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...]
Enchanted By A Song
I accidentally left a playlist running on the computer at work while I was out chucking bundles of The Nugget Tuesday night. When I came back in to shut out the lights and lock up, I heard the most heart-stoppingly beautiful song. ’Twas Julie Fowlis, singing in Scots Gaelic. I was transfixed. I have never heard her before and now I must hear … [Read more...]
Smoke Of The Sioux
Breaker Morant has launched a new blog recounting the history of the Sioux Empire — not just the well-known Lakota tales of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, but also tales of the Sioux of the prairies and forests of Breaker’s home state of Minnesota. This looks to be an excellent project. Head on over to The Smoke of the Sioux and take in the … [Read more...]
Olga & Her Tiger
Another walk on the weird side, this time with a Polish artist obsessed with the 1920s — a time when his nation stood off a Bolshevik horde in one of the under-sung epics of the 20th Century. And wild animal familiars. And giant war machines. Jakub Rozalski is a Polish concept artist and illustrator. He is best known for his World of 1920+ series. … [Read more...]
The Sins Of ‘History’
I tried. I tried — twice — to find some redeeming reason to watch the first episode of The Men Who Made America: Frontiersmen. Couldn’t do it. I think I’m a pretty generous critic. I try to measure books, films, etc. by what they are, not by what they aren’t. And, usually, when I don’t like something I refrain from comment. I’d rather be the … [Read more...]
The Train Wrecker
The Anglo-Boer War is a bottomless well of tales of exceptional, eccentric and astonishing characters. Love him or loathe him, Harry Harbord “Breaker” Morant remains a fascinating case more than a century after his execution, and his defiant last words to a firing squad — “Shoot straight you bastards! Don’t make a mess of it!” continue to echo down … [Read more...]
A Tip Of The Hat To Frontier Women
‘Mrs. Petitcarras’ threw down a gauntlet (soft, white buckskin with a beaded floral pattern?) re: International Women’s Day. We do tend to neglect the distaff side here at FP, I admit. It is high time we tipped a hat and raised a place to the women of the frontier. * Life was hard for everybody on the Ohio Valley Frontier. It was especially … [Read more...]
Stuff That Works — Cabela’s Windbreaker
By Paul McNamee, Captain, Frontier Partisans New England Ranging Company My wife and I have a long running joke/tradition: We never go on vacation without buying a new sweatshirt. It’s not that sweatshirts are our favorite form of souvenir. It’s that we invariably under-pack and find ourselves a bit chilled. One year, on our annual Maine beach … [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...]
