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Tack Room Keypad Deadbolt

Tack Room Keypad Deadbolt

Tack room keypad deadbolt

I can’t tell you how many times we’ve walked up the hill to our barn only realizing we forgot the key when we reached the tack room door. Sometimes one of us would have the key but was on another part of the property and had to be tracked down before the tack room could be accessed. We also needed a way to provide guest access when we travel. The solution for us was a keypad deadbolt. We purchased this Kwikset version for around $60, about the price a similar one goes for today (like this one at Amazon). The deadbolt is water-resistant and the batteries last a long time – almost two years when you use lithium AA batteries. If the batteries die, you can simply use the key. Each of us has our own code and we have guest codes for those to whom we want to provide temporary access. We’ve been using this system for about 5 years now without issues.

There are, of course, all kinds of fancy new ones with Bluetooth or wifi connectivity that let you lock/unlock your door from a distance but be prepared to spend two or three times more on those. If the one we have stops working, I intend to purchase another one like it. It’s inexpensive, simple, and so-far durable.

Book Review: “Half-Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel” by Jeannette Walls

Book Review: “Half-Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel” by Jeannette Walls

Half Broke Horses coverFirst of all – I am SO sorry to have neglected this blog for as long as we have. It’s inexcusable, really, but we have been very, very busy. My father retired at the end of September and I spent weeks getting ready to go out to California to help them move, then the actual time there getting them packed (about 2 weeks), then the week driving back, and since then we’ve been getting them settled (driver’s licenses, new doctors, new banks, etc.)…so I’ve let a lot of things slide. Y’all aren’t the only ones I’ve neglected, believe me!

But I DID find time to read this great book, and I highly recommend you do too. Although it’s not technically about horses, horses do figure prominently in the story. It’s the story of the author’s grandmother’s life, told in the first-person. Her name is Lily Casey Smith. She had quite a life, and she thankfully shared stories about it with her family. Ms. Walls and her mother, Lily’s daughter, remembered a lot about Lily’s life, and Ms. Walls created this wonderful book from those stories. She calls it a true-life novel because she couldn’t know everything about her grandmother – e.g., conversations she had with others, her thoughts about events that took place, other little details. But Ms. Walls fills in the gaps beautifully, and wove together a riveting, moving, even inspiring life story that I think her grandmother would be proud of.

Preview the book here (affiliate link)

What a life Lily lived – she was born in a dirt dugout in West Texas, became an itinerant teacher in Arizona at the age of 15 (riding her horse alone from her home to Arizona), ran a cattle ranch with her husband, survived the Great Depression, raised two children while earning her college degree, learned to fly…and those are just a few of the highlights. Ms. Walls’ writing style really connects the reader with Lily – you feel like you are really hearing Lily’s voice. She was a spunky, no-nonsense character, and I wish I had known her in life – but I’m glad I could meet her in this book.

My New KEEPER Saddle!

My New KEEPER Saddle!

I forgot to tell you all – I got something really cool a few weeks ago. I think I mentioned that I had been using my friend Shari’s saddle for trail riding. It is just the nicest, most comfortable saddle you could ask for, but I couldn’t keep using hers because she kind of wanted to use it too. So I thought I’d check on eBay for Eli Miller saddles, and I found a few. One of them just happened to be near where we live, so that’s the one I went for, and I got it!

Eli Miller Saddle

If you’ve never heard of Eli Miller saddles, you are missing out. Eli Miller is an Amish leather crafter who made saddles and other tack until he retired and his nephew Henry took over the business, using the same techniques and quality craftsmanship and materials as Eli – they’re now sold under the Henry Miller name. These saddles are made on a solid wood tree with a coating of fiberglass and a material called “Rhino” that helps make the tree more durable. They are covered in buttery soft leather and the seat is a “suspended” seat (it doesn’t rest directly on the tree) with a gel cushion. Mine is just heavenly to ride – I have ridden for hours with no pain or discomfort caused by the saddle. It is also really beautiful – rich chestnut leather with a darker seat, and simple, elegant tooling along the edges. There are also other matching tack pieces – bridles, breast collars, etc. (Gee, I sure hope I get something like that for Christmas. ;))

After doing some internet research, I believe my saddle is a “Buena Vista” (model #104). While it wasn’t as inexpensive as my World’s Longest Yard Sale saddle at $60, I still got a really good deal. The saddle retails for about $800 and I got it for $400, and the seller delivered it to me. (She was very, very nice, and we may go trail riding together sometime. She also knows my friend Shari – small world!)

So if you’re in the market for a really good saddle you intend to keep for a while, I highly recommend an Eli Miller/Henry Miller. I’ve seen them in our local tack shops and several online stores. And don’t forget eBay!

Book Review: Chosen by a Horse

Book Review: Chosen by a Horse

Chosen By A Horse BookYes, I know I’m supposed to be writing my own novel, but I started this book a while back and wanted to finish it. It was really, really good, but have the tissues handy if you read it!

Chosen by a Horse is a memoir by Susan Richards. She agreed to foster a Standardbred mare and her foal when they and nearly 40 other mares and foals were confiscated by the SPCA from a farm where they were abused and neglected. She brought this mare, Lay Me Down, back to her own farm even though she lived alone, already owned three horses and Lay Me Down was so sick she had no guarantee of survival. The foal was inexplicably returned to the abusive owner (apparently to be surrendered to a vet to whom the owner owed money), but Lay Me Down eventually recovered from the malnutrition and lung infection she was suffering from when Ms. Richards brought her home.

You would think that a horse who had been abused, nearly starved, and denied medical care would be the either the meanest or most skittish horse on earth, but Lay Me Down had a big, loving heart and over the following months, she helped Ms. Richards – who had a past just as horrific as Lay Me Down’s – open up her own heart through caring for this wonderful horse.

I won’t give away any more of the story, because you really should read it for yourself. It’s a really good book; very well-written and touching. I will tell you that when I got to the end, I was reading it in bed next to Bill, who was already asleep, and I was sobbing so hard I was afraid I would wake him. So you’ve been warned – grab a hankie with this book.

You can preview the book right here (affiliate link)

My one and only complaint is that there was only one photograph, on the title page. I sure would have loved to see some pictures of Lay Me Down and the other horses (Hotshot, Tempo and especially the lovely Georgia). But I guess Ms. Richards is more like me than Bill – at our house, Bill pretty much takes all the pictures, and I prefer to live the moment rather than photograph it.  Apparently, Ms. Richards feels the same way, and only takes pictures when the moment demands it, such as the one on the title page (in the book, she talks very specifically about taking that one photo, and why).  But she paints such a vivid picture with words that you can imagine everything in your head almost as well as if you did have a photograph to see.

All in all, Chosen by a Horse is one of the best books I’ve read, fiction or non-fiction. Definitely a must-read.

Who Was That (Fly) Masked Horse?

Who Was That (Fly) Masked Horse?

Fly maskWe are battling the flies again. In some ways, I don’t think they’re as bad as they were last year – probably because of a late frost that killed off a bunch of our normal pests – but the ones that are deviling our horses are really bad. Last year, we had a three-pronged approach to fly control: Equispot on the horses, feed-through fly control in the horses, and fly parasites in the horses’ environment. This year, we just weren’t prepared. Between the weird weather (One day, “It’s spring!” Then, “Wait, it’s winter again.” A week later, “I think it’s summer already!” The next day, “Nope, winter again…”) and our traveling, the flies kind of got the jump on us. Our poor horses are really suffering.

We are in fact using the fly parasites again this year, and I think they work really well. Unfortunately, without investing in a really big supply of them, we can only effectively treat the barn area. So the barn is virtually fly-free, but the pasture, where the horses spend most of their time, is still pretty fly-infested. That’s where the feed-through fly control would work. (Both the fly parasites and the feed-through fly control work by stopping fly larvae where they are laid – in the manure.) We like to get ours from a local feed store because it’s very economical, but haven’t had a chance to get over there (“local” for us means within 75 miles; this place is about 50 miles away). In the meantime, we’ve been using fly spray, which our horses hate and which doesn’t seem to work all that well anyway. We’ve also applied SWAT to their bellies again, which is very nasty and messy but does seem to help.

Since the flies seem to bother their faces the most, we decided we’d give fly masks a try. We got just one yesterday to see if they would even consent to wear it. We bought a SuperMask II without ears. Since my horse is was a fancy show horse and therefore seems to be more open to weird things being done to him, we thought we’d try him first. We put him in the stall, got out the mask and brought it over to show him. He backed away like I was holding a snake! Not a good start. But after letting him sniff it all over and giving him lots of reassurance, he did actually let me put it on with no trouble. He wore it for a couple of hours out in the pasture and didn’t seem to care at all.

