Never close your eyes, no matter how hard the rain is...

You have probably thought to yourself “if I am riding my horse, and it starts to rain, what should I do.” Fortunately you have the Internet to tell you that:

If you’re out riding and you and your horse are caught in a sudden downpour, it is very important that that you and your horse get back to the barn safely. Riding through bad weather is dangerous, scary for your horse, nerve-racking, and sometimes life-threatening.

Later on in the same article you will learn that:

If you are riding with other horses in the rain, never close your eyes, no matter how hard the rain is. The instant you ingnore your riding, a disaster will occur.

I know this because there is also a song, on the Sidsel Endresen album So I Write called Horses in the Rain (regular readers will remember Sidsel from yesterday). Lateral surfing takes you to some interesting places.

Like this Randy Newman album, his self-titled first album from 1968. The 10th track on that album is I Think it’s Going to Rain Today. Take a moment and listen to some clips of the songs on the album; Newman was only 25 when he released that album, and even today it seems thorough original and inventive.

I Think it’s Going to Rain Today was covered by the selfsame Sidsel Endresen on the 1999 album Nightsong with Norwegian jazzman Bugge Wesseltoft.

Their version is the only one of the many covers by artists from Judy Collins to UB40 that bests the classic version of the song — the one you probably know — by Bette Midler from the 1988 movie Beaches (watch a clip here).