Article: Taking a stand

FM1626 near Jerry's Lane.

While attending the wiener dog races a couple of weeks ago, I wandered by an information booth on proposed highway improvements in Hays County. A large map showed expansion of FM1626. I didn’t think much about it. Change is inevitable. I took some literature, impressed with its glossy, well-organized presentation, and headed back to the stands. In the excitement of the event, I forgot all about road improvements.

Driving, I dismissed the primitive roadside signs admonishing drivers to vote no on road bonds. They were probably the work of special interest groups or people who want time to stand still. Again, the issue faded from my mind.

But this week my husband received an automated phone call to local residents stating that County Commissioner Jeff Barton was giving a presentation on the road bond and its impact on FM1626 in just a couple of hours. We didn’t have anything else to do, the meeting was conveniently located and the call peaked our curiosity. We decided to attend.

There was quite a crowd and it was obvious they weren’t happy. Many had been to a previous meeting where they’d learned the transformed FM1626 would not include an access point to their subdivision. Some were concerned about the affect of the expansion of the road from a rural two-lane farm-to-market into a five-lane conduit for traffic from points south into Austin. Others wanted to know how they would be compensated for the degradation of their homes or properties that proximity to this high-volume thoroughfare would bring.

For the most part, Rick and I sat back and listened. We’re not used to being involved. And our property is a good distance off FM1626, expanding the road would probably increase our property value if it had any effect at all. But it was hard to miss the tone of the meeting, which was that it had already been decided and this thing is a great deal, a once-in-a-life-time opportunity that has to be taken right now.

At one point a local resident asked how long it would be before there would be road improvements if this bond is defeated. The reply was thirty years! Barton later clarified that some improvements would undoubtedly take place within that time but there would be no major work on the level of what the bond would support. It felt like we were all being sold a used car, if you don’t snap this beauty up today, it’ll be gone tomorrow!

And don’t look under the hood. Rick asked a couple of questions about possible risks to the project. What if the community does not grow as expected? What if the project comes in over-budget? I’m not sure how legitimate those concerns are but Barton and the representative for the contractor who would build the road seemed to think they were irrelevant.

I remember when FM1626 used to be a Mecca for bicyclists. Traffic has gotten too heavy these days so you don’t see many anymore. I wondered if we couldn’t build a road with bike lanes to help preserve some of our local heritage as we expand. Wouldn’t it be nice if local kids could ride their bikes down to the new YMCA at the corner of FM1626 and FM967? Not to mention there are elementary and middle schools right there. Could we build a road so that kids could bike to school?

The answer is no. Out of $172 million dollars, there’s money for cars only. Barton explained proudly that $2 million--less than 1.5%--of the total budget could be spent on extras to preserve local flavor. He and the contractor explained how lucky we were. They might even use some of that money to spare a few existing trees. It occurred to me that those very trees were what used to attract bicyclists.

Something snapped for me in that meeting. I’m sick of the way big roads destroy local communities. Where I work in Austin is less than ¼ mile from where we normally eat lunch but no matter how nice the day, we have to drive. There is no safe way to get there without a car.

I don’t even own a bike but I am never again going to vote for a road that doesn’t include bike lanes.

Update: The road bond failed! I guess FM1626 will stay as it is for the next 30 years.

Photo: Near the corner of FM1626 and FM967. Where's all the traffic?
Photo: Looking south toward my road, Jerry's Lane, at the top of the hill.
Photo: Looking north from the previous location. No wonder people used to like to cycle here.

Article: Fish-And-Chips

One day my coworker (who is also my daughter) peeked over her computer monitor and said, “I just made up a sentence with my name in it five times.” Aside from the fact that she should have been working, I wondered what was so remarkable about a sentence that contained multiple instances of her name. “What is it?” I asked. “Coral Coral Coral Coral Coral,” she replied. It wasn’t an interesting answer.

I informed her that a repetition of her name five times did not constitute a sentence. I knew I was in for a fight though, Coral has a master’s degree in linguistics and it’s just like her to pull some linguistic trick out of her hat to legitimize her claim. It took a while for her to explain but she was right, it is a real sentence.

Interpreting the sentence hinges on following definitions of the word coral:

1) the color coral, a pinkish yellow

2) the marine invertebrate coral that makes coral reefs

3) the verb coral, which means to color something coral colored

4) the name Coral, for example my daughter

Using those definitions, the sentence becomes: Coral (1) coral (2) coral (3) Coral (4) coral (1). In other words, coral colored coral animals color my daughter Coral coral colored. It’s a difficult sentence to decipher but I was impressed that her name had so many meanings. And there’s even another one, the unfertilized eggs of lobsters are also called “coral.” How versatile she is.

The coral sentence got us thinking about other people’s names. There was only one other person at work who had a name that could be made into a sentence. “Rob, rob Rob” wasn’t nearly as impressive though, using “rob” twice as a proper name and once as a verb and requiring a comma.

