Headless Horsemen, the Secretariat trailer, and the Kentucky Derby

The 2009 book Headless Horsemen: A Tale of Chemical Colts, Subprime Sales Agents, and the Last Kentucky Derby on Steroids Jim Squires came out in paperback yesterday. It's a fascinating read, particularly the sections on the evolution of sky-high yearling prices and the speculation that a long-time Churchill Downs vet essentially fixed the Derby for decades.



Just in time for the Kentucky Derby, Disney releases the trailer for its October Secretariat. From the trailer's tone, it seems to be an even more manipulative piece of handsome fluff than 2003's overrated Seabiscuit. But while Seabiscuit's story was of the comeback kid, combining genuine achievement with the ever-popular story of that magical second chance, Secretariat's is a tougher sell. What do you say about a freak of nature, a horse whose heart was literally - not choked-emotion-in-a-chord-swelling-speech - larger than normal? The trailer indicates that the filmmakers chose to focus on the horse's owner, and her challenges facing a male establishment at the dawn of the feminist era. All in bright, crazy Disney style, of course. But for once, that sturdy Disney hyperbole fits. At the end of the trailer, when an unseen man cries out "You about to see something you ain't never seen before!" it rings true. Secretariat's boringly simple story - great racehorse wins and wins and wins, and is declared a champion and wins some more - is an engine powerful enough to cut straight through the rags and tatters of a typical Hollywood horse story. Let's see if it does.

A regional publisher, Dementi Milestone, is bringing out a glossy book of Secretariat-related stories and photos in September. Secretariat's Meadow: The Land, The Family, The Legend by Kate Chenery Tweedy (daughter of Penny Chenery, Secretariat's owner) and Leeanne Ladin.

Returning from 1973... The field is set for 2010's Kentucky Derby. There's a filly in it for the first time since Eight Belles in 2008, the bay Devil May Care. NBC will cover the race from 4-6pm EST. The first 2 hours and 50 minutes will, of course, center largely on what celebrities are in the stands, interviews with long-suffering trainers and inane banter from the commentators.

Saddles For Breakfast (1961)

Saddles For Breakfast

Janet Randall, il. Paul Lane

1961, David McKay Company, Inc.

Curled dejectedly on her bed in one corner, Robin could barely hear her small radio above the noise of the ten-year-old twins, Drucy and Donna, playing across the room. She found herself envying girls who had rooms of their own. Once again the longing to escape swept over her.

16-year-old Robin Marshall is restless and dissatisfied with life in a small Oregon town. Desperate for a change, she persuades her parents to send her to work at the California riding school run by her cousin, Cora Galloway. Life at Sycamore Stable, in a canyon outside Los Angeles, is different than she expected - Cora and her 16-year-old son Butch are struggling to make ends meet after a girl was killed riding one of their horses the previous year. But Robin rises to meet the challenge of working with her hostile cousin Butch and makes a new friend in Paula. When Cora's laid up, Robin volunteers to stay over the winter and continue helping out.

Engaging, with a nice mix of teenaged angst and horsey interest. Robin struggles with homesickness, a hostile cousin, a snobby girl and her own insecurities, including an attraction to a college boy. Her first hurdle is handling the less-than-glamorous truth that Sycamore is a shabby hack stable, not the gleaming lesson barn of her imagination.

Her eyes swept the other horses. Even her untrained eye told her that they were a far cry

from the saddle animals at Greenbriar farm. A few, like one dainty black mare, appeared handsome and high-spirited, but others were well past their prime, with poor conformation or splints from long years of hard riding.

After that first shock, Robin learns to roll with the punches. She learns more about horses and riding at Sycamore than she had at her fancy barn back home, and discovers that her reactions to people - like the unflappable Val - can be colored by her own worries.

Leave it to Val to never lose that saucy self-assurance. For a moment she wondered if that was one of the reasons she found it so hard to like the other girl. There were so many times in her own life when she wasn't sure of herself at all.

A fun, quick read overall, though cousin Butch wears out his surly, bad-tempered welcome early. Robin's friends are acquired a bit too easily, and the pity Robin feels for her beleaguered cousins seems a bit overdone at times. Her next horse book, Pony Girl, was a smoother, more polished work although written for younger children.

