Aha! Your thoughts on political organization remind me of why I dislike federalism so much in the United States. We have such a large country, with such a diversity of cultures, that I think it is too large and varied for the one-size-fits-all top-down approach of federalism to work. I believe that the only valid purpose of the federal government in the United States is to protect the individual freedoms enumerated in our federal constitution (as was the original intent), and that everything else should be left up to the individual states and their localities. Then the individual states and localities would be free to govern themselves in whatever way worked best for them, instead of being forced to conform in some certain way by a majority who isn't even a part of the state and/or locality. Which could itself be considered an oppression.

But I digress. I remember that I promised not stomp on my soap box here too hard. Sorry about that, hehe. ;)

I am also reminded of the last time I rode a horse..... I don't own any horses myself, but my father and uncle own several. But anyway, a friend mentioned that she had never ridden before, so I invited her to the old homeplace to have a nice trail ride down an old carriage road.

It kind of ballooned into a whole-family affair, and my father didn't have enough horses for everyone. So I went to borrow one from my uncle, whom everyone calls "Possum".

Anyway, Possum had two horses that looked almost exactly the same at the time. One was broke and trained, and the other was still very green. And to top it all off, the mare that my father's wife was riding was in heat.

This of course put this green horse that I was riding into quite a mood. He bucked all the way down the carriage road, which was quite annoying, until we got to an old pasture down towards the end. The idea was that we would cross this pasture and come back up along the river, instead of following the road back.

But the horses didn't want to go into the tall grass. I figured they were just spooked by the tall grass, and urged Possum's horse out into it.

So that scared up the bear out that was hiding in the tall grass, which ran away from us towards the river. The horse was (understandably) frightened, and reared up on his hind legs and started spinning around. I just held on with my legs as tightly as I could and tried not to crack my scrotum on the saddle horn (with limited success lol). Somehow I stayed in the saddle, but I am not sure how. Lucky I guess. Or maybe strengthened by fear, haha.

So we turned around and that horse bucked all the way back to Possum's house. I have never been so sore after riding a horse, lol. And I haven't ridden since, though I would like to get a horse once I have my "new" house a little more finished.