A few days later I overheard two coworkers discussing the meaning of a section of some computer manual. One read a phrase to the other. “File file file,” he said without even realizing it. I laughed out loud even though I understood the sentence. In typical computer-speak it meant to file a file whose name is represented by the word "file".

What about the sentence: I want to put two hyphens between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish And Chips sign? That’s a perfectly normal sentence that just happens to contain five instances of the word “and” in a row. But what if you thought that sentence was confusing? Suppose you thought it’d be easier to interpret if it were written: I want to put two hyphens between the words “Fish” and “And” and “And” and “Chips” in my Fish And Chips sign.

I don’t know if the sentence really needs those added quotation marks so I might have to ask someone. To do that I could say: Wouldn’t the sentence “I want to put two hyphens between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish And Chips sign” be clearer if quotation marks were placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, and after Chips? That sentence makes perfect sense and yet it contains an unbroken sequence of twenty-one instances of the word “and.”

Sentences such as these incorporate homophonous phrases. These are strings of words that either are the same (as in the Fish And Chips sign example), have the same spelling but different meanings (as in the Coral example) or simply sound the same. An example of the last is: To tutor two tutors in tutus is to tutor two tutued tutors too many.

Next time you wonder why computers can’t understand English, ask yourself instead how it is that people can. When you think about it, it’s a miracle we can understand each other at all.

Article: The day the world smiled

Sunday was Earth Day.

Despite the promising weather forecast, a relentless drizzle leaked from the sky starting around noon. I stood with my horse while a neighbor took photos of her twin grandchildren petting Chesapeake’s enormous nose. The daughter and her offspring were visiting from San Francisco, she explained, the grandkids had never seen a horse before. Chessie stood quietly while they held the toddlers up to brush their tiny fingers along her broad blaze. I wondered sadly how many years it would be until they had their next encounter with livestock.

By the time the photo-op concluded, I had reached a conclusion. Forecast or no forecast, this was actual rain and it was not likely to let up soon. I gave up on the idea of an afternoon ride and returned Chessie to her pasture. I think we were both disappointed.

In my opinion Earth Day should be celebrated outside. I didn’t have formal plans. I’m not a social person so I eschew organized gatherings. With 6.5 billion people on the planet, I figure my physical presence isn’t needed. From the shelter of the back porch I looked across the jungle taking over our yard. Looked above the deep green of the juniper in the back pasture. Looked through the mist cascading gently from the infinite blanket of clouds. It seemed to me that the earth was sad and it reminded me of a poem:

Laugh and the world laughs with you
Weep and you weep alone
For the sad old earth
Must borrow its mirth
But has trouble enough of its own
______________Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The dismal sky seemed to reflect the troubles of the planet. The Earth gets a single day each year to celebrate--same as cousins (July 24^th) and reptile awareness (Oct. 21^st), same as the American flag (June 14^th) and grandparents (1^st Sunday after Labor Day). All of these things are important and they all share, as everything about humanity does, a dependence on the Earth. So it seems our planet deserves at least a week.

I entered the house to find my husband watching a video. I sat down with him. Turning my attention to the TV. I saw Al Gore presenting a slide show on global warming. Rick and I both saw “An Inconvenient Truth” in the theater. I often think that the only reason he cares anything about the environment is because he’s married to me. As the video neared its end, Rick remarked that he’d caught a lot of things in the second viewing that he hadn’t noticed the first time.

While watching the movie seemed a suitable pastime for the planet’s special day, it did not improve my mood. It again reminded me again of the poem and the troubles that plague the Earth.

I switched the TV over to the Discovery Channel. They were having a marathon of their new series Planet Earth. I’d never seen it but had heard good things. While the video is at times spectacular, I couldn’t tolerate the inane narration. How many times can they fit the phrase “Planet Earth” in their descriptions?

Unmotivated, I sat down at my computer and stared at the monitor. I still have a lot of work to do repairing my dad’s photos but I didn’t feel like doing it. I found myself browsing randomly. Eventually I stumbled upon a series of photos I took in April of 2004. 2004 was the last good year for wildflowers and these photos showed the diversity that grew on our property that year.

The photos reminded me that under the gloomy sky, bluebonnets are blooming again. And there are other wildflower plants just waiting for the right moment to show their colors. I know I’m not doing everything I can to save the planet. I’m probably not doing everything I should. But at least I’m preserving something on this little plot of land. Each year we loose a little as we become more hemmed in by development, but this Spring, the wildflowers are returning.

I smiled a little thinking of that. Maybe the Earth smiled with me.

Photo: Bluebonnets in my front pasture in the Spring of 2004.Photo: Cat claw is one of my favorite flowers. They look like purple powderpuffs with yellow tips.

Article: Book backlog

Like many people, I find there are a lot of things I don’t have enough time to do. I don’t get around even to things I really like, never mind the endless list of tasks that I don’t like. This predicament became apparent when a friend lent me a book. He’d gotten two books and said he’d read one and I’d read the other, then we could swap so that we’d both read both books. I didn’t want to agree because I haven’t had any time to read lately but when I saw the books he’d selected, I couldn’t resist.

