Tobi Taylor's Journal

About two months ago, a woman and a man came walking up my driveway on a Saturday morning. I had two horses turned out in the arena. Often, people drop by to watch the horses romp or to ask whether I board horses (I don’t), or inquire if I know where they can buy a pony for their child (ditto) or a quarter horse for their husband (also ditto). I have sport horses – equines bred to event, do dressage, or show jump – and that kind of thing is rare on my side of Tucson, where the majority of riders I know either rope or trail ride.

But back to the couple. The woman said they lived nearby and stopped because they’d seen dressage letters in my arena. She inquired about whether I rode dressage (yes), and did I have a trainer (yes), and then she said, "My father, here, is a horse trainer. His name is Jack Burton."

I couldn’t believe it. "You’re not Major-General Jonathan Burton, are you?"

The man nodded, and his eyes lit up.

"It’s an honor to meet you, sir."

General Burton is a legend in the horse world: competitor on the 1948 and 1956 Olympic teams, past president of various equestrian federations, international judge, and author. Not long after I’d begun to take dressage lessons, in the 1980s, a friend had given me Burton’s book How to Ride a Winning Dressage Test. And Burton is still judging: I recalled that he’d given a Trakehner colt bred by my friend Heather a wonderful score in an in-hand class at a show in California a couple of years back.

General Burton, who is closer to ninety than he is to eighty, rides his bike several days a week, and since our first meeting he’s dropped by a number of times to pet whichever horse of mine is turned out near the road, usually Rosie, my Arabian mare. He doesn’t say much but seems quite glad to simply be around horses on a somewhat regular basis.

The General unintentionally made my day on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. My husband and I were in the arena with my two-year-old Anglo-Arabian gelding Immaginn, whose nickname, like the General’s, is Jack. This gelding is a product of our very small breeding program (does three foals in twenty years constitute a program?), and he is by far the best one. I find very little to fault in him, but I'm well aware of that scourge of horse breeding, "barn blindness." The General was taking his daily bike ride and when we got to our driveway, he pulled in and stopped. "Who is THAT?" he exclaimed, as Jack trotted around. "He’s magnificent!"

My husband looked at me and rolled his eyes, knowing he'd never hear the end of that remark.

"Can I quote you on that?" I asked.

"Sure!" The General watched Jack walk, trot, canter, and play for about fifteen minutes. I asked him if he thought he saw a particular discipline -- dressage, jumping? -- in his future. "The sky’s the limit with that one," he replied, and then he pedaled on home. I have been smiling ever since, and calling Jack (the gelding, not the General) "Mr. Magnificent."

Interestingly, what the General didn’t know was that he himself had seen the sire of this gelding. Jack’s dad is a stallion named Innkeeper, a son of Secretariat out of a Mr Prospector daughter who was out of a Northern Dancer daughter. Innkeeper’s owner, Ursula Ferrier, and I are friends, and she writes, "Hilltop Farm asked if we could bring him to a breed judges’ seminar with the head of the Swedish National Stud at their farm. He was a big hit...and Major General Jonathon Burton thought he was the only ‘real’ stallion there." Imagine -- or rather, Immaginn -- that!

You've no doubt seen the books produced by Arcadia Publishing...they're relatively inexpensive and easily portable (think stocking stuffers), and they cover an astounding array of obscure topics relating to the history of America, telling their stories many through photographs.

When I was in Santa Fe a while back, I found a title in the series that fits well with my (admitted obscure) research on Brusally Ranch in particular and Arabian horse breeding in general: Tennessee's Arabian Horse Racing Heritage, by Andra Kowalczyk. The author focuses on the Arabians owned, bred, and/or raced by J. M. Dickinson and Dr. Sam Harrison, but also provides information on other (mainly Polish) Arabians, including Ed Tweed's Orzel, whose photo on page 61 caught my eye while I was thumbing through the book. This is a worthwhile addition to the libraries of those interested in Arabian racing.

