There is, I suppose, a Heraclitian aspect to our film because nothing is fixed in the outback. The petroglyphs weather and the granite grows its rinds of colorful lichen, the courses of creeks and rivers change in drought or in flood, wildfire scorches the sage and forests alike. The horses and cattle most certainly change, and so too do the people change, adapting to time and circumstance to meet the challenges of the wider cultural evolution, markets, and technology.
Revolution, Riot & Rock-and-Roll — Part I — The Gunpowder Plot
I know, it’s only rock and roll But I like it… — Jagger/Richards Lo, these many years ago — decades, actually, which is disconcerting — my then-girlfriend became Very Upset because her science major roommates scorned her major in English literature. They considered their majors — and therefore themselves — Practical , Useful, and Important. An English […]
Re-Entry
A few miles south of La Pine, Oregon, highway 97 offers travelers the opportunity to turn hard east onto highway 31. At this sudden intersection in the ponderosas – it is easily missed – there is a small sign welcoming motorists to the Oregon Outback Scenic Byway. It’s a pleasant enough sign, adorned with a silhouetted coyote yipping at the rising sun, and seems appropriate in its understatement if only to remind people that the entire world is not made of concrete, steel, and inter-personal friction.
You Say You Want La Revolution
Revolutions are a dangerous business. I suppose my instincts are inherently conservative (in the Edmund Burke sense) when it comes to this subject, because when people invoke the “to the barricades!” war cry of revolt and insurrection, I tend to recoil. It’s not so much the tumult and disorder of revolution that creates a sense of dread in me […]
The Len Babb Movie Project Teaser Released
This is a very brief post to announce the release of the movie trailer for my passion endeavor: The Len Babb Movie Project. Sam Pyke and I have been hard at work filming, editing, spitballing, desperately seeking coffee in the remotest corners of the American outback, and also having a terrific time meeting new people, hearing new stories, and learning how to make this film.
The Life and Times of a Big-Shot Filmmaker
I feel extremely fortunate to have escaped much of the Cat 5 Garbage Tornado that is Big America while down in Paisley, Oregon, with videographer Sam Pyke last weekend – where we began filming for the Len Babb Movie Project.
The New Silk Roads
A few summers ago, while lounging around the Munich Airport waiting for a flight to Reykjavik, I bought a book: “The Silk Roads: A New History of the World,” by Peter Frankopan. Frankopan is a senior fellow at Oxford University, and has written a convincing reassessment of world history. It is also a poignant and extraordinarily well-considered forecast of our possible future as a broader, Western culture.
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 […]
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. When […]
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 and […]
The Last Czars
Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. — Winston Churchill Regular readers of Running Iron Report know that we consider the Russian Revolution to be a fulcrum of modern history. Taken not as a discreet event but as a part of the great convulsion of the First World War and a precursor event of the Second World War, the fall […]
Rolling Thunder And A Hard Rain
Times were weird. The President of the United States had been run out of office a year ago, in the face of near-certain impeachment and conviction for high crimes and misdemeanors. Two disturbed women — one a lunatic follower of Charles Manson — tried to shoot his successor. New York City was on the verge of implosion, compressed under […]
