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dancinghorseThey say the monsoon may move out next week. Maybe. More or less on schedule. But maybe not.
I'd been kvetching that everybody else was getting rain and we haven't had more than a sprinkle in two weeks. This morning came up nice and wet. We haven't had two inches or more as they have in town, but there's standing water and the grass will green up again. That's good enough for me.
Fall is here in the desert. I noticed it last week while driving out on errands--the light has shifted. It's not the summer light any more; it has that indefinable slant that says the season has changed. There will still be plenty of hot weather; our annual cooldown is at least a month away. But the nights are ten degrees cooler all of a sudden--60s instead of 70s--and even today's big, wet storm feels more wintry than summery, in spite of the occasional lightning. It's subtle, but if you live in the desert, there's no mistaking it. Summer's back is broken. We're headed into the season when human beings actually want to live here. (The rest of us are salamanders. We like the heat.)
No lessons today. Teacher couldn't get here--it's wall-to-wall flood warnings from there to here. Even if it weren't raining medium-sized farm animals. Sunday should be drier, they say. We'll see.
So I get a rainy day to work on book and tackle an edit or two. The week's test passages are in and approved: I got a lovely gig writing passages for a major publisher, as part of a national testing project. I have deep reservations about the test-madness that passes for education these days, but if those poor kids have to be subjected to nothing but standardized tests, the least I can do is give them something decent to read.
I've turned out to have a mutant superpower for writing under extremely tight restrictions. The list of topics not allowed is very long, and odd things can ping the Nope response: birthdays, for example. Some religions don't celebrate them. Once the topic is approved by a panel of editors (very cool people, not incidentally; they're fun to work with), one has to write according to a spreadsheet of specifications (things like include figurative language, use a word significantly above grade level, passage has to allow reader to make inferences, etc.), to a very specific grade level (easy to do these days: use Word, hit the Spelling&Grammar tool, go with the F-K reading level), within a specific range of word count. Genre will vary and will be specified--and if they want fiction, they want a story with a beginning, middle, and end, with characters, setting, plot/conflict, the works. The maximum word count I've been allowed for this so far is 600 words. Usually it's more like 350.
And by damn it's fun. I've done stories, nonfiction passages, even ad copy, and this week they asked for a narrative poem. I haven't written poetry since high school. Didn't need to rhyme, thank goodness. And they liked it. And asked for another.
The prose is just, you know, there. Does the job. But I'm really sorry I can't publish the poetry elsewhere. My consolation is, this project will run its course, and someday I can pull these pieces out and share them. I didn't even know I could do them until I did them. Not up for anything really challenging yet--there's no sonnet or sestina in my immediate future--but free verse? Oh yeah.
Everything these days, in fact, seems to be calculated to jump me up out of my safe, dare we say boring, adult-historical-fantasy-novel rut. No resting on the laurels here.
Although, speaking of which, author copies of Shattered Dance have arrived. It's a book! Signs are that it may not stay around long, so get it while you can.
Meanwhile, in farm news, the vet came yesterday and confirmed that Gold has not come back into heat because she has Oreo II on board. Due around about July 21st of next year. (We're going to have to move the SRS Guy clinic. Urg.) She and Pook did it again. She's very pleased with herself. So is he. Oreo doesn't care as long as he gets all the scritchies.
I'd been kvetching that everybody else was getting rain and we haven't had more than a sprinkle in two weeks. This morning came up nice and wet. We haven't had two inches or more as they have in town, but there's standing water and the grass will green up again. That's good enough for me.
Fall is here in the desert. I noticed it last week while driving out on errands--the light has shifted. It's not the summer light any more; it has that indefinable slant that says the season has changed. There will still be plenty of hot weather; our annual cooldown is at least a month away. But the nights are ten degrees cooler all of a sudden--60s instead of 70s--and even today's big, wet storm feels more wintry than summery, in spite of the occasional lightning. It's subtle, but if you live in the desert, there's no mistaking it. Summer's back is broken. We're headed into the season when human beings actually want to live here. (The rest of us are salamanders. We like the heat.)
No lessons today. Teacher couldn't get here--it's wall-to-wall flood warnings from there to here. Even if it weren't raining medium-sized farm animals. Sunday should be drier, they say. We'll see.
So I get a rainy day to work on book and tackle an edit or two. The week's test passages are in and approved: I got a lovely gig writing passages for a major publisher, as part of a national testing project. I have deep reservations about the test-madness that passes for education these days, but if those poor kids have to be subjected to nothing but standardized tests, the least I can do is give them something decent to read.