One reason we didn’t try the mask last year is that we were concerned that it would affect their vision. All the fly mask companies claim that their masks don’t obstruct vision, but since “keeping an eye on things” is so important to a horse, we didn’t want to impede their sight in any way. So we tested it on the way home to make sure you really can see through – Bill wore it while driving. 🙂 He says he could see just fine. So I don’t think there’s anything to worry about there. Isn’t he a devoted horse owner?

On the down side…it sure looks goofy. On the horse, not Bill. Well, okay, on Bill too. It’s a hard look to pull off.

Book Review: Beautiful Jim Key

Book Review: Beautiful Jim Key

Beautiful Jim KeyWhile I was visiting the kids/grandkids in Arizona last month, I read 5 books. I love to read! One of the books I read, which I highly recommend, is Beautiful Jim Key by Mim Eichler Rivas. I had never heard of this horse, and apparently not many people these days have, but after reading this book, I can’t believe he’s being forgotten.

I don’t want to give away the whole story, in case you want to read the book yourself, but here’s a synopsis: Jim Key was a Arabian-Hambletonian colt bred by a former slave, Dr. William Key, in 1889. His dam was “Lauretta, Queen of Horses,” a purebred Arabian said to have been owned by (and stolen from) an Arab sheik. His sire, the Hambletonian, was a very successful pacer, and that’s what Jim was bred to be as well. Pacing (a form of racing where the horse pulls a small cart) was very big at the time. Jim was very sickly when he was born, and not expected to live. With tender loving care by Dr. Key, who was a self-taught veterinarian, he not only lived but turned out to be a very special horse. He showed an unusual aptitude for learning, and Dr. Key ended up teaching him to read, spell, do arithmetic, file letters in a filing cabinet, memorize Bible verses, and give political opinions, among other amazing feats. He ended up on tour, showing millions of Americans his amazing talents at fairs and expositions around the country.

Preview the book right here (affiliate link)

The biggest contribution Jim Key made, though, was to the animal rights cause. Animal abuse was rampant and accepted at the time, and by showing people how intelligent animals can be, he raised awareness in people and became a kind of ambassador for organizations that were the forerunners of today’s ASPCA and Humane Society.

Beautiful Jim Key retired in 1906 and lived a peaceful retirement until he died of natural causes in 1912. He’s buried in Shelbyville, Tennessee. We’re going to visit the memorial someday when we go to that mecca of Tennessee Walking Horses.

The book was well-written, though in my opinion a tad on the political side, and it dwelt far too much on the relationship between their promoter, A.R. Rogers, and the humane societies. I also wish that there were more pictures, but of course, it was just at the turn of the 20th century, so photography wasn’t nearly as common then. But on the whole, it was a very interesting, moving book and definitely worth reading.

My trusty barn gloves

My trusty barn gloves

I’m about to retire the best light-work gloves I have ever owned. I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty but last year I bought a pair of Justin light leather gloves from Tractor Supply. I’ve used these gloves nearly every day for a year and the only reason I’m retiring them is due to some holes they’ve developed. It’s time. I used these gloves exclusively for barn work and riding, etc. No working on cars, no gardening. I like them so much because of the way they feel, tight enough for me to easily grip whatever I’m grabbing but not too tight to be comfortable. I think I paid $20 for them and they’ve been worth every penny. They will be replaced with the same exact Justin glove model, if I can find them. Definitely a “buy” recommendation from me.

Neither Justin nor Tractor Supply paid me anything to say nice things about these gloves. 🙂


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June – Gamlingay Woods,  Fermyn Woods Country Park, Irchester Country Park

Fermyn Woods Country Park

fermyn(45 minute drive) Fermyn Woods Country Park is in the heart of Rockingham Fore st in Northamptonshire. We love the Northamptonshire website, each country park has a downloadable map and clear signs. It's worth the 45 minute drive to get there. Fermyn Woods has a lot in a small space, and is quite understated on the website. There is a cafe, a huge adventure play area for children and some gorgeous trails that are clearly marked. £2.50 for car parking again but today I think it's worth it.

Irchester Country Park

Irchester(50 minutes drive)  £2.50 was a bit steep. This former ironstone quarry has a wonderful children's play area as well as a network of long and short trails through 83 hectares of mixed woodland. The park is home to the Quarryman's Rest Cafe, Jungle Parc UK and the Irchester Narrow Gauge Railway museum. We walked past the quarry and viewpoint into the quarry. It has a troll bridge, multiple tree plantations, ponds, play area and café.

Website >>

Gamlingay Woods

Gamlingay(16 minute drive) Parking on a track on the entrance, like many wildlife trust places, there is a map at the entrance but nowhere else but no matter, you just get lost trekking on the paths. It's a very well maintained woodland, shelter but a little more info as you go around would be nice. Nice and quiet though, well worth a second visit.

Website >>

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On the road!

A cold 35 degrees at 7:00am on an overcast morning in Forest City IA

I flew to Iowa to pick-up our traveling adventure machine and after a couple of days of orientation and I’m starting the 1,200 mile journey back home.  I’m not a huge coffee drinker but this morning’s latte at Cabin Coffee Company was better than most I’ve had!   Maybe the best ever!   Cabin Coffee is a still small (just four stores) franchise out of Des Moines.  Stop in if you’re near one!

Made headway of 365 mile on this first day out.  After a couple of hours of driving through rain I stopped in Iowa City to see a photography friend of mine. Bruce took me on a tour of the downtown/university area.  I’d like to come back some day and spend more than just a few hours.

Arrived well after dark at a nearly flooded campground in the middle of Illinois that is running in self-service mode.  Envelope and Honor box.  I think the owners are in Florida.  I drove around two 5th wheels trying to park while finding my space.  I had parked & powered & hooked-up to water & was relaxing with a beverage in my hand while they were still unpacking wood and shovels to get their dually pick-ups unstuck.  On this first real night of adventure travel I am glad our traveling machine is a small one!

Listening to Bruce Hornsby Just The Way It Is on 96.5fm

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How To Find Someone Who Doesn’t Use Social Media

We all know the fact that this is the age of social media and we have all heard and read it in various places that almost all the people of the world are on social media now. However, that is not the truth and there yet is a big population of the world that is not a part of the social media. Now if you are wondering that how can someone not be on such an entertaining platform then well, let’s say that everyone has his likes and dislikes and some people just find these social media websites to be a waste of time.

Also, there are people who are not yet aware of what social media is and they don’t have much knowledge of IT technology, etc. So, in a nutshell, those who are not on social media have their own reasons but again, know that there is a big figure of people who aren’t on this platform.

How to find someone on social media without knowing their name?

Now, coming back to the topic of today that how exactly can you find someone who doesn’t use social media. Well, if you are someone who is looking for an answer to this question, then you need to stick a little longer because today in this article we are going to jot down a few ways that can help you find people on platforms other than social media. So, folks, take notes of what we are about to tell you because this article can be pretty useful for you.

#1 Google Search Engine

There are high chances that google search engine will have the information you need to find a person. You see what actually happens is that if the person you are trying to find has ever used Google or entered his number or name on any website or blog then yes you will have the results that you want. This is the place where you can make an online search and if this won’t work then don’t lose heart because there are several other ways to find a person.

#2 People Search

You can use people search platforms such as where you just have to enter the information you have regarding the person you want to find. It is as easy as it seems. Just go to the website, type in the first and the last name and then enter the state where the person lives, there are high chances that you will get your desired results here. This site is currently being used by thousands of people, and till now almost all the customers and users are happy with the results of this site. So, yes you can also try your luck here.

#3 Phone Number Directories

The other possible place where you will get the information regarding the person you want to find is the phone number directories. These directories can be your best friend if only you know the number of the person or the full name of the person. Just enter whatever information you have and then click on the search button to get the results.

These are a few basic ways through which you can find a person who isn’t available on any social media platform. Try the above mentioned three ways, and we assure you that you will get the results you want.

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Simon's Cat Pop Time Level 77 Solved: Let's Beat Level 77

Here we go... Let's beat Level 77

A place full of mischief for this little garden invaders who are caught in a bubbly trap and only YOU can help free them in this fun game, which is none other than Simon’s Cat Pop Time Level 77. Simon’s cat tries to rescue all his playmates after the bad-tempered Mr. Potts caught them in floating bubbles. This funny cat will blow up these bubbles and get rid of all the tender creatures and the delicious biscuits that are also caught in them, of course with the help of their feline friends Chloe, Jazz, Maisy, Kitten. Get through this level easily with the help of our Simon’s Cat Pop Time Level 77 walkthrough:

Keep it going!

As you progress through the Game, various Boosters will be offered, which makes the game more entertaining and complete, but honestly in Simon’s Cat Pop Time Level 77 you will rarely find yourself stuck, you will always have options to achieve the goal in the best way, however it doesn’t mean that it is easy, this game requires quite some skills and abilities.

