Stephen Bodio's Querencia

Sure Sign Deer Season is Over

2012-01-31T10:14:00.001-08:00

When fellows like these feel safe enough to walk around in broad daylight in my neighbor's yard.

I took these pictures out of our bedroom window this morning.

3- Wheel Morgan

2012-01-30T14:23:00.000-08:00

I always thought the Morgan sports car was the most elegant ever made, comparable to a London best hammer pigeon gun in esthetics.

(My other favorites are the '57 Chevy and the Citroen Traction Avant-- but remember, I also love Winchester Model 12 pumps and Darnes).

So how could I not be delighted when I found out that Morgan was bringing out this retro 3- wheeler. Is it a car or a motorcycle? Who cares!

Website here. Review here.

Battle Rugs & Endless Connections

2012-01-30T13:57:00.000-08:00

I have posted a pic of my Soviet- war era Afghan battle rug before. It is a prized possession, drenched in haunted history and metaphorical blood. I got it from fellow fly fisher and double gun nut (and fine artist and rug fancier) Michael Simon, then of Livingston Montana.

Daniela, who, like many of us who are saluki and hawk people, also likes textiles, recently found this site devoted to "war rugs" and their sometimes sinister history.

This prompted me to go in search of Michael, and I was gratified to see that he is doing very well indeed. LL Bean Covers!

Back in the day, he took photos of the local literati to adorn the walls of the local bar in Livingston, and tied flies for each. Some were outrageous, but ours, the "Goshawk & Claret", was elegant. Will photo soon. But here we were, in 1999:

Where I come from...

2012-01-30T13:46:00.000-08:00

My sister Karen just sent this irresistible map of Massachusetts (as always click to embiggen):

I wrote back: "...outside of Boston proper I have lived in Pilgrims, Republicans, and on the border of Hippies & Trees. Hmmm..."

Of course, I was born in "Murders & Stuff", and the Bodios' New World roots, so to speak, are in the abandoned, flooded granite quarries of East Insignificant ("Lotsa dead Bodios under that water" said one ancient to me in about 1956, giving me a week of bad dreams). And McCabes come from northeast of Witches...

I become a YouTube Star!?

2012-01-30T10:17:00.000-08:00

Well, of the UNM Clinical Neuroscience Center video anyway. Or maybe Taik or the slightly recalcitrant Chicken are...

We are on in the beginning and I after seven minutes but, especially if you live in NM, you should watch the whole thing. Anyway a rare possibility to see some familiar faces & places in motion.

Many thanks as always to Dr Sarah Pirio Richardson in particular, and to the UNM Center; and to filmmaker John Arnold, who can film my extended family any time.

Tazi Stamp & Desert Windhounds Reboot

2012-01-30T09:41:00.000-08:00

Jess of Desert Windhounds, the forthright defender of genetic diversity and our right to breed the dogs that please us, is back, under the equally forthright title of Bitter CynoAnarchist* here, still fighting the good fight (I may steal one of her images to pontificate on later).

She also had some nice pics of tazis on Kazakh stamps (scroll down) but did not I think know that the first was Andrey Kovalenko's Berkut, father of my Kyran and therefore grandfather to many New Mexican dogs.

From top: Kyran stamps; tazis- with- eagles stamp; Berkut & Andrey; Kyran.

*My rancher friend Lee Henderson used to call himself "A Bitter Man with a Bad Attitude". Always wanted to steal it for a blog...

(Early) Quote of the day

2012-01-27T02:55:00.000-08:00

"I like reading; I am especially fond of reading old books in poor condition by odd people." (English gun writer Diggory Hadoke, courtesy of reader Tom Condon)

SAA Symposium

2012-01-25T14:29:00.000-08:00

The Society for American Archaeology has released its preliminary program for the annual meeting to be held in Memphis in April. You can look at a copy here if you are interested.

While reviewing it a few days ago, I saw this symposium that I thought would be of interest to the dog enthusiasts who hang out here.

BEYOND DOMESTICATION: THE
ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE HUMAN/DOG
RELATIONSHIP

Organizers: Angela Perri & Jeremy Koster

Chairs: Jeremy Koster & Angela Perri

Participants: Greger Larson; Chris Widga,
Stacey Lengyel and Michael Wiant; Emmett
Brown; Angela Perri; Vladimir I. Bazaliiskii,
Robert Losey, Mietje Germonpre, Mikhail
Sablin and Sandra Garvie-Lok; Cleia Detry,
João Luís Cardoso, Catarina Ginja,
Catherine Hanni and Ana Elisabete Pires;
Catherine F. West and Torben Rick; Michael
MacKinnon; Pam J. Crabtree; Peter W.
Stahl; Jeremy Koster and Kenneth
Tankersley; Dave Schmitt and Karen Lupo;
Jacqui A. Mulville and Paul Evans

We'll know more about content once the abstracts for these papers are released in another month or so. I'll try to put up a link to the abstracts once that happens.

I'm presenting a paper at the meetings later in the week on some California work we've done that I posted about here last month. I plan on attending this dog symposium.

Bumpersticker

2012-01-25T14:13:00.001-08:00

Observed on a crewmember's vehicle last summer

Canat is Well

2012-01-24T11:18:00.000-08:00

A bittersweet result of hearing the melancholy news about Aralbai below was a note from my old friend Canat with great photos. We did mourn a bit of lost youth (he was moved by my white hair and grandchild, which he knew of only abstractly)-- was it really fifteen ears since I first set foot in Bayaan Olgii? Do contact him at Blue Wolf Travel for the trip of a lifetime, as more than one blog reader and contributor can attest, and tell him we sent you.

Then:

And now, first with the still- lovely Aika:

And me, to complete the contrast:

Hot Links

2012-01-24T10:40:00.001-08:00

A recent drought has exposed the remains of a Byzantine port city located just west of Istanbul. Turkish archaeologists report artifacts dating most commonly from the Fourth to the Sixth Centuries, including these bricks stamped with the name "CONSTANS" (see picture) that resemble some used in the construction of the Hagia Sophia. The archaeologists are calling the site Bathonea, but admit they don't know if that is its real name. I must confess I am somewhat surprised that there isn't documentary evidence of a city of this size only 13 miles from Constantinople.

Read all about the UFO and Bigfoot sightings near Mt. Shasta.

Please feel free to opine (everyone else has) about food personality Paula Deen's disclosure that she has diabetes. I don't remember such a big media storm when Anthony Bourdain told everyone he was taking Lipitor.

The NY Times has a short piece telling those of you who have never heard of them all about the La Brea Tar Pits. I know I am prejudiced by my background, but I sort of assume everyone has heard of them.

Here is an interesting article about very old (33,000 BP) finds of crania of domesticated dogs from Siberia and Belgium. Steve and I had some discussion last fall about these finds, as I had seen them cited in a paper I saw presented at the Plains Conference in October. That paper, by Jeffrey Saunders of the Illinois State Museum, presented information on remains of domesticated dire wolves (Canis dirus) from two Clovis (ca 13,000 BP) mammoth kills in Arizona. Saunders (and other researchers) are now referring to these finds as "incipient dogs." It appears that our ancestors domesticated wolves and wolf-like animals several times in the past, but these "incipient dogs" may have no genetic connection with modern dogs. This is a fascinating line of research that I'm sure Steve will have lots to say about. Also interesting, a somewhat younger (26,000 BP) "incipient dog" find from the Czech Republic (also cited by Saunders) shows evidence that it was buried by its owners with a bone in its mouth.

Science, Art, Helicoprion, Ray Troll, more...

2012-01-24T10:31:00.000-08:00

Dr H at Diary of a Mad Natural Historian just published a piece on Helicoprion, the impossible fossil shark that appears to have a circular saw in its mouth, and mentions artist Ray Troll. All natural history buffs mad or not should buy and read Troll (or wear him-- he does T shirts, and pins for William Spear), and his various writing partners like Brad Matsen and Kirk Johnson-- link here.

When Libby lived in Bozeman Troll and Matsen used to come down to do things at the Museum of the Rockies* and sell books, which resulted in some excellent discussions and the drawings in the second and third pic below. The first is taken from an old Natural History because Helicoprion and a diver are irresistible.

"Birds Get Off": cladistically ie not where say Feduccia says, In Our Arrogant Opinions:

Where is the data?

I have been neglecting science wonkery over the Holidays & deadlines but people like Retrieverman have been taking up the slack-- see here for Val Geist's mule deer theory and here and here for the almost science- fictional island species of Madagascar. With the help of invaluable info collectors like Walter Hingley, I hope to do better!

*Many years past, Libby and a very young Peculiar were volunteer diggers at Jack Horner's Egg Mountain Dino nest colony. Somewhere I have a photo of the tipi camp there...

Mission Dam

2012-01-24T09:48:00.000-08:00

I recently returned from an agency field visit for a project we have in the San Diego area. One enjoyable aspect of the trip was a visit to the Mission Dam.

The dam was built across the San Diego River in 1813-1816 to supply water and water power for the San Diego Mission. The Franciscans who ran the Mission used Kumeyaay Indian labor for the construction and an archaeological site north of the dam contains the remains of their work camp.
This gap in the dam was originally filled with a wooden frame that contained the mill wheel for a grist mill. You can still see some of the original brickwork used to anchor the frame. On the other side of the dam a flume channeled water for downstream use.

The area around the dam is now a park with hiking trails. You are urged to stay on the trails as this was a Marine Corps training camp during WW II and there is still some unexploded ordnance in the area. Wouldn't want to step on anything nasty.

A family of coyotes kept an eye on us during our visit. They obviously hadn't read the UXO sign.

Pronghorn snow

2012-01-22T15:50:00.001-08:00

A few images of pronghorn antelope in the snow yesterday - western Wyoming. Snow was falling like a light mist, with no direct sunlight, casting a gloom across the range. Beautiful in ways that only wild things are. Click on image to enlarge.

Rangeland rescue

2012-01-21T12:49:00.000-08:00

We finally got some snow overnight, covering our rangeland in a blanket of white. Our pregnant ewes love it, with the snow unable to penetrate their dense wool, but the moisture softening the vegetation.

After checking the sheep this morning, we watched a herd of pronghorn antelope running across the Mesa behind the house. Their's was not the usual pronghorn pace – they ran as if being chased, but we were unable to determine what was the cause for alarm. We've witnessed a few odd wildlife behaviors this week, so we think there may be some major predator action occurring, but we're not yet sure what's responsible.

While we were watching one pronghorn herd, two other herds came from different directions, and we thought they were going to converge. Instead, as we watched from our kitchen window, most of one herd made it under a crossing of our back fence. Suddenly, one mature buck became stuck in the fence, struggling and thrashing. We watched him go down, and within seconds, several eagles and ravens approached, landing nearby to watch.

I simply didn't have the heart to accompany Jim on the rescue, thinking that he was going to find a tragedy. When Jim arrived at the scene in the truck, he found the buck on his back, with both a front leg and a back leg stuck in the wires. Jim had to cut three wires of the fence to free the buck, but fortunately the wires hadn't even broke through his skin yet.

Jim freed the buck and he was up and running! He raced around the pickup and then launched himself through the air and OVER the top of the five-wire fence, running back to the Mesa to join his herd. (Click on the photo to enlarge, and you can see the buck clearing the top of the fence.)

We don't have just a few hundred pronghorn that go through our place in the winter – we have thousands of them. We are sheep producers, so we need to have fences that will hold sheep, but we try not to hinder wildlife migrations, so our fences are generally pretty wildlife friendly. Regardless, sometimes things simply go wrong. Fortunately, Jim was home today, and was able to help this buck get back to his bunch. I'm sure the eagles were not rejoicing over Jim's good deed.

As for Jim? He took a break for a celebratory beer, but now he's headed back to fix the fence he just cut.

