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Wednesday, February 7
Feb. 8th, 2024 12:34 amToday I am grateful for:
Pleasant weather for February, back to being around -3 C.
I did dishes and the usual animal care chores before heading off to the barn.
I wanted to take some giant faux sunflowers (huge, four feet tall) for R, to use in decorations for an upcoming event. She mentioned sunflowers as part of one person's freestyle, and I happened to have these on the "maybe go somewhere" pile.
She says they will be used for other events too, so they can now be used instead of sitting upstairs in storage.
River and I had a lesson.
He was happy and relaxed tonight.
We worked on pattern we might do for an online competition.
R has kind of decided that she will no longer encourage the ILHA that we have been training/competing with, as they have stopped giving useful feedback in the form of comments, and were not especially helpful in answering people's queries about why they got penalties in some classes.
Sigh.
So, there is a newly formed association that she would like to support, and I guess that means I'll be joining THAT group this year, to see how it goes.
I suppose I could still go back to the ILHA if I want to later.
Anyhow, we worked on that to get my homework for the week. More Liberty circle work, if you can believe that.
The next time you see anyone doing a Liberty pattern, think of me and River, and appreciate the hours and hours and HOURS of work that went into getting a nice, steady circle.
Then we did some riding, and worked on rhythm in the trot. Something that is news to NO ONE is that my left leg is not as strong or as good at communicating as the right, so it affects the quality of our circles (more circles) to the left.
She was wondering if I wanted to try fascia release with her; she's doing something with a person who works on horses, who wants to do horse and rider work at the same time, and see how things go. Well, here I go, heading down "woo woo road". Might be fun.
My Sweetie and I got home at about the same time. He cooked since I did last night, and we watched another episode.
He said he had a pretty good session of climbing, which is nice. He's been doing well with it since he's been going consistently a couple of times a week for a while now. I'm glad he has something outside of work to feel like life has some meaning.
Nauru: A single island in this nation. Very small, third smallest independent nation in the world, larger in land mass to only the Vatican and Monaco.
It's only valuable natural resource was literally the rock it is made of, with high phosphate content. It was at one time the best source of phosphate in the world, as it was right at the surface and easy to strip mine.
Now that is depleted, and even the reserves set up for the day it would be depleted are dwindling.
For a while, the main source of income was off shore tax havens and other shady and outright illegal financial shenanigans. There are actually quite a few places, mostly teeny tiny little places, that do this.
I guess that got shut down, because since 2001 the island has mostly been used as a controversial immigration detention or "processing" island for Australia (Oh, the irony!).
Nauru is very dependent upon Australia for money.
Historically, Nauru was quite isolated, thus it once had it's own language not spoken elsewhere. The people used to practice aquaculture, taking milkfish and breeding/harvesting them in a land locked lake.
In 1888, Germany annexed Nauru and made it part of the Marshall islands (which still exist separately).
Phosphate was discovered there in 1900, and at first was mined by contract by Britain, until WW I, when Britain was at war with Germany, so Britain/Australia/New Zealand figured they should be the ones exploiting these people, not the Germans.
Oh, and phosphate was used for explosives.
During WW II, the island was occupied by Japan, though recaptured later.
One thing I have absorbed during my studies of Oceania, is how important this region was during WW II, and how crazy it must have been for the natural inhabitants of these islands, many who had almost no experience with the modern world, and now there are ships, airplanes, soldiers with guns and tanks, and everyone trying to gain control of these strategic islands.
The Allied plan to defeat Japan was to "island hop" until they got to Japan, but to have a whole big supply chain behind them storing soldiers, weapons, hiding all kinds of boats and planes, making airstrips all over the place, planting and harvesting food and processing ore and fossil fuels. The people who lived here were just in the way, or conscripted as "workers" by one side or the other. I can't imagine how badly they were treated.
As was true for so many other islands, everyone lost interest in them once they took what they wanted from them. Nauru's phosphate was extensively mined, and the island was more or less left as a giant slag heap. It was thought that no one could continue living there.
The people were under Australian protection, or whatever, and the government in 1963 offered to relocate everyone to another island, but they refused because they would have to become Australian citizens. They wanted the people who mined their home to be held accountable to restore it to a livable state (good for them!). That didn't really happen either, though.
In 1966 the people of Nauru became self-governing, bought the not-yet completely drained mines, and operated them as a co-operative company, making them among the richest people in the world. So, then they sued the Australian government for how they exploited the island and ruined the environment.
They got an out of court settlement.
Wow!
Okay, but that was all back in the '80's, so the country isn't so rich anymore, and as I said, not a lot of other resources besides having an immigration center for Australia.
They're really not too sure where they're headed now.
They're democratic (yay), but have a very high child mortality rate, low life expectancy (around 60) and a very high rate of obesity and diabetes.
Most of their food must be imported because their soil is crappy, and, ahem, all the phosphate is gone. Without much vegetation, they are vulnerable to the intense heat.
They are now poor in general, there's little infrastructure, so there are issues with getting safe water, sanitation, and hygiene.
Things are not looking so good for Nauru.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru
This is a good short video:
https://youtu.be/kMvAQh3eLnU?si=hG0g3OB8l4Uxb4MH
Pleasant weather for February, back to being around -3 C.