Pick a level:

Simon's Cat Pop Time Level 77: Done!

The adventure of Simon’s Cat Pop Time Level 77 take place in a friendly environment of gardens, backyards, small orchards and various places in the city. Its excellent graphics, smooth animations, with a lot of detail and the most charming characters, funny and colorful, make the game even more enjoyable. There you go all the Simon’s Cat Pop Time Level 77 help you need to get through the whole game easily, enjoy!

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Wyldo D’offizi

music Nov 16, 2019 0 382
Wyldodoffizi Wyldo D’offizi @Wyldodoffizi
Wyldo D’offizi
Wyldo D’offizi (born Victor Onumajuru) is a Singer and Songwriter from Nigeria.

Wyldo D’offizi is signed to his record label " (M.O.L.A.E Entertainment) Minister Of Life And Enjoyment Entertainment.” Currently he is working on dropping singles for his upcoming EP which will be released much later this year. The single “Replay” was released May 19th 2019.

Listen and Download song here


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Web sites offer information. Whether you promote products or services, or your website is educational or commercial in nature, content is king. Few websites are honestly static or even fewer ought to be. Good layout and frequently up to date content are the important thing to retaining your internet site relevant, sparkling, and precious to users – not to mention the engines like google. Paying an internet clothier whenever you want to upload new images or text receives high priced. For common updates, a Content Management System (CMS) makes it easy to manage updates yourself, even on complicated dynamic sites.

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Simply put, content is all the “stuff” to your website: textual content, photos, charts, snapshots, audio/visual elements, downloadable forms or PDF documents, interactive pages and applications that permit customers to do or have an effect on something. In brief, content is something that appears on the website online, and all the factors that incorporate it. Content management is the way you control that “stuff”: textual content revisions, calendar and event updates, new pix, bureaucracy, even new pages or tabs on the web page. A CMS is a computer program or software that lets in you to feature, delete, or control the content material, commonly without any unique know-how of code, programming or net layout magic.

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Customized CMS, advanced by your net developer especially to work with your website, is the high-quality option. Alternately, there are sophisticated, expert caliber CMS available from each proprietary and open supply providers, generally thru Internet download or subscription. You can get those yourself, or ask your dressmaker/developer to investigate the exceptional alternatives to integrate into the web page. Proprietary software requires the purchase of a license and can not be altered. “Open source”, then again, a method that code may be viewed and changed by means of the general public to inspire peer assessment and development with the aid of other programmers. These are typically free, even though not always. Professional CMS may be extraordinarily effective and most are designed to paintings with a number of design architectures. They vary in charge from free to pretty expensive, depending on the supply and what your desires are. Many of them are green and fee-effective. However, until you recognize what you’re looking at, it could be tough to inform. Some of them are tremendous, while others can hobble your site as a lot as an off-the-shelf model.

It all comes all the way down to how plenty effort and time you may put money into mastering the technology. One of the primary problems with the greater sophisticated do-it-yourself CMS is they may be pretty complicated to combine into your website. It’s constantly most excellent to build CMS into the unique infrastructure of your website to permit for clean capability and future customization. Most proprietary CMS vendors offer tech aid, but they’ll charge extra costs and “aid” generally doesn’t mean a technician who can come to your workplace for set up or set-up. While a handful of open supply CMS providers provides terrific merchandise and tech aid, most expect you to be knowledgeable sufficient to govern and/or customize the code your self. Most open-source providers fee effectiveness, vast applicability, and unfastened access to in addition statistics. They usually provide links to different assets, product critiques and weblog posts.

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Kujibiki Tokushou: Musou Hāremu ken – Chapter 296

Chapter 296 – Divinification

On this day as well, Caroline is watching the believers pray.

Enveloped with my camouflage aura, I watched over her invisible.

The believers offer their prayers, and as they did, Caroline would show them “the light of their soul”.

Most of the people who saw the light of their souls were convinced.

Firstly, they have the preconception that “it is their own selves”.

Following that, there is the influence of it being shown to them by the “Child of God”.

And furthermore, the light gets stronger after their prayersーーit seems that this part depends on how strong the faith and prayer of the person in question.

The news about that was spread everywhere by those who would repeatedly come, leading to the gathering of the believers from all over the continent around Caroline.

On the other hand, Caroline herself was staring at the one praying.

Learning how to enjoy looking at people, she would observe those who have come to visit her.

Suddenly, Caroline raised her voice.

The Child of God who was dealing with them with a practical and flowing way showed a different reaction than usual.

The surroundings were stirred. The girl who was Caroline was observing looked confused.

「Uhm……did I do anything wrong?」

「Not at all, you are shining brightly. You have the brightest light for today」

Caroline showed the others the light of the girl.

It’s true that it was one of the brightest among the believers who came to visit Caroline.

「I would wish God would make you even brighter」

「Is that possible?」

「It is, with God」

Caroline answered instantly.

I mean, God=me, and since she’s telling me to make her brighter, she meansーー

『Sleep with her. That’s what she means』

It’s probably that.

I gave the girl another look.

Her age is about that of a high school student, and she seems to be a lady from a wealthy family.

Though she’s not the type that is sheltered and frail, she’s the type of a lady brought up well in a proper family.

In Caroline’s standards, she has the “brightest light for today”, and in my standard……let me see.

Probably someone who would become a good woman.

Since that’s the case, there’s no need for me to hold back.

I called out to her while enveloped with my camouflage aura. Even in this state, Caroline is still able to hear my voice.

The surroundings made a commotion because she said “God!” loudly.

「I’ll make her light stronger. Tell her to close her eyes and accept everything」

「I got it!」

「Just continue to let everyone else see her light」

Caroline told the girl my words.

The lady-like girl was surprised for an instant but nodded with a delightful expression in the next.

「I understood!」

After saying that, she slowly closed her eyes.

I enveloped her with my camouflage aura.

「S-She disappeared」

「But, but she was there a moment ago……」

「Was she summoned by God?!」

The surroundings were stirred.

The instant I enveloped her with my camouflage aura, no one can see her anymore, so they were surprised by that.

I reached out my hand and touched the girl’s cheek.

The girl flinched.

「Accept everything」

That’s all that I said.

「ーー! Yes!」

The nodded made a huge nod and relaxed her body while closing her eyes.

I gave the girl her “grace”.

「The light, the light is becoming stronger!」

「We must be witnessing God’s miracle!」

The girl who was in the church a moment ago was summoned by god and the light of her soul became a level stronger.

Everyone in that place, everyone other than Caroline.

They kneeled, praised god=me, and offered their prayers.

「What is it, God」

「I’ll leave the selection to you. Just tell me if there are those who you want their lights to become stronger」

「I got it. I’ll pray to God if I find someone whose light is better to be stronger」

Although they could only hear half of the conversation because they could only hear Caroline, even so, the believers were agitated.

Caroline’s position of being the “Child of God” became even sturdier.

Chapter 295 – Kujibiki TokushouChapter 297

21 comments on “Kujibiki Tokushou: Musou Hāremu ken – Chapter 296

  1. Thanks!!!
    　　+　+
    　+　　　　　+
    　　 ∧＿∧　／
    +　 ( n ´ ∀ ` n NEPUUUUU~~~♪
    　　/　　ノ　＼

  2. Daiz71 says:

  3. Deamonzean says:

    So he’s found another girl who’ll make a holy harem

  4. Rozpacz says:

    Thanks for the chapter…

  5. Crywolf641 says:

    I did not get the ‘Grace’ part. Was it s*x? If it was then she just did it in front of them and was still invisible.

  6. Mesmerised says:

    Thanks for the chapter!

  7. Leekt222 says:

    Thanks for the chapter~!

  8. A55mh says:

    Yes my fren

  9. DrNot says:

    Thank you very much for the chapter

  10. sfcipher says:

    Thanks for the treat.

  11. Nyarlathotep says:

    Thank for the Chapter

  12. iamviruz says:

    Lmao it is still funny when she scream ‘God!’ out loud 😀

  13. Raphalice says:

    What if…

    The brightest light for today, came from… HIM!?

    A young boy shone brightly… will god give his blessings to him?

  14. Raphalice says:

    What if…

    The brightest light came from a young… boy?

    Would he give him his GRACE?

  15. Sherrynity says:

    The divine harem lmao

  16. Ashmir says:

  17. When line “Oh my God” become true

  18. Krozam says:

    …He forgot to tell her to only choose young women. I wonder if that’ll backfire on him… XD

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Tile Art 3 2012

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PA TV hosts poet who writes stories glorifying terrorist who killed 37

Official PA TV program Palestine This Morning on Palestinian literature hosted poet Muhammad Al-Zaher
Palestinian poet Muhammad Al-Zaher: “First of all, this is a national cause; I began with the Palestinian child in particular. I wrote stories about the female Palestinian Martyrs (Shahidas) Lina Al-Nabulsi, Dalal Mughrabi, Taghrid Al-Batma; I wrote songs about the RPG children and about the ground rules of the Arab child."

