Dear readers, Merry Christmas to you all! Here’s my If Wishes Were Horses festive quiz: count the health and safety horrors committed by “Little Miss Fearless” in this short Pathé video from 1933 1923*. I’ve spent most of 2015 slogging away to finish book two, The Age of the Horse, which will be out at …
Continue reading “Christmas Quiz: Count the Health and Safety Violations!”
Manhattan’s carriage horses aren’t the only ones whose livelihood is under threat. When the ritzy Claremont Riding Academy on West 89th Street closed down in 2007, many thought that it was the last riding school on the island. Not true. The New York Riding Academy was founded by Dr George Blair in 1988, and offers …
Sasa’s name means “so-so” in Portuguese. It’s a little joke, because the gray lusitano gelding is anything but — he’s a beautiful horse who can, like many Iberian equines, claim descent from the war horses of the Renaissance. Look at Uccello’s “Battle of San Romano” and there’s Sasa’s likeness carrying a Florentine general: compact as …
Continue reading “The Language of Riding: A piece for the New York Times’ Menagerie Blog”
Hurrah to these four, who spared the time in the run up to holiday madness to take the tardis back to childhood and remember pony mania. I wish you horses under your Christmas tree and subscriptions to Horse and Hound all round. You endured not only ponylessness but even broken bones, parental bafflement and life-limiting …
Continue reading “Christmas Confessions of the Ponymad but Ponyless”
I’ve caught a few photos of horsey toys at local flea markets, and for a second I thought the one that appears in this Spiegel gallery was one I’d spotted before, but maybe not. Thomas Henk Henkel photographed aficionados of the Mauerpark flea market and their booty, and here’s a beautiful old hoss and its …
The Huffington Post have a great slideshow showing the evolution of MLP from the babyish but still equine Cotton Candies of the early 1980s to the bizarre-o “Equestria Girl” of 2013, a new model that’s an even stranger mutant than the hideous “Struts, fashion-forward ponies” that were unveiled and then disappeared a few years ago. …
Those of you who were pony-mad but ponyless as children and forced to gallop alone will be delighted with Prancercise: Do enjoy the Amazon reviews of the book, too.
Yes, we’re still deep in the horse meat scandal. You can now buy a “horse burger” fancy dress costume (Business Insider) Only 13% of Americans would consider eating horse meat (almost twice the percentage who would eat dog), whereas 34% would consider alligator lasagna (KTAR) Groups in Oklahoma want to build a horse abattoir. (SFGate.com …
Merry Christmas. Here, thanks to Karen and to Horse Nation, are six videos of little girls getting ponies as presents. And a happy new year to you too!
From a great NYT feature on geniuses as children: After the English lawyer Daines Barrington examined the 8-year-old Mozart in 1764, he wrote: “He had a thorough knowledge of the fundamental principles of composition. He was also a great master of modulation, and his transitions from one key to another were excessively natural and judicious.” Yet, …
