Blank on Blank from PBS does Elliott Smith

The late, great Elliott Smith is one of the finest musicians of my generation.  I love the Blank on Blank series from PBS which animates old interviews with deceased famous people.




Do you somehow not know Elliott Smith? Check out some songs from his most known album from 2004 "From a Basement on the Hill"


Coast to Coast


Pretty (Ugly Before)


Memory Lane

Happy Earth Day!

Please take some time today to reflect on the history and future of the conservation and environmental movement.  As fisherpeople, we are land and water stewards who routinely reap the benefits of wild lands and unpolluted systems.  There are a lot of good, hardworking people who have gone through hell to protect earth's systems and creatures.  Some have given their lives.  There is a lot more work to do.

The movie A Fierce Green Fire premiers TODAY on American Masters on your local PBS station.  Check your local listing schedule here.

An excerpt from "Thinking Like a Mountain" by Aldo Leopold

"My own conviction on this score dates from the day I saw a wolf die. We were eating lunch on a high rimrock, at the foot of which a turbulent river elbowed its way. We saw what we thought was a doe fording the torrent, her breast awash in white water. When she climbed the bank toward us and shook out her tail, we realized our error: it was a wolf. A half-dozen others, evidently grown pups, sprang from the willows and all joined in a welcoming melee of wagging tails and playful maulings. What was literally a pile of wolves writhed and tumbled in the center of an open flat at the foot of our rimrock.

In those days we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf. In a second we were pumping lead into the pack, but with more excitement than accuracy: how to aim a steep downhill shot is always confusing. When our rifles were empty, the old wolf was down, and a pup was dragging a leg into impassable slide-rocks.

We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes - something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters' paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view."

Read the entire version here.

This is also a chapter of  A Sand County Almanac: and Sketches Here and There, one of the greatest books of all time!