Lina Al-Nabulsi
– a high school student who was apparently shot and killed by an Israeli soldier at a demonstration in Nablus on May 15, 1976, according to Palestinian sources. PMW has not been able to verify the exact circumstances surrounding her death.

Dalal Mughrabi
led the most lethal terror attack in Israel’s history, known as the Coastal Road massacre, in 1978, when she and other Fatah terrorists hijacked a bus on Israel's Coastal Highway, killing 37 civilians, 12 of them children, and wounding over 70.

Taghrid Al-Batma –
A member of the terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, PFLP. In June 1980, she took part in a demonstration at Bethlehem University and was killed in a confrontation with Israeli army forces.


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Colad Dry Sandpaper Sheet P320 (x50)

Colad Dry Sandpaper Sheet P320 (x50)

Price: 3780 +GST

or payments from $9.45 with

About the product

Colad Dry Sandpaper 230 x 280mm Sheets

  • Abrasive sheets for dry hand sanding during various stages of the repair process.
  • Open-coat aluminium oxide abrasive specially prepared for strength and durability.
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North Island: Overnight delivery (If orders are placed before 1.30pm)
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Our policy lasts 30 days. If 30 days have gone by since your purchase, unfortunately we can’t offer you a refund or exchange.
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Rape Culture is Real: Talking to our Boys About Consent

In the past few years, the world has confirmed:

As I read stories like this, I am baffled by the number of people that do not see that all of this is backward and wrong. Why is it so hard to for others to see that just because they’ve lived a charmed life that bad things do happen to others?

rape culture 3

Is it because we are afraid our white picket fence will burn to the ground? Well, maybe, just maybe it is time to slash and burn what we know and start anew.  A world that isn’t tarnished by our past beliefs but listens, really listens, to the real story of how America came to be.

As a mother of a little white boy that will one day grow up to be a white male, I am appalled by the “boys will be boys” mentality of so many.  Rape culture is so prevalent it is accepted as the norm. But how do I teach my son that #metoo matters, #blacklivesmatter, #equalityisequality, and that #whitepriveldge is real when America is screaming otherwise? When our President mocks the very things that this country was built upon?

rape culture

How do we educate our sons not to become men that believe women are something to be conquered? Many experts believe that by revamping the way we talk to young kids about consent and continuing this conversation throughout adulthood may thwart some of the sexual misconduct that has become so commonplace in our society.

Ask permission

According to Debra Hauser, the president of Advocates for Youth teaching children to respect each other starts at an early age. “You see two 4-or 5-year olds, where one wants to borrow the other one’s crayon, and they just grab it.  And the response that you have is, ‘You have to ask for it. And if that other child says no, you have to respect that and find another way to get the crayon’ That is the very beginning of consent education right there.”

Teach Empathy and Compassion

Explain that his/her actions caused someone else pain.  Consider how these feelings would make someone else feel. Always be inclusive and be the friend when no one else will.

No Should be Respected

When children are playing if another child says no they need to respect that.  No, you can’t have this toy or no you must wait your turn.  It is ok for a child to say no. Respect your child’s right to say no in certain situations. It’s ok if they don’t want to hug, kiss, or high five Grandma goodbye.  As parents, we must respect the word no too.

Be an Askable Parent

Hauser suggests being the “askable” parent, the one your children come to with questions.  As kids become older, bring up tough topics, ones that make you feel uncomfortable. By doing this, your child will see your vulnerability and your child will feel more open and honest when the time comes to share things with you. Talk about what to do in certain situations. Raise boys not only understand but to respect and fight for women’s rights.

rape culture 2

This country has hidden behind Christianity, our skin color, and false pretenses disguising real agendas of misogyny, xenophobia, racism, and hate. Why is it so hard to believe that there is truth to the other side? That the world is actually seen through rose-colored glasses?

As parents and citizens, we must not be afraid to talk to our children about consent. We cannot continue the illusion that if we don’t talk about things they don’t exist.  There is more to our world that what is right in front of us, it is time to open our minds, change the story, and burn our picket fences to the ground.

Sources: NPR

You might also like: Why We March: An Open Letter.

Rape Culture

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Internship for Culinary Art RM500/Month @ Cyberjaya

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text:
Control in the pandemic

A self-confessed control freak am I

Feeling out of control destabilizes me, I will not lie

Just when I thought I had life within my grasp

The virus came to engulf the world in its clasp

And all my sense of control went spiraling down

Suddenly I was surrounded by fear profound…

Like everyone else I learned new ways

Of doing things and going about my days

As life settled in a new routine I found

A renewed sense of control to keep anxiety down

But the world stood divided, other tensions surfaced

In trying to make sense of the world, my sense of control regressed

This was the first time that crises of such magnitude

Were affecting me personally, shaking me from my lassitude

While solving these problems was beyond me

I could choose to be part of the solution certainly

So I pledged to do what was right in the situation

And though my efforts were but a drop in the ocean

It was empowering to know I had control

Over how I chose in this brave new world my role

With social distancing and a mask as my tools in this fight

I carry on with faith that an end is in sight.

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Head to head with les coqs

Winning against les bloody French has always given the English a warm glow. We’ve always had issues with the neighbours but those buggers across the Channel have always been our national ‘derby’ team. The Germans have been particularly annoying in recent history but in reality they are a lot like us (apart from the arrogance, first on the sun-lounger mentality and sense of humour). But anyone’s who’s holidayed in the Dordogne and popped out in the morning to buy 3 baguettes, 5 croissants, some ham and cheese for breakfast and commented on the pleasant landscape and lovely weather without speaking in perfect French knows how sneering they are about we English and our slight mangling of their beautiful language. What’s so wrong with il ne pleut pas comme dans Angleterre? We love France and they hate us. Pourquoi mes amis? Continue reading


text:
USG Bonnet Review

mintyeliEli makes a pretty good bonnet model. I’m just a bad photographer.

It’s no secret that I’m into bonnets for my horse. Bonnets keep the flies from bugging my horse’s ears and muffle sounds just enough to make it easier for me to keep Eli’s focus (kind of?). George Morris isn’t into bonnets for that same reason. Well, we can’t all be perfect. My horse will wear a bonnet, God of Hunt Seat Equitation! Heresy is not new to me.

So of course, when I say I “needed” a bonnet for schooling, just smile and nod. I want to keep my nice custom bonnets nice, but I still want to use a bonnet at home. As far as price and fit go, the USG bonnet fit the bill for a good schooling bonnet. And once I got my hands on it in person, I realized this bonnet would be nice enough for the show ring, as well.

bonnetwithstrapgoodsDouble cording, scalloped edge, nice material, a nice, open stitch (probably machine-stitched), subtle branding on the ear … I am very impressed with the quality of this bonnet for the price, ~$30. SmartPak has some colors, but has MANY colors. I picked up this mint & anthracite bonnet from

bonnetearsPeople indulge me by complimenting the color, but it kind of does look good on a bay. The bonnet is also available in more show-ring appropriate colors such as black or white, and I like this bonnet enough to be seriously considering a white one.

Eli had no problems wearing it. In fact, the bonnet has a feature that makes me think its designers KNEW how popular anatomical bridles would be.

topbonnetThere is plenty of material behind the ears–enough to keep this bonnet in place even with the wider, shaped crownpiece of my PS of Sweden bridle. This is probably my second favorite feature or the bonnet, the first being its cotton construction. I will definitely be using this bonnet all summer long.

The bonnet does lose some of appeal in my eyes for one reason.

dyebleedThe color bleeds. A lot. I hand washed this thing three times and color was still bleeding out into the water. I set it out on a towel to air dry, and the color bled into the towel. If you get this bonnet, hand wash really well it before using it. I think I’ve got the excess color out of the bonnet to where I feel comfortable to put it on my horse’s head without having to worry about the dye/color irritating him or staining him.

Overall, however, the USG bonnet is an excellent value. I recommend it, with the one reservation being that the dye washes out of the bonnet.

17 thoughts on “USG Bonnet Review

  1. That color is gorgeous on Eli!! I’m really digging the navy one- it’s exactly my barn colors so it’ll be my show bonnet 🙂 Thanks for the heads up about the dye bleeding, I’d really rather not give Addy blue ears. Everything shows up on that stupid/pretty gray coat.

    Liked by 1 person

  2. I like the USG bonnets a lot for the price, they just don’t make any color combinations I really care for. Even though they make a million. I’m the hardest to please person in the world. Oh and the scallops, I’m pretty sure Henry would punch me for putting a mare doily on his head.

