They're Killing Pigeons Again

Tyrants end up killing pigeons; I don't know why, but they do. Franco almost made the traditional old- fashioned competition "thief" pouters of southern Spain, like the Rafenos I keep, extinct. The Taliban's mere sixteen "Commandments", including ones against sorcery and NOT growing beards, include one, the fourth,"To prevent keeping pigeons and playing with birds. Within ten days, this habit/ hobby should stop. After ten days this should be monitored, and the pigeons and other playing birds should be killed."

It worked- there are more Afghan highflyers in Salt Lake City than in Kabul today.But all kinds of totalitarian and even just Nannyists ar e tempted.Even before they tore out the hutongs, the remnants of an older city, Beijing's pigeon flyers were harrassed by fanatical Maoists.And Chicago bans them as totally as the Taliban did, along with foie gras and at least until recntly, handguns...

But the Islamic "State" goes them one better; notoriously, they kill the OWNERS too, even if they are teeneaged boys. Syria, along with Turkey, has the most fine ancient breeds; it is where, if you beie the Turkish legends, and I do, the nomads  stopped and took the pigeons they took in their horse carts out, and settled.What is sure is that they have more genetic  diversity, and more breed "roots, than any other place. So now the crazies are desrtroying an ancient genetic heritage as well.

Look at these "refugees":

They are Bagdads, the first letter carriers, now show birds, kept and illustrated by Darwin (above) and me...

THey are also ancestor to the German, or Nuremberg Bagdad, or Scanderoon (from "Iskander", Alexander), which looks different from the English bird today-- but the old type is like both...

It may not be a crime like killing humans, but it is certainly on a level with destroying art.

Worst Design Idea EVER

From California Home and Design, proving once and for all that everything you suspected about California is true...

To quote them, "Enter the second-floor 1908 library... Designing for a modern family, DeSousa was challenged to fill the shelves with real books when today most are read with an iPad. With the help of Bookbythefoot.com, a site that provides salvage books by the linear foot, DeSousa adorned the shelves with hundreds of paper bound books."

And painted them all white.

Save the Dioramas!

I grew up looking at great dioramas, the magical combinations of painting and taxidermy that rose to a high art in the early twentieth century. Perhaps their highest expression is in two halls that depict the habitats and wildlife of North America and Africa in my favorite museum in the world, The American Museum of Natural History in New York. Every lover of "naturalist" art should make at least one pilgrimage to see them, but meanwhile, Stephen Quinn has written an excellent book that shows most of them and explains their genesis: Windows on Nature.

Yesterday a good friend, the artist and sculptor Tony Angell,  forwarded an alarming letter from Quinn. Apparently another unique set of dioramas in Minnesota, featuring painting by such masters as Francis Lee Jacques, is under threat of destruction by the usual flock of visually and historically ignorant illiterates who think change and trendiness trumps beauty and history. His is a long letter, but dense with information-- let me snip a bit.

"I'm writing to inform you all of some disturbing plans that I have just learned about for the James Ford Bell Museum in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Many of you may know that the Bell Museum possesses what are, arguably, the most magnificent collection of natural history dioramas done by the great wildlife and bird artist, Francis Lee Jaques. Also represented in this priceless diorama collection are the contributions of Louis Agassiz Fuertes, Robert Bruce Horsefall, Charles Abel Corwin, and pioneer diorama designer, famed Ornithologist and early conservation activist Frank Chapman.

"Late in his career at AMNH, Jacques assisted in the design of the Bell Museum building to facilitate and assure its primary objective of optimum display for its dioramas and, through the 40s and into the 50s, designed, directed construction of, and painted the backgrounds for a series of dioramas that can be considered his best... Jacques was originally from Minnesota, grew up on its prairies, northwoods boundary waters, and hunted waterfowl on its, then, vast and wild wetlands... These scenes of thousands of Snow Geese over windswept marshes, Sandhill Cranes alighting on a spring prairie meadows, or majestic Moose in the northern lake country all evoke such a compelling illusion and sense of place and personal presence that one is struck by the ABSENCE of the cries of the birds or the chill of the north wind on one’s cheek when standing before them.

