Your Custom Text Here
A Promise To California
A promise to California,
Or inland to the great pastoral Plains, and on to Puget sound and Oregon;
Sojourning east a while longer, soon I travel toward you, to remain,
to teach robust American love,
For I know very well that I and robust love belong among you,
inland, and along the Western sea;
For these States tend inland and toward the Western sea, and I will also.
Obvious Children
Woodsmen and River Drivers
Men and women who worked for the Machias Lumber Company before 1930 share their recollections of the logging industry in Maine when they cut trees by hand, hauled logs to the river with horses, and floated them down to the mill. Remarkable documentary footage from the 1930's illustrates this dangerous and exhausting work. The memoires include stories about death on the job and the ballad "The Jam on Gerry's Rock".
"Nobody ever seen a bulldozer or any of the equipment they have today in those times. All the power they had in the wood was huses and those big old huses were something in their time. And the men that drove them were something. They cussed a little on occasions."TrailerFull Movie
Northeast Winter Camping
The snow finally came yesterday. It's all gone now, but my neighborhood's massive baseball field lights kept the kids out throwing snowballs until they finally shut off at 10pm.Here
Devil's Tower
Seems as though there's quite a craft fair happening down in Washington Square at the Judson Memorial Church. More info here, but it lasts until December 21st and it's open everyday from 12pm - 8pm. Go get a Kachina doll.
War On Drugs 2
War On Drugs
Now I will do nothing but listen,To accrue what I hear into this song, to let sounds contribute toward it.I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of flames,clack of sticks cooking my meals,I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice,I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following,Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the day and night,Talkative young ones to those that like them, the loud laugh ofwork-people at their meals,The angry base of disjointed friendship, the faint tones of the sick,The judge with hands tight to the desk, his pallid lips pronouncinga death-sentence,The heave'e'yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves, therefrain of the anchor-lifters,The ring of alarm-bells, the cry of fire, the whirr of swift-streakingengines and hose-carts with premonitory tinkles and color'd lights,The steam-whistle, the solid roll of the train of approaching cars,The slow march play'd at the head of the association marching two and two,(They go to guard some corpse, the flag-tops are draped with black muslin.)I hear the violoncello, ('tis the young man's heart's complaint,)I hear the key'd cornet, it glides quickly in through my ears,It shakes mad-sweet pangs through my belly and breast.I hear the chorus, it is a grand opera,Ah this indeed is music--this suits me.A tenor large and fresh as the creation fills me,The orbic flex of his mouth is pouring and filling me full.I hear the train'd soprano (what work with hers is this?)The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies,It wrenches such ardors from me I did not know I possess'd them,It sails me, I dab with bare feet, they are lick'd by the indolent waves,I am cut by bitter and angry hail, I lose my breath,Steep'd amid honey'd morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes of death,At length let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles,And that we call Being. MP3: War On Drugs - Taking The Farm
Elfin Lake Hut
Elfin Lake Hut, Garibaldi Park, British Columbia, CAHereMP3: My Bloody Valentine - Sometimes
Fleetwood Mac
The right pocket of my big blue puffy winter coat is now home to two tickets for Fleetwood Mac at Madison Square Garden.MP3: Fleetwood Mac - Think About It
Song Of The Whales
Barbed Wire
Some historians believe that the Old West died when the barbed wire came in.From The Wire That Fenced The West:
Across half a continent the American settler of the nineteenth century made his way westward with tools of the forest. Leaving the rocky coast line of the Atlantic, he passed the great inland waterways and advanced through the virgin forests with the aid of equipment such as his forefathers had used to found a new world. But when he came out of the forest, suddenly removed from familiar environment and faced with conditions for which no previous experience had prepared him, he found he was - in his own idiom - "not rightly outfitted" to go on. It was not a question of the quality of the axes and knives and spades and plows which had brought him through the wilderness of wooded lands onto the threshold of promise; it was a question of their suitability. The fact was, tools of the Eastern forests were not usable on Western plains and prairies. Change in scenery called for change and adaptation in provisions, and with the farm-minded pioneer, one of the features most radically in need of adaptation to the changing scene was fencing.
Sitar
Nature's Cameo
Watch: A western tourism video from the 1930s:Ford Motors Presents Nature's Cameo: Bryce Canyon National Park
Bridger Mountain Hat
This awful thing is on sale at Cabela's right now.Says one reviewer:
"I have purchased a number of fur hats in my day but this is by far the warmest and most comfortable. Not only does it keep the back of my head warm but you can wrap the legs around your face to block the wind. The only reason this hat did not receive 5 stars is due to the fact that I was attacked by a bird thinking it was wounded prey while I was out for a walk. A rare but unfortunate occurrence when wearing an animal pelt on your head. Also great in the rain. Didn't smell at all after it was wet and it makes a great present. I'm getting one for my wife."
(Hat Tip: Get Outdoors Blog)MP3: Arthur Russell - Close My Eyes
Polar Bear Club
If you're in New York, or any place for that matter, on New Year's Day, don't forget about the annual Polar Bear Clubswim down on Coney Island.And if you want to be smart, definitely forget about it.MP3: Phosphorescent - And The Swimming
I watched this "movie" many many moons ago and I remember thinking it was one of the most pathetic things I ever laid my eyes on. I wanted Ram and I got a James Bond production of Roger Rabbit. I'm sure it's still really bad, but I don't remember the dude from Cocktail being in it, and that movie is pretty okay by me.
Finally fixed my DVD player this weekend and started watching my birthday gift from Tim and Heidi, Bruce Brown's On Any Sunday.Bruce Brown FilmsYoutube: Steve McQueen in On Any Sunday
In 2005, Steven Rinella won a lottery permit to hunt for a wild buffalo, or American bison, in the Alaskan wilderness. Despite the odds--there's only a 2 percent chance of drawing the permit, and fewer than 20 percent of those hunters are successful--Rinella managed to kill a buffalo on a snow-covered mountainside and then raft the meat back to civilization while being trailed by grizzly bears and suffering from hypothermia."American Buffalo" is a narrative tale of Rinella's hunt. But beyond that, it is the story of the many ways in which the buffalo has shaped our national identity. Rinella takes us across the continent in search of the buffalo's past, present, and future: to the Bering Land Bridge, where scientists search for buffalo bones amid artifacts of the New World's earliest human inhabitants; to buffalo jumps where Native Americans once ran buffalo over cliffs by the thousands; to the Detroit Carbon works, a"bone charcoal" plant that made fortunes in the late 1800s by turning millions of tons of buffalo bones into bone meal, black dye, and fine china..
Frank and Deborah Popper on BTBNMP3: Pete Seeger - Home On The Range
From the Florida Trail Association
In the early 1960s, Jim Kern, a Miami resident, visited the Appalachian Trail for a backpacking trip and came back to Florida with a burning desire to create a long-distance hiking trail in his own backyard. Founding the Florida Trail Association to pursue that goal, Kern rounded up like-minded Floridians and set to work. The Florida Trail’s first blaze was painted in the Ocala National Forest near Clearwater Lake in October 1966.Today, Kern’s original dream of a 500-mile long distance hiking trail has grown to a federally designated National Scenic Trail more than 1,400 miles across the state of Florida..
A book from Johnny MalloyMP3: Califone - The Orchids (Thanks)
