A Scrumptious Killer Nashville This Year

The Franklin Marriott Cool Springs Convention Center in Franklin, Tennessee, is again hosting the scrumptious Killer Nashville conference next week, August 20-22. Scrumptious, that is, in terms of its rich variety of offerings for writer and fan alike, and the sheer fun of going. You can solve the mystery of the annual dead body and win a free Killer Nashville for next year; buy a wide selection of books from the bookstores and/or their authors; get your manuscript critiqued; and learn how to write knockout dialogue. Above all, you can revel in being with people who share your love of mysteries. I promise you there is so much to do that you'll be sorry the conference doesn't last longer. There are more than forty separate seminars, workshops, lectures, and presentations.

Of great interest to CSI or Law and Order buffs like me, those who are fascinated with police procedure or gathering real facts for a novel, look for the fourteen seminars on forensics. Presented by experts in psychology, medicine, and law enforcement, these sessions provide in-depth information about forensic science, criminal psychology, investigative techniques, and firearms.

And if you come, please look me up! I'll be moderating an unusual panel on Friday, August 20, "Grow Old Along With Me: The Aging of Series Protagonists." It will be at 4:00 PM. And on Saturday, August 21 at 8:30 AM, join our group in discussing the Father of American Detective Fiction. That fellow above. Look for "Edgar Allan Poe: Dark Inspiration" in your schedule of events.

Killer Nashville has a number of special rates and discounts, including discounts for seniors, teachers, and full-time students. Special hotel discounts are available to conference attendees. If you'd like to know more, go to http://www.killernashville.com.

Zenyatta who?

Laura Hillenbrand, the author of the wonderful book "Seabiscuit: An American Legend," was interviewed on National Public Radio by Scott Simon on July 17, 2010. Her book led to one of the best equestrian movies I've ever seen, "Seabiscuit," starring three of the finest actors in the business: Jeff Bridges, Chris Cooper, and Tobey McGuire. Little wonder I listened carefully to what Hillenbrand had to say about the newest sensation in horse racing, the captivating mare Zenyatta, who is winning and winning and winning one race after another. Hillenbrand was so enthusiastic about the mare's performance that when she mentioned that listeners might like to watch Zenyatta on YouTube, I went to my computer and found this clip from the 2010 Vanity Handicap: http://www.youtube.com/resultssearch_query=zenyatta+vanity+handicap&aq=3.

I advise you to watch Zenyatta move up past all the other horses to win. Then read the Simon/Hillenbrand interview at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128584725&ps=cprs. You'll see that everything the dazzled Hillenbrand said in the interview about Zenyatta is true.

How I would love to see this mare run!

Botulism and Flooding

Several months ago, I read an article about the deaths of four horses at a riding stable near my home. They died from botulism, a devastating kind of food poisoning that comes from a neurotoxin, defined by Webster's as "a poisonous complex especially of protein that acts on the nervous system." The effects of botulism upon a horse may include muscle tremors, a weakness so pervasive that the animal cannot stand up, the loss of the ability to control his or her tongue and thus the process of swallowing, and a stiff, short, stumbling gait. Death results because of the horse's paralyzed respiratory system, or from associated health problems.

Botulism occurs when horses eat feed or water that contain the deadly toxin. For example, haylage, a silage made from partially dried grass, can be contaminated during raking and baling. Perhaps the body of a dead animal, maybe a snake or a rabbit, is caught in a bale. When several horses develop botulism, the vet looks for poisoned feed or water. What is so troubling for owners is that sometimes the silage may look and smell rotten, and it can be disposed of. But often, the poisoned feed shows no sign of spoilage, and then the horses eat it.

In the case above, it may well be that the recent flooding in Tennessee caused the fields to flood and the hay to get wet. It decayed and the toxic bacteria entered the horses' bodies either by ingestion or through a cut.

When a horse is hospitalized for botulism, the cost is often prohibitive for the owner. The sick horse must be given a serum over many days at $700 for each bag.

While we read about the tragic ways in which the recent flooding affected human beings, we often forget that horses are prey to natural disasters too.

Art Thieves Don't Look Like Brosnan or McQueen

I learned the pleasures of visiting art museums at an early age in Buffalo, where regular visits to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery was common for children. One of the best art experiences I ever had years later was in London, where the prestigious museum I kept going back to (I believe it was the Victoria and Albert) served breakfast in its restaurant. After a scrumptious pastry or two, I would prowl the huge museum at my leisure and see things I had only read about.

