Regional sheep 'more vulnerable' in Scotland and England

Regional sheep 'more vulnerable'

Sheep such as the Herdwicks are thought to be particularly at risk


A new survey claims regional breeds of sheep face a heightened risk of disease because of their tendency to remain together in one location.

The Sheep Trust report said it showed the need to protect many of the UK's commercially-farmed native breeds.

The study included breeds such as Lake District Herdwicks, South Country Cheviots in the Borders and South Wales Mountain sheep in the Rhondda Valley.

It said such concentration in one place increased vulnerability to disease.

Herdwicks are thought to have arrived in the Lake District with the Vikings.

Today, 95% of these sheep - some 50,000 animals - are still found within about 15 miles of Coniston.

Similarly 95% of the South Wales Mountain breed is less than 17 miles from the coal fields of the Rhondda Valley.

The South Country Cheviot also remains concentrated in the Cheviot Hills of the Scottish Borders.

Clearly vulnerable

Sheep Trust vet Amanda Carson said: "Such an intense degree of localisation makes these breeds vulnerable to devastating losses from major disease outbreaks such as those caused by foot-and-mouth (FMD) or blue-tongue viruses (BTV).

"In 2001, I saw FMD destroy huge numbers of Herdwicks, South Country Cheviot and Rough Fell sheep in Cumbria and now we can see just how dangerous this was for the breed.

"We can also see that the same risk is there for other breeds."

Prof Dianna Bowles, founder and chairman of the trust, said it was clear action needed to be taken.

She said: "We are strongly recommending that new measures are put in place to protect these important genetic resources now that their vulnerability has been so clearly demonstrated."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/south_of_scotland/7923019.stm

Garrett Hardin

Garrett Hardin on the Tragedy of the Commons and Resources



The Tragedy of the Commons
Garrett Hardin (1968)
http://dieoff.org/page95.htm

I had a wonderful talk with a retired doctor tonight at a church supper. We talked at length about Garrett Hardin and his essay Tragedy of the Commons. I haven't had such a good talk in years. We were talking about the current financial crisis but also in depth about resources and more. Who would think you could get into allot of science and economics at the local Methodist church! It was awesome.

The old English word bede or bead

The old English word bede (Anglo-Saxon bed ) means a prayer, though the derivative form, gebed , was more common in this sense in Anglo-Saxon literature. When, in the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the use of little perforated globes of bone, wood, or amber, threaded upon a string, came into fashion for the purpose of counting the repetitions of the Our Father or Hail Mary, these objects themselves became known as bedes (i.e. prayers ), and our modern word bead , as applied to small globular ornaments of glass, coral, etc., has no other derivation. In middle English the word bedes was used both in the sense of prayer and rosary. Thus Shakespeare could still write (Rich. III, iii, 7)
When holy and devout religious men
Are at their beads [prayers ], 'tis much to draw them thence,
So sweet is zealous contemplation.

While of Chaucer's Prioress we are told
Of smal coral aboute hire arm she bar
A peire of bedes, gauded al with grene.

The gauds, or gaudys, were the ornaments or larger beads used to divide the decades. The phrase pair of beads (i.e. set of beads — cf. pair of stairs), which may still be heard on the lips of old-fashioned English and Irish Catholics, is consequently of venerable antiquity. With such speakers a pair of beads means the round of the beads, i.e. the chaplet of five decades, as opposed to the whole rosary of fifteen. Again, to "bid beads " originally meant only to say prayers, but the phrase "bidding the beads ", by a series of misconceptions explained in the "Historical English Dictionary", came to be attached to certain public devotions analogous to the prayers which precede the kissing of the Cross in the Good Friday Service. The prayers referred to used to be recited in the vernacular at the Sunday Mass in medieval England, and the distinctive feature of them was that the subject of each was announced in a formula read to the congregation beforehand. This was called "bidding the bedes". From this the idea was derived that the word "bidding" meant commanding or giving out, and hence a certain survival of these prayers, still retained in the Anglican "Book of Canons", and recited before the sermon, is known as the "bidding prayer ".

