Running Iron Report

Cardi B and Nicki Minaj are feuding. Stormy Daniels has described Donald Trump’s penis for us. A big storm in North Carolina demanded 24/7 coverage, even if reporters had to fake it. Meanwhile, in other news: The Shanghai International Port Group is expected to take management of a new private seaport at Haifa, Israel in 2021, bringing a Chinese presence … Read More

Nevada cowgirl, educator, philanthropist, and elite‐level athlete Cris Converse joins Craig and Jim in the Bunkhouse on the historic Figure 8 Ranch.  Cris leads just the sort of eclectic and informed American life that fans of Running Iron appreciate; in this terrific interview she discusses the fascinating trail of her life, and lends important perspective on making a legacy commitment to community.

… Read More

By Rick Schwertfeger for RunningIronReport.com Evidence increases in the United States today of two processes underway simultaneously: One, a potential collapse of key institutions that underlie the existing American economic, political, and social systems. Evidence abounds of an economic system that concentrates wealth in a small minority of Americans, and leaves the majority struggling with insufficient income, debt, and no … Read More

I often return to the poets these days.  From great translations of the Illiad and the Odyssey to Beowulf, from Shakespeare to Dylan Thomas, and more frequently to the modern giants like Charles Wright, Richard Hugo, or Galway Kinnell, I find a touchstone that gentles my nerves. That ritual works for me because fine poets fire the language with precision, and stoke the imagination with what John Keats called “Negative Capability.” Our world is sorely lacking in appreciation for the mysterious and the levitating these days, and the airwaves are so rich with insincerity, so over‐cooked with political certainty and righteous declarations, that the daily and endless caterwauling amounts to a kind of relentless propaganda bullhorn. … Read More

“At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined… could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on … Read More

A recent letter to the editor in The Nugget Newspaper, which I edit and where Craig has a column, defended “political correctness” as “basically another term for respect, consideration, kindness, and generosity towards others despite their race, ethnicity, gender, or disability.” This definition elides the modern origins of the term, which lie in totalitarian attempts to own language, and thus … Read More

I’m drawn to those quiet little outbursts of humanity demanding attention, that impulse to declare with some permanence: “I was here”.  It is the same impulse, I suppose, that drove my wife and I to put our handprints and our names in the wet concrete when we built our barn.  For good measure, we added the paw prints of our dogs, and I scratched the date in with a nail.

… Read More

“Beowulf lying wrapped in a blanket among his platoon of drunken thanes in the Gothland billet; Judith going for a promenade to Holofernes’s staff tent; and Brunaburgh with its bayonet‐and‐cosh fight — all of this came closer to most of us than the drawing room and deer‐park atmosphere of the eighteenth century.” — Robert Graves, Goodbye To All That * … Read More

It must seem like a pretty good joke in the labyrinthine halls of the Kremlin: the Americans in a giant, going‐on‐two‐years twist about Russian interference in the 2016 election. We ought to recognize it when we see it. The Russians understand — better than 99 percent of Americans — that the USA is the world champion of meddling in the … Read More

“How is it,” asks my interlocutor, “that you immerse yourself in all of this dark history, and yet you don’t seem cynical?” Well, that’s a fair question. I’m tempted to simply throw down another Edward Abbey quote and let it go at that: “Don’t let yourself become cynical. Cynicism is a cheap emotion, a craven substitute for thought and action. … Read More