Tuesday and Wednesday and Rain and Sheep and Tigers

 

 

Tuesday slipped past me—Tuesday is normally my Blog-day.

         

I’ve been working so hard on my Prairie Report, I haven’t thought of much else. Although I scared myself last night when I was complaining about the state of the state, not just Oregon, all of the states. I gave myself a headache as a result.  So, I went inside the house, took two aspirins, and got rid of it.

And ripped up those pages.

 

Wednesday

Morning, I am out in my truck again with Sweetpea and coffee. This time, I parked next to an abandoned house for sale on 126 acres, not far from where we live. I figured I could sit here, attempt to get some rays, and watch the sheep in the field while I write to you guys.

It has begun to rain.

And those sheep in the field are out in the wet, and so are their babies. They don’t seem to pay much attention to the water falling on them—I guess those coats are pretty water repellent, with all that lanolin coating them.

Those babies know which dam is their mother, although I see a group of youngsters running together—whoops, two twins decided to stop by their mother for a snack.

The babies are youngsters, not babies, and run with the pack rather than huddle under mother most of the time. The rain stopped almost as fast as their snack time.

The fields are immense, 126 acres on this property so the ad says. $1,475,000 for the property with a house built in 1915. The land is rented for the sheep although their aren’t many sheep on it, only about 50 spread out over the abundance of green that covers the land.

This is a Zillow picture, I was curious about it. There were no vehicles parked beside the house when I was there, and I don't see any sheep in the fields, but they were there today.

 

 

Wise words:

“Healing is so hard because it’s a constant battle between your inner child, who is scared and just wants safety, and your inner teenager, who’s angry and wants justice, and your adult self, who is just tired and wants peace.”

--vensachingautamtero

 

Good news--tigers

Praise for the people in Kazakhstan who are implementing a reforesting of the land and a return of the tigers.

Kazakhstan, a country in Central Asia bordering Russia, is gearing up to bring the tigers back by planting 37,000 new trees for refuge and cover.

Kazakhstan has been inhabited since the Paleolithic era, and the Botai culture there is credited with domesticating horses around 3700-3100 B.C. The nomadic people of the country were pasturing their herds at about the same time as they traveled.

Now a team is making a grand effort to bring the tigers back to the wild places in the country’s south along the IIe River and Lake Balkhash. This area once sheltered the big cats.

The re-wilding isn’t just about the cats; the team has carefully chosen willows, poplars and other trees known to support deer and antelope that the tigers need to survive.

Already, wild grazers are foraging among the new growth, evidence that the landscape is slowly coming back to life. And soon, a pair of Amur tigers from the Netherlands may become the first of their kind in decades to roam Kazakhstan.

I didn’t know where Kazakhstan existed. It’s among other countries that end in “stan.”

 

 

 

 

View From The Chicken House

 “They say motivation doesn’t last, neither does bathing, that's why we do it daily.”—Zig Zigler.

 

How many times have I used that quote? Many. It’s one of my favorites.

Have you ever watched a movie the second time, like maybe 20 years later, and you remember a little, but when the introduction rolls, you say, “I don’t remember ever seeing that.’ And maybe there are a whole bunch more scenes you don’t remember. I did that with the movie Children of a Lesser God last night.

 

And we do it with those wonderful cryptic sayings that are so meaningful at the time, quotes, and motivational sayings.

Peaches and I are in the truck parked by our once bare ground field, now ablaze with green spring goodness. We are basking in the glorious sunshine that is warming us from head to our toes. I’m recovering from a cold, the first in over 5 years. I declared I was never getting another, but alas, there is many a slip between cup and lip.

So, we sit here like two lizards on hot rocks, but the image of a crispy lizard flashed on my brain, and I quickly cooled my choice of words from hot rocks to warm ones.  Of course, if I were truly creative, I would come up with a better analogy than a lizard on hot rocks, but as I was reading The Poisonwood Bible, I was shocked to see that Barbara Kingsolver used clichés, and if a Pulitzer Prize-winning author can use a cliché, so can I.

Those cool word pictures, aka clichés, climb right to the top of our brains—“Cool as a cucumber,” hardly causes a pause in the reading. We all know what it means, we all understand a cliche'. I think they are like traveling to famous sites of the world, yes these sites are frequented, and advisors tell us to get off the beaten track, but the sites are frequented because they are the best.

(I admit cliche's are lazy writing, but hey, I'm giving my stuffed head a break. But isn't it refreshing when we run into a simile that gives us an explosive "Ha!"?) 

 

Earlier, I listened to a video of a monk advising us that when sadness visits, quickly replace it with a gentler thought. Joy opens doors.

Imagine this: we are in control of our thoughts, yet most of us think our thoughts are thinking us.

You know I had been following the Monks Walk for Peace and Aloka, their Peace dog, until the end of their journey—that 2,300-mile trek. I pray that the Peace and loving kindness they were spreading and receiving will continue.  

I should say it will continue, for once our eyes are opened to possibilities, it takes extreme effort to close them again.

I'm going to throw in something I gained from my Real Estate Continuing Education Course I took last month--don't be scared if I mention Real Estate, it wasn't all dry stuff. (And you guys know how I was dreading taking that course.) 

The course warned us about something they called “Implicit Bias.”

Implicit Bias as a subconscious bias that is difficult to detect and hard to overcome. It is our tendency to assign negative traits to people outside our group and positive traits to those within our group. 

But that’s not all to it.

 We know about discrimination—treating people, groups, animals, differently, thinking of them as inferior or not worthy of our attention. Sometimes we judge by stereotypes, which are oversimplifications of behaviors or characteristics.

Here are some examples of Implicit bias I just pulled out of the hat:

• Anchoring bias occurs when a person’s judgment is unduly influenced by the first piece of information they have on a subject.

• Beauty bias: That beautiful people have it easier. They are hired more often, promoted more often, and paid more. Yet, that can work against them. When a highly attractive woman applies for a physically demanding job, she is likely to be judged as incapable of doing the work. Being attractive can cause jealousy and lead to social isolation, sabotaging promotional opportunities.  Many are surprised when a beautiful woman is also smart. (I had a hard time accepting California’s governor, Gavin Newsom as a presidential candidate because he was so good-looking. But then I listened to him.)

We don’t want to admit some of those feelings sometimes.

• Affinity bias, which is the tendency for us to be attracted to people like ourselves. They like the same things we do, believe the way we do—boy howdy, isn’t that true? It can cause tunnel vision. It limits debate, can create a closed mind, and limits one’s education.

 

And then I came home to type up this information for I had my arrow pointed at the bull's eye that is my blog. I was ready to let go of the bow's string...when... 

I learned that my first boyfriend died. I feel sad and odd. We dated for four years. He greatly added to my self-esteem and self-confidence. I know as we matured we become polar opposites in many ways, but I was impressed at what he had accomplished over the years, and that in college on the east coast, and having no car, he bought a scooter (not a motorcycle) and drove it from the east coast to the west coast to visit his parents. That was awesome!

I didn't know the man he became, but I remember the boy.

 

It feels like the end of an era.

I decided to ignore the monk’s sage advice and be sad for a while.

And then I went outside to close the chickens in for the night and saw this: