Lynne Hanson plays her first Harry


Lynne Hanson is on her way to Merrickville to play for the first time (!) at Harry McLean’s

Saturday, 21st of APRIL, 9 pm.

Her songwriting and singing and the courage to put up with the Saturday-night-crowd of a small town deserves a full house, so come ye all plentiful, no matter shape and size. The following passage is from her homepage:

“A stunning collection of roots-based songs coupled with exceptional vocals and an impressive array of musicians. Every year at KVMR-FM, we’re asked to choose our Top 5 new releases for air play. Things I Miss will surely be on my list!”
– Dennis Brunnenmeyer, Nevada City Limits, KVMR-FM Radio
LATEST NEWS:
River By My Side from Things I Miss won the Blues Award for the Ontario Council of Folk Festivals (OCFF) 2006 “Songs from the Heart” contest.

Things I Miss was featured on CBC Radio One Fresh Air on Sunday August 6th as one of their favorite new CDs of the month.

THINGS I MISS
now available at CD Baby and in Ottawa at the Ottawa Folklore Centre located at 1111 Bank Street (at Sunnyside).

Low-Stompin-Roots in Merrickville

Truthful songwriters and restless picking researchers John Carroll and Mike O’Brien are back at Harry McLean’s Pub this

Saturday, April 7th, 9 pm at no cover charge.

The vibe was great when they played there in March:

Possible that the flames get higher this time even, now that the happy season is just one more snowfall away …

MODERN LIVING Black hole for male hotties

by GEORGIE BINKS (posted on the cbc homepage), freelancer in Toronto

Ever since journalists revealed they were checking out “babes” in a Chicago courtroom to fight the boredom of Conrad Black’s trial last week, a @#$%^&storm has ensued.

Writer Ian Brown devoted a number of paragraphs in a recent Globe and Mail story discussing the hotness of various female legal counsel at the former media mogul’s trial. The only lament was that Judge Amy St. Eve’s body was covered in those darned cumbersome legal robes. It’s too bad the same people designing outfits for female volleyball players can’t come up with something more enticing for female judges’ bodies, but give ’em time. (Don’t forget the whip and boots accessories.)

On the editorial pages and in conversation this week, women have lamented that despite the fact we’ve made great gains professionally, we’re still just good body parts to the world.

As I pondered this, I started wondering what male legal counsel at the trial looked like? Why hadn’t anyone rated them for “hotness”? I know the prosecutorial team had its picture taken and distributed like it was posing for CSI: Chicago a couple of weeks ago, but I haven’t been able to find a list of the hot guys anywhere. I wrote to the Globe and Mail and asked for help, but the newspaper ignored me. Could its team of crack reporters be preoccupied with finding out the name of Barbara Amiel’s stylist?

Then a horrifying thought hit me. Perhaps there are no hot male lawyers there. In fact, the problem might run even deeper. While we women have managed not only to scales the walls of justice, broadcasting, medicine and business, and still manage to be perceived as sex objects to the masses, what has happened with the guys? Shouldn’t they be trying to upgrade in this area, just to make everything equal?

There was always a worry at the onset of the women’s movement years ago that we would be Birkenstock-wearing, hairy-legged uglies if we left the house for the professional world. But thanks to Botox, new bosoms and Blahniks (Manolo) we look even hotter than ever.

Coming up Kates

Why in turn have men not been striving to equal women in the hotness arena? In fact, it’s a huge problem. Look at the hot movie stars we’re served up these days. George Clooney is the still world’s sexiest man. The guy is practically my age. Despite the fact young females are churned out yearly, Scarlett, Kate, another Kate, Cate, Katie, etc., we rarely see a new hot young man hit the media. Yes, that guy who played Harry Potter is now showing his chest hair in magazines (watch out, they’ll make you wax it), but I feel like a pedophile even looking at his picture.

Recently when I spoke to a gay male friend of mine, we lamented the dearth of new sexy guys making their way onto the scene. He and I like to spend our time watching Tim McGraw videos. We both thank God for Daniel Craig, the new James Bond.

The sad thing is that life seems to be imitating art. While older women energetically fight the ravages of time, what are the guys doing? How many men colour their hair? How many take a look at themselves and the potbellies growing over their belts, and head for the gym? Where’s the Curves for guys? I think something along the line of a “Bulges” for the older male set would do a booming business.

Russell Smith, the editor of the online men’s magazine, www.xyyz.ca, says, “I still think women and men are very nervous about the idea of male grooming. It’s frequently mocked as something we really don’t want our men to do.”

Now I can’t lump gay men in with this because, in fact, most of them take great care of themselves. However, that, says Smith, may be what’s keeping straight men from gussying up. “All straight men know if you look too good, it looks like you’re trying too hard and caring too much for yourself. It’s something people think is inherently effeminate.”

