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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Merry Christmas From RIR
May you feast on fat cow and may Father Christmas load your packs with gunpowder, ham hocks and guitar strings!
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 […]
Get Behind The Mule
You got to get behind the mule In the morning and plow… — Tom Waits A friend told me the other day that her daughter was complaining that none of her teachers or classes in school inspired her. My friend and I were both a little bemused; we couldn’t recall that we ever thought we were supposed […]
Riding For The Brand This Christmas
Hey pards! The Running Iron Trading Post is open — you can now ride for the brand at coffeeshop or shooting range. (Link at the top of the page). The cap looks sharp on the range — and anecdotal evidence suggests that it actually improves your shooting. The stickers class up a guitar case or a laptop. […]
That Noble Northern Spirit
“I have in this War a burning private grudge — which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler … Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in […]
Soviet Storm
The brilliant Running Iron Report piece I spent a couple of days on turned out to be a piece of crap, so I junked it. A high volume Russian Kettlebell workout in 36-degree temperatures kicked my ass. Watching a couple of hours of impeachment hearing over a fantastic lunch with my friend Jack McGowan was good fellowship, but bad for my cynicism. […]
Off With Their Heads!
An ad campaign designed to get local folks thinking about east-west connectivity in Bend and encourage participation in a transportation survey has run afoul of cancel culture. The billboard that loomed over the intersection of 9th and Wilson depicted a covered wagon trekking across the high desert, with the tagline: “Traveling East to West still tough?” and […]
‘New Molds Want To Be Filled With Blood’
“This war is not the end but the beginning of violence. It is the forge in which the world will be hammered into new borders and new communities. New molds want to be filled with blood, and power will be wielded with a hard fist.” — Ernst Jünger (1918) The dramatic events of recent weeks — […]
A Reading Life
Our hometown of Sisters celebrated the reading life this month. The inaugural Sisters Festival of Books October 18–20 was a success on every level. Craig Rullman and I were honored to be asked to participate in the kickoff event, which featured a dozen local authors. There are few things more worthy of celebration than books and the strange […]