I dropped the copy of “Infidel,” an autobiography by Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the backseat in my car. I’d seen the author on one of the late night comedy talk shows and her story struck me as fascinating. Born a Muslim in Somalia, she later became an atheist and a member of the Dutch parliament. How could I not want to read about that transformation? Yet the book remained in the car, untouched. Each day, I would see it lying there, waiting to be read.

The problem isn’t just that I don’t have time to read. Compounding that issue, there are a whole slew of books ahead of “Infidel” on my reading list. I don’t want to read them more than I want to read “Infidel,” but neither do I want to read them less. And some have been sitting on my desk or coffee table or bookshelf for a long time. I can’t just take the johnny-come-lately book and advance it to the top of the stack.

My daughter, who is a linguist, gave me an intriguing book for the winter holiday titled “The Language Instinct.” If I read that, maybe I’ll understand what’s she’s talking about better. Even without that carrot to entice me, the subject is something I’m interested in. When I was getting my degree in computer science, I studied a lot about artificial intelligence and natural language parsing. I know what an intractable problem language is. I’d love to learn about it from a linguistics vantage.

I also committed to read and review a book a friend of mine is writing. I’ve read about half of “Comancheria” and really liked it. But when Darrell gave me the second half, I was caught up in another project and set the book aside until I could finish that. I’m still not done with the other project and Darrell’s book calls forlornly from the coffee table where it sits even as I write this. Reviewing a book is more time consuming than simple reading though and I need to set aside a block of time to really do it justice. Maybe next week.

Last weekend I decided to take action on this backlog of books. I went to my shelf and pulled out the book that had been waiting the longest. I sat myself down and started reading. The book is “Eldest” by Christopher Paolini. It’s the sequel to his first novel, “Eragon.” Paolini wrote “Eragon” when he was fifteen years old, a formidable feat. I read it a couple of years ago and it was pretty good. Then I saw the movie version which was terrible. It took all the bad parts of the book, the parts that gave away the author’s age and immaturity, and coalesced them. Not a good idea. Still I wanted to give “Eldest” a chance. That has proved to be another bad idea but I’m going to stick it out to the end.

A package came from my sister-in-law Cherilyn this week. Guess what, it’s a book. “The China Study” presents a comprehensive review of diet and nutrition as revealed by a study of 6,500 people in China. It also promises to discuss western politics and its influence on nutrition. That does sound interesting. I placed it prominently on my desk where I will see it each day. Some day, hopefully some day soon, I’ll get around to reading it.

Article: Giants of Los Llanos

My younger brother had a room full of snakes when we were kids. Our mom struggled against this at first. Rules were well defined: small species only, nothing poisonous and all animals securely caged. Stephen broke all of these rules at one time or another. I can still remember the look on Mom’s face when she asked him if his “water boa” wasn’t the same thing as an anaconda. It would have broken his heart to give up Annie, as he called the snake, but luckily Mom wasn’t as good at enforcing rules as she was at making them.

One of the goals of my recent trip to Venezuela was an encounter with a giant snake in the wild. As my brother’s euphemism implied, anacondas live in the water, including the vast marshes of Los Llanos. This is one of the best places to view the largest of the anaconda species, the green anaconda (Eunectes murinus). Even so, cruising around Los Llanos in a small boat, or even driving along the raised dirt roads that serve as levies, you’re not likely to see one. But you can easily spot both their predators and their prey.

The most obvious item on the anaconda menu is the capybara. It makes sense that the world’s largest snake would eat the world’s largest rodent. You can’t expect a snake weighing in the hundreds of pounds to be content with a rat. Capybaras look like enormous, big-headed, coarse-furred, web-toed guinea pigs. The males top out at around 140 lbs, a good meal for even a large female anaconda. The smaller female capybaras provide tasty treats for the smaller male anacondas or for juveniles.

It is impossible not to notice the large numbers of caiman sharing the water with the capybara. The caiman are not as large as many crocodilians, generally smaller than six or seven feet in length. While anacondas of all sizes consume appropriately proportioned caiman, the converse is also true: caiman eat appropriately proportioned anacondas. I guess they probably resort to this mutual predation when they get bored of an endless diet of capybara.

Another giant shares the swamps of Los Llanos, the Orinoco crocodile (Crocodylus intermedius). These large crocodiles reach fifteen feet and are much bulkier and have nastier looking teeth than their caiman cousins. They look like caiman on steroids. Since there are so few left in the wild, it’s not easy to determine who is predator and who prey in their interaction with the anacondas.

Surprisingly, I found my first anaconda at a crocodile breeding station. It was actually in an enclosure with several large crocodiles. We strained to see it through the dense vegetation. It appeared to be sleeping. Our guide pointed to a place where a circular opening had been made in the wire mesh allowing the anaconda, a regular visitor, easy access. Even though the snake was free to go, this hardly fulfilled my dream of a wild anaconda spotting.