Guys seem to think that we don’t care what they look like – we love ’em for who they are. We’re not superficial. Maybe we are though. Imagine this. Take two of the players in the Black trial, like for starters Black himself and his lawyer Eddie Greenspan. Imagine putting those guys in a female wig and maybe a dress. Guys, would you want to date that? Now put them back in their suits and just imagine they are guys. Do we women want to date that? Smith says, “Someone of Eddie Greenspan’s generation would really balk at dying his hair because it seems frivolous and unmanly.”

Talking up tarts

When you look at Conrad Black and his wife Amiel, they actually look more like a father-daughter team. In fact, it’s difficult to tell his daughter Alana from Amiel in the pictures. However, Black and Amiel aren’t actually that far apart in age. I have no personal knowledge of how Amiel looks that good, but I’m guessing she colours her hair, like most women these days. I bet she does a host of other things as well. I bet he steps out of the shower every morning and gets dressed.

Check out any internet dating site. Look at the men over 40 and then take a peek at the women. Do men go bad faster? Or are they simply not trying? I think it’s the latter.

So guys – why not tart up a bit? Then we can read about you in the media. We won’t have to worry our pretty little well-coiffed heads wondering what your opening legal statements were or what your past legal accomplishments are. We can look at your bodies and dream.

Make your move! Wild horses in Canada

by Maren Molthan with excerpts of the National Post

The rare breed Suffield Mustang regenerates in a small herd in the Marlboro Forest of Ontario. Meanwhile Albertans shoot the last examples of the Sundre horses with rifles. Is there a thing like “Canadian Mustangs”?!

Thump! This bunch of grass is ripped off the ground and disappears between Widowmaker’s lips. The dark brown stallion, the waves of his long mane run over his shoulder as he moves, one step, one mouthful, one step, another thump, another step, moving, always moving. The visitor’s eyes light up when Gale O’Grady explains, that this Mustang (from “mesteno”, Spanish, for “ownerless” or “stray”) has never felt anybody riding him. He must at least touch the beast now, but try to approach it. Though its muscled body never moves suddenly, the stallion seems always one step ahead of the horse lover’s careful efforts to come close enough – the horse manages to stay out of arm’s reach, but never runs away. “They are a very unexcited breed. They never run far, only far enough to be out of danger.” Gale O’Grady lays out some other characteristics of an untamed upbringing: “You can see, they move in bands, one stallion can gather up to ten mares, the foals are kept in the middle of the group as they graze, young stallions form bachelor bands, until old enough to challenge the leader or form their own band.”

The O’Gradys are the only breeders of Mustangs in Ontario and maintain what is today probably the biggest Canadian herd of Suffield Mustangs of 30 horses. Five years ago, they brought four pregnant mares, a colt and one mature stallion from out West, having foals every year and refreshing the bloodlines constantly with traded horses from other breeders. The sturdy, highly intelligent and exceptionally healthy horses came from an isolated playground for the genes to improve only under natural selection: The Suffield military base in south-western Alberta. Ever since the last roundup in 1994, most of the remaining few were sold to slaughter­houses. Only the very core found a home on the pastures of concerned horsemen. Now, 23 years and several horse generations later, there are about 300 Suffields traceable with the help of the registry of rare breeds, explains Gale O’Grady.

The Sundre area in Alberta hosts a last herd of a different breed with more curved nose back, to facilitate grazing. About 200 are left, the official government count of 2006 showing 25 less than the year before. Their life could be simple. Four strong legs, which basically solve any possible problem out on the plains. Moving, never grazing one place twice, never finishing the stock completely, leaving it much easier for the ground to recover than under cattle graze. Reforested seedlings are eaten only if the Mustangs are almost starving, and their constant pawing exposes grass for deer.

The galopping symbol of unbreakable freedom. Until a shot rings out to wipe them off their feet or a round up ends their roaming – that has been the end of many Mustangs, as the species does not qualify for federal protection and slaughterhouses pay well. The Canadian government prefers to look at them as being “feral”, meaning derived from domestic stock and not wildlife. But are they so different from wild animals?

The Suffield Mustangs have been left to themselves for about forty years. When the British expropriated local farmers in order to set up the Weapons Testing Range in the third year of the second world war, lots of them left their livestock behind. A roundup in 1945, after the war, counted about 425 horses. Only three years later, the military abandoned the base, leaving behind only a weather station. Twenty years of no military activity went by, with the neighboring farmers using the range as pasture for cattle and horse. In 1965, the military started reusing the range, fencing the land with the horse herds being a lot bigger. By 1994, the natural selection of an unmanaged group of horses had created the Suffield Mustang: an easy keeper, with height from 12 to 17 hands, all colors except grey.

