Virtual Brush Box

Photography of the outside world. Royal Museums Greenwich, Astronomy Photographer of the Year. Hat tip to L.

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Dock at Beeswax Creek
Shelby County AL USA
September 2024

Technical Details

Dock, f/8.0, 1/100 sec., 66.0 mm, ISO 100. Manual mode & auto-focus. Post production: resized, border, & watermark. No cropping.

Border colors. Gray for project, yellow for Nikon. [Photo Safari The First], [Quarry, Photography, Things]

Onwards!
Katherine

Awareness of the outside world. “It says something about our world that we seldom remember the person who came up with an idea, but canonize the pragmatist who made it commercially viable.” The author is referring to Gutenberg, Fulton, & Edison, then points out, “Already we have forgotten the people who created most of the important computer concepts and instead celebrate the people who became rich on them.” Paper: Paging Through History, by Mark Kurlansky (Norton 2016), prologue. [Before, intro]

~~~

tl,dr: I tried to have a lesson and failed to live up to my own minimal standards.

I even drew a frog on my hand, to remind me to feel froggy. It did not help.

My message to me, last week.

“Promise to self, in return for taking the easy route, once the show was over, I would at least attempt new things, i.e. put on my big girl jods & ride new horses.” [Before The Show, In Which I Dither And Decide To Go To A Horse Show]

My message to Coach Courtney, Saturday after the show.

Putting this out there while I still have horse show frogginess. I will ride whatever horse you name on Monday. I will not guarantee to do anything more than walk in the round pen. (Oh dear, I can feel the frogs hopping away. Come back!) 🐸

Monday came. I arrived at barn.

Taking me at my word, Coach Courtney announced that I would be riding Cosmo.

Deep breath. I can do this. Look at hand. Think froggy. All I promised was to walk.

Well.

Earthwork being done off in the distance. Jumpy about that due to my terrible, terrible lesson with Milton, wherein he objected to construction noise, among other things. [Milton’s Missing Lesson]

To ease into a lesson, I will sometimes walk the horse in-hand in the round pen and then get on there, instead of getting on in the barn. Reduce all variables to their simplest element.

Well.

As Coach Courtney and Cosmo circled the round pen, one of the field horses decided to go walkabout. Zip this way. Zing that way. Pasture mate sang the song of abandonment.

Cosmo was having a big time.

Mind you, this is a horse who generally needs help getting motivated. So I’m told.

I went over, opened a gate. Cavorting horse now behind a fence. Pasture mate still screaming. Construction noises still rattling.

Cosmo had his head up, showing the whites of his eyes. What is this? What is that? What is that over there?

While this was all going on, I tried. I stood on the mounting block. I walked him around the ring. We chatted. I watched him chill. I knew – rationally – that Cosmo wasn’t likely to do much more more than look about himself with alertness. If he did act up, it wouldn’t be much.

Didn’t help.

Nope. Nope. Noppity nope.

It’s not a confidence issue. It’s a trust issue. Unless my mount is the quietest of school ponies, I harbor the suspicion that the horse is a heartbeat away from a having a meltdown and hopping across the ring. I wonder why. (Gives hard side-eye to home team.) If one starts a ride with that attitude, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. [Cumulative Effect]

I never did get on.

Were does this leave me? I have no idea.

First photo attempt. Where did this old lady hand come from?

Onwards!
Katherine

Awareness of the outside world. “Technological fallacy: the idea that technology changes society. It is exactly the reverse. Society develops technology to address the changes that are taking place within it.” Paper: Paging Through History, by Mark Kurlansky (Norton 2016), prologue.

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tl, dr: Showed over the weekend. Almost didn’t. [Soloing In A Crowd]

Given the choice, my going to a show seems inevitable. Let the record show that I had actually bailed on this one.

I hadn’t ridden saddle seat since June.

July was heat alerts, endless rain, & summer camp at the barn. Driving works out better in the mornings before camp. [Summer Driving, Summer Showing]

August was work and stress for me … [Pink Horse]

… and Louisville for the barn. [Vicarious Louisville]

September. Work over. Time to pick up threads of my life that I had let drop. Show coming up. Might go. Might not.

Went for driving lesson the week before the show. Got with the program. Of course I am going to the show.

Came home. Is this really what I want to be doing with my life? Neither saddle seat nor western have ever been my dream. Neither of the available horses needed another rider on their dance card. School horse in a lesson-level class is not a particularly adventurous outing.

On the other hand, what else I’m gonna be doing on a rainy Saturday? Sitting around the house growing mold is not a good course of action. Better to do something than to do nothing.

Back & forth. Forth & back. Waffle. Waffle. Waffle.

Between tropical storm & schedules, couldn’t make it back to the barn for a riding lesson.

Okay. That’s that. No show.

Well.

Last minute cancellation on Friday left time for me to scoot out between feeds.

Had lesson. Went to show.

Give the lack of everything lately, took the simplest option. Rode Optimus. Who was of course a stellar dude.

Promise to self, in return for taking the easy route, once the show was over, I would at least attempt new things, i.e. put on my big girl jods & ride new horses.

More tomorrow.

Onwards!
Katherine

Photo credit: Kimberley Mullins

ASHAA Summer Fun Show
Heathermoor Farm
Leeds AL, USA
Saturday 14 September 2024

Optimus. Thank you to the Bearden & Gray families.
30 Academy Showmanship Adult WTC – 1st of 7 1
31 Academy Equitation Adult WTC – 1st of 7 1

Seven of us stood in the lineup and I was called out first! Woot! Victory is mine!

… and it was a combined Adult/Junior class. I was the only adult. Since I was a solo class, I rode with kids to move the show along. We rode together but the two classes were placed separately.

Rainy day meant the indoor ring. Small space for that many entries. Worked out fine. Since we all went about the same pace, we circled around like a carousel ride.

It had been a while since I saddle seated. Therefore, other than the minimum required to steer and signal, I did absolute nothing with the front end of the horse and concentrated on putting my body parts in the right place.

One error. I was congratulating myself on how well I was remembering an instruction from my lesson (rein action comes back not up). Sensing my distraction, Optimus elected to downshift to trot. On the straightaway, no less. Not even at a corner. Keep your eyes in the boat!

Photo is with stunt ribbons. Ran low on blues. Saving what they had for the kid classes. I’m good. I had fun.

Rode. Unlike last time, I was able to slide in a last-minute lesson. More on this tomorrow. [Summer Showing]

Did not drive. Cart was busy. Yay for more drivers!

Selfie Fail

Opt: Is cookie?
Me: No, is phone.
Opt: Might be cookie. Must investigate.
Me: Would someone please take our picture?

Onwards!
Katherine

Awareness of the outside world. Doing my part for science, Johns Hopkins COVID Long Study. Filled out my quarterly survey. [Summer Is Here]

