THE SHINBONE STAR

Craig's Little Campfire
When we all began to set-up our our own little campfires on the world wide campground. I stumbled on Craig Crawford's little blaze . It was an amazing little salon, with a marshmallow toasting on a coat hanger feel. Something about Young Crawford , he has a pretty interesting set of friends. It was a treat to visit the clearing and see what was cooking on the fire.

Some times the flames roared-up, and caught a sleeping bag or two on fire. But Craig , has managed over the years to control the flames, and not set the woods on fire. No mean feat when one considers that the campground he chose is in Washington D.C., home to a lot of dead wood.

Craig has talked about from time to time about moving the campground back home to Florida, and starting a fish camp. This was mostly when he was confronted by just how much dead wood there is in Washington. And I joked about what to do when fish heads were left everywhere, around the campfire, instead of empty bags of marshmallows & bent coat hangers.

The TM Fish Camp

Over the years, at our little fire, we watched the world, and informed each other about things of day , music, books, history, life/death, jokes, ( Lot's of jokes ), big events, and the small events as well. These discussions are real treat for me, and have been of great value to my life. When the Great Haiti Earth Quake struck. We were all discussing what we could do to help, and I began poking around looking for something that would let us all not feel so helpless in the face of such great tragedy. I came across ShelterBox, and because one of the things I learned at Craig's campfire was how to build campfires of on my own, I set - up The TM Fish Camp, as a place where we could band together to help the people of Haiti. At first, all we were hoping for was to chip - in , and buy a few of these ShelterBoxes. Our plan was to follow these messages of shelter to where they will end-up in Haiti. Little push pins on a map , and see if we could learn the stories behind where they landed.

But then , a funny thing happened , some of those interesting friend's of Craigs began to help us as well. It began as a shout-out from Keith Olbermann on Tuesday night last week. Then the next morning Craig appeared on Don Imus's show, and in the following days, we went from giving shelter to 30 people, ...... to giving shelter to 870 people. Our campground of just a few souls, exploded into a village of hundreds. Mixed in among all these gifts , are the contributions of Imus & Olbermann , one of the things we love at Crawford's campfire is irony.

As of this morning, the last day of January, we have raised nearly $70,000.00, and we are working on buying our 88th ShelterBox. That's over 870 people, and that's a village.

Join The TM Fish Camp here.
Colorado Bob

A while back, my friend in South Carolina, by the nom-de-plume of "Sturgeon ", asked if I had a leather vest left over from a past life. I regretted telling him it was all gone. Well I was wrong , I found one in a box, so Friday night I let him know I would pass it along . I made this one on Flint Ave. in Lubbock, in the early 90's. It's made from a very fat old elk hide. I just washed to get it ready to send to him.
Hot water and Ivory followed by lot's of pulling on it as it dries out. Then a heavy dose of Carnauba Cream to restore the waxes and oils .

Over the weekend, Sturgeon had the good fortune to rescue a Red Tail Hawk. Looks like that old fat elk is going to a good home in South Carolina.

Sturgeon's Blues Crab