Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Today, I’d love to load the dogs, drive up into the mountains, and for awhile just tramp aimlessly. Something about these days, warm and somewhat overcast with smoke, calls me higher. Alas, it’s a working day, maybe also bringing that calling. Yep, I’ll be inside, standing and hawking a food item, I think it’ll be hemp seeds.

The products we “demonstrate” are standards from Costco’s shelves. Few passer-by shoppers are interested, unless they decide to make a joke. Yesterday, I was responsible for speaking about a dog food and got teased by many who asked to taste-test before buying it. Like, come on folks, that’s not funny.

No matter how often we demonstrators show Costco’s hemp seed product (and we’ve done so bunches!), we find ourselves on the receiving end of jokes, like, “will this make me high?” To worsen the situation for demo types, askers pause and watch us waiting for a laugh! Well, I’m impolite and stay quiet, simply returning their stares.

Most would-be jokesters are men, but some women pick up on the hostility thread and try being funny. Please, folks, let me stand here wearily doing my repetitive job. Don’t joke about it. If you must try to joke, don’t seek my participation.

Anticipation. That’s why those mountains call! But I gotta go to work, and funny enough, also want to. It happens I look forward to reading t-shirts, and by the way stash humors from the good ones.

Anyway, if anyone local shops today in Costco, visit me wherever the hemp-seed might be hiding. Hey, I know you’ll joke, and it’s okay. With friends, I do laugh.

Dear Readers: It’s a perfect example of a situational love-hate relationship. Diana

Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Yesterday’s smoke from the nearby Green Ridge Fire made it seem rain was on the way. This morning, my weather app says there’s light rain nearby and coming this way. Soon, I’ll leave for work, hoping any moisture is too light to worry my Border Collie, Miles. He panics during thunderstorms, attempts to enter the house by ripping apart window screens. Ah, some joys of living with pets!

Speaking of having pets, yesterday the horses and I went into the forest to work on developing a horse-trail loop. I rode Rosie who wore a bit-less bridle, and we ponied Sunni. That’s my first time ponying off Rosie, she in a minimal-control device, and there was a price. Rosie jigged and jogged, rarely settling into her lovely long-striding walk. Okay, I did expect this unpleasant behavior.

Rosie recently was introduced to a bit-less bridle. She’s been wonderfully cooperative, needing little guidance, moving casually, staying relaxed. A horse in a bit-less bridle could have “the say” in a serious disagreement with its rider. Maybe one could steady a horse about to take-off by having it turn and circle. Anyway, my well-seasoned horses aren’t worrisome, but Rosie does jig and jog when she’s unhappy.

I chose to use an easy bridle and would suffer Rosie’s unhappiness, because our trio must learn to accommodate a “new normal”. These days in riding alone, I’m usually on one horse and ponying another. Sunni who’s nearly unflappable easily will lead Rosie. But Rosie’s another story, doesn’t appreciate having Sunni closely behind–or Oh Dear!–right beside us.

Yesterday, we tracked over forest trails. Rosie jigged, jogged, sometimes walked. Okay, we’re in a learning mode. I practiced sitting relaxed in the saddle, allowing freedom for her head and neck. In the end, I had to admit that, reasonably, Rosie had cooperated.

Our teamwork is in a new-beginning. It’s true, adjustments aren’t quick processes and practice makes perfect. And there’s Rosie, herself. She’s mature, has been around the block, is very-trained, sensitive, and smart. As will any horse given time, opportunity, and patience, she’ll settle into our new routine.

Dear Friends: This trio for learning–time, opportunity, and patience–benefits us all. Diana

Monday, August 24, 2020

My Border Collie, Miles, went to the veterinarian yesterday for medications to control his arthritis. Fortunately, his case isn’t devastating, it’s not rheumatoid arthritis! His issues, discovered early on, are controllable. Unfortunately, Miles won’t anymore be invited to run with my horses which too much would aggravate his arthritis. This dog lives to run, is a wonderful trail buddy. I’ll start taking lots more on-foot hikes with the dogs so Miles may have running opportunities. For sure, we both (and all) will benefit from climbing occasionally up and down Horse Butte.