About a week later in another part of Los Llanos, we came across an anaconda basking in the evening sun. The snake was only seven or eight feet long, typical size for a male. I snapped several photos and then posed with the snake after capture. It didn’t seem particularly large or dangerous. When released, it took its time sliding its heavy body into the tall grass.

I guess I expected more from my wild anaconda experience. It was great seeing how they live and everything but, well, Annie was only a little smaller and a lot more vicious than her wild con-specific. Our guide had insisted that only he was qualified to catch the wild anaconda yet, in one of those common breaches of the rules, even my mom caught Annie when she escaped from her cage one time when Stephen and I weren’t home.

Photo: Green anaconda at Hato El FioPhoto: Coral, Philip and me holding the 7' anaconda we saw at Hato El Frio
Photo: Capybara family swiming
Photo: Male capybara at water's edge
Photo: Coral with one of the Orinoco crododiles that was in the enclosure with the anaconda.
Photo: Head of an Orinoco crocodile. This one attacked Coral but luckily couldn't get through the fence.

Article: Making maché

I’ve always wanted to do papier-mâché. I don’t know why. And I don’t know why I had never have until this year. It was on my life list but apparently very close to the bottom. Still, this year I decided to cross it off. To that end, I enlisted the help of my eight year old granddaughter, Celeste.

To implement my plan, I bought a couple of books on papier-mâché and gave them to Celeste for the winter holiday. On New Year’s Day Celeste and I poured through the books and picked a project. I wanted to make a cute little snake but Celeste is more of a cat person. Since the books and the project were nominally her gift and not just a thinly disguised excuse for me fulfilling a life-long dream, the cat project won out.

I had the necessary items available: newspaper, plastic bags, masking tape, flour, salt and water. Plus a plastic tablecloth, a true essential for such a messy project. Celeste soon bored of ripping strips of newspaper. I should have done that the day before. But she loved picking out shreds of wrapping paper from the holiday festivities to stuff into our cat. Never mind that the shiny remainders would never be seen again, it was still important to use the prettiest pieces.

After plumping the bags and taping them together, it was time to apply the papier-mâché. At first Celeste enjoyed wrapping strips of dripping wet flour-covered newspaper on our creation. She’s a clean kid though and eventually decided she didn’t like getting her hands wet and gooey. Plus, we had to admit that our cat did not look like the cats in the book. In fact, our cat did not look like a cat at all.

Since the papier-mâché had to dry, we couldn’t complete the project on the same day. Philip assured me they would return on the weekend so Celeste and I could paint our creation. Things being as they are, that didn’t happen. And it didn’t happen the next weekend. Or the next month. Or the month after that. Everyone is so busy these days that we didn’t get to work on the cat again until last weekend.

April 1^st is a long way from January 1^st but luckily the kitchen table wasn’t used during that entire time. The project was exactly where we left it. All it needed was paint. We eyed the “cat” warily. It didn’t seem possible that a thin veneer of color would transform the shapeless blob into something recognizable. Still, we picked up our brushes and set to work.

Celeste chose baby blue as the base color. As we worked it became apparent that neither of us has much talent at painting. Still, we persisted. Transformed by a uniform shade of blue, our monster was still not a cat. We needed a pattern. I voted for tiger stripes but again Celeste’s suggestion--colorful flowers--won out. I painted the outlines and Celeste filled them in.

After our work was completed, no one was more surprised than the two of us that the cat actually looked like a cat--and it was kind-of cute! Our first papier-mâché project proved a success. Celeste hasn’t taken it home yet because we still have to paint the bottom. I hope that doesn’t take another three months because I’m hyped about starting a new project. I think I can convince Celeste to do a snake this time.

One success and I am hooked on papier-mâché. I wish I didn’t have to rely on an eight year old for an alibi but wouldn’t it seem lame for a person my age to take up such a silly hobby? I don’t think I’m old enough to claim senility. That might undermine my position as Director of Engineering if word got out at work.

To make your own cat use: Papier-mâché for Kids by Sheila McGraw

Photo: Celeste on New Year's Day with our incipient cat.
Photo: Celeste applying base color to the cat.
Photo: Me and Celeste painting the cat's pattern.
Photo: The eyes are the most important part. Celeste made them a shiny green.
Photo: Nearly done! Cat and artist pose together.

Article: Tombstone tales

Have you ever walked through a cemetery? There’s a special feeling in a cemetery, a connection with the past that you don’t get in museums. I think this is because people buried in cemeteries are ordinary people. Their lives mimic our own in ways the lives of the great and mighty do not. Although we may imagine our genealogy includes kings and queens, those lives don’t have the relevance to our own that the lives of common people do.

In western culture, most burial locations are marked with a stone. Walking through a cemetery, you might find yourself wondering about those interred below. What were they like? How did they live? Unfortunately, most tombstones give few clues. Frequently information is restricted to name, marital status, birth and death dates and religion. If there is an epitaph, it is usually generic or trite.

