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Recent Posts
- Review: “Your Friends and Neighbors” Season Two Begins With a Bad Back and a Huge Splash
- Review of “DTF St. Louis” Episode 5: David Harbour Deserves an Emmy
- The Year Without a Winter Over, Wildfire Season Begins
- On Pekka Hamalainen’s “Indigenous Continent”: Finnish Historian’s View of Native American History
- The Year Without a Winter Ends: It’s Spring!
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Category Archives: The West
"Dr. WarmLove or: How I Stopped Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Heat"
So I had the odd Flashback Experience of being visited last week by a college roommate I had not seen in twenty years (and we were roomies much longer ago than that, at the University of Texas, in Austin, circa … Continue reading
Posted in Climate Change, The West, Water Crisis
Tagged Climate Change, Drought, The Bird Saviors, The West
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Chris Nolan's "Interstellar" as Half-Baked Cli-Fi, or What Does Matthew McConaughey Eat in Outer Space? Pretzel Ions?
So I must first confess I’ve never been seduced by the eye-candy of Christopher Nolan’s films: Yes, they’re imaginative, clever, outlandish and topical. I’m all for that. But at some point they tend to turn so “Hollywood” that you have … Continue reading
Posted in books/film, Climate Change, The West
Tagged Book Reviewing, Climate Change, Drought, Interstellar, The Bird Saviors, The West
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On the Bear-Attack Film "Backcountry": Generation D Goes for a Hike
So I’m a sucker for a good bear-attack movie, having backpacked many times in the gorgeous/treacherous wilds of grizzly country (Alaska, Montana, Wyoming), where it’s often said that humans are not the top of the food chain, which can certainly … Continue reading
Posted in Bad TV, Bears, Horror Films, The West
Tagged Backcountry film, Film, Horror Movies, Millennials, The West
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Review of Reif Larsen's "I Am Radar" in the Dallas Morning News
So I’ve neglected this lonely little blog so often I should seriously feel guilty, but . . . I have my reasons. Note that I say I should feel guilty. But I don’t. (Well, maybe just a tad scrap of guilt is swirling around the door … Continue reading
The Heat Is On: Melting Santas and Family Values in the Era of Climate Change
So I haven’t blogged in—oh, just about forever (over two months)—but I’ve been fine and dandy, thank you very much, and trying to keep my ducks in a row: Besides being a professor, and all that entails, mainly I’ve been … Continue reading
Posted in Climate Change, The West
Tagged Climate Change, Drought, Photography, The Bird Saviors, The West, Water Crisis, Wildfires
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Review of "The Lousy Adult" Alongside Stephen Graham Jones's "Not For Nothing"
So the Dallas Morning News published this last Sunday a review of several books by (ex or present) Texas writers and my book of stories The Lousy Adult was one of those mentioned, but the cooler thing is that it’s … Continue reading
Posted in books, The West, Uncategorized, writing
Tagged Book Reviewing, Fiction Writing, Good Fiction, Stephen Graham Jones, The Lousy Adult
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Review of Malcolm Brooks's debut novel "Painted Horses," and What I've Been Up to All This Time
So I feel bad for my uncared-for little blog here, languishing away as I rush about in my busy life, never finding time to nurture, as they say. It’s like the freckled orphan in the corner, who you notice now … Continue reading
Posted in books/film, The West
Tagged Book Reviewing, Fiction Writing, Good Fiction, The West
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Review of Peter Heller's "The Painter" in the Dallas Morning News
So here’s my review of Peter Heller’s new novel, The Painter, today in the Dallas Morning News, here. It’s a good book, and I’ll have more to say about it this week, but for now I’ll let this review speak. … Continue reading
Posted in books, The West
Tagged Book Reviewing, Fiction Writing, Good Fiction, Peter Heller, The West
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Melting Ice Caps v. The In-Laws, With a Derisive Sneer at Marco Rubio
So I haven’t written much about Climate Change in a while (and in fact haven’t blogged, due to the hectic rush at the end of the term, but that’s over with, thank god) and here comes a batch of bad … Continue reading
Posted in Climate Change, Politics, The West
Tagged Climate Change, Politics, The West
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On Mark Bauerlein's "The Dumbest Generation" and Teaching to the Intellectually Challenged
So this little gem is priceless, coming from one of our last somewhat-intellectual news outlets, The New York Times: a media writer describing how he doesn’t read anymore, and seems happy (or Post-Shame, at least) to do nothing but watch TV … Continue reading
Posted in Bad TV, books/film, Cormac McCarthy, The West, writing
Tagged Book Reviewing, The Dumbest Generation
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