Why White Horses? Sculpting, Oregon Country Fair and such

 This White Horse was a Christmas gift from my Grandson Casey. He digitally sculpted it in the computer program Blender and then physically carved it in a 3D printer. (It took about 9 hours, he said.)

 

You probably know why I call this blog Wish on White Horses, although the site isn’t about horses. 

 

For those who don’t know, the title came from a day so hot that fair vendors squirted us with cool water to keep us vertical. 

 

Our friends Rita and Bob sat with Neil and me as we traveled by bus to avoid the drive and the parking trip into the left field for the Oregon Country Fair in Veneta, Oregon. 

 

Suddenly, Rita, beside me, said, “Quick, make a wish.”

 

“Why?” 

 

“A white horse. I always wish on white horses.”

 

I looked to the pasture alongside the road where a white horse, head bent to the ground, grazing on the green grass, and quickly thought up a wish. I don’t remember for what, but it must have come true. 

 

It tickled me to learn about wishing on white horses, for, as a child, I wished on every birthday candle, every shooting star that managed to cross my vision, and every first star of the night from when I was nine years old until I was twelve when my wish came true. My folks bought my gorgeous horse, Boots, for me.

 

You can see why I am so cuckoo over horses, for Boots was my partner and best bud for the following nine years. 

 

If you have never heard of or attended the Oregon CountryFair, it’s a phenomenon to experience. 

 

Even if you thought all the Hippies had gotten sucked up into the ether's, they get spit out for the three days of the Fair. It’s rather like a Renaissance Fair without the horse jousting. People dress (or undress) in whatever fun costume they can find. 

 

The booths displaying exquisite artworks are set among the trees and made from sticks and earthy materials, looking like a Hobbit village. The food is so good you want to sample everything. There is music and dancing and booths about sustainable living and new technologies. There is hot water from pipes coiled through a compost pile. 

 

People who have put together the fair party for three days. It is as though someone opened the doors to Shangri La. 

 

After three days, all human habitation or remains disappear except for the artistic fence bordering the entrance. The land reclaims its own. A big open field appears that was once a parking lot, and the trees return to their quiet whispering alongside the Long Tom River. 

 

The river generally floods in the spring, then evaporates in summer, leaving silt that makes the ground fertile come July when it is hot and the people return.

 

One summer, when Casey’s mother was pregnant with him, she went to the Fair and had her exposed belly painted with a coiled infant, such as existed inside.

 

Now Casey is 18, will graduate from high school this school year, made a white horse for me, and the wish on white horses lives on.

 

                 

https://joycedavis.substack.com/

 

 

 

 

It Takes a lot of Energy to Be Crazy

Long ago, I was a Dental Assistant. One day, the dentist realized the dentures he was making for a patient, who nit-picked at every turn, would never be right enough for her. So, although he had spent time and money taking impressions and such, he kindly asked her to find another doctor. (No fee was charged.)

 

 (Kindly, yes, although I could see veins swelling in his neck.)

He said his blood pressure would thank him.

 

Smart man.

 

This came to mind this morning when my daughter, who sells on Amazon, had such a customer.  “Help me,” the customer wrote, “cancel my order while I still have money on my credit card.” (Oh dear, the charge was already on the card. Should my daughter refund the money and swallow the 60 bucks she had already paid for the item?) The next day: “Where’s my purchase,” (Daughter gave her the mailing tracking number as her item was out of her hands and in the mail.) The next day: “Where’s my purchase?” (Doesn’t the mail service say, “Your mail may be delayed because of…you know what.”) Next, a notice came saying that item had been delivered. The lady said, “I didn’t receive it.”

 

Augh.

 

The postal service says that they use a GPS at the designated address to assure it’s delivered accurately. The lady gave my daughter a bad mark on Amazon. 

 

Augh.

 

There are worse crazies than those two women, but I ask, Do we say, "They can’t help it," and thus excuse the behavior?

 

I had a friend who had an incessant need to talk. I loved her anyway. We both had little kids, and after they were asleep, my friend and I  would stay up all night talking. At about four in the morning, she would have expended her load, and we would talk about meaningful events in our lives. The trouble was, we’d be dead tired the next day, and the kids were going strong.

