8 posts tagged “donkey”
Hi, everybody. Betty Page dropped by to wish you all a Happy Donkey Wednesday.
Hello. Anybody there? So, what's been upwith me? Sure not blogging. I've been a lazy bitch.
I enjoyed a lovely Valentine's day with Mr. Monkey. I got a huge vase of roses that are only just now beginning to wilt. We had dinner at our favorite little Greek place . I had the pork loin medallions with raspberry chipotle and chocolate creme brulee for dessert.
At some point in the weekend we watched all of season one of The Boondocks.
FOTC! JEMAINE!! SWOON!!! This week he found forbidden love with a foreigner. Both songs were stellar, but I decided on Carol Brown because it's a really sweet song. And those splendid instruments they were playing. Furthermore, Tiffany/epiphany beats Miranda/veranda any day of the week.
Monday I started coming down with the cold and did not get a whole lot constructive done. I should have posted my Last.fm chart but put it off until Tuesday. And speaking of the RIAA ...
ANYway, Blossom Dearie
passed last week and she was my top artist. Damn. She will be missed
by many people. Even more people DO NOT know who she is and that, my
friend, is messed up. I feel fortunate that I have benefited from her
wit and style.
So, after conferring with our pharmacist we have been taking Mucinex
for our plague-like colds. It's working, I guess, because all
plague-fluids have moved to the my chest. I sound like a consumptive
old pirate. So, I have that going for me.
I spent a lot of time on tumblr
this last couple of weeks. It is not as emotionally rewarding as
groping around in the Vox community, so I don't see my tumblr replacing
my Vox. However the short-attention-span, stream-of-consciousness,
zeitgeist-y-ness of it is very seductive. It is much more media-riffic
than Twitter,
which freaks me out on so many levels. Which leads me to one of this
weeks Issues. The theme this week is things beginning with "M" and
first up we have: Microblogging.
I
think there's something to it. When I hear it discussed as a business
tool or a marketing venue I just cringe. This is one of the things
about Twitter that makes me standoffish. Tumblr feels, so far, like the
lovechild of weheartit (scrapbook of web images), delicious (saving
& sharing links), and Twitter (blurting things out). It is a
texty, linky, FOAF-y kind of place full of interesting things to gaze
upon. One might want to try it out. If'n you do, please do follow me.
Second Issue of the Week: Multitasking.
I hate the very word. Computers multitask. People cannot. No. No, you CAN'T. You cannot perform two attention-requiring tasks at the same time. Well, you can but you will make more mistakes and it will take longer, due to the time it takes to adjust your attention from one thing to the other. Switchtasking is pretty much the same as being distracted. What you can do is background task. And consolidate work. Perhaps a more cogent post on efficiency is in order. But don't hold you breath. =D
While driving in my car I heard "All My Friends" on the radio and have had that earwig all week. It caused me to listen to Sound of Silver. Now I have "North American Scum" AND "All My Friends" stuck in my head. Stay tuned for next week's Last.fm
For Donkey Wednesday I had found some fab pics of those crazy mop-topped lads from Liverpool cavorting with the seventh Beatle-- a donkey.
My laptop is cranky. I have been gradually trying to tidy things up and run my Time Machine regularly. Usually I only do it once a week. (Here is the interactive section of this weeks post. How often do you back up your main leisure computer?) Still, I'm preparing for the worst. Thank ye Gods for Apple Care.
Final M-Issue o' the Week: Mortgages. I feel shitty that I begrudge this whole real estate crisis. I was watching that white guy go nutzo on the trading floor the other day and thinking, "Oh, shit. I basically agree with this red-faced joker." 92 % of Americans pay their mortgages on time. We are one of those households. For ten-odd years we have made our house payment every month, even when we couldn't afford it. It was hard. It consumed any disposable income that might have been. Bluntly put, it cramped my style. So, I am pissy about my portion of the tab for this irresponsible lending mess. I'm pissy about repo'ed houses in my hood and for-lease business spaces and my tanking property value. Don't get me wrong, I'm knocking on wood that we have been able to scrape together our payments And I understand that that circumstance may change. And, if only 8% of loans are in default, how can the industry be in total ruin? Gah!
Friday- And today I heard they are talking about nationalizing my bank. Whee!
In re: The Great Beard Decision 2009 over at M_____l's: The Jemaine camp dons our sackcloth and ashes to mourn our loss even as we gird our loins for next year. Oh, and there WILL be a next year...