I did dishes and the usual animal care chores before heading off to the barn.
I wanted to take some giant faux sunflowers (huge, four feet tall) for R, to use in decorations for an upcoming event. She mentioned sunflowers as part of one person's freestyle, and I happened to have these on the "maybe go somewhere" pile.
She says they will be used for other events too, so they can now be used instead of sitting upstairs in storage.
River and I had a lesson.
He was happy and relaxed tonight.
We worked on pattern we might do for an online competition.
R has kind of decided that she will no longer encourage the ILHA that we have been training/competing with, as they have stopped giving useful feedback in the form of comments, and were not especially helpful in answering people's queries about why they got penalties in some classes.
Sigh.
So, there is a newly formed association that she would like to support, and I guess that means I'll be joining THAT group this year, to see how it goes.
I suppose I could still go back to the ILHA if I want to later.
Anyhow, we worked on that to get my homework for the week. More Liberty circle work, if you can believe that.
The next time you see anyone doing a Liberty pattern, think of me and River, and appreciate the hours and hours and HOURS of work that went into getting a nice, steady circle.
Then we did some riding, and worked on rhythm in the trot. Something that is news to NO ONE is that my left leg is not as strong or as good at communicating as the right, so it affects the quality of our circles (more circles) to the left.
She was wondering if I wanted to try fascia release with her; she's doing something with a person who works on horses, who wants to do horse and rider work at the same time, and see how things go. Well, here I go, heading down "woo woo road". Might be fun.
My Sweetie and I got home at about the same time. He cooked since I did last night, and we watched another episode.
He said he had a pretty good session of climbing, which is nice. He's been doing well with it since he's been going consistently a couple of times a week for a while now. I'm glad he has something outside of work to feel like life has some meaning.
Nauru: A single island in this nation. Very small, third smallest independent nation in the world, larger in land mass to only the Vatican and Monaco.
It's only valuable natural resource was literally the rock it is made of, with high phosphate content. It was at one time the best source of phosphate in the world, as it was right at the surface and easy to strip mine.
Now that is depleted, and even the reserves set up for the day it would be depleted are dwindling.
For a while, the main source of income was off shore tax havens and other shady and outright illegal financial shenanigans. There are actually quite a few places, mostly teeny tiny little places, that do this.
I guess that got shut down, because since 2001 the island has mostly been used as a controversial immigration detention or "processing" island for Australia (Oh, the irony!).
Nauru is very dependent upon Australia for money.
Historically, Nauru was quite isolated, thus it once had it's own language not spoken elsewhere. The people used to practice aquaculture, taking milkfish and breeding/harvesting them in a land locked lake.
In 1888, Germany annexed Nauru and made it part of the Marshall islands (which still exist separately).
Phosphate was discovered there in 1900, and at first was mined by contract by Britain, until WW I, when Britain was at war with Germany, so Britain/Australia/New Zealand figured they should be the ones exploiting these people, not the Germans.
Oh, and phosphate was used for explosives.
During WW II, the island was occupied by Japan, though recaptured later.
One thing I have absorbed during my studies of Oceania, is how important this region was during WW II, and how crazy it must have been for the natural inhabitants of these islands, many who had almost no experience with the modern world, and now there are ships, airplanes, soldiers with guns and tanks, and everyone trying to gain control of these strategic islands.
The Allied plan to defeat Japan was to "island hop" until they got to Japan, but to have a whole big supply chain behind them storing soldiers, weapons, hiding all kinds of boats and planes, making airstrips all over the place, planting and harvesting food and processing ore and fossil fuels. The people who lived here were just in the way, or conscripted as "workers" by one side or the other. I can't imagine how badly they were treated.
As was true for so many other islands, everyone lost interest in them once they took what they wanted from them. Nauru's phosphate was extensively mined, and the island was more or less left as a giant slag heap. It was thought that no one could continue living there.
The people were under Australian protection, or whatever, and the government in 1963 offered to relocate everyone to another island, but they refused because they would have to become Australian citizens. They wanted the people who mined their home to be held accountable to restore it to a livable state (good for them!). That didn't really happen either, though.
In 1966 the people of Nauru became self-governing, bought the not-yet completely drained mines, and operated them as a co-operative company, making them among the richest people in the world. So, then they sued the Australian government for how they exploited the island and ruined the environment.
They got an out of court settlement.
Wow!
Okay, but that was all back in the '80's, so the country isn't so rich anymore, and as I said, not a lot of other resources besides having an immigration center for Australia.
They're really not too sure where they're headed now.
They're democratic (yay), but have a very high child mortality rate, low life expectancy (around 60) and a very high rate of obesity and diabetes.
Most of their food must be imported because their soil is crappy, and, ahem, all the phosphate is gone. Without much vegetation, they are vulnerable to the intense heat.
They are now poor in general, there's little infrastructure, so there are issues with getting safe water, sanitation, and hygiene.
Things are not looking so good for Nauru.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru
This is a good short video:
https://youtu.be/kMvAQh3eLnU?si=hG0g3OB8l4Uxb4MH