NSFW Rifle?

2012-01-19T15:54:00.000-08:00

...so first, MaryAnn sends me this pic from her recent safari, of amorous lions...

I am of course reminded of this Rigby double rifle with the same "theme" on the plates (click to enlarge; plain vanilla version, slightly used, on sale for a not-ridiculous- these- days $59,500, below it).

Jonathan Hanson sent the last words on it, from Bruce Douglas:

"Bruce's comment was that if you were hunting and were suddenly charged by a cape buffalo or something, you could turn and yell at your bearer, 'Quick! Gimme my fuckin' lion gun!' "

Two Links

2012-01-19T15:37:00.000-08:00

Vadim Gorbatov has his own website at last! It is in Russian but just click around-- you don't need language to appreciate a great painter.

Click the second button ("Novosti") for not only tigers battling bears but great sketches and images including ones on this Samurai falconer.

You can buy his prints from Al Gates-- links in post below.

Also, though I am almost embarrassed to so to speak recommend myself, the Suburban Bushwhacker has just done a perceptive and moving review of Querencia- the- book. Thanks, Sten!

Sad News

2012-01-19T14:57:00.000-08:00

Alan Gates writes:

"I have sad news that Aralbai has been diagnosed with throat cancer, he refused the laser treatment he was offered at the UB hospital because he believed that those that had had this type of treatment, die quicker.

"He has deteriorated a lot from the time I last hunted with him, and at the age of 54 it is far too young.

"I know you, like me have spent a lot of time with Aralbai, so I thought you should know."

I hunted (& ate sheep and drank vodka) with Aralbai the first time I went out to Mongolia in '97.

He has since taken out many of my friends, from Cat (who got in a horse race with his son, no longer a little kid!) to, particularly, Lauren, both on her first trip at 17 to her later Fulbright year.

He is also "The Coolest Man in the World".

I do not know if anything can be done for a brave friend but am asking Canat.

More photos by Cat below-- first is the boy in the upper, '97 one, all grown up... and here is Alan's link to him at the Festival of Falconry.

A last one by Lauren, letting his eagle go free after years of hunting, the Kazakh way:

Working Rifles

2012-01-17T17:51:00.000-08:00

A .30- 06 on an 03 A3 Springfield action (lower) and a modern Euro- style Czech Mauser .223. Any of you scholars know why the Springfield has a military trigger guard but a blind magazine?

The end of Civilization?

2012-01-17T17:43:00.000-08:00

This would be hilarious if it were a last- page ad satire in Wired. But somebody BUYS these. We. Are. So. Doomed

I was going to quit for the night with this but will post two real working rifles above. Their combined cost with scopes is less than this one's.

Cheerful Weekend

2012-01-17T17:04:00.000-08:00

Despite work and deadlines.

Daniela visited with grandpup Shunkar; we attended a belated "Christmas" dinner chez Lassez (Xmas tradition for many years but snowed out of the Muleshoe Ranch high- altitude site; also Lib's birthday). Boeuf bourguignon (spelling?) and, from us, a braised hare appetizer c/o the late Cog, with chile & Chinese spices.

Pix: D,S, L in front of our casa; Jean- Louis and Catherine Lassez, fresh from BURMA, & Bodios, relaxing after meal, courtesy of naturalist John Wilson who should appear here soon (French women always look good, but Catherine, French dogs DO drool): Jessica's new boots (don't let the style queen thing mislead-- she is a high- powered water lawyer & married to sheep rancher Piet who often appears here); JL's unstaged reaction to Jessica's boots- do French males practice looks of comic lechery??; Pieter & Jessica with pan-Celtic flag for no reason at all; first example of JL's new 3-D art, "Don Juan".

Different Breeds?

2012-01-17T16:39:00.000-08:00

Number two in my series; chart by Jutta Rubesam. Click to enlarge.

Atai is a Kazakh (actually Turcoman descended) tazi, but Jutta (who I think took the photos of both) will attest she resembles the little "Afghan" second from upper right except for the pantaloons...

Hot Links

2012-01-17T13:01:00.000-08:00

If you are in the Fresno area, you still might be able to see the falcated duck.

Interesting review of a new book, Glock: The Rise of America's Gun. My favorite quote: "He made prototypes and test-fired them with his left hand; if he was maimed by an explosion, he could still draw blueprints with his right".

Researchers study evidence of a two thousand year-old curse found etched into a lead tablet in Antioch. The curse calls on the gods to tie up the greengrocer Babylas, then “drown and chill” his soul. But it appears this was a cut and paste curse.

Forest clearances in Amazonia are yielding more evidence of prehistoric earthworks. When I took South American archaeology back in the 70s, the consensus was the area was barely populated during prehistoric times. In reality, the jungle made it so difficult to do research hardly anyone went to the trouble of looking for the numerous ruins and earthworks hidden there. Clearance of the jungle and modern remote sensing technologies have shown how wrong we were.

On another South American archaeology/culture history topic, this short piece surveys the strange economics of the Inca empire (or Inka, if you prefer). The Inca empire may have been the most authoritarian state society of which we have record. It was a complete command economy with no currency. The Spanish even seem to have been astonished by it.

The largest, most significant archaeological site in North America that no one knows about is arguably Cahokia, a prehistoric Eleventh and Twelfth century city located across the Mississippi from present-day St. Louis. If this article piques your interest I would recommend you read Tim Pauketat's wonderful book, Cahokia, Ancient America's Great City on the Mississippi. I started doing archaeology as a high school kid digging contemporaneous sites downriver from Cahokia. We all knew it was a big, important site, but research over the last 40 years has shown Cahokia was the nexus of a complex sophisticated society.

Bella the Equestrienne

2012-01-17T08:15:00.001-08:00

Our granddaughter Bella got her first visit with the ponies last weekend courtesy of our old friends at PDM Stables in Bakersfield. Here she is taking a seat on Peanut with her mom's help.

I'm told she seemed a little concerned about being that high up off the ground, but overall she really liked the stable experience. Her second birthday is in a couple of weeks.

Why we won't shut up

2012-01-11T11:14:00.000-08:00

Jess has taken down the post explaining why we fight against arbitrary breeding regs and requested I remove the link. I will let my own words stand for now.

Virtually EVERY DOG THAT APPEARS HERE REGULARLY, or that I have ever bred, is ineligible to breed under Los Angeles and fer Chrissake EL PASO rules, and arguably or at least practically speaking by Albuquerque ones, be they rare breeds, salukis blocked by SCOA factions because they come from improper countries or have "bad" colors, lurchers, or longdogs. I am tired of hearing (A) it won't affect me (B) I'll just ignore it (C) I live in a rural place. You know my favorite Trotsky paraphrase: You may not be interested in "X", but "X" IS interested in you.

More cheerful programming to resume soon. Below, useless forbidden mutts here and in Kyrgizstan.

Dogs & age

2012-01-11T06:34:00.000-08:00

An expansion from the comments below, from Chas's staunch "8 is not old!" to Lane's "8 is the new 4.."

I think it depends on the breeding. Atai's family is incredibly long lived-- here is a pic of her at about 3 months with her 15 year old mom, who lived to nearly 20, the day we met her in Almaty. I believe her grandmother, another compact little dog, also lived about that long.

Lashyn on the other hand, not yet 12, has been slowing down for years, and now has diabetes and cataracts. Lurcher Plummer is 2 years older and fat and a bit creaky but otherwise still thinks he is a pup.

But for the gray on her muzzle Atai could easily pass for 4-- or 3-- and still kicks butt!

Good day

2012-01-08T17:51:00.000-08:00

Tavo Cruz called us yesterday to meet him and other dog- in- laws and coursing friends for lunch at the Owl bar and a run down by White Sands missile range, where hares seem to thrive even in droughty years. I am gratified that old farts like me and Dutch Salmon are still walking, and that 8 year old Ataika found and ran the first hare of the day. Dan Gauss's "Motley Crew" (that's him on the right-- click to embiggen) says it all. I am in the middle flanked by Tavo & Dutch.

Taik after a run-- pretty good shape for a girl of a "certain age"...

Politicians & Animal Rights vs the right to breed YOUR dogs

2012-01-08T16:46:00.000-08:00

By intention I don't do much politics here- I am neither partisan or, mostly, interested enough. But does ANYONE pay attention to the fact that one socially conservative Republican presidential candidate, Rick Santorum, is in bed with HSUS, Wayne Pacelle, and the whole Animal Rights movement, and has been for many years? Worse, he seems to fly totally under the radar. If you care about hunting, or, especially, private dog breeding, Google “Santorum HSUS” or "Animal Rights" or even "Wayne Pacelle"...

A lot of nutty stuff left and right, approving and critical, is available, but some of real substance is up too. Many people think or comment "I'm against puppy mills." Fine, but much of the proposed legislation, like Governor Perry's below or some of Santorum's failed attempts, would not just ban commercial breeders (who in any case have the money to move, fight, rebuild their kennels in technical compliance, or otherwise evade). Such laws would have prohibited my breeding (all of five non- profit pre- homed unique sighthound litters so far), and/ or have stopped me from bringing over my entire hound family, including Ataika, Queen of the World, who we got and lived with for a month in Almaty-- she was among other things, including just IMPORTED (apparently inherently evil), under 6 months old. Think she would have been as social and civilized later?*

The very sane Bob Kane on Santorum's proposed 2005 PAWS bill:

"PAWS has virtually nothing to do with animal welfare or closing Animal Welfare Act "loopholes." It's a direct attack on U.S. hobby breeders, hunting dog owners and animal rescuers. PAWS federalizes hobby pet breeding."

And then there is his fellow Republican Rick Perry, who fails on dumbass grounds anyway but tends to pose as a red blooded western foe of bureaucracy. I call bullshit. From petbreedersandowners.com: “HB1451 created a new state agency, allows for entry into a private residence without the owners presence, establishes a public database to include the private information of pet breeders, established a bounty fund for animal rights activists to report pet breeders to the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, and is a contradiction of the key values supposedly upheld by Gov. Perry. These bills were heavily backed by the H$U$, ASPCA, PETA, and other animal rights groups, and promote their agenda.”

Statist meddlers & "botherers" both...

The results can be seen in Continental European countries, where an unholy alliance of government and closed registry breed clubs can now decide who is born. A friend in Germany wrote:

"But here in Germany it is very difficult to breed with brindle salukis. I think you remember the brindle Metzlers dogs. They tried to get permission to breed their bitch Bahia, but in the shows they only got a "good" and that is not good enough for the breeding permissions."

Priceless unique genetic diversity is being lost for no demonstrable reason at all, and it CAN happen here-- intact dogs of my AKC and Saluki Club unacceptable bloodlines are in peril of compulsory sterilization in Albuquerque because of former (Democrat-- stupid knows no partisan boundaries) Mayor Marty Chavez's Orwellianly- named HEART regs. Longdogs and staghounds, types prized and run in New Mexico longer than (I suspect) the authors of such regulations, are mere worthless "mongrels" of course.

[Elaborated from a comment of mine at Atomic Nerds.]

*Meanwhile it seems it is OK for urban shelters to import strays from Mexico to meet the demand caused by the "birth dearth" apparently resulting from too much compulsory spay neuter in pc precincts-- look it up...

Code

2012-01-06T23:53:00.000-08:00

Reader Bruce Douglas thinks this bumper sticker could effect better manners--?

Two different breeds

2012-01-06T23:41:00.000-08:00

Ya think?
Afghan, (real)

Taigan

One more irresitible quote

2012-01-06T23:23:00.000-08:00

Sent by Black Dog Lady, from a mentor, on her dogs and true "oriental sighthounds" generally:

"These dogs are not fully domesticated, take care to keep them that way."