After reading the book, I discovered that the author and I had a mutual friend, who put us in contact. By exchanging a few emails with Andra, I learned that we had more than simply writing and Arabian horses in common; we both work in historic preservation, and we are both interested in preservation breeding of Arabians -- her focus is on the celebrated Polish stallion Lotnik, whereas mine is on Brusally breeding. It's good to know that there are people like Andra out there.

In July of this year I was contacted by Darin Alexander, of FiberCords, LLC, a cinch maker who had heard about my research/interest in Navajo saddle cinches. He wrote:

"In a couple of weeks we will be sharing the art of cinch-making in a presentation at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.  We are asking our students, customers, and others who would be willing, to share photos and descriptions with us so we can highlight the growth and craftsmanship of cinch making in the world today, as well as share cultural and technical variations on the same theme. 

"We look forward to any suggestions and thoughts you might have on how to network the cinch making community.  At present we are in dialog with and/or assisting cinch makers in Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, Canada, and several of the lower 48 states as they seek to refine their skills, develop distinctive and personalized styles, and fill the desire to improve on the quality as it relates to a more comfortable and durable item for everyday use."

A worldwide cinch-making community? Who knew? Then, in late September, I heard from Mr. Alexander again, updating me on the presentation at the museum -- and more developments in the world of cinch-making:

"The response from the cinch presentation turned out to be more of shock and awe that cinches can be so ornate.  As some of the power point frames advanced you could hear the audience gasp with delight.

"This morning I visited with Pete Gorrell who is working with Partners in Development, a non-profit organization http://www.pidfoundation.org/, to develop a school of saddle and cinch making near the Parker Ranch on the northern coast of the Big Island in Hawaii. I thought you might find this of interest since the concept sounds similar to the Navajo program... in this case the students themselves are learning extensively about the business end along with development of distinctly Hawaiian renditions of the saddle and cinch."

A school of cinch-making in Hawaii? I think I may have to go over and check it out!

The most recent issue of American Indian Art Magazine contains a two-page review, by Dr. Ron McCoy, of Playing Cards of the Apaches. McCoy notes that

"Putting together a book of this caliber requires not only the raw material of scholarship -- in other words, the product of thorough research -- but also the precise convergence of various elements that, should the melding not come out just right, produce a decidedly unpromising result. In this case, all of the required elements came together with stylish precision...[It] is a worthy capstone to the missionarylike zeal that Virginia and Harold Wayland brought to their research and writing, as well as eloquent testimony to Alan Ferg's voluminous knowledge of Apache culture."

Also in this issue is an article about the world-class Southwestern pottery collection at the Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona, written by my friends and colleagues Diane Dittemore, Mike Jacobs, and Patrick Lyons, and beautifully illustrated with photographs by Jannelle Weakly.

The Summer 2008 issue of Archaeology Southwest is edited by Alan Ferg and yours truly, and includes the following articles:

Dogs in the Southwest (Tobi Taylor, Alan Ferg, and Dody Fugate)

Early Dog Burials in the Southern Southwest (Jennifer A. Waters)

Pueblo Dogs (Dody Fugate)

Dog Mummies at White Dog Cave (Dody Fugate)

Pueblo Dog Tales (David H. Snow)

Basketmaker Dog-hair Sashes from Obelisk Cave (Rachel Freer and Mike Jacobs)

A Rare Breed (Alan Ferg)

Canid Sacrifices from Homol'ovi I (Vincent M. LaMotta)

Itzcuintle: Ancient Mexican Dog Food

When Is a Dog in Mimbres Art? (J. J. Brody)

Mimbres Dog Descendants (Tobi Taylor)

Hohokam Dogs and Iconography at Pueblo Grande (Steven R. James and Michael S. Foster)

Dogs in the Desert: Repatriation (Alan Ferg)

The Hodges Site Figurine (Alan Ferg)

