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Posts Tagged ‘horse’

Migrant Workers for Thoroughbreds

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on September 25, 2012 | 3 Comments »

I never thought about this before, but it seems that there is a whole community of migrant workers who take care of the horses at racetracks and then move on at the end of the season.

Melissa Shook, a photographer who has taught at UMass Boston and MIT and whose work is at the Museum of Modern Art, has photographed these so-called “backside workers.” Her pictures appear in a book called My Suffolk Downs. The book is a fundraiser to help these invisible migrants, who have no access to health providers or other social services. A 22-year-old nonprofit called the Eighth Pole is their lifeline.

Read what the Boston Globe‘s Linda Matchan has to say about photographer Melissa Shook and why she loves the racetrack world, here.

Photograph of Melissa Shook by Wendy Maeda, Boston Globe

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Gas Lamps and Ice Delivery

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 20, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

When I told my husband that playwriting teacher Peter Littlefield wanted class members to base a scene on an early moment when we first looked objectively at the adult world, he volunteered memories of his own.

Last weekend, Suzanne, John, and their spouses got to hear about a Philadelphia childhood and the horse that delivered milk, going reliably to the next house while the deliveryman placed bottles at the last one. They learned about an elementary school visit to a dairy company, and how it hit my husband so young that some men spend their whole lives lifting bottles into crates. He also remembered catching the tail end of the street lamplighter age. He has since mentioned ice delivery at the Jersey Shore and how you would put a special sign in the window indicating how many pounds of ice you wanted for that week.

There was also coal delivery in large canvas bags. Believe it or not, my husband is not that old.

Even Suzanne and John should remember that coal was delivered next door for several years after we moved to town. And clearly coal is still being delivered somewhere, as in this video a guy put on YouTube. I especially like the speech balloons he added.

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Horse Agrees Not To Be Extinct

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on July 13, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

I’ve been reading Jason Elliot’s book Mirrors of the Unseen, which is about time he spent in Iran (not long before the green revolution of June 20, 2009, was trampled).

He’s a lovely writer if a bit overwhelming with his ability to compress centuries of history. I liked his earlier book, too, on Afghanistan, An Unexpected Light.

In the car on Sunday I read aloud a section of Mirrors that describes Elliot’s extended stay with Louise Firouz, an American who married an Iranian in the 1960s and has lived in Iran ever since — despite stints in prison and twice having all her family’s property confiscated.

The part I read aloud was about how she had researched, rediscovered, and bred a small horse thought to be extinct, one that turned out to have an ancestor going farther back than the Arabian horse. It’s the little Caspian, which was finally found, in pitiful shape, near the Caspian Sea and in Turkmenistan.

Nowadays you can find lots of videos of these horses on YouTube. I thought I would include this video, which is from a Caspian stud farm in Sweden.

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