The Heroic Gent

Some of the guidebooks tell you to count the fighting bulls when they pass you on the street so you can be certain the six fighting bulls are gone and there isn’t a suelto making its way through the crowd toward you. I always wonder if the authors of these guidebooks ever ran and so tried to count running bulls in a crowded street as your heart is in your churning feet. This time the bulls had all passed and, as always happens in this moment of relief and joy, th

“Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.” –Ernest Hemingway Each of us stood alone in an anxious crowd. There were so many of us filling the narrow street in Pamplona I had to turn my shoulders and push against the crowd to move. We were all wearing white clothes with red sashes and bandanas bought from street vendors in the small city. The veteran runners’ sashes and bandan

I once had the opportunity to meet a dozen students at the South African Wildlife College who were taking a course to become professional hunters. They were learning to track game, survive in the bush, deal with poachers, and other necessary skills. As part of their training, these college-age students had to stalk to within twenty yards of dangerous game—rhino, elephant, lion, hippo, and Cape buffalo— in Kruger National Park. And then they had to slip away safely, knowing t

My 13-year-old son’s “social studies” textbooks appear to be written by committees whose chief concern is to dull boys’ minds in order to make them open to indoctrination by politically correct dictum. Indeed, the very term “social studies” was promulgated by a Progressive Era committee. “The social studies are understood to be those whose subject matter relate to the organization and development of human society, and to man as a member of social groups,” decided the Nation