my condolences James, we are thinking of you.

Thanks. My dad and I are in a GriefShare group. And yesterday, a small portion of the leftover food from the Memorial was served at the GriefShare meeting, and a much more substantial portion of it was donated to feed the hungry crew of volunteers doing a Stop Hunger Now project. All at the same church where we held the service. And I have it straight from the equine masticatory orifice that it was appreciated.

Equine Masticatory Orifice = Horse's Mouth.

Equine Defecatory Orifice = The other end of the horse's digestive system.

In this case, that my fellow GriefShare participants appreciated their one fruit plate and their one small plate of cookies, I have directly from them. And as for the partially-eaten fruit, vegegable, and cheese plates, and somewhat larger plate of cookies, that went to the Stop Hunger Now crew, I have it directly from the church secretary, who was supervising them (and who is also the wedding and funeral coordinator).

Oh, and in that MIDRANGE-L thread you cited, I think that particular equine masticatory orifice was somebody from IBM itself.

sometimes we joke sometimes we grieve -- most of us know the difference

FOR THE RECORD:

In case some people here are ignorant of them, there are two metaphors referring to a horse's mouth (or an "equine masticatory orifice") that are among the most common and timeless in North American English usage:

"Straight from the horse's mouth," for an answer being straight from the source, comes (so far as I'm aware) from gambling on horse racing: if horses could speak, than how could a betting tip on a horse race be any better or more reliable than one that came "straight from the horse's mouth"?

"Looking a gift horse in the mouth" for ingratitude comes from the old practice of examining a horse's teeth to estimate the animal's age and health: if a horse is a gift, then one should be grateful regardless of the horse's age and health. Some decades ago, in a science fiction novel by Alan Dean Foster, a Pandronian character, referring to a draft-beast of his home planet, recast the metaphor as "Not to look gift zintar in the masticatory orifice."

Notice that at no time in this thread did I bring up the subject of an insulting reference to another portion of a horse's anatomy, other than to define it in the most literal terms possible, differentiating it from the "masticatory orifice."

Thank you, pastrypet!