The words bedesman and bedeswoman , which date back to Anglo-Saxon times, also recall the original meaning of the word. Bedesman was at first the term applied to one whose duty it was to pray for others, and thus it sometimes denoted the chaplain of a guild. But in later English a bedesman is simply the recipient of any form of bounty; for example, a poor man who obtains free quarters in an almshouse, and who is supposed to be bound in gratitude to pray for his benefactors. Similarly, bedehouse , which originally meant a place of prayer or an oratory, came at a later date to be used of any charitable institution like an almshouse. It has now practically disappeared from literary English, but survives provincially and in a number of Welsh place-names in the form bettws , e.g. Bettws y Coed. Finally, bede-roll , as its etymology suggests, meant the roll of those to be prayed for, and in some sense corresponded to the diptychs of the early Church. The word is of tolerably frequent occurrence in connection with the early English guilds. In these associations a list was invariably kept of departed members who had a claim on their prayers. This was the bede-roll.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02383b.htm

Paternoster Prayer Beads

The beads I made for Jim with large, crude, garnet beads. On the ends a bronze, Celtic cross and a small, quartz, skull bead.

There is an old Medieval practice, older than the Rosary known as "Pater Noster" beads. Before the Rosary, for those who could not pray the 150 psalms, it was considered just as good to say 150 "Pater Noster's," which is the "Our Father" or "The Lords's Prayer" in Latin. The beads had such a close association with the Our Father that they were commonly known as Paternoster beads. Many customs of reciting Paternosters existed in the Middle Ages. The monks at Cluny were urged to recite 50 Paternosters at the death of one of their fellow monks (Udalric, 1096). The Knights Templar, from a rule dating from about 1128, were required to say the Lord's Prayer 57 times if they could not attend choir, and on the death of any of their brethren they had to say the Pater Noster a hundred times a day for a week.

Eye-candy for a Jeweler

There sure are amazing nice agate beads on eBay. It sure is eye candy for a jeweler! I am about to make some bracelets and prayer beads using my pewter charms with stone beads.

And now for something completely different....

“Blue Mustang,” a sculpture at Denver International Airport.


Dick George/Associated Press via The Corpus Christi Caller-Times


A statue of a giant male horse — electric-eyed, cobalt blue and anatomically correct — was installed in February 2008 on the roadway approach to the terminal, and it is freaking more than a few people out.

Haters of this work say that “Blue Mustang,” as it is formally known, by the artist Luis Jiménez (killed in 2006 when a section of the 9,000-pound fiberglass statue fell on him during construction), is frightening, or cursed by its role in Mr. Jiménez’s death, or both. Supporters say the 32-foot-tall horse is a triumph, if only as a declaration of Denver’s courage to go beyond easy-listening-style airport art that many cities use like visual Dramamine to soothe travelers’ nerves.

Love it or loathe it, though, “Blue Mustang” is doing what art is supposed to do — get attention. There’s even a poetry slam planned in Denver to read horse haikus, of which about 250 have been composed, believe it or not.

“It’s definitely achieved its purpose of being memorable,” said Rachel Hultin, a real-estate broker in Denver who started a page on Facebook last month to vent her horse anxieties, byebyebluemustang.com, and found herself at the center of the debate.

Ms. Hultin, who said she started the campaign partly on a whim, “after a few drinks with friends,” also suggested on her page that people post comments in haiku form. Denver residents and travelers who had formed an opinion about the statue while passing through, leapt at the challenge. To wit:

Anxiously I fly
apocalyptic hell beast
fails to soothe my nerves.

Local artists and city public art administrators say “Blue Mustang” has stirred a deeper debate too, about Denver itself, and what sort of image it wants to communicate. Is “Blue Mustang” an echo of the city’s high-plains bronco-busting past? Or a mocking denunciation of the Old West conventions? Or is it just strange?

“People can’t put their finger on what’s it’s conveying,” said Joni Palmer, who is finishing a doctoral dissertation on politics and public art in Denver. “It’s the strangeness that really unnerves people — this mix of things.”

As another of the haiku writers put it:

Big blue horse beckons
Fiery, red eyes glowering
Good bye one horse town.

The airport’s public-art administrator, Matt Chasansky, said airport settings carry fundamentally different psychological baggage than ordinary urban spaces. Like most public art in Denver, he said, the statue was paid for by developers who are required to contribute 1 percent of the cost of major capital projects to public art.

“We don’t want the work to convey things that would make people uncomfortable about flying,” Mr. Chasansky said. No art, for example, would be commissioned with a violent theme. But art that is too soothing, he said, is probably in the end just bad art.