A thought

2012-01-06T21:27:00.000-08:00

In response to Matt, from me:

"Good but overwhelming holidays have me exhausted. MUST adjust to reduced energy which will paradoxically leave me more, and stop doing a bad job of being 30 so I can do a good one of being 60 plus..."

A quote

2012-01-06T21:25:00.000-08:00

From Johnny UK:

"When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading" --- Henny Youngman

Beaches in two Hemispheres

2012-01-06T21:03:00.000-08:00

Tazis and horses, maritime habitats, family & friends, Scotland and west Australia, Mark McBride and Chantal Parratt, even fierce little cousin Nura...

Hot Links

2012-01-03T15:01:00.000-08:00

These days, drone aircraft deploy their own drones. Cicada is a strange choice for a name - too noisy for a stealthy drone.

Think you can train cats to walk on a leash? May be easier than herding them.

A new study indicates the ancient city of Angkor and the Khmer Empire may have been done in by a drought.

For many years, it was believed syphilis originated in the New World and spread to the Old World - actually introduced by Columbus' First Voyage. Native American populations were devastated by diseases introduced by Europeans after 1492, and syphilis is one of the few diseases to have gone the other direction. Lately, a number of researchers have claimed to have found instances of Precolumbian syphilis in Europe, casting doubt on that interpretation. Now a new study has reviewed 54 published studies of European evidence and finds them all in error, either through misidentification of skeletal evidence or problems with radiocarbon assays. This is the sort of academic controversey that will go on for decades, but my bet is on the New World origin.

Two companies that are working toward building solar thermal power plants here in the US are planning to store some of the heat in molten salt. This would allow them to continue generating electricity after the sun goes down.

This survey claims to rank America's top 25 drunkest cities and rates Boston number one. I have my doubts about any such survey where New Orleans doesn't crack the list.

Some Replies--Eagles for Jim, "UFO Area" for Chas...

2012-01-02T07:17:00.000-08:00

Below, Jim Cornelius wrote: "Caught an episode of Human Planet on Saturday, featuring a 16-year-old Kazakh making his first hunt with an eagle he had captured and trained. They had a camera mounted on the eagle. OH, MAN! I want to see an entire movie on this type of hunting in IMAX."

Actually, a wonderful movie about a young eagle hunter's journey from the smoky ger suburbs of Ulan Bataar to the wilds of Olgii already exists: Kiran Over Mongolia. Links will take you to where you can buy a copy; trailer here:

We know people on both ends of this production and can vouch for its integrity.

Chas was amused by our address post: ""UFO Area" is pretty special. I should ask our postmistress (it's a one-person p.o.) if she has seen anything that good."

Well, the Alamo UFO story involves gullible Anglos and a joke, but other gullible Anglos have come here from as far as Germany in search of flying saucers and cattle mutilations.

An old, very country cowboy named "Rink" used to work on a ranch near the Rez just north of here ("I been just three places; North Dakota, Viet Nam, and Socorro County.") We were sitting in the Spur one night listening to a woman from Germany, a UFO conspiracy theorist, drink brandy as she made an amazing speech. First she described an alien structure she had found on a bare hilltop, made of fiberglass; she would not allow me to persuade her that it was a Game and Fish quail waterer. Then, warming to her subject, she argued that powerful groups were attempting to shut her down: "...the CIA targeted my son. He didn't dare leave his bathroom for eight years. The final straw was when they killed my nine- year old Labrador-- the Vatican sent a hit team for him..."

Rink leaned over to me and spoke quietly: "Steve, that lady is counterfeit. I don't know what no Vatican is, but it didn't send no hit team to kill her dog!"

Renaissance Saluki

2012-01-01T12:21:00.000-08:00

An image from the 1500's, oldest western one I know of, by Federico Zuccaro, courtesy of Jess. Anyone have any info on the artist?

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T12:18:00.001-08:00

Slightly idiotic photos... farewell to 2011

2012-01-01T11:55:00.000-08:00

And welcome 2012!

A New Year's party, the first I can remember attending in-- decades?-- at our home bar, the legendary Golden Spur, yards not miles from Casa Q, my watering hole for some thirty years, Peculiar's first "regular", Eli's from birth a few months ago, and where Phil Grayson grew up (his father used to own it; unfortunately not here because he went back to NYC a couple of days ago)...

Some day I'll focus on history and the cowboy tradition there, but this batch is pure happy idiocy.

Family & postmaster Greg, L's boss, our friend; Peculiar with well- decorated offspring; L; Greg; part- time bartender Cat Aragon, who both teaches and works here, admiring the Beastie. Click to enlarge. (I promised Sam, who worked the door, not to "put him on the internet" without his photo approval).

Gratuitous dogs

2011-12-25T09:22:00.000-08:00

Tavi tazi entranced by the snow; Vladimir's Onana, who looks uncannily like Ataika; Taik.

"But it doesn't snow in the southwest!"

2011-12-25T09:02:00.000-08:00

Actually said to me a few years ago by a New Jersey Nuevo, in July. As the property he bought was on a dirt road at 7500 feet in Catron county, where the winters can be positively Montanan, I knew he was in for a surprise...

The illusion remains. I was idly watching morning TV the other day as I worked out on a treadmill at a neighbor's house (just got my own, where I can READ, better for my brain) when the dizzy network blonde protested as she watched an ongoing blizzard in cold Flagstaff: "But isn't it, like, perpetual summer there?"

Like, well, no. But we have been in the depths of a long drought and the last eighteen months before it broke were particularly bad. Now we seem to have returned to the old (pre- 1988) order of weekly snow, cause for rejoicing.

That said, it can get damn cold in an ancient rock house. We are properly grateful once again for the Vermont Castings wood stove from Paul Domski (seen recently below flying his Gos), and a good load of wood from Mac Leyba. (A stack of wood is so mentally and esthetically comforting I always take photos!)

A Little Music...

2011-12-25T08:09:00.000-08:00

It has been a week blessed with good music from friends local and visiting...

Joel Becktell is local, a neighbor and a world- renowned cellist, probably Magdalena's most famous resident in a sort of obscure way (he is known among musicians but not by Magdalenians). He is also a cook and as much of a bookman as I am.

Joel at right. He has been as always traveling and performing all over the nation-- Santa Fe, where he performed last night, is "near". But somehow conversation brought us to a performance in Albuquerque last year: his classical/ "fusion" (if that is the word) group Revel playing at the Church of Beethoven. I love this fierce jazzy performance of the Argentinian composer Piazzola's "Autumn", and it is a good entree to Revel. Now we need a CD!

Our good friend Montana novelist Peter Bowen (new website, with my essay "Of Peter Bowen and Gabriel DuPre", here-- more to come!) told us his friend Amanda Bailey would be traveling in our area and sent her our way midst the storms.

Amanda has one of the all- time haunting voices for Appalachian and country music. Go here for a version of "In my time of dyin'" that will raise your hair. Libby wants me to add that she vastly prefers it to the 70's Led Zeppelin version featuring a bare- chested Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, though that one does make an interesting contrast.* I got Amanda listening to my late friend John Lincoln Wright (posts below) with real interest- I'd love to see that collaboration. Again, the perfect voice-- she and JLW were both influenced by Merle Haggard.

Local trivia-- she keeps a sketchbook of her travels and produced for us this very New Mexico vignette from 1992, good enough for us to recognize Marshall Larry Cearley in the middle:

* 6 degrees or less department.I THINK Revel does a version of the Zep's Stairway to Heaven-- Joel? And Zeppelin founder & guitarist Jimmy Page once roomed in London (in the Yardbird days) with Explorer's club member Ted Bakewell. Ted is the nephew of the late legendary Jesuit adventurer (and my mentor) Father Anderson Bakewell, who lived in Santa Fe-- not a few of Q's readers including Peculiar drank his whiskey and ate elk there. Ted also lived in NM, in the 70's, and used to play guitar with rock legend and Los Lunas sheriff Bo Diddley...

Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T07:50:00.001-08:00

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to you from all of us at Querencia blog. We are having a white Christmas here at Moonshine Gulch and from what I have seen of the weather reports, Steve and Libby are too down in Magdalena.

Hot Links

2011-12-20T13:51:00.001-08:00

If I was going to be in New York, I'd go to this exhibit of material from the Roman city of Dura-Europos. I have previously read a fair amount about information that excavations at Dura-Europos have provided on the Roman Army in the later empire. One of the most interesting finds there apparently gives evidence of an early form of chemical warfare. Our niece is in school at NYU. Maybe she'll go.

Pecan rustlers are rampaging through Georgia. OMG. Reminds me of the plague of mushroom rustlers we had in California a few years ago.

A 44,000 year-old house built of mammoth bone by Neanderthals has been found in Ukraine. Maybe it's just as well their sense of smell wasn't as good as ours. Especially if those were some wet bones.

Careful with that neti pot.

The origin of the building stones at Stonehenge has been found 100 miles away in Wales. I think to be clear, the general location of the quarry has been known for some time, this analysis just narrows it down.

Gobekli Tepe

2011-12-20T11:00:00.000-08:00

I wish that I had posted on the very important archaeological site of Gobekli Tepe last summer when the article about it came out in National Geographic Magazine. It got yanked back to my attention when I read this extremely annoying article about it in the latest New Yorker.

Gobekli Tepe is a site in Turkey that dates back as early as 11,600 BP. Its importance stems from the fact that it contains some very striking monumental architecture that was made by pre-agricultural people. Most archaeological theories about cultural development have always held that this sort of sustained communal effort could only be accomplished by peoples who had an agricultural subsistence base and a well-developed social heirarchy to direct the work. As the archaeologist who excavated the site says:

"These people were foragers," Schmidt says, people who gathered plants and hunted wild animals. "Our picture of foragers was always just small, mobile groups, a few dozen people. They cannot make big permanent structures, we thought, because they must move around to follow the resources. They can't maintain a separate class of priests and craft workers, because they can't carry around all the extra supplies to feed them. Then here is Göbekli Tepe, and they obviously did that."

This is really cool stuff and I recommend that you page through the pictures accompanying the NatGeo article to see the amazing quality of the stonework and the earliest life-sized human statue. And there is no arguing that it is older than anything else like it that we know of so far. However, I believe Dr. Schmidt is a victim of some stereotyped thinking concerning the behavior of hunter-gatherers.

Hunter-gatherer societies don't have to be "small, mobile groups." It depends upon the nature of their subsistence base. Archaeological and ethnographic evidence from western North America shows large permanent settlements of hunter-gatherers all up and down the west coast. If you have a large, reliable non-agricultural food source - like the ocean or large groves of acorn-producing oak trees - you don't have to move around much at all. Whether you choose to go into the monument building business of course, is another story.

My first contrarian thought about the "unique" quality of Gobekli Tepe involved a well-known site in Louisiana, the large earth-mound complex at Poverty Point. This is a large complex of mounds covering around 500 acres that dates as early as 3500 BP. These people were hunter-gatherers as well, not as early as at Gobekli Tepe, but at the same stage of social and economic development. The Poverty Point folks didn't do stone monuments, they didn't have rocks, but their overall scope of effort dwarfs anything the people at Gobekli Tepe did: Mound A at Poverty Point contains 238,000 cubic meters of fill.

A second contratrian example would be some early cultures along the coast of Peru. Evidence of mound-building by hunter-gatherer people has been found in the Nanchoc Culture there that dates as early as 8000 BP. That's within striking distance of Gobekli Tepe's age. These cultures were very dependent on the rich Pacific fisheries, and it is becoming apparent that agriculture's first appearance here was in the form of raising cotton to make cord for fish nets, rather than growing foodstuffs.

I have a feeling the reason more sites like Gobekli Tepe haven't been discovered is due to confirmation bias. Now that the old paradigm is broken, more will be found. Archaeology is rife with examples of this.

