Part of the natural evolution — and devolution — of language is that useful terms of art gain popular acceptance and then are debased through overuse. This process is accelerated in the sticky, humid and overwrought hothouse conditions of cultural conflict. The decomposition of useful terms is frustrating for those of us who make our living […]
A Game Of Chickens
For some lighter fare, I give you a Hound and a chicken. Better make that two chickens. We are living in a time of Maximum Bloviation. Everybody has a platform, and discourse on all of them seems to have fallen to the low common denominator of the Facebook rant. Whenever I tire of listening to blowhards flap their jaws, I fire up this brilliant […]
A Rum Tale
But from that great herd — that single wild creature hurtling into nowhere across the sunset-crimson plain — one bull will at last break free from the rest. One bull who will not run with the others — into nowhere, or into the gorge, or into the sea. He does not fear the herdsman or […]
The Long Silence
I’ve been mighty quiet on The Running Iron Report. I don’t feel good about it. Actually, I feel negligent. The strange and disconcerting thing is that, now that the Crash that Rullman and I have been anticipating for years is upon us, I don’t seem to have much to say about it. I feel like I’m just standing by some […]
Living up to what we put on paper
No words committed to paper have ever had greater impact than those we celebrate this Saturday, on Independence Day: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” That clarion […]
Vietnam Blues — For What It’s Worth
There’s battle lines being drawn And nobody’s right when everybody’s wrong — The Buffalo Springfield, For What It’s Worth * In another case of the uncanny synchronicity that often strikes like a bolt from a Sisters Country lightning storm around The Running Iron Report, the unlaid ghosts of the Vietnam era rose in recent weeks, asserting their undying influence […]
Legal Showdown In Oregon
We have a legal showdown underway in Oregon that has implications across this battered republic. On Monday, a judge in Baker County, Oregon, acting on a case brought by faith groups, invalidated the restrictions on businesses and social gatherings imposed under Governor Kate Brown’s emergency actions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, dating back to March. Judge Matt Shirtcliff, a Brown […]
Talkin’ Syncretic Frontier Blues
Governments don’t live together, people live together. With governments you don’t always get a fair word or a fair fight. Well I’ve come here to give you either one, or get either one from you. — Josey Wales to Chief Ten Bears, The Outlaw Josey Wales * Raising hell with the hippies and the cowboys They don’t care about no trends […]
A Lifetime Of Adventure
RIR reader and contributor Rob L. Thornton has a poem published in the current issue of Dark Mountain. A signal accomplishment, and we tip our hat(s) to him. I stumbled across the Dark Mountain Project in February of 2016. I know the date because I wrote a piece about it titled Chasing Buffalo Down A Dark Mountain on Frontier Partisans. I was intrigued […]
An Eruption Of Demonism Into History
“The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.” — Joseph Conrad * “The systems of explanation, historical and psychological, that we employ to explain ordinary human behavior, however extreme, cannot explain Hitler, who represents, (theologian Emil) Fackenheim believes, a ‘radical evil,’ an ‘eruption of demonism into history…’” — Ron Rosenbaum, Explaining Hitler * […]
A Strange Drunken Dream
As did you all, I read with great enjoyment Craig’s “Tickling The Wire” post, which set me to ruminating upon his observation that our bad-tooth, grisly-and-bubbling-infections-and-finally-death past is a mere camera-flash away from us. This, of course, set me to contemplating the wild, colorful career of Donald McBane. As one does. You see, Donald McBane should have died young […]
Blood For Oil, Zero Defect & Living With The COVID
“NO BLOOD FOR OIL, man!” That’s what the guitar player said as we listened to the news on the radio, trundling down the 405 Freeway in a panel truck. It was 1990, the U.S. was fixing to boot Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait and I was serving as a roadie for a 1950s-themed rock-n-roll band heading southbound from Los Angeles […]
