Andrew Lawler describes an interesting approach to linguistic archaeology.

Measuring teeth from dead horses in upstate New York seems an unlikely way to get at the truth behind some of the most controversial questions about the Old World. But David Anthony, a historian and archaeologist at Hartwick College, discovered that by comparing the teeth of modern horses with their Eurasian ancestors, he could determine where and when the ancient ones were ridden. And answering that seemingly arcane question is important if you want to explain why nearly half the world today speaks an Indo-European language.

The origin of Indo-European tongues has roiled scholarship since a British judge in eighteenth-century Calcutta noticed that Sanskrit and English were related. Generations of linguists have labored to reconstruct the mother from which sprang dozens of languages spoken from Wales to China. Their bitter disputes about who used proto-Indo-European, where they lived, and their impact on the budding civilizations of Mesopotamia, Iran, and the Indus River Valley are legion.

That contentious debate, says Anthony, has been “alternately dryly academic, comically absurd, and brutally political.” To advance their own goals, Nazi racists, American skinheads, Russian nationalists, and Hindu fundamentalists have all latched on to the idea of light-skinned and chariot-driving Aryans as bold purveyors of an early Indo-European culture, which came to dominate Eurasia. So the search for an Indo-European homeland is now the third rail of archaeology and linguistics. Anthony compares it to the Lost Dutchman’s mine—“discovered almost everywhere but confirmed nowhere.”

Read the whole thing.

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Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Date: Program–Time (EST) on Channel

Aug. 9: 3-Day: Dressage–2:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. on USA
Aug. 11: 3-Day: Cross- Country–6:00pm-8:00pm OXYGEN
Aug. 12: 3-Day: Stadium Team Gold Medal Final–6:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. on OXYGEN
Aug. 13: Dressage–6:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. on OXYGEN
Aug. 14: Dressage Team Gold Medal Final–6:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. on OXYGEN
Aug. 15: Show Jumping–6:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. on OXYGEN
Aug. 16: Dressage Individual–5:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. MSNBC
Aug. 17: Show Jumping Team Gold Medal Final 1st Round–10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m on NBC
Aug. 18: Show Jumping Team Gold Medal Final Round–6:00pm-8:00 p.m. OXYGEN
Aug. 19: Dressage Individual Gold Medal Final–6:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. on OXYGEN
Aug. 21: Show Jumping Individual Gold Medal Final–10:00am-1:00 pm on NBC

Melanie Williams, winner of the Sheila Baldwin Burke Memorial, looked happy yesterday.She rode to victory on Flying Horse Farm’s Analyze, whose trainer was Jazz Napravnik.

Racing was temporarily interrupted in mid-afternoon by a thunderstorm featuring lightning and hail. Spectators, horses, and riders scurried for shelter. Fortunately, the storm passed fairly quickly, and it was possible to complete the final races.

If we are not rained out, I’m going to be working all day on Saturday and Sunday at the Blue Ridge Hunt Point-to-Point and Hunter Pace Races.

link

The Wall Street Journal reports a heart-warming story of the proverbial blade of grass succeeding in growing up right through the urban asphalt of a Philadelphia combat zone neighborhood. Naturally, the combined forces of government and economic progress are threatening to eliminate it.

Philadelphia — In a gritty, inner-city neighborhood here, a group of teenagers, older men and a few women gathered one Saturday recently — to parade their horses.

More than 60 horses are squeezed into a row of rickety brick stables and a dusty vacant lot here on West Fletcher Street in the rough neighborhood of Strawberry Mansion. They are among the last major remnants of a decades-old tradition in Philadelphia of inner-city riding, on horses kept in yards and odd corners of the city. …

The horsemen that weekend were also worrying about their future. For decades, Fletcher Street and most of the city’s horsemen were largely ignored by officials. Stables came and went over the years, but there has always been vacant land to claim or another stable to squeeze into.

Now, inner-city development is creating competition for property. Stables around town have been condemned and torn down.

The city has not announced specific plans for Fletcher Street. But the local city councilman, Darrell Clarke, says he wants to see houses replace the stables. Mr. Clarke grew up in the neighborhood and knows several of the older horsemen from his childhood. But, he says, “It’s not an ideal place for them. They are in the middle of a residential block.”

