August 23, 1572 — St. Bartholomew’s Eve. Man of Commerce and Soldier of Fortune Mattias Tannhauser rides into Paris, where all hell is about to break loose. At a tavern called The Red Ox, he pauses to take his repast and reflect upon the state of affairs in his adopted country… “Tannhauser had abandoned all involvement and […]
Pestilence Part II — The Winnowing
Turns out, I underestimated the potentials regarding COVID-19. I thought this would be another SARS or MERS — potentially dangerous, but containable; burning out relatively quickly. I wish I’d read this February 24 article in The Atlantic, which is still a worthy read now: With its potent mix of characteristics, this virus is unlike most that capture popular attention: […]
Pestilence — Death Rides A Pale Horse
Coronavirus is probably NOT going to kill us all. You might be forgiven for thinking otherwise, since the reporting on this respiratory illness tends to severely hyperventilate. According to WebMD reporting, as of Tuesday, February 11, there are about 43,000 cases, the vast majority of them in China, and the number of deaths crested 1,000. […]
Ain’t Got That Swing
Travel time on the road to a newspaper conference last week gave me more leisure than usual to run down the warren of rabbit holes that is political journalism c. 2020. It’s weird out there, as you have probably noticed. A couple of pieces caught my eye, one of which is simply a telling commentary on the […]
Rule Britannia! An Anglophile Abroad
Rule Britannia! Britannia rule the waves Britons never, never, never shall be slaves! Daughter Ceili is in London for the next five months, for a study-abroad term through the University of Oregon. This is the fulfillment of a dream she’s had since she was a very young girl, enthralled by the image of Harry Potter and his friends […]
Age Of Anxiety And Misrule
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 […]
An Ordinary Plains Lunatic
As I was reading and writing last night–sketching various attempts at an end of the decade post, I came across a wonderful passage from “The Powder River Expedition Journals of Colonel Richard Irving Dodge.” This was a book I bought myself for Christmas because I maintain an abiding interest in that period of our history and also because I have a long-running fascination with immediate accounts written by the people who were on the ground when events unfolded. That’s true from Caesar to Tacitus, from Samuel Pepys to the Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition and beyond. I buy them and read them whenever I can.
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 — […]
‘The Marke Of His Manhood’
The quality we admire most at The Running Iron Report is resilience. Nobody escapes the injuries, the wrecks, the traumas big and small that life dishes out. The 21st century therapeutic culture, which often valorizes victimhood, has led us astray from old, heroic virtues, and indeed casts them in a negative light. But those are the […]
Down Into The Mire — The Hard Men Of The War Of Irish Independence
There is nothing more stirring and romantic than a people’s fight for independence. Who cannot be moved by an underdog taking up the rifle to make a stand and be counted in the community of nations? And yet the reality of revolution — and the civil war that it seems must almost inevitably follow — is grim, […]