Sexy Saturday- well, I'm still too sick to really "go there." I'm so congested that it would be that weird asphyxia sex. And not the sexy, bondage-y, edgy, hot kind, either. More like a gasping, wheezing, phlegmy kind. So, I'll spare you any more of that.
Well, that might not be everything that's happened, but it's all I can remember, Sorry for all the grammatical, spelling, punctuation, and logical errors in this post. I'm out of practice.
More breaking news from Ole Blighty, where they looooove their beach donkeys. Freddie has been named the Best Beach Donkey in the North East of Yorkshire. This news comes to us from Scarbrough, which is-- after all-- the best beach donkey town according to the judges from the Donkey Sanctuary.
The title of Britain's Best Donkey went to Dennis, and I'm still looing for a picture of him.
Today is Donkey Wednesday and it's Animal Week on Mp3eme. That means one thing and one thing only: A BIG-ASS DONKEY POST!
We shall start with the Ignatz theme song: "Soul Donkey" by the Sugarman Three.
Next, it's probably the most well-known donkey in a song: the one in the Who's "Happy Jack."
I have three more songs 'bout donkeys:
Mochipet's "Disko Donkey,"
Buckner & Garcia's "Do the Donkey Kong," and BOAT's "I'm A Donkey For Your Love."
A MULE
(Extra credit points to anyone who knows what you get when you cross a jennet (female) donkey with a stallion.)
Let's start the mule portion of our post by listening to Tennessee Ernie Ford totally annihilate Bing Crosby in a "Mule Train" showdown.
Whitewater Ramble's "Pack Mule Blues," Deep Purple's "The Mule," Coley Jones' "Army Mule In No Man's Land." some guy named "Whiteboy Slim" covering the classic "She Took The Caty and Left Me A Mule," and The Magic Numbers' "The Mule."
As the newly appointed First Minister of Donkeys (and Books and Music) of a burgeoning new country, my first official act is to designate Wednesdays “Donkey Wednesdays.” (I mean, like we even NEED a day for 70's music???) Donkey Wednesdays will henceforth be set aside as a day of appreciation for donkeys, mules, and generally under-appreciated and overworked pack animals across the globe.
We shall begin our festivities with a salute to Ignatz.
Ignatz was written up in the Barton Chronicle (the weekly voice of Orleans County, VT) when he, despite old age and founder, he kicked a fox's ass. This story is two years old, but you haven't heard it yet, so it's new to you.
Ignatz lives on the Bread and Puppet farm in Glover where he was originally supposed to watch the sheep. "He bit the ears off the sheep." Peter Schumann got Ignatz as a gift in 1980 and he wrote a book Donkey Ride Over Dexter Hill about the stuff that guys do with their donkeys.
Also, his name is Ignatz.
Ignatz fought a fox he caught in the chicken house (like my own dear MeMa*). Peter Schumann's daughter, Maria heard a commotion in the henhouse. "As I ran to the house the chickens came running out with feathers flying, and going bruck, brock, brawck, brawck, brawwk."
"Then I saw, in the chicken yard, Ignatz with a fox in his mouth, shaking him. And then he threw him and the fox ran into the woods."
That is awe-inspiring. I have heard of guard donkeys, but I always pictured them as a deterrent and not as an active force for ass-kickery. It's pretty amazing that he took the initiative to defend something that A. he had not been trained to protect and B. he could not eat. And, seriously. When was the last time you threw a fox ANYWHERE?
I say "Hats off to Ignatz!" Even if he wasn't a hero to the chickens of Orleans County, he'd still be named Ignatz.
Today we will celebrate the greatness of Ignatz with a song by the Sugarman Three (who may become the official band of Donkey Wednesday if I can get my hands on the Soul Donkey cd). Please enjoy.
*There is a story in my family, which I believe to be 100% true, in which my mother's mother (aka MeMe) caught a fox in the coop with her pullets. MeMa was a tiny lady but she was tough and, fuelled by righteous indignation, she assaulted and strangled the fox to death. She got bitten a little, but she was mostly concerned about her spring chickens. God, I love country folks!
- African Wild Ass (Equus asinus) was domesticated around 4,000 B.C.
- By 1800 B.C., the ass had reached the Middle East. Damascus was once referred to as the “City of Asses”
- The origin of the English word donkey is debated. It may allude to the color dun, a dull grey-brown. It may have been influenced by the word monkey. It may be a hypocoristic form of the name Duncan.
