10 ways....

TEN WAYS TO BECOMING A BETTER EQUESTRIAN

10. Drop a heavy steel object on your foot. Don't pick it up right
away.Instead, shout, "Get Off, Stupid! GET OFF!"

9. Leap out of a moving vehicle and practice "relaxing into the fall." Roll
into a ball and spring lithely to your feet.

8. Learn to grab your checkbook and write out a $200 check without even
looking down.

7. Jog long distances carrying a halter and a carrot. Go ahead and tell the
neighbors what you are doing - they might as well know now.

6. Affix a pair of reins to a moving freight train and practice pulling to a
halt. Smile as if you are having fun.

5. Hone your fibbing skills: "See, moving hay bales is FUN!" and, "No,
really, I'm glad YOUR LUCKY PERFORMANCE and multi-million dollar horse won
the class. I am just thankful that MY HARD WORK and actual ability won me
second place."

4. Practice dialing your chiropractor while paralyzed to
the shoulder and one foot anchoring the lead rope of a frisky horse.

3. Borrow the US Army's slogan: Be All That You Can Be - bitten, thrown,
kicked, slimed, trampled, frozen...

2. Lie face down in a puddle of mud in your most expensive riding clothes
and repeat to yourself, "This is a learning experience. This is a learning
experience. This is . . ."

AND THE NUMBER ONE EXERCISE TO BECOME A BETTER EQUESTRIAN:

1. Remember, its never the horse's fault...* :-)

Heath Ledger

Brokeback Mountain star found dead


Heath Ledger


Heath Ledger was found dead Tuesday at a downtown Manhattan apartment, and police said drugs may have been a factor. The Australian-born actor was 28.

Police said Ledger was naked in his bed with an unknown number of sleeping pills near the body.

Ledger had an appointment for a massage at a residence in the tony SoHo neighborhood, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said. A housekeeper who went to let him know the massage therapist had arrived found him dead at 3:26 p.m.

A large crowd of paparazzi and gawkers began gathering Tuesday evening outside the building on an upscale block, where several police officers guarded the door. The medical examiner's office planned an autopsy on Wednesday, spokeswoman Ellen Borakove said.

While not a marquee movie star, Ledger was a respected, award-winning actor who took his craft seriously rather than cashing in on his heartthrob looks. He was nominated for an Oscar for his performance as a gay cowboy in "Brokeback Mountain," where he met Michelle Williams, who played his wife in the film. The two had a daughter, Matilda, and lived together in Brooklyn until they split up last year.

Ledger most recently appeared in "I'm Not There," in which he played one of the many incarnations of Bob Dylan -- as did Cate Blanchett, whose performance in that film earned an Oscar nomination Tuesday for best supporting actress.

Ledger had finished filming his role as the Joker this year in "The Dark Knight," a sequel to 2005's "Batman Begins."

He's had starring roles in "A Knight's Tale" and "The Patriot," and played the suicidal son of Billy Bob Thornton in "Monster's Ball." He also played a heroin addict in the 2006 Australian film "Candy."

Before settling down with Williams, Ledger had relationships with actresses Heather Graham and Naomi Watts. He met Watts while working on "The Lords of Dogtown," a fictionalized version of a cult classic skateboarding documentary, in 2004.

Ledger was born in 1979 in Perth, in western Australia, to a mining engineer and a French teacher, and got his first acting role playing Peter Pan at age 10 at a local theater company. He began acting in independent films as a 16-year-old in Sydney and played a cyclist hoping to land a spot on an Olympic team in a 1996 television show, "Seat."

After several independent films, Ledger moved to Los Angeles at age 19 and co-starred opposite Julia Stiles in "10 Things I Hate About You," a teen comedy reworking of "The Taming of the Shrew." His movie career caught on soon after that, culminating with his Academy Award nomination for "Brokeback Mountain."

"Dark Knight" director Christopher Nolan said earlier this month that Ledger's performance as the Joker would be wildly different than Jack Nicholson's memorable turn in 1989's "Batman."

"It was a very great challenge for Heath," Nolan had said. "He's extremely original, extremely frightening, tremendously edgy. A very young character, a very anarchic presence that taps into a lot of our basic fears and panic."




(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

January Birthdays

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BRIAN!

And this is one other thing I am going to do: HAPPY BIRTHDAY to ALL the January Birthday people I know...friends and family!

Hey...I think I may do that every month.

Interesting....

This link is interesting but in our case we have done as much as we have to save. May work for some but it hasn't for us...yet. It seems every time we move 5 steps forward something happens and we get pushed back 10.

