Despite falling nearly silent during these past years of distancing, masking, and boosting, I mostly carried on as usual; irrigation happened, hay got baled, ewes lambed, tomatoes overwhelmed, and seasons progressed. I could have painted, but ideas eluded me; I might have blogged, but my stories felt dull. And so, I trudged along, blaming COVID, blaming my age, blaming whatever . . . Thankfully, fresh energy is flowing and I am again painting, reading, sharing meals with neighbors, and staying in touch with friends—including classmates from grade school who met in July for a 50th high school reunion. I continue to follow news, however furious it makes me, and regularly contact my DC politicians, urging them to solve problems rather than point fingers. (I refer to that last effort as “tilting at windbags.”)
Carrying on with my website, however, is at a standstill until I can figure out how to log in. While I was AWOL, my website host, Weebly, was taken over by The Square, a payments-focused business that changed website-access protocols. As I keyboard, my post is merely a Word document residing on my laptop. If you read it as a 2023 website post, login issues have been resolved.
In lieu of creativity during the past years, I threw myself into the job of chairing a national Columbia Sheep Association committee focused on support for commercial producers. During my tenure, I had several hard-working committee members whose ideas, advocacy, and activism in the interest of producers rattled the rubber-stamp, business-as-usual board decisions. Not surprisingly, before the committee and I could further upset the status quo, I was acrimoniously voted off the BoD last June. I remain proud of the committee’s multiple accomplishments in addressing and elevating concerns of commercial producers, but I have no regrets about departing stressful leadership of a committee with goals and accomplishments deemed threatening to the association’s nearly exclusive focus on show ring matters. Descriptors that continue to sour my thoughts after my four-year tenure on the Board include: vindictive back-stabbing, territorial posturing, self-serving decision-making, under-the-table manipulation, defamatory name-calling and insinuation, nepotism, and short-sighted thinking.
In contrast, my work on the MT Watercolor Society BoD is congenial, collegial, and non-confrontational. Turnover on that Board is steady, without being stuck or disruptive; outgoing directors provide support and guidance for new members; fresh ideas and volunteers are welcomed. As a result, the Society is dynamic and offering evermore diverse opportunities for members—opportunities that range from local cohort groups to monthly painting challenges, to critiques shared via Instagram and Zoom, to varied workshop and exhibition options, all of which go beyond the group’s traditional quarterly newsletter and national juried Watermedia show. I plan to resign from my role as Signature Member Chair at the end of my term in October, not because I’m tired of the position, but because it’s time for someone else to learn the job. Additionally, for the past six years, a large box of Signature Member files has monopolized the couch in our sun-room. It’s time to make that space available once again for human occupation. Of course, recent files are stored on a thumb-drive, but the box contains records that tell a story of the society’s former years. I hope my replacement on the Board has more convenient storage space.
Of course, no blog would be complete without mention of sheep. I brought the ewes back to home pastures yesterday, and it’s most satisfying to watch them in the field adjacent to our kitchen window. They had been on a leased pasture for the past months, digging for grass and eating snow for water. I fed them only four times, during the week prior to Christmas when our snow depth was daunting and temperatures were brutal. On one of those days, following Solstice night, when our temperature bottomed out at -36 degrees, neither the 4-wheeler nor the Gator would start, so I ferried square bales to the ewes in my faithful Subaru Forester. Tootie and Dozer ran beside the Suub that day, braving wind, cold, and drifting on the way out; however, they were delighted to accept my invitation to ride with me in cozy comfort on the return trip.
A sad note: Old Border Leicester ewe R-71 died during that coldest solstice night. Two years ago, Jim and I made the decision that she owed us nothing and could stay at home for the duration of her life. She was sassy and bossy to the end, hustling through gates and doors that were left open for a moment too long, pushing the three dogs away from her grain ration of sweet cob that they covet, bedding down at night in the tack room, beside the barrels of grain, and ignoring my gentle suggestions that she should move, rejecting all but the finest, most-leafy legume hay. One should never wax sentimental about livestock, but old Border earned an exception to that rule of thumb.
