Sheep

Taking stock of the new year means contemplating a blank slate. It means staring out into the unknown, more acutely aware than usual that we don't know what will happen next. As we look ahead, we brace ourselves for the fact that every day of the next year will bring news. People we know will get engaged. There will be elections, military battles, and natural disasters. The world will change and our lives will change, and when it's over we'll look back and wonder if we could have seen any of it coming.

Andy Rice Andy Rice of Vermont, a full-time professional sheep shearer, calls himself the "sheep whisperer. " While some shearers approach the job as "me man, me shear sheep," Rice says, people hire him because he's gentle. "I control the sheep with my feet," he said of the technique he will illustrate in shearing demonstrations at Saturday's annual Sheep Day and Earth Day Celebration at Soule Homestead in Middleborough. "You can see how calm the sheep are. " The Soule Homestead Education Center is a nonprofit that teaches children about nature and rural...

Rabid skunks, raccoons and foxes are fairly common in Massachusetts, but health officials in Amherst are reporting that a sheep in town has tested positive for rabies. Amherst animal welfare officer Carol Hepburn says the sheep was one of three kept in a pen owned by three families at a cohousing complex. The town was informed of the infected sheep Wednesday. Town officials are recommending that anyone who had direct contact with the animal in the 14 days prior to Oct. 8 be evaluated to see if vaccination is needed.

Gore Place's 25th annual Sheepshearing Festival takes place on April 28 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. In addition to the llamas, alpacas, and sheep that will be getting haircuts from sheep-shearing experts Kevin Ford and Andy Rice, there will be herding dog demonstrations, 88 crafts vendors, hands-on activities for children, wagon rides, and historic crafters dressed in period costumes. Visit www.goreplace.org for more information. - Megan McKee

BEARA PENINSULA, Ireland -- For centuries, this remote finger of land extending from Ireland’s southwestern corner into the ocean has stymied foreign invaders. Even when most of the Emerald Isle was gripped in an English vise, this untamed cape was often a lawless frontier, just beyond the long reach of the crown. Today, the Beara Peninsula remains blissfully wild, refusing to be conquered by the sprouting of souvenir shops and armadas of tour buses. While platoons of travelers armed with cameras and fortified with fanny packs stick to the Ring of Kerry - the well-trod trail directly to the north - the Beara...

Traditionally, video games have showcased the alien or the weird. From Italian plumbers hurtling through oversize green pipes to gun battles set on distant planets, part of the appeal of games has been the escapism they provide. So it's surprising, at first glance, that two critically acclaimed, recently released video games deal darkly in the least escapist - and least escapable - subject imaginable: growing up. "Limbo" and "Catherine" are different in many ways, but their positive reception, and the simple fact that they were made in the first place, suggest that as the people...

Friends often accuse me of being too nostalgic. By afternoon, they say, I have become misty-eyed over what I ate for breakfast. That's not completely true, I tell them. I am sure there have been a few bowls of cereal that have gone unremembered or unremarked upon. But my protests are half-hearted, because I know my friends are right. Case in point: On a recent trip to Iceland, I became weepy at the sight of three sheep grazing in a grassy field under the midnight sun. This was my first trip to Iceland in several years.

One More Sheep Written by Mij KellyIllustrated by Russell Ayto Peachtree, 30 pp., ages 3-7, $16.95 The Big Bad Wolf and Me By Delphine Perret Sterling, 64 pp., ages 6-10, $9.95 March, the month usually reserved for lions coming in and lambs going out, might newly be dedicated to wolves and sheep. "One More Sheep," written by Mij Kelly, with illustrations by Russell Ayto, is the literary equivalent of vaudeville for the picture book set. It charmingly tells the story, in rhyme, of "a wild, windy night, in a fierce thunderstorm," when...

Halil Topal walks with his sheep each day across the rocky pastures through the colorful palette of apartment towers that have risen on his hill. Topal's face, anchored by a thick mustache, is aged by wind and sun beyond his 26 years. Yet his eyes spark at talk of his work. Topal lives in a fifth-floor unit but prefers it out here. "In the summer, we sit under the tree and drink milk from the goats. But in the apartment there is no tree. It is hot," Topal said. "It's good to live near the soil.