As far as the annoying New Yorker article is concerned, Elif Bauman seems to want to make the center of attention herself rather than what's going on at the site. She complains the graduate students managing the excavation didn't want to talk to her, but based on her attitude in the article, I don't think I blame them.

Magdalena Lion Hunt

2011-12-19T18:21:00.000-08:00

My friend and "cousin", local rancher, reader, and hunter Sissy (Mary Helen Gianera Pound) Olney, ran into us in the Capitol Bar in Socorro yesterday and told us to look up this YouTube of her husband Tom and nephew Royce hunting mountain lions in the Magdalenas on horseback with hounds, the traditional way.

The video, by the NM game & Fish Department, is amusing and professional, the hunters articulate and enthusiastic, the hounds even more excited. The humans exhibit a practiced competence that makes it all look easy-- I have known Tom over 20 years, and his father Hugh was one of the pioneering local hound men. They tree a cat a couple of times, photo it, let it go, and explain why...

At this point I should and will state that comment threads outside Q are more often than not fatuous at best. But these ones are truly amazing.

The first here is the best-- it is not only WRONG but: what about NEW MEXICO COUGAR HUNT and NEW MEXICO GAME AND FISH does this person not understand?!

"Hunting cougars is not funny, is an endangered specie and it must be protected! Hunting a cougar is criminal.

"Hunting a big cat is criminal. Who hunts an animal like this most be behind bars. Everybody should tell this to the Canadian Authorities."

Must I say? Not "specie", not endangered, must not most, not illegal, NOT CANADA.

The second is more literate-- if no less fatuous AR boilerplate and propaganda:

"Shooting any animal sitting on a branch takes no skill whatsoever to do it. If these "men" had their act together they would see that. But, it takes all kinds in the world. Unfortunately, we all suffer the loss of animals because these guys have nothing better to do with their time. It is sad for the cats, even sadder for the misfits that hunt them. Get a life.

"I love all these stupid comments about killing livestock etc. Hunting mountain lions is killing and wasting a beautiful animal for some misfit to get his jollies nothing more. Don't give me the crap about losing livestock. It is a cost of doing business, that simple. If you don't like it, don't be in the livestock business moron... if you are a stupid rancher get out of the business."

In the face of what theologians might call Invincible Ignorance ("stupid rancher..") the rational mind quails. So I answered coolly, as I hope we all would:

"Actually it takes enormous skill and experience to train a pack of dogs, not to mention horses, and we are not even talking about maintenance and time.

"The Olneys are second and third generation hunters and pro ranchers, and even so let more lions go with only a digital record than they take-- AS THEY DID THIS ONE. I suspect they care more knowledgeably for lions than their critics."

And the implication that the hunters are somehow not "men"? How... early 20th century Freudian. Apart from the physical dangers, and the skills needed to ride for days and miles in hard country: the very female Sis, hound woman, mother, grandmother, 4th generation ranch matriarch, "Cowboy Bitch" (her own sardonic formulation), and the first female brand inspector in the US, is more of a woman AND a "mensch" than the critic whatever her or his "gender" to put it in proper pc terms will ever be...

Addresses

2011-12-16T14:08:00.000-08:00

Two of the strangest showcases of human society I know are the zoo, any zoo (I have written more than a bit on this) and the Post Office.

I could go in a lot of directions with the PO (many of you know that Lib works in a rural PO) but I only want to look at one today: addresses.

Our town, the 8____ Zip code, covers an enormous area, from the Alamo Indian reservation 40 miles north (and a few ranches north of that) to a rural route that stretches 75 dirt- road miles to the south.

The population isn't big, but still some addresses defy deciphering. I wrote down the following, printed, business- mailed ones while having coffee with the staff this AM. Printed, mind you, not handwritten by illiterates- well, maybe the last...

But for name and Zip, these are the ENTIRE ADDRESSES; each separate line is a whole one.

Indian Reservation

Rural Area

UFO Area

Two Houses Behind Benson's [who is... dead-- SB]

MAGDULZENA

Update: someone says I should add that my address for my electric bill is and has been for over 20 years "Montoya Rock House."

Or in directions: "You know, Steve Bodio's house that was Cecilia's that used to be rock." (Still is of course but stucco'd over in '84).

December in the sheep pasture

2011-12-16T13:41:00.000-08:00

The Wind River Mountains are magnificent in their snow-covered spendor, but the sagebrush rangelands still contain only a scattering of snow.

The image below is our New Fork River pasture where the sheep are currently located, taken at sunrise earlier this week. It was about -8 degrees that morning, which is a typical overnight low for us this time of year.

This herd of mule deer have been a constant presence in the pasture for the last few weeks, safe from disturbance for breeding season. I'm still trying to get a good photo of the muley/white-tailed hybrid buck that hangs out with this bunch.

We turned the rams out last weekend, to join the ewe herd, so we'll have lambs five months from now. This ram has wounds from recent skull-crashing disputes with another ram.

While I fed the guardian dogs and had a look around the pasture, I heard the sound of branches breaking. It was two bull moose, browsing their way through the willows.

Western Wyoming's Shiras moose population has been suffering, so it's a great pleasure to share the pasture with these fellows.

Silly dog pic

2011-12-16T13:07:00.000-08:00

Chipotle ("Chip"), the PO Lab, waiting for a cookie from one of his customers (photo by Yvonne Magener, through her PO box...):

Pretty dog pix

2011-12-16T13:01:00.000-08:00

Jutta Ruebesam's team, tazi Nhubia and taigan Taalai:

Gos in action

2011-12-16T11:47:00.000-08:00

From Paul Domski: a few of the amazing photo sequence that photographer Mark Wiliams shot of his Gos. (As always click to enlarge). Mark's site is here.

Christopher Hitchens 1949- 2011 RIP

2011-12-16T06:09:00.000-08:00

Damn but we are losing some good ones. I hardly always agreed with "Hitch" (who could?) but AM inclined to agree with Jonathan Hanson: "The collective IQ of the planet just dropped noticeably."

Update: hunter, man of letters, and Catholic Tom McIntyre is another not uncritical admirer. He writes:

"According to NPR, Hitch's most important legacy is his atheism. Nothing about his support of the Iraq-Afghan wars and George W., his tremendous body of critical and literary essays, his courage to single out Islamo-Fascism as the evil it is (according to NPR, he equated all "evangelicals" with the mullahs–no difference), his devastating indictments of Kissinger and Clinton, his marvelous wit and command of English, his vast store of knowledge, no, it's the fact that when he was nine-years old he had the brilliant insight that there is no God. Have you ever noticed that people always base their atheism on the incredible discovery they, alone, made as a child or a teen–about the same time they learn there's no Santa Claus–and then cling to it doggedly the rest of their lives? In short, it's a jejune inspiration that they never grow out of. It isn't about atheism or no atheism but about putting so much "faith" in an idea you came up with when you were nine. I hope that I have at least examined some of the conclusions I arrived at at that age. According to NPR, Hitchens never wavered in his "belief."

"Personally, I really appreciated the broad range of all of Hitchens's prickly thought, agreeable, or comfortable, or not. A great, freewheeling yet rigorous intellect at work, hardly one solely devoted to the disbelief in a deity."

Eevil Killer Dino- Birds

2011-12-15T16:52:00.000-08:00

(With apologies to Darren).

Walter Hingley sends word of new theories coming out the Museum of the Rockies about the ever- closer similarities becoming apparent between raptorial dinos and modern raptors.

The illo is lurid but wonderful:

Of course some of us have always thought so, notably John McLoughlin. "Washington and Moscow..."

UPDATE:

Quote is from McL's 1983 (!) The Helix and the Sword. The tyrant of a post- apocalyptic civilization has a pair of "reconstituted" Deinonychids described as follows:

"...the Sisters found the tale of the Dinosauria, a lost race of bird-like beings that inhabited dread Earth long before the advent of human beings...they learned of the Deinonychid, a beast that walked on two legs like a bird but that possessed, in place of wings, terrible, three-fingered taloned hands... within the inmost recessed of the mammalian mind... survives an ancient racial memory, a black fear of the bird-beast Dinosauria. Knowing this, the Sisterhood grew for Lothar IV two twin Deinonychids...

"Man-high, smooth-coated with short blackly iridescent feathers, red of eye and each wearing a diamond-studded Regency orange collar, Washington and Moscow were delivered to Lothar IV by the Sisterhood."

And the names? They are from an ancient document about the destruction of civilization:

"Washington and Moscow have come to blows at last, and with them all of earth must die...for the talons of these beasts are steel and their breath Death itself."

UPDATE (by Matt):

I wondered when the notion of the velociraptor "killing talon" use might be equated to modern birds of prey. I was never able to see how the slashing theory made sense, given how well hawks use their feet (grasping, not slashing) and how similar the anatomy looks. Incedentally, the common depiction of the dino's inner talon being hinged upward never made sense to me either, but I assume the educated folks know this was so, and why?

As to the above article's mention that modern raptors "flap" to keep prey beneath them, they do---but not constantly. Flapping to maintain upright posture is common when the prey is still struggling, but once subdued (and certainly once killed) the hawk's wings and tail become three parts of a tripod and simply provide leverage for tearing.

An additional feature of the spread wings and tail (a posture falconers know as "mantling") is that it hides the prey. I can see dino feathers serving both needs, the stabilization and the obfuscation, without ever needing to have developed flight.

Here's a video of my Harris from yesterday to illustrate, tearing meat from a fresh kill.

(Neutrino Cannon says: "Avian phylogeny, when studied long enough, will tempt you to mix headache medication and alcohol.")

More John Lincoln Wright

2011-12-15T16:21:00.000-08:00

Ironically but not surprisingly John Lincoln Wright's few surviving recordings are now going through the roof. I only hope as commenter Pat said "... Rounder or some other outfit will release all of John's music on CD."

Pat pointed me to some good YouTube links. If you don't have time for the whole list, "I'm too old to die young now" from his later years shows he still had the magic even then. And number five has some of the best classic stuff, including "Pull away" which showcases his voice and in my opinion out- Haggards Haggard. Tom Russell said that he was "...the real thing-- sort of Johnny Paycheck meets Merle." And even that apt description doesn't quite capture the magic of his voice at its best.

Good memorial essay here:

"Wright’s debut album “Closed for Alterations” helped break the band all over New England. Wright could pen affecting music that also didn’t take itself too seriously. “Takin’ Old Route One” in ’73 kept the ball rolling, but Nashville was never going to completely warm to the cowboy from Maine.

“John’s songs would never contain a pickup truck reference to try and sell himself in Nashville,” [former Sour Mash Boy Larry] Flint said. “I think instinctively he knew he was never cut out for that scene. We’d go to Nashville a couple times a year in the early days, but he was never a schmoozer. He had his own style.”

“I would think, in retrospect, John and I are both essentially Americana,” said Flint. “We were both not quite folk music, and not all country.”

If anyone out there has any old Lincoln Wright they can convert to CD I'd appreciate knowing. I sure would like to hear “Closed for Alterations” one more time!

Old Stuff

2011-12-13T14:11:00.000-08:00

Doing the sort of consulting work that we do in archaeology, we mostly don't get to break significant new ground in research. We don't get to pick where we do our work: the client decides where he wants to build his project. Actually, we devote much effort helping our client find places to put his project where he is least likely to find sites, which is the way it should be. So, in contrast with our academic colleagues, we spend lots of time doing field work to verify our estimate that there's nothing significant in the area. Occasionally though, we get to luck out and rewrite the reference works.

I have posted before about work we have done in the Blythe, California area for a proposed solar power project. Our project is located along the shoreline of a playa, or dry lake in an area of California known as the Colorado Desert. The Colorado Desert is actually a region of the Sonoran Desert separated from the rest by the Colorado River - same geology and climate regime, but somewhat different biology. No saguaro cactus, for example.

