Every January, following the New Year, I have a bit of a ritual.  I like to spend a few days getting things cleaned and organized.  My little ritual includes both a mental, digital in addition to a physical cleaning.  I repeat the entire process again in July.  I should also probably mention that I really, really dislike cleaning  and organizing.  There are, of course, a bunch of reasons why I hate them.  They include good reasons and stupid reasons.  Some of those reasons, however, are worth a review.

First up is the time and effort which said activities require.  This is time and effort that I would rather use to do just about anything else.  Second, cleaning things require judgments.  I have to decide what things to keep and which to keep.  This almost always leads to loose ends; in addition to my aversion of decisions, I also really dislike loose ends.  This combination has led to a secondary tradition.  In addition to the “Cleaning Week”, there is also a “Finish Things Week”.  Yet more time and more effort to completing things which should have already been completed.  That sounds like grand fun.

The third reason that I dislike cleaning is that it invariably leads to change.  For those wondering how how I can jump from organization to change, allow me to explain.  While my mind is certainly a bit crooked round certain edges and has made more bizarre leaps, there is a certain logic to it.  Organization involves a review of activities and acquaintances.  When we plan, we consciously choose to grab the steering wheel and go somewhere new.  That often means that activities and acquaintances get left behind and new things will start looming up ahead.  Either way, change happens and everyone knows that, “Change is uncomfortable.”  It might be uncomfortable in the good kind of way, but it is still uncomfortable and I dislike being uncomfortable.  What can I say?

Anyway … I started cleaning this week and I got quite a bit organized … and then I got sidetracked.  The server that I keep in the house for backup and music streaming decided to stop working.  That required a day to fix.  After fixing it, I decided to upgrade it.  That took another evening (and never quite ended up working), so I just put it back to the way it was originally (except working this time).  In the process, though, I learned a lot of cool things.  This includes how to get both Windows Vista Backup and Apple Time Machine to back up to a Samba share.  Oh, and did I mention that Ubuntu makes it trivial to then move a copy of that backup offsite?  Redundant backups, that’s just cool!  You can, thus, expect a post about how to make the Ultimate Backup Server.

After I got back to organizing, I also started leafing through pictures and other material from the last year.  I found some some nifty old stuff, including a guide to leather braiding.  I’ve meant to braid a new reata for quite a while now.  I’ll have time in the next few months, so I figure I could start now.  It’s also probably time to start writing some posts about how to do things with horses.  While I am still working hard to master Python, I feel like I need to write about things other than technology.  I’ve wanted to write a little series about how to refine and train a saddle horse.  Far too much of the literature/discussion among the horse “academic class” for quite some time has focused almost singly on the basics and foundation.  What about the moderate and advanced riders of the world?  We deserve brain food too!

Finally, we arrive at the last reason I dislike cleaning and organizing.  In addition to having a slightly crooked mind, I also have a wildly overactive mind.  When I start digging through my junk, I start getting Ideas which lead to Plans and eventually Notions.  Plans and Notions aren’t necessarily a good thing, but … they aren’t necessarily bad either.  Either way, I hope that this coming year is as exciting as 2008 (except in good ways).  At the very least, I’ve got a whole new heap of material to explore and write about.  Here’s to blogging in 2009!

Categories: Computer, Cool Stuff, Horses and Horsemanship, Writing and Literature
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The pulsating roar of the alarm clock pulled me out of my wonderful sleep. It was a deep, blissful kind and not the type that either comes (or should be given up) easily. The day was cool and still in that time of morning when everything was bathed in a pearly gray light. A quick look sideways confirmed my greatest fear, the alarm clock was already glowing 5:30 am. It was time to get up. I rolled over and waited for the roar to kick over to the less obnoxious radio, covering my head with the pillow in the process. Certainly there must be some way to blow off the appointment and catch up an extra 20 or 30 minutes of sleep? Even 10 minutes would likely make a big difference. Though it probably wouldn't. That, however, would be too true to form. This appointment was important.

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Categories: Horses and Horsemanship, Writing and Literature
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Frank stood on the height of the cliff, silently watching the moving steer below. The cold knife edge of winter was gone, and spring had again returned to the highlands. The bulls moved their heads over the lush green grass. The newborn calves nursed from their mothers, while mindfully watching the bulls.

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Categories: Featured, Horses and Horsemanship, Writing and Literature
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When I was younger, one of my favorite past times after a hard day of horse work was to come home and read. My parents and grandparents had been good people who imparted to me a love of words at an early age. I can't remember a time when sitting in the sun with a good book settled between my legs wasn't an enjoyment. It would work out the knots in muscles cramped from hours spent in a saddle.

Horse work was a wonderful privilege too, but after some hours sitting astride an animal, it felt good to get a change. God never intended for man to sit on certain bones for very long.

