September, 2008

June 13th 6:24am: Morning folks! The flooding is done it appears – we almost had the ark finished! Man did we get pelted with rain. The barn cam is back online, click the Raindance Nursery Cam link above and help us keep an eye on Lily – she’s close to having her baby!

June 11th 9:08am: As promised, some photos of Layla…I will try to get even more up in the next couple of days now that I’ve copied them to a disk to bring with me. I’ll also try to get some more updates and posting done, the days have been quite insane these days with all the planning and work going on – the Summer BBQ, the Legacy materials, our wedding….

If you haven’t been out to see Layla, she’s good for your spirit. She has a sweet gentleness that’s just adorable – she loves to give kisses and loves hugs. And like most babies, she’s full of spunk so goes from rest to full tilt running in circles and leaping into the air for no other reason than she can. Too cute! We’ll miss her when she goes, yes she’s for sale and is going to make somebody a very special dream horse I think.

June 3rd, 10:51am: What an insanely busy couple of weeks for us. Kathi’s been busy not only training our horses to get them ready for upcoming shows but working with several others to get them gaiting correctly. I have absolutely no patience for that. I like riding the rough edges off them, or riding the horses considered too “energetic” by others. She has the patience to make each horse be all it can be. I guess that statement holds true actually for me and the other beings at Raindance as well!

In other news…work on the BBQ continues. Lots of RSVPs have started coming in and lots of good people offering to donate items for the silent auction and baskets which we truly appreciate. Maybe we can find some way to have the BBQ on webcam so those that can’t attend can make some stuff on the grill and eat at their computer screens. Watch – instead of it being too cold to keep a webcam going like when Windchill was alive, it’ll be too hot to keep the computer out near the grill…

And finally for those wondering I popped The Question to Kathi this weekend. You’ll have to email one of us to know what her answer was…grin….

Thanks for all the nice notes and support friends, you’re all the greatest. We haven’t seen some of you at the farm in quite awhile, hope to see you soon. Remember, we generally always have the coffee on!

The world today is nuts. Everybody has a viewpoint and believe it or not, they differ from mine a lot of the time. That’s okay though, people are allowed to be wrong. With all of the politicking going on, the wishy-washy vacillating stands people are taking based on popularity polls I’m making a stand as well. Here and now. I don’t care if you disagree with me. I am willing to let the chips fall where they may, the results speak for themselves, the early bird getting the worm which I never wanted anyway because it always give me a headache, and put my nose to the grindstone.

I am against creases. That’s right. I don’t like them. I’m adamantly against them. I will support a bill abolishing them and I will vote for a war on them. I am so against them that there is a pile of shirts and slacks on my floor awaiting their abolition at the stroke of my iron. But…I am against wasting energy right now. I will not plug in that iron and turn on a light. I am attempting to see to the removal of those creases by out waiting them. The iron is near my clothing, striking fear into the creases heart to be sure. I occasionally bring these clothes into the bathroom when I shower because I like to attempt to deceive myself into believing that “steam will cause creases to fall out of your clothing.” Has that ever worked for anybody – bring a wrinkled garment into the bathroom, step out of your shower and there is your neatly pressed suit? Maybe it only works if you wear it in the shower with you.

I have to go now. I need to buy some wrinkle-free clothing to support my tough stance, my war on wrinkles.

