Breaking Smith's Quarter Horse

"Oregon Jim Creek was frozen solid and so was Smith's right ear".  So begins Paul St. Pierre's story of Smith; first name known only to people he hates, like bankers and brand inspectors. Smith is a small time rancher some 200 miles west of Williams Lake BC on the high Chilcotin Plateau. Set in the late 1950's when a ranch "needed 100 cows" to make a decent living, Smith has 78.  And many horses.  Many many horses.

Smith is a man of moderate ambition.  He has a Quarter Horse stud which he is convinced will make a legendary cutting horse IF Ol' Antoine, a local Chilcotin, will talk to the horse in the Indian fashion (this is long before horse-whispering became the rage).  He has promised Ol' Antoine $20 dollars and given him half already.  He has been waiting several years for Ol' Antoine to do this.   Ol' Antoine has a habit of promising Smith he will break the horse "right away, maybe start tomorrow".

Ol' Antoine according to his own stories might be 137 years of age.  He claimed to have fought in the Chilcotin War of 1864 and ridden with Chief Joseph of the Nez Perces in their futile race for the Canadian border. 

Smith's other ambition is to mind his own business and stay out of other people's troubles.  However the harder he tries, the more other people's troubles find him. Gabriel Jimmyboy, who "happened to shoot where someone was standing" and has been on the run for some months, has been pursuaded by one Walter Charlie to turn himself in to the law.  Smith trusts Walter Charlie "about as far as you can bounce an anvil in a swamp" and rightly so.  Ol' Antoine is to take Gabriel Jimmyboy in and collect the $500 reward which he will give to Walter Charlie who will "hire a good lawyer" and, as court translator, with Ol' Antoine in the witness chair, will speak "the words the white man wants to hear" to get Jimmyboy off the charge.

Other than warning both Gabriel Jimmyboy and Ol'Antoine that Walter Charlie is not to be trusted, Smith steers clear of the issue.  Until court is convened in the middle of haying season and his hay crew leaves to Williams Lake.  A broken mower blade sends Smith to Williams Lake and into trouble...

Breaking Smith's Quarter Horse was a gift from my parents back in the mid-sixties and surprisingly enough is still available from Chapters-Indigo.  The book was in the last care package MayB sent me.  I have read it dozens of times. It is an old friend. Paul St. Pierre spent most of his life in the Cariboo-Chilcotin country of interior BC and knows its people well.  The story is told in dry understated humour, which still leaves me laughing out loud at times.

They used coal oil lamps and gas lanterns. The toilet stood one hundred feet from the house and was made of logs, unchinked.  It was the coldest place in all Namko, possibly in all the world.

In the preceding summer Smith had built yet another line of his endless fencing between house and toilet.  He had not yet found time to make a gate through this fence.  The fence itself had required a month of hard work. The extra day required to make the gate had not been found by him. No doubt there was such a day, but he had not found it.

Some of these features of the Home Place annoyed Norah, in a general way.  On this day her annoyance was not general but specific.  Smith had been away for two days and he had neglected to notify her when he was going, where, why or when he might be expected to come home.

The story was originally written for television.  Chief Dan George made his acting debut as Ol'Antoine and went on to fame and fortune.  A good book, especially for those who enjoy ranching tales of a simpler time.

Happy as Pigeon with a French Fry GiST # Next

1. Have my documents, visa, presentation, ticket and clothes ready for Kazakhstan.  Leave Monday morning at 0045 hours by train to Kyiv and Monday night 2300 hours by plane to Astana.  Will rent a flat for $50 and sleep all day. Will be home late on 24th Nov.

2. Friday's trip to Kyiv was far less nerve wracking than last week's trip.  Only one screw up and it was my fault - left my modem and mouse in the restaurant where I had lunch with my friend George from the Canadian Embassy.  Discovered this at the railway station at 1545 and by 1715 was back with the missing pieces after a very brisk combination of subway and walking.  Needed the exercise anyhow. Went straight to the train which left at 1745.