Along with the love of reading came a strong imagination and a love of creating my own stories. When I was a small boy, I can recall the sagas born, nurtured and let loose from the minds of myself and friends. In a time when the deserted block of city - half house, half field - seemed the expanse of an entire world; and when creatures of magic - faerie, elf, gnome, giant - walked the woods a stone's throw away from my door. It was a time when empires, knights, indians and pirates arose, fought, loved and died before dinner and then it began again each morning. Some of those sagas (the lucky ones at least) found their way to paper.

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Categories: Horses and Horsemanship, Writing and Literature
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When I was a junior in high school, I started a journal. While it started out as a private place to lodge my secrets and silly thoughts, it later evolved into something else. That journal went with me to a bunch of different places. I carried it through most of Idaho, Wyoming, as well as parts of Montana and California. It saw parts of England and Scotland and then spent more than two years in South America.

In that time, it stopped collecting my thoughts and started collecting stories and illustrations. I've always liked to scribble. Sometime during 1999 I decided that I needed some rules for this book. Here's how they went:

1. I would add one story or thought to the journal each month.
2. Each page of the journal would have at least one drawing which related to the content of the story, in some way.

While I've had that little book for over ten years, I can happily say that I have kept my rules. The little journal has, thus, collected quite a few stories. Some of them are mine, a lot of them aren't. Some are true and some are fiction. Part of the fun in reading them is trying to guess which are true and which are not.

While I've never loaned my little book out, some people have expressed a very sincere desire to read them. I've had some time in the last few months, and I have finally gotten around to fulfilling that request. As a result, you will start to see some of those stories posted here (in as much of their illustrated glory as I can manage). Please look and handle with anything but care (isn't electronic publication wonderful?).

Enjoy.

Categories: Horses and Horsemanship, Writing and Literature
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Did you ever wake up and realize that something in your life was missing something … something important? About six months ago, I did.

This is really quite odd because by all of the metrics that "matter," I was doing very well. I had a good job, I was making good money, and I was just coming off of a series of scientific publications in major journals. But … that's about all I had to show for my time and energies.

There was a time (more than a decade, actually) when my life revolved around one primary interest: horses. I woke up thinking about horses and went to sleep thinking about horses. I made my living on the back of a horse, and wrote (rather prolific volumes) about horses. It was a good life, and I was happy.

Then, education happened and "Real Life" started to happen and I was forced to put away some of the activities, causes and passions of my youth. Unfortunately, this also included horses. While I never stopped riding, I spent all of my thinking about other things, and going to sleep with yet other unspecified worries. I made my living by using my mind and education and wrote (rather prolific volumes) about science, medicine, and other related things. It was a hectic life, and I was busy.

And then, some Things happened and I started to look at what I had gained versus what I had lost. The balance came back negative and I started thinking. Thinking, of course morphed into digging, and I pulled out some old notebooks. Some of these notebooks included thoughts about horses, drawings about horses, and stories about horses. I even dug out an atrociously pretentious book about horse training (which has, mercifully, vanished into the ether of cyberspace). I then sat down and started reading. While doing so, I realized that I really missed horses. To be more precise, I missed horse culture.

When I lived and slept horses, though, I didn't live in the "standard" horse culture. I was rather lucky. I didn't spend much time worrying about horse shows, competitions or other such things. Rather, I got to meet people who could have easily walked out of the 19^th century (and some who actually did). I experienced a rather "special" horse culture rooted in the West and land which was slowly passing into memory and history.

Its celebrities were old and a bit long in the tooth a decade ago, and now most of them are gone. Yet while the men and women are starting to fade, they have left a powerful legacy. Many of their thoughts, insights, sayings, music, and beliefs have taken root in the present … and others … have not.

So, while I read these notes, thoughts and stories, I realized that other people might want to read some of them as well. While I will probably never hang out my shingle again and make my living by the back of a horse, that isn't what I have missed the most. Rather, I missed the talk, teach, and instruct parts of horsemanship. While it was fun to travel, ride and train; it was more fun to watch people get better with their horses and another culture. I felt a bit like a consultant actually, a consulting detective if you will, who got to visit and share. It was a role I rather quite liked. I also realized that it was what I was missing: my identity as a consulting horseman.

So, I'm going to post some of what I've learned here and recreate some of the core bits. I'll probably write a little bit about training, a bit about horse care, and a bit about how I think horses should be raised and started. I will probably post poems, songs and pictures (both mine and some of those in my collection). I will even probably post things about tack and leather braiding. Some of it will likely be of interest, a lot it might not be. But that's okay, just take what you like and leave the rest. If you find something interesting, though; please let me know, either in the comments or via e-mail.

So, I open this little section of my blog with a traditional line: Welcome and Howdy.

Categories: Horses and Horsemanship
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