"Sadly, I have learned last week that the Minnesota State Legislature has approved funds to build a new natural history museum on the University of Minnesota campus at Saint Paul and this new plan calls for gutting the interior of the Bell Museum in Minneapolis, an attempted removal of some of its unique collection of irreplaceable dioramas in order to “reinterpret” some in the new museum, and the possible storage or disposal of the rest.

(Snip)"...  to attempt to extract these great works from the alcove settings in which they were specifically designed and fabricated to be viewed in, is a folly and loss for the generations to come that will never see them under those intended conditions. Removed, "re-purposed", "re-interpreted", or "re-designed" to become "relevant" and "useful" to today's University of Minnesota, will inevitably mean that they will find themselves adapted as "open-air", "immersive", or "walkthrough" dioramas... they will become even more vulnerable to the whims of ambitious exhibit designers, short-sighted curators, and a nature-deprived public who, with a constant diet for the latest techno/interactive bombardment, cannot begin to understand their value historically, scientifically, or artistically as the remarkable replicas and record of a wilderness they can not comprehend, in this new setting."

(Snip) "The James Ford Bell Museum is THE ONLY remaining building in NORTH AMERICA that was specifically designed, in its entirety, as a standing theater for natural history dioramas. It's very exterior structure; site plan and interior floor plan reflect this. It is superbly, and perfectly “fine-tuned” for this purpose. There are NO OTHER buildings like it in the US or Canada!!!  As such, it is just as significant, both architecturally and artistically, as the Biological Museum of Gustaf Kolthoff and Bruno Liljefors in Stockholm, Sweden, and the grand Akeley Hall of African Mammals or the magnificent Hall of North American Mammals in New York....  They were all created by the great naturalists/artists/ scientists and educators of their time, requiring extensive and costly travel and expeditions, unique and groundbreaking fabrication techniques, and embraced a mission to present an illusion of nature so powerful and compelling that, it can be argued, they will NEVER be equaled again.

(Snip) "We MUST all spread the news of this impending tragedy with a letter-writing campaign to the critical individuals involved... The threat to that building and those dioramas needs to be clearly known and it’s loss clearly recognized and understood by all who are making this decision.

 "... Also, notably, I have learned that the University, itself, does not view the dioramas favorably, but sees them as “archaic and old” and does not consider them a priority in the plans for their future museum, and would prefer not to address them at all. What is to prevent the University from, in the future, allocating funds away from the dioramas, sighting the VERY high costs for the proper removal, conservation, and reconstruction of these dioramas as not worth it?... In a relatively short time, they are likely to be considered diminished in value and therefore disposed of."

Here is a site with more links and images. I will update this as soon as I have more contacts. Stay tuned...

One afterthought: friends and scholars-- Jonathan Kingdon, John McLoughlin-- and writers and scientists I have never met-- Stephen J Gould, Ed Wilson, Richard Dawkins-- have all written in praise of the traditional museum that formed and nurtured them. Do ultramodern, interactive, "Game"- themed, info- free installations have any such potential? Without the Harvard and later,  New York Museums, I don't know that I would have the interests I do today, or this blog.

It is official

You might have figured it out in comments below but it is official: because the Feds are allowing a three- decade exemption for wind farms to kill as many eagles as they "need" to, and because they exert no pressure on tribal use (right and understandable for religious practice, but ignoring the profitable if clandestine traffic in feathers for dance costumes), falconers will no longer be allowed to catch "up to six" eagles for falconry in areas of proven depredation, exactly reversing the win- win scenario Cat details below.

Nobody ever took six a year, an infinitesimal part of the breeding surplus; ranchers had proven predators removed; falconers got the companionship of one of the world's formidable predators, often for decades, and the chance to participate in one of if not THE oldest falconry tradition on earth, at least six thousand years old.

Presumably if we do not fight this it means "for three decades?" Or forever?

And why in hell not allow trapping in wind farms?

No more of this!

A book cover we would not likely see...

...today:

Labels

Courtesy of Reid,we learn that UC Boulder has banned costumes based on Indians, cowboys, "Mexicans" and-- costumes?!-- white trash.

Having spent time at the bar today after the week's second funeral, I can only conclude that any image of me or my neighbors is now verboten. (Images NOT from today-- we don't take pics at funerals, but every one is a local friend).

