Category: The Grab Bag

So there I was, prepping to grill a tri-tip for the Big Game–which I now watch less as a fan than for the window it opens into the study of human history–think Coliseums flooded with gladiators–when they hauled out Joe Namath, only recently thawed from the deep freeze where they keep him between games, and ...

I’m not particularly old school.  There are any number of modern conveniences that I use and enjoy and as I’ve mentioned before in these pages, nothing beats modern pain killers and dental care–an option not enjoyed by the Lakota in The Moon of the Cracking Trees on the great plains, where they hovered by tiny ...

For several months I have been receiving letters from the United States Census Bureau demanding that I submit to a supplemental census exam.  These letters have grown increasingly grim, advising me that my “response is required by law,” citing the applicable U.S. Code, and carrying the implicit threat of prosecution.  The letters have also told ...

Post Eagle-Huntress, we have this fantastic news:  Dutch police are training eagles to take down drones.  I am simply in love with this news, and not because I really have anything against drones.  If I could afford one, I might buy one.  In fact, I have seriously considered buying one and flying it over the ...

Yesterday I received an email from my friend Dave Hedges.  Dave is a screenwriter, a damn good one, slugging it out in the movie trenches, and we were once constables together, doing our best to keep the lid on public order.  Dave took the occasion of his email to inform me that the temperature in ...

Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed.  Wendell Berry I am a huge fan of Wendell Berry, who has done the hard work, but he’s too dour here.  I get the sentiment:  let’s hunt for meat, not trophies, and couldn’t agree more.  I’ve built my life around it.  But we can ...

I have a good friend who is now a Colonel in the Marine Corps.  Once, in our youth, we served together, fraternizing, as it were, in various pubs and off-limits districts across the Pacific, until eventually sailing through the Straights of Hormuz to plant Old Glory and our regimentals in the greater sands of Araby. ...

There is a golden eagle flying over our house right now, just at the limit of where the window will allow me to see it, turning great circles in the treetops.  This happens on occasion, when one of the nesting pair at Wychus Creek stretches out over the canyon and drifts this way in search ...

We have been re-educated now, for decades, with the notion that our feelings are important.  It’s how we feel about a subject that matters.  The psycho-analytic crowd loves this, and has grown rich from it.  Oh gee, Molly, how did that make you feel? It isn’t hard to reverse engineer how this vision of ourselves has warped ...

This morning the Nugget News published a column I wrote regarding the tactical approach to resolving the Malheur Refuge takeover.  The timing was mere accident.  You can see it here.  In the article I was deliberately not discussing the political considerations driving the decision-making process, merely the modern tactical approach to resolving an armed resistance with ...