing crew this year, since our regular shearer went out of the business. The new crew, consisting of a seven-man shearing plant, included shearers from Peru, New Zealand, Australia, and even a couple of Americans (a rarity in shearing). It takes about three to four minutes to shear each sheep.

The photo below shows the wool that is kicked out the front of the shearing plant, sorted according to wool grade, then baled.


At last, naked sheep. Our wool was sold to the United States Army this year – a first for us. We sell with our friend Pete, so it leaves here in 400-pound bales stacked on semi-tractor trailers headed to the railroad. Our wool usually goes overseas for designer clothing, but this year, it stays in the U.S. I like that notion.