James Ellroy’s latest novel, This Storm, drops at the end of the month. Just in time, too. I’m in the mood for one of Ellory’s dark, jagged, Benzedrine-fueled rides through the neon-lit landscape of the American Century. I consider Ellroy one of the great ones — put him on a par with Cormac McCarthy. His ambitions are […]
Indy Saves History
Used to be, I’d get up in the morning and turn on the cable TV news. Just to, you know, find out if the world had blown up overnight. Then I’d come home from work and catch up on the news of the day. Can’t do it anymore. For one thing, it’s not “news” — CNN’s […]
Viva La Revolucion!
Poverty, injustice, over breeding, overpopulation, suffering, oppression, military rule, squalor, torture, terror, massacre: these ancient evils feed and breed on one another in synergistic symbiosis. To break the cycles of pain at least two new forces are required: social equity — and birth control. Population control. Our Hispanic neighbors are groping toward this discovery. If […]
The Wounds Of Towton No. 16
The king is an imbecile. The realm is in anarchy as partisan factions cleave to their banners, supporting one or the other rival claimants to the throne — represented by the Red Rose and the White. Civil war on a massive and bloody scale scourges the land… If this sounds like the premise of an epic […]
TURNing to localism
I have become mildly obsessed with the AMC show TURN: Washington’s Spies. I got sucked into this drama on Netflix and have now made it nearly through its four seasons, sneaking in an episode almost every day in the early evenings. The show is historically challenged in many respects, but — taken on its own terms […]
No Mercy, No Surrender
Consider this: The German Wehrmacht is generally considered the toughest and highest-quality fighting force of the Second World War — perhaps of the whole 20th Century. Yet, when confronted by military disaster in North Africa, at Stalingrad or in the collapse of their defenses in France in 1944, German units surrendered wholesale. We’re talking hundreds […]
The Market For Force
My go-to podcast of late has been Spycast, a media production of the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. Last weekend, I went out to Zimmerman Butte, our local shooting area to dial in a brand new Sig Sauer Red Dot sight on the AR-15. Followed this pleasurable activity with another — I sat in the truck and smoked […]
Wilson Wewa Never Cut His Hair
On a clear day from Winter Ridge, high above the broad expanse of Summer Lake in south-central Oregon, it is possible to look far into the eastern desert at a low-slung formation called 5 Mile Point. It was way out there, in 1937, that archaeologist Luther Cressman began excavating the Paisley Caves. Today, the U.S. Forest Service maintains a tidy cabin up on Winter Ridge, at the place where John C. Fremont came out of the woods in the winter of 1843 and first beheld the breathtaking reach of the Great Basin.
Long War, Broken Peace
My wife Marilyn and I enjoyed a chef’s dinner out at the Suttle Lodge at Suttle Lake in the woods west of Sisters last Saturday night. In addition to being an outstanding culinary adventure (“A Meal From One Pig” prepared by the chef from the Grand Army Tavern in Portland) it was a most convivial evening. We enjoyed […]
Misdirection In The Motte & Bailey
If you feel like your values and your very nature are under assault — they are. Two things happened on the same day last week that provide ample evidence that values and life-ways we cleave to here at Running Iron Report are under concerted and deliberate attack. The American Psychological Association has released new guidelines for […]
An Ace in the Hole
Over the years I have paid particular attention to my family history. Not because my family is in any way unique from anyone else’s, only that from a very young age I have been imbued with an abiding appreciation for the experiences of my ancestors. I’ve wanted to know them, or at least about them, and so maybe learn something about myself as I’ve traveled through this life. And it is the Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri branches of my family — Norwegians, Germans, and Dutch — who all wound up farther west at one point or another, that I have learned the most about
The Immediacy Of History
I’ve spent most all my days trying to touch the past. It’s a compulsion, a hunger for a connection. I have been accused by some folk who lack understanding of “living in the past,” but that misses the mark by a country mile. It’s never been about that at all — it’s always about making the past present. When that connection […]
