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On horseback through Beauty RanchTony is a 30-year-old Thoroughbred with a lengthy résumé and a fondness for pears. I'm a former cowboy (I rode with the Lone Ranger, Lash Larue, and Zorro when I was seven), and I've owned a few horses, although my saddle time has dwindled as my years advance. |
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Hold your horsesExcept today the obstinate foe is not our three-foot tall daughter, but a 1,200-pound painted horse named Velcro, whom we are supposed to lure through a set of poles as part of an equine therapy session on parenting, offered by a program called Equine Mirrors. |
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In search of Jack LondonMuch has changed since the Sailor on Horseback rode this terrain, but on a blazing fall day Jack London State Park is bathed in gauzy October light, vineyards and eucalyptus as Klimt might have seen them-ornate, embellished, all movement reduced to bronze shimmer and the occasional spindrift of leaves. |
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Pam Berg, rescue womanAnd I wonder how petite Pam Berg, sitting next to me, manages the heat, the pond, the land, the horses, all of it, alone. |
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Castagnasso ClydesdalesClydesdales pulled a lot of weight. But to most Clydesdale fans it isn't their size and strength that distinguishes the breed so much as their grace and agility and, above all else, their gentle disposition, the kind of paradoxical sweetness you'd expect to find in an enormous puppy. |
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Like very large dogsIn Sonoma, there are lots of equestrian people. They have stables and Thoroughbreds and expensive toys and Stetson hats. For them, horses are hobbies. And then there is Neil Shepard. |
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Collecting JackSome people collect bottle caps, some people collect stamps, some people collect Ferraris. Darius Anderson collects Jack London. Lots of Jack London. |
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Radical JackPerched on a picnic table half a mile from the Wolf House where the socialist Jack London's capitalist dream went up in smoke, Jonah Raskin reflects on the enduring contradictions of the man who remains both a publishing icon and an industry. |