Actually, I’ve begun itching again to tackle climbing Horse Butte. I’ve explored for easier ways to hike up and down that butte, to avoid having to cope with unending loose scrabble on its main steep access trail. I’ve seen hikers with leashed dogs descending from an easier-looking side trail. I’ve partly followed a faint walking trail that circles the Butte and might wind up at or near its summit. The next time I’ve only several free hours, the dogs and I will head for the Butte.

Yesterday, I rode Sunni and ponied Rosie into the forest. I’m still trying to connect two horse trails that recently I ran across. Both go in the same direction but they’re totally separate. Connecting them would create a loop, with one trail going from the trailhead and the other returning to it. This would create in a beautiful part of the forest about a four-mile riding loop, allowing one on horseback to avoid dusty roadways.

Finally, I grasped where to connect these trails as a loop. Yesterday, Miles’ vet appointment limited my playtime in the forest. Today and again, the horses and I hopefully will travel the loop. I’ll record our time and distance, and when we’re next there will capture trail coordinates for mapping.

This has been a summer of wonderful fun. It’s almost unimaginable, having found nearby a beautiful forest, with free time to go there and play with my equines and canines.

Dear Friends: August ends to introduce fall and our most beautiful months ahead. Diana

Sunday, August 23, 2020

My reading of the works of past authors has taken me down a long road, and finally, to the works of Olive Schreiner (1885-1920), a South African, an intellectual, and one of the first feminist writers. She had a fascinating life story, as one of twelve children born to missionary parents living in South Africa and most often impoverished. Schreiner forged a way of her own, thinking through her personal religious conflicts, managing to gain some formal education, and becoming eventually a published writer. Her best-known work, a novel, “The Story of An African Farm”, is in the public domain. Recently, I began reading it.

She published this novel in 1883 under the pseudonym, Ralph Iron. I’ve been interested in how writings from that time might have expressed a newly-evolving awareness of feminism. I found a copy of “The Story of An African Farm, and began reading. It’s very serious and slow-going. The descriptions of situations in the story are serious and written very carefully. I’m having a problem in that her countings of people and their thoughts offer visuals that are comical by today’s standards. But I’m a student of pioneers of social thinking, who also are early activists, and will plow on to read with determination. After all, this novel still is viable after 127 years!

Most of us hope to gain a viable understanding of what’s around us, and for the skill to explain well what we see and experience. I’ll be trying to discover in Schreiner’s work the lines of thought lending themselves into a direction that has led to modern social development. Maybe she’ll become one of my heros.

Dear Friends: We musn’t take for granted today’s freedoms of place and thought. Diana

Saturday, August 22, 2020

My farrier is coming today. I considered having him put shoes on one of my horses for driving, but there’s a new reality of now-limited time to play with the horses. I’ve begun working part-time. This is trashing some “play notions” for the time-being.

My work requires only a few daily hours, but they’re aside from the pre-work of preparing to be away, and exclude after-work time of caring for waiting animals. On scheduled working days, regardless of my wishing and planning, time is too-squeezed, even for a quick horseback ride. By now and for too long, the horses have been just hanging around, unexercised.

Today I’m not working and early will try to get away with them. We’ll have to return ahead of the farrier’s arrival. I’ll take all three, will ride Sunni, pony Rosie, and let Pimmy follow. It’ll be slow-going but that’s okay for I’ve missed having outings with them.

And, I’ve a brain full of concerns, about people wearing masks incorrectly and refusing to cover their mouths and noses, about politics and ahead a complicated race for president, about whether or not to explore refinancing my mortgage, about books I’m reading that offer points of view to be considered, and a big stack of books waiting to be read. Such a list goes on, and riding horseback while managing an entourage will consume my attention and energy.

It’s a fine way to ease those accumulated muddlings in my head.

Dear Friends: Please while out in public and for all our sakes, correctly wear a mask. Diana

Friday, August 21, 2020

I’m off to work again, today as a breaker. I’ll be a stand-in for workers taking their breaks and lunches. This role lets me show up for work a little later than usual and leave for home a bit earlier. Even on days with short working hours, I can’t do much with my animals besides feeding. The horses especially need exercise. I’m eager to be out riding them.

