Running Iron Report

Yesterday I travelled down into Bend with my bride to buy some new cell phones. This seemingly innocent task turned into an excellent lesson in modern commerce, and maybe some other things, though hard lessons are difficult to draw from the early part of the second millennium which is a kind of historical bouillabaisse. … Read More

“Such is time: everything passes, it alone remains; everything remains, it alone passes. And how swiftly and noiselessly it passes. Only yesterday you were sure of yourself, strong and cheerful, a son of the time. But now another time has come—and you don’t even know it.” … Read More

Who is this guy? I see him everywhere. He might be in his mid-thirties. He’s wearing baggy sweatpants, destroyed shoes, and a hoody over a baseball cap. He’s pushing a bicycle up the sidewalk and smoking the last raw nub of a cigarette. Sometimes there is a plastic bag with dubious cargo hanging on the handlebars. He’s in no particular … Read More

I had coffee with Jim this morning and can report that he too is alive and well. We are nearing the end of an election cycle and you can probably imagine that in his role as the Editor in Chief of our newspaper he is like the Gypsy Moth battling a storm in the Roaring 40s. The politically devout—a growing … Read More

I won’t be voting this time around. And spare me the lecture. You may allow yourself to get cornered into a bad vote between Donald Duck and Porky Pig. I won’t. The same way I won’t sign a loyalty oath to a nation that is equally make-believe and doesn’t even exist. I’ll take my chances with the small, and shrinking, … Read More

One problem with all of this high altitude lying is that us common folk now have a difficult time discerning the truth, in those rare moments when someone is trying tell it. It is somewhere in that miasma—where the truth being offered is a lie, and the lie being offered turns out to be the truth—that conspiracies are born and … Read More

A couple of years ago, before the plague struck planet earth and accelerated the already impressive pace of batshit crazy behavior here on our little blue ball, I had a fellow who helped me out around the ranch. I’ve written about Mando before, sharing the story of him arriving one day on our porch with a rake and a tarp, … Read More

It isn’t much, this fort, and I strain for verisimilitude. It might be the very sad museum, where the most interesting item on display is a woven Clatsop hat. The rest is fraud. Intellectual and physical. Reconstructions of reconstructions. The people inside shuffle and wheeze in unison behind their masks, a phlegmatic choir requiring oxygen and historical handrails. It feels … Read More

I like to think of Vin as a kind of ancient bard telling the story of Ulysses around a campfire. He was a master scene-builder, and could seduce a listener into the story of a young pitcher, just called up from the minors, making his debut. He would make that story something like your own, epic and inspiring and familiar, … Read More

I don’t raise bees anymore but I’m still working on my Theory of Everything. In physics, the big TOE is meant to unify general relativity (all the big stuff) with quantum theory (all the little stuff) to create a grand unifying theory of the whole enchilada. Mine probably isn’t as ambitious, and I realize I’m running out of time to … Read More