Virtual Brush Box

It’s A Herd Thing

Awareness of the outside world. Vox: The Puppy Bowl, explained, Pai and Koski 2020.

~~~

Rodney has had his feed ration reduced. It is an ongoing balance of keeping weight on without having the calories bubble out his ears.

He’s been due for a while, but you hate to cut feed going into winter. The good news is that he wasn’t stressed, as he has been in the past. He was a good mood. Perhaps a little to good. The shenanigans during the arctic blast were the last straw. Frozen mud is not a forgiving surface. Plus, we are – though it seems hard to believe – moving toward spring.

Rodney is now calmer. More able to think through a situation.

The weird part is that Milton is calmer as well.

Rodney is easier to live with?

Or is it something more pervasive?

We are starting to wonder how the herd dynamics play out.

For example, before Milton, Rodney had no interest in the salt block. We had one, because that’s what you do, but it was largely ignored. Milton loves salt. Milton has salt daily. Milton will stress lick the salt block after a hard day. Now, Rodney uses the salt block.

Humans don’t understand. Humans can’t understand.

We are social creatures. We are not herd creatures.

Horse A spooks at X. Horse B spooks at horse A spooking. Humans laugh. This happened as recently as the last show. I saw the bird fly into the arena. The horse in front of us spooked. Optimus didn’t care about the bird. He spooked at the other horse spooking.

This makes complete sense when you are lion kibble out on the savannah. You don’t have to see the lion for yourself. Trust that the other guy saw something. You spooking? Good enough for me. Let’s get out of here.

Run first. Ask questions later.

As a reaction to physical danger, it seems obvious. Does it go deeper? Does a horse take on the mood of their herdmate(s)? Is the herd an organism made up of individual horses? Do they model their behavior on each other more than we realize? Do the horses have to be living together as a herd or does it apply to horses stalled next to each other as well?

Research is ongoing.

Onwards!
Katherine

F is for Fantasy, Emoji Art

Art & commerce of the outside world. Entertainment Weekly: The 20 best Super Bowl commercials of all time, Wolfinsohn 2023. Country Living: A Comprehensive List of The Best Super Bowl Commercials of All Time, Horton Jan 20, 2024. SuperBowl-Ads.com: Super Bowl Ads Archive.

~~~

Legend

Bird – Bridge of Birds
Wand – Harry Potter
Dragon – The Hobbit
Wizard – The Wizard of Earthsea
Horse – The Blue Sword/The Hero & The Crown
Castle – Knights Castle, Edward Eager
Door – The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Turtle – Discworld

Emoji from Emojipedia.

Frame colors from cover art or website. Lots of animals, which says more about what I notice than it says about what is in the books.

Book selection. Venn diagram of fantasy with available emojis. For example, I could not find good representation for Rivers of London. The Tolkien one is marginal. LOTR would have been more on point than The Hobbit. Had to include something. You can’t spell fantasy without “T”. Also gets in the requisite dragon as symbol for fantasy. Harry Potter has not made it onto my personal reread shelf, but one cannot deny the cultural impact.

Process Notes

As with the dragon, my mental image of this was full of swoops and fancy scrollwork. Classic fantasy art tropes. Alas, my artistic vision may have swoops, but my artistic skill does not. Both the dragon & the letter were reimagined as images that could be constructed on grids. [D is for Dragon]

Onwards!
Katherine

Where Is Fantasy Found? A Prepositional Prose Poem

Where Is Fantasy Found?

In the footsteps of Frodo.

Over the rainbow.

Down the rabbit hole.

Through the wardrobe door.

Beyond the tollbooth.

Passage To Elsewhere, Fantasy Photography

Awareness of the outside world. The Guardian: The eyes have it: 100 of the world’s cutest photos – as chosen by readers, 25 Jan 2024.

~~~

Shelby Iron Works
January 2024

In the grand tradition of portal fantasy.

Technical Details

Brick arches. f/7.1, 1/100 sec., 105.0 mm, ISO 100. Manual mode & auto-focus.

Post production. No cropping. Framed through the lens. Resized, border, & watermark. Border colors, gray for project, yellow for Nikon. [Photo Safari The First], [Quarry, Photography, Things I Forgot]

Previous Posts
[Head In New England, Feet In The South, Walk Report, Boston Virtual 5K, Shelby County Iron Works]
[End of The Road]

Onwards!
Katherine

Pondering The Rider’s Shoulders

Horses of the outside world. Shetland Pony zoomies. My Shetland: In Search of the Yellow Bucket. Scroll down for video.