Monico Baca, whose funeral I just attended, owner Darrel, California- Montana transplant

Juan, one of our Spanish majority town's three actual Mexicans, and a cowboy

 The ones above may not be what you think, (which individual above is ethnic Italian?)  but the last three may especially confuse the taste police: John Paul Jones Apachito (an Alamo Navajo) impersonating an Irishman on St Paddy's; Tyler Chavez, half Italian miner and raised ranch Mormon, now getting back his patronym "Scartaccini", and his wife Kayla;  Cody Henderson and Neal Harris-- both half "Spanish" as we say here, but only Cody is considered "Hispanic".

We as a society are more label- mad than white South Africans used to be, but not in "real integrated" Magdalena, thank God.

Oh-- et moi, Boston ethnic cross who came here 30 very odd years ago...

Pigeons vs Humaniacs

Chris Landauer of Border Wars sent me a note a couple of weeks ago on the ARista's war on pigeon racing. Since then I have been roaming the Internet, too busy and too pissed off to to write a calm essay on the kind of people who would persecute old men, some of them who have made real connections to youngsters of different cultures, for being "racketeers" for betting on races. They claim it is cruel because some don't make it home (they don't know most ferals are more homer than not), and that some substandard birds are "culled" (and eaten), a practice and term that they seem to think unique to pigeon keepers....

It would of course be easy to sue the sport out of existence, of course; though the Queen of England and some wealthy Belgians fly birds,  the old working class cartoon character Andy Capp on the other side of the channel and ancient ethnics like my late grandfather in the US are more typical, as are young blacks and city Hispanos. And given its nature as a HOMING sport, its targets are stationary, unable to go underground. Add irrational fears of diseases that pigeons don't even carry, the latest being bird flu...

And then I thought, to hell with reasoned arguments; better to go with my initial reaction. So here are some of the calmer parts of my reaction to Chris...

"God, Chris, I get so sick of it all.

" 'It's so crooool, but they are all old and they're going to die soon so we'll LET them'...

"And another human- animal hybrid culture, another meme, another selected association of unique genes goes back into the undifferentiated pond; another joy is taken from us, there is one less thing to distract the young from the all- flattening difference- ending locale- killing biophobic Almighty Screen. How many youths in how many places once took baskets of pigeons miles to 'toss' and raced them home, as I did? No more pigeons, hunting dogs, ferrets, horses but for the rich, ratting, snake catching. Oddly my grandson probably WILL do many of these, but will he be a social outcast for it? And WHERE will he do it?

"And me- my salukimorphs are wanted, and my hawks. But who will pick up my unique genetic stream and crosses when I am gone, my wild hawk- evading homers, my crossbred and reconstructed old Spanish pouter breeds? Eli is too young, and his parents still live in the city; US cities are banning them outright by name (Chicago, Bozeman) or just making it  virtually impossible to keep or God help us FLY them.

"No answers but... Pigeon racing CRUEL? What absolute bullshit. The only beings that never suffer are-- DEAD."

A last thought: vegetarian and fine writer Sy Montgomery, who wrote beautifully about them in Birdology, knows better, and has more wise biophilia in her little finger than all of HSUS...

Photos from Scotland and Turkey, where pigeon culture still not only exists but thrives. The last pix including the cupboard loft are in the restaurant in Urfa where I used to eat lunch.

My relatives are OK

Federico wondered if my relatives were OK. As I have three sisters who regularly run the Marathon it was a serious question. The twins did not go up from Pittsburgh this year, and Anita St John was at mile 20 when the bombs went off at the finish line.

However, my sister Wendy, a head nurse, is apparently working on the victims, and there are or at least were armed guards on the hospital doors.

What is this man DOING?

And how long is he likely to be doing it?

From the cover of a new issue of a venerable outdoor mag that employs several friends, a "re- creation" of a 1912 cover. Well, sorta, kinda...

But: how many times has this man been on a horse?

How long do you think the horse's ears will be pointed forward. after he shoots over them?

How long do you think his feet will be in the stirrups?

As he is not even using a hasty sling, where do you think the rifle will be?

