Still Life with Camera

We've lived here now for 6 weeks and I've only seen another dog walker once.  There are lots of dogs here but instead of walking their dogs, everyone here seems to have a solid 7-8 foot fence around their yard.  I miss meeting people with their dogs.  I made a lot of friends that way at Prairie Crossing.  And now I appreciate the wisdom of how Prairie Crossing was put together.  It was intended to encourage community so no big fences are allowed.  And no fences that block a view.  The houses all have shared common areas - not a block away,  but out the front or back door.  On a good weather day, warm or cold, people with children and dogs or cups of coffee or a beer, congregate outside. The kids play or ride their trikes around the square, dogs romp with each other or chase balls or frisbees.  Or we chat while someone grills something for supper.  And so we all got to know each other.  Most American communities support individualism and privacy, but I wonder if they know wh

The State of Illinois is billions of dollars in debt, which means that money promised to the University of Illinois ,where I work, hasn't been sent. Clearly the University's primary missions are education and research so the institution is agonizing over how to meet this vast short fall in funds without endangering those missions. So, furlough days, or, if you'd prefer, a short term cut in pay. A furlough day is a mandatory day off without pay where you are absolutely not allowed to work. Generally not a problem for the kind of work I'm involved in where we can cover for each other most of the time. However, lots of people on the commuter bus to the train station (who talk while I unintentionally eavesdrop) are involved in research or patient care and they would rather keep working for less pay. The pay cut was not offered as an option at first. I have a feeling people like my bus mates made the case for it. The University thought these options were more fair than firin

Laura, the woman I bought Navaroan from and who now has him back, and I have been spending a lot of time on the phone. After he unloaded she put him out in the pasture. We weren't sure if he just needed to relax and decompress for a while or what. She said he ran around and around the pasture , kicking and bucking, and just having a grand old time. She had put him out with her other horses and he started chasing them around (which he'd never done before)so she put him in a pasture by himself. When she led him back to the barn, he was doing exactly the same thing he did here, which was to ignore her. She kept having to do things to get his attention back. And by the way, look at those sad eyes. I knew he was unhappy, but looking at these pictures really brings it home. She rode him on Wednesday and was surprised, I think, not that she didn't believe what I'd been saying, just that it didn't sound like the horse who'd left her 6 or 7 months back. He spooked, h

I'm not sure why, but all of a sudden I'm getting Martha Stewart Living Magazine. I almost threw it away without opening it, but stuck it in my train bag instead. And it's great! I could hardly believe it. And I think it hit me just at the right time, right before the winter doldrums had me totally immobilized. I felt like Julie (of Julie and Julia - wonderful movie, by the way)when she committed to 532 recipes in 365 days. I'm energized! And it's the most unexpected things that really caught my fancy. One of my favorite things is Martha's calendar at the very beginning of the magazine. Besides all the usual stuff - yoga 3 times a week, workouts 2 times a week, there are things like "Vacuum refrigerator coils " and "Clean and oil saddles." Having it there - just that one thing for that day - makes it seem so doable . When I think of things like that, I think, OMG, the house is such a wreck, where can I start and I immediately com

Yup, that's what we have here. Did you know there are many different kinds of frost? Sort of like Inuits having many different words for snow. But hoarfrost, also called soft rime, is formed when the air is warmer than objects in the environment - like trees, for example. It's really pretty - see the crystalization on this one. Or this one.

Darn it!  Connie called while I was on the train tonight to say that someone else has taken Meg.  I'm so disappointed!  And, now I have nothing to distract me from how much I'm going to miss Navi.  I talked with Tammie, the horse transporter and she thinks she'll be at Sunflower midday on Monday.  It's Martin Luther King Day, a work holiday for me, but I don't know yet whether I can be there or not. I've also been thinking about, Stealth,  the other horse I would have bought if I hadn't bought Navaroan.  He's still for sale.  Since I'm not getting any money back from Navaroan, I wonder if I could work out some kind of lease deal for him for a while.  Hmmm.  He's a Georgian Grand, a relatively new breed which is a Friesian crossed with something.  Stealth is a saddlebred, Friesian combo.  He certainly seemed like a sweet, sweet guy.  Maybe I'll try to go see him this weekend.

