HOME, HOME ON THE VELDT: Linda Hasselstrom imagines a “New West” in which rodeo riders would lasso giraffes (cowboys would need “longer ropes and taller horses”) and “baboons, chimps, and gorillas might revitalize small towns by providing the cheap labor we’ve lost to cities.” Hasselstrom was responding to a recent Nature magazine article that suggested threatened African wildlife could be saved by a move to our Great Plains. Her commentary appeared as part of the Writers on the Range series from High Country News and was in the Sept. 28 Wyoming Tribune-Eagle in Cheyenne. She also proposed changes to our favorite western songs: “Home, home on the veldt/Where deer and antelope once dwelt./Lion and leopard/are what we now shepherd,/We’re playing the hand we’ve been dealt.” And this version of “Ragtime Cowboy Joe” might reenergize those disappointed UW football fans: “How he sings/raggy music to his camel/as he bumps/back and forth in his saddle…/on his hump.” You can read more at High Country News, although you have to buy a subscription first.

- posted by Michael Shay @ 11:20 AM