At one time, headstones were made of marble. Marble is a soft rock and easily chiseled, even so it took a skilled artisan many hours to make a truly unique stone. And over time, the words and art melted from the face of the rock, running with the rain into the soil below. You stop to stare at a child’s stone with a sleeping angel carved into it. You can see that it once displayed incredible detail. Now the fingers and nose are missing, the eyes filled with dark lichen.

As you meander through the newer section, you find a tombstone that includes a photo of the deceased etched on a ceramic oval. If you bend down, you can look into the photographed eyes to try to read them. You wonder why that particular photo was chosen. Did the deceased select it himself or did a bereft family member make the decision? Would the man, who died at 90, want that photo of his aged self or did he still identify with a dashing 20-something? You straighten your back and look down at the stone with its yellowed and already fading image. Why does this strike at immortality fall so short?

Then a shiny, dark stone catches your eye. You focus on it as you make your way along the narrow alley between the graves. There’s a color picture on it: a small ranch, a windmill, a barn and a family of deer. The field in front of the ranch house is filled with bluebonnets. The black stone shines behind the image. It is granite, a hard rock that will hold the etching for a very long time. These people were ranchers and the image is probably their own spread. You imagine they lived there many years and loved their land. A bit of personality has made it past the threshold of death.

If you’re like most people, you’ve been looking for your own family name on the stones. When you find it, you wonder if that person is some distant relative from a long-lost branch of a wide family tree. I do that too but my name is too unique. I have only found one this way and that was on my family’s home island in Greece. It was a beautiful piece with a mourning woman contemplating the names carved in marble. But my name was written in Greek and, while I recognized it, it did not make a real connection with me.

The only other tombstone I’ve seen with the name Typaldos on it is my brother’s. Stephen’s kids designed a black granite stone that should last nearly forever. My brother was a doctor and his children choose to prominently position the seal of the Fascial Distortion Model (FDM) on his stone. Stephen not only conceived and developed the FDM himself, he also designed the seal. His kids did a great job with a difficult task. The stone will always speak for him.

To learn more about the FDM go to:
www.orthopathy.com

Photo: A typical older generic tombstone from somewhere in Maine. Notice it contains only names and dates.
Photo: Another generic tombstone. This one is from Texas. I wonder if the grown children aren't also in graves marked "Mother" and "Father".
Photo: An angel statue on a child's grave in Fredericksburg, Texas.

Photo: A tombstone from Hamilton, Texas showing a ranch house.Photo: A Typaldos family tombstone in Lixouri, Kefalonia, Greece.
Photo: My brother Stephen's tombstone in Bangor, Maine. Note the seal of the FDM.
Photo: Stephen's tombstone on his 50th birthday.

Article: It's hard being a horse

Horses are one of the great loves of my life so it might be surprising to learn that I passed up an opportunity to ride while in Venezuela last month.

We were staying at a cattle ranch that also accommodates a few tourists near the town of San Fernando de Apure in central Venezuela. The hatos, as these ranches are called, typically encompass thousands of acres of grazing land and are patrolled by the Venezuelan version of the cowboy. The llaneros ride scrappy little horses that bear little resemblance to American Quarter Horses, their cowboy equivalent.

Life is hard for the llaneros and their horses. Half of the year, most of the land is flooded. All year round, caiman and crocodiles lurk along the edges of the water holes. Pumas and jaguars roam the land at night. Distances are vast and the few roads double as dams, ineffectively holding the marsh at bay. Moving cattle generally involves herding them along roadsides where the land is most likely to remain dry and passable.

There is an element of the romantic in the llanero. I’d read a lot about their solitary existence, their music and unusual dress that includes sandals instead of boots while riding. I was curious to see them in person and my first chance came at the hato. When we arrived we were told that we could go on to two excursions per day, and one of them could be a horseback trek through the ranch. It sounded interesting and fun but I’ve had bad experiences riding other people’s horses so I hesitated.

As we walked around the ranch house that first day, I saw a few Venezuelan horses up close. I’ve always said that all horses are beautiful but the first horse I saw proved me wrong. Its white coat was speckled with scars and bites, red skin ringed its nose and eyes, its knees were so low on its legs that it could have been walking on them. It wandered around the buildings, ugly and unkempt and looking for food.

Next I saw a little dun horse, just skin and bones, standing saddled under a tree. A llanero strode up, untied it and mounted. The horse acted almost as if it had never been ridden before. Only a severe bit provided any control to the rider who managed to straighten him out after taking a few spins on the haunches. Did these so-called “expert horsemen” not bother to train their horses at all?

As I watched the llanero ride off, I noticed the horse was gaited, possibly a smooth-riding relative of the Peruvian Paso horses so highly prized in the US. Although I was intrigued by the horse’s movement, I resolved not to ride. All of the horses near the ranch house were scraggly and skinny. It would be cruel to ride them.

A couple of days later we passed a pickup truck with two horses standing in the bed as it sped down the highway. Rails had been installed to provide some height to the walls. My driver laughed when he saw me take a photo. I explained that this would never happen in the United States, it would be against the law. He didn’t understand why. The horses seemed calm even though a stiff wind blew in their faces. I hoped they remained that way and that the driver never had a reason to brake suddenly.