I actually got the last seat tonight on the 5:00 commuter bus that goes from UIC to Union Station. Certainly ridership goes up when it's cold, but this is the first time I've ever seen people having to stand. The real reason, I think, is that there have been 3 strong-arm robberies on the West Side of campus already this week including 1 right outside the building where I work at 6:00 pm. Took away our illusions that these only happen on the East Side of campus and later at night. So I figure that all of the folks who would normally hang around a bit don't want to risk walking to the bus or waiting by themselves. I'm sure that winter garb - hoods and scarves and hats - makes people less able to be aware of what's going on. I've decided to be wary but not afraid. Fear is responsible for so much undesirable behavior in our world. We're afraid of people who are different from us in any way, we're afraid we might lose our high standard of living, we're af

Tammie the horse transporter picked up Navaroan at about 1:00 on Monday. He walked right onto the trailer (thank God! I'd had some worries about that). She had another big Saddlebred gelding on the truck - I'm sure that helped. Navaroan got very attached to the horse she had on the truck when he came the Arkansas to Illinois direction. I went to the barn at about 10:00 on Monday and brought him in from turnout, gave him a last good grooming, gave him lots of carrots, got him some hay and then.....waited. I couldn't get up the energy to clean out my locker. I didn't really feel like talking to anyone. Finally at about 11:45, I took his health certificate and the negative Coggins paperwork to the office and asked if they would be willing to help Tammie when she came. The waiting was really killing me. They were willing, of course, and I left. At 3:00 pm on Tuesday Tammie called and said he was back with Laura in Arkansas. So, that's that. Right.

So my beloved Navi is going but all of a sudden my trainer has heard about the possibility of a sweet, hard-working, 9-year-old Hanoverian mare for me. The owner can't keep her anymore and is looking for a good home for her. Obviously, temperament is vital, and not just temperament, but temperament in this kind of a situation. I don't ever want to put a horse in a bad circumstance again. I've just seen pictures of her - she's really a pretty little girl. Well, not little, actually, she's 17 hands. We're going to go see her on Sunday. So keep your fingers crossed and maybe she'll be the one.

My trainer called over the weekend to talk about Navaroan's not to be fixed spookiness. So I e-mailed and spoke with Laura, his former owner in Arkansas. She was really shocked at how he's behaving - he sounds like a different horse than what she'd had. That's what the vet said the second time she saw him too. In talking with Laura, it all began to make sense to me. I thought Laura had bought him from the breeder, but actually there was an intermediate stop for him. An Andalusian trainer in Florida had him for a while. Laura's impression when she went to ride him was that this trainer was frightened of him and that he'd probably been abused. I read about this all of the time, where trainers just push, push, push regardless of the horse's temperament. And pretty soon, the horse just doesn't trust people anymore. So here I've gone and inadvertently put him into a set of circumstances that's probably very similar to that Dressage Barn. I think whe

When I took Weezie out this morning it was 3 degrees with a windchill of 10 below zero. It's interesting, I think, that for those of us who live in a "temperate" zone, the weather is always a valid topic of conversation. My father used to go to Mexico in the winter. He's not good at small talk anyway, and in Minnesota frequently fell back on weather talk just to be saying something. In Mexico, it didn't work because the weather was always pretty much the same - sunny, hot and beautiful. A friend of mine from Santiago, Chile, noticed what an impact the weather has on socializing. It's not like you want to stop and chat on the street when every minute outside brings you a little closer to frostbite. Maybe that's why Starbucks was invented. But, I guess it can always be colder somewhere else. These pix are from a site called MarcoFolio.net. BRRRR. And why isn't that man wearing gloves???

One of the benefits of the new house is this magnificent tree we have to the west of us. I'm not sure what kind it is - guess we'll have to wait until spring. It's certainly old. Think of the stories it could tell us. Of the HoChunks and Dakota Sioux who lived in this area, of tall grass prairie, of European immigrants. We'll have to do some listening.

"Oh the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful, and since we've got no place to go..." Yes, that's me you hear singing. Unfortunately, I did have to go to work. It's been snowing here since early this a.m. and we'll probably get a foot or so of accumulation. The plows hadn't kept up overnight so the roads were slow and slick for the morning rush hour. At least I'm not flying anywhere. Delta cancelled a whole bunch of flights this morning and I'll bet the other airlines weren't far behind. I suppose it's a minority opinion, but I'd much rather have snow than rain. It's too cold for snow balls, though. Don't look too long - you don't want to get snow blind.

My friend, Susan, arranged for Laura Amandis to be at Sunflower Farms last October for an afternoon clinic. Laura was working at the Bristol Renaissance Fair as Mistress of the Joust and the Fair is only a couple of miles from Sunflower so it was convenient. Her ground work with horses is amazing! And she and her horse, Acierto, are amazing in a totally different way.  He's a gorgeous white Andalusian stallion.  After she had worked with a  couple of horses, she brought Acierto in to do a demonstration of his Liberty Work.  He came into the arena and took a victory gallop around.  When he caught sight of himself in the mirror, he preened and whinnied and neighed at himself.  He did this multiple times - it was hilarious! So, this Sunday, January 10th, Laura will be at Sunflower to do a 9-5 clinic.  I'm looking forward to it.

