Page 48 - New Mexico Horse Breeder Spring 2018

Will the circle be unbroken...
2017 NMHBA
Have you ever jacked up the awareness level of your internal radar and honed in on circles? If you’ve done that, it means you’ve experienced a sometimes sudden realization that circles, more than any other shape, dominate our everyday existence.
Think about it.
We eat breakfast, lunch and dinner from
a round plate. It doesn’t matter if it’s made of paper, pottery or porcelain, the shape remains the same. It is worth noting that square plates tried to join the league some years ago but the odd-ball shape never gained much popularity. Somehow, it just felt wrong to eat from a square.
The glass placed next to the plate is round. It fits into the hand easily. Balanced. A perfect vessel for water, sweet tea or Dr Pepper.
Walk through your house or barn and make note of the circles surrounding you. Some of you have round tables, round rugs, round hats with round sweat bands sewn in. Your rings are round, as are a lot of your lamp shades and light fixtures. The inside barrel of a washing machine, as well as the interior of a dryer, are both round.
Water buckets for horses are circular in shape and it’s not uncommon to see round bales of hay in the pasture. Wheels and tires for cars and trucks are round. And, if they ever get “out of round,” the result is a miserable ride.
A circle is much more than just a shape.
Its physical configuration spawns a number of technical terms that most of us learned (and forgot) in high school geometry. Most definitions begin by saying: A circle is a simple closed shape or curve. Then, typical of human nature, we take this simple, vaguely comforting shape, and we load it down with hard-edged terms in order to “explain” its mathematical concept. We rely on something called the Euclidian plane in Euclidian geometry to substantiate that the round shape on top of the table over there in the corner is, truly, a circle. For instance, did you know:
Circles have something called an annulus? They, from the smallest to the largest, also have a tangent, a chord, a scant and a diameter. And just when you begin thinking they can’t possibly lay claim to any more parts, someone jumps up and says, “Wait! What about a secant, a radius, a segment, a sector, an arc, an.....”
Oh. Please.
Medieval scholars believed the circle had divine qualities. The shape was studied in
the Rhind papyrus in 1700 BC, in 300 BC
in a book written by Euclid and in Plato’s Seventh Letter. That’s all fascinating (to some) information but, for now, let’s abandon all the mathematical elements and think about other significant aspects of a circle.
The circle is recognized across the world as
a representation of something that is infinite
by its nature, without beginning and without end. A circle is comforting. It’s consistent, never changing its destination. It’s one of the very few things we can actually count on. It’s the shape of the sun and, sometimes, the shape of the moon. The strength of a circle is tempered by some kind of strangely perceived softness.
We’ve all heard the phrase “coming full circle.” It’s the path the circle follows to get back to itself. A dear American Indian friend once explained
to me that each individual’s life is viewed as a circle. We gain insight and wisdom as we travel through the successive arcs and segments and the experiences that fill them. Finally, we arrive at
the final arc. We are closing in on our personal full circle. That, he explained, is when we begin sharing our accumulated knowledge with those who are still on the earlier arcs.
Okay.
So what’s with all the circle talk? How does it relate to the 2017 champions?
Answer: Horses, especially from a breeding perspective, are capable of coming full circle
By Diane M. Ciarloni
and, in so doing, achieve a sense of immortality for their human connections.
Immortality is a major focus for some people. They want it badly and, for some, that want turns into a need. This is a digression but here is some must read proof of that last statement.
There are people called transhumanists and, for them, one life just isn’t enough. They want more than a single, paltry full circle.
We know of at least 56 people who share this viewpoint. Currently, those 56 bodies hang upside down in a small, white warehouse, located just north of Moscow, Russia. Their blood was drained from their bodies, to the last drop. They will hang there for the next 100 years, fully immersed in cold, cold, cold liquid nitrogen.
There they hang, like 56 very large bats. The main difference between the bats and the 56 human bodies is the bats hang rent-free. Not
so for the humans. It’s $36,000 on the barrel head before the blood-letting begins. The cost drops to $18,000 if you want to preserve only the head/brain. Obviously, those 56 people have (had?) a tremendous desire for immortality.
Horses are capable of achieving the same thing with a lot less hassle and a lot less time. Now, the $36,000? That depends on the horse.
The 2017 Quarter Horse Champions offer an outstanding example of a full circle, highlighted by a blush of immortality.
How?
Answer: Look at the background information on the nine Champions. Eight
of them are stamped with Mac Murray/Janis Spencer Murray’s MJ Farms influence. And you’ll eventually see how even that ninth one isn’t MJ-free. That’s the kind of continuity that will continue to grace Quarter Horse pedigrees for the next 100 years....and no one needs to hang upside down to have their blood drained.
46 New Mexico Horse Breeder