Lobo - The Wolf That Changed America (BBC Natural World)

Here is the link you have all been waiting for. Watch the BBC Natural World video "Lobo - The Wolf That Changed America.' http://www.veoh.com/videos/v7973289q3qTgwHB

This is a FANTAstic film and has ignited a huge amount of Seton interest in the U.K.


Online Videos by Veoh.com

Let's Have a Little Bird Music

From the Winnipeg Free Press. Excerpts here. Click here to read it all.

BALMORAL -- It's the male birds that sing and it's mating that turns them into little Pavarottis.

But it was a threat to habitat that transformed birds here into recording artists.

Aluminum maker Alcan wanted to build a smelter near Balmoral, 30 kilometres north of Winnipeg, and one of the comments people kept making was "at least there's nothing up there."

"I thought, 'There's lots up here,' " said Catherine Thexton, who lived on a farm in the area with her late husband George. To prove it, Thexton would venture into the bush on their Interlake farm and record bird sounds.

The Alcan plan was scrapped but a recording industry was launched. Thexton's first vinyl record, In Praise of Spring (1981), sold more than 1,000 copies, followed by Meadowlark Music (1983), also on vinyl, which sold more than 7,000 copies.

...

Another of Thexton's recordings, Dusk to Dawn, sounds as if it's about all-nighters at a drive-in theatre. It came about after many nights when Thexton would lie in bed with the screen window open and wonder what bird and animal sounds she heard.

For example, she wondered if the "pahh" sound was an owl or a fox. (Naturalist writer Ernest Thompson Seton encountered the same dilemma. In his case, he determined it was an owl only after he killed the owl and found the noise stopped.) Dusk to Dawn includes the red fox and various species of toads, frogs and night owls.

With her parabolic microphone, shaped like a satellite dish, Thexton looks more like someone trying to intercept extraterrestrial signals. The apparatus amplifies sound 75 times for her recordings, but she has to pinpoint a bird's location. Even then, birds don't speak on cue.

...

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca

That Good Ol' Tipi Living

From Mother Earth News

A few summers ago I had the opportunity to be involved in a mountain goat research project. Needless to say, I was excited by the prospect of spending half a year in the wilds of Montana ... but I did foresee one serious problem. My assistant and I planned to live—from summer through early winter—on top of an 8,660-foot peak ... but we weren't sure just what in blue blazes we were going to live in!

I studied the alternatives and rejected everything from "space age" tents (too cramped) to geodesic domes (not practical) to log cabins (too permanent ... suppose the goats moved?). No, we had to have something roomy, portable, inexpensive, easy to build, and able to adjust to a wide range of temperatures. In short, what we needed was a tipi!

THE "PLAINS" ADVANTAGES

Most folks will probably be surprised—as I was—to learn that the best movable shelter ever devised was perfected hundreds of years ago by the Plains Indians of the American Southwest. But the more I looked into the subject, the more convinced I became that—although they look like uncomplicated structures—tipis are actually more precisely designed than most of the "high technology" houses that are being built today!

As Caleb Clark, the old trapper in Ernest Thompson Seton's Two Little Savages, said: "Ye kin live in it forty below zero and fifty 'bove suffocation an' still be happy. It's the changeablest kind of a layout for livin' in." And Caleb wasn't talking majority, either. A tipi can be snugged down to endure subfreezing winters or—with its skirts lifted—will keep its residents cool in roasting summer weather. Its conical shape sheds rain ... and withstands hurricane winds that would dislodge any tent (and a good many stone or brick homes!). And the Indian dwelling will hold the heat-but not the smoke -of a toasty f ire.

