From the Land of Cowboys to You; or, The Modern Buckaroo’s Guide to the World
Westness is in the eye of the beholder.
I was on the hunt for the most western of western images and I discovered westness in
cactus-shaped cookie jars, by God.
In vast space encircled by mountains. (People find this openness either really scary or really refreshing. I recommend bringing a gallon of water per day either way.)
Westness is [...]
Let’s see, where was I? Why yes, hip deep in Lorne Greene’s pillow lips circa Bonanza…
Sigh, no. I was in deeply in the wonder that is the Gene Autry Museum (aka the Cowboy Museum) and writing up another draft of the novel. Unlike movie cowboys, who seem to either
a.) multitask–fix barbed wire fences, herd cattle, [...]
A recent trip to the LA’s Autry National Center of the American West, aka the Cowboy Museum, yielded huge Westness moments. I don’t remember much of it–being so transported in ecstasy I wasn’t on the earthly plane–but I know I took a lot of pictures.
What is Westness? It’s the romantic thing that anything West of [...]
“I have often been asked how my characters differ from the traditional, larger-than-life heroes of the mythical West,” Mr. Kelton said in an interview with The Dallas Morning News in 2007. “ ‘Those,’ I reply, ‘are seven feet tall and invincible. My characters are 5-8 and nervous.’ ”
Elmer Kelton died August 22 in Texas, after a long [...]
Pioneer Woman is the reason I can’t lie when people ask if I am a real cowboy. I say no. There’s no getting around it.
I don’t live in the middle of nowhere (although there actually is plenty of alone time in NYC).
I can’t cut off calf nuts.
I don’t even eat calf nuts.
I don’t ride a [...]
The taxman/woman brings oppressive reality. No, not all of my money is my own. My sweat is not my own. Then I tell myself to drop kick that checkbook and cowboy up–time to see what is going on in the Wild Western Web.
One phenomena that never fails to cheer me up is the strange world of western fetish [...]
Walking Nebraska City’s main street from the Missouri River is a journey *cue swelling orchestra* filled with echoes of the hopes and disappointments of intrepid pioneers making their monumental trek across the wide country on the Oregon Trail.
O Pioneer!!!!
Freighters, Nebraska City, 1860 (Nebraska State Historical Society)
OK! OK, OK… sorry. Sorry for the purple prose.
I’m forced to be dramatic, [...]
Weren’t we supposed to be done with all these cowboy showdowns? Then along comes AIG, thinking business as usual, and they caught caught in populist crossfire. I’d feel sorry for them, but I’m not. I can hear a constant rustling in the bushes as one by one all of AIG’s friends and comrades abandon them [...]
The New York Times isn’t above reaching for hyperbolic language like a grocery store rag. I couldn’t help discovering–OK everything even remotely related to the West gets shot to my e-mail like a .44 caliber bullet so I can read these things greedily as if they were pulp novels, of which I have over three [...]
Another blog hiatus, but another excellent reason–a writing residency “where the West begins.” Nebraska City, dear buckaroos and buckarettes, is the place where the frontier began. Dripping from a shallow crossing of the Missouri River, pioneers were invited on their trek across the plains by a wide main street that gently lifted them to level ground and [...]