You are currently browsing The Intransigent One’s articles.
V in the evening sun
Fairly well this year, as long as we keep up with watering!
Le jardin chez Arbourist et Intransigentia
Hi everybody, just a random update from your friendly Intransigent blogger, to lighten the mood around here. I have a tale of a happy convergence of circumstances.
One day, I’m at the horse rescue and another volunteer invites me to come to a different horse-establishment to meet her horse. Of course I said yes! So we made a date, and I met up with her and her horse, and as we’re fussing over her horse and giving him treats, she asks me, have you ever thought of starting to ride again. I (as cheerfully as I can manage) say “nope, I’m too fat.”
We carry on pampering her horse, and the owner of the barn stops by to chat. “So,” she asks, quite innocently like there was no ulterior motive in getting me to visit, “Have you ever considered starting to ride again?”
I do my little nope too fat, shrug, self-deprecating laugh thing.
The barn owner looks me up and down, and says, “We have a couple lesson horses who could handle youno problem. Email me if you’d like to have a lesson sometime!”
I emailed her as soon as I got home, and lessons started the week after singing lessons ended for the summer!
A few observations upon getting back in the saddle after eighteen years on the ground:
- Everything is still there mentally, but the balance and fitness to do what I remember, has left the building
- Riding, especially posting trot, is way more exercise than I remember
- Horses are still very silly, unpredictable animals
- Falling off hurts about the same amount as ever
On my old blog, where I haven’t posted in years, I at one time had a series of posts called “spot the misogyny”, where I had been making an effort to document misogynist images and texts in my everyday environment. The rule was, I couldn’t go out looking for them; I had to just stumble across them in my everyday life. I can’t promise how often I’ll do it here, but I just happened to stumble across this ad today:
This isn’t as blatant, by a long shot, as some of the things I’ve captured, but it was a little microaggression getting in the face of every woman passing the sign. For what I find misogynist about this image, see below the fold. Read the rest of this entry »
(Everybody is free to toe the party line)
In an email leaked today to the Ottawa Citizen, the federal government has plans to increase surveillance of Canadians to include all demonstrations and protests:
“The Government Operations Centre is seeking your assistance in compiling a comprehensive listing of all known demonstrations which will occur either in your geographical area or that may touch on your mandate […] We will compile this information and make this information available to our partners unless of course, this information is not to be shared and not available on open sources. In the case of the latter, this information will only be used by the GOC for our Situational Awareness.”
The Government Operations Centre is a federal agency tasked with managing strategic planning for situations affecting national interests, such as pandemic and natural disaster planning, and also acts as an intelligence clearing-house. It was involved with compiling information on Aboriginal protestors against fracking, but apparently now it’s interested in everybody who disagrees with federal policies and cares enough to make a sign and go marching around with it.
Remember, Canadians: freedom is for businesses, not for people.
Happy Birthday Arbourist! I’m looking forward to being with you for at least the next 40!
At my latest visit to Rescue 100, I was fast enough with my camera to catch Sophia going for a roll. The ground was much drier, so she didn’t get super-messy.
Yes, that is snow in the foreground. In May.
More horse pictures below the cut Read the rest of this entry »
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…