Most horsemen are unprotected. Half the block is owned by the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority, an agency charged with developing underused property, with a special emphasis on affordable housing. The city aims to finish a major renewal project just to the south of Fletcher Street by 2010.

Neighbors have complained of the noise and smell, and city animal-control officials have fingered Fletcher Street as a “problem area” — a finding the horsemen dispute. Mr. Clarke and other city officials say they believe the horsemen are doing something good for the community but cannot protect them.

“To be candid, it is not a priority,” says Joyce Wilkerson, chief of staff for Mayor John F. Street. Ms. Wilkerson, who keeps a horse of her own in a stable in nearby Fairmount Park, says, “I look at a city that has an operating deficit, a school system with problems,” and too much crime. “I don’t think you take a sport like horses and make it a priority.”

Comments like those have made the horsemen anxious. “There’s a pushout coming,” says Devon Teagle, a 43-year-old former jockey, as horsemen around him nod. “I don’t know when, but it’s coming.” If the stables weren’t here, says Mr. Gough , a retired welder, “I’d just be home twiddling my thumbs.” He comes to Fletcher Street every day to be with old friends.

Read the whole thing.

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2:20 video

Temple article

There’s an old saying that there is nothing better for the inside of a boy than the outside of a horse. You’d think the City of Philadelphia would take a more positive interest in promoting a traditional local activity which brings the community together, and which attracts young people and offers a positive alternative to substance abuse and crime.

All the contact information (for donation purposes) I’ve been able to find is:

Strawberry Mansion Equestrian Center
2600 Block Fletcher Street
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

email link

Reuters (April 28):

Yet another unique New York institution is set to disappear when the last riding stable in Manhattan closes its doors during the weekend.

Claremont Riding Academy, said to be the oldest continuously operated stable in the United States, will shut its stable doors at 5 p.m. on Sunday.

The stable has been a fixture on the upper west side of Manhattan since it opened as a livery stable in 1892, six years before the automobile began to negotiate city streets. It has operated as a riding academy since the 1920s, giving lessons and renting horses for rides in Central Park.

Claremont owner Paul Novograd said he was not at liberty to say whether the building, which is located two blocks west of Central Park on West 89th Street, had been sold.

But New York City Parks and Recreation Commissioner Adrian Benepe said it was widely known that the building was being sold to developers and he understood that it is going to be made into condominiums. The building is a landmark, so it won’t be torn down, he added.

Several dozen people turned out on Saturday to protest against the stable’s closing, but the demonstration was not expected to affect the outcome.

On Friday, trainer Karen Feldgus, who has worked at Claremont for more than 18 years, was giving her last lesson at the stable to a group of 10 people who were riding to music.

Feldgus began to cry as the music began playing. ‘These (horses) are all my best friends. I’ve ridden all of them,’ she said.

Novograd said the horses would go to good homes. Most will be moved to the Potomac Horse Center in Maryland, owned by Novograd. Some are being sold to their riders, and some are being donated to the equestrian program at Yale University.

Claremont has a small indoor riding facility and stalls for the 38 horses. Instruction included jumping, dressage and stable management. Horses also could be rented for a ride on the bridle path in Central Park.

Novograd estimated that about 60 percent of the stable’s riding business involved children.

Among reasons for closing the stable, Novograd said, were costs incurred restoring the building and problems with the Central Park bridle path.

Benepe said there are no issues with the condition of the path or people using it for other purposes. If anything, he said, the bridle path has been improved over recent years by the Central Park Conservancy, a not-for-profit organization that manages Central Park under a contract with the city.

Novograd said bridle paths were being used for running, dog walking and pushing baby strollers, making it difficult for riders.

The closing of Claremont does not mean the end of horseback riding in parks in New York City, Benepe said, pointing out that there are riding facilities in the city’s other boroughs.

And he said the city is exploring the possibility of one or more of its stable operators setting up an operation under which horses could be brought to Central Park by trailer.

‘We’re obviously not interested in seeing horseback riding leave the park after 150 years,’ Benepe said.

Losing Claremont is a blow not only to those who ride there, but to those who believe such changes erode New York’s character.

New York Times:

Yesterday, Paul Novograd, 63, ended the family tradition, closing the stables for good. Were this some other place, some place out West maybe, the shuttering of one old riding school might have gone unnoticed. But what made Claremont unique was not so much what it was but where it was: in the heart of Manhattan, on the Upper West Side, a few steps from a Papa John’s pizzeria at the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and West 89th Street, and less than two blocks from Central Park.