LINCOLN - In my indefatigable quest to offer you, dear readers, more insight into the financial markets at this most perilous time, today I invite you on a field trip to a very special place. If I had my way, we'd go directly to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, where we would ask the over-caffeinated traders who are always bleating "Buy!" or "Sell!" how a national economy can be reasonably sound in the morning and be hurtling toward a depression by lunch. Short of that, we would visit expert investment managers in their plush downtown offices to learn why a company like Bank of America...

Kids ODDANIMALS More than 100 fictional species, including a Zebraeagle and Cheeseasaurus, fill the Hall of OddAnimals, an imaginary natural history museum created by artist Jef Czekaj and Boston Children's Hospital patients. Daily from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. (Fridays until 9 p.m.; exhibit runs through June 3). $12, $1 on Fridays from 5-9 p.m., free under 1. Boston Children's Museum, 308 Congress St., Boston. 617-426-6500. www.bostonchildrensmuseum.org DORCHESTER SPRING EGG HUNT Folks at the Phillips Candy House have their work cut out for them.

Forty bighorn sheep are settling into their new home in Nebraska, about two weeks after they were captured in the Canadian Rockies and moved 1,300 miles to the United States. Dozens of big game managers, conservation officers and volunteers joined in Alberta to round up the animals, with hope of establishing herds in an area of Nebraska where tens of thousands of the sheep once lived before the area was settled by Europeans. The Omaha World-Herald reports ( http://bit.ly/y1Kj8R)

Taking stock of the new year means contemplating a blank slate. It means staring out into the unknown, more acutely aware than usual that we don't know what will happen next. As we look ahead, we brace ourselves for the fact that every day of the next year will bring news. People we know will get engaged. There will be elections, military battles, and natural disasters. The world will change and our lives will change, and when it's over we'll look back and wonder if we could have seen any of it coming.

Cricket is a very old and complicated game, and it obviously played a part in the invention of baseball. Although, historians at Plimoth Plantation here in Massachusetts believe our game has a much closer genetic connection to stool ball, which colonists brought here directly from England, where milkmaids in the 1400s fashioned their milking stools into wickets (think: home plate) and swung some manner of a bat at balls bowled toward the milking stool. Obviously, not many dull moments in the barn.

Rabid skunks, raccoons and foxes are fairly common in Massachusetts, but health officials in Amherst are reporting that a sheep in town has tested positive for rabies. Amherst animal welfare officer Carol Hepburn says the sheep was one of three kept in a pen owned by three families at a cohousing complex. The town was informed of the infected sheep Wednesday. Town officials are recommending that anyone who had direct contact with the animal in the 14 days prior to Oct. 8 be evaluated to see if vaccination is needed.

FUNDÃO, Portugal - For many years, I wondered about transhumance and saw remnants of it across Europe. In Switzerland, there was a stone hut in the mountains, and in Austria someone pointed out part of an old trail that had probably been used for a thousand years. But little did I suspect that a small town in Portugal had maintained the ancient tradition, and that visitors could go there in September to be part of it. Transhumance - which occurred annually in Asia, Africa, India, and the Middle East, as well as Europe - is the seasonal movement of livestock...

"Your ancestors are dreaming of you, waiting for you, calling you," says the Yoda-like Grandfather (Damchaa Banzar) to Bagi (Batzu Khayankhyarvaa), near the beginning of "Khadak," an ambitious fable set amid herding peoples of the wintry Mongolian steppes. Bagi can sense lost sheep. He can hear rocks and trees. Strange premonitions cloud his consciousness. A female shaman (Tserendarizav Dashnyam) says Bagi is a mystic. Whether he will accept his calling is the ostensible tension of the film.

"There's also a family connection in England. " PEAK EXPERIENCE: In London, "we didn't do the walking we wanted to do because of the heat wave. " Instead, they moved on to nearby Derbyshire, an area of mountains and valleys called the Peak District.

Traditionally, video games have showcased the alien or the weird. From Italian plumbers hurtling through oversize green pipes to gun battles set on distant planets, part of the appeal of games has been the escapism they provide. So it's surprising, at first glance, that two critically acclaimed, recently released video games deal darkly in the least escapist - and least escapable - subject imaginable: growing up. "Limbo" and "Catherine" are different in many ways, but their positive reception, and the simple fact that they were made in the first place, suggest that as the people who make and play video games grow up,...