I was also surprised to discover how spacious the cone-shaped homes are. My fellow -goater"' and I found we had plenty of room in our 16-foot-diameter shelter. In fact, on occasion we had five people bedded down 'round the fire ... without a single crowding problem. And these practical accommodations have another, more subtle, advantage: Living in a tipi provides a unique, at-one-with-nature experience. A cone dweller is in touch with—and yet shielded from—all the changing whims of weather. Tipi walls let the sun illuminate the interior by day ... and provide a curved screen for firelit shadow dances at night Chipmunks may perch on the shelter's poles , violets sprout from its floor, or moonlight stream through the smoke hole—mixing with the glow of a fading fire—and form a sight too beautiful for words. Little wonder the Indians (who revered nature) considered a tipi a temple as well as a home.

Read it all here

High Goals

from Health Beyond Civilization Remedial health for the aspiring indigenous soul

Having established a certain degree of grounding in our experience of our own health, it’s worth it to start exploring goals.
I’d like to set the bar sky-high by looking at a few accounts of, for lack of a better term, superhuman feats.
Ernest Thompson Seton, in Gospel of the Redman, wrote,
The most famous runner of ancient Greece was Pheidippides, whose record run from Athens to Sparta was 140 miles in 36 hours. Among our Indians, such a feat would have been considered very second-rate. In 1882, at Fort Ellice, I saw a young Cree who, on foot, had just brought in despatches from Fort Qu’Appelle (125 miles away) in 25 hours. It created almost no comment. I heard little from the traders but cool remarks like, “A good boy”, “pretty good run”. It was obviously a very usual exploit, among Indians.
The two Indian runners, Thomas Zafiro and Leonicio San Miguel, ran 62 1/2 miles, i.e. from Pachuca to Mexico City, in 9 hours, 37 minutes, November 8, 1926, according to the El Paso Times, February 14, 1932. This was 9 1/4 minutes to the mile.
The Zunis have a race called, “Kicked Stick.” In this, the contestants each kick a stick before them as they run. Dr. F. W. Hodge tells me that there is a record of 20 miles covered in 2 hours by one of the kickers.
The Tarahumare mail carrier runs 70 miles a day, every day in the week, carrying a heavy mailbag, and he doesn’t know that he is doing an exploit. In addition, we are told: “The Tarahumare mail carrier from Chihuahua to Batopiles, Mexico, runs regularly more than 500 miles a week; a Hopi messenger has been known to run 120 miles in 15 hours.”
The Arizona Indians are known to run down deer by sheer endurance, and every student of Southwestern history will remember that Coronado’s mounted men were unable to overtake the natives when in the hill country, such was their speed and activity on foot.

Read it all

here's the chance to go to school on what master naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton called "the oldest of writing",tracks.

A new approach to the art of tracking mammals.

Blest with a Magic Power is he,
Drinks deep where others sipped;
And Wild Things write their lives for him
In endless manuscript.

-Ernest Thompson Seton
("The Trailer")

YOU WAKE ON AN UNNATURALLY bright winter's morning and, squinting, peer out your bedroom window. As unexpected as enchantment, a half-foot of snow has fallen while you slept, and you're fairly pulled out of bed by the childish urge to be the first to mark the clean white sheet that's settled over your yard. Ignoring coffee for once, you dress quickly, fired by the adrenaline high of dramatic weather, and rush outside . . . only to find that smaller feet have written where you'd hoped to scratch your name. Put your petty disappointment aside; here's the chance to go to school on what master naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton called "the oldest of writing",tracks.

From Mother Earth News. Read it all here.

'Immersive' museum to showcase N.M. - SantaFeNewMexican.com

'Immersive' museum to showcase N.M. - SantaFeNewMexican.com

This new museum, The New Mexican History Museum, opening next year adjacent to The Palace of the Governors, plans an exhibition featuring Ernest Thompson Seton in 2011.

Reading Copy » Blog Archive » Slow Food and Ernest Thompson Seton

Slow Food and Ernest Thompson Seton

I cam across this blog entry from abe.books. So Wild Animals I Have Known is a best seller one hundred and ten years after it was first published. Incidentally, both Blue Skies Today and our sister site Blue Sky! - The Ernest Thompson Seton Pages (www.etsetoninstitute.org) had record-breaking numbers of visits over the past week too, presumably due to the BBC special. Unfortunately, we have not been able to view it in the U.S. because the website blocks viewing outside the U.K. Hopefully, it will be shown on PBSinthe future.