    Liked by 1 person

  3. they look like nice bonnets – thanks for doing the review. i want so badly for my mare to look adorable in a cute little bonnet, but a) she doesn’t seem to like them (maybe I can fix that?), and b) none seem to fit her right… le sigh.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. Love! I’ve always wanted to get a USG bonnet and matching saddle pad, thanks for doing a review. 🙂 I wish they would allow bonnets in dressage…but noooooo…only in eventing dressage only. 😛

    Liked by 1 person

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Never Marry a Mitford

The title is taken from a sweater that Andrew Cavendish, 11th Duke of Devonshire used to wear around his Chatsworth estate in Derbyshire. However, just like us he must have been fascinated by the Mitford sisters. In this lengthy article entitled Elvis, Chatsworth, JFK and me, Deborah Cavendish, The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, and the last of the Mitford sisters, talks about her extraordinary life.

By Jessamy Calkin

First published in the Telegraph 12 Sep 2010

The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire Photo: Emma Hardy/East Photographic

If you give the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire a fiver, she’ll show you round her house, an old vicarage in Edensor, Derbyshire. It would be tempting to think that she pocketed the money, but it goes towards the church roof fund. The occasion is the annual village fete.

‘It’s true,’ she says mildly. ‘What people love is the shoe cupboards and the lavatories and all that. And sometimes they say, “You’re very brave to do this,” and I say, “You’re very brave to come,” because there’s always a queue. So funny.’

Debo, as everyone calls her, was 90 this year. Having greeted me in her pretty garden, shaking my hand and looking me directly in the eye, she leads me into the apple-green-walled and flagstone-floored hall – ‘Do put your bags down, no burglars here’ – and shows me into her sitting-room, which has an extraordinarily nice atmosphere, and we take to the floral sofa, where she positively lounges, looking at me brightly, waiting to be amused.

There have been countless books about the Mitfords, both biographical and autobiographical, and now her own memoirs, Wait for Me!, are about to be published. (She has written several books, mostly about Chatsworth, her former home.)

Debo says she was motivated to write about her life because she had offers from other people to do it for her, and she didn’t really want them ‘to fiddle about with it’. She was appalled by some of the books about her sisters – in particular David Pryce-Jones’s book about Unity, and the books about Diana, who married the fascist Oswald Mosley. ‘They are so full of inaccuracies,’ she says. ‘No one ever really got my sister Diana, and she was such an incredible person. It was always a delight for me to see somebody who was prejudiced against her sitting by her on the sofa like you and I are now and… melting, absolutely melting.’

Debo became close to Diana, who was 10 years older, only later in her life, but now, she says, ‘hardly a day goes by when I don’t say to myself, “Oh I wish I could tell Diana that, she’d laugh so much.”’

It wasn’t an easy book to write; it has taken her four years. Debo suffers from the eye condition macular degeneration and can’t read at all, but she can write; she says it’s because she knows the shape of the words. She does all of her writing in bed, early in the mornings (‘My sheets are covered in ink’) and then her assistant, Helen Marchant, reads it back to her. ‘And you feel guilty asking someone to read it back three or four times but that is what I had to do to try and get it right. Helen in her genius way can translate it into ordinary English, because I don’t know grammar and she knows grammar.’

The book is full of stirring anecdotes, such as when a wounded soldier repatriated from Italy during the war brought home a lemon. ‘Such a luxury had not been seen in the shops for a long time and it caused a minor sensation when he put it on the post office counter at Ashford-in-the-Water and charged tuppence a smell – proceeds to the Red Cross.’ Or the dinner at Calke Abbey, where lived the Harpur Crewes. ‘The dining-room table was set with candles – the only light in that high-ceilinged room, which I imagine had not been used for years. The first course was melon; it was followed by cold beef; then melon for pudding.’ Her host, Airmyne, whose best friend was a goose, then took her up to meet ‘Nanny’ who, they said, used to be the Kaiser’s nanny, a tiny, ancient creature who was fast asleep in bed. It was the strangest evening she had ever had. ‘The Harpur Crewe siblings,’ she writes, ‘were the only true eccentrics I have ever met.’

Can this be true, I ask her. I imagined her life must be full of eccentrics. ‘Well, if you don’t count all my sisters, but I never thought of them as eccentric. I suppose my father was a bit outlandish; he was the source of all jokes in our family.’

The Mitford family

The Mitfords – there were six sisters and one brother – were a defining family of their time; Debo says now that they always thought they were ordinary, but their celebrity and influence has endured. Extreme behaviour seemed to run in the family. David Freeman-Mitford (Farve), later Lord Redesdale, married Sydney Bowles (Muv) in 1904.

Their eldest child, Nancy, wrote several historical biographies and eight novels, the most famous of which, The Pursuit of Love, was, in her own words, ‘an exact portrait of my family’. There was Pam, the least well-known sister, described by John Betjeman as ‘the most rural Mitford’. There was Tom, who used to pay his sisters a shilling an hour to argue with him and went on to become a barrister, but was killed in the war in 1945.

Diana married young, then left her husband for the British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley, and was put in prison for three years for her beliefs; she was also one of the few people who knew both Churchill and Hitler. There was Unity, who moved to Germany in 1934 at the age of 19 and became devoted to Hitler, whom she got to know well; her dual loyalties to the Führer and her country caused her to attempt suicide by shooting herself in the head at the outbreak of war.

Jessica, known as Decca, became a communist and ran away at the age of 19 with Esmond Romilly, Winston Churchill’s nephew, and then moved to America. After Romilly’s death she married again and wrote several books, including The American Way of Death, which changed the way people felt about the funeral business.

And there was Debo, the youngest. ‘Everyone cried when you were born,’ Nancy, 16 years older, would enjoy reminding her (their mother had wanted another boy). Nancy went on to tease and torment her until it came close to bullying.

‘I should think the social services would be called in now,’ Debo says mildly. ‘But I adored her. I used to sit on her bed for hours being mentally tortured. I would be in tears succeeded by roars of laughter. She was so funny, you see, and people don’t seem to be quite so funny any more.’

In addition to looking hopefully at the clock every evening and saying, ‘As soon as you’ve gone to bed I shall do the joy dance,’ Nancy would chant, ‘Nobody will want to marry you, not only have you got a deformed thumb but there is the gland…’ Debo had a lump in her neck, she thinks, because she drank milk from a tubercular cow. ‘Nancy explained that it hubbled and bubbled when I was asleep,’ she writes in her book, ‘and that no man could stand it.’

‘Oh, the gland, wasn’t it wonderful?’ Debo says, touching her neck. ‘It’s still there; I’m very fond of my gland.’ Nancy continued to tease Debo all her life, calling her ‘Nine’, which she claimed was her mental age, and addressing her envelopes to ‘Nine, Duchess of Devonshire…’ (It is true, Debo says, that she hated reading, but Diana has said of her that she was the reverse of the intellectual snob; she actually claimed not to have read books that she had read.)

Debo grew up mostly in Swinbrook House in Oxfordshire. ‘This was the calm background of a self-contained agricultural community,’ she writes, ‘regulated by the seasons, in an exceptionally beautiful part of England.’

The children all had pets – Decca had a sheep called Miranda, Unity a goat, rats and snakes, Debo had ponies, dogs, guinea pigs and hens. The younger girls had extraordinarily close relationships with each other, and their own private languages; all the sisters had a complicated variety of nicknames, and, later, political alliances and rivalries (except for Debo and Pamela, who remained apolitical).

The best and most revealing book about the Mitfords is Letters Between Six Sisters, 75 years of letters masterfully edited by Charlotte Mosley, Debo’s niece, published two years ago. They all had the Mitford voice – relentlessly upper-class 1930s, and their own particular imperative way of speaking: ‘do miss me’, ‘do say you’re thrilled’, ‘do be sorry’, ‘you must say it’s funny’. They toyed with words constantly, and invented nicknames that robbed people and things of their status – in Nancy’s hand Mein Kampf became Mein Comf and then Mein Uncomf; Sir Oswald Mosley was Cyril, Sir O, the Great Leader or simply Lead; Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother was Cake; Nancy herself was known as French Lady Writer.

Did Debo have a favourite sister? Growing up, she says without hesitation, it was Decca. ‘She was absolutely my boon companion; I couldn’t imagine life without her and then suddenly she left, and it was never quite the same. Her husband, Esmond, just didn’t like our family; he only liked her, and he jolly well did like her, and I’m quite convinced it would have been the happiest marriage ever, but sadly his plane went down in the Atlantic when he was in the Royal Canadian Air Force.’

