Old Year, New Year Lesson

Listening to NPR's report on the Worst. Decade. Ever. yesterday, I must say, I had to agree. Wars, corporate and political malfeasance, economic chaos, epic natural disasters; it wasn't rosy. I went about my business at the stables, trying to be positive and not reflect on the negative.

The horses were in their stalls munching on their afternoon hay snack. All content, except Kitten, who kept nickering at me. She has the most alluring nicker: deep, sweet. I checked that I had actually given her hay and not missed her inadvertently. More nickering. I told her it wasn't time for grain. More nickering. I checked her water. More nickering.

I stood outside her stall with my hands on my hips, "What?" She gave me those come here eyes and I dutifully scratched her neck. Kitten is a scratching fanatic and always obliges in return. Yesterday, she wrapped her neck around my shoulder and held the back of my head with hers. I put my arms around her and we stood in the embrace for a sublime time.

No amount of hardship or pain can withstand the super power of a Kitten hug; she puts her entire existence into fighting the evil of stress, grief and despair with them. When confronted with events or circumstances beyond control, the best defense is an expression of love. I don't understand her all the time, but Kitten is my Hero.

Wishing you a happy new year,

Michelle Blackler

Serendipity

www.hossbiz.com

Serendipity is an Accidental Sagacity Corporation company.

Another Favorite Dressage Video: Andreas Helgstrand and Matinee

Merry Christmas from Serendipity

Bob Nervig driving Don Pecos put to the one horse open marathon vehicle. Happy Holidays everyone!

Kind Regards,

Michelle Blackler

Serendipity

www.hossbiz.com

Serendipity is an Accidental Sagacity Corporation company.

Christmas from daily@delanceyplace.com

In today's encore excerpt - at the end of the 19th century, Charles Dickens' short novel, A Christmas Carol, had readership second only to the Bible's:

"If only Ebenezer Scrooge had not, in the excitement of his transformation from miser to humanitarian, diverged from the traditional Christmas goose to surprise Bob Cratchit with a turkey 'twice the size of Tiny Tim.' But alas - he did, and as A Christmas Carol approaches its 165th birthday, a Google search answers the plaint 'leftover turkey' with more than 300,000 promises of recipes to dispatch it. As for England's goose-raising industry, it tanked. ...

"The public's extraordinary and lasting embrace of Dickens's short novel is but one evidence of the 19th century's changing attitude toward Christmas. In 1819, Washington Irving's immensely popular 'Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent' had 'glorified' the 'social rites' of the season. Clement Moore's 1823 poem 'The Night Before Christmas' introduced a fat and jolly St. Nick whose obvious attractions eclipsed what had been a 'foreboding figure of judgment' as likely to distribute canings as gifts. Queen Victoria and her Bavarian husband, Albert, 'great boosters of the season,' had installed a Christmas tree in Windsor Castle each year since 1840, encouraging a fad that spread overseas to America by 1848. ...

"What is true is that Christmas, more than any other holiday, offered a means for the adult Dickens to redeem the despair and terrors of his childhood. In 1824, after a series of financial embarrassments drove his family to exchange what he remembered as a pleasant country existence for a 'mean, small tenement' in London, the 12-year-old Dickens, his schooling interrupted - ended, for all he knew - was sent to work 10-hour days at a shoe blacking factory in a quixotic attempt to remedy his family's insolvency. Not even a week later, his father was incarcerated in the infamous Marshalsea prison for a failure to pay a small debt to a baker. At this, Dickens's 'grief and humiliation' overwhelmed him so thoroughly that it retained the power to overshadow his adult accomplishments, calling him to 'wander desolately back' to the scene of his mortification. And because Dickens's tribulations were not particular to him but emblematic of the Industrial Revolution - armies of neglected, unschooled children forced into labor - the concerns that inform his fiction were shared by millions of potential readers. ...

"Replacing the slippery Holy Ghost with anthropomorphized spirits, the infant Christ with a crippled child whose salvation waits on man's - not God's - generosity, Dickens laid claim to a religious festival, handing it over to the gathering forces of secular humanism. If a single night's crash course in man's power to redress his mistakes and redeem his future without appealing to an invisible and silent deity could rehabilitate even so apparently lost a cause as Ebenezer Scrooge, imagine what it might do for the rest of us!"

Kathryn Harrison, "Father Christmas," The New York Times Review of Books, December 7, 2008, p. 14.

Edward Gal's Master Class at Olympia

This video is a fantastic class with top dressage rider Edward Gal at the London International Horse Show. His teaching is filled with humility and understanding, both of the horse and his audience. I love watching it and wanted to share it. The video box is a little wonky, so scroll down to the bottom right hand corner and click on the orange square for full screen version.

Enjoy!

Michelle Blackler

Serendipity

www.hossbiz.com

Serendipity is an Accidental Sagacity Corporation company.

Mary Cassatt's Painting, A Woman and A Girl Driving

A Woman and A Girl Driving by Mary Cassett (1881)

This is an interesting painting from an artistic point of view. The little girl is said to be Edgar Degas' niece and the woman driving is the artist's terminally ill sister. The technical application of light and color is the hallmark of the Impressionist movement, Cassett was a contemporary of Degas, Manet and Renoir. An American living in Paris, Cassett painted this portrait in 1881, and anyone who is a fan of Impressionist art will see the influences of all three more famous painters in its application.

Now, being the art critic I am, there are things to be celebrated in this work. But being the carriage critic does raise a few trifling flaws to the vehicle and carriage. I'm glad I wasn't the one driving that vehicle, what? A Dos a Dos Meadowbrook? With a kicking strap? The position of those shafts? Lamps on the dash? I fear for the groom were they to hit a bump...

Artistic license. That would never pass a safety check today.

One Horse Open Marathon Vehicle Part II

Another bitterly cold day. Gosh this is getting old and it isn't even Christmas yet. The weather really prohibits good blogging material, as Lucy and I have been home bound for so many days and even when we do go to the barn, it is just about getting through lessons and working horses as fast as possible.

This last weekend was tolerable, so I set out to work Don Pecos and Ace. My colleague, Michael Scott was down for a visit and we got the marathon vehicle out and plowed through the drifts, braved the chilly wind and worked a new angle of cones. Ace was not wanting to settle down and bend for me, so Michael got in and took him hell for leather through the course. I tried to anchor the vehicle to the ground as best I could while still looking over Michael's shoulder to watch Ace. He was booking through those cones, twisting and leaping like a ballet dancer. It was thrilling! Afterwards, I came to the conclusion that I baby him too much. He went much better with sturdy contact and a more complicated course.

Don Pecos was up next, so I took him through the course as I knew he could: fast and tight. Michael seemed to be much more impressed with me driving Pecos, but I can not take any credit there. Pecos reminds me of a BMW 5 Series advertisement: Part Athlete, Part Genius. He is such a joy to drive through these cones courses: fuel injected, power steering, big engine. But not to diminish Ace's ability, he is a great athlete as well, he is just different, and he has not got the same level of conditioning that Pecos has.

So, we have so much work to do this winter to prepare for combined driving next year, that this weather is an even bigger bore. I'd rather be driving. Oh, well, at least I got my Christmas cookies baked. And I'm halfway through the Manual of Coaching, which should be required reading for anyone interested in hitching a horse to a vehicle. So, snuggle up next to your dog, cat or sweetie and keep the fire stoked.

Kind Regards,

Michelle Blackler

Serendipity

www.hossbiz.com

Serendipity is an Accidental Sagacity Corporation company.