Guss Cothran at the College of Veterinary Medicine of Texas’ reputed A&M University – his colleagues presented a cloned foal there, in 2005 – confirms: “Being isolated and running free for generations, the horses redevelop wildlife skills, e.g. being economic with their energy, thus not running very far from the intruder, and running away another little piece, should he, she, it come too close again. Strong herd instincts are another criteria.” The scientist is involved in research in order to manage genetic health of herds in the US, where the situation seems a little bit better, and the Bureau of Land Management propagates the Mustang as “making excellent riding stock” and organizes auctions of “Excess” – the number of wild horses, that the government researchers consider being too much pressure for the land, trying to find them private owners. But it’s been only been some weeks since the Senate passed a law to prevent them from being sold to slaughterhouses. Cothran explains that genetic tests leave no doubt about the intertwined development, the hoofed spirit has taken through the millenniums: “The vast majority of the North American Mustangs are mongrel, meaning that they are of mixed breed origins. The Przewalski is the only true wild horse remaining and it is different from the domestic in that is has an extra pair of chromosomes. Only a small number of herds, about five percent, show strong evidence of Spanish horses.” Cothran’s genetic testing proved a direct genetic link between wild horses of the BC Brittany Triangle and their Spanish ancestors, where friends of the Nemaiah Valley still fight to have the government recognize their claim on the grounds of the Xeni Gwet’in First Nation, who proclaimed a wild horse reserve there in 2002. The Sundre variety with its long tail, smaller and sturdier statue simply physically resembles the Caballos of the Spaniards quite obviously. The explanation, that the remaining Canadian wild horses are the great-grand-children of far bigger logging horses, can’t appeal to anyone who takes the time for a closer look.

To confuse things further: the ancestor to all of this, first appeared in North America about 50 000 years ago, gradually shaping the modern horse, equus callabus, only to fade again from this continent 10 000 years ago. However, not all of them fell victim to hunters and ice age, it is believed. Some herds migrated to Eurasia, where they diversified further, under both free and captivated conditions. The Spaniards brought them back to North America in the 1500s, and the escaping horses started to form the legendary Mustang herds that North America once was so known for. Blackfoot raiders introduced the mustangs to Alberta in the 1700s. Explorer David Thompson recorded horses in the Sundre area in 1808. Three million wild horses filled the new continent with life around the 1800s. Now researchers estimate, that there’s not even 8.000 left.

Albertan authorities also organize roundups – a permit costs $280 – but with a lot rougher consequences: a limited number of the horses are sent to slaughter or, the more fortunate ones, sold for breeding. The Wild Horses Of Alberta Association WHOAS would like to stop this drain for a while to allow the horses to expand and renew their gene pool. “WHOAS has never said that the horses should be left totally alone, but we think their numbers should be allowed to recover,” Bob Henderson says. “They are not overrunning the ecosystem.” The WHOAS president describes the unique role of the horses in the harsh conditions of the Canadian West: In winter, rival stallions will allow their herds to mingle for survival, and deer will sometimes take refuge among horse herds to escape wolves. With no new-borns to protect, the Sundre Mustangs let people approach up to 50 m at this time of year – an easy distance to practice your aim. The latest shooting hit two adults and two seven-month-old foals found on January 23rd. Having spent decades in police service in Calgary, Henderson was outraged: “There was still skin on the faces. My reaction was real hurt. Anger. Being a cop all those years, I’m able to turn it off. But my wife, she just cried for the longest time.” On a hunting trip he saw Sundre’s wild horses first in 1972. “They just awed the hell out of me. I knew then what it meant to be free.” The Sundre killings can be prosecuted under Section 444 of the Criminal Code, which carries a penalty of up to five years for anyone who willfully kills or maims an animal. But Henderson would like to see the horses protected under their own legislation. “They are perfectly adapted to fit their environment,” he says. “What we are fighting is attitudes. It’s how you perceive things. They represent part of our history and they are beautiful.”

In Ontario, Gale and Barry O’Grady agree, that the Mustang deserves to enjoy the status of an endangered species: “If some private owners, horse lovers and dedicated individuals didn’t breed it, the Suffield Mustang would be gone by now. The position of the federal government seems bureaucratic and very casual. These animals are a center piece of Canadian heritage. The people around us are fascinated with their beauty. Officials are getting very late to acknowledge, what Mustangs have done for the societies of the North American continent.”

The O’Grady’s have an open doors day in June. They sell their Suffields as friendly and reliable riding horses all year long. Please call for more information or email: 613 283 3650, logrady@webruler.com and make sure to visit their web pages: www.webruler.com/logrady.

All pictures show horses of the O’Gradys stock in Ontario. They were taken by the O’Gradys, Sue Peck and Maren Molthan. We welcome publication in your medium. Please get in touch with the editor BEFORE you publish. Thank you for your consideration!