Slow Food and Ernest Thompson Seton

On the back of a BBC2 feature titled Lobo: The Wolf that Changed America, Ernest Thompson Seton’s 110-year-old classic Wild Animals I Have Known shot to No.1 on AbeBooks.co.uk’s bestseller list last week.

Seton was one of the key pioneers of the Boy Scout movement, which incidentally is celebrating its centennial this year. You can read about it on our Boy Scouts feature.

Also on the top 10 is W.M.W. Fowler’s Countryman’s Cooking. The book was first sold 40 years ago by Willie Fowler in his local pub and was forgotten until recently when it was rediscovered in a charity shop and republished. Featuring traditional English countryside recipes the book is a gift from the heavens for slow foodies.

Top 10 bestsellers for AbeBooks.co.uk for the week of March 31-April 6

1. Wild Animals I Have Known by Ernest Thompson Seton
2. Countryman’s Cooking by W.M.W. Fowler
3. The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
4. Shamanic Journeying: A Beginner’s Guide by Sandra Ingerman
5. The New Strategic Selling by Stephen E. Heiman
6. Ulysses by James Joyce
7. Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping by Paco Underhill
8. Cancer Vixen: A True Story by Marisa Acocella Marchetto
9. Paul for Everyone: Romans by Tom Wright
10. Once Upon a Time in the North by Philip Pullman

Farm School

Farm School

This is a fantastic website and blog which should appeal to Seton afficionados. Here is a link to a great comprehensive post about Seton on that site.

A man, a wolf and a whole new world - Telegraph

Steve Gooder tells the tale of a British-born hunter and his mighty foe - and how their duel in the dying days of the Wild West led to the birth of America's conservation movement

It was the moment Ernest Thompson Seton had been waiting for. After months of frustration, the professional wolf hunter finally had his quarry in his sights.

He raised his Winchester rifle and prepared to put a
bullet between the eyes of "Old Lobo", a notorious wolf that had killed hundreds of cattle.

But, face to face with his adversary for the first time, something deep within the hunter changed. He slowly lowered his gun and decided to take Lobo back alive.

The year was 1894 and it was a moment that would prove a crucial turning point, not just for Seton, but also for the fate of America's wilderness and its wild creatures.

British-born Seton had grown up with wolves on the Canadian frontier and written the definitive manual on how to catch them. More than two centuries earlier, his Scottish ancestors had helped wipe out the last of Britain's wild wolves.

Yet there was another, less bloodthirsty, side to Seton. His backwoods childhood had left him with a real love and fascination for nature and he would eventually go on to become both a leading light in America's emerging conservation movement and a tireless advocate for the protection of wolves.

It all began in October 1893, when Seton travelled to a remote corner of New Mexico "to catch vermin". What had once been the land of the Apache and the buffalo had now become the domain of cattle ranchers, and the last remaining wolves were being picked off as fast as the bounty hunters could trap and shoot them. But a few "outlaw wolves" still eluded capture.

Among these elite survivors was a reputedly giant beast, known as Old Lobo, who had thwarted every attempt to kill him. Seton was merely the latest in a string of would-be assassins who had come and gone.

BBC - Science & Nature - Natural World

BBC - Science & Nature - Natural World: "Lobo - The wolf that changed America
Wed 2 Apr 8.00pm (GMT) BBC Two

Ernest Thompson Seton's account of how he hunted a cattle-killing wolf became a pivotal part of American history, helping to change the way people see wolves and the wilderness. In his efforts to find, capture, and kill Lobo, Seton came to understand the animal's intelligence, loyalty and warmth. Although he finally succeeded in his task, he never killed a wolf again. A combination of wildlife and history, this film is based on the personal diaries of Ernest Thompson Seton himself."