Tomorrow afternoon the farrier is coming. I’ll try to escape early and ride awhile.

Not much can compare to working with a horse when it comes to clearing one’s mind. Handling a horse means focusing totally on the animal. One needs a sense of its energy level, attention span, willingness to respond, and probabilities of its amenance to guidance. For a rider on horseback, everything shrinks to awareness of the duo itself and the terrain.

Horseback makes one forget outside worries, such as money too short, bills too many, work not done, people not called, and realities needing to be faced. Riding is a postponer more than a therapy, although getting-away, forcing other thoughts into the background may somehow reveal solutions. On dismounting, one might be thinking creatively from mental background processing–like a nighttime awakening and an “Ah-ha! moment”.

Today at work, unless we’re really busy, I’ll make the hours pass quickly by thinking about my horses. I’ll start making plans for our next outing, deciding which trails to cover and why. I’ll consider where we might go simply for fun, looking around and discovering. I’ll think about how to improve my skills as a rider, to collaborate more fully while on horseback.

Dear Friends: All creatures are therapists, if we pause to spend quality time with them. Diana

Thursday, August 20, 2020

I’m running a bit late this morning, got caught up thinking and writing about some old days. I’ve been doing some retro-reading and renewing my acquaintance with great writers. I’m focused now on Tillie Olson and Zora Neale Hurston.

Recently, I ran across an article about Olson’s writing skills and remembered long ago reading a story in “The New Yorker”, by her and entitled “I Stand Here Ironing”. Her writing was deceptively simple, very powerful, and created a story that blew me away. Recently, remembering, I sent for a retrospective of Olson’s works, offered by her daughter and granddaughter, themselves fine writers. Olson was born in 1912, her stories are perspectives from America’s tough Depression years, and are breathtakingly fine art.

I already was re-reading Hurston’s, Their Eyes Were Watching God, one of several several retro books I selected from a used-seller. Hurston was an amazing writer, her prose is sparse and clean, and like Olson’s was formed much by the Great Depression.

There are many reasons to think 2020 may be a “woman’s year”. In following #metoo and current politics, it’s impressive that women are speaking out, moving up, being publicly acknowledged as intelligent, productive, and professional. In contrast, those women who matured during the 1930s, and survived the Great Depression, had fewer opportunities to stand away from cooking, cleaning, ironing, and trying to reassure husbands and children. I don’t dismiss the problems men faced during this period, as for them it was similar. Many individuals we remember today are those who learned how to write, and knew how to express themselves with clarity and meaning.

Reading Olson and Hurston has slowed my brain, made me recall my growing-up days with a mother who matured during the Great Depression. It offers my mom’s eye-view and helps me understand better her personal needs and family decisions.

Besides, these two fantastic women were highly-intelligent, wonderfully talented artists. They’ve given us their experiences and ideas in stories that mesh interestingly with today’s worldviews.

Dear Friends: Their writings keep my brain active in slow periods of my part-time job. Diana

Wednesday, August 19, 2020

One of the tires on my horse trailer has for weeks given me fits from a visible nail. It probably was picked up in the Horse Butte parking area. There maybe thousands of nails lay around from wood-burnings conducted in the area’s center. Many remove the nails we spot easily, but many more are hiding under the area’s dust. Cleaning nails, and sometimes debris, from that trailhead is an unending job. Parking there is a risk to tires.

Because of the CoronaVirus, I hesitated to go to a tire shop. So instead of repairing, I simply kept adding air to the damaged tire. Well, until yesterday, when the tire wouldn’t accept more air. It turned out that the tire store was respectful of the epidemic. I had to stay inside my truck while workers checked the problem tire. It turned out to be unrepairable, for running through were a couple of screws and a staple, and it also sported a large puncture hole. I needed a brand new tire.

(BTW, the tire shop was impressive in its attention to sanitization. It reminded me of the care we take while working inside Costo. We’re continuously maintaining a sanitary environment, cleaning surfaces, wearing and often changing gloves, using masks and not touching our faces. Unfortunately, the tire store had the same sort of in-denial tire customers as we see in Costco. They’re wearing masks beneath their noses, and usually deliberately, a symbolic “finger-up”.)

