Notes on a Greasy Napkin
I like to write in diners. I like it because I always hear something marvelous about politics, or the weather, and also because there is something inspirational in the smell of bacon, the comfort of a worn-out booth beside a picture window, and the reliable goodness of hashed browns, two eggs over-medium, and a side ...
Sinatra at Ground Zero
Our American obsession with celebrity is as interesting as it is potentially dangerous. It’s also hard to dislodge, as war correspondent George Weller discovered when he defied McArthur’s ban on travel to Nagasaki after the Army Air Corps detonated Fat Man, a 21 kiloton nuclear weapon, over the city. Nearly 1000 allied POW’s were living ...
An Iron in the Fire
Running Iron Report is now live. I encourage you to go there and check out the inaugural post. Sign up to receive new posts as they are published, and to join in what will certainly be an interesting conversation. Here are few words about the site, and what you can expect, from Frontier Partisans: The ...
The Cross of Lorraine, Part Deux
We don’t often think of US Marines when we think about World War 2 in Europe. The Marine Corps, naturally, did the bulk of its work in the Pacific theater and probably survives today only because of the brutal, no-quarters warfighting the Old Breed did against the Japanese in places like Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Peleliu, and ...
The Cross of Lorraine
With mostly amusing talk of “resistance” so much in the air, this column has been reading deeply on various characters of the French Resistance during World War 2. A couple of noteworthy names have floated to the surface—not Frenchmen, but allies who parachuted into occupied France to help the Maquis organize, train, and bring the ...
Black Rock Blues
I admit to a conservative streak in my nature. One problem with that is a tendency to paint the past in golden hues and promote visions of a world that never really existed. And it’s probably accurate that if we are ever to learn anything, and carry that knowledge forward, we can’t do it by ...
Something for Nothing
My grandfather warned me a long time ago that: “You can’t get something for nothing,” which always sounded like an unassailable bit of wisdom pulled from Stonewall Jackson’s Book of Maxims. But grandad wasn’t around for the invention of Bitcoin. Bitcoin, if you don’t know, is a digital commodity invented by a cryptologist whose real ...
Ed O’Farrell’s Midnight Ride
On a recent research trip into the Nevada outback, Nugget News editor Jim Cornelius and I had occasion to stop for a few minutes in Silver Lake, Oregon–to pay our respects at a monument in the local cemetery. Ten feet high, unprepossessing, the monument was erected in 1898, to remember the victims of Oregon’s most ...
A Meditation, With Horses
We don’t make as much of Christmas anymore. Each year the tree gets smaller and we put up fewer lights. It isn’t that we’ve lost the spirit of the thing. Mostly, we just fall behind the season. We aren’t alone. By mid-May the last of the late Christmas cards usually trickle in, bloodstained and dusty, ...
Dawn of the Drones
There has been an interesting conversation going on all around me that I haven’t been paying enough attention to. The topic is drones, drone technology, and the growing group of accomplished and fanatical pilots who fly them. Most of us are probably aware of drones in one form or fashion; we know that the military ...
Bunkhouse Chronicle 