My first Zozobra, Sept. 1, 1960. Truly a monstrous front page, from the first-name reference to the governor to the juxtaposition of the “Natives Massacred” headline on a Congo story over a photo of Santa Fe kid in a Native headdress. In other news that day, my mother got hit in the head with an …
Link — Gay Talese and Tom Wolfe Talk Donald Trump – Arts Intel “Flak Catchers” by François Busnel, based on interviews with Wolfe and Talese in 2017, published by Graydon Carter’s airmail.news. Uncredited photo accompanied airmail.news story online. Excerpts below. Note: This was written and published before the second-term Trump experience. I disagree with Talese’s …
I should have known that Daniel Boone was not the first in poetry to cry the words, “Elbow room!” Sure enough, it was not my childhood hero in the Arthur Guiterman poem titled Daniel Boone. Lo, it was more likely King John in Act V, Scene VII of William Shakespeare’s play of the same name. …
I met Ollie Reed Jr. in 1978, when we were crisscrossing the state covering Bruce King and Joe Skeen in a colorful New Mexico governor’s race, Ollie for the Albuquerque Tribune and I for the Santa Fe New Mexican. The fall dust-up between the two big New Mexico ranchers was made for us. They drawled as heavily …
Because of wartime secrecy, the Santa Fe New Mexican could not report on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos until atomic bombs were dropped on Japan in August 1945. The atomic bomb developed at Los Alamos was tested at White Sands on July 16, 1945. You can read an excellent account of the Manhattan Project …
Jim Belshaw obit by Ollie Reed in today’s Albuquerque Journal: https://www.abqjournal.com/2541425/journal-columnist-championed-underdogs-knew-how-to-make-readers-laugh.html
I resort to taking pictures with my iPhone when I don’t have much to say. It happens more often these days. Here I am again. Don’t get me wrong. I’m reading plenty and I watch many hours of news and punditry on TV. I have rewarding conversations via email with several friends. Cowboy is always …
I was doing some casual research on the history of Zozobra and Santa Fe Fiesta when I came across a front-page news story by Old Gloomy himself. In fairness to the newspaper’s current publisher and editor, I note right off the bat that the Zozobra byline appeared in the Aug. 20, 1943, edition of the …
Summer after summer, something draws me to reading about the Battle of the Little Bighorn. This year I am reading simultaneously about the battle of Mar-a-Lago. I was born in August 1949, so I don’t think it’s the just the stars that draw me to the Custer defeat and the fleeting Native victory of June …
I am 99 percent convinced now that there is not a novel in me, or at least that I am not capable of producing one. I’ve started enough of them to know that I quickly lose interest and, even if I could carry one through, know I probably would be embarrassed by the result. This …
dream ranch 