From Michelle Styles in the U.K.

Ernest Thompson Seton Read it all here

On Tuesday, BBC2 will broadcast a programme about Ernest Thompson Seton, one of America's early environmentalists. He was born in South Shields, Durham, grew up in Canada and spent the end of his life at Seton Castle near Santa Fe New Mexico. And as it happens someone my father knew as a boy when he lived in Santa Fe. Seton was an old man at the time, and my father always spoke of him with awe.
I can remember watching the Walt Disney movie about Lobo the wolf and my father getting out Wild Animals I Have Known and showing me Seton's signature. Seton had signed the book for my grandfather and had included a picture of a hangman's noose with the words -- hang Hitler. My grandfather was an officer in the US navy. My grandmother and father had moved to Santa Fe during WW2 because my father suffered from asthma. Seton lived a few miles from Santa Fe. My father as a boy was quite active in the boy scouts which may be why they knew him. Seton was one of the founding members of the Boy Scouts and wrote the first Boy Scout manual among other things. However, at that point, Santa Fe was not a large place...
My father was very impressed with him and had me read Wild Animals I Have Known after I watched the programme. Seton was a natural storyteller and brought the various animals to life, so it was a delight to read.
The book now sits proudly in the bookcase in the dining room. My children have all enjoyed the stories. And it is a book that should be read by anyone interested in natural history and conservation.
Seton's daughter Ann wrote historical romance novels under the pen name of Anya Seton. I did not realise this until yesterday, but thought it interesting.
Anyway, I shall look forward to watching the programme. Seton's book apparently had a profound influence on David Attenborough. And he deserves to remembered.

posted by Michelle Styles @ 11:07 AM

Scouting and Culture Wars

Editor's note: I found this guest column by our friend and Scouting historian, Nelson Block, published in the Waco Tribune. It is definitely worth reading in its entirety.

Nelson Block, guest column: Scouting and 'culture wars'

Monday, March 17, 2008

HOUSTON — Rick Perry’s new book, On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For, is portrayed as a tribute. Actually, it’s the latest attack on a great American institution.

Perry praises the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) as a paragon of “traditional American values” then co-opts scouting to vilify those he and like-minded politicians and talk-show hosts consider political enemies.

This group invented the “culture war” and casts liberals as the religion-bashing, authority-hating, character-deficient bad guys in it who would create a world “where moral relativism reigns and individualism runs amok.”

If the governor understood scouting’s history, he would know it uses many concepts championed by liberal and progressive leaders among its founders.

Scouting and several other movements evolved to alleviate poor social, public health and educational conditions created by the Industrial Revolution in England and America, as young people left their rural homes for cities with low-paying factory jobs and dissolute pursuits far from moderating family relationships.

Victorian and Edwardian reformers responded by helping people improve their lives, promoting the idea that hard work brings rewards, among other principles. Although Perry suggests that industriousness and faith are not liberal values, Scouting’s liberal and progressive founders embraced them.

In 1902, liberal American naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton established the Woodcraft Movement, based on camping and American Indian life, to enrich modern leisure time.

He incorporated educational principles described by liberal educator John Dewey, who advocated children working together in social situations where the child would “emerge from his original narrowness of action and feeling to conceive of himself from the standpoint of the welfare of the group.” BSA later named Seton its first chief Scout.

In 1908, British general R.S.S. Baden-Powell published the book that popularized the Boy Scouts, Scouting for Boys. He incorporated concepts then considered liberal perfected during his army years: encouraging noncommissioned officers to exercise leadership, personally training soldiers in military scouting and providing them with wholesome entertainment.

The principle was the same for both soldiers and Scouts — make the individual responsible for a task, then give him the freedom to accomplish it.