Going to the Dogs: Studying Valley Fever in the Southwest (T. Michael Fink)

An Unsettling Image (William H. Doelle)

The Setting on of Dogs (Richard Flint)

Yoeme Dog Pascola Masks (Tom Kolaz)

Old Dogs and Some New Tricks (Alan Ferg)

Back Sight (William H. Doelle)

From the website of the Wheelwright Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico:

July 20, 2008 – November 2, 2008
Playing Cards of the Apaches
Based on Playing Cards of the Apaches: A Study of Cultural Adaptation by Virginia Wayland, Harold Wayland, and Alan Ferg, the Wheelwright’s exhibition explores a unique southwestern folk-art genre, with hand-painted decks from Arizona State Museum and several private collectors. On display in the Slater Gallery.

Today, at the 2008 Arizona Historic Preservation Conference, in Rio Rico, the Governor's Archaeology Advisory Commission's awards in Public Archaeology were presented. Among the winners was Archaeology Southwest, the quarterly publication I have edited for the Center for Desert Archaeology since late 2001. The award citation reads,

Archaeology Southwest was conceived in 1986 and originally published under the title Archaeology in Tucson. Each issue currently contains eight to ten profusely illustrated articles written in clear, understandable English, by leading Southwestern archaeologists and other authors. Through Archaeology Southwest, the Center helps the public connect with the rich and diverse landscapes of the Southwest. Archaeology Southwest also helps the general public and professional archaeologists to keep up with the latest in Southwestern scholarship. Generous distribution of the newsletter has enabled the Center to build preservation partnerships and to practice community-based archaeology at a wide geographic scale.

Anthropology professors use Archaeology Southwest to fill a niche left unaddressed by introductory textbooks. Archaeology Southwest also plays an important role in reaching underserved communities in rural areas and on Indian reservations. The newsletter has been described as “a text-book case for how public archaeology can and should be done.”

I've mentioned previously that I copyedited the award-winning Playing Cards of the Apaches by Wayland, Wayland and Ferg. A review of the book just crossed my desk. It's by Dr. John R. Welch, of Simon Fraser University, and it appears in the  Spring 2008 issue of The Journal of Arizona History. Here's a sample of Welch's review:

"More than forty years in the making, Playing Cards of the Apaches is a unique masterwork that artfully integrates impeccable scholarship, spectacular graphics, and an unmistakable love for Apaches and their inspiring heritage...the volume is impeccably laid out and crafted. Fresh variations on a high-integrity design theme await the turn of virtually every page."

Good news! Playing Cards of the Apaches: A Study in Cultural Adaptation, by Virginia and Harold Wayland and Alan Ferg, was named a Southwest Book of the Year for 2007 by a panel selected by the Pima County Public Library and the Arizona Historical Society. Congratulations to Elizabeth Barber and Ann Peters, daughters of the Waylands, and Alan Ferg on receiving this honor. I’m proud to list this title among the award-winning books I’ve edited.

Earlier this year, I decided that I wanted to have more art in my home. I go to the nearby YMCA to work out a few days a week, and one day, on the wall above one of the machines I work out on, I noticed a stunning photograph. It combined multiple negatives — one a shot of the interior of a Spanish mission (San Xavier, I presumed), and the other a view of the Sonoran Desert. I got in touch with the artist, Bill Lesch, also a member of the Y, and arranged to buy the piece. Not long after that, I was watching television one Sunday afternoon and saw an entire program devoted to his work. Check out his website: http://www.williamlesch.com.

