IF this little magic doo-hickey is not f-ing with me gray matters, Palo Alto before it was a city near Leland Stanford’s farm was a horse owned by Leland Stanford the farmer and driven by his famous jockey Charles Marvin. As evidenced by this fine 1890 painting.

Charles Marvin also wrote a book “Training the Trotting Horse” that he dedicates to his boss man. I would guess that beyond this scanned version Stanford the farm I mean world class university has a library that someone if not me can access this for reals.

(and somehow I am flashing to the vampire documentary I just saw at Guild and how powerful and seductive beings sometimes acquire us mere mortals as slaves)

Steve Staiger surely knows more about this scoop, so to speak. (When you say “horse” and “scoop” in the same breath, watch your step. There’s also a song that I heard Buddy from Nashville sing at a house concert at hedgehog I think, something about the guy whose job at circus is picking up after the animals. I’m the guy who…)

edit to add: and if anyone cares I got to this (link) because I wanted to see if Christopher Felver who made a doc about Ferlinghetti and has a book on musician photo portraits I borrowed from library has a palo alto connection and what I got instead was that an online auction was selling a Felver portrait of Bukowski next to an oil from 1890 about “Palo Alto” the horse. Which is like Bill Rose looking for a nanny online and instead finding Felstiner essay about “this dust of words”.