We are getting picked up at 4 a.m. to get to Albany and then a connecting flight to Chicago and then on to San Francisco. We’ll get a tour of the Silicon Valley Humane Society, rest up in a guest cottage at the home of a Humane Society supporter, where we are staying and go out and get some Asian food. Wednesday Maria and I will go the Cantor Museum at Stanford and visit some Humane Society volunteers and donors and have a dinner with some officials and contributors from the group. Thursday more meetings, some walking around Palo Alto, hopefully more Asian food and a speech that evening, it is not open to the public.
I have a long and old connection to the Bay Area and Palo Alto, I was often out there when I was writing for Wired and then Rolling Stone. I was offered a job out there, but I thought San Francisco wasn’t the right place for me. It has changed a lot, Palo Alto is beautiful, crowded, wealthy and intense. They support their animal welfare groups out there, I am eager to talk about the history of the human/companion animal bond, the rise of the rescue culture, the future of animal welfare in America.
California is wonderful, but no longer the peaceful paradise, it feels a lot like New York City without the skyscrapers. There is awful traffic and lots of harried people. Maria and I are tired and drained a bit, we are looking forward to a few days away. I always miss the blog when I am gone, but I am taking my camera. Deb Foster, a wonderful house and pet sitter is keeping an eye on the house, dogs, cats and donkeys and sheep. Chickens too. She knows the drill, and even Frieda likes to snuggle with her a bit. We don’t have to worry about anything but our trip.
Technology always figures into life these days. I am bringing the Canon, I just no longer feel at ease without it, I am not bringing a laptop, I will not blog from there. I have my Ipad to check e-mail. Saturday morning I will begin teaching my four lecture course, “The Art Of The Blog” at Hubbard Hall Arts Center in Cambridge. Then I have to focus on heading out to the Nimrod Literary Festival in Tulsa, Oklahoma, then my Ted Talk, then the “Second Chance Dog: A Love Story” is coming out from Random House on Nov. If you want it signed by Maria and I, you can order it from Battenkill Books or call them at 518 677-2515. So the blog will be quiet for a few days, and so, hopefully will I. It always feels strange not to write on the blog, it is a part of me now. We can appreciate one another a bit, I think. I will miss it and I appreciate all of you. Be well. I’m praying for peace and relief for the people of Syria.
I am in the fourth month of my new subscription program, the migration of much of my writing life online, the evolution of the blog into a book all of its own, my living memoir, my seminal work. My blog is about mindfulness, the hero journey, the search for a meaningful life, spirituality, love, rural life, photography and animals. It’s about a life, my life, a new brew of images and words, columns and journals, ideas and yearnings, podcasts and Open Groups on Facebook.
The subscription program is going very well, nobody has complained about it, most people seem comfortable with it, some, of course, are avoiding it.
The blog is growing, a lot of different things on it. I have been soliciting subscriptions for four or five months now, the program has been successful. Internet marketing has its own pace. More than 95 per cent of the people reading the blog have not yet subscribed to it. It will take some time to change that percentage, but the important news is there is lots of room for growth. I am positing this as a model for the new way writers work and make a living in the digital era. On Mondays, I write about the blog, how it is doing, what I am up to, what changes are in the works. In the coming weeks, I will increase the number of podcasts, building up to the November publication of my next paper book, Second Chance Dog: A Love Story. I’ve been asked to write a piece about the book for The New York Times, also for Parade Magazine, a good start. I am redesigning the blog’s header to reflect the idea of the blog as a book. I’m doing a Ted Talk in November on my notions of mindfulness, aging and health.
Today, I thought today I’d engage in a dialogue with the 90 per centers, the readers who have not yet subscribed, either by using the new credit card option or the existing Paypal option. You can subscribe for $3 a month (for the financially pressed), $5 a month, $60 a year. The credit card option offers subscribers the change to manage their subscriptions. They can upgrade, downgrade, cancel at any time. I want to say this those to those of you among that percentage who simply don’t have the money: the blog will remain free to you, I have no plans to restrict content or exclude those who can’t pay. You have been with me from the beginning, I will stay with you.
