Mormons, the Chocolate Bar and "Sass"!
The next morning we had free, so after breakfast Jim and I strolled around Boise's center. Idaho is a very red state with an abiding suspicion of the "Federalistas." (I actually heard this term in a conversation two business men were having on the street.) But its capital city--while not as blue as Boston--certainly is modestly liberal as well as environmentally informed and active. There are lovely book and coffee shops, art galleries, and restaurants. However, as we walked along a street not far from our hotel we passed a barber shop advertising itself as "The Electric Chair." (I did say modestly liberal). Buzz cut, anyone? Probably not the place I'd take my son for his first haircut.
Entering a shop that Sam had recommended highly, "The Chocolate Bar," we inhaled a complex variety of dark, rich fragrances. The chocolates--little pieces of art themselves--were neatly presented on trays behind the glass counters. We settled on some plain, heavenly dark chocolate, and an assortment of chocolate covered cherries and huckleberries (Idaho's state fruit).
While our delicacies were being boxed, we chatted with the young lady behind the counter. We told her we were from Boston.
"Are people in Idaho as nice as the people in Boston?" she asked.
"Nicer," Jim and I replied in unison. Neither of us could bring ourselves to mention that in a recent survey of fifty U.S. cities examined for friendliness, Boston came in dead last.
"Y'mean people in Boston have sass?"
"Some, yes," I replied.
"I've never been to Boston but I've been to New York. Now they've got sass!"
I wasn't about to volunteer that I had grown up on Long Island, which I think rivals--if not surpasses--Manhattan in the sass department.
On the news I learned that a Boise-based tattoo artist had won the most prestigious tattoo competition in the U.S., held in Salt Lake City, not a locale that instantly comes to mind when I think "tattoo parlor." This artist walked away with blue ribbons in three categories--chest, back, and legs. In an on-screen interview, she happily declared that she is "booked-out" for two years solid.
I do understand that tattoos are art and that great skill and patience are required. The blacksmith who shoes my horses has a striking, brightly colored dragon and koi arrangement on her back. And I have a student who even had a tasteful image of her favorite horse here at Windflower applied to her hip. I served in the Navy for twelve years, so I am thoroughly acquainted with the traditional run of romantic and maritime tattoos: pledges of eternal love to mother, wife, and lover, as well as images of ships, anchors, eagles. I got my commission from the Naval Officer Candidate School in Newport in 1975. Back then the city's waterfront was seedy if not downright dangerous. That's where all the cheap bars and tattoo parlors were, and so that's where the sailors were. At that time tattoos were technically prohibited in the Navy. (Perhaps they still are.) Simply stated, if your tattoo got infected or you wanted it removed, Uncle Sam wasn't going to foot the bill.
And I carry with me me another traditional, albeit horrific historical association that prejudices me against use of the body as canvas. Having been born in 1949, just a few years after the concentration camps were shut down, I cannot disassociate tattoos from those terrible, blue-ink numbers forcibly put on the wrists of millions of Jews by the Third Reich.
And, of course, I lived in Japan where I developed yet another tattoo adverse association. Yakuza members, Japan's equivalent of the Mafia, are known for their torso tattoos. This practice dates back to the organization's formation in the 1600s. These days they prefer to be known as "Ninkyo Dantai" or "Virtuous Group." Right. Some members travel to the Philippines and other Asian countries, promising good office jobs to impoverished women if they come to Japan. But when the women arrive they find themselves prisoners and forced into prostitution.
I was amused to find a popular chain of gas station convenience stores called "Skunkies." Its emblem, of course, is a Looney Tunes-like image of a skunk. Makes me wonder how the flavored coffees there taste. I also spotted a used car dealership named "Ethical Autos." In my experience, when the words "ethical" or "ethics" are used as a selling point, they're usually aren't any. But who knows? "O! Zone" advertises itself as the only store in Idaho completely devoted to the sale of condoms. I asked one of Sam's students (the shop borders Boise State campus) what the "O!" stood for; without a moment's hesitation, he replied, "Orgasm!" They like their exclamation points in Boise: near the river, the city library building announces itself with huge block letters high on its outside wall--LIBRARY! I like that. They could go one step farther: "O! LIBRARY!"
Idaho is only second to Utah in its Mormon population--one quarter of the state. Though they do not hold the majority in Boise, they and other conservative groups make their presence felt in nearby cities and towns. In Meridian the school district recently fired two hundred teachers. Mormonism dominates and I was told that the unofficial motto of the high school is: "Enter as students, leave as parents." Married, of course.
World Center For The Birds of Prey
And here we are, Jim, Sam and Emily, a student of Sam's as well as a volunteer at The World Center for Birds of Prey. The chief mission of the Center is to breed and restore a variety of raptors on the endangered species list, including the California Condor and the Aplomado Falcon:
Here is one of five condors who permanently reside at the center:
Ainslie Sheridan copyright 2012
Apologies for the poor quality of this shot; though outside, it was quite dark and he was flying. It also fails to convey how enormous he is. The California Condor is North America's largest land bird with a wing span just under ten feet. It so impressed the Yokut tribe of California, that they believed those great wings blocked the sun and caused eclipses.