When Scouting came to America, liberals and progressives immediately supported it, including Theodore Roosevelt and James E. West, BSA’s first chief Scout executive. West began his progressive activism as a teenager in a Washington, D.C., orphanage, fighting for the children to have a library and attend public school.

These leaders used liberal social principles to build the Boy Scouts. Unfortunately, Perry uses Scouting to build support for his particular social principles.

For example, Perry considers public prayer an important part of religion, and by extension, Scouting. However, Baden-Powell held that beyond a personal belief in God, religion was about helping people. When people asked if he prayed, he was tempted to reply, “Not often: I am far too busy giving thanks.”

Yes, the Boy Scouts’ values are worth fighting for, but Perry picks a fight with his fellow Americans and misrepresents this institution by claiming it is at odds with liberalism.

Liberalism then and now recognizes that people realize their greatest potential in exercising personal freedom, and that such freedom comes with responsibility to the society that supports it.

Nelson R. Block, a Houston Boy Scout leader for almost 30 years , co-chaired the Johns Hopkins University program “Scouting: A Centennial History Symposium.”

Here is the link to the Waco Tribune.

Paw prints could lead to a wildcat

Follow the tracks

Yes! Follow the tracks. In the words of naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton, "Look ever for the track . . . it is the priceless, unimpeachable record of the creature's life and thought, in the oldest writing known on earth."

Follow the tracks. Leave the city. Climb into the chaparral. Walk among the scrub oak, watching for signs- claw marks low on a gnarled tree trunk, a trace of scat, scratch marks on the ground.

And at last, look there! A print, scalloped front and back. Four toes, no claw marks. Another, and another, some even made by a two-legged animal.

From The Thousand Oaks Acorn Read it all here.

In the wings

From the Charlotte Observer:
"Another month will wind down by the end of this week, even with the leap day added to February every fourth year to realign our calendars.
February's full moon is often referred to as the Hunger Moon. Perhaps there's another, more appropriate name for the silvery globe, round as a medallion and bright as a silver dollar, rising late in a brittle eastern sky. The late artist-naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton suggested it be known as our Awakening Moon. Arriving without heat, it brings on the winds of change."

Read it all

Self-Sufficient Living » Blog Archive » How to Construct A Plains Indian Tipi (Part 1)

Self-Sufficient Living » Blog Archive » How to Construct A Plains Indian Tipi (Part 1)

There were 50 tents made of tanned hides, very bright red and white in color and bell-shaped, with flaps and openings, and built as skillfully as those of Italy, and so large that in the most ordinary ones four different mattresses and beds were easily accommodated. The Indians . . . are as well sheltered in their tents as they could be in any house. ”
From Don Juan de Oñate’s account of a 1599 Great Plains expedition
“Tazhebute came to join us with a good Indian tent . . . Those tents have no equal for camping purposes. They shed the rain well, and in cold weather one can build afire right in the center of them, with the smoke rising cleanly up out of the top, where the flaps are set to suit the way of the wind.
“Thomas Henry Tibbles, describing an 1881 trip among the Ponca Indians in his book, BUCKSKIN AND BLANKET DAYS
“Ye kin live in it forty below zero and fifty ‘bove suffocation an’ still be happy. It’s the changeablest kind of a layout for livin’ in. ”Caleb Clark, The Old Trapper, in Ernest Thompson Seton’s TWO LITTLESAVAGES, 1903

100 Years of Illustration : Ernest Thompson Seton's The American Bison or Buffalo

Main
Ernest Thompson Seton's The American Bison or Buffalo

Ernest Thompson Seton was a force to be reckoned with as author and illustrator of scores of books about nature and Indian lore. He was a Scot born Ernest Evan Thompson in England on 14 August 1860, who with his parents emigrated to Canada at the age of six. To avoid an abusive father he took to the woods as an escape, where he became fascinated by nature and drawing animal life. His work was good enough for him to win a scholarship at the Royal Academy in London.