On one excursion we stopped at the home of some llaneros, far from any paved road. A little gray horse stood saddled and tied to the fence outside the shack that housed the extended family. This horse was in better condition and his tack was both colorful and complex. Finally my vision of the romantic life of the llanero acquired some validation. Later as I watched three llaneros ride across the plain on their small horses, I thought that these men matched their animals, sculpted by the harsh life they lead together. Living much closer to their horses and relying on them for their livelihood, the remote llaneros cared for them better.

Everywhere I went in Los Llanos I saw this division: at some places the horses were thin and sickly looking with mangy coats lacking any shine or luster, in others, horses looked about with bright, inquisitive eyes, running across green pastures to investigate visitors. I guess this is what happens when there are no laws regulating the treatment of animals, horses like other pets and livestock suffer or thrive at the whim of their owners.

Although I enjoyed my stay at the hato, I will not go back. I can’t support an establishment that allows animals to suffer. There are other hatos in Los Llanos and if I return, I will stay at one of those.

Photo: Even the ugliest horse in the world should look better than this.

Photo: I wish I could take this horse home and feed it a good meal.
Photo: My horse Ribbon showing what a well-fed horse looks like from this angle. Notice that the backbone and hips do not protrude.
Photo: Safety last.
Photo: Please don't hit the brakes!
Photo: Horse in typical llanero tack.
Photo: Los tres llaneros!
Photo: A happy, healthy horse in a nice pasture

Article: Spring clearing

At New Year’s I proclaimed 2007 “My Year of the Horse!” Like so many New Year’s resolutions, my proclamation has rung hollow these past two months. But as the weather warms and the days grow long, it becomes easier to live up to my vow. Last weekend, I actually got on one of my horses and rode for the first time this year. Buoyed by my success, I decided to tackle a major horse-related issue--a riding arena.

I’ve wanted an arena ever since we moved to Buda fifteen years ago. We have the land but it’s covered with juniper and mesquite. In some places this “forest” is so dense I have never been through it. It’s a fire hazard. The trees suck all the water from the soil and block the sun, stunting any grass that might provide grazing. Over the years I’ve tried and failed to contain this unsightly, exuberant growth. This year I conceded it was time to call a professional.

The idea of hiring someone to clear some land is not new. My husband, Rick, has put this idea forward every year. “Get someone out to cut some trails for you,” he’d say. “You can’t do it yourself. You’re not strong enough and you don’t have the time.” These seem like reasonable arguments but everyone knows you can’t win an argument with your spouse through reason. I steadfastly refused. No bulldozer was going to tear up my land and push down trees willy-nilly, leaving them lying on their sides, bare roots exposed to the sun. Still, this year I admitted the time had come.

I searched the web for land clearing and Central Texas. There were quite a few hits. When I began going through them, I realized there was an option I had never heard of. One of the first web sites I examined introduced me to the track mounted mulcher.

The track mounted mulcher is a miracle machine. Its caterpillar tracks allow it to travel over rough terrain. Its small size means it can squeeze between trees and through gates. Since it’s a mulcher, it gobbles up a tree and spits it out as mulch. The mulch can be left on the ground to protect against erosion. Since it is mulch, it eventually returns to the soil restoring lost nutrients. I still have piles of dead juniper from when we had the fence line cleared ten years ago so the transformation of brush into mulch particularly grabbed my attention.

I searched a few more web sites and found someone operating out of Austin. Within a couple of days, he was out examining the property. I was embarrassed by the state of things. Massive, multi-trunked junipers spread their horizontal branches until they almost touched. And the scraggly mesquite that grew in the narrow spaces between them clawed at us as we examined the task.

Carl nodded knowingly when I indicated where I’d like my arena. “You’ve got some nice land here,” he said, “but I wouldn’t put your arena right there. Those big junipers will either leave big stumps or big holes. It’d be better to move it back a little to this area that’s mostly mesquite.” I nodded. Of course he was right.

Finally I asked the big question, how long would it take and how much would it cost. I was shocked when Carl said most likely it would be around two days at $1200 per day. That’s quite a bit of money but I’m sure it’s not worth spending fifteen years without an arena for.

This morning Carl started working on my land. In just an hour, the place was transformed. I stood on a carpet of mulch and gazed about me. Carl had left some trees as shelter for the horses and some to block the view of neighbors, some he had trimmed so they actually look like trees rather than monstrous bushes, others had gone through the mulcher never to be seen again. It was beautiful.

After the arena, Carl is going to make a few riding trails for me. “I’m an idiot,” I told him. “I should have listened to Rick years ago and had someone clear this land.” Carl informed me that the track mounted mulcher wasn’t available years ago. I smiled to myself. So I was right and Rick was wrong after all. Go figure.

This is the link to Trees Unlimited / Natural Texas, the company that cleared my land.
http://www.treesunlimited.com/naturaltx/about.html

Photo: A row of large junipers (aka cedars) in the back pasture. You could hardly see the house from this location.

