Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Wishing You “The Luck of the Irish”







Is this St Pat’s day? I think it is. Normally I don’t keep track of such things—I have to be reminded of Thanksgiving Day and such, but I wrote the date for this blog, and saw that it was time to go out for a green beer.

St. Patrick was 
born around 387 C.E. in Scotland, and turned to God once he was kidnapped by slave traders and brought to Ireland to be a shepherd.  He is accredited to bringing Christianity to Ireland and he used the shamrock, a three leafed plant, to explain the trinity to the people.

According to Catholic Online. St Patrick said, "I prayed in the woods and on the mountain, even before dawn. I felt no hurt from the snow or ice or rain."

For decades following the Great Famine in the mid-nineteenth century, the shamrock was popular among the Irish as an icon promoting, at least for a day, the rejection of British rule in Ireland. And because the church lifted the ban on drinking on the Sabbath on that day, everyone went out for a beer.

But, I wondered, why has the four leaf clover become associated with St Patrick?

Apparently it was a mix-up. The luck of the Irish, the green, the shamrock, and the four leaf clover which is a good luck charm. This is the stuff of myths, and symbolism, and since we love celebrations, that too. My grandson would call this a “mixel.”

During the gold rush in America, the most famous and successful miners were Irish or of Irish American birth. Over time this association with mining fortunes led to the expression, “The Luck of the Irish.” Of course it could have been that it was not so much luck as brains.

Fascinating, that some of the most down-trodden people have risen above adversary to become great. And these once thought to be less-than people are now celebrated.

Ha ha. To life! the ancestors must be laughing.


Picture of Cinderella's Castle, Disneyland Paris France, green for St. Pat's day.



Saturday, March 14, 2015

I am Woman


My morning read—I stumbled upon it, didn’t mean to go there, but here it is:

“The reality is that girls make up almost a quarter of the world’s population yet still face the greatest discrimination of any group in the world.” (Movie I am A Girl.)

Anyone in their right mind ought to be outraged.

Why or why would anyone treat their mother less-than, their sister, their aunt, their girlfriend? Someday these individuals might get their sorry asses saved by a woman doctor, or kept out of prison by a woman lawyer, or their despicable childhood healed by a lady psychologist—you got it. Although it took millennium for women to be allowed into those professions.

When I attended the University of Oklahoma that also sported a Veterinary program, I considered applying for their Vet school, but I was only a sophomore, and we moved away that year, but I remember the Vet professor saying that women were seldom admitted. They didn’t want to waste their time on someone who would get married, have babies and not practice.

Now, ha ha professor, the majority of Veterinarian graduates are women.  I was married then, and I did have children later, still I could have practiced for 50 years—that would match any man. No regrets, just the facts.

Remember the Trojan Women denied sex to their men until they stopped warring. That worked. Yet when a girl loses her virginity at twelve years of age that sets her up for a lifetime of submissiveness—not power.

Monty Roberts, a horse trainer, and you have heard me say many times “It’s all about horse training,” spent a summer observing wild mustangs. One day Roberts watched the schooling of a terrorist foal by a nun mare. While Roberts watched a colt—he figured it was between one and two years old—the colt took a run at a filly and give her a good kick. The filly hobbled off.

Then the colt committed another attack. A little foal approached him moving his mouth in a sucking motion, which in young horses indicates that they are no threat. “I’m a baby. I eat grass, not animals.” 

The colt lunged at the baby and took a bite out of his backside. Immediately after the attack the colt pretended that nothing had happened.

The dun mare was watching this activity. She was the wise one, the matriarch of the herd, and the alpha mare in charge of the day to day living. Each time the colt behaved badly she inched closer to him, showing no sign of interest, until she made her move. She pinned her ear back, ran at him, and knocked him off his feet into the dirt. As he struggled to his feet, she knocked him down again.  Then she drove the colt some three hundred yards from the herd and left him there, alone, and took vigil to keep him there. Clearly she was freezing him out.

It terrified the colt to be left alone. For a flight animal this was equivalent to a death sentence. The colt attempted to sneak back into the herd, but again the mare drove him out. He started the licking and chewing motion of a contrite young foal.

By morning Roberts saw a surprising event. The dun mare was grooming the colt. She was giving him little scrapes on his neck and hindquarters. She had let him back in and now she was giving him lots of attention. She massaged the root of his tail, his hips. Hell was behind, this was heaven.

As time went on Roberts observed that, like a child, the colt would test the disciplinary system, and each time the mare disciplined him. By the third time he sinned, he practically exiled himself, grumbling but accepting his fate.

Finally the colt’s teenage rebellion stopped, and be became so sweet he was a positive nuisance. He would wander around when the horses wanted to graze asking, “Do you need any grooming.”


Amen



P.S. From a reader. This is fascinating. Today is Pi Day  (π)
The date is 3.34.(Pi)
Later today the entire Pi number (well a large amount of it--it goes on forever) will come up with the date and time. This will not come again until 2115.

www.vox.com/215/3/13/8205807/piday


See below: "Coming In For a Landing"--my new landing page title.

This will be a place to park my books when they appear, and they (you know the publishing gurus) say that I need a "Landing Page" in case anyone googles my name, or books or whatever.