Coupled with my love for art museums is my love of heist movies. I've seen many, but one I really enjoyed was the charming movie "The Thomas Crown Affair," a remake of the old Steve McQueen movie but this time starring Pierce Brosnan. Now I've started reading about real thefts, stories in which the thieves are scruffy, weasly, cruel and greedy. I'd like to recommend to my readers "The Gardner Heist" by Ulrich Boser. I've never visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the scene of the largest unsolved art theft in history. The author tells the story of his quest to solve the mystery, a search that took him all over the world. And he is still searching, by the way. See his blog The Open Case at http://theopencase.com/columns.php?page=blog&ctitle=The+Gardner+Heist&blog_id=11.

Two Treats from Michael Flatley

In my blog of June 5, I talked a little about my love of clogging. Having discovered Michael Flatley of Riverdance fame long ago, I wondered about the connection between clogging and Irish Step Dance and tap dancing. And here's the answer. Through a little research, I discovered that "the troubles between the British and the Irish in the mid-18th century, coupled with the great famine, brought a mass exodus of Irish to the shores of America. Many Irish settled in the Appalachians, bringing their music and dance with them. Irish step dancing thus influenced the creation of Appalachian clogging. American tap dancing was also influenced by a combination of African rhythm and Irish percussive foot work." For more on this, go to http://www.ehow.com/about_5453202_history-irish-step-dancing.html.

However, Michael Flatley, having won international acclaim for Step Dancing, exceeded even himself and created his own version, which you can never forget if you've seen him dance. Here's what he says: “What I'm doing there is an accelerated version of Irish traditional dancing." He says more: “At the same time, I have incorporated the upper body movement and all of the arm movements, but it’s not done like ballet. It’s not done like tap and it’s not done like flamenco. It’s something that I had to create from scratch because nothing else would have fit there.” Go to http://worlddance.suite101.com/article.cfm/michael_flatley_biography#ixzz0qITKVQO7

Here are two YouTube excerpts of Flatley's dancing. The first is his "Thunderstorm" from Riverdance. Notice that his arms are freely and naturally moving, as opposed to traditional step dancing. The dancers' percussive steps are perfectly executed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytcZIfvSWW4 And last today, notice how his style has changed in his "Feet of Flames Finale." I like the Spanish influences so much. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdD5Te_ZZys&feature=related

Clogging Makes You Smile and Smile

I first found clogging on the Blue Ridge Parkway of Virginia, and I have loved to watch it ever since. A friend and I were driving on the Parkway and he knew of a store close to one of the mileposts. The sights and smells of the store turned out to be fascinating to a newcomer from the cold and ice of Buffalo (that's me), and we had fun browsing for drinks and treats.When we emerged to go back to our car, some energetic people were setting up a portable stage for what turned out to be clogging. The women were dressed in brightly colored blouses and big skirts, the men is neat shirts and trousers, and they all wore tap shoes. There was canned blue grass music, the volume turned up high. It looked like a square dance to me, but the dancers were clogging, that is, performing heavy, stamping steps. The rhythm in this percussive dancing is catching. And I liked the way the dancers and onlookers grinned from ear to ear. You just can't help it, when you're around clogging.

Just a few months ago, I walked downtown to the square, and suddenly heard bluegrass. In front of the bank, cloggers had set up to dance. This time, it was anything goes, and as a CD played, everyone got into the act: an elderly man, a child of about three, two high schoolers, a middle aged man who was really good. They clogged away deliriously, while I stood in the heat and watched and enjoyed and grinned.

To get an idea of what southern clogging looks like in action, go to this link to YouTube. I found it recently. This is real, southern clogging, and this time, there are wonderful, old-time musicians.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs2j8f7H2WY

Disaster on May Day

Saturday, May 1, was no happy day of feasting, dancing, singing, love, and gathering flowers, as it was in the May Day holiday of medieval times. Far from it. That was the day the river that encircles my community like a belt rose in its bed and flooded us out.