A few months later, I was at Brusally Ranch, near Show Low, visiting artist Chaille Trevor in her studio. She uses a lot of snapshots of horses for inspiration, and several of my horses have ended up in her paintings. I like some of the resultant paintings, but not so much that I feel I have to have them. However, the painting that was on her easel at the time really caught my eye. It was of my mare Rosie and her foal Tess. I was very taken with the composition more than anything else. A few weeks later, I called her and left a message telling her I wanted the painting and that I’d pick it up the next time I was at the ranch. Somehow, though, she never got the message. When I was at the ranch again in October, she was horrified to learn that I’d wanted it and sheepishly said that it had already gone down to the gallery in Scottsdale that represents her work. Fortunately, when I called the gallery, the painting was still available. After two trips from Tucson to Show Low to see the painting, and then a trip to Scottsdale to fetch it, the painting is now hanging in my living room.

The next piece of art came from an unlikely source, Mark Tashiro, one of the writers in my writers’ group. Aside from being an incredible writer, it turns out that Mark’s a fine amateur painter, too. One day, after a meeting of the group, he brought me a wedding gift — a landscape he’d painted on board. I put it in my kitchen, but within a day it had disappeared into my new husband’s office. Mark seemed pleased to hear that.

The last piece of art — so far! — that has wended its way to me this year is coming from artist Amy Novelli (http://www.janehamiltonfineart.com). We met when I was selling my horse trailer and she offered to do a painting in trade for it. She sent me a couple of emails with probably thirty pieces, and I was very impressed. She got a trailer, and I got to commission a portrait.

It didn’t take me long to decide which of my horses I wanted Amy to paint. Who do I miss the most? Answer: Statesman, a.k.a. Twinkie, the “Second Son of Secretariat.” His body type also seemed the most suited to Amy’s style. Another thing that I found very impressive, and professional, about Amy has been her interest in seeing as many photos as I could find of him, hearing my innumerable Twinkie stories, and watching video of him. She started working on two canvases, and invited me to come over and observe/critique. I was astounded at how quickly, and how well, she captured him. At last report, he’s almost done — all four feet by five feet of him.

Two years ago I began writing a book about the Arabian horses imported from Poland and Russia in the 1960s for Ed Tweed’s Brusally Ranch. I plan to complete it in 2008. Amazingly, despite the profound influence of Tweed’s breeding program on Arabians in America, until now there has been no single source of information about these horses.

This wasn’t a book I planned to write. Over the years, I’ve simply been in the right place at the right time, collecting information only because it interested me, not because I intended to do anything formal with it. But a couple of years ago, it dawned on me: there was a reason I’d met many of the players in the Brusally story, received access to the archives, and had ridden so many Brusally-bred horses. If I didn't do it, who would?

Meanwhile, as I’m writing the rest of the book, here’s a summary of Ed Tweed’s adventures in breeding Polish and Russian Arabians. He imported thirty-one Arabians (six in utero) from Poland and three from Russia; he bought two others after they had been imported to the United States. Among these were the famous stallions *Orzel, *Zbrucz, *Czester, *Faraon, *Gwiazdor, and the valuable broodmares *Prowizja, *Basta, *Genua, *Chlosta, *Abhazja, *Gontyna, *Miroluba, Daszenka, *Paleta, and *Palmira.

Although we tend to focus on the positive aspects of a breeding program like this — the pride of ownership, the goal of producing offspring that are better than their sires and dams — there is a shadow side to breeding as well: the stallion prospect who turns out to be sterile, or the prized mare who dies from foaling complications. For example, the filly *Almeriaa, from the 1963 Polish importation, broke her leg not long after arriving in America and was put down. Another horse from that importation, *Gwiazdor, colicked and died after siring only one crop of foals — of which all but one were colts. While regrettable, such incidents come with the territory. But Tweed’s worst, longest-lasting heartache came from the three Russian Arabians that Spalding acquired for him on his 1963 trip to England.

Thanks to Cold War paranoia and a misplaced sense of patriotism, these horses (two mares and a stallion) were not allowed to be registered by the Arabian Horse Registry of America because, Tweed was told, “We must not deal with the Russians.” Tweed tried vainly to get papers for the three horses, and eventually gave up. The (purebred) foals out of the two mares were registered as half-Arabians; the stallion, *Park — out of a full sister to *Pietuszok, sire of *Orzel — sired only a handful of foals and was mainly used as a tease horse on the ranch. Fifteen years after their importation, the Russian horses imported by Tweed were finally granted purebred Arabian status and allowed to have American registration papers. By this time, *Park was dead, and the two mares were near the end of their reproductive lives. In an article published in Arabian Horse World in 1984, Tweed was finally hailed as a visionary.