I’m loving the horseback riding at Horse Butte, and yes, will return. All together on my truck and trailer are ten tires. I’ll gamble that since the parking lot has murdered only one, maybe in my favor are the odds of escaping another tire-battering. For sure though, upon seeing a tire getting low, I’ll move quickly to have it repaired. It’s better now, knowing that a visit to the tire store isn’t particularly unsafe.

Dear Friends: Correctly masking, sanitizing, and washing hands, frequently, are best practices. Diana

Tuesday, August 18, 2020

The other day, Sunni and I, and the dogs, ambled through the forest on an ancient trail. Before completely reaching its far end, we discovered another old, faint, but well-beaten pathway. We turned onto it, found that it took us back toward the trailhead. At long last, I’d discovered old trails that create a riding-loop, and go purely through forest. They introduce future horseback rides in an area avoiding dusty roads, except for walking across.

On another day, the dogs and I returned. I rode Rosie with Pimmy following, intending for us to travel over that forest loop. We weren’t lucky enough to find the old trail that returned to the trailhead, and so, searched for it by bushwacking.

We wandered from the “Greenery area”, into grassy flatlands or through stretches thick with trees, and a couple of times found ourselves moving upward toward a ridge peak. If our location made it appear we were lost, we turned back toward the Greenery.

My useful habit while on horseback, and when appropriate, is to follow the dogs. Dogs love trails and will discover and travel over them. On this day of our wanderings, the dogs stayed busy chasing chipmunks without finding any beaten trail.

Somewhere and finally we ran across a trail going in a direction that seemed desirable. With dogs leading (as sometimes our trail faded), we went to its termination, where I hoped, at a road where directly across another trail I knew well continued toward the trailhead.

I’ve confidence in the ultimate success of having an easily-accessed, completely-forested loop for my entourage. Hopefully, it would be rideable for as long as five miles, or abbreviated for three-mile rides. Traveling through a forest on horseback is more fun, much prettier, and yea, cleaner than dusty roadways.

Dear Friends: Today, more armed with experience, maybe I can complete this quest. Diana

Monday, August 17, 2020

In my half-sleep this morning, on awakening, I heard clearly in my head, “When I lost my baby, I learned to cry real tears”. There was more, for those words were subtitled, “Goodby, crocodile tears”. I hadn’t a notion as to what those thoughts referred to, and decided to play creatively with them.

I tried to write a short story but couldn’t string-together enough satisfying ideas. I found it beyond my musical talents to use those words as country-western lyrics. Later, I thought more about this and wondered if the words are remnants of an old country-western song from my Oklahoma childhood. In those days, our regional music was nothing like modern country-western. Most old pure-country songs had lyrics either silly and laughable, or heartbreakingly rendered in faux-sobs.

To escape my Oklahoma upbringing, I elected to dislike country music. Instead, I listened to and learned to enjoy classical music–specifically opera. Many years later and seemingly out of the blue, I began yearning to hear the original old-time singers like Jimmy Wakely and Hank Williams. Actually, in those days, country singers sometimes did team with more sophisticated singers like Margaret Whiting and Jo Stafford. They were the daughters of famous musicians and bandleaders, Richard Whiting and Paul Weston.

Whyever this morning’s words popped up, they made me recall and rethink. I remembered the wonderful singer, Jo Stafford, who created an alternate life as Cinderella G. Stump. Here, Cinderella sings with Red Ingle and his fiddle, in 1960. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_ukeZqJYPY

Stafford also teamed with her dad, and as Jonathan and Darlene Edwards. They created an album of left-handed playing and singing, an hilarious parody that kept my friends and me in stitches.

In contrast and as herself, here’s the talented Jo singing with the magnificent one-and-only Ella Fitzgerald, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctyT-9o4Vl0

Thank you, dream life, for reviving some of my heart’s fondest memories!

Dear Friends: I’ll be rediscovering more of the past’s fabulous creativity and listening. Diana