The best and most recent (2007) summary of the known prehistory of the Colorado Desert has been published as a chapter in this useful book, California Prehistory: Colonization, Culture and Complexity. In discussing early human occupation of the area, the authors make this statement:

"Solid evidence for a human presence in the Colorado Desert during the Late Pleistocene or Early Holocene is still scarce. This situation stands in marked contrast to the well-documented Early Holocene occupations in surrounding regions, including the Mojave Desert and coastal southern California."

Well, at least until our project came along. We have discovered a series of Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene sites along the dry lake shoreline that we have been able to date by means of diagnostic projectile point styles. The red jasper point in the pic above is a Lake Mojave point that dates 8-10,000 BP.
This specimen from an adjacent site is a Borax Lake style, that dates 6-8,000 BP. The sites have an artifact inventory that is dominated by ground stone artifacts (manos and metates) used for plant food processing. We infer that during wet periods, such as we would have seen at the end of the Pleistocene, the dry lake would fill with seasonal rains, and grasses and other plants would have grown along the lake shore. The people would have collected these and processed them using the ground stone tools.

Here is a mano from one of the sites.

Here are a couple of metates, though there are lots more on these sites. The metates represent a significant investment in energy and time to manufacture and transport. There are no stones ocurring naturally on the sites any bigger than the gravel you can see in this picture. The metates had to be carried in from locations in the mountains several miles away. They stayed in place so that every few years when the rains were sufficient to fill the lake, the band would have its tools prepositioned to exploit that resource.

We are pretty excited about this, as is the BLM archaeological staff as well as Jerry Schaefer and Don Laylander, the authors of the summary chapter I quoted above. Now that we have opened the door on the possibility of finding early sites, I'm sure folks will start turning up more. Shortly after these finds, a BLM staff archaeologist found another Lake Mojave point on the south shore of our dry lake, outside of our project area. I just was notified last week that the Society for American Archaeology has accepted our proposal to present a paper on this research at the annual meeting next spring in Memphis.

Hot Links

2011-12-13T11:16:00.001-08:00

Roaming around the internets, I keep bumping into stories about zombie ants. Apparently a fungus infects an ant's brain and causes it to wander away from the nest and die so the fungus can consume the entire body. Maybe some of you biologically savvy folks know more about this. Makes for awesome pictures and the ants' publicists have timed this perfectly for the current zombie craze.

Speaking of ants, researchers have discovered fossils of a species of giant ant in the famously fossiliferous Green River Formation in Wyoming. These were about two inches long and date to about 50 million years ago. Must have been awful for picknickers during the Eocene.

Archaeologists working underwater in Lake Huron have recovered a piece of culturally modified wood preserved in the anaerobic depths that has been dated to 8,900 BP by radiocarbon assay. What is likely more significant, is that it appears to be associated with submerged rock alignments that are interpreted as prehistoric game drives. These are thought to date to the late Pleistocene/early Holocene when the lake level was substantially lower. Nice picture of the game drive - no picture of the artifact. This reminded me of a story I posted on a few years ago, that dealt with a possible mastodon petroglyph found on a boulder submerged in Lake Michigan.

A paleoclimatologist believes she has proxy evidence of an intense regional drought in the Great Basin during the second century AD. I'm assuming "...extending from southern New Mexico north and west into Idaho" means the Great Basin. I look forward to seeing more about this.

A comparative study of human and Neanderthal craniums indicates that our two species (sub-species?) may have had slightly different physical brain structure. This I find interesting as it has been known that Neanderthals had larger brains than modern humans since Neanderthals were first identified.
News has just been released that Paul Allen and Burt Rutan are going to build a new space launch system. I had seen last year that Rutan had retired, but I guess he changed his mind. I was doing fieldwork in the Mojave, California area in 2004 and used to see flight tests of their White Knight and SpaceShipOne launch system.

Ruins

2011-12-13T09:05:00.000-08:00

Libby and I participate in a Forest Service program as "site guardians" for a known archaeological site, a rather large pueblo of perhaps 200-some dwellings. From any distance, despite its size, it is almost invisible-- which in these days of thoughtless looting and vandalism, is probably A Good Thing.

Peculiar has some things to say (as well as more photos):

"This ruin doesn’t look like much. It’s never been thoroughly excavated, only a few test spots have been dug... But this was a big one, two stories and something like 250 rooms, with numerous kivas. It’s further south than you might expect, a little outside the area most people think of when contemplating Pueblo archeology. It’s also thought that it was inhabited until a while after the Spanish entrada.

"Over-publicizing locations is often a potential moral dilemma in landscape photography, and much more so when archeology is involved. I know of this site only due to local contacts, including the designated caretakers. But though it’s almost completely unknown, it’s also distressingly accessible. I’ve therefore chosen to pass on posting the more dramatic angles on the site, because they contain features that would allow someone sufficiently familiar with New Mexico geography (like a pot hunter) to get a pretty good idea of the location."

Same here. But there is still plenty to see.

Libby and Taik search a kangaroo rat midden. They can be destructive but make great places to see pot chips, arrowheads, and bones, as they turn over amazing amounts of soil.

Notice how the ranger has strategically placed dead cholla so nobody will drive over the ruins.It will surprise no one that we have to replace them periodically...

We also report graffiti and vandalism-- though a modern misspelled religious petroglyph is going to take some work to remove.

One Good Hound

2011-12-13T08:51:00.000-08:00

Not all New Mexico hounds are tazi types; more are longdogs (locally more often called "staghounds"), deliberate and intelligently- bred crosses of various sighthound breeds. I have been hoping, and still am, that Clint Chisler would elaborate on the voluntary partnership between Lucy and a free falcon, but meanwhile here is his celebration of a fine dog.

"In the fall of 2007 a good friend of mine and fellow sight hound hunting enthusiast, Bill Bates, and I took a trip to the Estancia Valley. I bought a pup for $45 that day. She was 7 weeks old and one of a dozen very similar looking siblings. I figured I’d get the smallest female since I’m more of a rabbit hunter than a coyote killer. The ranch hand I bought her from asked me, “do ya think that’s too much money?” I quickly replied, “No I’d say someday she’ll be prove to be worth it.” That statement was soon become an understatement. Lucy was a squirrelly little hazel-eyed light brindle staghound. To look at her you might think she was just another greyhound, but her ancestry traces back to indigenous staghound blood lines from the southwestern United States with a little Argentinean Dogo, Pit bull, and who knows what else mixed in.

"Over the years Lucy has been an outstanding hound. From about 6 months of age she could keep up with my older stag/saluki, and improved the older she got. Lucy has taken about a half dozen coyotes to date and I can’t count how many jacks. Ten of those jacks were taken as a team effort with a wild (previously inter-mewed) prairie falcon I had released on the mesa where I did most of my hunting in Los Lunas, NM. The prairie falcon is a story in itself that I hope to write soon. Not many dogs could match her perfect combination of speed and endurance.

"Lucy has endured many injuries that are all too common in the coursing world; broken toe, fence-torn tail that had to be amputated, a concussion from running full speed into a pickup, coyote bites, and too many sutures/staples to be listed. These strong yet delicate dogs age fast, but Lucy has stood the test of time and the rough miles of running across the New Mexico countryside. Her hardened feet have come to accept the sand, rocks, mud, and snow they have been exposed to and punished by. To this day Lucy is still an integral part of my pack.

"A couple of mornings ago I let the dogs out for the day and after I broke a thin layer of ice in the water tub I stood and soaked up a beautiful cream orange and blue sunrise. In the foreground a murder of crows were flying across the landscape. I’m guessing they were going from their nightly roost to a nearby dairy to eat for the day. I looked down and Lucy was right beside me watching the same grand display of nature, and then she looked up at me with those hazel eyes."

Lavenham (& a bit of Falconry)

2011-12-13T06:45:00.000-08:00

My sister Karen Graham and her husband George just came back from England, where they visited what remains of Lavenham air base. My father served there in a B17 crew during the war.

Karen is standing on the old airfield in the second photo.

My father, who was an art student before joining the Army Air Corps, has left us a record of those days...

They also spent some time at a falconry school: Karen with some Circaetus Snake eagle.

I suspect they will be back...

Chinese Elk Shanks

2011-12-11T13:58:00.000-08:00

A Chinese red- cooking braise-- good for any shanks, but you need strong tasty almost tough meat. What you should end up with is a kind of Chinese osso bucco with more than a hint of chile-- restaurant good & fork tender. Mine but owes much to Fuchsia Dunlop...

Preheat the oven to a pretty low temperature. I use only 250 degrees, and plan to cook it for hours.

Heat a few tbsp of peanut oil in a Dutch oven. Add 2 tbsp of good chili bean paste (not one of the vinegary kinds, or one with lots of extra ingredients other than beans and chile), a cinnamon stick, a star anise, up to 8 dried little red chiles, and a one inch chunk of ginger cut into very thin slices. Turn them all around until they're well coated, and the smell gets good.

Now add the shanks, turning them around until they're browned and covered by the spices.

Now, add enough water or stock to virtually cover the shanks, and bring to a boil. I like to use good homemade chicken or game stock as it is richer than water.

When it's bubbling add a tbsp of dark soy sauce (this is a heavy sweeter sauce -- you can get it in Chinese markets; if you can't find it, don't worry about it); 2 tbsp regular soy sauce and 2 tsp clear vinegar, preferably rice vinegar if you have it.

Now cover it and stick it in the oven and leave it for a minimum of 5 hours. If you leave it long enough I suggest you turn it down even lower to 225 or even 200.

Garlic mashed potatoes are a good accompaniment. Or you can do Chinese style potatoes: peel, cut into chunks, fry in peanut oil until golden and crispy on the outside, and put into the braise an hour before it is done.

Libby reminds me that you may have a slightly shorter cooking time at your altitude, as we are at 6500' plus. Just keep checking -- the thing is to get it falling off the bone and almost meltingly tender. This recipe will work with almost any kind of shanks, as well as beef short ribs.

Rigby

2011-12-11T13:46:00.000-08:00

The .275 Rigby takes a second elk for Jonathan. No seller's remorse here.

Well, maybe a TINY bit... but if they make us elk shanks a la Chinoise, more or less after Fuchsia Dunlap, I will forget it....

Dog News and Possibilities...

2011-12-11T13:34:00.000-08:00

A future father of Q dogs? Shiri's tazi Tavi who lives up the road. Still a pup but...

A BIG descendant of Q dogs: Dan's prodigious pup:

Clint Chisler's excellent longdog Lucy-- there will be field tales soon...

Darne!

2011-12-11T11:24:00.000-08:00

By cosmic coincidence not one but two of my old French Darne shotguns visited this weekend.

Scott Elliot has the shot and ball gun designed for me. In this one you can see the quarter rib and sights.

.. and the unique sliding breech:

Then falconer and dog in- law Bodie Littlejohn came by after a duck hunt...

I find myself with a bit of seller's remorse. Perhaps...!

John Lincoln Wright RIP

2011-12-11T07:48:00.000-08:00

The finest country and country swing musician in New England, John Lincoln Wright, died last week at 64.

He was a friendly acquaintance rather than a close friend; we attended Boston College together for a brief couple of months together in '67 (we both left); and later I worked in a Cambridge bar (the lamented Inn- Square of fond memory-- local sheep rancher Piet Ditmars also remembers it well!) where he and his legendary band the Sour Mash boys played often. But I used to see his shows all over New England.

He was a greater talent than many who "succeeded"; perhaps appreciating a talented heir to the tradition of Bob Wills and Merle Haggard who was based in Maine and Cambridge was just too far a step for the public to go.

What I think is his best record is only available on vinyl. Now I have to find somebody to convert it for me.