Where do you think he will be?

Where will the horse be?

What will happen to his quarry? Where will IT be?


Myself, I would never shoot over a horse's head with anything; hold a rifle like that while shooting offhand, never mind from a horse which I wouldn't do; or hold the reins with the gun like that.*  Most likely I would get off the horse, and look for a more supported shooting position. This may be because I  have some deficiencies in horsemanship and accuracy, but also because at 63 I am aware of that fact.

If I did shoot off a horse, I would likely find out if the horse was used to it or not, use a .30-30 or other mild old lever rifle, and point it away from the horse's head. And still not hold the reins like that.

Also, look at the position of the butt on the hunter's shoulder. If it is (and it no doubt is) a .300-plus Short Magnum or other loud barrel- burner invented less than ten years ago, it is not only going to make the horse shoot straight up in the air,  it's gonna hurt his shoulder and his cheek, before it hits the ground and breaks its stock. That's OK, because he probably wouldn't have hit his elk anyway, having bought his rifle and scope on the way to the airport (as one of the clients at a hunting camp Libby used to cook for did), and then laughingly refused to sight it in (ditto).

His clothes sure are clean and pressed (though why on earth does he need camo in this situation?), but if he cheeks the stock properly, his hat brim will be in the way. Trust me on that.

O tempora! O mores!

* The 1912 cover, unfortunately about the size of a postage stamp, shows a cowboy shooting what I think is a lever action at a 3/4 angle away from the head of the horse, with dropped reins trailing on the ground.

Invincible Ignorance?

I hate to rant but (I can see everybody believes THAT)...

Well, first Reid provoked me with this, knowing that it was like poking a stick at a hot rattlesnake.

At first I just sputtered. "I can't even debunk this-- it is like Mary McCarthy's famous remark on Lilian Hellman: "Every word she says is a lie including AND and THE."

Except of course it is not a "lie"-- it is merely smug, invincible ignorance, with libel of all hunters or even non New- Yorkers thrown in for snark. Would the "Paper of Record" accept an op- ed on any other subject featuring as basic an example of incorrect terminology as using "bullet" for"shotgun cartridge"? That indulged in such basic illogic as comparing putting voluntary limits on a tool used in a sport with limiting the effectiveness of one primarily used in self- defense?

And of course the not very subtle dismissal of NYC cops shooting bystanders because EVERYBODY is a bad shot. You think someone who had been through a serious class like Gunsite would miss 30% or more of the time? Maybe one reason that NYC cops in particular are so bad is that they live in an anti- gun culture, though studies show that cops who are not gun nuts are almost always bad. She should be forced to read the Armed Citizen page in the publications of the "mindless" NRA.

I do read anti- gun propaganda, and one of its most striking features is that it is virtually always factually and technically incorrect-- even those who say they know guns make mistakes. And they never, never read our side enough to even refute our facts. They already know we are mindless, paranoid, frightened, even racist, and probably don't believe in evolution... even if we are scholars, or women or Hispanic...

And then I began thinking about history, and subtleties even our allies don't mention, perhaps because nobody reads outside the lines anymore. The roots of the three- shell limit are historically interesting and have little to do with anything but a bunch of rich sportsmen, who thought repeaters ungentlemanly, trying to put the brakes on market hunting in a time of little enforcement-- they also banned gauges larger than ten, an arbitrary and unnecessary move never done in, for instance, England. Both bans could be repealed today with no bad effect. They have no effect on conservation-- driven shoots in Europe make bags of 1000 plus with archaic side- by- sides like mine.

The anti- repeater bias might well have started with the excitable conservation pioneer and bigot William Hornaday, who like the artist Frederick Remington believed the US should be a "pure" Anglo- Saxon nation. In one of his books on wildlife he had photos of a Browning autoloader. On the same page he complained that such were used by immigrant filth from the dregs of Europe's society, and that Italians and other inferior "races" should not only be refused entry but deported with all their descendants. Imagine my reading this in the fifties after it was recommended to me by an old WASP librarian.

