Other Voices

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In the way most of us breathe air — an essential intake to sustain life — Leonard A. Slade Jr. breathes poetry.

He inhales the works of Chaucer and Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe and Langston Hughes, and breathes life into their words as he recites them as naturally as if he were exhaling. Their words, entwined in his thoughts, his very identity, flow naturally in conversation.

Slade writes his own poetry, reams of it, imbued with what he has learned from a lifetime of reading literature but uniquely and personally his.

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Anita Martin talks to horses.As a certified equine sports massage therapist, she helps horses in pain.

“When horses are in pain,” she says, “they need help. They can’t tell us with words, but they certainly tell us with body language and action,” which can include biting, bucking, and kicking.

Martin has been familiar with horses since before she was born. Both of her parents rode horses. And, Martin’s mother rode horseback when she was pregnant with Martin, which she says made her comfortable in utero with the rhythm of riding.

In her book, “The Horse Less Traveled,” Martin writes that horses were the glue that kept her family together.

She describes her father as a “real hillbilly” who did trick riding at a mountain resort for city folk, which is how her parents met.

“My mother’s obsession for horses and my father’s rebellious James Dean personality. It was a perfect match!”

As a very young child, Martin writes, she would spend hours quietly observing horses. “There was something going on very deep inside me, as if I could hear them, as if I knew their thoughts. This was a connection that was very personal. This was a window that they allowed me to see into their world.”

As she grew older, Martin rode her pony, Candy, everywhere. “Being a quiet little girl my pony gave me courage and confidence,” Martin writes. With Candy, she felt secure, and that’s how people knew her as she traveled her neighborhood on horseback.

“I always felt like even my own feet were foreign to me,” Martin says in this week’s Enterprise podcast. “But being on top of a horse was more natural and comfortable. I was fascinated by them.”

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When is a coat a work of art? When is a coat the center of a play?

When it is Joseph’s Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

The character Joseph wears his coat in this weekend’s school production in Voorheesville — where it takes on a life of its own, swirling in its many-splendored colors.

“It definitely has a stage presence,” says the woman who created the coat, Megan Viscio.

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Jill Rifkin is a sort of Robin Hood for musical instruments.

She collects them from often well-off kids who don’t use them and redistributes them to children who can’t afford them.

Rifkin was hooked, she says, by a little boy from the Caribbean.

“He didn’t speak much English, was desperate to play the violin, and his school did not have enough violins to give him … He was lonely,” Rifkin says in this week’s Enterprise podcast.

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A new widow had never driven. She had no license. She did, however, have her husband’s car. But, without a driver’s license, she couldn’t register the car to park it on the street.

A neighbor said, “Hey, if you title it to me, I can register it in my name and I can then park it.”

The widow didn’t know where to turn. She thought maybe she should have a contract with the neighbor.

She called 518-400-5544. That is the number for the Legal Hand Call-In Center. Any Schenectady or Albany county resident seeking help can call that number or email [email protected].

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Joan Mckeon had an awakening as she mowed her lawn — a job she hated.“It smelled bad, it was noisy, and the little creatures would run for their lives,” she says in this week’s Enterprise podcast.

The less lawn she mowed, the more native plants grew up. “They would bloom and then they’d be covered with bees,” she said.

Similarly, plants in her garden beds had been purchased at a garden center and came from other parts of the world.

Read the full story at https://altamontenterprise.com/02032023/mckeon-says-nurturing-nature-native-plants-something-everyone-can-do

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