By the late 20th century, due to habitat destruction, hunting, egg poaching, and lead poisoning, there were only twenty-two of these incredible vultures left. When condors fed on the carrion of carcasses of animals who have been shot, they inadvertently consumed the lead in the bullets and shells. (Swans who eat fish with lead fishing weights in them suffer the same fate.) In 1987 all twenty-two condors were captured and breeding programs initiated at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park and the Los Angeles Zoo. Condors are gradually being reintroduced into the wild. As of December 2011, there were two hundred and ten condors living in the wild. If they are lucky they may reach the age of sixty.
Harpy Eagle Ainslie Sheridan copyright 2012
We had a wonderful tour given us by the director of the archives, David Wells, where we got to see illustrations and books on falconry dating back to the fifteenth century. The extraordinarily realistic illustrations were created with a depth of color and vibrancy that I'd never seen before. And speaking of art, Mr. Wells' two Italian greyhounds joined us for the tour. Here they are, a true tableau vivant:
Next it was on to the Research Library where we were met by by Kent Carrie, original founder of the Archives of Falconry. There dozens and dozens of beige flat metal file cabinets contained samples of eggs from a variety of raptors, including the California Condor:
Mr. Carrie then quietly and gently opened another drawer. This is what we saw lying on a plywood sheet, wings down and feet tagged:
She is a passenger pigeon, and there are no more. In the late 17th century, enormous flocks of these birds, often a mile wide, would darken the sky from morning until late afternoon. One witness described it as a great "living wind."
One hundred and thirty-six million would nest in an area covering 850 square miles. Native Americans hunted them only periodically. But the white residents of North America were methodically rapacious. Nets were set up, trees in which the birds normally nested were cut down, and hundreds of pounds of alcohol-soaked grain were thrown onto the ground to disorient the birds and render them more compliant. In one day of netting and shooting at a single location, over five million birds were killed. Those made wealthy by this slaughter generally did not eat their catch. Oppression and extinction often interlock. Considered sub-standard fare, passenger pigeons were fed almost exclusively to servants, slaves, and hogs.
By the time significant action was taken to save the passenger pigeon it was too late. They would not mate in small flocks. Even though some birds remained, the species was doomed. The last known bird in the wild was shot in 1900 in Ohio by a boy with a BB gun. And the last captive passenger pigeon, a female, died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. Her body was frozen in a block of ice and shipped to the Smithsonian, where she was stuffed and mounted. She is archived and not available for public viewing. This last passenger pigeon was named Martha after the wife of our first president.
"In Wildness is the Preservation of the World." I saw this quotation from Henry David Thoreau every day my two last years at Hamilton College. It was printed on the bottom of a Sierra Club poster of Redwoods that I had taped on the cinder block wall of my dorm room. That evening in Boise Jim gave a public lecture, "Henry David Thoreau and Health in Nature." By not exercising or even walking enough, eating huge amounts of processed foods, throwing endocrine disrupters into our environment right and left (they mess with your hormones), destroying complex ecosystem habitats, and isolating ourselves from the sources of good food, clean water, and fresh air, we damage our own health and that of our environment. They're linked. And awareness of this is shared by blue and red alike. When it comes to the environment, Idaho hunters and Boston (or Concord) gardeners have a lot in common and share many values.
That evening dinner at the Red Feather, an organic restaurant; where used wine bottles are turned into water glasses. The food and wine was predominantly local--and even the number of miles to a farm or winery was noted on the menu. The closer the source, the less carbon dioxide to get its product to the restaurant, and the more money kept circulating within a regional economy. A lot of environmental concerns end up being about building a stronger human community, too.
In the next blog entry, our trip to Idaho will conclude with a trip to Celebration Park on the Snake River, where the Paiutes fished and left extraordinary petraglyphs on the rocks. But for now, let's go back to horses here at Windflower. Here is my friend Joy lunging Quilly, our Welsh Pony over a jump:
Unimpeded by the weight of a rider, free-jumping is a great method for strengthening and developing back and hindquarter muscles, as well as for gaining trust and discipline.
Naughtiness in horses sometimes goes hand-in-hand with high intelligence. Haflinger mare Firefly has been able to undo all sorts of knots as well as open anything, whether it be doors, gates, cabinets, bags of feed, and cans with lids firmly shut. A couple of weeks ago she got in the barn by opening the outside latch to a stall. She was in there for well over an hour before being discovered. She thought she'd just attended the best party of her life, and I felt like I'd been vandalized. We were both right. This is what I found:
It took well over an hour to straighten up this mess. Here's the perpetrator, looking oh-so-innocent in the upper right, with her three friends soaking up the sunshine just a few days after:
I leave you once again with the story of an animal who needs your help. It is six-week-old Freddy. He requires lots of love, medicine, and money to heal from the abuse he suffered at the hands of some miserable person. Meet Freddy:
See you next time. Thank you for reading
The Windflower Weekly -- Ainslie
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