At the arena
This is the time of year when the calves are born, the 3-year-old horses go to their first big shows (the Futurities), and the Reno Air Races happen. It is quite a busy time! We have had our first set of bovine twins on the ranch, and we are keeping a close eye on them to make sure the mother cow can adequately take care of both of them. Sometimes they will reject one of them knowing they don’t have enough milk for both, sometimes they will try valiantly to feed both, but eventually one of them will be undernourished and we will have to take the calf and bottle feed it until it is old enough to grow on hay. So far so good with this set of twins, as the cow seems to have plenty of milk for both of them and they are growing normally. It is always preferable to have the cow raise the calf as somehow they always look so much better.As I write this, I am sitting in the Reno Livestock Event Center arena, where the annual National Reined Cow Horse Association’s Snaffle Bit Futurity is held. This year I have three Futurity horses, four in the horse show classes (two-rein, hackamore, etc.), and two yearling stud colts for sale. Two of the three Futurity horses have shown so far and did quite well. They are Hes Shinettes CD, a stallion by CD Olena, who was a prolific producer of mostly cutters deceased recently, out of my mare Sheza Shinette, and Nic The Wrangler, a gelding by Starlights Wrangler out of my mare Nic N Chic.
A filly named Sheza Dancingdiamond (“Audrey”) by Diamond J Star out of Sheza Shinette will show tomorrow. Then next week the rest of the horses will show in the various horse show classes. One of them is Kiss My Shiny Lips, “Annie” by Shining Spark out of my mare Lipschic. She is currently leading the nation in the Open Two-Rein class and we hope she will do well here. She will be going to Texas in January to compete for the World title with qualified horses from around the world. These are the very best there are and have earned the right to compete from their various divisions. It should be exciting!
We also have, in the horse show classes, in the Limited Open Hackamore “Lilly,” a gorgeous palomino mare who has lots of hair (mane and tail) whose registered name is Chics Little Step (Wimpy Little Step X Cheeky Boom), “Triscuit,” a red roan stallion (Boonlight Dancer X Crackin) in the Open Hackamore, and “Norma” registered as Sheza Roo (Gallo Del Cielo “Rooster” X Sheza Shinette) also showing in the Open Hackamore. It is fun having this many horses who have managed to reach this level and stayed sound to continue on in their show careers past the Futurity. So many horses that seem promising at a young age just don’t make it past that first show for a number of reasons. I am blessed to have so many who have been successful so far. Every year when I come to this show, it is different. I first started coming in 1991 and had my first “snaffle bitter” in 1992. From time to time, well-known trainers from other disciplines like cutting or reining decide that they can do better than the reined cow horse trainers (they’ll show them a thing or two!) and very often they are the ones being taught something new. Because two out of the three events involve cows, the trainers from cutting think they have an edge, but that is not often what happens. It has been pretty entertaining over the years to watch some of the most famous cutters and reiners in their respective fields struggle with the fence work or reining.
The cutters often have an advantage in the herd work portion of the show and because it is first on the schedule, it has a psychological advantage as well. In the second event, the reining, the reiners have the obvious easy road after agonizing over the herd work. When it comes to the final event, the fence or cow work, neither has any experience with the controlled working of the cow at the end of the arena, letting the cow run pell mell down the long side, stop the cow and make it turn around and go the other way back where it came from, all within markers delineating fault points, turn that cow once again back up the fence. Then the rider must bring the cow out to the middle of the arena and make it turn 360 degrees in one direction and then 360 degrees in the opposite direction, until the judges blow the whistle indicating that they have seen enough.
This year we have a number of cutters who have decided to try out a reined cow horse event. While it is common for cutters to joke about how easy reined cow horse is because you have the reins in your hands instead of dropping them on the horses neck as soon as a cow is selected to be worked like in cutting, they are about to get a rude awakening. Some will succeed, eventually, some will provide amusing entertainment, and others will slink away, never to enter another reined cow horse event, having learned that it’s not as easy as they thought. I say good luck to them; I hope they all succeed and discover new respect for their fellow horse lovers who have become enamored of a different sport for their horses.
The air show
The first day in Reno my husband went with his friend who lives here to the air show. While they were enjoying death-defying races around pylons, I read my book, watched TV and took a nap. What a luxury!This was the 47th Annual Reno Air Races that took place Sept. 15-19. There were huge lines and record crowds. There were classes for Biplanes, jets, sports, modified World War II fighters and T-6 trainers. Formation flying was performed by the nine plane Canadian Snowbirds and various aerobatic flights. One World War II Mustang crashed on Sunday, but the pilot walked away. That was wonderful!