3. Tanya had hot soup waiting for me when I got home Friday night.  The perfect comfort food.

4. Skype

5. Andrei drove me to Dnipropetrovs'k on Thursday in his Lexus to pick up the last documents for my trip.  I didn't mind travelling at 120 until Andrei said the speedometer was calibrated in mph not kmph.  Oh...

Kuchma appears to have dived onto his towel and  collapsed

Speaking of diving, this sleep position is adapted from the Olympic diving team.

Cold cat cuddles quilt.

Our Neighbour Viktor 1940-2011

Our neighbour Viktor was buried today.  It was a beautiful warm fall day.  The service was held at the house, actually outside in the yard.  Tanya and I went to pay our respects.  He was a good man and the neighbourhood will miss him. He had a good heart or доброе сердце as they say.  He always had a cheery hello and would often stop to chat if Tanya was in the flower garden.  My dogs will miss him, too, as he always had a kind word and a pat for each of them whenever he went by.

He was a man "from the village" all his life and worked hard.  He loved his cows and pigs.  When we moved here he had three cows and he and his son spent the summer putting up hay. Every morning at 5:00 all summer long he would pass our door taking the cows to join the others from the village where someone would herd them for the day and then he would go and collect them at night about 8:00. Sometimes the dogs and I would go with him to collect his cows. As the years passed the cow numbers dwindled to two then one.  We bought fresh milk from him the past two years.

Viktor's health was never good.  The doctor said just living to 71 was an accomplishment.  He was small and frail looking though his son and daughter are both quite tall.

We wonder now about his wife.  She is not physically able to look after livestock and cannot afford to keep the house and yard on one pension.  She may go to live with her son and his wife or her daughter and her husband but those are not easy decisions for her or them.

The neighbourhood is a little lonelier.

The Global Wealth Pyramid

Read Article HERE.

Of the world's ADULT population, 0.5% own 8.5% of the world's wealth while 91.2% of the adult population own 17.8%. Time for a realignment of wealth.  Unregulated capitalism works only for the wealthy and not for the poor. Even Adam Smith realized that and worried many times throughout his famous book that without government keeping a firm grip on things, the results would be what we see today.

If businesses the world over market products or services that fill a need (the purpose of business) and make their owners rich, that is good; PROVIDED the business does not destroy the environment, treats its employees fairly and equitably and puts back into the community.  IF the business/owners use their money and power to monopolize, to beat down their employees, to co-opt governments into passing regulations that favour them and not passing those that would hold them to account, it is called in economic terms "rent-seeking".  (That also includes the activities of the powerful at the tops of planned economies too). Rent-Seeking is the chief cause of the disproportionate distribution of wealth and the seething discontent of the 99%.

Simple Fare for Simple Folk GiST #22

1. Bread, cheese and tea for supper last night. Tanya knows exactly what to serve.
2. My new $30 canvas computer bag; not the $300 fine soft black leather one that we looked at in Krivii Rih.
3. Our little purple Kia Carens, standard transmission, few bells and no whistles but dependable and not too expensive to repair.
4. Our little village, bad roads and all, but peaceful and with open country just across the road.
5.  Just general contentment.  Few needs and fewer wants. 

Fools and Children

Yesterday was one of those 24 hour trips to Kyiv.  I was applying for my Kazakhstan visa and hoping to get the Canadian Embassy to certify some true copies of documents I need to take with me.

Either I am getting old or the berths on that night train are getting harder.  Not much sleep on the trip.  McDonald's at the train station at 7:00 am is packed 12 deep at 12 tills. It took less than 10 minutes to get my breakfast. No complaints there. It is not a good place for s sudden onset of dysentery, though, as the wait for the men's bathroom was 20 minutes.  Single stall.  Obviously McDonald's adheres to local standards (none) as opposed to setting their own intelligent ones. We did let one guy jump queue as he appeared in a bad way.

