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 […]
SPQR — The Senate and People of Rome
This year has been a particularly good one for those of us who are interested in old Rome, as new discoveries of letters, and even boxing gloves, at Hadrian’s Wall – a strange wall, indeed, for a host of reasons – and in fresh diggings at Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Oplontis, all destroyed by Vesuvius back in ’79 – have given us valuable new information about Roman life, culture, and reach, and indeed have overturned some apple carts.
Long Black Train — Sex, Death & Revolution
What can be scarier and stronger than the feeling of impending death? — Larisa Reisner, Trotsky (2017) * I hung around St. Petersburg When I saw it was time for a change Killed the Tsar and his ministers Anastasia screamed in vain… Pleased to meet you Hope you guess my name But what’s puzzling you Is the […]
Time To Shake These Doomsayer Blues
It’s the same old story Tell me where will it end I got the same old blues, same old blues again — J.J. Cale * I’m gonna lay down these Doomsayer Blues. The fourth National Climate Assessment under the U.S. Global Change Research program was released on the Friday of Thanksgiving weekend — the traditional […]
A Proclamation Of Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving has long been an American tradition, famously dating back to the Pilgrim settlers at Plymouth Colony. The observance was celebrated at different times and in different places, and the tradition was strongest in New England. It wasn’t until the Civil War that it was established as a fixed national holiday. In the darkest depths […]
Guns, Germs & Gravy On Everything
It would be hard to overstate how much I love Thanksgiving. An autumn family feast day with underpinnings of historical remembrance seems purpose-built to trip my trigger — and it always does. It is even more important to me now that it means trekking across the Cascades to retrieve daughter Ceili from university. The drive is […]