There’s two things that for some reason are hard for many to say – “goodbye” and “thanks.” I’ve never really had trouble with “goodbye”, that one’s fairly simple. “Goodbye…see ya…so long…see ya tomorrow….get off company property…” So many people get stuck in those conversations where for some reason they can’t get out of them, the kind where you’re sitting there going insane inside your head, wondering if it’s a slice vertically or horizontally in your wrist, one way will cause this conversation to end swiftly and mercifully, the other a long lingering period in which you’ll hear all the details of an event so boring that even the event itself found no interest in as it was occurring. Unfortunately my sister inherited my mom’s inability to end a conversation. She hangs onto it like it’s some form of lifeline, tightly grasping it well beyond it having any life left in it. But she’s one of the nicest people on earth. The only way my mom knows how to end a conversation is when “my show is coming on.” I always wondered who the networks made all those shows for – they’re for my mom. All those Sunday night movies about terminally ill ice skaters who despite all lack of hope, and overcoming extreme adversity, somehow find peace, joy and love with their rival or skate partner before the news comes on, thus giving us all a little more to be thankful and helping put our lives in perspective for that 2 hour period (1 hour of actual show, the remainder commercials) – they’re all made for my mom. Mom measures time as pre-”my show is coming on” and now. The networks have formalized this into “prime time” and non-prime time but what they really mean is “Jeff’s mom’s show time” and non. Thus in mom’s pre-my show time period, which is mid-afternoon for the rest of the world, she’ll call me at the office where I’ll have two nurses in my office screaming at each other, two calls on hold, an evening board meeting and 7am board meeting to prep for and staff lined up to ask questions which apparently the universe hinges on and my mom will call, tell me about her pre-show world “Hi honey, just got up…slow day but I’m up early (it’s noon)…coffee is brewing…haven’t done much today…can you hold on the coffee’s almost brewed and I need a cup…” but it’s my mom so I gotta take the call. When she finally returns she remembers to ask “Oh by the way honey, are you busy?…” “No mom, just trying to see if I can sharpen this letter opener enough to open a vein…” “Oh that’s nice sweetie, so anyway, haven’t done much today, gonna start putting on my makeup….” AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH Okay, so maybe there are conversations I can’t get out of so easily but it’s my MOM….

That leaves “thank you’s.” I’ve never really felt like I know how to say it adequately enough. So I try to let flowers do my talking. When I was going through my divorce way back when I pretty much hit bottom – stopped eating, stopped even drinking liquids…so as you’d guess, I ended up in Urgent Care with pneumonia, dehydration and malnutrition. The doc told me I needed to find something else to live for. Losing my kids had been really hard on me, I loved my time with them…. so I did as she ordered. Sent out two resumes, got two job interviews leading to two job offers. I brought roses to the committee that was interviewing for the job I didn’t take. 5 years later one of those members took over as administrator at one of our clinics and said they had never heard of anything like that and still talked about it. I took the other job doing what I do now – went back to that Urgent Care and brought that doc a rose, thanked her for caring enough to call and follow-up on me, told her where I was in life and gave her the rose. She cried. I guess that sort of told me maybe we don’t say “thanks” enough. I’ve told my staff to abuse their positions for the greater good – meaning if they witness an act of kindness, professionalism, service – of just plain goodness – to call that person’s supervisor and/or send them a letter or better yet a card. Recognize it. One of our staff came in afterwards and said never in  that person’s experience had they worked for an employer who directed that they live by or recognize the Golden Rule. Isn’t that sad?

So I guess this is a long-winded way to say “thanks” to those of you that take time out of your day to comment or write because you stopped long enough to read and look at one of my little pieces of the greater puzzle of our lives. I never thought people would read this, I thought it was a way to throw something out at the great virtual space and never really thought space would bring anything back. It has, and it’s you folks. Thanks for honoring me enough to read my words and even more for commenting.

Thanks to everyone – this bud’s for you.

May 30th, 10:51am: If you haven’t seen the invites yet – there’s gonna be a party! That’s right, Saturday, August 16th at Raindance we’re having a memorial BBQ for Windchill’s memory – a chance to say “thanks” to all of those who remember the little guy and were a part of his life and who also made him a part of their life. Click on the link above to see the invitation. Please RSVP as soon as possible to help with planning.

On a separate note, the planning committee met at our house two weeks ago and I can’t believe the planning that goes into this kind of thing. I was telling Kathi she was spending more time planning the BBQ than our wedding and this committee formed almost instantly! Thank you all for making this happen and thank goodness it wasn’t left to us guys (Gary Niemi and me) to try and coordinate any of this. We’re both former military and used to planning but I don’t think any of our training prepared us for the crew that took this thing over, wow! Thanks guys, you’re absolutely wonderful!

May 16th, 9:27am: Whoa, busy busy week! Last Saturday we hauled two horses to Lake Elmo, MN for the Early Bird Show. Kathi showed Last Dance (Dance) and Simply Fearless (Fear) in a number of classes bringing home a second place finish on Dance out of 14 horses and a second place finish for Fear. Dance had only been ridden twice in the last year or so – Kathi has worked with her so much that she even makes me look good when I get on her and go round the arena! After a stressfully short period getting the horses clipped, bathed and ready to go it was amazing watching her out there, a cowgirl in her element. I took a ton of pictures I’ll get posted along with the Layla videos and pictures from the past couple of weeks that got lost when I tried to email them to me (files were too large I guess).