It was also in 1984 that the gelding Brusally Skoraik, out of the Russian import *Napaika, began what was to be the first of four consecutive finishes in the Western States Trail Ride (Tevis Cup), in which a horse and rider traverse one hundred miles in one day. Brusally Skoraik went on to log 6,880 miles in endurance, ranking fifty-six on the American Endurance Ride Conference’s list of equines with more than five thousand miles.

Skoraik’s story, as impressive as it is, is only one of the many I’ve learned through doing the research for the book. Not a week goes by that I don’t meet someone on the internet who has a Brusally-related story for me. I’ll start posting them here, for the enjoyment of others.

Last year, I had a marvelous day writing with poet Rita Magdaleno and other like-minded folk at the Rex Ranch in Amado, Arizona.  I have another engagement this year and so will miss the retreat, but I wanted to help Rita get the word out about this opportunity. She creates a positive, fun, thought-provoking environment for writers. This year, the retreat will be at another venue in Amado, The Amado Territory Ranch, on September 22 from 9 am to 4 pm.

For more information, contact Rita at RitainAZ@cox.net or 520.419.6816

Brusally Ranch was one of several large Arabian horse farms in the Scottsdale, Arizona, area from the 1950s to the 1980s. The ranch's owner, Ed Tweed, did a great deal to make Scottsdale the Arabian horse capital of the country. He was a founding member and first president of the Arabian Horse Association of Arizona, and in 1955, the association put on the first Scottsdale All-Arabian Horse Show, held every February at WestWorld. Today, the Scottsdale Show contributes more than $50 million each year to the local economy.

In the 1960s, local breeders began going abroad to buy Arabians to improve the quality of their breeding stock, and Arabians became big business. By the 1970s, various farms held yearly auctions timed to coincide with the Scottsdale Show. I grew up in Phoenix and began attending the show, and the sales, in the mid-1970s. Each year, I'd tour the well-known farms in the area, like Brusally Ranch, Lasma Arabians, Karho Farms, Gainey Ranch, and Tom Chauncey Arabians. Those were the days when on one drive you could see such famous stallions as Bask, El Paso, Aladdinn, Naborr, Ferzon, Gai Parada, Orzel, and Zbrucz. Lasma, Karho, and Gainey are long gone, replaced by housing developments and office complexes; Chauncey's farm is under a car dealership. Over the years, the Scottsdale Show itself was held at different venues, and two of those locations -- at Paradise Park and on Bell Road -- no longer exist.

Now the only vestige of the heyday of Arabian horse in Scottsdale, the Brusally Ranch house, is threatened. The 6,000-square-foot house, built in the 1950s by Tweed, and the five acres on which it sits are all that remain of the 160 acres that comprised the ranch. Tweed's daughter donated the house to the Mayo Clinic in the mid-1990s to be used as a temporary home for those awaiting  organ transplants. Known as the Arizona Transplant House, it has served thousands of patients over the years. However, the Mayo Clinic needs a larger facility, and so it has sold the property to a developer.

I breed Arabians and half-Arabians with Brusally bloodlines, and I'm currently at work on a book about the ranch's imported Arabians. Through my research, I've discovered that the horses born on Tweed's ranch have descendants throughout the world that excel in a number of disciplines. I was interviewed for a recent article in the East Valley Tribune about the plight of the ranch, and I tried to make the point that Brusally isn't simply a name from the past: "Tweed’s importation of about two dozen Arabians from Poland in the 1960s put Scottsdale on the equestrian world’s map. From the 1960s to the 1980s, Scottsdale was basically the place to be for Arabian horses. Three generations on, we’re talking about thousands of horses that have the Brusally bloodline. These horses are so good that they’re sending some back to Arabia to be race horses.” (East Valley Tribune, May 9, 2007)

An Arabian owner who relocated to the Phoenix area last year asked me if I could give her a tour of the old-time Arabian ranches. I still haven't been able to bring myself to give the tour  -- there is so little left to see -- but I think we'd better visit Brusally before it's too late.

