Horses & Other Interests
Good Enough is Good Enough
“Dr Winnicott’s crucial insight was that perfectionism can be cruel and counterproductive.” NIH: Br J Gen Pract. 2017 Jul; 67(660): 311.
Appointment with sports psych doc this week.
Preliminary data suggests that their approach is scientific without being medical. I can get behind that.
As always, specifics once I find out their comfort level with being blog fodder.
Onwards!
Katherine
Art from the outside world. Black Southern Belle: 5 Pieces of Juneteenth Art We Adore!
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Motif, the thing that gets repeated.
Block repeat
Half-drop
Mirrored
Rotational
Radiating
Gradation
Source of terms. BBC: Bitesize, Pattern. With gorgeous examples.
More terms. So many terms. Artlandia: Pattern Design Terms Defined and Illustrated. Pattern design software.
Turns out there are only so many ways to repeat a motif. “A wallpaper pattern (also known as a plane crystallographic group) is a pattern with translation symmetry in two directions … In 1891 E. S. Fedorov proved that there are exactly 17 possible wallpaper patterns.” Mathematical Association of America, maa.org: wallpaper pattern.
How to omit words from a search, so one is not reading about dress patterns. ClickMinded: Tutorial: How to Exclude Words From Google Search. Yi, 2022.
Onwards!
Katherine
Not reviews. Imagine we are in a bookstore. I wander up to you, hand you one of these books, say ‘Have you read this one?’, then wander off. Whereupon you look at the cover, turn it over, look at the back cover, read the blurb, flip through the book, and decide for yourself if you are interested. It’s like that. Enjoy. [HYRT]
Instagram: underthecaminosky
Instagram: unabashedly
A mother and daughter currently walking the Camino de Santiago. Screenshot from utcs account.
Worldwalk by Steven M. Newman (Morrow 1989). Publishers Weekly: Worldwalk. Author’s Facebook page. Book image from PW website.
A Walk In The Woods, by Bill Bryson (Broadway 1998, Black Swan 2015). Penguin : WITW. Cover image from publisher’s website.
Step by Step: A Pedestrian Memoir, by Lawrence Block (Morrow 2009), includes the Camino de Santiago. Cover image from author’s website.
Walking memoirs are a huge field. Any recommendations?
Posts
[Have You Read This? Happy Lunar New Year!]
[Have You Read This? Inspiration]
[Have You Read This? Graphic Novel Edition]
Onwards!
Katherine
Awareness of the outside world. Jim C. Hines: Thoughts on Blood Donation and Bodily Autonomy. May 2022.
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On Friday posts, I usually talk about my fitness efforts, such as they are. It’s difficult to generate content – particularly fitness content – with one’s foot in the air. [Bored]
So I restarted my Instagram account, virtual_brush_box.
First photo.
Caption: Art in the ER
Second Caption: Reopening account while I am on stall rest.
Unembedded copy of photo, in case Instagram decides to take their toys and go home.
Props
Got the idea when the main character in a book posted to Instagram, “Anything that matched the brand she was trying to build for herself.” Since my ‘brand’ is random shit, dunno why this spoke to me, but it did. Delilah Green Doesn’t Care, by Ashley Herring Blake (Berkley 2022, Kindle)
Yes, I am a straight person who reads gay romance novels, either M/M or F/F. I find them restful. It is a similar situation to saddle seat versus hunter/jumper. I have few opinions on the conduct of gay relationships. I have many opinions on M/F relations. Have you ever noticed an incident written as cute in a novel that would qualify as sexual harassment in real life? But I digress.
Past
This was my Instagram page from November 2018 to now. Actually, it was more complicated than that. Instagram shut this account down. I started another one. And so on. [Contact]
Anyway.
This was the one I reopened.
Future
One photo so far. I’ll see what else turns up. At the other end of the scale, I’ll see if I can keep Instagram limited to an occasional, interesting side project.
Onwards!
Katherine
Awareness of the outside world. Did civic stuff at county courthouse & city hall this week. Saw more masks than I was expecting. Only a few, but enough that I didn’t feel like a lone weirdo.
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I’m riding, but only at the walk. [Easing On Down The Road]
We went over to Falcon Hill Farm for ring acclimatization. Taking exercises at tortoise pace is never the wrong move with this horse.
Walked courses made up of poles, low crossrails, and tiny verticals.
Rodney: Shouldn’t we be trotting by now?
Me: No, dude. We’re being chill today.
Rodney: Huh.
I worked on keeping myself exactly with his balance over the “jump”.
No media because walk poles.
Onwards!
Katherine
Awareness of the outside world. Alabama New Center: Alabama Power’s infrastructure suffered historic damage during the April 2011 storms and tornadoes. Massey, April 23, 2021. Outstanding photos by Meg McKinney, as always. It’s a 10-year retrospective article. Lead photo & some of the others are by Meg. Hover over photo to see labels.
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Over on social media, dressage rider Lauren Sprieser talked about the different go buttons.
“There’s two ways to tell a horse to “go” – the slow, deep aids, and the quick, shallow aids. The slow, deep aids are things like the squeezing calf, the driving seat, or the lifting spur, and they encourage a horse to take longer steps – things like passage, or like medium or extended gaits. The quick, shallow aids are things like a touch with the stick, a quick use of the leg, or a quick touch of the spur, and they encourage a horse to take quicker steps – like in piaffe, pirouettes, or just generally going forward within a gait.”
Lauren Sprieser (@laurensprieser) • Instagram, Lauren Sprieser Facebook, March 16, 2022
First of all. Really? I had no idea.
Second. I occurs to me that saddle seat is always asking the horse to take higher, quicker steps. Therefore, riding would be all about the ‘quick, shallow aids.’ Which would be consist with the riding style. Lower leg off. Tap to use. Lower leg off. No reason to have a steady contact with the lower leg if you don’t need a ‘squeezing calf.’
I have not gotten out of the shallow end of the pool in either discipline, as evidenced by my first comment above. Any guidance from folks who ride high-level saddle seat or dressage, or better yet, both?
Onwards!
Katherine
Awareness of the outside world. Jan. 6 Hearings. Is anyone on either side going to change their minds?
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Total. 61.5 miles, 35 rides, 27 hours 3 minutes, pace 26:23 min/mile.
This week. 4.5 miles, 4 rides, 1 hour 57 minutes, pace – walk.
To go. 38.5 miles in 33 days.
Notes
Ring work
Milton, 5.5 miles
Rodney, 1 mile.
Estimated by time. Not logged. Keeping track in case we need the mileage. [VT Announced]
[Easing On Down The Road, Week 9, Virtual Tevis 2022]
[VT archives]
Update. Why I didn’t think we’d make progress. [I’m Bored Already]
Because the condition of my extremities is not at the forefront of everyone’s mind, the commenter most graciously excepted.
Onwards!
Katherine
Virtual Brush Box 