Barn cats are as much a part of racetrack lore as good-luck horseshoes, and in some barns, the reality lives up to that idyllic image of a cherished feline, prowling the barns for prey, soothing the horses, ruling the roost. Some backstretch cats are beloved and spoiled rotten, traveling from track to track with trainers and…
Join Infinite Hope Animal Rescue this Thursday night at the Nu Hotel on Smith Street (at Atlantic Avenue) to celebrate a year of helping animals and to help fund the organization’s rescue efforts. Infinite Hope is an all-volunteer animal rescue based in Boerum Hill that houses, cares for, and places abandoned animals; the organization’s adoption center is…
While the opening of the Oklahoma training facility in April is usually greeted with enthusiasm, there’s at least one person and a lot of felines who mark the return of the horses and the humans with mixed feelings. In the off-season, the barns belong to the cats of the three colonies who call the Oklahoma…
More than 10 years ago, artist/writer/curator Rhonda Lieberman was at an art installation by James Turrell at the Museum of Modern Art’s P.S. 1 in Long Island City, Queens. It was, said the East Village resident, all about light and emptiness, and about mediating environments. “It was an empty room, and the ceiling had been…
He and his sister joined my roommate Susan and me in September 1996. Rescued from a feral mother somewhere in London, Floyd and Madison were none too certain about humans; they spent much of their first few weeks in our flat under the couch. Before we adopted them, we agreed that the girl would be…
November? What November? I’m writing this on Thursday night, and a month ago tonight, I sat in my apartment as the full force of Sandy hit New York City. That night, we knew it was bad, but not how bad it would be. With an almost guilty sense of good fortune, I can say that beyond…
Let’s hope that Sunday’s open house at Saratoga is not a harbinger of things to come. Perhaps due to a less-than-pleasant weather forecast (a forecast that it never occurred to me to check), the crowd seemed smaller—though no less enthusiastic—than other years, or perhaps more people were concentrated inside, where I didn’t spend much time.…
It’s late afternoon on a February Saturday in Saratoga, and the sun is low in the sky; the temperature hovers just above freezing, and a chilling wind sweeps through the deserted shedrows of the Oklahoma training facility. There’s not a horse or a human in sight. Describing the scene as “desolate” would be charitable. But…
It is, they say, better to be lucky than good. My Miss Aurelia is both. She won her first start, at Saratoga on opening day. And when her connections went back to the barn that afternoon, waiting for them was the tiniest of little black kittens, curled up in the shedrow, not more than a…
School obligations led me southward earlier this week, away from Saratoga and back to Brooklyn, which looks remarkably verdant and beautiful after two months’ absence. I am happy to be home…I will also be happy to make my way north tomorrow, back for closing weekend at the Spa. Among the many things to look forward…
Brooklyn Backstretch 