He wanted all Italians, "southern and eastern Europeans", Slavs, Jews, Asians, and "negroes" deported; better at least than the unspeakable Remington, who wanted them exterminated and offered to help in one of his letters. Remington: "You can't glorify a Jew! Nasty humans! I've got some Winchesters and when the massacring begins, I can get my share of 'em and what's more I will. Jews, Injuns, Chinamen, Italians, Huns - the rubbish of the Earth, I hate." I don't put political standards to art, but if I owned a Remington and read that, I'd sell it so fast it would bounce on the way out-- and maybe use the money to buy a Charlie Russell...

Compare to two other establishment figures, both hunters and infinitely more appealing than Hornaday, never mind Remington: Teddy Roosevelt and his generous acceptance of anyone who embraced our culture, and Aldo Leopold (who married a NM "Mexican").

I added, in my note to Reid: "I assume you are acquainted with the utterly racist origins of handgun control? Think "Jim Crow Laws" or read Condoleeza Rice on her childhood in the segregated south, or the pro- gun liberal Don Kates. Hint: white people had no trouble getting guns, just like rich people in New York today."

Maybe sometime I'll talk about "Progressivism" and eugenics. Know your history!

Quote of the day #1: The way things were

"Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever without a passport or any sort of official permission … For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police... " (A. J. P. Taylor, English History, 1914-1945; HT Derb

"Look, don't touch!"

Tim Gallagher sent this article by David Sobel from Orion about how our nit- picking, rule- bound, risk- averse society is creating a generation of kids who dislike and fear and are bored by nature and the outdoors. It should scare the hell out of you. Some quotes:

"Amanda notices a red eft in a patch of moss. She takes a few steps off the trail and Terri chastises her: “Remember, Amanda, nature is fragile! When you walk off the trail, you crush all kinds of little creatures you can’t see.” Farther on Ross scampers up into the inviting branches of a tree that has fallen across the trail. “Sorry, Ross, no climbing, too dangerous, we wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”

"the “look but don’t touch” approach cuts kids off from nature, teaching them that nature is boring and fraught with danger. Inadvertently, these messages send children back inside to the dynamic interactivity of computer games. Could it be that our fear of litigation and our puritanical concerns for protecting each and every blade of grass are hampering the development of the very stewardship values and behaviors that we environmental educators all say we’re trying to foster?"

He contrasts the attitude with a quote from a childhood memoir from gentle John Muir:"We made guns out of gas-pipe, mounted them on sticks of any shape, clubbed our pennies together for powder, gleaned pieces of lead here and there and cut them into slugs, and, while one aimed, another applied a match to the touch-hole. With these awful weapons we wandered along the beach and fired at the gulls and solan-geese as they passed us... We also dug holes in the ground, put in a handful or two of powder, tamped it well around a fuse made of a wheat-stalk, and, reaching cautiously forward, touched a match to the straw. This we called making earthquakes." Sobel elaborates:

"This is probably not the kind of boy you’d want your children out roaming the neighborhood with. Dangerous, unmannered, destructive perhaps. Certainly, you’ve never seen an “Inventing Guns and Shooting Sea Gulls” program on Saturday mornings at the nature center. And yet John Muir helped create the national park system, and his writing has fostered environmental values and behaviors in countless millions of people."

Contrast this with the modern way of introducing kids to nature. "... researchers compared three kinds of childhood nature experience—wild nature experience, domesticated nature experience, and environmental education. They found that "Childhood participation in “wild” nature, such as hiking or playing in the woods, camping, and hunting or fishing, as well as participation with “domesticated” nature such as picking flowers or produce, planting trees or seeds, and caring for plants in childhood have a positive relationship to adult environmental values...participation in environmental education programs (in school, in Scouts, at camp, or in community environmental improvement programs) was not a significant predictor of either environmental attitudes or behaviors.” [Emphasis mine]

There is an enormous amount of valuable, thoughtful, and downright scary stuff here-- read it all. Sobel also has a book, and I'm getting it for the Peculiars (who were raised right themselves) if only to reinforce their already good ideas. Though I'm not sure Eli and the Peculiars really neeed this book as much as everybody else does...

Jackson Hole-- more photos

Wyoming photos from long time friends Matt Wells and Tina Cole (they variously are or were teachers, Outward Bound, and guides, as well as parents of a fine son; Matt was a commercial fisherman and a Mongolia hand, and Tina was the one who suggested to Russ Chatham that he hire Lib to cater the Sun Valley Library fund raiser that I was dragged off to sign books at in '92, thank God).