We had the very first official board meeting of the WindChill Legacy, Ltd. last night. I’m happy to announce we now have 6 board members – each of whom have an area they are responsible for (volunteer/project coordination, grant writing, education & resource development, finance, management). The board members will be posted on the forum along with meeting details. We also have a core group of volunteer administrative team members, each of whom have an area they are helping with. They’ll be posted on our website as that develops. I am also very pleased to announce that Kathi L. Davis has been named the Executive Director of The WindChill Legacy, Ltd. I know Windchill would be as proud of her as I am as she tackles this new role. There couldn’t be a finer person in this role – congratulations Kathi!

May 5th, 8:14am: FINALLY no snow for a couple day stretch! Yesterday we had a great day – sun was shining, it was warm, all of the farm visitors came Saturday so Sunday was ours. It was a jeans, boots and t-shirt day for me and the best part of the arrival of Spring – kat in tank tops and jeans!  Cowgirls rock. The mud was awful but if that was the worst thing we had to deal with I’ll take it. We used the day to bring the horses into the barn for ‘maintenance.’ That means walking through the mud to catch the suddenly blind and deaf pasture citizens who can’t hear their names for some reason, walk them back through the pasture, through the yard, through the mud in the pen and into the barn where we brush them down head to toe, worm them, give them their shots and do a general check of them – bodies, teeth, etc. They love the brushing, if they could purr they would. It’s okay though, Olivia jumps up on their backs so she does the purring for them. I think we got around half the herd done or so. I guess that’s job security for us.

We added another board member the end of last week, so we’re rounding out some areas. Quite a few of the old care team are back in the saddle with us in this effort. What a great group.

I know I promised photos and vids of Layla and had tried to email them early this AM to my office so I could post this morning instead of doing something productive but unfortunately the files must have been too large. I’ll try to get them up early this week. Our first priority is getting the basic Legacy webpage up and going. I had hired a web designer who had to back out due to another big project so I’ll do something basic to get us started and then hire someone to do something more worthy of WindChill’s memory.

April 1st, 9:13pm: Woohoo! Good news on multiple fronts! DSL is back up and running so we have have all the cams back up, and can pull the security cams off the second phone line. That’s our backup for if internet goes down but we lose the use of the line. And help finally arrived with my family flying in to stay at the farm and play with the animals for a couple of weeks. And even better – I’ll be gone so won’t have to deal with them! Mostly kidding.

April 1st, 8:43am: While in the middle of my update last night our DSL went down AGAIN. While I have a connection (at the office currently) I wanted to update you on a couple of things: Watch for WindChill Legacy (the non-profit) updates on Windchill’s forum from Kathi. We’ve been a lot behind the scenes, lots of the paperwork as well as trying to get our arms around the various efforts going on (research on programs, laws, organizing volunteers which is going slower than we’d like). Kathi Davis will be posting updates on there to keep you all updated on things. We’ll probably need to organize people into tighter groups, like committees only in our case they’ll actually get things done – you people are absolutely amazing, the caliber of people who have volunteered has been incredible.

I’m hauling a horse to IL and then continuing on to FL so will be out of touch the rest of the week and weekend. Will be on the road a LONG time. If I hit some wireless hotspots on the way I may try to post but that’s really hit and miss I’ve found.

FYI, I’m sort of branching this blog off into several areas so anything I post about Windchill will later be moved to the Windchill section of the site. For right now anything else is being copied to the Layla section but I have a bunch of other thoughts and blogging to do so eventually when I organize this more I’ll branch that off more into a ‘wanderings and ramblings’ sort of spot. I’ve found a bunch more Windchill pictures and videos, if there’s time tonight I’ll post some, if not I know I’ve promised you I’ll get to that and I will. I also haven’t forgotten the promise to post the notes from the communicators, we had hoped to have the ‘final’ communication from the communicator who was in touch with him regularly to explain what we were doing and get his ‘feedback’ feelings but we haven’t received that so I’m going to post from our old notes, which is a combination of notes from several different communicators and healers.