Meanwhile I'll raise a memorial glass of Jack Daniels (what we both drank in those days) to the writer and singer of everything from the haunting "Takin' Old Route One" to the sublimely idiotic "It's So Lonely Here in Braintree with You in Methuen It's Almost Like Being in Lowell.."

Terence Wright's Cog

2011-12-11T07:25:00.000-08:00

Recently Terence Wright's 12 year old Gyr- Prairie tiercel Cog starred with partner Loki the lurcher in a video here. Yesterday he was killed on a jack by a coyote before Loki and Terence could get to him. He will be missed; he was one of the best hare falcons I have ever seen, and an engaging character.

With Warren's tazis, 100% granddogs:

With Terence and Loki last January, and with me:

Lately the suburban coyotes around Albuquerque have become unnervingly bold. Greg Rabourn's Gyr Saker female was also killed, there have been several more incidents, and they don't even back down from humans. They are shyer down here where they are hunted. Some lessons there-- and as one falconer said, maybe time to get some dogs that can kill a coyote!

Agricultural Archaeology and More

2011-12-09T13:23:00.001-08:00

Here is an article I found via the Memphis Commercial-Appeal.

Mississippi River floods from the spring of this year have apparently scoured away enough sediment to expose a cotton field that was buried by the legendary 1927 Mississippi River flood
in Coahoma County, Mississippi. From the article:

"Like washing away a layer of mud from the bottom of an old pair of boots, the floodwaters revealed once again the treads of the old field, perfectly preserved sets of ancient mule tracks and old cotton rows.

Bowen Flowers and Pete Hunter, two Coahoma County cotton producers, were lucky enough to have seen the field while hunting this spring. Flowers took a few pictures on his iPhone. 'You can actually see where the mule tracks were when they were rowing it up,' said Flowers, who is serving as the president of the Delta Council this year. 'It was like they were petrified.'

'The rows were extremely crooked like they are when they’re put up by mules,' Hunter said.

Hunter believes the old cotton field was likely flooded in 1927. So does Charles Camillo, a historian with the Mississippi River Commission."

Pretty cool, I thought. Camillo goes on to tell of several other instances when floods on the river have exposed historic features buried by earlier floods.

This immediately reminded me of a reverse situation with a similar result: the drought of 1988 that reduced the Mississippi to a trickle and exposed numbers of shipwrecks in the dry riverbed. I remember driving across the Hernando de Soto bridge at Memphis that summer and seeing the wrecks as big piles of wood out in the old channel.

Here's a link to a brief write-up by the Arkansas Archaeological Survey on the work they did on some of these wrecks.

Armed Buddhists and Warrior Women (quotes); Mexican Gun Laws

2011-12-05T12:16:00.000-08:00

"T'ang was the high point of much poetry, and of Ch'an [Zen] Buddhist creativity, but it must be remembered that it was not peopled by effete scholars in flowing robes who detested violence. It was a time of hardy Northern derived gentry who were skilled horsepersons and archers and falconers, hard drinkers and fighters. Women were much freer then, and the custom of bound feet was yet to come."-- Gary Snyder, "'Wild' in China" (in The Gary Snyder Reader)

"Both my husband and I had revolvers, and wore them. All the Mexicans in the wilder parts of Mexico wear revolvers, and it is but the part of safety to do likewise."-- Mrs C William Beebe in Beebe's Two bird Lovers in Mexico (1905)

Hot Links

2011-12-05T11:43:00.001-08:00

We've posted several times here at the Q blog about the expansion of jaguar range back into southern Arizona, but until I saw this article I didn't know ocelots were back as well.

Names are proposed for two new elements that will be added to the periodic table. I know why they're doing it, but "livermorium" just doesn't seem to have much of a ring to it.

Archaeological excavations in a cave in East Timor have demonstrated that our early ancestors had boats and tackle adequate for venturing far from shore and catching large deep-water fish species as early as 42,000 years ago. With gear like that, a coastal migration to the New World would have been a piece of cake. Never underestimate our "primitive" ancestors.

What is that smell we smell when it starts to rain?

An archaeological project in the Caribbean shows that oppossums, peccaries, armadillos, guinea pigs and small rodents called agoutis were imported by sea to the island of Carriacou about a thousand years ago.

Last Child in the Woods?

2011-12-05T10:24:00.001-08:00

There are advantages to life in the suburbs, at least in a state known as the Sportsman's Paradise.

I gather most suburban kids have more in common with urban kids than rural ones when it comes to hands-on wildlife experience. Luckily for our children, the wildlife is close at hand and the neighbors are aware of it.

On a recent Thursday evening, after returning from a rabbit hunt near home, I got a call from my neighbor Tyler (mentioned elsewhere here) who was driving by with kids to drag a bow-shot deer from the woods in the back of our subdivision. Would I help him?

Of course. I still had my boots and chaps on.

After retrieving the small buck from its final resting place, maybe 75 paces behind another neighbor's house, I gathered my own kids and brought them by to see how sausage is made.

All these kids eat deer and rabbit as a matter of course (often the main course!) and are not ignorant about where their meat comes from. Ditto their eggs, which come from another neighbor's hens...

...See Logan's hand on the antler? I just noticed that!

Star of India

2011-12-04T17:55:00.001-08:00

As I said in my rock art post earlier this week, early in the week I was in Boise for a field trip and agency meeting for a project in that area. Thursday, I flew from Boise to San Diego for a field trip and public meeting for a power plant project down there on Friday. A good week for airline miles.

We took a walk on the San Diego waterfront Thursday evening and saw the Star of India, a tall ship tied up at the maritime museum. It has lots of lights spread on its masts and yards.

This elegant ship was also tied up at the museum, but I didn't get its name.

Our field trip and meetings went well, but our return to Denver on Saturday was a shock to the system. It was 65 degrees in SoCal when we left, but 3 degrees in Denver when we got home that night.

Wanderer

2011-12-03T16:56:00.000-08:00

Josh and Stella, neighbors a couple of houses south, came knocking last night as we were going to bed. Libby called me to the door to say they had a "strange bird". In the dim light of the entry I thought (perfectly reasonable) snipe or dowitcher, but when I welcomed them in and turned on the living room light...

It was a WOODCOCK! Only 500 miles or so west of home...

I may have blurted something like "the last one of those I saw was in Maine in 87 and I ate it!" But it seemed in good condition but for being very thin.They picked it up in their yard, cold and unable to fly. Our guess is that the recent 70 mph plus east winds blew it off migration and food to here. He (male I think) is now in the capable hands of local rehabber and hawk sitter Jennifer Keller; more when we know more.

Thanksgivings

2011-12-01T17:34:00.001-08:00

It’s been a rough few weeks, with major ups and downs. Son Cass took a job at a ski hill near Laramie, so we fixed a Thanksgiving feast a week early since he was about to head off to the new job. Two miles from our house, on a slick wintery road, he drove his BMW off an embankment above the New Fork River. We’re so thankful he walked away from the wreck. We loaded his gear into a ranch truck and he left, making it to the job on time.

That left us short a vehicle, and although we’d been looking for another truck for about a month, we hadn’t found the right match. Finally, the day before Thanksgiving, I found just the right truck, located in Provo, Utah. We made all the arrangements, and on Thanksgiving Day, Jim and I locked up the dogs that weren’t on duty with the ewe herd, and had a pleasant drive down to retrieve my new ride. It’s a primo 2000 Chevy shortbed 4x4, manual transmission.

The next afternoon, all the dogs at our place were free and lounging around outside while we did various chores. Jim and I loaded a ram and two lambs into a trailer at the house, driving the three miles (just ½ mile on a highway, and the rest on a nearby county road) to drop the ram into one pasture, and then backtracking to check the ewe herd, located in another pasture closer to home. Because there was a short snow squall while we were trying to find the ram herd, it took longer than we had expected, but we were gone an hour. When we pulled back up to the house, our Akbash Rena wasn’t there to greet us. Vega, another adult female guardian, and our herding dogs, were all accounted for, so we knew there hadn’t been a predator event while we were gone, or Vega would have been involved. We searched the nearby Mesa, but called the sheriff’s office because we knew someone had to have picked Rena up.

Rena is not a typical livestock protection dog. We picked her out of a litter to photograph her life, as she grew up with a young burro and a set of orphan lambs. The children’s book describing her life had just been released two months ago (The Guardian Team: On the job with Rena and Roo). We’d intentionally socialized Rena from a young age to make her an “ambassador dog.” She attended book signings, schools, libraries, fairs, and agency meetings so that people could personally meet and touch a livestock guardian. She travels well, and loves to work a crowd, demanding attention and pets. She’d met more than 2,000 Wyoming school children in her four years of life, and dozens of state and national policy makers – including most recently USDA Undersecretary Ed Avalos. Because Rena was human socialized, she was easy to steal. She’d been “rescued” once before, when an oilfield shuttlebus driver thought she was too close to the road, so the woman called Rena to the shuttle bus and loaded her up. I chased the shuttle to town, retrieving my dog and NOT punching anyone in the nose.

But this time, I had no idea who had taken Rena. Was it another well-intended but mistaken rescue? I did a short post on Facebook noting that I had a sheep dog missing, but not providing any details. Jim and I put in calls to all the vet clinics, law enforcement, and animal control and rescue organizations in western Wyoming, and it quickly became apparent that whoever had Rena hadn’t made a move toward reuniting her with her home.

We decided to announce that the missing dog was actually Rena, Wyoming’s most famous livestock guardian dog, friend to children, and star of the new book. The story took off like wildfire, with several media organizations picking it up and providing some excellent coverage. It was going to be very hard for someone to hide this 130-pound, beautiful dog, with thousands of eyes looking for her.

Jim and I were just sick with worry. We had six miserable days of calling vet clinics and rescue groups, talking to law enforcement, and dealing with the wonderful but somewhat overwhelming response of people who were trying to help find Rena. I alternated between crying and wanting to use explosives.

Then early Thursday morning, six days after Rena disappeared, our telephone started ringing. Four calls within a short period of time – Rena had been spotted just a few miles away, traveling down the side of the highway, headed for home. Jim raced down the road and found her. Rena was no worse for the wear – when she came into the house, she was not hungry, had been freshly groomed, and had a sweet shampoo smell. The only problem we could see was that her butt was dirty – she had apparently been fed something that her system didn’t like. She had been cared for, but the person who took care of her didn’t drop her off at home, where our big living room windows provide a view for miles. Fortunately, one neighbor and several oilfield workers were on the lookout for Rena and got word to us quickly when she was spotted. We’re betting Jim was able to retrieve Rena within minutes of her being deposited along the highway, from the flurry of calls we received.

We’ve had problems with people “rescuing” livestock protection dogs before – and even “rescuing” lambs – an act that is also called livestock rustling. The fact is that some people do not approve of the lives lived by working dogs. That our livestock protection dogs have been bred and selected for thousands of years to do what they do – stay with the sheep round the clock, guarding them from harm – is frowned upon by those who believe these are pets that should be indoors when it’s cold outside.

Last winter I had the problem of some “Good Samaritan” stopping in to the entrance of one of our pastures where I fed the guardian dogs at a livestock trailer every day. This person began feeding my dogs – actually dumping out onto the ground a whole bag of junk dog food that my dogs refused to eat. Besides scaring me terribly with the threat that someone could try to poison or harm my dogs, and the threat of having my dogs associate with strangers, the junk food then served to attract ravens and other predators. We shoveled the junk into buckets and fed it to the coyotes a few miles away. We ended up stringing a rope barricade across the cattle guard entryway, with a note attached, telling the person to quit feeding and endangering my dogs, noting my name and phone number should the person want to talk about how my dogs were being cared for. It stopped the problem, but I do wonder if the same person was at it again, with Rena’s disappearance.