High Society at Lib's "reunion" party-- me , YC, and a gawker (as always, click to enlarge):

The worker bees-- 565 tamales!


Apres wedding-- Tina, Me Lib, Matt.

More Thoughts on Prof. McMahan's Essay

Reading yesterday's NYT (online) essay, The Meat Eaters, by Rutgers University professor of philosophy Jeff McMahan (forwarded by reader Daniela and shared below by Steve), I'm almost more puzzled by my own need to comment on the piece than I am amazed by it.

It's tempting to lump this man's essay in with the tiresome mass of animal rights propaganda, but I think it's only superficially similar. This goes deeper, is arguably crazier, and may belong to another tradition entirely.

Professor McMahan's work is principally atheist, by my reading, secondarily misanthropic, and only for the sake of example concerned with the welfare of animals.

His ignorance of animals and "nature" is obvious (Does he know some deer eat baby birds? Does he know ducks rape and kill each other?) and his ignorance of the human animal (his own animal self!) can be inferred. But I think the misanthropic bent of his argument hints that maybe he knows just enough about himself to be scared and disgusted by what he sees.

This is a very old theme, indeed. Man's fear and loathing of himself long predates any "animal rights" movement (though it certainly seems to inform it.)

I can't help but, as a parent of two children, recognize in this line of thinking a child's deep-seated (and profoundly self-centered) sense of injustice.

Faced with the world's certain measures of pain, bewilderment and abandonment, reasonable children seek comfort---and if denied that comfort, predictably lash out in self defense. They give hell to their parents, to their siblings, teachers, and tragically often to themselves.

To such a child, it is better to be alone than in the company of fellow sufferers. It is better, some will conclude, even to be dead.

For all the professor's elaborate argument and educated language, he writes essentially from the perspective of a hurt child, ironically selfish in his lashing out against the "cruelty" of others.

This argument has been taken farther than the professor has yet come. Every religion and entire civilizations (spawning literatures and philosophies he must certainly know) have been created in the attempt to see past the problem of pain.

Although we still argue (obviously) and wonder about this problem, there is at least a shared understanding that the problem is sewn into the system and somehow essential to it.

Whether you chose to see this as life in a Fallen world or simply acknowledge, in the secular sense, that we're all fucked, every adult must advance from that basic understanding to whatever conclusions can be drawn.

Only a child will chose to sit in a corner, hungry and hurt, while everyone sits at the table and eats what's given.

Update: Chas's thoughts here.

Disgrace

In Boston, the Franklin Park Zoo may close. As many as 165 employees may lose their jobs, and a large percentage of the animals may be euthanized.

“These are extremely difficult times across the state, and there have been tough cuts in every area,” a [Governor Deval] Patrick spokeswoman, Cyndi Roy, said in a statement. “This is an example of an unfortunate cut that had to be made in order to preserve core services for families struggling during the economic downturn.”

Boston's mayor disagrees:

"This is just another bad decision on budget cuts, affecting working families,” Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino said.

"It's a big deal,” he said of the possible closure of Franklin Park Zoo in Dorchester. “It's a great resource for the community. The zoo is an inexpensive place to spend a day in tough economic times."

The zoo opened in 1913 and is set in a beautiful green park by Olmstead. As the article notes, it "represents something of a touchstone for virtually anyone who grew up in Boston and walked through its majestic gates."

I admit to being utterly prejudiced-- I worked there in the early seventies and met many lasting friends , including my late partner Betsy Huntington and frequent commenter Annie D. But the zoo is an architectural treasure, a place where Boston's many communities come together peacefully, and part of a great tradition.Massachusetts spends money like a drunken sailor on everything else; the zoo is unique and irreplaceable.

Brave New World

This you tube video is.. I don't know if astounding or terrifying is more appropriate.

I am thinking about the plain of Eastern Montana above the Missouri Breaks or the hills of Kazakhstan- far northeast Kazakhstan, not wired Almaty. it is all going too fast for me.

HT Christina Nealson.