Downtime. Catching up on vacation photos. Back to current when there is something to report.
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This is the building I lived in from 4th grade to the middle of 9th grade. As a kid, I lived in seven(?) places, six of which I remember. If you asked me to imagine my childhood home, this is the one that would come to mind. (If you asked me where I grew up after the age of 14, I’d probably say the barn.)
Horses fine. People fine. Narrative content non-existent. There’s only so many posts that I can spin out of nobody going nowhere. I thought about taking a break. Instead, I will use the time to catch up on vacation photos. I hope to return to regularly scheduled programming once I am doing something more riveting than watching Milton graze.
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As I wandered around the AmeriStamp Expo, folks kept asking me, ‘What do you collect?’ I mumbled something about getting started [Year of the Stamp], while thinking, ‘Don’t mind me. I’m just here for the blog posts.’
I watched customers hunched over dealer tables, flipping through boxes and albums, checking the items on offer against lists and notebooks. I made snap judgments about an entire subgroup based on 15 minutes of observation: older, white, male, chatty. I looked at row upon row of stamp competition entrants. People compete with stamps? Why, yes they do. People compete at everything.
I needed a guide through this new world. So, I looked – of course – for a book.
I joined the American Topical Association, resulting in a pile of loot including a huge head start on forming a horse-stamp group.
Year of the Horse First Day Covers. The larger envelope includes all the stamps in the series to that date.
The one thing I didn’t buy was a stamp, other than the ones on the first day covers. The various dealers had hundreds? thousand? hundreds of thousands? of stamps for sale, from buy-’em-by-the-bucket to credit-check-first-please. Unfortunately, stamps are arranged by country, not by ‘Horses, pretty pictures of.’
Donald Evans painted fascinating, tiny watercolors as stamps from non-existent countries.
Carol Gordon is (was?) an amazing cachet, i.e. envelope, artist. Despite the huge range displayed in a show entry, her work doesn’t have a centralized Internet presence (Please correct me if I’m wrong). Mostly, Google turns up items for sale: Year of the Pig, Edna St. Vincent Millay. This woman’s career is crying out for a web page.
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How much of this sudden interest in stamps is due to the blog and how much is personal? I’d say 50/50. I wouldn’t pursue the idea without an outlet, i.e. blog posts. On the other hand, I wouldn’t research and write about an area for content alone. (I would if someone paid me, but that was a previous life.) Stamps are interesting. Stamps will generate blog posts. Win/win. [RS stamp page]
Fourteen hours of class without a single photo assignment.
A local college has evening photography classes. The first prerequisite is Know your Nikon/Canon. Seven weeks of going over buttons and menus. Apparently, people would show up for Intro Photo, the instructor would tell them to put their camera on X setting, and people would look blank. Hence this class.
Sometimes I feel frustrated, particularly as class involves hauling myself off the farm and into town. Two glazed and a medium hibiscus tea from Dunkin’ Donuts eases my pain.
Photographer Meg McKinney [list of posts] had already done an excellent job setting up my camera and getting me off auto. Therefore, much of this is review. Still, a) I learn something new about my camera in each class and b) I appreciate the professor explaining what settings are important, telling stories to make a technical class entertaining, and helping when my camera ends up in a weird place because I have pushed too many buttons.
Meg teaches classes here, so one reason to take these pre-reqs is to sign up for her classes later.
Part 1 [Road to the World Cup: Have Saddle, Will Travel] Part 2 [Road to the World Cup: First Team Practice]
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The World Cup riders are divided in a three-gaited team and a five-gaited team. At practice, we would sit and watch the other team. The three-gaited team practiced first while the five-gaited team watched, then we swapped out. There really isn’t a lot of separation between the two groups. We all do everything together as one with the exception of our practice rides.
While there is not much rivalry between five-gaited and three-gaited, I think there is some between the members of each team, but no one talks about it out loud. There are six members of my five-gaited team but only five can compete for the railwork and only five can compete for the pattern. Everyone is competing to not be that sixth person who has to sit out. It is probably the same with the three-gaited team.
The same person will not sit out both days of competition. Everyone is guaranteed to compete. So basically four riders will compete in both rail and pattern and the other two will be what we call “split”. They each will ride the same horse but one will ride the horse for the rail portion and the other rider will ride the horse for the pattern portion. The two split riders will have to wear the same number since scoring is based off back numbers.
Equitation on a five-gaited is exactly same as you would trotting and cantering. The same position applies. There is more leeway with your legs though. Squeezing with your lower leg is essential in balancing a horse while racking, especially through the turns, so it’s not expected to keep your lower leg perfectly still and off the saddle while at that gait.
America shows do not have five-gaited equitation classes. The UPHA used to host a five-gaited horsemanship class that was focused on equitation but they discontinued it. South Africa does have five-gaited equitation and it is quite popular. This is probably why SA beats USA’s butt a lot in the five-gaited International Competitions.
All of my Championship victories have been three-gaited. I chose the five-gaited team for a couple of different reasons. It was a safer route in my mind. Saddlebreds are the only breed that do five-gaited so I knew I would not have to go against the Morgan and Arabian riders. At trials, 20 riders tryout for the three-gaited team but only 12 tryout for the five-gaited. I played the numbers game and figured it would be easier to beat out six riders than 14. Another reason was I felt that I would more of an asset to the five-gaited team. Past five-gaited teams have been made of really good gaited riders but they did not have much of an equitation background. I felt my equitation skills would help the gaited team.
Virtual Brush Box 