Why White Horses? Sculpting, Oregon Country Fair and such

 This White Horse was a Christmas gift from my Grandson Casey. He digitally sculpted it in the computer program Blender and then physically carved it in a 3D printer. (It took about 9 hours, he said.)

 

You probably know why I call this blog Wish on White Horses, although the site isn’t about horses. 

 

For those who don’t know, the title came from a day so hot that fair vendors squirted us with cool water to keep us vertical. 

 

Our friends Rita and Bob sat with Neil and me as we traveled by bus to avoid the drive and the parking trip into the left field for the Oregon Country Fair in Veneta, Oregon. 

 

Suddenly, Rita, beside me, said, “Quick, make a wish.”

 

“Why?” 

 

“A white horse. I always wish on white horses.”

 

I looked to the pasture alongside the road where a white horse, head bent to the ground, grazing on the green grass, and quickly thought up a wish. I don’t remember for what, but it must have come true. 

 

It tickled me to learn about wishing on white horses, for, as a child, I wished on every birthday candle, every shooting star that managed to cross my vision, and every first star of the night from when I was nine years old until I was twelve when my wish came true. My folks bought my gorgeous horse, Boots, for me.

 

You can see why I am so cuckoo over horses, for Boots was my partner and best bud for the following nine years. 

 

If you have never heard of or attended the Oregon CountryFair, it’s a phenomenon to experience. 

 

Even if you thought all the Hippies had gotten sucked up into the ether's, they get spit out for the three days of the Fair. It’s rather like a Renaissance Fair without the horse jousting. People dress (or undress) in whatever fun costume they can find. 

 

The booths displaying exquisite artworks are set among the trees and made from sticks and earthy materials, looking like a Hobbit village. The food is so good you want to sample everything. There is music and dancing and booths about sustainable living and new technologies. There is hot water from pipes coiled through a compost pile. 

 

People who have put together the fair party for three days. It is as though someone opened the doors to Shangri La. 

 

After three days, all human habitation or remains disappear except for the artistic fence bordering the entrance. The land reclaims its own. A big open field appears that was once a parking lot, and the trees return to their quiet whispering alongside the Long Tom River. 

 

The river generally floods in the spring, then evaporates in summer, leaving silt that makes the ground fertile come July when it is hot and the people return.

 

One summer, when Casey’s mother was pregnant with him, she went to the Fair and had her exposed belly painted with a coiled infant, such as existed inside.

 

Now Casey is 18, will graduate from high school this school year, made a white horse for me, and the wish on white horses lives on.

 

                 

https://joycedavis.substack.com/

 

 

 

 

'Tis Christmas

 

Last night ‘Twas the night before Christmas and there was much scurrying, for we were celebrating with one daughter and grandson, and tonight we will celebrate with another daughter, grandson, and son-in-law.

This morning I took a break from the house, grabbed a coffee, and am now in my Wayback office for a friendly visit with my computer and hopefully you. (Maybe with you after Christmas.)

Yesterday, I had the poem’ Twas the Night Before Christmas, same as A Visit from St Nicolas, cycling through my brain. My ten-year-old nephew from the night before sparked my thinking of it, for he didn’t know the poem.

That poem is a moment of history from the man who named the reindeer and described St Nicolas is a right jolly old elf who was “dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot, and his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.”

Ad writers from the Coco Cola Company came along and cleaned up St Nicolas. They changed his name to Santa Claus, made him into a regular-sized person, and dressed him in fur clothing, red and white. They kept Moore’s jolly person with a little round belly that shook when he laughed like a bowl full of jelly. 

I like the story I heard as a child: Moore was a village doctor. Wanting a special gift for his children, for he was, after all, called away on Christmas Eve, he trusted his horse to take him home, and as he jostled along in his buggy, he wrote a poem for them titled, A Visit from St Nicolas.

Well, he wrote the poem for his children, true, but according to my checking, he wasn’t a physician but a professor with a buggy driver after whom he patterned the elf. The two reindeer named “Donner and Blitzen” meant “Thunder and Lightning.”

Moore wrote the poem in 1837. One of his children had it published anonymously, for initially, Moore wouldn’t take credit for it because it wasn’t “scholarly.”

Finally, in 1844, when it was published with a group of other poems, he, at the insistence of his children, publicly admitted writing it.

I still remember the racket on the lawn, and the writer who had just settled down for a long winter’s night when out of the lawn he heard such a clatter, he sprang from his bed to see what was the matter.

From his window, he saw the snow’s luster like midday, a miniature sled, and eight tiny reindeer.

He described St Nicolas his cheeks like roses, his nose like a cherry—a right jolly old elf, and he watched as St Nicolas filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk, and laying a finger beside of his nose, and giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.

 ‘Er, he drove out of sight he called, “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a Good Night.”

It’s fascinating how stories evolve, and images change. Yet, they sprang from a moment when someone displayed their genius and lived on long after they, the writer, was gone.

“Moore received a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia College as valedictorian of the class of 1798 and earned his Master’s Degree there in 1801.”