“Quality works of public art are not the works that are completely gentle,” he said.

Yet the specific setting of “Blue Mustang” has evolved since it was commissioned in the 1990s, changing how the work is perceived.

The original design called for a pull-off from the airport road, with benches and ample room to contemplate the statue from all angles. After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, however, the parking area idea was shelved for security reasons.

That makes “Blue Mustang” literally unapproachable: most viewers zoom by, perhaps retaining only a vague impression. The barriers to approach, artists and art critics say, have compounded the piece’s troubles, making it seem even more forbidding by virtue of isolation.

“There’s no location to be able to get intimate with the work,” said Lawrence Argent, an artist in Denver. “It’s a vista from afar, and to many it’s a frightening vista from afar.”

Mr. Argent knows about distant vistas — and outsize animals too. He is best known in Denver for creating a two-story blue bear that peers into a window of the Colorado Convention Center, called “I See What You Mean.” Last fall he received a commission for an installation at Sacramento International Airport in California for a 56-foot-long red rabbit. When the piece is installed as part of a planned airport expansion, the fiberglass rabbit will appear to be leaping through the terminal into a giant suitcase.

Ms. Hultin, meanwhile, who got the ball rolling with her antihorse Facebook page, has changed her mind. She no longer wants “Blue Mustang” removed, as she once did. (City policy holds that public art pieces are left in place for five years, anyway, and officials have given no sign of budging.)

She now thinks that pamphlets at the airport, and maybe education courses for airport bus drivers, could lead viewers into a deeper understanding of the horse and the artist, she said, notwithstanding that she had been called “every name in the book” by defenders of the statue.

“In the process of being personally attacked through e-mail, and through learning more about the piece, I’ve shifted gears from, ‘I don’t think it’s appropriate,’ to ‘Let’s try and understand it,’ ” she said.

But the controversy has also stirred up people in other ways. Conspiracies have floated around the Internet for years about secret bunkers or caverns beneath the terminals at the Denver airport. Symbols of Freemasonry are also said to abound on airport floors and walls.

“It’s brought out the conspiracy theorists who think there are aliens living under the airport,” said Patricia Calhoun, the editor of Westword, an alternative weekly paper in Denver that is helping organize a “Blue Mustang” poetry slam in April to share horse haiku as part of National Poetry Month.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Should the Denver Airport’s Giant Blue Mustang Stay or Go?
Posted by Matt Phillips

A group of Denver locals is banding together in the hopes of getting rid of the giant blue mustang that greets those arriving to Denver International Airport, according to a Journal story published over the weekend.

If reporter’s Stephanie Simon’s description, of the giant statue doesn’t paint a picture for you, check out this slide show of the behemoth:

The mustang rears on splayed hind legs — his nostrils flaring, his eyes glowing red, his taut body a slick, sweaty sheen of blue. Anatomically correct — eye-poppingly so — the 32-foot-tall fiberglass sculpture makes quite a statement at the gateway to Denver International Airport.

But that begs the question: What kind of statement, exactly?

“It looks like it’s possessed,” says Denver resident Samantha Horoschak. “I have a huge fear of flying anyway, and to be greeted at the airport by a demon horse — it’s not a soothing experience.”

Today the journal published a couple letters to the editor with people’s take on the horse. Denver Councilman Charlie Brown wrote:

It’s clear to everyone that it’s a horse, and people only glance at it from their vehicles when they are driving to and from the airport. Denver International Airport is 53 square miles and the statue is next to the terminal, miles away from the view of any homeowner. Are folks offended by the 1950s Western sky blue sheen, the luminous red hangover eyes, or the anatomical correctness?

The mighty, muscular mustang has found a fitting spiritual home. Over time, I believe a majority of residents and visitors to the airport will appreciate “Mustang” for what it is: a powerful and engaging symbol for the captivating West, with its majestic mountains, sweeping vistas, brilliant sunshine and spirit of independence and romance. It’s the lure of Denver.

Meanwhile, Verne J. Harper of Longview, Texas countered:

All they need to do to gain acceptance of the blue mustang is to put a saddle blanket with John Elway’s number on it.





http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/02/arts/design/02hors.html?ref=arts

http://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/2009/02/12/should-the-denver-airports-giant-blue-mustang-stay-or-go/

We are back in the deep freeze!

Last night it dipped down to about 8F. We got about 3 inches of snow as well.