Sycamore Stable horses

Pepper - mare

Peppito - foal

Ballerina - black mare

Rex- bay gelding

Dolly - black pony

Leo - bay gelding

Volcano - piebald gelding

Vixen - palomino mare

Sweetheart - gray mare

Major - chestnut gelding

Redbird - sorrel

Jericho - gelding

Fritz - bay gelding

Sorcerer - palomino gelding

Peanut - pinto pony

Tampico - gelding

Books

Saddles For Breakfast (1961)

Pony Girl (1963)

Jellyfoot (1964)

Miracle Of Sage Valley (1958)

Burro Canyon (1964)

Non-horsey

Tumbleweed Heart (1959)

Desert Venture (1963)

The Seeing Heart (1965)

Brave Young Warriors (1969)

Topi Forever (1969)

Buffalo Box (1969)

Island Ghost (1970)

The Girl From Boothill

with husband (as Jan Young)- Nonfiction
54-40 Or Fight: The Story of the Oregon Territory

To Save A Tree: The Story of the Coast Redwoods

Forged In Silver: The Story of the Comstock Lode

Liberators Of Latin America

Frontier Scientist: Clarence King

Simon Bolivar: The George Washington of South America

The Last Emperor: The Story of Mexico's Fight for Freedom

Reluctant Warrior: Ulysses S. Grant

The 49'ers: The Story of the California Gold Rush

Plant Detective: David Douglas

Empire Builder: Sam Brannan

Old Rough And Ready, Zachary Taylor

Seven Faces West

Pikes Peak Or Bust

Gusher: The Search for Oil In America

Mr. Polk's War

Anza, Hard-riding Captain

The Story of the Rocky Mountains

with husband (as Jan Young)- Fiction

Across The Tracks

Where Tomorrow?

Run, Sheep, Run (1959)

One Small Voice (1961)

Sunday Dreamer (1962)

Good-bye, Amigos (1963)

The Undecided Heart (1970)

Links

I unfortunately have no access to the cover; an image is available at eBay

About the author

1919-

Jane Badger Books has a nice bit on Janet Randall's biographical information

About the publishing house

David McKay Company, Inc.was founded in Philadelphia in 1882 by a 22-year-old Scottish immigrant who'd begun working for J.B. Lippincott & Co. at the tender age of 13. During the 1930s, the company published some of the first comic books, including Popeye, The Phantom and Blondie and Dagwood. The publisher was located on Washington Square, heart of Philadelphia's venerable and now mostly departed publishing industry and to my mind the single most pleasant, most Philadelphian spot in the city after Independence Square, directly catty-corner to the north-east.

News, etc.

24-year-old James Stierhoff wins the Maryland Hunt Cup on Twill Do after Across The Sky blows a 30-length lead with a refusal at the third-to-last fence.

Further south, the Rolex **** is chugging along despite tornado warnings and the haphazard routes of European riders to circumnavigate the volcano debris to reach the U.S. My lanky favorite, William Fox-Pitt, is currently in the lead on Cool Mountain. Fellow Brit Oliver Townend, who won Badminton and Burghley last year, fell from Cruise Master and was hospitalized. He and the other three people who fell on today's cross-country course all appear to be fine, and set to complete the competition.



William Fox-Pitt and Cool Mountain at the Head of the Lake, Rolex.

Rachel Alexandra is going to race for the second time this year, heading to Friday's La Troienne Stakes at Churchill Downs.

The first Saturday in May is closing in, and so the Derby stories are coming out of the woodwork. One of the more esoteric is that Major League Baseball coach Joe Torre owns a share of a Derby contender this year, Homeboykris (oh, the humanity).

And lastly, my alma mater, Rutgers, is holding its annual celebration in New Brunswick. Part of the weekend-long proceedings is an auction of horses used by the school to give students in the agricultural program hands-on experience in caring for and training young horses. In the past, Rutgers bought draft-cross foals from ranches out West that specialized in producing Premarin, an estrogen replacement for women, from pregnant mares' uring. This year, they branched out and also bought four mustangs from Nevada. Not all the horses sold last year; the economy has people cutting back. So good luck, RU Rambling Rose, RU Canella (pregnant), RU Casanova, RU Marley (mustangs), and RU Firedance, RU Pardner, RU The Good Witch, RU Shivna, RU Woodstock, RU Honky Tonk, RU Genesis, and RU Brisa (PMU horses).




The handsome mustang RU Casanova meets a stool for the first time.

