Square Peg Foundation

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
I awoke and saw that life was service.
I acted and behold, service was joy.”
– Rabindranath Tagore

I got a call this morning that our neighbor’s horse died.  I see this horse every day, all day as he lived in the pasture adjoining ours.  I do recall seeing him yesterday, belly deep in grass while his longtime companion horse flirted over the fence with our geldings.  So I was in a funk driving to the barn today to help my neighbor make the arrangements to render his old friend and to discuss what to do with his remaining horse who was upset and lonely.  It would also be my job to try and figure out if this horse’s death might be caused by something enviromental that could affect the Square Peg herd.

Needless to say, I wasn’t in the best of moods driving to the ranch.  The weather today is forecasted to possibly include thunderstorms and to be quite warm.  Funky weather.  The drive from my house to the ranch includes 12 miles on Hwy 1 straight up the coast.  The view of the ocean is world class and I so often forget to look.  But today, the sun peeked through heavy clouds and turned the Pescadero coast a brilliant deep blue and I was transfixed.  As I continued north, my eye was caught by motion in the water and I turned to see a pod of dolphins playing in the surf not far from the shore.

I jerked my car across the highway into the north parking lot for the Pescadero State Beach.  I parked and hopped out to watch the undulating play of the dolphins.  I was exhilarated and calmed in exactly the same breath.  I laughed out loud.  For about five minutes, I didn’t think about anything but the ocean and the waves and the spectacular scene unfolding in front of me.

When I got back into the car, I had a different outlook on the world.  I was focused on beauty and lovely surprises and the vastness of the life that is under the waves all the time, whether or not I choose to acknowledge it.  I felt like the planet smiled gently on me and I did my best to receive her gift with gratitude and humility.

It was a great way to start the day.

If you have a minute, do what you can to help keep the State Parks open.

With Square Peg’s first Day at the Races fundraiser coming up this weekend at Golden Gate Fields, I’ve had some strange and conflicting emotions floating around my head.

Namely:

1. You can’t go back.  I worked in racing for many years.  Essentially, I raised my son at the track.  I worked in the marketing department of Golden Gate Fields for years as the Special Events manager.  It was a great job to have in your 20’s.  Now I’m going back to the track and all the memories, good and bad after 10 years and a whole lot of life changes. I know I’m different,  I wonder how it will make me feel. (I am however, sincerely looking forward to seeing some wonderful people who still work there.)

2. Conflicted to be watching racing after spending so much time and love knitting ex racehorses back together.  How will I explain to people (yikes, the  kids) at the event if a horse should fatally break down?

While musing over these feelings, I searched friend Tom Ferrall’s recent press releases from Golden Gate Fields to find this:  An odd pairing of racing and Autism Awareness.  A story in a story about a horse that overcomes huge odds to win.

Ah racing.  It never ceases to surprise me.  I wonder what surprises are in store for me on Saturday?

Join me.

Wow.

Hmmmm.

Uh, actually; yes.
Strangely enough, I’m where I want and need to be.  Each day, I wrestle out how to continue my tiny little life’s work.  Sure, there are days when I phone it in, I whine or snivel about how hard it is, how many hours I put in. Or I pine about our families financial implications as a result of me not bringing home any bacon and even investing more time and money into what it is we do.  Truth is, I don’t bring home a paycheck.  I’m a full time plus volunteer.  Right now, I have no health insurance.  Yeah, I know, that’s insane.  My friend Jim is rolling in his grave at the notion. And yet, it’s honestly the mountain I want to die on.  Shuffling up rocky slopes with an unreachable peak, clawing my way hand over hand not to teach horsemanship, but teaching joy and trust.  Yup, that’s what we do.

There is an article in Teacher Magazine (here) about whether or not teachers are empowered.  It poses the question that children can’t learn empowerment from people who are so badly paid and who are in the school system where they are repeatedly stripped of power.

Bullshit.  And several teachers in the article call it.  One of the teachers, the mentor of the article’s author, points out that the students watch everything you do, a very small portion of which happens to be your subject matter.  They watch who you are and how you react.  When you take up the teaching mantle, you are on the stage, stripped of a persona and your students see you for exactly who you are.  Get over it and start modeling the best of what you’ve got.

Who thinks that showing a kid how to clean a horse’s hoof doesn’t make a bit of difference in the suffering of the world?  Oh yeah, that’s me, late at night when I’m trying to figure out how to pay the ranch lease or the horse shoer.  That’s me when I’m honored by a volunteer’s gift of her time and her heart.

