Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Wild Hopes


“I’m going to let our hopes run as wild as the Mustangs,” by Jocelyn, age 10.

 

We need the free spirit of the mustang right now. We need some hope of a free tomorrow where we can run like the wild horses. And we need little children like Jocelyn who have a purpose and a heart to help the wild things.

 

Remember the song from the movie Anne Mamie,“We need a little Christmas, right this very moment?”  Join in.

 

A dear friend, Jocelyn’s grandmother, sent Jocelyn’s drawing to me. I thought it was so wonderful, I had to use it. You know me and horses, and here I had found a kindred spirit in a little girl who loves horses as I did when I was her age. Still do. You don’t have to be a kid to love horses or to ever ride or even touch one. Watch them running across the prairie and imagine how that would feel--the wind in your hair, the exhilaration of the run, being with your herd.

 

 “Winged” has often been ascribed to the horse.

 

I told her grandma, “Nana,” that I had adopted a mustang, which sent us off talking about horses and exchanging pictures. I received a video of Jocelyn, who lives in another state, running down a wooded path—her giggles making a Doppler effect as she and Cookie, a pony, ran past the recording photographer.

 

Jocelyn is the illustrator and spoke’s person for her Girl Scouts Troop who is sponsoring the Wild Beauty Foundation. This foundation was formed by filmmakers Ashley Avis and Edward Winters on the heels of the upcoming feature film Black Beauty.

 

The Wild Beauty Foundation was inspired by Anna Sewell, author of the original 19th-century novel Black Beauty. As Sewell’s message was to give voices to the cab horses of her day. The Wild Beauty Foundation’s focus is to give voices to the wild mustangs.

 

So, buy cookies and help give voices to the Wild Mustangs.

 

To know a mustang is to love them. Well, you don’t even have to know one. Seeing a herd running wild and free is enough to swell your heart.

 

Sierra, my mustang, had a freeze brand on her neck that looked like a strip of hieroglyphics. If you had the translation of the brand, you would know what herd she came from, the area, and the date of capture. Having a freeze brand meant she could never be sold for slaughter. Never, never do that. That’s a crime against all that’s sacred. Her pregnant momma was rounded up and gave birth to Sierra at the BLM holding facility in Burns, Oregon, where I adopted her as a baby of five and one-half months-old.

 

What a character she was, and curious as all get-out, smart and loving. While my quarter horse thought plastic bottles in a box was a monster, Sierra knew that rattling box was a play-toy. 

 

After Sierra was gentled and knew that our place was home, I turned her and her roommate, Velvet, loose where they frolicked around the house, jumped and ran on the drive, then rolled in the Oregon red-mud. All that before settling down for some grazing. (We lived in the forest, so our property was private.)

 

Sierra had a wild heart and a sweet nature, with a propensity for gnawing on our pickup truck. She accepted a sack of kitty litter on her back (as weight) and later-on, me. Her feet were strong and kept perfectly trimmed by running on the gravel drive. 

 

(Not so for the quarter horse).

 

The strength of the wild.

 

www.wildbeautyfoundation.org

 

This picture is also posted on https://thefrogssong.com, and that site includes more pictures of the Island, and horses. 

Wednesday, February 3, 2021

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