Posted by admin on May 4, 2012 in
Books,
Musings I recently finished reading Gregg Jones’ new book, Honor in the Dust, Theodore Roosevelt, War in the Philippines and the Rise and Fall of America’s Imperial Dream (New American Library, 427 pages). Amply footnoted and bibliographied, this book is a great read if you are interested in the history of American involvement in the Spanish-American [...]
Tags: Afghanistan War, American history, books, Emilio Aguinaldo, Gregg Jones, Iraq War, Philipines, Smedley Butler, Theodore Roosevelt, Vietnam War
Posted by admin on April 20, 2012 in
Musings Tuesday last was tax day and as I usually do around April 17, I ponder taxes, money, accountants. All of this, of course, fuels imagery that erupts from the past: characters, events, some funny, some sad, some unwanted, some I am glad I remembered. In 1979-1980 I worked for a big corporation in the ag [...]
Tags: Arizona, audits, cattle, cowboys, dust, feedyards, flies, Gila River Indian Reservation, manure, ropes, San Tan, taxes
Posted by admin on April 13, 2012 in
Movies,
Musings Our daughter, Sarah, and her husband, Baruch, are expecting their first baby in July. We have grandkids already. One, Justyce, is already zooming her way to young adulthood. The prospect for the arrival of a newborn is damned exciting. As I think about this new granddaughter, the season is Spring and outside the daffodils are [...]
Tags: Allman Bothers, Arizona, Baruch Ellsworth, Casa Grande, cast iron stove, cotton farmer, cowboys, Dire Straits, Geronimo, Idlewild South, James Rodgers, John Huston, Justyce Rodgers, Man in the Wilderness, Memory of Elizabeth Reed, movies, painter, plumber, prickly pear, Richard Harris, Richard Madewell, Rolling Stones, Sarah Ellsworth, sheep herder, Spring, Sticky Fingers
Posted by admin on April 6, 2012 in
Dust Storms,
Musings The wind blows in Idaho this time of year. Totes the angry vestiges of another aging winter. Grass leans, limbs break, birds balance in the tops of aspen branches that tilt away from the gales that holler off the east Oregon desert. Time moves east to west around here, the wind sweeps west to east [...]
Tags: Alamogordo, Apache, Arizona, Avignon, Black Range, Cloudcroft, Gila, hurricanes, Idaho, New Mexico, Palais de Papes, San Andres Mountains, Sonoran Desert, Spring, storms, typhoons, Western Bar, Western Cafe, white sands, wind
Posted by admin on March 16, 2012 in
Books,
Musings This morning Betty and I are in Sun Valley, Hollywood in Idaho, at the Sun Valley Film Festival. Our film wasn’t chosen to be screened but our friend and mentor, Christopher Beaver has a film—Tulare-The Phantom Lake—entered and he invited us to represent him since he would be busy filming elsewhere. Besides representing Chris, we [...]
Tags: Boulder-White Cloud Mountains, Christopher Beaver, elk, Ernest Hemingway, Idaho, John Rember, MFA in a Box, moose, salmon, Salmon River, Sawtooth Mountains, Stanley Basin, Sun Valley, Traplines, Tulare--The Phantom Lake
Posted by admin on March 9, 2012 in
Musings,
Travel Back in my mid-to-late twenties I worked at a feedyard in southern Arizona. Every late winter/early spring, cattle buyers descended from heaven with boxes and boxes of asparagus bartered fresh out of the fields of the Imperial Valley of California. Gifts to us, the working stiffs trapped with a gazillion flies, and miles and miles [...]
Tags: Arizona, asparagus, California Trail, cantaloupe, cattle buyers, Council Bluffs, feedlot, ice cream, Independence Rock, Mormon Trail, Oregon Trail, promised land, rain, saints, St. Patrick's Day, Wyoming
Posted by admin on March 2, 2012 in
Birds,
Musings For the last several months my wife Betty and I, along with our friend and bird watcher extraordinaire Leanne Lloyd-Fairey, have helped conduct a raptor watch for the Oregon, southwestern Idaho and southern Washington region. A lot of people are involved in this effort and we are a small cog in the machine that makes [...]
Tags: Arizona City, bald eagle, environmentalists, golden eagle, harriers, hunting, kestrels, Papago Indian Reservation, quail, rattlesnakes, red tail hawks, Sonoran Desert
Posted by admin on February 24, 2012 in
Musings,
Photography Last Saturday Betty and I hung her photography exhibit in Boise at an event titled Art in the Bar V at the Knitting Factory Concert House. It turned out to be a 15-hour event and it took us a few days to recover from that experience. Betty shared booth space with her photographer and writer [...]
Tags: Allan Ansel, Aretha Franklin, Art in the Bar, Betty Rodgers, digital art, El Greco, expressionism, Jefferson Airplane, John Lennon, music, photography, Sheila Robertson, tattoos, The Beatles, Vietnam
Posted by admin on February 17, 2012 in
Movies,
Musings Last weekend I attended a workshop given by teacher, raconteur, cowboy poet, rope twirler, guitar picker, yodeler and warbler extraordinaire, Ernie Sites. The event was held in downtown Boise and sponsored by Elaine Ambrose of Mill Park Publishing in Eagle, Idaho. I like to write poetry but the cowboy poetry genre often confounds me. I’m [...]
Tags: "Anthem", Buck Ramsey, Cowboy Poetry, cowboys, Elaine Ambrose, Ernie Sites, Houlihan, Mill Park Publishing, movies, poetry, Ray Fred Kelly, Urban Cowboy, writing
Posted by admin on February 10, 2012 in
Elko,
Musings,
Travel The halfway point of winter in the northern hemisphere has arrived here in Idaho with dry and warm weather. Trapped in some kind of drought, I suppose I should be saying stuff like, “We need snow in the mountains, we need rain on the flats,” or maybe I should be circling around dancing with my [...]
Tags: Arizona, Elko, Henry Real Bird, horses, Nevada, New Mexico, Paul Zarzyski, Ruby Mountains, snow, tamales, The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, Wallace McRae, Wild Horse Crossing