The academy was the oldest continuously operated stable in New York City and, according to Mr. Novograd, the oldest in the United States, offering riding lessons and the renting and boarding of horses. It was a patch of un-Manhattan in Manhattan, definitive proof that the city indeed had it all — skyscrapers, a nearly naked cowboy in Times Square and horses you could rent for $55 an hour.

Mr. Novograd’s decision to close the academy shocked many of his customers and even many of his 30 employees. All day yesterday, the last official day of business at Claremont, people stood around as if at a wake.

Upstairs, Chelsea Roberts, 47, who started riding the horses at Claremont in the early 1970s, said goodbye to one of her favorites, Bach. She brought along her 10-year-old son, Maxwell Roberts-Pereira, who learned how to ride at the academy. Downstairs, in the main office just outside the riding ring, someone taped a letter to Claremont to the glass panes of the door: “You are more than brick, mortar, wood, dirt and hay. Your soul is made of all those souls that have come through your doors.”

And down a muddy, cleated ramp on the sidewalk outside, Christina Valauri snapped a picture and shook her head.

“I’ve ridden here, my daughter’s ridden here,” said Ms. Valauri, a research director at a brokerage firm. “This is a real loss. I actually feel like I am at a funeral.”

The riding school was formed in 1927, in a tan-brick building erected in 1892 as a public livery stable. It had escaped death before, when the city condemned and took over the property from Irwin Novograd in the 1960s as part of an urban renewal program. The city never followed through on its plans for public housing at the Claremont site, and in the late 1990s Mr. Novograd’s son bought it back.

But insurance costs, payments on a loan for a $2 million restoration and taxes had become too costly, Paul Novograd said, while business decreased over the years by hundreds of riders on an average weekend.

“It’s a wonderful institution,” he said. “It’s a shame it has to go. But I can’t go into bankruptcy. I’ve taken out a second mortgage on my house to put money into this place.”

He said that the popularity of nearby Central Park worked against him and the horses. Riders could take the horses for a stroll on the scenic bridle path in the park, but as the path became more congested with joggers and other pedestrians, the path’s upkeep decreased, as did the number of customers willing to navigate the crowds, he said. “The bridle path has become like an obstacle course, with dogs nipping at horses’ heels, people pushing baby strollers,” Mr. Novograd said.

He declined to answer questions about what would happen to the building, which would be worth millions on the market. “I can’t say anything about the future,” Mr. Novograd said, though he added that the building could not be torn down because it is a registered national and city landmark.

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The ancient Persians believed that the young should be trained Equitare, Arcum Tendere, Veritatem Dicere “To Ride, To Shoot, and to Speak the Truth.”

New York passed the Sullivan Law banning guns in 1911.

I don’t think anyone can remember when Truth was last honored in New York City.

The last riding stable in Manhattan closed April 29, 2007.

Opening this week in New York fresh from Robert Redford’s Sundance Festival, this year’s answer to Brokeback Mountain takes the contemporary cinema’s defense of forbidden love one step further.

New York Times:

The director Robinson Devor apparently would like viewers who watch his heavily reconstructed documentary, “Zoo,” to see it as a story of ineluctable desire and human dignity. Shot on Super 16-millimeter film, with many scenes steeped in a blue that would have made Yves Klein envious, “Zoo” is, to a large extent, about the rhetorical uses of beauty and metaphor and of certain filmmaking techniques like slow-motion photography. It is, rather more coyly, also about a man who died from a perforated colon after he arranged to have sex with a stallion.

Bumper sticker sighted locally in Loudoun County, Virginia:

My horse bucked off your honor student.

Earlier post.

video

The attention of the Netherlands has been riveted for several days on the plight of a herd of about 100 horses trapped by the North Sea on an earthen mound in a wilderness area outside the town of Marrum. Storms flooded the area and trapped the horses for three days.

AP

Dutch firefighters waded into the waters and staked out an escape route. 19 horses died from drowning or exposure before today’s rescue, in which four female volunteers on horseback led the herd to safety.

BBC

This is one very talented horse.

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Hat tip to Dominique Poirier.