- A male donkey (jack) can be crossed with a female horse to produce a mule. A male horse can be crossed with a female donkey (jennet or jenny) to produce a hinny.
- Horses have 64 chromosomes. Donkeys have 62. Horse-donkey hybrids have 63 chromosomes and are almost always sterile.
- In 1495, the ass first appeared in the New World. The four male and two female asses brought by Christopher Columbus gave birth to the Western mules.
- The donkey's reputation for stubbornness is actually a highly-developed sense of self-preservation.
- The American Donkey and Mule Society, Inc. is a non-profit organization which serves the donkey and mule world.
- Passed in 1971, the Wild Free Roaming Horse and Burrow Act (Public Law 92-195) protects all unbranded and unclaimed horses and burros on public lands of the United States.
- Since 1973 the Bureau of Land Management has removed 141,762 wild horses and burros from public land and placed 122,627 animals into private care through the Adopt-A-Horse program (which leaves about 20,000 that I'm worried about).
Jimenez lived between 1881 and 1958. He studied law and painting but ultimately pursued writing. As you read his words you will notice his artists attention to color, light, and texture. He's been called a Platonist and an Impressionist.
In 1900 the young Jimenez's father died and the up-and-coming poet sank into a deep depression. He returned to Moguer and eventually ended up in a san in France. But he continued to write, went back to Moguer (1905-11), then to Madrid where he met Zanobia (1912), whom he then followed to New York (1916). Then a bunch of other stuff happened.
In 1956, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. He died two years later.
- A mother dog, a mangy dog, a white horse, a runaway bull, an old donkey, an evil donkey, a sweetheart donkey, a canary, a parrot, sparrows, and geese
- A cemetery, a castle, a bull ring, a fountain, a pool, a well, a locked gate, a windmill, and a cistern
- 3 blind women, a crazy man, the village idiot, a consumptive girl, a shepherd, various children, Gypsies, and Romanies
- Pine trees, vinyards, flowers, butterflies, and trees
- A pomegranate, figs, grapes, bread, wine, and pine nuts
- One cockfight and a few religious processions
XXXVII
The Cart
In the big creek, which the rain has swelled as far as the vinyard, we found an old cart stuck in the mud, lost to view under its load of grass and oranges. A ragged, dirty little girl was weping over one wheel, trying to help the donkey, who was, alas, smaller and frailer than Platero. And the little donkey was spending himself against the wind, trying vainly at the sobbing of the child to pull the cart out of the mire. His efforts were futile, like the efforts of brave children, like the breath of those tired summer breezes which fall fainting among the flowers.
I patted Platero, and as well as I could I hitched him to the cart in front of the wretched little donkey. I encouraged him then with an affectionate command, and Platero, at one tug, pulled cart and beast out of the mud and up the bank.
How the little girl smiled! It was as if the evening sun, setting among the yellow-crystal rain clouds, had kindled a dawn of joy behind her dirty tears.
With tearful gladness she offered me two choice oranges, perfect, heavy, round. I took them gratefully, and I gave one to the weak little donkey, to comfort him; the other to Platero, as a golden reward.
Friendship
We understand each other. I let him go at his fancy, and he always takes me where I want to go.
Platero knows that on reaching the Corona pine I like to get close to its trunk and touch it, and look up at the sky through its enormous, light-filtered top; he knows that the narrow path that leads between the grassplots to the Old Fountain delights me; that it is high festival for me to watch the river from the pine hill, which, like a sorceress brings classic scenes before me. If I go to sleep, unafraid, on his back, my awakening always finds me at one of these friendly spots.
I treat Platero as if he were a child, If the road is rough or a little too hard for him, I get down to make it easier for him. I kiss him. I tease him mercilessly. He knows that I love him and bears me no grudge. He is so like me, so different from the rest, that I have come to believe that he dreams my own dreams.
Platero has given himself to me like a passionate adolescent. He protests at nothing, I know that I am his happiness. He even avoids donkeys and men...
LXXXVIII
October Afternoon
Vacation days are over, and with the first yellow leaves the children have returned to school. Solitude. The heart of the house, also, with the fallen leaves, seems empty. Distant cries and faraway laughter are heard only in fancy.
Evening falls apace, slowly, on the flowering rosebushes. The sunset glow reddens the last late roses, and the garden, lifting its flame of fragrance to the flame of the dying sun, smells of burnt roses. Silence.
