The Durango Debrief, Part One
My wife and I were down in Bend, Oregon, the other day, to visit with some friends and to spend the afternoon watching the Oregon Ducks smash helmets with the Wisconsin Badgers in the Rose Bowl. I had no dog in the fight – my alma maters are both mired in long-term football mediocrity — so instead of pulling for … Read More
Age Of Anxiety And Misrule
It’s not the apocalypse, of course, it’s just history, but if you thought the shape of history was meant to be an upward curve of progress, then this feels like the apocalypse. — Dougald Hine, co-founder of The Dark Mountain Project It can always sound really glib when historians start dancing up and down and saying, “hey, my book is … Read More
Running Iron Podcast 14
Join Craig, Jim, and “Oil Can” Rathbun as they welcome teacher Judy Larson into the bunkhouse on the historic Figure 8 Ranch for Running Iron Podcast Number 14. Presently a middle-school teacher on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, Judy brings her considerable experience to talk all things education and to provide an insight into the challenges and rewards of a … Read More
The Education Of A Warrior
About two minutes into the new Polish docudrama Born For The Saber, I exclaimed aloud: “Teddy Roosevelt would have LOVED this!” The film — available with English subtitles on Amazon Prime and iTunes — is a passion project created to honor and preserve the heritage of the Polish saber and the 17th-century martial culture of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth for which … Read More
Notes on a Theme of Bushido
On the same afternoon that I zipped my grandfather into a body bag – he was fortunate to die at home, in his own bed, and the last words he heard on this earth were my grandmother saying she loved him — I inherited one of his old rifles. It was a single shot .22 with a scope from the … Read More
Billy Howe’s Cleopatra
“History is human nature writ large, and the better you understand the past, the better you’ll understand people in general, including those of our own day.” — James Carlos Blake * There is a pernicious movement afoot to push aside liberal arts education in favor of more “practical” education. This reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of what is practical. I “use” … Read More
An Ordinary Plains Lunatic
As I was reading and writing last night–sketching various attempts at an end of the decade post, I came across a wonderful passage from “The Powder River Expedition Journals of Colonel Richard Irving Dodge.” This was a book I bought myself for Christmas because I maintain an abiding interest in that period of our history and also because I have … Read More
Merry Christmas From RIR
May you feast on fat cow and may Father Christmas load your packs with gunpowder, ham hocks and guitar strings! … Read More
Die Living
I’m growing older but not up My metabolic rate is pleasantly stuck Let those winds of time blow over my head I’d rather die while I’m livin’ than live while I’m dead — Jimmy Buffett The winds of change have been blowing pretty hard around here of late. Some men of my community who were strong and vital when I … Read More
Running Iron Podcast 12 — Dr. Larry Len Peterson
In this episode, Craig, Jim and “Oil Can” Rathbun are joined in the bunkhouse by Dr. Larry Len Peterson. The author most recently of “American Trinity: Jefferson, Custer, and the Spirit of the West” Dr. Peterson has published numerous highly regarded biographies including “Philip R. Goodwin: America’s Sporting and Wildlife Artist”; “The Call of the Mountains; The Artists of Glacier … Read More