Photo: This enormous juniper was in the corner of the pasture closest to the cul-du-sac. We want to make a driveway through here some day.
Photo: This is the same juniper from the last photo! And the whole row of junipers from the first photo has been turned into the mulch you see on the ground. This took about two hours.
Photo: This section of the pasture was rife with mesquite. Behind the gate in the Back 18, was a solid wall of large, dense junipers. I once had a trail through these but it disappeared over the years.
Photo: This is looking back at the area in the previous photo. Before the mulching, I couldn't have gotten to this spot and even if I did I'd be in the middle of a mass of junipers.

Article: Anteaters

I’ve always been intrigued by giant anteaters. And who wouldn’t be? Even if you know nothing about them, the name alone is provocative. What kind of giant animal could eat something as small as ants? How giant is a giant anteater? How many ants would it take to feed one? So anteaters were high on my list of desired sightings when I went to Los Llanos, the great flood plane that spreads across thousands of square miles of the Venezuelan interior.

February is in the dry season in Los Llanos and the locals are somewhat confused by this. Although the country lies entirely north of the equator, they refer to this time of year as “summer.” They call the rainy season “winter” although it actually takes place in the summer. Stepping off the plane into the warm, dry air I gratefully accepted the reverse naming convention. It felt wonderful leave winter behind in Texas.

During the summer months the vast marshes of Los Llanos evaporate leaving a plane of grass punctuated by palm trees and dirt roads that form a cobweb of levies. We were driving along one of these roads just before sunset when I spotted my first giant anteater. It looked like a black smudge rising from the sea of green. I almost mistook it for an incongruously placed boulder. Then it moved.

As I clicked off my first few photos, another black smudge appeared. The new one was smaller and slightly closer. I had trouble making out its shape as it barely rose above the tall grass. The more distant anteater stopped, then back-tracked a little. The baby quickly climbed on its mother’s back getting a grip in her long, thick fur. In an instant she was in retreat again.

This was what I wanted to see, the giant anteater, Myrmecophaga tridactyla. The adults are about the size of German Shepard dogs. They look a bit like German Shepards too, except they’re hairier and have very, very long snouts that house their equally elongated tongues. They’re not related to dogs though, except that they’re mammals. And they don’t have big teeth like dogs. In fact, they don’t have any teeth.. They don’t need teeth since their food, which is mainly termites, doesn’t take much crunching.

What they have is impressive claws. They use them both for defense and to rip open termite nests which can be as hard as concrete. Once the nest is opened, the anteater sticks its long snout into the hole. It doesn’t suck up the termites as is popularly believed. Instead it uses its sticky tongue to lap up its prey. Anteaters eat around 30,000 termites each day.

Anteaters belong to the order Edentata, meaning toothless. They are most closely related to sloths and armadillos. Like sloths, they have a very slow metabolism that allows them to thrive on a low energy diet of termites and ants.

I felt pretty lucky to see several giant anteaters on my trip. Our driver even raced one as it ran through the scrub on the side of the road. I got luckier still when we spotted an elusive lesser anteater, Tamandua tetradactyla on a remote dirt road.

About a quarter of the size of its giant relative, the lesser anteater is mainly arboreal. It was fortunate to find one on the ground where it could be easily observed. Carlos, our guide, grabbed the little animal by the tail and temporarily captured it for us to get a closer view. It used its formidable claws to rip Carlos’ camera free from its strap around his neck.

Anteaters are some of the most fascinating and unique animals in the world. The range of all four species is restricted to Central and South America but if you can’t swing a trip, the San Antonio Zoo is a great place to see some. They have three species including the giant and lesser anteaters, only missing the squirrel-sized silky anteater.

Photo: A giant anteater running beside our car.Photo: Mother giant anteater waiting for baby.

Photo: Giant anteater
Photo: Lesser anteater. Note the big claws and prehensile tail. These anteaters are arboreal.
Photo: Lesser anteater attempting escape.
Photo: Lesser anteater hiding in some brush
Photo: Lesser anteater. The nose isn't as long as in the giant anteater but it's still pretty cute.

Article: Airport art

A few years ago I took a short business trip to California. The trip consisted of two days of meetings with various potential customers. Normally I take my camera with me everywhere but I couldn’t imagine what I might photograph on such a brief and restricted journey.

When I arrived at the Sacramento airport, I realized my mistake. Two pillars disguised as piles of ancient lost luggage rose in stacks toward the high ceiling in the baggage claim area. The sculpture didn’t make me feel better about my chances of reconnecting with my own luggage but it did open my eyes to airport art. Thus enlightened, I soon found airports to be full of imaginative decoration.

Let’s face it, there’s not much to do at an airport and you may be trapped there indefinitely. In some ways airports are the closest many of us will come to being in prison. Airports force us to relinquish our personal belongings, they virtually--and sometimes literally--frisk us before we enter and the food is terrible. The one thing they have going for them is the art.