It started raining sometime after after noon on Saturday, Day One. By Saturday evening, people on our street were advised by the police to evacuate our homes, because of the intensity of the flooding that had already occurred. "Shut off the electricity before you go," one policeman told us. By that time, I had watched a strange drama out of my back windows. My neighbor, insisting plaintively that he didn't know how to paddle, was nonetheless taking his property out of his home by canoe, "docking it" after each trip in my yard where the flood waters mysteriously stopped and some grass was still visible. The water in his back yard was so high that a volunteer trying to maneuver the canoe by its bow was standing in water up to his waist. And the water had roiling waves. In the pasture beyond our back fences, a new lake had formed that looked perfectly natural, in fact, oddly pleasant. Out of my front windows, I watched canoes ply their way up and down the street. Some people were determined to get some fun out of the situation. A teenager walked through the water, never realizing what was in it: it was toxic with detritus and horse manure from the house with the four horses down the street, and such things as the plastic bag that washed up on my lawn containing what looked like shoe liners complete with worms.

On Sunday, my family and I went to my house to get the furniture up on blocks, tie up the curtains, and do anything else to save my home. The rain was eerily heavy, the street flooded and dangerous. We worked frantically to ready the house and then left the area as quickly as we could. We didn't know when it would stop raining.

By Monday, when I went back to my house to see if the water had risen inside (miraculously it hadn't), neighbors were sitting in front of their houses watching the water slowly, agonizingly slowly, receding. A thoughtful neighbor had put an old can at the edge of the flood water, and watchers in lawn chairs sipping drinks were using this as an indicator. Every time the water moved, the neighbor would move the can. The water receded, but the devastation remained. And now, my neighbors had to start getting back the comfortable homes upon which they so depended.

Editors are Often Angels

My latest novel, He Trots the Air, is presently being edited by an angel. Well, not like the ones with wings and sometimes swords. Nevertheless, thank heavens for her. As a teacher of literature, I've learned that people read novels many different ways. They bring to the story their own frames of reference and interpret the themes of novels in ways authors never imagined when they were sitting at their computers and sweating out the composing process. Dedicated writers obsess over every word, every sentence, every paragraph. I have written the same two paragraphs 17 times, and in the present editing process, cast a jaundiced eye at those paragraphs and some inner compulsion forced me to write an 18th version. And yet I know that e-mail from readers will tell me their reactions to the book and my eyes will widen with surprise. That's why editors are so important. Angelic editors bring a scrupulously objective reading to their author's work whether they like the book personally or not, their mission to improve the book, make it clearer and more enjoyable. When my editor said, "I don't understand this," or "How about more detail about XXX?" it was tremendously helpful. In one case, I took out a rather rather abstruse reference I thought everybody understood, and in the other, filled in some extra descriptive words about the appearance of a character I thought would be perfectly clear in the imaginations of my readers.

FOSH Fights Soring

As we've learned, Tennessee Walkers and other gaited horses are prey for those who sore their animals for greed and prestige. Today, a few words about Friends of Sound Horses (FOSH), a group I think highly of for its active defense of gaited horses and condemnation of soring. Its mission is "To promote all "sound," naturally gaited horses, with a specific emphasis on Tennessee Walking Horses. (“Sound” means not “sored”)." The group educates the public about the "humane care, training, and treatment of all gaited horses for their emoti0nal, mental and physical well-being. FOSH will only support flat shod or barefoot horses, and will never endorse any event that uses stacks and/or chains as action devices, nor any mechanical, chemical or artificial means to modify the natural gait of the horse."

FOSH really goes after those who sore. On their web site, the FOSH folks have an excellent page devoted to soring. But they don't leave it there. I especially admire their bravery in publishing Horse Protection Act (HPA) Violations Lists up to 10/16/09, and their state-by-state map of HPA suspensions. I've said here before that one of the ways to get rid of soring is to expose its practices to the light, and now FOSH has exposed the people who do it. They cannot hide. FOSH also suggests ways to work on this problem, including joining FOSH and becoming a volunteer. Read their "Volunteers Welcomed" page. You'll find something to do, I'm sure, as you read the really useful list of things that need to be done to get rid of soring.

There is much more at the FOSH site to enjoy. If you like what you see, you might consider joining the group and enlisting as a volunteer.

http://fosh.info/index.html

Horse Tortured for Fifteen Years

About a week ago, a new acquaintance told me the following story which she has never forgotten. She and her husband were at an auction of older horses, looking to buy. One horse didn't get any bids and when the auction ended, the couple walked to the horse's stall to observe it more closely. That's when they noticed the telltale marks on its hooves and legs and the lack of vitality in the poor animal. It looked worn out. Someone who was well acquainted with the owner told the couple confidentially that the horse had not been out of its stall in 15 years,except for shows, and the owner intended to euthanize it if he couldn't sell it. And that's just what happened the next week. To his credit, the husband met the owner at a horse event and raked him over, telling him what he thought of him for doing that to a horse.