 

We lived in separate towns, so our visits lasted for days. As I got older, I got smarter and went to bed earlier, but then I missed the 4 to 8 a.m. talks.

 

I know, we all have our idiosyncrasies that are only idiosyncrasies to others, not ourselves. 

 

We find that many lives have not been easy. There are traumas and abuse at every turn. Dr. Gabor Mate’, a psychologist who treats addiction, says that most addictions can be traced back to early childhood trauma. And that trauma can be inadvertently caused as it was in Dr. Mate’s case. Mate’ was born in Hungry at the time Germans were about to invade. His mother called the Pediatrician and said little Gabor was crying a lot. The doctor said, "All the babies are crying. They are picking up their mother’s worry.” Mate’ grew up to have an addiction--and overcame it.

 

As parents, we try to raise our kids to be healthy, thoughtful, caring people who think for themselves. Whoops, many parents want their kids to be better versions of themselves. We tend to pass down what we’ve been taught.

 

Then there is school bullying, ridicule, shame, the need to be top dog, get good grades, and never fail. 

 

And then we grow up and hear that some failure is inevitable. We learn from failure. (Hey, Musk’s rocket ship hit the launching pad in flames yesterday—back to the drawing board.) 

 

Long ago, I read an article about people called Indomitable. Those individuals had suffered untold hardships (like some refugees) and come through as exemplary adults. 

 

How does that happen?

 

What gives some people the resilience to carry through? 

 

When I was studying the horse’s brain, I learned that abuse can cause the Corpus colostrum to shrink. The Corpus colostrum is the bridge between the two hemispheres of the brain—it contains the wiring that allows one side of the brain to talk to the other side. People are different from horses because their Corpus colostrum is more developed so we don’t need to be trained on both sides. Perhaps, though, abuse or trauma shrinks the bridge for both man and beast.

 

One horse that had been abused by a man in a black hat developed a fear of black hats. It’s strange the connections that are made sometimes. Probably that’s one reason early traumas are so hard to track down.

 

If brains are altered, can they get back the pure spirit they were born with? 

 

There is so much we do not know and so many errors to be made.

 

The Native Americans knew this and said we would understand if we walked a mile in another person’s moccasins.

 

Even my little dog, who used to love going with me in the car, now has some apprehension. It began with bottles rattling in the trunk. No, it started when a firecracker hit the sky beyond our back fence the moment I opened the door to let her outside. That sensitized Sweet Pea to loud noises—like bottles rattling. When she experienced the truck bumping into another vehicle, that cinched the deal.  

 

However, I figure if she learned that behavior, she can unlearn it.

 

And so can we.

 

Now we are afraid of catching a dreaded virus, we’re afraid of dying, we’re afraid of other people, we’re afraid of being breathed upon, and we can’t get together with friends and family. And even going to the grocery store is a pain in the neck.

 

You see, FEAR is our greatest enemy. Yeah, I know, I am repeating myself.

 

Fear has made us sniveling images of our former selves. My thought is, perhaps we pumped up this virus because we feared it so much. 

 

This flu is is severe, I’m giving it that. However, I learned today that for under 20-year-olds, the recovery rate is 99.99%; for 20-40 year-olds, the recovery is 99.8%, age 50, 99.5%, and 95% for people over 70.

 

Good news, huh?

 

Of the ones who passed on the the Happy Hunting Grounds, their health was already severely compromised. 

 

We’ve had other severe influenzas that didn’t shut down the world.

 

We’ve had people in times past die of the flu (I’m sorry.) And now the media won’t leave it alone. Now they scare us with flu variants. 

 

What if—stay with me here—what if, instead of being off-kilter and afraid, we erase thoughts of Covid19 from our minds?

 

Would this pandemic wither up and go away as other flu's eventually do?

 

I don’t know. 

 

I’m going to stop talking about it. 

 

That’s impossible.

 

Well, I can stop writing about it.

 

That’s possible.

 

But before I do, let me tell you I was blown away by Dr. Simone Gold, a board-certified emergency room doctor who spoke about the Covid19 vaccine. By definition, it is not a vaccine but an “Experimental biological agent.” You might give this video a look-see. It’s the best I’ve seen and heard.

 

 https://lbry.tv/@Arkeadius:a/nwnw20210114:c