Coyote Crossing

Now selling signed copies of the Zeke book

Really, it’s kind of embarrassing that it took this long to set something up. But if you’ve been holding out on buying the Zeke book because you really wanted a signed copy, you can now order that signed copy here. It’s 20th century book ordering

A few things on Friday

1) I have been reminded (via a Facebook post by the Center for Biological Diversity’s Great Basin guy Rob Mrowka) that I’ve been meaning to point you all in the direction of Chance of Rain, a wonderful blog on western water and related politics by

Writers write because we must, and other untruths

A week or so ago, eating a late breakfast with The Raven at Canters’ on Fairfax, she said she couldn’t imagine me not writing. It took me by surprise. She sees me not writing most of the time we’re together. I spend most of my waking hours not

Abandoning Taxonomy

We are, all of us, abandoning taxonomy, the ordering and naming of life. We are willfully becoming poor J.B.R., losing the ability to order and name and therefore losing a connection to and a place in the living world.

No wonder so few of us can

The empty barrel

Via greentangle:

The modern environmental movement is a messianic mission to save wild ground and at its heart — at spots like this unnamed canyon where we sit on a rock and eat while a cold front beats against Pusch Ridge — it always seems to me

Could green kill the desert?

Biologist Bruce M. Pavlik, author of The California Deserts: An Ecological Rediscovery, which I’m working my way through this week, has a great piece in the Los Angeles Times on Big Solar vs. the deserts.

The costs of industrializing the

Best field guide ever

I don’t do paid reviews of books nor other products, and I think bloggers who do are unethical — whether they disclose that the review is paid or not. I say this because I’m about to rant about how amazingly cool iBird Explorer Plus is, to the

I wish they’d stop printing books I want to read

...especially given that I have no income.

This one sounds good:

Every scientific study confirms that global warming will cause the amount of water in the Colorado River to decline, yet because we already use every drop, there is none to

Kirk Douglas Talks About Lonely Are The Brave

At a party in the early 1960s someone handed Kirk Douglas a copy of Ed Abbey’s novel The Brave Cowboy, recommending Douglas read it. Douglas liked the book enough to option it, and hired Dalton Trumbo to write the screenplay of what became the 1962

The Zeke Book

Those of you buying gifts this month may, he reminded everyone sidelong, want to consider the Zeke Book for dog-loving recipients. Or for animal-loving recipients in general. Especially for those with older pets. I’ve heard from a lot of people

Review: Trespass, Amy Irvine

It’s not surprising that Amy Irvine’s erstwhile neighbors in Utah’s San Juan County have supplied some of the harshest online reviews of her book Trespass: Living at the Edge of the Promised Land, released earlier this year.  They don’t all come