Decca’s running away was a dark time for Debo. ‘It was so frightening; we didn’t know if she was dead or alive. She was in such a state of euphoria herself that I don’t think she considered that we might all be very worried.’

As a teenager, Decca had always had a Running Away bank account and became increasingly dissatisfied with her life and enamoured of the idea of communism (she and Unity would partition the schoolroom at Swinbrook, scratching swastikas and hammers and sickles on the windows). When she met Esmond Romilly, who was her second cousin, she had already fallen in love with his reputation, and they made surreptitious plans to go to Spain where he would report on the war against Franco, Decca going along as his secretary.

Under the pretence of going to stay with friends, Decca went to France but they couldn’t get a visa for Spain, and for a while her family had no idea where she was or with whom. Nancy and her husband were sent to bring them back; they refused to come. By the time they returned to England, they were married, and in 1939 Decca moved to America with Romilly. She remained there after his death in 1941, marrying again, coming back only occasionally to England. But after 1937 Decca never saw her father again.

Farve, faithfully portrayed as Uncle Matthew in The Pursuit of Love, was prone to ‘roaring’ at everyone. On her birth certificate, according to Nancy, it gives her father’s occupation as ‘Honourable’. He enjoyed the occasional ‘child hunt’ where he would chase his two youngest daughters with bloodhounds, he was rude to all Nancy’s friends who came to stay (‘Don’t these people have homes to go to?’ he would shout to his wife across the dinner table), and a man he didn’t like was a ‘sewer’ or ‘a pointless piece of meat’. He had a horror of anything sticky, and Debo once asked him what his idea of hell was. ‘Honey on my bowler hat,’ he said. Irascible, unreformed and very dry, he made a great double act with Nancy.

Did he know he was funny? ‘Oh, yes,’ Debo says, ‘but people didn’t know how to take him because he was completely deadpan.’ The sisters loved him but they would gently tease him; they called him ‘The Old Subhuman’ or ‘The Poor Old Male’. Decca would shake his elbow while he was drinking his tea so he could practise for when he had palsy.

Their upbringing was an unusual one for the time. Their mother, Sydney, rejected all conventional forms of medicine, including vaccination, believing that ‘the good body’ would cure itself. They were on a strict diet – only wholegrain bread, nothing cloven-footed and no shellfish; only their father was allowed to eat sausages. When did Debo break those rules? ‘When I was 18 and free to do what I liked. Going to all the deb dances there were marvellous suppers laid out – things like lobster, which were absolutely banned at home.’

Her brother, Tom, went to Eton but the girls mostly didn’t go to school – their father believed that they would be made to play hockey and might develop thick calves. Sydney taught them until they were six; she then engaged governesses, which she paid for out of the profits she raised from selling eggs and honey. By the time the last two sisters were teenagers she had relented slightly; Unity went to two schools (and was expelled from both) and Debo went to one for a week (‘It smelt of lino and fish and girls’) where she was so unhappy that she fainted in geometry and was sent home.

Muv was a meticulous housekeeper who lived very frugally and recorded everything. After Debo became the Duchess of Devonshire in the 1950s and moved into Chatsworth, it became clear that she had inherited some of Sydney’s skills at household management.

‘I suppose I inherited from her some of those old-fashioned ways, which seemed to work. My mother’s account books are fascinating. She was very meticulous and wrote down every penny which she spent on household things, every penny. She loved figures and adding up.’ (Her children didn’t all inherit this ability: when Sydney once tested their housekeeping skills, giving them an imaginary sum of £500 a year and asking them to budget for heating, food and so on, Nancy wrote, ‘Flowers £499. Everything else £1.’)

Debo partly wrote this book, she insists, as a way of correcting what other people had written about her parents. ‘People who never knew them. I wanted to put it straight, and then of course it burgeoned into a much bigger thing.’ Her mother particularly has been portrayed over the years in books – some by her own daughters – as distant and vague, even callous if you believe Nancy. ‘People always thought my mother was miserable because of the things my sisters had done but she used to say, “I am perfectly satisfied with all my children,”’ Debo says.

In fact she was an extraordinarily selfless woman; when Diana was interned in Holloway prison Sydney would visit her regularly; after a journey that took between four and six hours she would be obliged to wait for an hour in the prison and then was allowed only 15 minutes with her. Her frequent and loving letters to Decca always began ‘My darling little D’, even when she was so distraught about her and Esmond. When Unity was brought back from Germany with brain damage in January 1940, she was by then incontinent and needed a lot of supervision. ‘My mother washed her sheets every day,’ Debo says. ‘The little garden was completely taken over by the sheets drying.’

The bits about her parents in the book are some of the most moving. The family became riven by politics: at various times Nancy wouldn’t speak to Unity or Diana, Diana wouldn’t speak to anyone who criticised Sir O, and Decca and Diana didn’t speak or correspond for more than 35 years. Nancy betrayed Diana to the authorities (she effectively prolonged her time in prison by reporting that in her opinion Diana was a ‘ruthless and shrewd egotist, a devoted fascist and admirer of Hitler and sincerely desires the downfall of England and democracy in general’) – a fact that didn’t emerge until after Nancy’s death in 1973. (Debo describes this betrayal as ‘extraordinary’, and thinks that Nancy was probably jealous of Diana.)

And although neither parent was directly involved in politics (although Lord Redesdale did attend the House of Lords), it was in the end politics that drove them apart. ‘My mother thought there never should have been a war and that they should have talked to Hitler. She really thought it could have been avoided,’ Debo says. ‘My father took another view and wrote to the newspaper to say he was loyal to whatever the government was going to do, and that was enough to spark off rows, banging doors, all of that.’

By this time they were living in a small cottage near High Wycombe. Even though Debo was 19 and unofficially engaged to Andrew Cavendish, it affected her very much. ‘There really wasn’t room for two people with such diverse views so they quietly went their own ways, but they still wrote to each other.’ Farve, who was something of a shadow of his former self by then, moved to Redesdale Cottage in Northumberland with their former parlourmaid Margaret Wright. ‘She was a very boring woman, very ordinary,’ Debo says.

‘I think he had had enough of rough and tumble and wanted someone quiet that he needn’t bother to answer. But we never spoke about it. In those days you didn’t talk about why people did things.’

Unity seems more of an unknowable character. ‘It is difficult to explain why we all loved her so much,’ Debo says. ‘She was very difficult as a teenager, really sullen sometimes, and if something happened at the dining-room table which she didn’t like she would just very quietly slide underneath it and stay there until she thought the coast was clear.’

After she shot herself, in the English Garden in Munich, days after the outbreak of war, Unity was taken to hospital at Hitler’s expense, and then he arranged for her to be sent to Berne in Switzerland, from where Sydney and Debo collected her at Christmas 1939. ‘She was completely changed,’ Debo recalls in Mary Lovell’s 2001 book The Mitford Girls. ‘Her hair was short and all matted. Because of the wound I expect they couldn’t do much about washing and combing it; and her teeth were yellow, they had not been brushed since the shooting. She couldn’t bear for her head to be touched. She had an odd vacant expression… the most pathetic sight… but it wasn’t just her appearance; she was a completely changed person, like somebody who has had a stroke… her memory was very jagged. She recognised us, though.’

Unity never recovered enough to live an independent life. She died in 1948 after an infection of the wound in her head turned into meningitis.

In August 1938 Debo met Andrew Cavendish in a restaurant off Curzon Street in London. ‘We met at a dinner party,’ he said in an interview, ‘… and if it wasn’t love at first sight it was certainly attraction at first sight.’ They were unofficially engaged for quite some time; in 1941 she wrote to Diana, in Holloway: ‘I expect we shall be terrificly (sic) poor but think how nice it will be to have as many dear dogs and things as one likes without anyone having to say they must get off the furniture. I do so wish you weren’t in prison, it will be vile not having you to go shopping with…’

They were married at the church of St Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield, in April 1941. Andrew was serving with the Coldstream Guards, and Debo moved around with him and then to a cottage in her parents-in-law’s estate, Chatsworth. The war hit her hard; she lost her only brother, her four best friends, and in 1944 Andrew’s older brother Billy, Marquess of Hartington (who was married to Kick Kennedy, JFK’s sister), was killed and Andrew became the heir to the dukedom.

Andrew’s father, the 10th Duke, set up a trust, the Chatsworth Settlement – the law at the time stipulated that five years had to pass from the date of handing over the property for it to become free of death duties. But in 1950 he died of a heart attack, 14 weeks before the five years was up, and Andrew became the 11th Duke with an inheritance subject to death duties amounting to 80 per cent of the worth of his estate: £4.72 million, with interest to be paid at a rate of £1,000 per day.

