Have Hooves, Will Travel

Occam is going on another adventure and will be without internet access for 4 weeks. UGH! Will Occam survive? If so, there will be new stories to tell. I expect to travel only 4000 miles this time. But some of those miles will be with a friend and her two Arabian horses. I love to travel with horses. Since you are taking them out of their natural environment, you must become their slave in order to see to their comfort and health. When you stop and before you go, the last thing one does is check the horses.

I will be camping in the northern US and it will not be summer. If things go as they have in the past, that means I'll see snow. Hopefully not. I prefer to see only the autumn foliage coloring the landscape. But I'm not a wimp. It won't be the first time I've had to scrape frost off my whiskers in the morning. (I don't have whiskers. That was just a poetic expression.)

So please check back about the middle of October and see what news is coming from the ranch. See ya round the bend...

Orson Welles

I've been to the movie theatre twice in the past 20 years. I saw "A Beautiful Mind" and "Passion of the Christ". With all due respect to Christ, the beautiful mind was better. Modern movies are in a terrible slump. Tonight I watched "Citizen Kane" which was made in 1940 when Orson Welles was 25 years old. He directed, wrote and starred in the film. It is absolutely riveting. Cameras don't film like that today. In 2006 there are no young people born in 1982 with a smidgen of the talent Welles demonstrates in "Citizen Kane". Today there are some actors who are producing movies that they are acting in, but they are established talents, not fresh faces. Movie-making is out of the reach of new filmmakers which probably explains the popularity of "You Tube" and other internet video outlets. Maybe this new medium will cultivate an Orson Welles of the 21st Century. I hope so. I am pretty tired of the fantasy & urban violence crap that Hollywood has been re-making over and over.

Orson Welles 1915-1985.

At a Loss

Five days ago a life was tragically lost halfway around the world. I'd never met the man. I've never even been to his country, Australia. But I, like millions of his fans, mourn his death. Steve Irwin, better known on TV as The Crocodile Hunter, was a conservationist in your face. His exuberant voice and athletic adventures with crocodiles and numerous other species of animals drew young and old alike into knowledge and familiarity. We started to care about the animals. Even old grumpy crocs. There will never be another like Steve. And we aren't shedding crocodile tears.

September 26th

All my life I have lamented the dearth of people also born on my birthday. I've never met a person who shares the same date with me. But thanks to the wonders of the Internet I have found some birthday twins:

• 1888 t.s.eliot -American writer
• 1889 Martin Heidegger -German philosopher (where I get my angst from?)
• 1981 Serena Williams -Tennis player.

The list of famous people who have died on my birthday also is singular:

• 1820 Daniel Boone -Frontiersman
• 1763 John Byron -English Poet
• 1952 George Santayana -Writer and Philosopher.

The list seems heavily weighted to writers and philosophers. Since I fancy myself a bit of an amateur writer and an even more amateurish philosopher, maybe there is something to this "birthdate as an influence" over one's life. The planets were aligned in such and such a manner. Ooops! Pluto is no longer a planet, have to re-write everyone's astrological predictions. Well, seriously I haven't any angst over astronomy. It's all fanciful.