Posts Tagged ‘River Falls’
Public Protest
Sitting beside two women I didn’t know, I asked them if they ever imagined this would be happening in our lifetimes. The response from the elder of the two was that it was her second protest of a President because she previously took to the streets in objection to Nixon.
I didn’t know what to expect in terms of numbers but it seemed a little thin at first. We had no difficulty finding a place to park our car. Walking a short distance, we found a line of sign-carrying folks coming down the sidewalk toward us and chanting.
As they reached us, we fell in with the marchers while passing cars honked on our way to the small park where a soap box would be presented for people to speak their minds.
While people robustly expressed their deep dissatisfaction with everything the current administration has been doing, passing cars continued to honk in support of the “Hands Off!” theme. This occasionally triggered those gathered on the other side of the road to start chanting, which drowned out some of the words of the speakers, but we always got the gist of each message.
The small gathering in River Falls drew people from Minnesota on the other side of the St. Croix River, from Hudson, and from Red Wing. It was inspiring.
I learned of the somewhat subtle silent protest of “8647” on a sign, which I think is clever. There were plenty of other witty and creative slogans I found entertaining, as well. Among the many spoken messages shared by citizens, I was particularly pleased to hear one gentleman describing having just returned from a trip around Europe. He shared that the people of several countries they visited were not thinking poorly of us –sympathetic, maybe– but their beef was with our leaders, same as us.
“How are those cheap eggs working out for ya?”
The most moving speaker was a Hispanic immigrant who talked about working long, hard hours milking cows and searching for work that others don’t want to do. She just wanted a little compassion amidst the callous aggression being doled out by masked, plain-clothed ICE agents who are “disappearing” people with no acknowledgment of whether or not violations had actually occurred.
Most of the people who stepped up to the microphone were retirement-age so one guy put up a challenge to the crowd that the next person to speak needed to be under 30. It worked, and soon we were hearing the opinions of several from younger generations.
A lot of people expressed pride in our country and that is why they are protesting. I’m more inclined to admit I was protesting because I’m not proud of my country at this point.
At least, for now, we were still granted the freedom to assemble and exercise our right to free speech. No AI bots and no fake news. Just real people telling it the way they see it. It was cathartic if nothing else.
Rating: 10/10. I’d do it again.
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Horses Shedding
It’s that time of year when horsehair starts showing up everywhere. When you touch them, their hair gets on your gloves. When you rub them, the shedding hair gets in the air. With hair floating on the wind, it gets in your face. If you reach up to swipe the hair from your face, you get more hair than you bargained for.
Case in point:
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Cyndie’s brother, Steve, paid me a visit while his sister is in Florida. We stopped by a paddock gate to visit with the horses and found several of them showing interest in allowing us to give them scratches. Swings stopped by first. She stood for a bit with her nose just at the gate, breathing in our scent. I turned away for a moment and when I looked back, she had stepped forward and was reaching her head completely over the gate.
Steve and I both happily obliged her willingness and rubbed our gloved hands on her head and neck where she seemed to want some scratching action.
Upon receiving her fill, Swings stepped away and Mix moved in for her own dose of similar attention. Mix has a bit of a runny nostril and appeared to think Steve’s jacket served as a fine “tissue” for wiping her nose. Undaunted, Steve served her up a good massage around her head, coming away with two hands full of Mix’s hair.
Steve was playing in a hockey tournament in River Falls this weekend.
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I was able to show up and watch their first game on Friday night and then Steve and I visited a sports bar with live music on Main Street for a late dinner. He came back to our house to spend the night before heading back to River Falls for his second game, after a leisurely morning that included a walk with Delilah and the time with our horses.
Hopefully, Steve wasn’t still finding horsehair clinging to him while he was trying to chase the puck around in game two. I stayed home to enjoy all the shedded hair showing up in our house, and on my clothes, stuck to my boots, on our furniture, getting in my mouth, blowing like tumbleweed across the paddocks…
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Relative Calm
For the most part, calm prevails on the ranch as we settle into a routine of rest and healing for Cyndie. With neither one of us needing to go anywhere, we can operate at a very comfortable pace, guided by the regular intervals of animal feeding times which I must act on.
Cyndie is capable enough now to take care of many things herself, so I don’t need to constantly be in her immediate vicinity. Plus, we continue to be blessed with the added assistance of her mother’s occasional visits, or the home-care nurses and physical therapist.
We received a dusting of snow after last weekend’s melt, making our views a bit more photogenic again, at least for this time of year. I was going through a bit of a picture-taking drought for a while there.
After walking Delilah yesterday morning, I grabbed my camera and headed back outside to see if I could capture some of the scenes that had caught my eye moments earlier.
The horses were so content, messily chomping away on the hay in our two feeders, that I was moved to take some extra time and linger among them. Both Legacy and Dezirea had rubbed their manes into a tangled “braid” that defies logic. I have yet to see how they do it, but it is a recurring phenomena —more so for her than him. They tolerated my interest in detangling their hairdos, continuing to munch at the feeder while I worked.
Delilah patiently waited for me in the barn, where I left her while getting hay. It’s a good day when she quietly waits for me there while I feed the horses. Too often I feel rushed to get back because of her sharp barks of protest for being left longer than she wants.
The only other thing that has disturbed the peace and quiet we’ve been enjoying is an invoice that came in the mail from the city of River Falls. In addition to needing to pay for the towing and repairs to the truck after Cyndie’s little rollover accident, we are also responsible for paying the public service emergency responders for responding. It costs $500.00 to have an accident in River Falls. It adds insult to injury.
Don’t do it, folks. It is not worth it. That money is better spent on groceries. It irks me to no end that they show up and park their cars with flashing lights while the tow truck works, and then bill you five hundred bucks. If they are going to charge you, they should at least inform you, and give you a choice of having them respond or not.
Talk about a dis-incentive for calling for help. Something is seriously messed up if our tax dollars are not sufficient to fund public services. And they have a monopoly. We should have a choice of more affordable options. If they want to charge for services, then privatize it and let us shop for a responder who charges the fairest price.
I told Cyndie that she is not allowed to have any future accidents in or around River Falls, WI. We can’t afford it. We’ve got horses to feed.
Speaking of the horses, that reminds me, it’s time to go back to grazing. I’m going to return to that place of calm. I don’t have to pay an extra fee to do that.
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Relative Something 