Monday, April 29, 2013

Wearing Flowers In Your Hair Is Optional

My father as a young man, playing guitar in the woods of Idylwild, California.
 

Last year I introduced you to my dad, Guitar Whitey. He was out on his porch strumming some old tune by Merle Haggard and soaking up the sun.

Tonight, he will be honored at an event in San Francisco, at the prestigious San Francisco Conservancy Of Music. No, he won't be playing any hobo songs, but he will be recognized as the very first classical guitar student they ever had! He was 27 years old.

Today, the San Francisco Music Conservancy has over 400 guitar students. The Bay Area is one of the most active classical guitar scenes in the US.

This event, known as Guitarrada, is really about Pepe Romero, the greatest classical guitarist in the world. His father before him, Celedonio Romero, was a world renowned classical and flamenco guitarist. He taught Pepe everything he knows. I'm so excited for my dad to be escorted to such an occasion as this. To be a part of such a special evening, all surrounding the main theme, The Guitar.

My mother used to say that my father's best friend was the guitar. It's come full circle today.

Tonight will be a rare occasion. If you are in the Bay Area, how fortunate for you to be a part of it. It's free!

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

HERE IS THE ANNOUNCEMENT:

  • San Francisco Conservancy of Music

    50 Oak Street, San Francisco, CA.

    concert hall
  • Guitarrada is a term invented by Celedonio Romero to denote a group of players working their way through a special collection of guitars. In this case, we will be listening to and discussing instruments from the wonderful Harris Guitar Collection with Pepe Romero and the great guitar scholar and storyteller Richard BrunĂ©, and there are some further features of the evening. David Tanenbaum will be introducing perhaps the country's first classical guitar student, a 92 year old man named Robert Symmonds, who is making the trip from San Luis Obispo for this event. He wrote a wonderful book about his hobo life of riding trains called Ridin' Free, and he made the San Francisco Conservatory find him a guitar teacher so he could become a guitar major here in 1948. Also, 8 more guitarists will perform on some of these instruments.

    This is a free - and delightful - event.


 

Monday, April 22, 2013

Every Day Is Earth Day

Only when the last tree has died

And the last river been poisoned

And the last fish been caught

Will we realize

We cannot eat money. ~ Cree Indian Proverb

 

 

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Cyan Sky

So happy just to see you smile
Underneath the sky of blue
On this new morning, new morning
On this new morning with you. ~ Bob Dylan

 

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Beading By The Fire

Today is my day off.

It is snowing again, so I thought I'd hang out by the fire and string some beads on leather, put on some Lucinda William's and enjoy the company of my sweet kitty's. Skye and Sherpa love it when I stay home. They get me all to themselves. Just us girls. I'm always jabbering at them, fawning over them, singing to them. I add their names to songs I'm listening to. They love that.

"Come on now Sherpa

we're gonna go for a ride,

Car wheels on a gravel road.

Car wheels on a gravel road!"

I take turns picking them up and twirling, spinning and sliding across the hardwood floors, as they dangle over my shoulder, rocking to the beat. On occasion we shuffle over to various windows for a peek at the nuthatches and flickers pecking to the beat of their own drum.

Then it's back to the bowl of beads and a rest from dancing. And time for cat naps in front of the fire.

Sometimes taking a break from the world outside is exactly what I need. A day to sit and contempate. To make room for reflection, ideas and daydreams.

I only go out to get me a fresh appetite for being alone. ~ Lord Byron


 

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Spring Snow

Don't let the smile fool you. It's not so much that I loved the two feet of snow we got.

I was daydreaming about the Sonoran desert.

Again.

 

Monday, April 8, 2013

All The Pretty Horses

ARE DISAPPEARING.


Image by Melissa Farlow > High Country News article November 2012
Image by Melissa Farlow > High Country News article November 2012
Wyoming's Great Divide Basin wild horses > Ginger Kathrens > The Cloud Foundation
Great Divide Basin herd, southern Wyoming > Ginger Kathrens > The Cloud Foundation
Divide Basin herd, southern Wyoming > Ginger Kathrens > The Cloud Foundation
Bachelor stallions of southern Wyoming's Divide Basin herd in the early morning sunrise.
Image by Melissa Farlow > High Country News article November 2012
 
Do you have a minute? I don't mean to bore you with statistics, but sit tight and read the latest news on OUR WILD MUSTANGS.
 

Cheyenne, WY ( April 4, 2013) – A federal court in Wyoming has approved a consent decree between the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Rock Springs Grazing Association (RSGA) that will wipe out wild free-roaming horses from the Wyoming Checkerboard, a two-million acre swath of public and private land in the southern part of the state.

