If I could roll back the years
Back when I was young and limber
Loose as ashes in the wind
I had no irons in the fire…
— Ian Tyson, 50 Years Ago
Irons in the fire? I got me some. We’re going to set out into some new territory here at Frontier Partisans. Look for a major announcement sometime in the next few days…
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Corb Lund’s Agricultural Tragic is out. It’s a good un, and I love that album cover…
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Speaking of cowboys… as we were… Craig Rullman’s work on the Len Babb Movie Project continues apace. Mike Biggers and I recorded the first piece of original music for the film last week, and we’re going to lay down my song Charlie Russell Sky for it as well. Craig’s trail has tracked across an outfit called the Traditional Cowboy Arts Association.
The Traditional Cowboy Arts Association is dedicated to preserving and promoting the skills of saddlemaking, bit and spur making, silversmithing and rawhide braiding and the role of these traditional crafts in the cowboy culture of the North American West.
Take a few minutes to browse through the site. The beauty will elevate your soul.
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This looks like a fun one. Drops at the end of the month:
It’s 1909, and Teddy Roosevelt is not only hunting in Africa, he’s being hunted. The safari is a time of discovery, both personal and political. In Africa, Roosevelt encounters Sudanese slave traders, Belgian colonial atrocities, and German preparations for war. He reconnects with a childhood sweetheart, Maggie, now a globe-trotting newspaper reporter sent by William Randolph Hearst to chronicle safari adventures and uncover the former president’s future political plans. But James Pierpont Morgan, the most powerful private citizen of his era, wants Roosevelt out of politics permanently. Afraid that the trust-busting president’s return to power will be disastrous for American business, he plants a killer on the safari staff to arrange a fatal accident. Roosevelt narrowly escapes the killer’s traps while leading two hundred and sixty-four men on foot through the savannas, jungles, and semi-deserts of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Congo, and Sudan.
Art by John Seerey-Lester.
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The wonderful Hillbilly Highways scouted this one up:
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I recently realized that I never posted this short film based on the exploits of Deneys Reitz. Stephen de Villiers created it as a student film project.
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Looks like I’m going to have to schedule some class time on July 25. Every education needs a bit of Bandit Wars.
SILVER CITY, N.M. – The Silver City Museum is offering a free webinar by Professor Andy Hernandez on the Bandit Wars along the U.S.-Mexico border surrounding Pancho Villa’s raid on Columbus, NM in 1916. This virtual lecture will take place at 11 a.m. on Saturday, July 25. Join the Zoom Webinar at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82522002786 or download the app ahead of time and enter Meeting ID: 825 2200 2786.
Texas Rangers patrolling the border.
Violence along the U. S. – Mexico associated with the Plan de San Diego and Pancho Villa’s raid on Columbus are often treated as discrete events. This presentation will explore the connections between Venustiano Carranza’s Machiavellian use of the Plan de San Diego, Villa’s decision to raid Columbus, NM, and the resulting Punitive Expedition and offer a more cohesive understanding of border violence during this period.
Andy Hernandez is Professor of History at Western New Mexico University.
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Speaking of Pancho Villa — his statue in Tucson has not fallen… yet.
As always, where you stand seems to depend on where you sit, and on whose ox is getting gored. While, to their credit, denizens of the political Right have not gone around toppling statues in fits of destructive adolescent pique — but they have it in for statues, too. Certain ones. Judicial Watch (arch-conservative) has deployed some legal procedural technicalities in an unsuccessful attempt to get the statue removed. Those who dislike the Villa statue think there’s something wrong with honoring a foreign terrorist who attacked the United States. Which is fair enough, right? But, then, all those controversial Confederates were also enemies of the United States, were they not? And they killed a whole bunch more Americans than Villa did.
Hard to get it right, I guess.
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The city administration of Denver proactively removed a statue of Kit Carson. Of course.
“Denver Parks and Recreation has removed the Kit Carson statue within the Pioneer Monument Fountain,” city spokeswoman Cyndi Karvanski said. “This was done proactively for safety and as a precautionary measure to keep it from being torn down similar to the sculpture at Civic Center park last night.”
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1870s Martin in Steve Earle’s collection.
Greg Waddell scouted up a video series featuring the legendary Steve Earle talking about Martin Guitars. As is his wont, Mr. Earle has taken his enthusiasm to an extreme — his collection runs to 132 guitars. I recall that his seventh ex-wife (see above) the lovely and talented Allison Moorer once threatened mayhem on a Mr. Earle’s New York City instrument dealer if he sold her husband one more guitar. Hah!
Extreme he may be, but I’d do the same with guitars and rifles and shotguns if I had the $$.
Anyhoo, thought y’all would find the 1870s and 1890s guitars of interest. Just don’t lend one to Quentin Tarantino…
Matthew says
Great to see a new piece by you. It’s been over a week since you last posted. I was going through withdrawl and seeing spiders on my arms.
I take Hunting Roosevelt is a novel and J.P. Morgan really did not send an assassin to kill Teddy?
JimC says
It’s a novel. As for Morgan… maybe not. But don’t think he wasn’t capable of it…
Matthew says
Yeah, I’m pretty sure he was capable of it.
Paul McNamee says
I had the same idea but instead of JP Morgan is would be Japanese assassins from a splinter group that were not happy with the results of the Russo-Japanese War.
And I wanted Tarzan, but the dates might work but it would be tricky … and he’d need to go unnamed due to trademark.
JimC says
I’d read that.
Keith West says
Me, too. Start writing, Paul.
