a weblog sharing info on outdoor skills and campfire musing by a guy who spends a bunch of time in pursuit of both
CULTURE
WHERE -
TALES ARE TOLD OF
Welcome to Roland Cheek's Weblog
Roland is a gifted writer with a knack for clarifying reality. Looking forward to more of his wisdom
- Carl Hanner e-mail
There can be no living together without understanding, and understanding means compromise. Compromise is not a dirty word, it is the cornerstone of cvilization, just as politics is the art of making civilization work. Men do not and cannot and hopefully will never think alike, hence each must yield a little to avoid war, to avoid bickering. Men and women meet together and adjust their differences; this is compromise. He who stands unyielding upon a principle is often a fool, and often bigoted, and usually left standing alone with his principle while other men adjust their differences and go on. * Louis L'Amour in Bendigo Shafter / (Pretty sharp, those Western writers.)
To access Roland's weblog and column archives
Tip o' the Day
Domestication of the horse and creating computer technology represents different dimension in human defelopment. Yet their operations share remarkable parallels.
Horses, as most of us know, are clumsy brutes with high performance capabilities and low actuarial proclivities. Computers, on the other hand, have enormous capabilities and a frustrating insistence on operating outside the realm of human comprehension.
Riding your pony to meet a friend? Don't count on the ride to be a pleasant one. If you're headed away from the barn, your steed will travel at a crawl. If you cluck him into a trot, he'll rattle your teeth; kick him into a gallop and he'll crow-hop or try to swerve back to the barn. Will you arrive on time for your assignation? No.
On to the computer front: I had a newspaper deadline to meet. At first, my screen went dead. Then it jumped to another file. When at last I cornered the confounded thing and hit my print button, it must have been set for a thousand copies.
The advice from this corner is don't try to meet deadlines when depending on either.
Yet turn that horse and head for home and you'll be sitting back before your computer screen in short order. If you hold him to a walk, your pony will convince you he was bred for overseeing Tennessee cotton fields. Let him trot and you'll believe he's on the European show circuit. Or let him swing into a canter and you'll have to bend low to keep from being blown from the saddle.
Your computer has remarkably similar capacities. Tap into it in the middle of an insomniac night and you'll be able to enter programs you never dreamed existed--draw diagrams, do spread sheets, create stunning prose in exotic text. Try a repeat performance the day after tomorrow, however, and watch the infernal machine sulk while you blow a gasket.
Horses dominate a farm. Computers dominate a home.
Need more similarities? How about their most qualified handlers?
Techno geeks / computer nerds live in their own insular world, just like the teenage girl down the road who sees more class in horses than in her high school's football star.
In the final analysis, the greatest similarity between the horse and the computer lies not so much in their performance, but in their operators. Horses, you see, are really quite intelligent. So are computers. It's their users who are dumb.
Echoes of Vengeance -- A military outpost situated in an isolated region of the Department of the Upper Missouri. An embittered Commandant who believes unkind fate kept him from fame and glory during the recent War of Seccession. A band of starving Blackfeet too riddled with smallpox to withdraw to their reservation. A young mixed-blood army interpreter whose aging parents are with the Blackfeet tries to prevent a massacre-in-the-making; he's beaten and dragged to the guardhouse for the attempt.
Thus the stage is set and principal characters in place for the opening pages of Echoes of Vengeance * Mule Milk News / Official Newsletter of the Montana Outfitters and Guides Association
THE COST OF LOVE
Dispassionate evaluation might lead one to better understand Valentine's Day as an annual reminder of one's obligations to social life. For those without love--unrequitted or otherwise--Valentine's might demonstrate a certain omission in their contribution to making the world go around . . . but they'll save a bunch of money!
Is love expensive?
Sure is. First off, I must pick up a nice card and a box of chocolates. Then of course, is the orchid she's come to expect from the lover of her dreams (or nightmares). Depending on circumstances, either I'll take Jane out for fine dining or enjoy an elaborate candlelight dinner she has planned and orchestrated as a "surprise."
Actually, Valentine's Day has turned into one of our most important yearly events; better than our birthdays, Mother's Day, Father's Day, or even Christmas. The reason why Valentine's is so important is that it is for both of us. And it is ours alone.