Later, he changed his last name to Seton and began a career as an artist, writer and naturalist, eventually moving to New York City where he became successful enough to build a home in Cos Cob, Connecticut, a suburb of Greenwich.

He was also famous as a mover and shaper in the U.S.A. of the Boy Scout movement, founded by Lord Baden-Powell, who took Scouting world wide.

You can read more about this as well as biographical information at the following links:

Wikipedia,

here,

and here.

These are scans from his lead article in the October 1906 issue of Scribner's Magazine, The American Bison or Buffalo.

Click on images to enlarge them.

Ets_buffalo_1

A Buffalo Herd in Early Fall.


Ets_buffalo_1x

Detail of the illustration above.


Ets_bulls_eye

One of the studies Seton made while drawing buffalos.


Ets_bison_3

A large bull buffalo.

Ets_bison_4

A Catalo, or hybrid cow.


Ets_bison_5

A Catalo yearling.


Ets_bison_6

A very high-humped old bull buffalo.


Ets_bison_7

Seton titled this, The old bull's last fight.

Posted by PAUL GIAMBARBA on February 01, 2008 at 12:59 PM in Ernest Thompson Seton 1860-1946 | Permalink

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Tragic Death for Most Wild Animals

A Letter to the Editor From The Modesto Bee

Artist-naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton stated that every creature in the wild dies a tragic death. No wild animal dies peacefully in bed surrounded by its family and friends. They either starve to death, succumb to disease, or are killed and eaten by other animals. The small percentage that fall to a hunter's gun or bow suffer the least pain and misery. Deer that overpopulate suffer serious malnutrition, coyotes and foxes suffer hideous mange epidemics. Nature finds ways to control numbers, of which the human hunter is the most merciful method. I object to those who say that the other ways are better because they are natural.
I suppose if they came across a sick and dying animal they would refuse to put it out of its misery so as not to interfere with nature. And I cannot believe those who advocate control through contraception. They are promoting an attitude that it is better to not live at all than to ever experience any pain or fear. That attitude, taken to its logical conclusion, would claim that the best thing for all living things would be to eliminate them, including us, immediately.
CHAD ORTON
Delhi

Boyhood before the Xbox

Virtual adventures didn't begin with 3D graphics and computer games. Neither did parental anxiety
December 23, 2007 Peter MartynTORONTO STAR
The absence of modern paraphernalia would make the boy's world of a century ago seem more alien than deep space to the youngsters on a 2007 Christmas list: no video games or miniature music players, no cellphones, no television, video or movies.
And certainly no political correctness. The post-colonial ethos had not been invented, not by a long shot.
But parents were concerned, then as now, that the seductions of modern life were spoiling the young, particularly those living in the booming cities at the turn of the 19th century. Literacy rates were rising; books were the Xbox of the day. Popular authors joined the movement to instill "traditional values" in the boys of the late Victorian era – stoicism, independence and self-reliance, and a sense of imperial history.
Two historical artifacts still worth putting under the tree for any young teen or 'tween boy today (you can decide if girls might also be interested), are Ernest Thompson Seton's Two Little Savages and Daniel Carter Beard's The American Boy's Handy Book. A third, modern title is The Dangerous Book for Boys by brothers Conn and Hal Iggulden. Published more than a century after the others, but written in a similar vein, the latter title has spent months on the New York Times bestseller list and was book of the year at the Galaxy British Book Awards.
My favourite remains Two Little Savages, inspired by Seton's own youthful adventures in Toronto's Don Valley. Today you can buy a photographically reproduced Dover edition with Seton's original illustrations.
Seton wrote Two Little Savages while a naturalist for the Manitoba government. He was already famous for Wild Animals I Have Known (1898), one in a wildly successful illustrated animal series.
From the illustrations reproduced here and the subtitle, Being The Adventures of Two Boys Who Lived as Indians and What They Learned, you'll realize this book is devoid of political correctness. It is a story of Victorian-era boys "playing Injun." Real Indians only appear in a couple of paragraphs near the end of the book. They are sketched respectfully but adhere to the stereotype of the aloof native. There is boyish "Indian talk" with "Ugh," "Heap good," and "wampum," etc. which some might find offensive – but the boys' frontier dialect is mimicked, as well.
The reader is transported to an imagined Canada in the mid-19th century. Shy, sickly Yan is fascinated by birds and pines for the woods; his home life is horrid – a lazy, abusive, domineering father dotes on introspective Yan's robust but unscrupulous brother; his mother is self-absorbed and unloving. After nearly succumbing to consumption (tuberculosis), 14-year-old Yan is sent to the fictional community of Sanger, "a settlement just emerging from the backwoods period."
Homesick, he makes friends with Sam Raften, the mischievous boy of the household where he boards, and they venture into the woods. Yan's "eddication" wins over Sam's hard but good-hearted father, who gives the boys three weeks off from farm chores – if they agree to really live like Indians.
They begin a blissful period learning woodcraft from Caleb Clark, who Sam says had been "a hunter and a trapper oncet.'' Two Little Savages is filled with lyrical descriptions of nature and drawings of birds and animals – a Seton trademark.
Read it all here.