Dedevelopment
Is it even an English word? Do you know what it means? What I have learned recently is that the powers that be have a plan to dedevelop the United States. By that, they mean to remove “development” and make our country more environmentally compliant. Is the Wildlands Project part of this? The reason for this? If I were to hazard a guess, I might say that it was another scheme to make us poorer and other countries richer. Isn’t that why we are sending our jobs overseas? It has clearly been a deliberate act to make it economically infeasible to hire employees here for many types of business. I happen to have a business that cannot be exported, but that doesn’t mean that my business, the agricultural one, isn’t negatively impacted by regulation. Of course it has been. In fact, the regulatory climate is so severe as to make it impossible for new people to enter the business, and farms and ranches are being sold daily so that families would stop bleeding financially.Some things now make sense. I didn’t understand why it was so important to make agriculture the bad guy in the environmental argument. I think I now understand. It is because if the public is persuaded that agriculture is destroying the environment, and that farmers and ranchers were just a bunch of big business greedy folks who care nothing for the health or safety of the consumer, then the public could be manipulated into destroying that industry. They’re doing pretty well so far.
Santa Barbara County is a good example of how this works. Along with the State of California, farmers and ranchers are being required to meet regulations that are simply unreachable. They are being asked to control the air, the water and virtually every other impact they have. Even wildlife owned by you, the citizens of the state, are now the responsibility of the landowner. Somehow everything bad that happens is our fault. While the air pollution is worst at the top of San Marcos Pass, it is our fault down in the Valley, not those commuters who travel daily through our Valley rather than by the coast.
So when you see that wildlife is more important to our legislators than you or I, it is all part of the redevelopment scheme. You are already familiar with many examples I have cited over the years reflecting this point of view. Now it makes sense. But what are we to eat if we can no longer feed ourselves? The small farms cannot supply nearly enough to feed all that we feed now. Not everyone can grow food and most cannot produce it year-round. Do you know how to preserve food? Do you have the time or energy to grow enough food to feed your family and maybe a couple of neighbors?
If the answers to these questions is no, then I would suggest that you become more actively involved in the decisions being made on your behalf, supposedly. Should you decide you don’t have time, by the time you realize what a mess we are in, it will no longer be as easy to fix. I get discouraged sometimes when I see the complacency of many of the people I know. Yes, they are busy and may not have much in the way of finances, but this is no excuse for expecting a few people to carry the entire burden for you. There are many things one can do to help that take no money and very little time. You only have to ask to find the answers.
And you have to vote! I heard that in Iraq, now that they have the ability to vote, thank you American and other troops, 95 percent of citizens vote compared to 38 percent in the US. That’s disgraceful! Of course, I have concerns about whether our elections are still valid. We certainly need to weed out those who would steal them, as they have been doing for a very long time. All of these issues are related as the same group of people are making these changes. Remember voting for change?
Networks
If you thought that the incidents happening to our election system and other legislative items were isolated, think again. I thought you might find some of the information I have found to be very interesting.It is clear that social networking via things like Facebook, Twitter and other mediums have become very important to the younger generations. This activity has become part of the ability of political folk as a way to reach other like-minded individuals, whether directly involved in the process. It is with peril that we ignore these pathways if we are to maintain our way of life. Thus I present you with the social network list of college and university people that was found on Ahmed Ali Bob’s Facebook page — a person deeply involved in the results of our 2008 election. This individual has 803 friends on Facebook, 274 of which currently or previously attended UCSB. The rest of his “friends” are from UC Berkley, UC Davis, UCLA, Santa Barbara City College, San Francisco State, UCSC, UCSD, UCSF, CSU Chico, Cal Poly, CSU Long Beach, UC Irvine, UC Merced, USC, CSU Fullerton, San Diego State, CSU Channel Islands, CSU Fresno, CSU Northridge, CSU Sacramento, Claremont Colleges, Humboldt State, Pepperdine, Stanford, UC Riverside, Whittier, Cal Poly Pomona, City Colleges SF, CSU Dominguez Hills, CSU East Bay, Cuesta College, ECDA, Occidental, Otis, Redlands, CSU San Jose, Santa Clara, Santa Monica, Sonoma, Woodbury University, BU, Oregon, GWU, Colorado, Georgetown, UF, Emory, Spelman, BYU, Hawaii, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Harvard, MIT, Smith, Tufts, University of Cape Town, John Hopkins, Michigan, Carleton, Washington University in St. Louis, Mississippi State, Duke, UNC, Warren Wilson, Columbia, NYU, Williamette, Brown, UPenn and Washington.
Wow! What a group of “friends!” How does one develop such an enormous collection of college and university people as “friends?” Of course, we can figure that these are not friends in the traditional sense. Rather it suggests a very far-reaching network of political contacts whereby elections or other things can be distorted via a few emails.
If this is the way of the future, it does not bode well for the rest of us. Thus guy is only 23 years old; how could he possibly know all of these people? I would guess that this list was given to him and that he uses this list to bring large blocks of like-minded people to perform various tasks. What might that be? Stay tuned, as there is much more to come and you will be breathless when all is revealed.