The latest issue of Archaeology Southwest (Vol. 21, No. 1) contains two of my articles -- one on Zuni ethnoornithologist Ed Ladd, and one on the reintroduction of turkeys at Mesa Verde National Park in the 1950s. "The Great Mesa Verde Turkey Experiment" had some hilarious unintended consequences: "Once the turkeys were established, they began to overrun the place: 'It was not long before they paid little or no attention to humans, cars, or racket.'" They were obnoxious, slow-moving, and territorial; a Park Service employee came home one evening to find a turkey in his living room. When the employees decided that enough was enough, and tried to drive the turkeys into the wilderness -- by shooting over them, lobbing cherry bombs at them, spraying them with water, and chasing them with cars -- the turkeys viewed it as a game of wits, which they won. The employees gave up. 

A few weeks after the issue of  Archaeology Southwest came out, I was talking to a current Mesa Verde employee about an unrelated matter. Just for fun, I asked her if she'd seen any turkeys in her area. "Well," she said, "I had to brake for a puffed-out tom turkey on my way to the office today. I didn't have any cherry bombs handy, so he was lucky!"

The turkeys are still winning.

In January, I traveled to Ireland to visit a friend from Tucson who'd emigrated there a few years ago. She understands that, as an anthropologist, I’d prefer to live in the community I visit instead of making the rounds of various tourist attractions and crossing them off of someone else’s “must see” list. She knows, too, that I like to read, or re-read, a book about the area in which I’m staying, and that she’ll have to hear about it whether she likes it or not.

While packing, I’d thrown several books into my Land's End bag, and had finished two of them before I left LAX (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and Sight Hound). But the book I was saving until just the right moment was Dubliners, more of which below.

Near the end of my stay, my friend and I decided to spend a day in Dublin, and round it off with a lovely lunch at Avoca Cafe, in Suffolk Street. We took the train from Newry, Northern Ireland, to Connally Station and went for a leisurely, if chilly, walk through Temple Bar, across the River Liffey (which confirmed for me the aptness of Brendan Behan's remark that "Somebody once said that 'Joyce has made this river the Ganges of the literary world,' but sometimes the smell of the Ganges of the literary world is not all that literary"), and towards the Writers Museum in Parnell Square.

It was in the Writers Museum's bookshop that I experienced the first part of my trip’s “perfect moment” (a tip of the cap to Spalding Gray here). A volume of Irish poet Paul Muldoon’s work somehow fell into my hands, and I quickly found a favorite poem of his, “The Lass of Aughrim”:

On a tributary of the Amazon
an Indian boy
steps out of the forest
and strikes up on a flute.

Imagine my delight
when we cut the outboard motor
and I recognize the strains
of The Lass of Aughrim.

”He hopes,” Jesus explains,
”to charm
fish from the water

on what was the tibia
of a priest
from a long-abandoned Mission."

Gleefully, I handed it to my friend (who is not a poetry person), and told her that reading this poem always makes me think of her. "I don't get it," she said, even after I'd enumerated, as eloquently as I could, the various ways that the poem seemed to intersect with her life, and mine. Then she led me out of the museum and around the corner to the IRA bookshop. There, the selection was more to her liking and I spent my time looking at all of the Che Guevara Lynch memorabilia (he's Irish! who knew?)

