It’s been a while, but the memory of Barbaro is still stamped on many hearts….and visible on many magazine racks.

Students of good journalism and lovers of the Late Great One should beat a path to the newstand and settle down with the August issue of Vanity Fair to read Buzz Bissinger’s tribute to Barbaro: “Gone Like the Wind”.

Call me old-fashioned, but I think that a story like this one deserves to be read from the printed page. And it’s so hot out (at least around here), you can justify sitting in front of a fan for a good read.

This article is a bit different because it includes some very personal excerpts from Gretchen Jackson’s diary.

True, for those who can’t afford to buy the magazine or who can’t make it to a newsstand, the article is posted on the VF website. But it’s not the same as holding the fat magazine in your hands and drinking in those words.

There’s also a terrific slide show of Barbaro images, some of which I had not seen before.

However you read it, do. Then send an email to the editors and ask them to assign more writers to chronicle life with and around horses. VF has had some interesting horse-related articles in the past year or so, and this is the latest.

July 12 post script: The Thoroughbred Times is reporting that this article is being used as the source material for a screenplay for a new feature film from Hollywood, to be created by the producers of the recent film “Friday Night Lights”. Barbaro on the big screen! I wonder who will play Dr. Scott Morrison from Rood and Riddle…how about Brad Pitt? Will farriers finally make it on the Hollywood scene? I’d cast Tom Hanks as Dean Richardson, George Clooney as Michael Matz, Anthony Hopkins as Roy Jackson and Meryl Streep as Gretchen Jackson. Edgar Prado will have to play himself…