Apart from Chatsworth, the estate comprised Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire, Compton Place in Sussex, Bolton Abbey in Yorkshire – and their contents – and Lismore Castle in Ireland, which he already owned. The Duke decided to hand Hardwick Hall over to the Treasury (it is now with the National Trust), and to sell thousands of acres in Scotland and Derbyshire. He also sold books and many works of art to various national institutions, though nothing left the country. The final debt was cleared in 1974.

The Duke and Duchess moved into Chatsworth in 1959. Passing it, Debo had often said to Andrew, ‘Oh, look at that lovely house, I wonder who lives there.’ And he would say, ‘Oh, do shut up.’ They embarked on a huge programme of renovation and improvement, most of it orchestrated by Debo (the house had 175 rooms, 17 staircases and 3,426 feet of passage) – including the installation of 17 more bathrooms. (‘Who is my sister going to wash in all those bathrooms?’ Nancy asked.)

Chatsworth last year attracted more than 623,000 visitors; it is one of the most popular country houses in England. Debo has played a huge part in its administration and all its initiatives. The two achievements at Chatsworth of which she is most proud are the Farmyard, which she instigated in 1973, a very avant garde idea, now very fashionable – to show town children how the country worked and where their food came from. ‘The city children were amazed and so were their teachers because they were the first generation of teachers who hadn’t got relations in the country.’ And 1977 saw the establishment of the Farm Shop, also way ahead of its time. In 1991, for their golden wedding, the Duke and Duchess asked everyone in the county whose golden wedding anniversary fell the same year to a tea party – 3,700 people attended. This was a typical gesture; there is very much a feeling that they created a sort of magic kingdom during their reign at Chatsworth.

Andrew Cavendish used to wear a sweater bearing the words never marry a mitford. ‘I don’t think any of the brothers-in-law ever read a word that Nancy had written,’ Debo says, ‘certainly Andrew never did. He just wasn’t interested.’

But he was tolerant of her Mitford-ish eccentricities – up to a point. In June 2000 some American friends of hers came to stay, who visited every year. They included the art collector Jayne Wrightsman and the fashion designer Oscar de la Renta and his wife. Thinking they would be bored by a table centre of flowers, and because chickens are her passion, a Buff Cochin cock was washed and placed on some hay in a rectangular glass container. ‘A couple of hens of uncertain ancestry occupied another glass container,’ she writes, ‘and there had been a hatch of Welsummer and White Leghorn chicks that morning so I put them in little china baskets lined with hay to keep them warm… the chicks presumably thought it was all quite normal as they had only been alive for 12 hours.’

‘It was fantastic,’ recalls a guest who was there. ‘But it only just worked. It was almost too much for the Americans.’

The following year Debo topped it by putting half a dozen piglets, replete from their feed, in straw beds on the middle of the table. ‘But after the first course, my husband said, “That’s enough, take them away,” which was rather sad really.’

Debo has an extraordinarily youthful spirit, and she is, says an old friend, just as impressed by the local milkman as by JFK. This is borne out by the fact that at one point she had a tramp living in her barn for several years. She also got to know JFK quite well, and says he was one of the funniest people she ever met. ‘He was so quick, and he made such fun of other people, but in such a nice way that they didn’t mind.’ She met Kennedy at a ball in 1938, and later became close friends with him; he would often ring her at 3am to chat, and she and Andrew attended his presidential inauguration in 1961 and, in 1963, his funeral.

Deborah Devonshire is not a self-pitying kind of person but her life has not always been easy. She has three children – Emma was born in 1943, Peregrine in 1944 and Sophy in 1957 – but she also lost three babies shortly after birth. And in her middle years one gets the impression that life with Andrew was not always a bed of roses; he was an alcoholic. (There is a short and rather brusque chapter in Andrew’s own memoirs, Accidents of Fortune, entitled ‘Drink’.)

There was alcoholism in his family – Andrew’s uncle Charlie died of it at the age of 38 – and Debo says that drinking also contributed to his father’s death at 55. Andrew was an angry man and Debo describes one period of their life as ‘like walking on eggshells’, waiting for that anger to flare up when he was drunk. Advised by her family and Alcoholics Anonymous counsellors, she explained to his loyal employees that Andrew was suffering from an illness that was alcoholism, and asked for their support. He gave up drinking twice – once in the 1970s for two years, and again for a short time in the early 1980s. In 1983, after a particularly terrible weekend when ‘Andrew’s behaviour was out of control’, she left Chatsworth and went to stay with her son, agreeing to return only if he stopped drinking. He did, with the help of the drug Antabuse, and never drank again. He died in May 2004, aged 84.

Debo never stopped appreciating Chatsworth. ‘Waking the first morning in the bed I was to come home to for the next 46 years and one month was a joy and I never tired of the incomparable view west across the park,’ she writes. ‘In all those years I never took the place for granted, but marvelled at it and the fact that we were surrounded by beauty at every turn.’ She stayed on there for 18 months after Andrew’s death, and then decided it was time to go, handing it over to her son Peregrine, the 12th Duke, and his wife, Amanda. ‘I was 85, it was high time to go and high time for the others to come.’ She now has eight grandchildren (the model Stella Tennant is one of these) and 17 great-grandchildren, and they all adore her.

The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire has her own exhibition at Chatsworth, in celebration of her 90 years. There is a display cabinet with her diary open at the page where she writes about having tea with Hitler in 1937. There are paintings and photographs of her – by Cecil Beaton, Mario Testino and Bruce Weber – and some of her clothes on display, including a Philip Treacy hat, dresses by Dior and de la Renta, a bouclé skirt by Givenchy, and her trademark uniform in the 1980s and 90s, wool cardigans by the Natural Dye Company. There is her collection of insect and spider brooches, and also what can only be described as an Elvis shrine, including a piece of picket fence with a nail that may or may not have been knocked in by the man himself.

When the talk turns to Elvis, she brightens considerably. ‘Oh, don’t speak about Elvis,’ she says looking delighted. ‘Wasn’t he wonderful? I never became a fan until after he was dead, otherwise I would have been a stalker.’

She has been to Graceland three times, once in the company of her son and daughter-in-law (‘I don’t think they were terribly impressed’), who were in Memphis for an exhibition of works of art from Chatsworth, and once in the company of people from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. ‘By far the most amusing thing was seeing them peering at the records which line the walls. They got out their little jewellers’ glasses and they might as well have been examining a Vermeer.

‘Would you like a strong drink before you leave?’ she asks, gesturing at the drinks table, although it is about 11am. We go into her office where one wall is covered with birthday cards, many of them, I note, depicting Elvis. (Her birthday celebrations – dinner for 910 at Chatsworth, staff and family only – took place shortly after the ‘long service awards’: Alan Shimwell, who has worked for Chatsworth on the farm and in the garden (60 years), was given a carriage clock; Henry Coleman, Debo’s butler (47 years), got a postbox; Debo herself (55 years) was given a bracelet.

Most of her pictures have been removed for her exhibition, but Debo shows me a lovely little Lucian Freud picture of eggs in a basket. She sees him often. ‘Good old Lu. I take him eggs every time I go to London.’ What does she think of Woman in a White Shirt, his picture of her, painted when she was 34? When Andrew went to see the finished picture at Freud’s studio, there were two men there, one of whom, looking at the painting, asked him, ‘Who is this woman?’

‘My wife,’ Andrew replied. ‘Well, thank God it’s not mine,’ the man said.
Debo thinks that the older she gets, the more like the picture she becomes. ‘Lucian’s great and extraordinary talent when he was doing that style of painting is making a person aged 34 look like I do now, and I’m 90. You know, yellow skin, green moustache. So funny.’

11 thoughts on “Never Marry a Mitford

  1. Pingback: Dowager Duchess of Devonshire – obituary | Patrick Leigh Fermor

  2. Pingback: Paddy’s great friend Debo Devonshire, last of the Mitford sisters, has died | Patrick Leigh Fermor

  3. Pingback: Debo, Chatsworth, Andrew Cavendish and All That | ukgovernmentwatch

  4. gabriella

    When Deborah Devonshire walked into the little church at Dumbleton for Paddy Leigh Fermor’s funeral last year, it was electrifying. She was absolutely the last word in dignity and elegance, and her wreath of home-spun flowers and herbs for Paddy was simply beyond beautiful. I was recalling the event last week with Magouche Fielding (Xan Fielding’s widow) and said “she knocked the socks off everyone else”. Magouche replied “no one else was wearing any socks”.

  5. mthew

    Mitford clan loyalty is endearing, but please, let’s remember that Diana was a fascist and anti-Semite till the end (she died in 2003).

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text:
June 23rd, 2020
Most people that are making money on the internet are not talking about it.

It may feel like there’s a small community of successful entrepreneurs, but there are actually thousands (if not millions) of people making money on the internet who you will never hear about.