On my last night in Ireland, I was upstairs reading just before dinner. I'd read a little bit of Dubliners each day, so I had only one story, my favorite, remaining. I was twenty when I first read "The Dead," during a particularly bad summer when I was recovering from a love affair. I wondered, turning the pages two decades later, whether I would find it as compelling as I had then.

I received word today from Mary Ellen Hartje, editor of the Concho River Review, the literary journal of Angelo State University, in Angelo, Texas, that my story "The Object of Desire" will appear in the journal's Fall 2006 issue.

This story had its genesis in a piece I wrote in a fiction masterclass with Melissa Pritchard in 1996. "Desire" underwent a few revisions over the years (some characters removed, others introduced), and last fall I rewrote it extensively, based on some excellent suggestions from writer Heidi Bell. "Desire" is part of a story collection I'm working on, tentatively titled Sex and Horses.

Recently, while proofreading Playing Cards of the Apaches: A Study in Cultural Adaptation, by Virginia and Harold Wayland, and Alan Ferg, I was struck by this passage, a quotation from another playing-card scholar, Sylvia Mann: "I happen to collect playing-cards as my way into history." Intrigued, I consulted Mann’s book, All Cards on the Table, where she writes that “a true collector, whatever the object of his particular interest, be it children’s comics or gold snuff boxes, touches a live element of history...I have acquired, through application and countless reference works and the talents of other collectors, some knowledge about a lot of subjects hitherto outside my interests.” In the case of Playing Cards of the Apaches, my own "way into history" — horses — came in handy. In the book, the provenance of each pack of cards is traced in minute detail, whether the pack belonged to a captured Apache girl, or a U.S. Army soldier, or even Vincent Price.

But when I proofread the pages devoted to a pack owned by Elias J. Baldwin, he was mentioned simply as the donor of a pack of cards — and not, as I knew from my crazy patchwork way of assimilating history through horses, as "Lucky" Baldwin, the founder of Santa Anita Park (named for his daughter Anita), where Seabiscuit won the Santa Anita Handicap in 1940. Hearing this, the junior author (Ferg) agreed to add some biographical information about Baldwin. It’s no surprise, given Baldwin's interest in horses and gambling, that he owned a pack of Apache cards — aside from their use in gambling, Apache packs contain cards featuring caballos, ridden by jaunty caballeros.

I don’t consider myself a collector of horses (though some of my friends might disagree), but, like Mann, my interest in equines has led me to learn about (and what is perhaps more frightening, to retain knowledge of) subjects that seem, at first glance, to have no connection to horses, including: genealogy (horse and humans); textiles; W. K. Kellogg; hide-tanning; the King Ranch; Jostens' class rings; General Patton; Bromo-Seltzer; the Rolling Stones’ Charlie Watts; John Davidson; the Battle of the Little Big Horn; Catalina Island; the Polish language; charreria; Calumet baking soda; the Doors; the paintings of Degas, Lord Munnings, and George Stubbs; and, of course, Ramtha (whom J. Z. Knight channeled in What the Bleep Do We Know?).

As Dorothy Parker noted, "The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."

On the advice of my friend, the poet Jami Macarty, I enrolled in a writer's retreat with local writer Rita Maria Magdaleno, author of Marlene Dietrich, Rita Hayworth, and My Mother, a volume of poetry that repays repeated readings.

The retreat was held at the Rex Ranch Resort and Spa in Amado, Arizona, about an hour south of Tucson. Rita had created a curriculum based on four modules — entering silence, finding the lost object, writing the photo-narrative (which she had employed so successfully in Marlene Dietrich), and creating a vision. She also emphasized the fact that it was "our day," and gave us plenty of time to write. We'd each brought a photograph and an object to write about, and I found myself being very inspired by the setting and my fellow students, and I finished drafts of two poems during the course of the day. One delightful student, Alva, an older Hispanic woman who had been a reporter for the Tucson Citizen, reminded us of the Mexican proverb  No te apures, para que dures — very loosely translated as "don't rush, and you'll last." A good, productive day.