Now that there are no rug rats underfoot, we rattle around in a big house--just the two of us. But come Valentine's, we're grateful for our privacy; for the opportunity to get warm and cuddly without shame, disgrace, ridicule, or embarrassment to others.
As shown above, love is expensive, even for a one-night-a-year extravaganza with the brightest light of your entire life. And Lord knows it's even more expensive when weighted with an entire lifetime of togetherness. The expense of true love cannot be measured, however, by mere money, mere time, or mere labor. Neither can its benefits be entirely quantified. Some of those benefits come home as dividends on lovers' own special day. At least I believe it so.
True love, in reality, is a great investment. Research, of course, discloses happily married couples live longer, have more complete, happier lives. By pulling together as a team, they're often better off economically. Too, they tend to be more physically sound and mentally stable. They're inclined to patience, understanding, forgiveness, compassion, and yes, compromise.
During our early life together I used the chits garnered on Valentine's as springboards to outdoors adventure during the rest of the year. Then Jane grew curious about the attraction of traveling to remote places and asked to come along--on a trial basis, of course. The trial basis was only trial a time or two, then turned into a regular thing. With her entry into my outdoors game plans came a parallel change in my own desire to visit far places without her. These days, all the separate vacation chits both of us have accumulated during the last couple of decades lie dusty and unused as our present adventures are pursued together.
There simply is no way either Jane or I could buy the benefits love for each other has generated in our lives. In what market could it be found? What catalogue? Niemann-Marcus? L.L. Bean?
Yes, one can save in the short run by not investing in love. But over the long haul love will outperform the money market or stocks and bonds. You won't find "love" listed in the Wall Street Journal or on Dun & Bradstreet. It is the stuff of great literature, though. And you'll see the product of it on faces everywhere, especially on Valentine's. This guy Cupid is special; more believable than Santa, more traditional than Thanksgiving, more explosive than the Fourth of July.
You want your spouse to give a little when fishing season rolls around? Then give a bunch on Valentines's.
Roland Cheek wrote a syndicated outdoors column (Wild Trails and Tall Tales) for 21 years. The column was carried in 17 daily and weekly newspapers in two states. In addition, he scripted and broadcast a daily radio show (Trails to Outdoor Adventure) that aired on 75 stations from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean. He's also written upwards of 200 magazine articles and 12 fiction and nonfiction books. For more on Roland, visit:
www.rolandcheek.com
Recent Weblogs
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
There's a bunch of specific info about Roland's books, columns, archives and radio programs. By clicking on the button to the left, one can see Roland's synopsis of each book, read reviews, and even access the first chapter of each of his titles. With Roland's books, there's no reason to buy a "pig in a poke."
for detailed info about each of Roland's books
Read Reviews
Read their first chapters
For interested educators, this weblog is especially applicable for use in history, economic, and government classes, as well as for journalism students.
Roland, of course, visits schools. For more information on his program alternatives, go to:
NEXT WEEK:
FRIENDS INDEED FOR A FRIEND IN NEED
www.campfireculture.com
Roundup Magazine says of The Silver Yoke, the final book in the acclaimed Valediction For Revenge series: This novel has lots of action, a terrific villain you love to hate, the smell of dust and dynamite, and a man sworn to bleed his enemies, not of blood but of money, the only they love.
This is another page turner from Cheek with characters that possess all three dimensions and are tough to kill. Any readers who likes action, adventure, and a plot with more twists than a sidewinder will love Gunnar's Mine * Roundup Magazine
Lincoln County, New Mexico, where poor farmers and ranchers are at the mercy of crooked merchants, the military, and a corrupt territorial government run by something called the "Sante Fe Ring," But who are the "good" guys? Billy the Kid? John Chisum?
Book three in the Valediction For Revenge series, the completion of Jethro Spring's adventures in New Mexico
Crisis On the Stinkingwater is Cheek's darkest book. It is also the most realistic. The portrayal of the depth of hatred engendered by the bitter conflict between rancher and homesteader chills the reader * Roundup Magazine
Two books -- one about the people, the second about their place of adventures
For detailed information about Roland's books
source links for additional info
to visit Roland's newspaper columns and weblog archives
to send this weblog to a friend
to tell Roland what you think of his Campfire Culture weblog