I did have Charles Goodnight and Sally Chisholm plot to kill a President in an alternate history story. (I did have Woodrow Wilson assassinated in that one.)
Matthew says
That would be awesome, Paul.
Personally, I always wanted to see Tarzan battle ninjas. In many Japanese works ninjas are portrayed as leaping from branch to branch like Tarzan did.
Of course, I always wanted to write about modern day ninjas working for private intelligence companies. Which sounds ridiculous when I typed it.
lane batot says
OF COURSE the Cherokee book looks interesting to me–maught havta dig that one up….. As for statues being tumbled, I was recently joking on a friend’s post regarding Greek Statuary–about how them thangzs needed to come DOWN–as heck, they ain’t got no clothes on! I mean, they’z completely NEKKID!
David Wrolson says
The Hunting Roosevelt book sounds right up my alley.
I just read Stratton’s book on “The Wild Bunch” and I kept in mind, throughout, Ugly Hombre’s comment in your post on a possible remake.
Ugly Hombre>>>”You no longer have beat up verified tough guys and old tarantula’s who know how to handle a rifle like Holden, Ryan, Oates, the great Ben Johnson and so on. What you have today- in the film world, is a bunch of foppish girl singers.”<<<<
There were Marines and WW2 combat veterans and real cowboys and other assorted tough guys all over that movie-not only as actors, but in all other positions as well. There is no way that can be replicated.
I was most astonished at the various first hand connections to the Mexican Revolution-too numerous to mention here-not that surprising really since it had only been about 50 years away at that point-but interestingly, the train engine had seen service during the Revolution.
JimC says
I HAVE to get that Wild Bunch book.
John Roberts says
No problem finding an excuse to tear down the Pancho Villa statue. Who cares how he treated Americans! What counts is how he treated the Chinese. According to some accounts, he liked to tie them together in bunches by their pigtails, douse them with kerosene and set them alight. I don’t know the origin of his antipathy toward the Chinese, but it’s a plenty good excuse to tear down his statue. Of course, there may be a Chicano guard there to prevent it. Maybe one of those “preemptive removals” is in order.
JimC says
True that: Villa had a pathological hatred for Chinese that no biographer seems to be able to explain.
Ugly Hombre says
A remake of “The Wild Bunch” would be a abomination to Crom.. gives me the willies just to think about it..yeesh..
“Personally, I always wanted to see Tarzan battle ninjas. In many Japanese works ninjas are portrayed as leaping from branch to branch like Tarzan did.”
Tarzan would kick their tabi shod @$$’s!, its a little known fact that Tarzan learned “Great Sage Hand Ax” kung fu from a wandering Chinese safari cook back there on the dark continent. Mastered it well and specialized in the “Wooden Monkey” method and the “Monkey Rope”.
I lived in Japan for most of a decade- asked my martial arts teacher about ninjas..
“Sensei are their really ninjas?”
“Yes- but most of them went to the states to make money.”
lol
JimC says
That’s pretty funny. Quite a Ninja phase in, what, the ’80s?
John Roberts says
Back then the saying was, “If you have something to sell, paint it black and call it ninja.” Things have evolved. Now, it’s “paint it black and call it “tactical.”
JimC says
I keep getting pop up ads for CIA tactical pants.
Paul McNamee says
“Tactical bacon” should make someone a fortune.
Betty says
Tactical cell phone, no kidding. Waterproof. Black. Heavy. I plan to aim it at the head of a Black Hat, whenever.
The only thing wrong with it, I can’t make it work right. Could it be me? Naw.
Glad to be back at the campfire, Jim. Too many pressures of commitments have left me no time for Frontier Partisans, but I’m binge-catching-up now.
I know I’m not in step with the plaudits for Peckinpah; too much blood for me.
Passage of time has not changed my opinion.
Here’s a coincidence, Steve Earle’s Copperhead Road now on DirectTV Honky Tonk channel. Bye.
JimC says
Hey — good to have you back. Crank that SE.
Ugly Hombre says
Yep the 80’s Ninja mania! Even Lee Van Cleef was a Ninja!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_(American_TV_series)
Wth? It was kind of a joke in Japan, not to say that there are not people with old era Japanese martial arts who often stay hidden out in the Japanese boondock- but the Ninja Mania thing was like a cartoon. I was lucky to live there when I did and learned something but I missed a lot to because I was to young and stupid. I met a old Kenjitsu master, out in the hinterland, and could have learned from him but I thought I was to busy learning other things and missed my chance.
Taihen des..
If you ever get a chance to go to Japan jump on it. Its a wonderful county.
Would go back there tomorrow if I could…
Ugly Hombre says
“I just read Stratton’s book on “The Wild Bunch” There were Marines and WW2 combat veterans and real cowboys and other assorted tough guys all over that movie-not only as actors, but in all other positions as well. There is no way that can be replicated.”
Yes Sir-, that’s for damn sure. Emilio Fernández, born 1904 saw the revolution first hand, and was a force to be reckoned with, later in life lived in a hardened fortress in Mexico City- something like the hacienda in ” Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emilio_Fern%C3%A1ndez
“When he was a teenager, a fatal event forced him to flee his home and enlist in the ranks of the Mexican Revolution. Later, he entered the Mexican Military Academy (where in 1954 he gained the rank of colonel). In 1923 he took part in the uprising of Adolfo de la Huerta against the government of Álvaro Obregón, but this insurrection failed and he was sent to prison. He escaped, and left Mexico to go into exile, first in Chicago and later in Los Angeles.”
“The Wild Bunch” book is good, did not like the tie in attempt to the Vietnam war in the intro though, over blown and a dead horse beat on once to often imo.