We were very lucky to get Rena back, and for that, we are very thankful. Rena was not micro-chipped, but that wouldn’t have made a difference in this case, since the person who took her did not take her to a vet or agency. Rena’s human socialization, which makes her so popular with children, is what made her so vulnerable. Thank heavens so many people cared about this dog, made a ruckus about her being gone, and helped to keep the pressure on until Rena was returned to us.

We are going to seek a change in state law to protect our dogs: If you rescue a dog, you need to notify someone of your action. Otherwise, it’s theft. If it’s not yours, and you take it, you’re a thief.

Here's a few images of today's reunion. Rena and her mother - Rena has her tongue sticking out.

And Rena and her Roo:

East/ West: Architecture

2011-12-01T16:25:00.000-08:00

Or "vernacular" architecture in Christopher Alexander's words...

This is NOT Magdalena (though I have had people insist it is and even locate it); it is Bayan Nuur in Olgii aimag.

Nor are these.

This is:

I even put plastic on the windows.

Our Crew Goes Viral

2011-12-01T16:07:00.000-08:00

Patrick Burns links a video, which comes to our Asia Group via Karen Myers-- and turns out to be our gang here in NM. Terence Wright, lurcher Loki, and Gyr- Prairie tiercel Cog are family. They have appeared here before and I hope will again soon- we have hunting plans.

The team(photos by Daniela).

Cog on my head last January:

Tamgaly Rock Art

2011-12-01T15:23:00.000-08:00

Whether because of (quite plausible) shared ancestry or (more I would think) the "Darwinian" demands of environment, climate, and materials, both rock art and vernacular architecture resemble each other in central Asia and the dry west. Compare Reid's images below to these from Tamgaly, in the dry steppes a couple of hours north of Almaty in Kazakhstan.

The site:

A similar local site- basalt, stone cairn "wolf watchers", petros nearby...

Hagay and his cousin with panels (Asian T shirts-- don't ask):

More panels, some separated by hundreds of years or more-- this is a palimpsest, not a unified work.

The horned horse, which Gorbatov painted-- we both saw saker falcons there...

The enigmatic Sunhead-- similar images exist in America:

There is half a book's worth more to say, one I hope to write eventually. Meanwhile Reid probably knows more than I do. For a good overview read Renato Sala's account in Kazakhstan by Dagmar Schreiber. Not only is he my go- to guy on the subject; it is the best book, and full of work by Kazakh friends of Q.

Soon: architecture (Canat to Kazakhs: "Stev lives in a Kazakh house-- he even puts plastic on the windows!")

And re Sala: an Almaty- based Italian archaeologist and the leading expert on rock art, he is still very Euro-- shaven headed and stubbled, kissing his fingers through a haze of Gauloise smoke: "..and the women here are so beautiful, no? Jengiz or Stalin or somebody must have killed all the ugly ones!"

Some Idaho Rock Art

2011-12-01T10:03:00.001-08:00

I am currently in Boise, ID for an agency meeting and field trip for a project I have up here. We were in Owyhee County for a field trip yesterday and saw these rock art panels near Givens Hot Springs. The picture above is of a location called Map Rock. When this was recorded the interpretation was that the large curving line you see on the front of the rock represented the Snake River and the other petroglyphs were features along the river. I believe that's fairly speculative.

Please remember you can click on these images to enlarge them for easier viewing.

The majority of what's going on at Map Rock is geometric in nature, but this detail from the left side (referencing the earlier picture) shows what appear to be deer.

This detail from near the top of the rock shows a bighorn.

About a quarter mile away from Map Rock there is another group of five panels. I'll show a couple here. Most of this work is geometric - though I did see one anthropomorph.

The anthropomorph is in the upper right hand portion of this panel. One wag in our field party said that square sitting on a line, just above a circle (at the very bottom of the panel) obviously is a Frosty the Snowman representation. 'Tis the season.

Frederic

2011-11-30T11:24:00.000-08:00

Peculiar sends a link to the latest-- there always seems to be news-- on Emperor Frederic the Second (1194- 1250), of Sicily and the Holy Roman Empire (which wits will still tell you was none of the three)...

I have been trying unsuccessfully for years to sell a book on Frederic and his surviving relics like the amazing Castel del Monte (good book here). It might begin thus:

"Born a German Emperor in Sicily, to a mother nearly 50 years old; raised a street kid in Palermo, reclaimed his heritage at 16; feuded with popes, was excommunicated (often); made a reluctant crusade that ended in a mosque, shaking hands with Saladin and discussing falconry; died at 57 of malaria; left only an Italian Moslem town that survived him for less than a century, a son who was soon to die defending his cause and bloodline, a strange castle in Puglia , and a book of advanced science and art in the form of a hunting manual , The Art of Hunting with Birds.

“He was reputed in his lifetime to be the Antichrist, and was known as Stupor Mundi, the Wonder of the World. Dante, of the opposing political party, wrote him into Hell.

“The Nazis liked him for maintaining power as a northerner among Mediterraneans, despite his keeping a court of Jews, Moslems, and heretical troubadors, maintaining a beacon of rational tolerance in a time with little enough of that. Also despite the fact that his leading historian was the Jewish Ernst Kantorowicz, who they exiled (he ended up teaching at Berkeley).

“He defeated a Moslem guerilla army in Sicily , then made them into a kind of mercenary guard, settling them in the walled city of Lucera on the mainland and building them a mosque. He tempted St. Francis of Assisi with naked dancing girls. He was reputed to have experimented on humans, raising children without speaking to see what tongue they spoke, weighing bodies before and after death to attempt to discover the weight of the soul. As in his falconry manual, he was, perhaps to an excessive degree, the first anti – Aristotelian empiricist.

“When the opened his tomb not long ago they found he was sharing his tomb with an unknown young woman. Today he is remembered mostly by falconers, Sicilian patriots, and perhaps the Mafia, which some legends say started as a local patriotic society, fighting occupying forces and landlords in his memory.”

The in- print translation of his de Arte Venandi cum Avibus will be in my "book of books". And Vadim Gorbatov has painted him, more than once.

"Big Eli's" Monument

2011-11-30T06:49:00.000-08:00

In a beautiful spot on his family ranch in central Montana. With sighthounds!

Guns vs Spells

2011-11-29T17:50:00.000-08:00

From Peculiar who writes:

"I've often thought that aspects of the Harry Potter epic would have been improved by this approach...."

Also check his blog link to an artist who has drawn The Call of Chthulhu in the style of Dr Suess, including rhyming text-- brilliant! As he says, "We have an infant who will soon need it!"

Granddogs & others

2011-11-29T14:22:00.000-08:00

More running dogs...

Dan Gauss writes to tell us his Galgo girl has just given birth to a pup with Lashyn AND Plummer lurcher on the paternal side.

UPDATE:

"Department of corrections: re: grandogs. It's just the opposite. Galgo *boy* sired litter of uno. Plummer and Lashyn are on the *maternal* side. A singleton, born on my mother's birthday could only be named: H1LDA ;) I was trying to rustle up some pics of the parents and got sidetracked."

Grandparents in their youth:

Meanwhile John B's inimitable Tigger (Lashyn X Kyran) in California continues to be a serious performer despite the opposition of breed purist Nazis...

Links, Pix, & Assorted Phenomena...

2011-11-29T13:14:00.000-08:00

Lauren's Aquiling is up and running again and, at least until her book on her year among the Kazakhs is out, the best place for exotic falconry and adventure tales...

There is some pretty funny and often grotesque animal photography up at Nature Wants to Eat You. HT Annie Davidson, who also sent this video of a walking octopus.

Tim Gallagher, who recently completed a book on his harrowing expedition to the heart of the Narcotraficante strongholds of the Sierra Madre in search of the (almost?) extinct Imperial woodpecker, wrote the short version here, and added a link to the only videos of this largest of all woodpeckers...

Dr Joseph Rock explored the remotest parts of central Asia and southwestern China for the National Geographic in the twenties and thirties. Teddy Roosevelt's big- game hunting sons thought Minya Konka in "his" territory near the border of Szechuan and Tibet-- he wrote about in in 1930-- was higher than Everest. A couple more Americans laid siege to it in 1935 (they were also hunters, armed with a Springfield .30- 06 and two "heavy" SMLE's) and found it was formidable but not quite that high. Yvon Chouinard, Al Read, Kim Schmitz, Rick Ridgeway, and Harry Frishman (Peculiar's biological dad) made another attempt on it in 1980, not long before Harry was killed in a climb in his "backyard" Tetons, but they ran into disaster. Bruce Chatwin allegedly caught the legendary "bat fungus" that did in his AIDS- compromised body in a cave in the vicinity, which is also home to the Naxi people and their still- living goshawk falconry. (Chatwin also put Rock's book, and Emperor Frederic II's falconry text de Arte Venandi cum Avibus, into his posthumous story "The Estate of Maximilian Tod").

Obviously there is a book there, and eventually I hope to go, with Lib and Peculiar. Meanwhile I suspect the greatest single source of useful material is at the Arnold Arboretum near Boston, where Rock's archives reside, full of treasures like this photo:

("Horned Rifles" too!)

Fat Horses

2011-11-29T11:01:00.000-08:00

Large- mammal and Pleistocene maven Valerius Geist thinks more is going on with the spotted horse cave paintings below than just realism-- be cites their exaggerated fatness as well:

"Horses in top condition thus have a large gut-fill, expanded further by storage fat about intestines and omentum. Consequently, the belly bulges downward. Simultaneously, the fat stored on the rump and haunches generates rounded rump and haunch contours. Because of the hanging belly, at a distance, fat animals appear short-legged. To signal the wish for a fat horse the artist sketches or paints horses with very large haunches, bulging bellies and very short legs. To this may be added atlatl darts or throwing spear arching towards or stuck in the horses vitals. The image is totally non-representational. No artist ever saw a horse like the one painted in Lascaux Cave, illustrating Rosner's article. However, the artists skillful exaggerations generated meaningful symbolism: may spears kill for you a fat mare."

This struck fire with me as Mongolian artists STILL portray even ridden horses as fat. Two examples from my own collection (one with dog a present from Andrew Campbell) below:

Of course the actual horses are chunky too: an "Appy" from Olgii:

Val wrote back:
"Wow! thank you so much for this note and images. Indeed the horses look "delectable". I am still investigating, but it appears horse fat has a multiple of the omega-3 content of ruminant fats. That's brain-building fat! Nice to see the spotted coats. As to leg-placement, it's wrong- alas!"

Hawk Trapping

2011-11-29T10:43:00.000-08:00

Leonardo Trujillo, a new falconer and friend of my apprentice Gary Moody, just trapped his first redtail "Rojo". He may find that such "getting ready games" (term from Bil Gilbert) are almost as addictive as falconry itself. Meanwhile, congratulations!

Grandparently stuff

2011-11-29T10:26:00.000-08:00

Eli's Baptism in Santa Fe two weekends ago. With this and a Tom Russell concert and deadlines and trying to get Momo going and editing-- BUSY!
Eli and doting grandma:

Niki and Eli, Jack too...

The ceremony, us behind:

Lib with Jenny French, one of my oldest friends in duration if not age, beaming on what she calls the "Beebums":

Thanksgiving Goats

2011-11-27T18:22:00.001-08:00

Our daughter, her husband and our granddaughter were here to visit during the Thanksgiving holiday. I took this picture during one of our field trips while they were here. Bella seems to have decided she likes goats, at least these three sweet Dwarf Nubian does owned by one of our friends. She had a good time feeding them peanuts.

Hope you had a nice Thanksgiving.

Corrected - Nigerian.