Platero, wearily restless as I, does not know what to do. Hesitantly he comes toward me, considers, wonders, and at last, confidently stepping sturdily and cleanly on the brick floor, he comes with me into the house...
CXXXVII
Cardboard Platero
Platero, a year ago when there appeared in the world a part of this book that I wrote in memory of you, a friend of yours and mine made me a gift of this toy Platero. Do you see it from where you are? Look: he is half-gray and half-white; his mouth is black and red; his eyes are enormously big and enormously black; he carries little clay saddlebags with six flowerpots filled with silk-paper flowers, pink and white and yellow; he can move his head, and he walks on a blue-painted board that has four crude wheels.
Remembering you, Platero, I have become attached to this little toy donkey. Everyone who enters my study says to him, smiling, "Platero." If anyone does not know about you and asks me what he is, I say "It is Platero." And so well has the name accustomed me to feeling that now I myself, even when alone, think he is you, and I caress him with my eyes.
You? How inconstant is the memory of the human heart. This toy Platero seems to me today more Platero than you yourself, Platero.
Brighty of the Grand Canyon was written in 1953 by Marguerite Henry, known for her horse/pony/donkey/dog/fox books for children. I guess a lot of kids did not read Ms. Henry, but we lived on a farm and we read the bejeebus out of them. We watched horse movies and shows, read horse books, played with horse toys and ...well, horses.
Brighty is illustrated by Wesley Dennis, as were the majority of her books. The color plates look kind of garish and muddled, but the black and white illustrations are the perfect compliment to the story. I love Mr. Dennis because he also wrote and illustrated the Flip books. Flip and the Cows. Damn, I love that book.
Bright Angel, or Brighty, got his name from Bright Angel Creek, which flows into the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. (Click here or here for some funky 3-D USGS photos.) He was a free spirit roaming the the canyon, summering on the North Rim and wintering low in the Canyon. Brighty belonged to no man, but he was especially fond of the Old Timer, a prospector who didn't mind sharing his flap jacks with a furry donkey. In summer he would hoof it up to Uncle Jimmy's. (Uncle Jimmy lived at the Canyon for the sole purpose of shooting mountain lions for the gub'ment.) When it served his interest or curiosity, Brighty would help out the prospectors and tourists with their toting--of which there was plenty. Kids from the nearby Wiley's Camp could hop a ride. Bust mostly Brighty liked to keep his options open. He loved to sleep, romp, and skylark.
The plot of BotGC concerns the detection and apprehension of the Old Timer's killer, and only Brighty knows with certainty who that is. But there are plenty of auxillary plots: Teddy Roosevelt's lion hunt, building the suspenion bridge across the Colorado River, the boy lost in the blizzard. But whatever occurs, Brighty is stalwart on the side of children, animals, and friendly old men. He is equally devoted to thwarting and mocking the bad, greedy, and violent. What a donkey! True blue right to the end. (Note to self: Emulate Brighty.)
A lot of really harrowing things happen to Brighty in the course of the story. His best friend goes missing. He is attacked by a cougar. Twice. A cranky artist breaks a canvas over his head. He gets stung by a yellowjacket (very Ferdinand the Bull). Jake Irons (Old Timer's killer & claimjumper) hits him with a can of pebbles, shoots at him, kidnaps him, drops him in the river, and locks him in the lean-to. He got in a couple of knock-down-drag-out fights with other donkeys. He catches what I presume to be pneumonia. He nearly starves to death during the snow storm. I kept being surprised at how much cruelty he endured.
Marguerite's tale is based on a real donkey. Brighty did live in the Grand Canyon and did escort Teddy Roosevelt on a mountain lion hunt. He helped with the construction of the suspension bridge and was the first "person" to cross it. He most likely made baby donkeys. His estimated dates are 1890 to 1922. There is a bronze statue of him in the Grand Canyon Lodge on the North Rim.
BotGC is also interesting as a study in changing attitudes about the environment and "progress." When Teddy was President we killed off mountain lions, built bridges, and brought tourists into the canyon. The donkey is shown as a benevolent presence in the canyon, rather than a destructive and invasive one. Mountain lions were far from protected; Uncle Jimmy was doing his darnedest to make them extinct!
Anyway, I've been thinking about donkeys and mules a lot lately so I needed to get all that off my chest. You might also want to check out the movie, but I promise: YOU WILL CRY. Now go. Be like Brighty.