Wanted to be at the Canadian Embassy at 9:00 but the line up at the can plus finding a bank machine plus rush hour on the Metro meant it was 9:30.  They were able to handle three of my six documents, the others will have to go through the Ukrainian notarizing system.  For some reason Kazakhstan want my diplomas to prove I have gone to university.  At my age what difference does it make?  Further more, I could find a few hundred people who never darkened the hallowed halls who could do a better job than I of describing Canadian beef cattle production in 10 to 15 minutes. So the embassy will do what I told the Kazakhs to do and that is contact the Registrar's Office.  The paper diploma is only for decoration.  But not in the FSU, I guess, where documents with STAMPS are sacred as the original scrolls of the Pentateuch.

It was 10:30 when I finally headed for the Kazakh Embassy to apply for my visa.  I got off the Metro and looked for a place to change 400 Hrivna for $50 USD, the cost of the Visa.  No luck.  ALL the money changing booths in the area were closed up tight.  I found a bank finally and was told that because I was a foreigner they couldn't change money for me.  Some new currency law I didn't know about.  Panic city.  The Kazakhstan Embassy takes Visa applications until 12:00 noon.  It is now 11:00 and I am running out of time.  Call Tanya (who else??).  She said try another bank. Some days I wonder about me.

I headed for the Kazakhstan Embassy and looked for a bank along the way.  None.  I was hoping I could talk Ivan (the guy at the Embassy who speaks English) into letting me pay in Hrivna or waiting to pay until I picked it up next week.  I see a bank a few doors past the entrance to the Embassy.  A very small branch.  One desk, one teller, one security.  In my bad Russian and the desk lady's bad English, I explained the problem well enough she understood and was instantly sympathetic.  She said one magic word "resident" but I didn't have my Ukrainian Residency Card.

I got Tanya on the phone and she and the lady are having a conversation when I remembered THE STAMP.  I had a permanent residency stamp in the back of my passport.  Problem solved.  The lady smiled and lit up like it was Christmas, took a quick copy of my passport and the stamp and the teller lady gave me my $50 along with two documents to sign for it.  It was 11:35 when I got to the Kazakhstan Embassy.

Six people in front of me.  I know the routine too well.  Every one of them takes TIME and the clock is ticking. The lady at the counter finished as I found a chair.  French lady and two of the people in line were her kids.  She had driven from France through Europe to Ukraine and was planning on DRIVING through Russia, Kazakhstan, China (Xinjiang and Tibet) to Nepal where she was opening a restaurant ("the food in Nepal is terrible").  I learned all this while the second person in line was finishing at the counter.  The other two people were still filling out documents so I was next.

Ivan had a good laugh at my currency adventures and promised my visa would be ready Monday even though I was coming Thursday.  Finished at 11:50.  Wringing wet, heart pounding and looking and feeling like the wrath of God.  Found a Coffee House and had three cups of hot black bitter mud and a wild berry cheesecake to celebrate.  This was after I went back and bought a small bouquet of flowers for the folks at that bank.

Winter is coming GiST #21

1. Every day is a day closer to April and spring
2. Getting the dogs winter lean-to house all warm and snuggle BEFORE the weather got cold.  And remembering to shut of the water to the outside hose before the tap froze.
3. Kuchma has decided he is going to become a house cat in his old age.  He sleeps in the house at night but wakes Tanya up every morning at 7:00 to be let outside to do his 'blutions then comes back in for milk and cat food. Tanya has to wake me to take my turn at getting up early as I don't hear him at all.
4. Watching the dogs munching walnuts and spitting out (most of) the shells.  They were helping Tanya rake and burn leaves under the walnut trees and discovered walnuts were edible.  They are not as clever as the ravens at opening them but since they can crunch the nut, they don't have to be.
5. The doves are so pretty; light brown or light grey. This must have been a good season for them as there are many of them roosting n the walnut trees.