Brainerd Dispatch: News | Brainerd, Minnesota | Brainerd Lakes Area News on brainerddispatch.com

Horse Blanket Day

Once again I am sitting in front of the computer what I should be blogging or posting. We are just about to the middle of the month of a brand New Year and I have nothing to post. Nothing new, exciting....nothing!

The only thing that is happening this month is Brian's 27th birthday.

Oh, I did manage to finally try on this turnout blanket on 3 out of the 4 horses today. I am bracing for the COLD stuff. The horses...I just don't see that thick coat that they usually grow for the Winter. I bought this blanket on ebay and it is nice. So I walked out to the pasture and first tried it on Tori. It fit her to a tee, for now. She is now 3 years of age. She was such a good girl. This one I think is going to be so easy to train, which that will start this Spring. She is finally showing some growth and I know she still has some more growing to do. Next I tried the blanket on Ginger. The blanket was too small. I have had 72" on her before and the ones I have were too big. Must be the type of blanket and whoever makes it. The new one is 70" so now I have decided that I will purchase another blanket from the same place and hope that the new 72" will fit. Then I tried it on Grace. It would fit perfectly if it were an 1" longer....ARGH! So since the 70" doesn't fit properly, I think I am going to pick up another 72". These blankets...I love how they adjust on the front closure.

So that was about the extent of my day.

Jim Brandenburg

Renowned National Geographic photographer Jim Brandenburg is considered one of the premier wildlife photographers in the world. However, this Minnesota-based artist doesn't measure his success by the numerous national and international awards and honors he has received. Rather, he gleans a well-earned sense of satisfaction from a steadfast and long-term commitment to his almost mystical quest to explore and understand the wilderness. As he says, "Ever since I was a boy, I have had a passion for telling stories about the forest and the prairies."

Brandenburg took his first photograph at age fourteen, then further developed his photographic skills and style while majoring in art at the University of Minnesota. After college, Brandenburg worked for the Worthington Daily Globe in southern Minnesota learning the trade of the "hard news" photojournalist. While at the paper, he began freelancing for National Geographic Magazine, and joined this heralded publication as a contract photographer in 1978. An abbreviated list of Brandenburg's project for National Geographic include: "The Tallgrass Prairie," "The Canadian Rockies," "South Dakota Badlands," "At Home with the Arctic Wolf," and "Ellesmere Island Life in the High Arctic."

His photographs have appeared in Life, Newsweek, Time, The Smithsonian, and Geo, often on the covers of these magazines. His works in Manchuria was featured in a book about China, and his photography in the Highlands of Scotland appeared in Discovering Britain and Ireland. He has just published Images of Home, a personal and intimate collection of black and white photographs that depicts the many fascinating people and places in the author's home state, Minnesota.

Brandenburg was twice named Magazine Photographer of the Year by the National Press Photographer's Association (regarded as the "Oscar" for the industry), and in 1988, he was named Wildlife Photographer of the Year by the British Museum of Natural History and the BBC, sponsored by Kodak. In 1981, he was commissioned by the United States Postal Service to photograph and design a set of ten wildlife stamps which were released on May 14th of that year. And in 1991, he was honored with the Global 500 Environmental World Achievement Award from the United Nations Environment program which was presented to him by King of Coastal Sweden.

For more than twenty years, Brandenburg has worked in Canada, Alaska, Minnesota, China, and the former Soviet Union. In the spring of 1980, he discovered on Ellesmere Island in the high Arctic what be one of the last packs of wolves not ingrained with fear from an excessive proximity to man. Photographs from that trip resulted in his bestselling book, White Wolf (with text by Brandenburg), that continues to delight and inform wildlife enthusiasts. Brandenburg has also produced, directed, and was the cinematographer for the extraordinary popular 1988 National Geographic/BBC Television Documentary titled simply, "White Wolf," aired world-wide in more than 120 countries.

Today, the force that continues to fuel Brandenburg's photography is his ever-deepening fascination with the wolf, a romance he pursues daily from his rural Northern Minnesota home near the Canadian border, also home territory for the Gray, or, as it is also called, the Timber Wolf.

Brandenburg speaks of the "elusive" nature of wolves, and the challenge that creates in photographing them. On a planet threatened by mankind's technological excess, Brandenburg's own "dances with wolves," falls perfectly in line with other environmentally-concerned movements and individuals as the expression of only hope for saving the earth, and ourselves as a species. As the photographer says, "I'm interested in people's relationship with wolves...As much as it touches a feared aspect in us, the wolf as a symbol of wildness that we're trying to reconcile and make an agreement with..."


The Photography of Jim Brandenburg

2008

I am just going to make this plain and simple, to the point......

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Resolutions? I make the same one EVERY year. What is it?? That the new year will be better than the last.