Often the hardest part of writing my blog is picking a suitable image for the top of the column. Sometimes I have a photo on my phone that will do, sometimes I pick one from our old photo albums. Occasionally I will use Dall-E, an artificial intelligence tool from the folks who brought us Chat GPT to create an appropriate depiction of my post’s theme. And sometimes I will search the World Wide Web for something to punch up my words.

Of course, one has to be careful when choosing images from the Web. Many are copyright protected and should not be appropriated for other uses. When my posts were part of the Chicago Tribune’s ChicagoNow site I was allowed to use the Tribune photo files—at least according to the ChicagoNow Guru, Jimmy Greenfield. That gave me a lot of creative photo choices.

There are other options. Once a week, the website Deposit Photos sends me a link to a Photo of the Week that can be used for free as long as I give proper attribution. So yes, that is where today’s stunning illustration is from. It’s such a marvelous photo of a Clydesdale that I knew I wanted to use it to head up my blog. The only problem is that I don’t have much to say about…horses!

I have ridden horses a few times. I recall a summer vacation with my parents in upstate New York where trail riding was an afternoon activity. And when our kids were 6 and 8 years old, we spent a marvelous week at Peaceful Valley Dude Ranch in Colorado. Although I am sure I took a daily ride through the mountains, my strongest memories are of Michael in the kid’s rodeo, and watching Laury screw up her courage to go for a ride. The cowboy hats from that adventurous summer are still on the high closet shelf in our bedroom.

I may not have been on a horse in the last 30 years, but I have ridden a camel. That took place somewhere in the south of Israel during a tour in 2008. My ride was uneventful; I wish I could say the same about the ride of one of our tour companions who was unceremoniously dumped from her “ship of the desert.” She had a dusty, painful landing!

How about any of you? Great horse stories to tell? Something to make that fiesty Clydesdale at the top of the page proud? Send them to me at chidoc@mail.com, or leave them as a reply.

Just remember, if you fall off your horse, or your camel, screw up your courage and get back on. We will ride those wild horses, someday.

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