I've turned out to have a mutant superpower for writing under extremely tight restrictions. The list of topics not allowed is very long, and odd things can ping the Nope response: birthdays, for example. Some religions don't celebrate them. Once the topic is approved by a panel of editors (very cool people, not incidentally; they're fun to work with), one has to write according to a spreadsheet of specifications (things like include figurative language, use a word significantly above grade level, passage has to allow reader to make inferences, etc.), to a very specific grade level (easy to do these days: use Word, hit the Spelling&Grammar tool, go with the F-K reading level), within a specific range of word count. Genre will vary and will be specified--and if they want fiction, they want a story with a beginning, middle, and end, with characters, setting, plot/conflict, the works. The maximum word count I've been allowed for this so far is 600 words. Usually it's more like 350.
And by damn it's fun. I've done stories, nonfiction passages, even ad copy, and this week they asked for a narrative poem. I haven't written poetry since high school. Didn't need to rhyme, thank goodness. And they liked it. And asked for another.
The prose is just, you know, there. Does the job. But I'm really sorry I can't publish the poetry elsewhere. My consolation is, this project will run its course, and someday I can pull these pieces out and share them. I didn't even know I could do them until I did them. Not up for anything really challenging yet--there's no sonnet or sestina in my immediate future--but free verse? Oh yeah.
Everything these days, in fact, seems to be calculated to jump me up out of my safe, dare we say boring, adult-historical-fantasy-novel rut. No resting on the laurels here.
Although, speaking of which, author copies of Shattered Dance have arrived. It's a book! Signs are that it may not stay around long, so get it while you can.
Meanwhile, in farm news, the vet came yesterday and confirmed that Gold has not come back into heat because she has Oreo II on board. Due around about July 21st of next year. (We're going to have to move the SRS Guy clinic. Urg.) She and Pook did it again. She's very pleased with herself. So is he. Oreo doesn't care as long as he gets all the scritchies.
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no subject
Date: 2006-09-07 07:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-07 07:50 pm (UTC)She was booed at the World Cup in Vegas--that's why her warmups are now closed to the public. She and her husband have a hammerlock on the international judges, but the rest of the dressage world is gradually getting a clue.
Unless of course you want to see how not to do it. (And look at the neck musculature for clues.)
no subject
Date: 2006-09-07 07:56 pm (UTC)oh, equisearch article in question is here: http://equisearch.com/equiwire_news/weg2006/dressage/WEGdressageFS082606/
no subject
Date: 2006-09-08 04:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-08 03:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-12 11:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-07 08:27 pm (UTC)it really is no better than those who claim that Heavy Shod walkers are Happy! and Comfy! and Well!Trained!
GAH!.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-08 04:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-08 04:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-08 04:14 am (UTC)Never really understood any of that, really. If horses were meant to be curled up, they'd be pillbugs.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-08 04:29 am (UTC)For Western of course they want the horse to look "relaxed." And since more is better, the more limp and enervated he is, the better they like it. Those poor things look as if they died and are sliding along on a meathook with a rider perched on top.
In dressage, it's all about the headset. And the big front-end action. And the money and the power. I don't know what Sjef has on the FEI, but whatever it is, they kowtow to him the way the US Congress does to Junior Evil.
Heaven forbid anybody get any of this by, you know, actually allowing the horse to perform naturally.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-08 04:32 am (UTC)Does she look relaxed to you? :) (In fairness, that's Tazzie in retirement, about a year before she passed away in 2003. :P My great old girl.)
I understand that headset is important and movement is important but... it's like anything extreme. It's showy, but that doesn't make it correct.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-12 05:50 pm (UTC)Saw two of the BigNameJumpers warming up on Sunday AM (we were there early-ish for booth duties) -- one had the horse's nose tied almost to the check with the bungee aparatus. The other was just riding in a saddle. Both appeared to be in loose ring snaffles. While the one wearing the bungy still somehow managed some beautiful flying changes, there was simply NO comparison in the movement of the two horses. The one with freedom of head movement was a thing of beauty to watch....
no subject
Date: 2006-09-08 05:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-08 06:05 am (UTC)Isn't this the person who got a threat of legal action from Sjef and Anky for having those pages up? She had to take down a website, I think.
If you've seen what it's supposed to look like, these approximations are not only sickening but tragic.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-08 06:28 am (UTC)I have to tell you--as a horse photographer, I have limited the you-know-what out of my potential client base, by not being willing to work with the shaved-hair Ayrab crowd, the artificial frame crowd, the peanut rollers, etc. etc. I only want to work with real people who want images of their horses how they are on the inside AND the outside. Fortunately there seem to be enough of those people, as gradually apparent.
Thought of you today, as I committed to work with yet another small breed--the local Shagya inspection. 4 horses total for this local stop on the every few years inspection tour. What's not to like? Arab + Hungarian, shown on the triangle, at liberty, and for the older ones, in the jump chute. Athletic, pretty horses that "can DO". Oh, and they're paying up front, hehehe. Man, I love some of those Hungarian horses, the Kisber Felvers in particular.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-08 04:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-12 05:53 pm (UTC)had fun this weekend by being very careful where I was, what I watched (didn't go NEAR the BigEvents!) and who I was with....