I actually took my first airport art photo years ago. I had few-hour layover at the Hong Kong airport on my way to Singapore on a business trip. After I deplaned, I looked back through the window and saw my plane. It was beautiful. Singapore Airlines must have the most highly decorated planes in the world. My plane sparkled (or would have sparkled if it hadn’t been raining) in various shades of blue, yellow, orange, red and tan. I pulled out my camera and snapped a photo.

The San Francisco airport has most impressed me with its art. Everywhere you look there are tremendous murals, some including 3-D elements including wonderfully polished wood carvings. I felt a little self-conscious going around photographing them (I was the only one doing so), but I wanted to remember them.

In Tokyo, a monument of colored glass adorns the international check-in area. Each of the four sides blends with the two adjoining and yet presents a new color scheme. I wandered all around admiring it from all sides. In an obscure corner was a plaque explaining the piece. The creation, titled “The Land of Nature,” was designed by Itoko Iwata of Iwata Class Co. I’m sure the rest of the explanation meant more in Japanese than it did in the English translation.

On my recent trip to Venezuela, I had several hours to explore the Caracas airport. The use of stained glass windows delighted my eyes and my camera. Each area of the airport sported a different color of glass and each color lent a unique atmosphere to the scene it illuminated. It provided at least a half-hour of entertainment, too bad I had ten hours to kill.

So next time you’re stuck in an airport, spend some time looking around. Even the Austin airport has some “art.” I had to put that in quotes because Austin is a bit on the nerdy side. One section in the baggage claim area depicts the street layout of central Austin in floor tiles. And much of the remaining art consists of holograms. At least it’s unique, I haven’t seen that anywhere else. I guess Austin is still weird.

Photo: The Caracas airport is colored with stained glass windows.
Photo: Singapore airlines has the most brightly painted planes I've ever seen.
Photo: A mural in the international terminal at SFO.
Photo: This mural at SFO also included carved, wooden birds.
Photo: A huge glass rectangle at Tokyo Narita airport.

Article: Am I dreaming?

I rode my bicycle down a rocky dirt path that switched back and forth across the undulating face of a cliff. Blue-green waves with brilliant caps broke far below. Rocks beneath the tires wrenched the handlebars, pulling me from one side of the narrow trail to the other. As I rounded a sharp bend, the rear wheel nearly skid over nothingness before I pulled it back. I’m not good on a bike and I’m afraid of heights but I held myself together and continued.

The next curve proved worse--both tires came to the very edge of the cliff, sending puffs of dirt down the side of the cliff. Yet I continued. On the next, the bike seemed to hang suspended over the abyss like the coyote in the cartoon, not realizing it should fall. Then, miraculously, I was back on the path.

That’s when I decided to put a stop to it. On the next turn, I let momentum carry me out over the water. The bike fell away while the air suspended me like a bird. Then I plunged toward the water. “Great!” I thought. “I’ve been wondering what it would be like to dream underwater.” It proved everything I imagined because it was my imagination. Of course I didn’t need to breath. Brilliantly colored fish came to me so I could pet them. I created a hammerhead shark and clung to its dorsal fin as it cruised through the clear waters.

This is lucid dreaming, defined as dreaming while knowing you’re dreaming.

The dream I described above could have been a nightmare. In real life, I am afraid of heights and the dream began with a wild ride on the edge of a cliff. Because I knew I was dreaming, I didn’t have any fear. The challenge of riding the bike consumed my attention at the beginning of the dream and when that proved more difficult than I cared for, I simply gave up, exchanging the cliff world for the marine world.

Controlling nightmares is one reason people learn to dream lucidly. In a lucid dream it is impossible, or at least irrational, to be frightened since you are aware that nothing is real. I can remember nightmares from when I was a child--in one I was being devoured by ants--but I haven’t had one in many years.

Aside from controlling nightmares, lucid dreams can help people overcome real-life anxieties and phobias. The dream setting often reflects the dreamer’s fears and concerns. I have no doubt my fear of heights would be worse if I did not periodically confront it in dreams.

On the internet I found several references to use of lucid dreams to confront the fear of public speaking. The dreamer practices speaking before an imaginary crowd and then feels more prepared to give the speech in real life. That sounds like a waste of a good dream to me. It would be more interesting if you combined another common tactic for overcoming this fear--imagining your audience naked.

According to the internet, lucid dreaming is a skill one can learn. The key is that when something happens that’s impossible--you fly, you meet someone who’s dead, all your teeth fall out--instead of just accepting, you have to realize that it’s an indication that you’re not in the real world. At this point, you may wake up, especially if you were having a nightmare. The trick is to stay asleep and to realize that everything in the dream is a product of your own mind which means you can control it.

I once tried to convince a character in a dream that we could do anything. To persuade him, I took off flying. The character wouldn’t follow me which goes to show that, even in dreams, you can’t control your own thoughts.

If you are interested in learning more, there are many books available on lucid dreaming, many of which provide techniques for learning to dream lucidly. These include at least two by Dr. Stephen Laberge who has done extensive research on the subject. You can also review the following internet sites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dreaming
http://www.dreamviews.com/
http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/Articles/si91ld.html