March 31st, 8pm: Sorry for the delay guys, we’ve had major problems with our DSL (internet connection) the past couple of days and after meeting some really great people – the Friends of Barbaro – who came out to the farm Saturday, our DSL went down completely. I used the down time to work offline, answering around 240 emails yesterday from when Windchill died, I have around 300 or so left from around his memorial time. Then I can start catching up on the 150 currently in my inbox. I divided the emails up into “pre-March 24th” and after thinking that would help me both stay current, and start chipping away at the piles in the folders. I was wrong. FYI, for some reason I hit some people’s spam filters so if you haven’t gotten a response it may be because my email to you bounced and I’m truly sorry.

‘MEET ME IN THE STAIRWELL’

You say you will never forget where you were when

you heard the news On September 11, 2001. Neither will I.

I was on the 110th floor in a smoke filled room

with a man who called his wife to say ‘Good-Bye.’ I

held his fingers steady as he dialed. I gave him the

peace to say, ‘Honey, I am not going to make it, but it

is OK..I am ready to go.’

I was with his wife when he called as she fed

breakfast to their children. I held her up as she

tried to understand his words and as she realized

he wasn’t coming home that night.

I was in the stairwell of the 23rd floor when a

woman cried out to Me for help. ‘I have been

knocking on the door of your heart for 50 years!’ I said.

‘Of course I will show you the way home – only

believe in Me now.’

I was at the base of the building with the Priest

ministering to the injured and devastated souls.

I took him home to tend to his Flock in Heaven. He

heard my voice and answered.

I was on all four of those planes, in every seat,

with every prayer. I was with the crew as they

were overtaken. I was in the very hearts of the

believers there, comforting and assuring them that their

faith has saved them.

I was in Texas, Virginia, California, Michigan, Afghanistan.

I was standing next to you when you heard the terrible news.

Did you sense Me?

I want you to know that I saw every face. I knew

every name – though not all know Me. Some met Me

for the first time on the 86th floor.

Some sought Me with their last breath.

Some couldn’t hear Me calling to them through the

smoke and flames; ‘Come to Me… this way… take

my hand.’ Some chose, for the final time, to ignore Me.

But, I was there.

I did not place you in the Tower that day. You

may not know why, but I do. However, if you were

there in that explosive moment in time, would you have

reached for Me?

Sept. 11, 2001, was not the end of the journey

for you. But someday your journey will end. And I

will be there for you as well. Seek Me now while I may

be found. Then, at any moment, you know you are

‘ready to go.’

I will be in the stairwell of your final moments.

God

During the next 60 seconds, stop whatever you are

doing, and take this opportunity. (Literally it

is only 1 minute.) All you have to do is the

following:

Stop and think and appreciate God’s power

in your life, for doing what you know is pleasing to

Him. If you are not ashamed to do this, follow the

instructions. Jesus said, ‘If you are ashamed of Me, I will be

ashamed of you before My Father’

If you are not ashamed, copy and send this message…only

if you believe ‘Yes, I love my God.. He is my

fountain of Life and My Savior.. He Keeps me going day and

night. Without Him, I am no one. But with Him, I can do

everything. Christ is my strength.’

THIS NEEDS TO GO AROUND THE USA MANY TIMES SO

KEEP IT GOING

What’s wrong with this picture?

If you look closely at the picture above, you will note that all the Marines pictured are bowing their heads.. That’s because they’re praying.

This incident took place at a recent ceremony honoring the birthday of the corps, and it has the ACLU up in arms. ‘These are federal employees,’ says Lucius Traveler, a spokesman for the ACLU , ‘on federal property and on federal time. For them to pray is clearly an establishment of religion, and we must nip this in the bud immediately.’

When asked about the ACLU’s charges, Colonel Jack Fessender, speaking for the Commandant of the Corps said (cleaned up a bit), ‘Screw the ACLU.’

GOD Bless Our Warriors,    Send the ACLU to France

May God Bless America , One Nation Under GOD!

What’s wrong with the picture? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING

GOD BLESS YOU FOR

PASSING IT ON!

I am sorry but I am not breaking this one…..Let us pray

Prayer chain for our Military…please don’t break it

THIS NEEDS TO GO AROUND THE USA MANY TIMES SO

KEEP IT GOING