The reasons why this abuse is still happening are politicians who don't want to offend the horse industry and sp won't act, and the federal government, that doesn't give the inspectors enough money to cover all the gaited horse competitions so that the abusers can be caught. The Horse Protection Act is thus not enforced to the fullest extent.

The worst people of course are the owners and trainers obsessed with making money and winning prizes and the dubious prestige that goes with the prizes when horses have been sored, and so will do anything necessary to torture their horses in order to win. Even when the offenders are caught, the punishments are not nearly harsh enough. What would be appropriate would be with one infraction, the sorers would never be allowed to participate in another event, and they would have their horses taken away. They would never be able to own horses again either. And I would legislate huge financial penalties and even jail time. I would also work hard to change the tax codes of a particular state to classify the horse in more ways than just farm animals.

What can we all do about this? At least let your representatives in Congress know how you feel about it, stressing that some states' names are blackened in the public's view because of the filthy reputations of sorers who live there, and urging the politicos to use their power in Washington to get rid of soring. Go to http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml to find your reps and contact them. And because sorers profit from the silence of people who care but do nothing, find some way to work on horses' behalf actively besides donating money. If you have web sites or blogs, write about the problem, and get it out in the light where people will learn about it. Become a member of an active horse protection group. Read good web sites where there are opportunities for you to do something substantial. In my next blog entry, I'll tell you about an excellent group that needs your help.

The Savagery of Soring

In all discussions of soring, we have to remember that there are many trainers who work with gaited horses in a humane way without having to resort to torture; indeed, I believe that knowing what the sored horse goes through, they are ashamed of what their fellow trainers do for ribbons, money, and prestige. Several years ago, a prominent local citizen told me that he had given up showing his Walking Horses, even though he had trained them with kindness and patience, because he couldn't stand seeing the other horses that had been the object of savagery.

The techniques of soring as seen in the damaged hoof above, are bad enough, but it doesn't stop there. As discussed on the Protecting Horses page of my web site at http://www.mmfisher.com/, The Horse Protection Act of 1970 was designed to eliminate soring, but political pressure from influential business people in the horse industry, inadequate funding from the federal government, and the arrogance of those who sore their horses and who will not stop have hobbled the enforcement of the law for almost four decades. The law involves inspection of horses. And here is where the afflicted horses suffer more. In "The Cruelest Show on Earth," the Humane Society says that some people train their horses not to respond when inspectors palpate their ankles and legs to find out if they have been sored. How do trainers do this to their animals? By beating with blunt instruments or attaching alligator clips to sensitive parts to cause pain, or putting a painful device in their mouths: all to force the horses to concentrate on the "new pain" rather than in the "old" pain in their feet or legs. They must not move. This process is called "stewarding" within the industry, an ironic double usage. As an English teacher, I can't help but see the irony here. The word "steward" was in use before the twelfth century and meant, as it does today, someone who is in charge, who directs affairs, who has great responsibility. Stewards then can be those who run horse shows in the right way, those officials most in evidence at shows, or a trainer who works in a stall or pasture, torturing, stewarding his animal into silence.

Some years ago, I included abuse of horses in a list of topics my students could choose to research for their essays. We talked about each topic and its possibilities, and when we came to the horse question, a student in the back spoke up loudly and clearly: "I don't know what all the fuss is about. It's just a horse." What that eighteen-year-old said was crude and ignorant, but is true of too many "adults" who are equally unable to consider the horse as anything more than an animal who is worth money, prizes, and prestige. It is a horrible prestige, this maiming of animals for no good reason, and people who respect, care for, indeed, love their horses regard sorers with horror and loathing.

I discuss the Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration of 2009 on the Protecting Horses page at http://www.mmfisher.com/.

My Neighbor's Cherished Horses

Snow. All day yesterday. The tall trees left in the backyard along the fence (the ones still standing after a tornado hit a couple of years ago) looked black from my back kitchen windows. On the other side of the fence, the empty, white, snow-covered pasture stretched back to snowy farm buildings. Everything black and white with a leaden sky. As I came into the kitchen to make tea, I happened to glance out the windows just as five horses--black, white, brown--galloped along the fence in a perfect line, one behind the other, head to tail. They were moving in perfect rhythm and complete abandonment through the cold air and thick, falling snow. I thought how beautiful those cherished horses were in motion: strong and free and joyous.