~~~

[A Last Look Back]

Driving lesson with Coach James. I said that in the photo from the show, above, I thought I was leaning a touch forward. This would not be out of character for me to be physically leaning forward, nor mentally out of charterer to be reaching forward instead of sitting chilly and letting the world come to me.

We worked on that.

Sit up. Put the shoulder over the hips. Sit back away from the horse.

Aesthetically, I looked more in control. Presented a better picture. Performance Driving is all about the horse. Still, it doesn’t hurt to have the driver display an air of elegant competence. I have no idea how they judge Academy Driving.

Functionally, sitting up made my arms feel softer.

I have been told to sit up a time or two before. It hits different when you are sitting on the bench seat of a cart rather than in the saddle on the back of the horse. Less ancillary movement to deal with. Less time spent balancing. Less ingrained muscle memory.

Each time I reminded myself to sit up, my arms feel both softer & stronger.

There are two ways to pitch forward. Bend at hips with straight spine. The hips and the shoulders remain the same distance apart. This is not always bad. This is how you two point.

The second way to pitch forward is to curve the spine. The hips and shoulders come closer together. This is not always bad either, provided the shoulders don’t get involved. An imaginary line across the upper back should stay straight. I don’t see the use in riding, but when I try, it feels like a modern dance move.

However.

What most of us do is slump. When the spine curves forward, we pull our shoulders in and hollow our chests. We curve along two axes. I know I do.

Try this. Sit up straight. Upper arms at your sides. Elbows at 90o. Lower arms parallel to the ground and to each other. Hands up as if holding reins. Or carrying a tray, for non-riders. Now swing your arms back & forth. The hands moved freely along parallel tracks.

Now curl your shoulders in. Immediately, I felt less mobility in my shoulder joints. Also, when I swung my arms, my hands smacked into each other. Less freedom of motion. Less area to move in.

I applied this to my next riding lesson. Made a hash out of it. I was concentrating so hard on my shoulders that I let the rest of my body parts go wandering. I was trying to throw shoulders back by brute force without have the rest of my torso organized. It took me three-quarters of the way through the lesson to get back to status quo ante. Not the big revelation I was hoping for in the saddle.

Will keep working on it, particularly as it is so much easier to feel in the cart.

Onwards!
Katherine

Milton Settles Into His Winter Schedule

Awareness of the outside world. AL.com: ‘What if Harry Potter went to an HBCU?’, Short, Feb. 05, 2024. Penguin: Labyrinth Road Acquires YA Fantasy Trilogy from Playwright LaDarrion Williams Following Viral Twitter Pitch, 2023. “3 yrs ago, I made it my mission to write a YA fantasy book with a Black boy lead. No police brutality& no racial trauma. This is Malik Baron, a country boy from Helena, Alabama blessed with Hoodoo magic. BLOOD AT THE ROOT. May 2024.” X: ItsLaDarrion, Oct 26, 2023.

~~~

Milton has joined Rodney in a winter vacation. [What’s Up With The Home Team, Tack Update Rodney]

Wasn’t really planned. Just kinda happened.

Milton worked hard to get ready for the show in December. [Milton at Work]

Ended up not going. [Show Prep Part One, The Horse Who Didn’t Show, AWTA 2013-2024 #1]

We never found out what, if anything, was bothering him.

Added kicking strap. [What’s Up With The Home Team, Tack Update Milton]

Tested kicking strap. [Milton Meets Kicking Strap, Again]

After that, working the horses kinda slipped off the schedule. Time off to heal up whatever, if anything, was bothering him. Weather. Logistics. More weather.

And here we are.

Mid-February is not the time to create motivation.

Meanwhile. Milton eats. Goes for handwalks in the mornings. If not living his best life, living a pretty good one.

Onwards!
Katherine