Storytelling and the intersection of “Myth” and “History” have been much on my mind of late. I place those loaded words in quotation marks because they are not as straightforward and easy to pin down as we might tend to think. Considering History, as Napoleon had it, “a set of lies that people have agreed upon” is too harsh, but it remains that … [Read more...]
Digging Up The Cellar
By Paul McNamee Captain, Frontier Partisans New England Ranging Company In the consciousness of the general public, if Robert E. Howard is remembered at all, he is remembered as the creator of Conan (the Barbarian). In the past two decades — give or take a few years — Howard scholars and fans have worked hard to bring much more of his … [Read more...]
Steve Tompkins And His Grinning, Unappeased Aboriginal Demons
I never met Steve Tompkins. Never even exchanged an email with the man, though I often thought to do it. Then it was too late. Nine years ago today, Steve Tompkins died suddenly. His loss was a gut punch to a lot of folks, including me. For it is no exaggeration to say that Frontier Partisans, Warriors of the Wildlands and Running Iron … [Read more...]
Booked And Boered
Last Wednesday we trekked across the Cascades to Eugene to fetch Ceili home from college for Spring Break. There’s nothing more delightful, in my estimation, than hitting the road with my Lady Love in the rain with Celtic music to accompany the journey up and over the Santiam Pass and through the misty mountains. Rather anomalously, it stopped … [Read more...]
Out On The Borders
By Rick Schwertfeger, Captain, Frontier Partisans Southern Command, Austin, Texas Pancho Villa crossed the border in the year of Ought Sixteen The people of Columbus still hear him riding through their dreams — Tom Russell, “Tonight We Ride” This Bulgarian beach was on the border with Turkey. East German summer vacationers were called … [Read more...]
Shotguns & Stagecoaches
When I was a lad, I frequently visited my cousin Marlane Turner, who lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. Twenty years to the day older than me, Marlane recognized and enabled my interest in history. We visited any number of historic sites in the Bay Area — from the Golden Gate Bridge to Jack London’s cabin housed in Oakland. Several times we … [Read more...]
Cowboy Capitalist
The mysterious FP correspondent “Mrs. Petticaras” has tossed a little grenade into camp. The Jameson Raid was a pivotal moment in the history of South Africa, linking events from the Anglo-Boer War to the declaration of the Union of South Africa in 1910. For more than a century, the failed revolution has been interpreted through the lens of … [Read more...]
The Outpost
By Paul McNamee — Captain, Frontier Partisans New England Ranging Company Nuristan province in northern Afghanistan is historically some of the most difficult terrain in which to conduct warfare. It is the land of Rudyard Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King. The mountains chewed up the forces of Alexander the Great, the British Empire, and … [Read more...]
Bambi — A Critter Geek Critique Of A Little-Known Novel
By Lane Batot, Scout, Frontier Partisans, North Carolina Sector I Let’s first get that Disney cartoon feature out of the way, which has become such a cliché and a lightning rod in our society, and that differs considerably in some ways from the book supposedly written for adult readers: I DID see the Disney film, way, way back in 1964, when I … [Read more...]
Lend A Pard A Hand…
We’ve all been there a time or two: The Blackfeet steal your horses and leave you afoot out on the starveling prairie; a hippo overturns your dugout and dumps your whole outfit to the bottom of the Zambezi River… Our pard Eccentric Cowboy has fallen upon some hard times and needs a hand. He ain’t asking for a handout though: He’s got trade goods … [Read more...]