Academy to resurrect mission at Seton Castle site

Building's ruins from fire in November 2005 will be left as part of garden
By Julie Ann Grimm The New Mexican
12/23/2007 - 12/24/07The burned-out ruin of a historic home known as Seton Castle will become a contemplative garden, and an eco-friendly building downhill from the site is likely to be constructed early next year. The Academy for the Love of Learning is preparing to resume its work as an education think tank after more than two years of delay resulting from a fire Nov. 15, 2005. The nonprofit was midway through renovations on the nearly 80-year-old home in Arroyo Hondo when construction workers reported the fast-moving fire. Before two hours had passed, the roof of the building and much of its interior had been consumed. Today, several stone walls and other features remain from what was a 32-room home designed by conservationist Ernest Thompson Seton. Seton, who wrote more than 60 books and helped found the Boy Scouts of America, was also an artist who painted and drew images from the natural world. His family sold the estate and the nationally recognized home to the academy in 2003. The state fire marshal and a federal agency both ruled out arson, but no cause for the fire was ever determined. It took the insurance company about 20 months to settle the case, said academy founder Aaron Stern. In the meantime, efforts to rebuild the castle fell apart. "Our deepest desire was to rebuild the castle as it was," Stern said. But given the near destruction, any rebuilding would be considered new construction under Santa Fe County's development rules and therefore would need to comply with modern codes. One requirement, for example, was that the structure contain an elevator, he said.
Read the whole story here.

Ernest Thompson Seton's One and Only U.S. Patent

To all whom it may concern:
Be it known that I, Ernest Thompson Seton, a subject of the King of Great Britain and a resident of Coscob, in the County of Fairfield, State of Connecticut, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Steelyards...

So begins the one and only US Patent known to have been granted to Seton in 1911.

See the whole patent here.

The Wolf That Talked Too Much

We are pleased to present you with this audio track of Ernest Thompson Seton telling the story of "The Wolf That Talked Too Much."

Camera Trap Codger: Vile epithets and the dangers of learning foreign language

Camera Trap Codger: Vile epithets and the dangers of learning foreign language: "Vile epithets and the dangers of learning foreign language 'The men of mixed blood jabbered in French, Cree, and Chipewyan mainly, but when they wanted to swear, they felt the inadequacy of these mellifluous or lisping tongues, and fell back on virile Saxon, whose tang, projectivity, and vile epithet evidently supplied a long felt want in the Great Lone Land of the Dog and Canoe.' The Arctic Prairies, 1911, Ernest Thompson Seton"

Are You a Seton Indian? Whoop!

I believe that is ETS in the canoe...

I like this blog...

http://wisdomofhands.blogspot.com/2007/09/these-days-being-boy-isnt-quite-what-it.html