Links
Baltimore Sun
New Jersey Star Ledger - Rolex
Daily Mail - nasty photos of Townend's fall
ESPN Sports - Rachel Alexandra
Yahoo! Sports - Joe Torre
Kentucky Derby.com
New Jersey Star Ledger - Rutgers mustangs
Rutgers - The Young Horse Teaching & Research Program

Poetry Month

I stumbled upon the fact that this is National Poetry Month, so I went searching for poems. I wanted something a little different, and a little modern, and I've always liked Gluck.

Horse
What does the horse give you
That I cannot give you?

I watch you when you are alone,
When you ride into the field behind the dairy,
Your hands buried in the mare's
Dark mane.

Then I know what lies behind your silence:
Scorn, hatred of me, of marriage. Still,
You want me to touch you; you cry out
As brides cry, but when I look at you I see
There are no children in your body.
Then what is there?

Nothing, I think. Only haste
To die before I die.

In a dream, I watched you ride the horse
Over the dry fields and then
Dismount: you two walked together;
In the dark, you had no shadows.
But I felt them coming toward me
Since at night they go anywhere,
They are their own masters.

Look at me. You think I don't understand?
What is the animal
If not passage out of this life?

Louise Gluck


And a list of anthologies of poems about horses.

Adults'
Poems About Horses by Carmela Ciuaru (Random House)
Say This Of Horses by C.E. Greer (University of Iowa Press)


Children's
Hoofprints by Jessie Haas (Google Books)
A Grass Green Gallop by Patricia Hubbell (cover image)
My Kingdom For A Horse by Betty Ann Schwartz (Henry Holt)
My Mane Catches The Wind by Lee Bennett Hopkins (cover image) il. Sam Savitt

Ride The Wild Storm (1969)

Ride The Wild Storm

Marjorie Reynolds, il. Lorence F. Bjorklund

1969, The Macmillan Company

"Every time he gives a little cough, you rush to him as if he were dying."

12-year-old David Lang is frozen in indecisive nervousness between his impatient father and his sickly mother. His father rages at his mother's coddling, and his mother weeps at his father's brusqueness, and David basically tries to cut off the sound of their twin whining while dreaming of horses, but he's a worried kid. Worried about his parents, who are talking divorce, worried about his asthma, worried about being shunted off to Nantucket as a paid guest of a local family for the summer, worried about his mother's bronchitis and his father's blatant dissatisfaction.

On Nantucket, the Macy family startles and confuses David, who's not used to the freedom to come and go without adult scruntiny - or to the blithe assumption that everything's fine unless you're actually bleeding. The tightly wound kid begins to relax a little, but what really kick starts his change is the mare Salty. The Macys agreed to care for the grey mare and sell her for her owners, who have moved off the island, but in the meantime David can ride her. And the tense, frantically worried David seems to loosen up almost the moment he meets the horse.

"Let's ride bareback," he said, although he had never done such a thing in his life.

With Bill Macy and his pony Pumpkin for company, David and Salty explore Nantucket. David, experiencing childhood freedom of movement for the first time in his life, thrills to every adventure, from getting lost in a fog to rescuing stranded swimmers. Bill, more prosaic, reminds him that Salty, the key to their shared transportation, will be sold sooner or later.

Very much a boy adventure, with the focus being on how Salty gives David freedom and autonomy. There is much less fascination with the horse as a beautiful animal or to the care of the horse than in the typical horse book starring a girl. David dearly loves Salty, and there are passages where he reflects on her beauty or gentleness, but it is an emphatically male POV. In most horse stories, a girl rescues a horse; here, a horse rescues a boy.

Reynolds had a few quirks which made her books a bit aggravating - an obsession with fat kids, a tendency to portray women as either sturdy and contented second fiddles or as weak ciphers (with men as strong, sensible alpha males) and some unlikely language - has any 12-year-old boy after 1900 really uttered the word "shall" in a casual conversation? The language itself is slightly stilted; it's clear and readable, but a little simple for the presumed audience.

As opposed to that is her depiction of a wonderful childhood summer running free across a unique island, galloping bareback on the beach, rescuing hapless people and becoming strong and confident. She vividly portrays a sense of a summer idyll on horseback, and Bjorklund's soft, dreamy art complements her style.

Books

The Cabin On Ghostly Pond

A Horse Called Mystery

Sire Unknown

Dark Horse Barnaby

Keep A Silver Dollar

Ride The Wild Storm

Links

Nantuckett, Massachusetts