It’s time to re-define teaching.  More importantly, it’s time to re-define learning. Each day, I talk to parents who are battling school systems and IEP’s.  They are wrestling with big decisions about where their child goes to school and what services they need.  All the schools are coming under tremendous budget constraints. I hate to tell you but it’s going to get worse. We will have to do more with less.  Teachers will have less resources and more demands.  That means each teacher and each parent will have to learn to entrust the students to own and care for their own education – teach them how  to value what and how they learn.  Folks, here’s the kicker, the part you don’t want to think about; the academic part is only a small portion of what they learn in school. It’s an important part to be sure, but smaller than you think.

I had breakfast with a young volunteer and her mom last weekend.  She’s 13 and hates school.  Well, she likes the kids, she even likes most of the teachers but she refuses to turn in work.  The school is at the end of their rope.  They suggest upping the ante and forcing this young woman to start producing work.  She’s made it clear to everyone that forcing her is going to create mayhem.  Serious mayhem.  The school tells her parents that it’s a life lesson that she needs to learn.  That life is not all about doing whatever you want all the time.  That she needs to learn this now, or it will be even harder the older she gets.

Stop.

Rewind.

So what the school is trying to get across is that work needs to get done, on time and with best effort.  Fair enough.  However, what the student is learning is the bigger lesson: That if someone doesn’t do what you want them to do, you just up the ante until you force them to.  Gosh guys, I think she already knows that lesson and it’s not such a good one.

It seems to me that what this very bright young woman is desperately trying to establish is a sense of self.  She’s refusing to turn in work not because of laziness or impudence but she’s desperately trying to set boundaries of who she is and how amenable she is going to be about who forces her to do what and when.  For her, caving in and turning in work feels like giving up and of being less of her own person as a result. Of course I’m not advocating that all teachers or schools do away with assignments, deadlines and grades.  It’s been tried, with varying results.  But it’s clear that what’s going on here has a lot less to do with book reports than it does with a developing human’s struggle for self-hood.

Profound?  Maybe.  But this is a typical week at Square Pegs.  For each of these stories, there are scores of others. Kids who don’t fit in, or perhaps even more scary, kids who manage to fit in and fade away. These are opportunities to make a real difference.  To teach compassion and joy.  To let the world experience what’s special and beautiful about a person.

So I’ve answered my own question; this is the mountain I’m willing to die on.

Peace out.
j

Twenty nine years ago, Precious Feathers was born on Lew and Jeanee Conner’s ranch.  Part of a long line of prized Quarter Horses revered for their versatility and solid minds.  She was raised in the Sacramento Valley and trained as a performance/working cow horse.  She went on to raise several babies and was known as a wonderful mother whose babies excelled in the show ring and as working and trail horses.  She taught several of the Conner’s grandchildren to ride.

September 11, 2006, Precious Feathers arrived at Square Peg Ranch with her best friend, Sugar.  Together they were the stars of the barn and the best horses for beginners.  Their patience and excellent training introduced hundreds of new riders to the wonders of horsemanship.

Feathers was quirky, she could never be tied and was always extremely girthy.  She had opinions and she shared them freely.  All of the male horses at the ranch fell in love with her even after her advanced age began to show.  She loved soft brushes and hated baths.  She could be gentle as a lamb with a beginner and yet she was the horse you wanted to be on when you needed to put the neighbors cows back in their pen.

She taught students until this past weekend and then developed a deep cough and a fever earlier this week.  She spent the last couple days of her life eating grass and visitng her favorite horses.  This afternoon she struggled to breathe and we surmised that she had a tremendous amount of fluid in her lungs.  When she started to stagger as she tried to walk, we knew that it was time.  Dr. Ashton Cloninger canceled dinner plans and was at the ranch just as the sun was going down over the hills.  She ate a bag of carrots and a bucket of grain while we stroked and petted her and told her that she would soon be galloping in green fields with her very best friend Sugar.

She was an exception to many of the Square Peg horses.  She had only two homes in her long life and in each home, she was loved, understood and cared for.  She had never had a major injury nor had she been homeless or gone hungry. We should celebrate a long and good life of a wonderful, kind and gentle little red mare.

I wrote a blog post when we lost Sugar in 2007.  Maybe it bears revisiting here.

Humbly,
joell