Poem

2011-11-27T18:00:00.000-08:00

Hurt Hawks

I

The broken pillar of the wing jags from the clotted shoulder,
The wing trails like a banner in defeat,
No more to use the sky forever but live with famine
And pain a few days: cat nor coyote
Will shorten the week of waiting for death, there is game without talons.
He stands under the oak-bush and waits
The lame feet of salvation; at night he remembers freedom
And flies in a dream, the dawns ruin it.
He is strong and pain is worse to the strong, incapacity is worse.
The curs of the day come and torment him
At distance, no one but death the redeemer will humble that head,
The intrepid readiness, the terrible eyes.
The wild God of the world is sometimes merciful to those
That ask mercy, not often to the arrogant.
You do not know him, you communal people, or you have forgotten him;
Intemperate and savage, the hawk remembers him;
Beautiful and wild, the hawks, and men that are dying, remember him.

II

I'd sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk; but the great redtail
Had nothing left but unable misery
From the bone too shattered for mending, the wing that trailed under his talons when he moved.
We had fed him six weeks, I gave him freedom,
He wandered over the foreland hill and returned in the evening, asking for death,
Not like a beggar, still eyed with the old
Implacable arrogance. I gave him the lead gift in the twilight.What fell was relaxed,
Owl-downy, soft feminine feathers; but what
Soared: the fierce rush: the night-herons by the flooded river cried fear at its rising
Before it was quite unsheathed from reality.

- Robinson Jeffers

Hot Links

2011-11-27T17:32:00.001-08:00

Enjoy this run-down on Ten Huge Prehistoric Cats. That's an American lion in the pic.

Someone tries to rob the wrong Denny's in Houston.

Anthropologists at the NY Times discover the use of man camps for construction and operation of projects in remote areas of the West. Many of the projects I'm involved with permitting plan on using these. In fact, we may have a project next year where we have to set one up ourselves.

Here's an interesting article containing a series of interviews with author Jim Harrison, who has a new novel out. My favorite line from the article: “You’re from Escanaba. Shouldn’t you know what a pheasant looks like?”

For the first time in a long time, more people are moving out of California than are moving in. I can relate.

Apology on Poems

2011-11-16T11:46:00.000-08:00

I was just looking at the last two poems I put into posts and just wanted to apologize for the hash Blogger makes of my attempts at formatting. I don't seem to be able to do a lot more than get the line breaks and stanzas correct. I assure you the words are all there.

Poem

2011-11-16T10:02:00.000-08:00

The Windhover

To Christ our Lord

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-

dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding

Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding

High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing

In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,

As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding

Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding

Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here

Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion

Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion

Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,

Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

- Gerard Manley Hopkins

Hot Links

2011-11-15T14:41:00.000-08:00

This piece on dinosaur feathers preserved in amber came out in September, but I just now stumbled across it. Pretty amazing photo gallery.

Anthropologists from the NY Times Style section have discovered that portable generators can become status symbols in certain primitive societies - such as their own during a power outage.

This story tells how a reanalysis of human fossils originally excavated in 1964, has established that they are the oldest known skeletal remains of anatomically modern humans in the whole of Europe. It's amazing what you can figure out re-examining old collections. This post I put up a few weeks ago describes the reanalysis of a mastodon kill excavated thirty years ago that has established it as Pre-Clovis in age. It's taken us about 100 years to figure out how the Antikythera Mechanism worked. There's a reason we curate this stuff in museums.

Here is a beautiful photo gallery of The Forest of the Ancients - a bristlecone pine grove that contains the oldest living things on the planet.

Bronze Artifact from Prehistoric Site in Alaska

2011-11-15T14:10:00.000-08:00

The Associated Press has this report on a cast bronze artifact discovered this summer during the excavation of a prehistoric Eskimo site on the Seward Peninsula of Alaska. This article isn't written very clearly, but it appears that the artifact was found in fill outside of, or possibly below, a prehistoric house that was being excavated. A radiocarbon assay taken from a piece of leather wrapped around the artifact gave a date of AD 600.

Prehistoric Eskimo as well as many North American Indian groups, are known to have made artifacts from native copper, but using casting techniques for alloys like bronze has never been seen before. This buckle or piece of harness or whatever it is, most likely was made in China or Korea and somehow made its way across the Bering Strait. I would imagine some analysis of trace elements in the alloy will give a better idea of its origin.

Pretty cool.

UPDATE

I complained in the original post that I thought the AP article was poorly written. Please take a look at this press release and interview from the University of Colorado that makes what's going on at that site much clearer.

Huevos

2011-11-11T09:54:00.000-08:00

One of our colleagues at work lives in an even more rural part of Douglas County than we do. In an effort to keep her agricultural property tax rate, last summer she started raising chickens and goats. The goats are milk goats and we haven't seen anything from them yet. However, we are glad to do our part to help her with her tax issues by buying eggs. If you compare these with eggs you'd buy at a supermarket you wouldn't know they came from the same species. She has a fairly wide variety of chickens and guarantees at least one green egg per dozen. The white eggs in this dozen come from Polish White Crested Black hens. As the white eggs are a bit smaller, we got another as lagniappe.

Buzzard Roost

2011-11-11T09:27:00.000-08:00

After posting the Robinson Jeffers poem Vulture earlier in the week, I remembered some pictures I took early this year. Back in January we were doing some field work in the desert near Blythe, California. In town one morning, I saw about 30-40 turkey vultures using a large eucalyptus tree as a roost.
The temperature was in the high 30s - just about as cold as it ever gets in Blythe. This flock was about as cold, huddled-up and miserable-looking group of birds as I have ever seen, accustomed as they were to the 100+ degree temperatures here most of the year.

Finally, as the sun rays hit more directly, a few starting spreading their wings to catch the heat, as turkey vultures are wont to do.

Sporting Miscellany

2011-11-11T06:56:00.000-08:00

As the Peculiars are here with grandbaby Eli I shall continue my slackerish blog- sloth for a bit more, but I have harvested a number of cool images to share. So with no further ado:

Colonel Charles Askins was a more ambiguous character than the other Golden Age gunwriters; he once described himself as a "sociopath". Charlie Waterman once told me that he was the only evil person he ever met, and his darker side shows in the character based on him in Stephen Hunter's Pale Horse Coming. On the other hand, he was endlessly kind to a friend of mine who grew up in San Antone (where he spent his retirement), when Mark was a child.

And he had great taste in guns. I have coveted this baroque monster of a ten- bore, best- quality AyA since I first read of it in the Seventies and now it is up for sale, unfortunately with an estimate of over $20,000! Somewhere there also exists its companion, a sidelock over- and- under that may be the only one ever built in ten...

We have seen blog- friend and all- 'round sportsman (pointers, falcons, fine guns, even Spanish pouters!) Daniel's dogs and hawks here before. Here he is (on the big gray) at a field trail with pointer Ferd-- and I think that is fellow blogger Mike Spies on the ground...

Berkutchi Lauren McGough*, who we are proposing as a Fellow for the Explorers Club, is going for her PhD in Central Asia. Meanwhile she has added deerstalking in Scotland to her skill set. Here she is with her first quarry and a very "Euro" setup-- a suppressed Tikka .25- 06 with a Swarovski scope (Jonathan Hanson: "Why do Americans consider suppressors 'evil' rather than polite?")

You can vote for her in a "Hunt of a Lifetime" competition here.

Finally, also courtesy of Lauren, the "Eternal Team" in Turkmenistan:

* Lauren can make me feel older than being a grandfather does-- she is 24, born several months after Betsy Huntington died!

Hot Links

2011-11-09T11:19:00.000-08:00

This rather amazing photo comes from an article describing rhino translocations in South Africa using helicopters. From one of the pictures it looks like they are just using a Huey to do this - I would have thought it would have required a stouter helo.

It's too soon to tell how the ouster of Kadafi (Kadhafi? Gaddafi? Qaddafi?) will play out politicially for the people of Libya. But this article says archaeological research there may benefit.

Here are nine things you need to know about North Dakota. I may be mistaken, but I don't think I saw pheasants mentioned once.

Does this country really need a Christmas Tree Tax?

Asteroid 2005 YU55 just missed us.

Poem

2011-11-09T10:44:00.000-08:00

Vulture

I had walked since dawn and lay down to rest on a bare hillside
Above the ocean. I saw through half-shut eyelids a vulture wheeling
high up in heaven,
And presently it passed again, but lower and nearer, its orbit
narrowing,
I understood then
That I was under inspection. I lay death-still and heard the flight-
feathers
Whistle above me and make their circle and come nearer.
I could see the naked red head between the great wings
Bear downward staring. I said, "My dear bird, we are wasting time
here.
These old bones will still work; they are not for you." But how
beautiful
he looked, gliding down
On those great sails; how beautiful he looked, veering away in the
sea-light
over the precipice. I tell you solemnly
That I was sorry to have disappointed him. To be eaten by that beak
and
become part of him, to share those wings and those eyes--
What a sublime end of one's body, what and enskyment; what a life
after death.

- Robinson Jeffers

Spotted Horses in Paleolithic Art

2011-11-09T09:44:00.000-08:00

I really enjoyed this article in the NY Times about horses in Pleistocene cave art. From what I have seen in the literature, most researchers seem to believe that animals represented in Eurasian cave art are accurate depictions of the animals living in our ancestors' environment. For example, in The Nature of Paleolithic Art, Dale Guthrie uses information from cave art to produce maps that plot variation in coat color and marking patterns for various species.

One group of researchers however, believed that some animals represented may be more symbolic, diverging from reality or representing rare or even mystical creatures. Among these possible symbolic creatures were spotted horses, well known from Pech-Merle Cave.

The article tells us that recent DNA analysis has shown though, that Pleistocene horses had three color patterns: spotted or dappled; blackish ones; and brown ones. And these are the patterns that appear in cave art. People were drawing horses they actually saw - not "spirit horses."

So there is another vote for research like Guthrie's, assuming these are accurate representations of nature in the Pleistocene.

Also though, being a Faulkner fan, I was reminded of his novella entitled Spotted Horses.

Running Dogs

2011-11-08T11:14:00.000-08:00

Herb Wells of Alpaugh CA takes the most amazing photos of coursing dogs I have ever seen- probably that anyone has.

A couple of sets here. The first three pics demonstrate the incredible and totally normal hyperextension and flexing of a running dog's first joints (third is also one of out own breeding, Daniela's Shunkar). This is also why you should not remove dewclaws.

Second batch: synchronized dogging. Is this common?!

Lame excuses and photo posts

2011-11-08T10:58:00.000-08:00

Apparently finishing the eagle book meant MORE work- I have totally reorganized the library and am organizing book selling, wood heating, the next book, and getting Momo aloft. Which leaves precious little time to blog (yet).

But on the principle that everybody likes bookshelves pix here are a few shots of the "new" library. I will follow with some other (more?) interesting photos.

Clicking these ones to enlarge should resolve some titles for the curious...

Homecoming

2011-11-06T17:10:00.001-08:00

Husband Jim's Uncle Walter passed away early last week, so we left home Friday to attend the memorial services in Cheyenne. We were gone for about 30 hours, and of course I was nervous about how the animals faired while we were gone. When we arriving to see the ewe herd in the river bottom, some of my favorite animals came out to greet us. They had done just fine without me, but seemed happy to see us. I love seeing the animals look so relaxed and content. (Click on photos to enlarge.)

We headed to the house to check on Vega and her four-week old pups in the kennel. It had snowed and the wind was blowing, but of course the pups were out exploring the world inside their kennel. Jim decided we needed puppy therapy, so he hauled them into the living room for a visit

This is Spot. He's the biggest dog in the litter, and he is very grumpy, growling and barking. He reminds me of his Uncle Rant.

Vega decided to come in and check on her pups, so several of them took advantage of having the milk bag nearby. For readers not familiar with these livestock protection dogs, Vega is a Central Asian Shepherd, or Aziat.

And here is our one-year old Hud, a bearded collie who loves snuffling around in the snow.