The Consent Decree was vigorously opposed by the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign, The Cloud Foundation and the International Society for the Preservation of Mustangs and Burros, which were granted intervenor status in the case. The intervenors were represented by the public interest law firm Meyer, Glitzenstein & Crystal.

“We are appalled that the court has put a seal of approval on the BLM’s plan to destroy some of Wyoming’s last remaining and most popular wild horse herds,” said Suzanne Roy, director of the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign (AWHPC). “The court’s decision to prioritize the interests of the livestock industry over protection of wild horses is blatantly wrong from a legal perspective. We vow to fight with all legal means available the BLM’s unlawful plans to wipe out wild horses from the Wyoming checkerboard.”

“As a party to the original agreement that protected wild horses in this critical habitat area, we are devastated by this decision, which will have lasting impacts on wild horses in Wyoming,” said Karen Sussman, president of the International Society for the Protection of Mustangs and Burros (ISPMB). “This continues the BLM’s trend of managing our wild horses to extinction.”

Sussman noted that since the Wild Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act was passed in 1971, the BLM has eliminated wild horses from over 20 million acres of designated habitat and reduced the number of Herd Management Areas from 303 to 179 today.

“This is a sad day for wild horses in Wyoming, a state that ironically promotes its mustangs in the state’s ‘Roam Free’ tourism ads,” said Ginger Kathrens, director of The Cloud Foundation. “The sweetheart deal between the ranchers and the BLM was put into motion when the Interior Department invited RSGA to file the suit against it, so that the BLM could capitulate to the ranchers’ demands, and then claim it is under a ‘court order’ to remove the horses”

Kathrens recently photographed the Great Divide Basin wild horses, which are targeted for elimination under the consent decree. The backroom dealing involved in this case was recently exposed in an article on The Atlantic.com entitled, How the Department of Interior Sold Out America’s Wild Horses.

Also objecting to the consent decree was Lloyd Eisenhauer, a former BLM manager in the Rock Springs and Rawlins areas. Eisenhauer submitted a declaration for the intervenors stating the following with regard to the BLM’s plans to zero out the Great Divide Basin and Salt Wells herds:

“The BLM has no biological or ecological basis for zeroing out a herd of wild horses in an HMA that existed at the time the wild horse statute was passed in 1971 . . . [B]ecause the wild horses have a statutory right to be there, whereas livestock only have a privilege that can be revoked at any time by BLM, there also is no authority or precedent, to my knowledge, for the agency to zero out these two longstanding wild horse herds simply to appease private livestock grazers.”

Eisenhauer also called the BLM’s plan to convert the White Mountain wild horse population to non-reproducing a “slow motion zeroing out of this HMA” that is “inconsistent with any wild horse management approach I am familiar with that BLM has implemented on public lands.”

Under the now-court sanctioned consent decree, the BLM will move forward with a plan to reduce the maximum number of wild free-roaming horses allowed in the state of Wyoming by 46%, from 3,685 to 2,070. An additional 205-300 sterilized horses (castrated stallions and spayed mares) would be allowed to remain on the land.

Specifically, the consent decree outlines the BLM’s plans to:

· Zero out (entirely eliminate) wild horses from the Salt Wells and Great Divide Basin Herd Management Areas (HMAs);

· Sterilize wild horses in the White Mountain HMA, thus destroying the federally-protected wild free-roaming behaviors of the mustangs who are a popular tourist attraction

· Cut by more than half the number of wild horses in the famed Adobe Town Herd Management Area.

The consent decree settles a lawsuit, filed in July 2011 by the RSGA against the BLM, seeking removal of all wild horses from the private and public lands of the Wyoming checkerboard. The RSGA is the nation’s largest grazing association and grazes thousands of livestock on BLM lands in the checkerboard for tax-subsidized fees that are approximately 1/16th of market rate.

The American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign (AWHPC) is a coalition of more than 50 horse advocacy, public interest, and conservation organizations dedicated to preserving the American wild horse in viable, free-roaming herds for generations to come, as part of our national heritage. AWHPC is a campaign founded and sponsored by Return to Freedom.

The Cloud Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and protection of wild horses and burros on our Western public lands with a focus on protecting Cloud’s herd in the Pryor Mountains of Montana. Cloud is the subject of Foundation founder Ginger Kathrens’ groundbreaking PBS/Nature documentaries.

International Society for the Protection of Mustangs and Burros, founded over 50 years ago, was instrumental in securing the enactment of the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, the landmark federal legislation that established protections for wild free-roaming horses and burros on public lands in the West.

THE FIGHT TO SAVE WYOMING'S WILD HORSES IS ON!


Horses are creatures who worship the earth

As they gallop on feet of ivory.

Constrained by the wonder of dying and birth,

The horses still run, they are free. ~ John Denver & Joe Henry, "Eagles and Horses"