Running Iron Report

Last week I took some time off from working the colt, writing, and fixing the myriad things around the Figure 8 that broke in the last big snowstorm.  I put all that away for a three‐day fishing trip down the Lower Deschutes.  I went with my friend, neighbor, and legendary guide Steve Erickson, and an old cop colleague who has spent much of his adult life working violent crimes – a grueling career that has left his armor severely dented by the sword and axe‐blows of human behavior.

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Spec. 4 James Christian “Frosty” Paquette attended Irmo High School and finished at Chapin High School. He overcame a serious head trauma from a car accident in April 1990. He went on to be a Corrections Officer with the S.C. Dept. of Corrections, then earned a two‐year degree from Midlands Technical College and became a licensed electrician. He entered the South … Read More

Used to be, I’d get up in the morning and turn on the cable TV news. Just to, you know, find out if the world had blown up overnight. Then I’d come home from work and catch up on the news of the day. Can’t do it anymore. For one thing, it’s not “news” — CNN’s perennial “Breaking News” banner notwithstanding. … Read More

The truth comes out as the fire burns low It comes to light as only embers glow The whiskey talks, the west wind moans in the night — Corb Lund, “Truth Comes Out” It’s been a grinder here these past few weeks. The newspaper gig has demanded full attention and constant labors. Mind you, I am not complaining. A successful … Read More

It is unacceptable to hear a soldier say, “I did all they asked of me. Why are they doing this?” as Matt Brown posed to me just weeks before shooting himself in his quarters at Fort Lewis. Perhaps this is how Meriwether Lewis felt on that dark, cold night in October 1809 as he crawled across the ground, dying from his self‐inflicted wounds as those who could have helped hid behind closed doors and watched him bleed to death. Lewis, whose name graces the Army’s largest base in the Pacific Northwest, died alone, unwanted, and abandoned in his hour of greatest need.

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Poverty, injustice, over breeding, overpopulation, suffering, oppression, military rule, squalor, torture, terror, massacre: these ancient evils feed and breed on one another in synergistic symbiosis. To break the cycles of pain at least two new forces are required: social equity — and birth control. Population control. Our Hispanic neighbors are groping toward this discovery. If we truly wish to help … Read More

If there is one principle I am steadfast to uphold, it’s that a man’s waist size should always be smaller than his inseam.  If your inseam is 36, and you wake up to find your waist is a 38, you have crossed the bridge into a contrary life.

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The king is an imbecile. The realm is in anarchy as partisan factions cleave to their banners, supporting one or the other rival claimants to the throne — represented by the Red Rose and the White. Civil war on a massive and bloody scale scourges the land… If this sounds like the premise of an epic fantasy, it is: the … Read More

I had promised a different piece this week, but had a friend and his wife stop in for the weekend and that threw me off my game.  They were up from Paso Robles, California, where they raise wine grapes – Syrah, Petite Syrah — on a magnificent chunk of the central coast, and also to pick up some elk meat I’d been holding for them in our freezer since our hunt last fall. And, as things go, the weekend vanished in an insalubrious 72‐hour fete that left me feeling like I’d spent the weekend with Robert Plant and the boys in a chapter from Hammer of the Gods.

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I have become mildly obsessed with the AMC show TURN: Washington’s Spies. I got sucked into this drama on Netflix and have now made it nearly through its four seasons, sneaking in an episode almost every day in the early evenings. The show is historically challenged in many respects, but — taken on its own terms and merits — it … Read More