For the past five years, 3 days a week, a wonderful dog person named Amy has taken Weezie and her pals (Clemmie - a samoyed, Gus - a yellow lab - and others)to the dog park for two hours. Weezie needs the exercise so she won't drive us nuts during the day, but it hadn't occurred to me until after we moved that she also needs the companionship. She and I were at the dogpark the other day when two samoyeds arrived. Faster than a speeding bullet, she went to see if it was Clemmie, did the obligatory sniffing, and was obviously disappointed when it wasn't her.

After the hock injections last Wednesday, Navi was on stall rest for 2 days, then back to regular turnout over the weekend and on Tuesday Connie lunged him for about 40 minutes. She says there's some improvement. I've been thinking we should try a chiropractor, or massage or acupuncture and when she called me on Tuesday night, that's what she was thinking, too. There's a chiropractor up here named Mike who has a 'Horse Whisperer' reputation. Connie has known him for years and will get Navi on his schedule. It would be so wonderful if he just needed an adjustment instead of all these other chronic problems I've been imagining. Meanwhile, I'm just visiting him in the evenings, feeding him treats and hanging out while he munches hay. Okay, Navi, look carefully at this picture. See how quiet Contessa is being while she gets her massage?

This horse owning experience has been very interesting for me. Let me first say that I'm an older beginning horse rider and that I've loved horses since I was a little girl. I think it's a gene that skipped generations. My grandfather had work horses as a farmer early in the 20th century and family lore has it that he loved them more than he did his own kids. My mother and my children are afraid of horses; my sister and I can't get enough of them. When I first thought about buying, it was the fulfillment of that little girl's dream. And somewhere along the way I had developed the certainty that I wanted a horse so I could learn to ride dressage. I knew it. I had been taking dressage lessons on and off for a couple of years on a few different horses. My best horse buddy, Susan, is very into dressage and the positive effects it has on her, both physical and mental. She says if it weren't for riding, she would be on some anti-depressant or anti-anxiety drug. She&#

We spent New Year's Eve watching the movie, Seven Pounds What a good movie! I commented that it was a "little" movie, like they still produce in Europe, but you rarely see from the U.S. I wasn't surprised when I found out that the Director, Gabriele Muccino, is Italian. When I say "little," I mean "little" as in the trivial little things of daily life, the little happenings that are sewn together to become our lives over time. No need for explosions, shootings, wars.... As in definitely not Independence Day . Not that I disliked Independence Day . It's just that the balance between wonderful "little" movies and the blockbusters has been off here for years. So rent it if you get a chance. And don't forget the kleenex. And if you don't like it, just watch it to enjoy Rosario Dawson's beauty and vulnerability.

My kids had the good luck to spend all of their growing up years in one town. So they have friends that they've known since nursery school. Marty is one of those friends to Charlie. The first time I became aware of Marty (or was it Richie? they're identical twins) was when he fell off the slide and broke his arm. Marty was 4, Charlie was 3. Now they're in their 30's and still in daily contact. Charlie is tall, blond and an extreme introvert. Marty is short, dark and an extreme extrovert. Marty's whirlwind visits wear Charlie out (not that he'd have it any other way) with their constant round of visits to friends and family. We were Marty's alternate parents for a while when his parents divorced and his mother decided to pursue a long-delayed (after raising 10 kids) bachelor's degree. He's slept on all our couches and guest beds at one time or another. It's always great to see him! And as you can see, Charlie rarely allows a pictur

We've been in the new house now for 2 weeks. The first floor is coming along, i.e., we can now walk through without tripping over boxes. And we can put together a meal without opening every cupboard to find: pick 1- (the mixing bowls, the measuring cups, this or that ingredient). So here's a little tour starting with the living room. I've developed a yen for a house with a two-story room in it over the past few years -I'm not sure why. But we got one with this house. Dining Room - complete with bay window that overlooks an area of native plantings. Entry Mirror And the patio - currently covered with snow, dreaming of summer barbecues.

Gone are the 'oughts', in with the teens! It was about 4 degrees when I took Weezie out this morning. No wind, though and brilliant sunshine making the snow sparkle. It seemed colder yesterday at the dog park when it was in the 20's with a nasty wind. I had my usual cup of caffeinated tea this morning. That's about all the caffeine I can handle before I get the shakes. So I have a great collection of decaf teas. So it seemed like the perfect day to brew up a pot of decaf Chai. When we were little girls living at my grandparents' house, we were allowed Sunday tea with the adults. Grandma got out her lovely china cups and saucers from Germany and filled our cups half full of tea, half full of milk and then added lots of sugar. Milky sweet tea brings back such fond memories. Some of my ancestors come from Ost Friesland. I have discovered two interesting facts about Ost Friesland. One is that in the past Ost Friesland was the butt of the (pick your nationality