Running Iron Report

Decided to go with something a little lighter and more uplifting than usual for this week’s Running Iron Report column. If you can call broken bones and a torn scrotum “light and uplifting.” Blame Rullman and my brother John. * Last Sunday, Craig and Pete Rathbun and I sat down at the Figure 8 to record a podcast on “Stories … Read More

They came upon a circle of nomads Camped far from the lights of the town Blue men with scars and malarial eyes And teeth that were pointed… filed down He said: “These are the people I’ve been searching for, This is more than I ever could have hoped!” As they threw him down on a blanket And tied him up … Read More

If you don’t know, Artificial Intelligence, AI, is creeping inexorably into our lives.  From facial recognition technology to autonomous vehicles, from drone swarms to Siri, from Tesla to Pandora’s “Musical DNA”, AI and Machine Learning are among the incredibly powerful – and largely invisible — forces driving our next cultural revolution.

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Thanksgiving has long been an American tradition, famously dating back to the Pilgrim settlers at Plymouth Colony. The observance was celebrated at different times and in different places, and the tradition was strongest in New England. It wasn’t until the Civil War that it was established as a fixed national holiday. In the darkest depths of the American Civil War, … Read More

Sunday morning we killed the turkeys.  This is an important fall ritual on the Figure 8 because it brings with it a level of intimacy with our own lives that we find sorely lacking in the Age of Robots and Artificial Intelligence. It’s the same impetus that drives our effort at growing vegetables, and hunting for protein when we can:  because it moves us decidedly off of the crass and mindless consumer X and comes with a refreshing dose of participation and personal responsibility that remain life’s best teachers. … Read More

It would be hard to overstate how much I love Thanksgiving. An autumn family feast day with underpinnings of historical remembrance seems purpose‐built to trip my trigger — and it always does. It is even more important to me now that it means trekking across the Cascades to retrieve daughter Ceili from university. The drive is a beautiful one, made … Read More

Washington, Monday, Nov. 11, 2:48 A.M.–The armistice between Germany, on the one hand, and the allied Governments and the United States, on the other, has been signed. The State Department announced at 2:45 o’clock this morning that Germany had signed. The department’s announcement simply said: “The armistice has been signed.” The world war will end this morning at 6 o’clock, … Read More

Take some time this Sunday, November 11, to reflect upon a moment that occurred exactly 100 years ago. It made the world we live in. In November 1918, at the 11th hour* of the 11th day of the 11th month, an Armistice went into effect between the Allied powers of France, Great Britain and the United States and the newly‐formed … Read More

We are fast approaching the 100th anniversary of the Armistice that ended World War I — known then as The Great War. It was the most cataclysmic conflict in human history up to that time, and it is almost inconceivable that it would be superseded in a mere 30 years by an even more horrific one. Americans are not much … Read More

In a consumer society, where so much of what we require for daily life forces us into roles of utter dependence upon complex, fragile, and unaccountable systems, there are few remaining outlets that allow us at least the illusion of self‐sufficiency. Hunting is one of them.

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