Here she is, bellying into a bucket of grain intended for the lambs.
Carrying on with my website, however, is at a standstill until I can figure out how to log in. While I was AWOL, my website host, Weebly, was taken over by The Square, a payments-focused business that changed website-access protocols. As I keyboard, my post is merely a Word document residing on my laptop. If you read it as a 2023 website post, login issues have been resolved.
In lieu of creativity during the past years, I threw myself into the job of chairing a national Columbia Sheep Association committee focused on support for commercial producers. During my tenure, I had several hard-working committee members whose ideas, advocacy, and activism in the interest of producers rattled the rubber-stamp, business-as-usual board decisions. Not surprisingly, before the committee and I could further upset the status quo, I was acrimoniously voted off the BoD last June. I remain proud of the committee’s multiple accomplishments in addressing and elevating concerns of commercial producers, but I have no regrets about departing stressful leadership of a committee with goals and accomplishments deemed threatening to the association’s nearly exclusive focus on show ring matters. Descriptors that continue to sour my thoughts after my four-year tenure on the Board include: vindictive back-stabbing, territorial posturing, self-serving decision-making, under-the-table manipulation, defamatory name-calling and insinuation, nepotism, and short-sighted thinking.
In contrast, my work on the MT Watercolor Society BoD is congenial, collegial, and non-confrontational. Turnover on that Board is steady, without being stuck or disruptive; outgoing directors provide support and guidance for new members; fresh ideas and volunteers are welcomed. As a result, the Society is dynamic and offering evermore diverse opportunities for members—opportunities that range from local cohort groups to monthly painting challenges, to critiques shared via Instagram and Zoom, to varied workshop and exhibition options, all of which go beyond the group’s traditional quarterly newsletter and national juried Watermedia show. I plan to resign from my role as Signature Member Chair at the end of my term in October, not because I’m tired of the position, but because it’s time for someone else to learn the job. Additionally, for the past six years, a large box of Signature Member files has monopolized the couch in our sun-room. It’s time to make that space available once again for human occupation. Of course, recent files are stored on a thumb-drive, but the box contains records that tell a story of the society’s former years. I hope my replacement on the Board has more convenient storage space.
Of course, no blog would be complete without mention of sheep. I brought the ewes back to home pastures yesterday, and it’s most satisfying to watch them in the field adjacent to our kitchen window. They had been on a leased pasture for the past months, digging for grass and eating snow for water. I fed them only four times, during the week prior to Christmas when our snow depth was daunting and temperatures were brutal. On one of those days, following Solstice night, when our temperature bottomed out at -36 degrees, neither the 4-wheeler nor the Gator would start, so I ferried square bales to the ewes in my faithful Subaru Forester. Tootie and Dozer ran beside the Suub that day, braving wind, cold, and drifting on the way out; however, they were delighted to accept my invitation to ride with me in cozy comfort on the return trip.
A sad note: Old Border Leicester ewe R-71 died during that coldest solstice night. Two years ago, Jim and I made the decision that she owed us nothing and could stay at home for the duration of her life. She was sassy and bossy to the end, hustling through gates and doors that were left open for a moment too long, pushing the three dogs away from her grain ration of sweet cob that they covet, bedding down at night in the tack room, beside the barrels of grain, and ignoring my gentle suggestions that she should move, rejecting all but the finest, most-leafy legume hay. One should never wax sentimental about livestock, but old Border earned an exception to that rule of thumb.
Here she is, bellying into a bucket of grain intended for the lambs.
A smile-worthy note: For obvious reasons, we often refer to Dozer as “Double Dump.” This photo of him—wrangling two casserole dishes and gleaning leftovers from both—surely warrants his new name: “Double Dip Dozer.”
RSS Feed
