Ut Prosim: Get 'em while they're hot

Monday, March 29, 2010

Get 'em while they're hot

The following is an article about the Tibetan Mastiff craze in China. These dogs are like small grizzly bears, shaggy and massive. They're nice enough when napping in the sun, but are fearsome, vicious protectors of the tents and livestock. Long vital to life on the plateau, they are a symbol of Tibet. Not sure how they'll enjoy their lives in Beijing and Shanghai, but I hope that some of that money will trickle back down to the nomads.
http://www.seattlepi.com/national/1104ap_as_china_tibetan_mastiff.html

Attached is a photo from October 2007. This pack of mutts (not nearly as big or good looking as the full-blood mastiffs) and I would fight for bathroom rights at the outhouse- me to relieve myself, they to feed. Here they're eying a fresh sheep carcass being dressed. They usually won the outhouse battle, but I got to eat the innards of the sheep!

If

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too:

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same:

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss:

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

-Rudyard Kipling