Tuesday, July 29, 2008

not a proper blog entry

While I'm pulling the videos off the camera, here's some thought and updates and so on... mostly about the dogs. But maybe not.

This is not the best video I've ever made and not all the dogs get the full treatment. Come back tomorrow for a proper Glencadia dog video and not all these ducks. Here are the stills for today, so give you a hint of what is in the video, unfortunately.

But wait: I will post another one of these later today with more running around and I will have a full length feature film with Mackey and Sheila... but they only make cameos here now and are fine, very loyal to each other but good with everyone and only get a C for walking around with no leash (mostly Sheila gets a D and Mackey gets a B and they get a C average).

Maggie Blue has been very good, I mean by Maggie Blue standards. She doesn't like Freya though... Parker still doesn't listen but gets away with it by being cute. Theo is popular with everyone, the way he just quietly stands next to you and looks you in the eye, very effective. Freya would be allowed to jump the fence at will if she didn't have this disturbing habit of licking her lips when she sees a chicken. Helmut was asleep during the shooting of the video below. Muri is terrific and come with us on the walks I shot this morning. Cleo does her usual running in circles.

After a terrible week, Jim is back and out there fixing the fences. Freya and Lucy and the thunder: there are a lot of holes. They can't get out of the dog area but I like a dog to stay where I put them. And the fences are not supposed to be optional, respect them if you feel like it... no, they are supposed to work whether the dog likes it or not. Seems fairly obvious. If Jim wasn't around, looks like I would have to do it but I wasn't getting it done... so I'm very glad he's back. We have leaks in the barn roof, I want to install a hand pump in the well by the dogs (to get water in the winter), line another chimney fro wood and burn no oil this winter, fix the van window, and Jim is going to do all that. Now you know, Jim.

Shannon and her son came by to help with the dogs. You'll see them in the video, if I ever get this sucker uploaded. Nice to have the kids around... and they are big enough that I think they can handle it. Plus Shannon lets Bray do any damn thing: drive a tractor, shoot a gun, ride a motorcycle, a stallion... he's my son's hero, 3 years older. Country style child rearing, it has it's appeal. I had some cousins like that in Vermont and they seemed quite reckless... but they all survived into adulthood and are still reckless. The mother's getting old and she stayed reckless too, still jumping horses at 68. I guess it's a family tradition. Actually, compared to the Fishes of Randolph Vermont, Shannon is careful.

Last night I was driving up the Taconic and I had one of those quick temperature drops I used to love. As soon as you leave the city, you get into the highlands, 1100 feet, and getting away from the concrete and into the mountains so quickly, you can shed 10 degrees in half an hour. When we first left Brooklyn and I didn't drive that way very often, I would find that change in the air exhilarating.

On the Taconic, you feel like you're in the country even when you are in fact in densely populated suburbs. Apparently, it's one of the world's oldest highways, designed for beauty, since it doesn't go to any major population areas. No on ramps, no breakdown lane: the grammar of highways had not been invented.

And the deer: you might think having grass right up to the edge of the highway is asking for trouble. You might also wonder about the wisdom of PLOWING the grass, exposing grass when there is none elsewhere, in the winter. Why design system like that? It's suicidal.

It seems the white-tailed deer was practically extinct in the 1920s and not a concern. Hard to believe now, but that seems to be why the Taconic is designed to produce carnage.

I haven't hit a deer yet. The other night the raccoons and opossums were out as I had never seen. I think that the days and nights of heavy rain had kept them from their rounds and they were all out in force. But it was still wet enough for the frogs to hop around, looking for new ponds, so I had to do a lot of bobbing and weaving.

Well, I could continue on any number of subjects other than everyone's dog. The dogs are all well. We had so many holes that we couldn't make effective small dog and large dog and old dogs and young dogs kind of groups but that should change in a few hours.

And this video includes:

1) Almost all dogs somewhere.

2) The duck saga: One duck met an unfortunate and premature demise. The other did not get along with chickens, which was where she went, escaped from the chicken house and waddled back to the pond. In a lot of videos you hear here in the background, quacking away. I assumed she was hungry, so the kids and I went down to the pond to feed her. She ate a little then followed us around as we paddled a bit, leaving her food on the shore.

She was not hungry. She has plenty to eat over there in the pond. She was lonely. How about that.

3) Ollie, my son who is 6, making videos. Take a Dramamine, you might get sea sick. He shot me trying to corral Moki into some kind of confinement.

I'm done. Thanks.


a duck, some dogs, maybe a chicken and a cat, three spoons and some electrical wire: I can make this sucker fly from glencadia on Vimeo.

VIDEO HERE.

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