Sunday cartoons

The first from Jackson Frishman; the second from the ubiquitous New Yorker, source of all our refrigerator art.

The "Mother of Dragons" gets her tattoo

Lauren's amazing ink:

Courtship

From Arthur Wilderson:

When you finally find the one

If this confuses you, see this:

Inevitable...

Greg McNamee sent this with the caption: "It was only a matter of time", to which he added "Newly scraped from the north Phoenix desert...

"Great Moments in Pigeon Keeping"

..as Jack said in a recent email.The Grand Canyon guides knew long before the scientists about the huge stable non- migratory Peregrine population in the Grand Canyon, the Colorado and its tributaries...

 Photos by the late great Wesley Smith of the homers he used to take down the River in the days of film cameras, to allow his clients to be met with photos,. He used to say that each roll took three pigeons: "One for the tiercel, one for the falcon, and one for the film..."

Chicken Attack

From Annie Davidson. Utterly...undescribable....

Flyover Country- Who Knew?

Reading the WSJ, I was startled to encounter two old friends in an unusual context. The relevant passage:

 I called Russsell, who is in California and recovering from a shoulder operation ( casting lead- core steelhead lines in deep water for 60 years has got  to have SOME effect!) and he was as bemused as I was.

Old Days Mag #1

Carlos's Sparrow Sauce

Just like my paternal grandmother's, which she used on Polenta. "Makes a nice-a sauce", she would say as she caught the sparrows in the pigeon loft by swatting them with a
broom or popping them into a brown paper bag and whacking it on a beam. I have never felt more Italian.......

Here she is in the back of a car driven by my dad, in '38:

Now THAT is a bookstore!

The El Atenio in Buenos Aires. HT Micah Mattix at Prufrock.

"James Bond's Armourer"

Geoffrey Boothroyd really did write me on Model 12 Winchesters. He also really held that "position"- a critical letter to Ian Fleming on guns, early in the series, led to Fleming's whimsically writing him into the books as a character.

With Fleming, early in his career.

Here is the Winchester letter. He later provided an intro to John Hill. "Johnny UK", who became a good friend, over our mutual interests in Darnes.

Of course it was a young and beautiful Betsy who, with Joan van Ness, attended a wild party at Goldeneye, Fleming's Jamaica estate. Everybody knows everybody.

Indian Vultures

I wrote soberly on the Indian Vulture crisis years ago in the Atlantic.

They continued to decline; nobody gives a damn about serious whiny articles.

Today, my friend Jemima "Mima" Parry Jones, daughter of the grand old falconer Philip Glasier, sent me this YouTube piece of pro- vulture propaganda, and I am envious- it will likely be a lot more effective.

Mima is unusual- I am reminded of the remark, which sounds like one of Osxar Wilde's epigrams, that in friendship , it is best to begin with a little aversion...

We were staying at Jonathan Kingdon's near Oxford when  he decided we MUST se Mima's original  Bird of Prey Center on the west coast of England (on a day trip- I will never get over the scale of England). I was a little dubious - I had heard she did not approve of some things I had written-- but the chance to see all those birds was irresistible.

We  had fun exploring the park- it is where  I first encountered the African Crowned eagle I mentioned below. We also played with an Andean Condor who seemed fascinated with Jonathan's car keys.

But finaly the time came to meet the proprietor. Jonathan ushered me into the office where she sat behind her desk and began "This is Stephen Bodio. He wrote.."

She interrupted him : I KNOW what he fucking wrote. He's the cunt who write 'The English have nothing to teach us but history!' "

She glared at me  for a moment longer, as though to be sure I had heard her properly; then stood to shake my hand with a  dazzling smile. "Glad to meet you! Let's go and see my birds."

I don't think she ever uttered a critical word in my direction again, but I am not sure Jonathan ever got over his shock..

 As for Mima, perhaps the last word should go to Merliner Emeritus, naturalist, poet, and former schoolmaster John Loft. In  his local pub, over good peaty Scotch whisky and steak and kidney pie, on a foggy unseasonably cold  May night, I told him this story. He shook his head and said: "Stephen, if you think SHE has a mouth that could take your hide off, you should have known her father."

Mima, the Duke, and her father many years ago

John Loftt with falcon topiary in his garden; hawking with Tim Galllagher.

In need of correction...

From a recent Guardian, as reported in the PLF blog. These children can't be serious-- I have see better reporting by high school students in rural New Mexico... 

A review of David Astor: A Life in Print, a biography of the former editor of the Observer, contained a number of errors (20 February, page 7, Review). In the article we suggested that William Waldorf Astor was named after a hotel, when in fact his name referred to the family’s native Rhineland village. He didn’t build Cliveden, as we suggested, but bought it, and he didn’t sack the editor of the Observer for spiking his contributions (although he did sack the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, another Astor acquisition, for spiking his contributions). We said Katharine Whitehorn was women’s editor of the Observer when in fact she was a columnist. We said Patrick Leigh Fermor compared David Astor to Disney’s Pluto; Fermor actually compared the writer Philip Toynbee to that cartoon character. Terence Kilmartin replaced Jim Rose as Observer literary editor, not JC Trewin. During the war, David Astor didn’t merely suffer “a mild attack of dysentery” as suggested in the review. In fact he was wounded in action during a German ambush in the Ardennes. Terence Kilmartin is believed to have been involved in his rescue, and Astor was awarded the Croix de Guerre.

More funnies

Needs no verbiage...

One more light one...

This amazing illo of a mammoth apparently walking out of a frozen bank is from a 19th c childrens' travel book. The text is sensible enough but the ilustration almost made me buy the book..

A Little Place Marker

Plenty of material, madly busy, but this image, courtesy of John L Moore, will stand, as truth, as a testimonial to my old rifles, and to  my vanity that my hair is growing back, if not quite here yet. At least I can go out now without a hat...

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From Annie Davidson:

Driving with Animals

Charley Waterman used to say. of a dog that always occupied the driving seat when the humans were absent, that she knew driving was important, and that somebody had to do it; she just didn't know how.

Vulture Fan

From Stacia Novy. Picture this revolving above your hospital bed. I WANT one...