Recently, I just heard of a dude who sold his Australian car blog for $60M+.

It’s not that they are trying to keep it a secret, it’s more that they probably don’t care much to tell their story and they just want to live their life.

I think online forums and Twitter are a great way to meet people and for inspiration - but the issue I see is many people treat them as a single source of truth for starting/running a business.

Reddit & Hacker News & YC & Twitter: these communities are amazing but they have turned entrepreneurship into a subculture. If you go on these sites, you’ll read about the “right way” and the “wrong way” of doing things.

When I see that, it's usually a sign I should turn around and go look in a whole new direction.

I always think about this video about investing in the stock market. The key takeaway:

"I retrained my mind to identify game-changing things in my own life that were having game-changing impacts on publicly traded companies. The trick here is to understand that when you see something in your own life that Wall Street hasn't picked up on yet - that's when you have an opportunity to make an information arbitrage investment. Now, the moment that Wall Street starts talking about that thing you earlier picked up on - that's when you exit the investment.

I think that online forums and communities can be very toxic to our minds.

The thing is, to be a great entrepreneur, you need to have a constantly open mind - you need to be able to go into any situation with no assumptions.

Starting a business is precisely about not caring about wanting to be right. Unfortunately, Twitter + online forums are all about wanting to be right.

What I’m trying to say is that to accelerate your success, you need to go out into the world, talk to people, ask questions, and be insanely curious.

Instead of letting information just come to you (podcasts, Twitter, etc), go out and find some new information on your own.

Go find that "simple hack" to 10x your business - I promise that it will be really simple, but I also promise you won't find it in any trendy blog post.

This simple act of getting out and figuring this shit out is what will set you apart from 99% of other people.

Over the past couple months, I’ve been doing this.

Instead of reading blog posts and Twitter, I’m just going out and figuring shit out on my own.

I’m talking to people, asking for feedback, and spending hours scouring actual successful websites and taking ideas from them and applying to my own business.

Doing this + working hard and moving quickly has seen some of the biggest growth at Starter Story.

Last four weeks at starterstory.com


text:
Skip to content

Just Shy Of Infinity

Photo: B. Fertman

Photo: B. Fertman

Who would have thought? I mean, who would have thought that when I was 25 years old and utterly convinced that Marjorie Barstow’s approach to teaching Alexander’s work was superior in every way to the stiff, postural, ritualistic procedures that had come to be known as the Alexander Technique, who would have thought, that forty years later, I would not feel that way?

I mean, wasn’t it completely obvious that working in groups was the best way to develop your eye, that it was the best way to get your students working on their own, of weaning them from dependence on your hands? Didn’t everyone know that group teaching was the way to get the work into the larger system of education, where learning happened in groups, like in universities and elementary schools, in dance classes and yoga classes, and in physical therapy colleges? Wasn’t it as clear as day that working in activities was the quickest way to demonstrate to people that the work was eminently practical? And wasn’t is a no brainer that adhering to a 1600 hour, 3 year residential training model as the only possible model for training was absurd? I mean how could one not recognize this training structure as elitist, as out of touch with the needs of everyday working people? Hadn’t they noticed the emergence of night schools, of adult education, of retreat centers, of all the ways society was enabling hard working people, people with families, to study and train and grow?

Those were my beliefs as a twenty something, arrogant, brazen Alexander teacher. Slowly, very slowly, I got off my white horse, I took off my shining armor, I stopped fighting, and I started questioning everything, most importantly, Marj’s work, and my own opinions.

Really, was my use all that great? Was I not physically uncomfortable some of the time? Wasn’t my body still inflexible in certain ways? Wasn’t I still driven, obsessed? Was I really free to respond to situations the way I wanted? Was I able to control my impulsivity, my anger, my defensiveness? No, I wasn’t. So why did I feel like I knew what was best for the entire Alexander world?

It came down to wanting to be right, special, the best. So of course I had to have a teacher who was the best, better than anyone else. How, without having directly experienced all the approaches to the Alexander Technique I was capable of arriving at the irrefutable conclusion that Marj’s work, and therefore my work was the best work out there, I have no idea. But there you have it, the human mind at work in all of its glory.

I see now that Marj, like everyone, had her strengths and her weaknesses. She had a great eye, but she had her blind spots too. I needed to get some distance from Marj, I needed to see her and her work more honestly if I was going see myself honestly, if I was going to see what I knew, and what I didn’t know, which the older I get I see is just shy of infinity.

For example, Marj changed Alexander’s directions from “neck free, head forward and up, back to lengthen and widen” to, “what would happen if ever so delicately your whole head moved slightly away from your body and your whole body immediately followed?” I clearly understand why Marj chose the language she did, but now I also know what she lost by excluding reference to the neck and the back, and to directional language such as forward and up, or lengthening and widening. I can get both ways of directing to work for me, but honestly, I love Alexander’s directions. At this point they work better for me. I’ve also developed other ways of directing and allowing the primary movement to surge through me, but the point is I know now that there isn’t one way that’s right for everyone, forever, all across the board.

You see that’s the thing. When we are getting something new, we don’t see what we’re losing. And when we are holding on to what we don’t want to lose, we don’t see what we could be getting.

My friend Lena Frederick died in her early 50’s. I would have loved to see who she would have become if she had lived into a ripe old age. Lena trained with Walter Carrington, and then went on to study with Marj for many years. I remember her telling me that Alexander’s procedures were too hard for most everyone. She said that it would have been much easier for her if she had first studied with Marj for about ten years, and then went on to study with Walter.

I didn’t understand what Lena meant by that, but I knew Lena was a wise woman, so I decided to take that in, and clearly I did, because 25 years later here I am realizing it’s true. Now I’m ready to work through Alexander’s procedures. And I’m going to find a way to do that.

It’s like Keith Jarrett, for his entire career an improvisational jazz musician, deciding to play classical music, which he did. Or Steve Paxton, originator of Contact Improvisation, as an old man, deciding to choreograph ever so precisely to Johann Sebastian Bach, which he did. I’ve spent my life teaching improvisationally to Alexander’s principles outside of his classical procedures. I know how to do that.

But if I want to keep growing, if we want to keep growing, we sometimes have to leave what we are good at, we’ve got to go forward toward a place unknown, into a place we resist, into a place we feel is wrong, just what Alexander suggested we do.

It’s in that place where we didn’t want to go, that’s where the gift may lie, just what we need, just what we always wanted.

11 Comments Post a comment
  1. I’m also someone who had, (during my ongoing “training,”) many different teachers who originated their own ways to present what they have come to understand and embody in their embodiment of Alexander’s work.
    Integration is really FUN!
    Depending on how you do what you do – of course you get different results. Defining the order and relative importance of your goals (even if they are transcendent!) will determine if you get them faster or never – also what sort of goals evolve when you arrive! Enjoyed it immensely when David Gorman explained where he branched off of Alexander’s assumptions about how to address student needs. Nice to see you spelling out the next phase of your journey of exploration of A.T. here.
    It appears that you were the sort of person who originates alternate means to accomplish and explore principles of A.T. because you valued the innovative way Marj Barstow translated her understanding of F.M.’s idea for the American culture.
    Now you’re moving more into becoming what some people might call a “diver.” I believe that those who are preservationists are, by nature, people who are “divers.” These are people who go deep into their interest from the starting point to be enriching and “filling out” the form of exactly how they were taught.

    August 6, 2015
  2. Wendy Hardman #

    I like what you have shared, Bruce. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, your learnings, your struggles and your hopes.

    August 5, 2015
    • thanks wendy. so flattered to have a family member reading what i write.

      August 5, 2015
  3. Ian Jorgensen #

    I so appreciate this entry Bruce. Your writing reminds me to honor my past, respect my experience and at the same time willingly move forward and explore, to continue to grow. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

    August 2, 2015
    • my pleasure. thanks for being such a motivated and interested student.

      August 2, 2015
  4. Jennifer Roig-Francolí #

    Excellent. I take my hat off to you, Bruce, for your honesty and humility. And I agree with you 100%. Thank you for expressing this so eloquently.

    August 2, 2015
    • someday I hope we get to meet. thanks for taking the time to read my writings.

      August 2, 2015
  5. Although not a well-known teacher like Ruth (who’s toes I don’t want to tread on), I was also formally trained in Alexander’s procedures so believe I have a lot both to give and receive. I to think that an open mind is something to be treasured. I will be going to Congress in Limerick, but live and work in BANGOR Northern Ireland where you are welcome to stay before or after the Congress. If you’re there I will see you then (I have volunteered to help, so you can’t miss me!)

    August 2, 2015
    • how generous. thank you Don. i won’t be going to the congress this time around. have a great time. and thanks again. bruce

      August 2, 2015
  6. Some exchange then?

    August 2, 2015

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