~~~

Rodney has been promoting putting Milton on Regu-Mate, a mood stabilizer for mares that can be used for geldings. Rodney would like his roommate to chill. Regu-Mate is complicated to work with. Instead we are trying Mare Magic, an OTC version. Essentially raspberry tea.

We aren’t doing this because Milton is “difficult” or because he is not conforming to human standards of behavior. We’re doing it because he’s not happy. Previous Horse was a curmudgeon. He was a grumpy old man the day he was foaled. However, he still spent the majority of his time simply hanging out being a horse. Milton doesn’t. He seems to be cranky and jumpy. Not all the time, but more often than I would want to go through life. Plus, he still doesn’t like to be touched, something that no one has been able to explain.

I feel that we have never really gotten through to Milton. Riding? Driving? Training? We are average amateurs. Horse management? That part we are good at. By now we should have a better answer to the question that is Milton.

Raspberry tea anyone?

Onwards!
Katherine

Art of the outside world. MOMA: Lettering by Hand, Exhibition from the 60s. Exhibition calalogue online under “View the publication.”

~~~

[Fractal Alphabet]

Onwards!
Katherine

It all started when two of Abby’s friends used to meet every weekday for coffee. She wanted to join them, but they lived in town and she lived way out in the country. Their coffee shop of choice was too far away. It would mean driving for two hours – an hour there and an hour back – to spend one hour seeing her friends.

Then Bettina got covid. Isolation meant not going out for coffee. A mild case meant boredom and sniffles. When she complained about cabin fever, Abby offered to host a digital coffee hour on her Zoom account.

It was supposed to be temporary. A few days until Betts felt it was safe to go back among other humans. Turned out they all liked the arrangement. Abby got to see her friends. Betts liked drinking coffee in her pajamas. Chris like saving money.

They kept meeting.

Instead of shrinking over time, the group grew. This friend. That sister who lived out of town. They finally settled on about two dozen women all told. A core group of 5 or 6, with others rotating through as time or interest allowed.

The hour was convenient. Coffee hour Abby’s part of the US was afternoon break in Europe.

They talked about this or that. Movies, books, sometimes politics. They talked about coffee. What they were drinking today. Who got a new machine. Brew vs. drip. Coffee history. Free trade. How someone ever figured out how to make coffee from beans in the first place. They talked a lot about coffee. It was coffee hour after all.

There was no role call. Still, people tended to notice when one of the regulars hadn’t shown for a while. Does anyone know what happened to Dorothy? Oh yeah, she’s really swamped at work right now. She’s going in early to cover the opening shift. Where is Erica been? I dunno. I’ll text her later.

Abby didn’t get off the property much, so she was around to play host as soon as all the animals had been fed and settled for the day. She liked to sit out on the porch with the trees in the background. If you’re going to live this far from civilization, you might as well enjoy the perks. Although the prize for backgrounds went to Felicia, who traveled for work and went to some amazing places.

In time, the group would fade away. It was the way of such things. They’d move on to different places in their lives. Fewer people would show up. The meetings would shift to weekly and then to monthly and then to promises of getting together again soon.

Or maybe not. Maybe they’d still be meeting in 30 years. The one steady element in the vicissitudes of life.

It could go either way.

For now, Abby would pour a cup of coffee, aim her laptop at the trees, and hold space for whoever showed up.

~~~ ☕ 💻 ~~~