For those who do have the money to pay, this is payment for my work, my writing, my time, my photography. It is like any other book, I charge for it, and I feel it is appropriate to be paid for it. My life is my responsibility, not yours, but publishing has changed. I am not a worthy cause or a charity, it is just like buying food or clothes, things of value are not free in our world. Nobody should subscribe unless the blog is useful, entertaining, inspiring or valuable to them. Everybody has to form their own value system about taking things for free, and people are used to free things online. Information does want to be free, but somebody has to create it and also eat. I take this position on behalf myself and other creative people. We have a right to be paid for our work and we need to pay our bills like every one. From the responses to the subscriptions, I see that most people agree. It is essential to the continuation of culture online and off. I was a long time in coming to the point where I saw that I need to be getting paid for the work I do here and I think it is the right time.
Except for short vacations and business trips, I publish the blog daily and have published nearly 14,000 posts and 7,000 photographs since the blog started up in 2007. I am very proud of this blog, it is the most creative thing I have yet done in my life.
So far, all of the subscription money has gone into improving the blog. Creating a mobile web version, setting up podcasts, offering credit card subscription options, maintenance and other fees. More improvements are underway. They are expensive.
I will continue to post weekly discussions about the new world of writing, I am happy to see that many creative people are offering quality blogs and getting paid for them. I have 175,00 viewers a month coming through bedlamfarm.com and this is the right path for me, I intend to remain relevant and vital in this new world. I love writing and photographing for the blog, it is the perfect forum for me – varied, instant, interactive. I embrace the challenge of being a writer in this new environment, I will keep at it, subscriptions are a major step forward. So are e-books and other new offerings. Thanks to those many people who have already subscribed, the 90 per centers will have to make their own decisions about it. I’m not shutting off access to the blog to anybody and will continue working to improve it.
In the past few years, I have had to change and will have to change some more. If you want to read good writing online or off, you may have to change also. I’m up for it. I am committed to a blog that is relevant, timely, published frequently and is well illustrated. I am committed to being paid for it.
I don’t take people’s work for free, online or off. Not to the grocer, the dentist, the handyman or the cable company. So will keep this dialogue going. My own goal is to get the 90 per cent down to 75 per cent over the next few months. I believe it will happen. You can subscribe here.
We brought an old chest over from the first Bedlam Farm and parked it on Minnie’s favorite chair. When we came out to move it, we saw that Minnie was not fazed by the chest, she just found it an even cozier spot to doze away the mid-day hours. Cats are quite resilient and adaptable creatures.
I frequently hear people tell me they love all animals, and I have also gotten use to the startling (to me) statement so many people make, especially online, that animals are better than people, that they love animals more than people. Many people also tell me they don’t trust people who don’t like dogs or other animals. This is all an amazing evolution in the way we perceive animals, although I believe this much more common in America than in other countries where we can afford these kind of indulgences. Here, it seems the less we love people, the more we are loving animals.
In fact, if you pay attention to the way people talk about animals – I do – they worship them, they see them as pure, unconditionally loving and saintly creatures.
Plato and Aristotle wrote a great deal about the human view of animals, so did almost every great philosopher, this has always been an issue in the world. Until very recently, the idea that animals were superior to people or like children would have been stupefying, incomprehensible, now statements like these are made so frequently they are not even surprising. And they are made so passionately and often they are becoming reality for many.
Once again, I am a bit of freak, somewhat outside the tent, scratching my head and looking in. I don’t love all animals, I barely even know most species, and in my mind, that is just like saying I love all people. I would like to, but surely do not. Some animals are quite difficult to love. That kind of love is so indiscriminate to me as to be almost meaningless. I I love everything without reservation, then I love nothing.
For me, a dog is not like a field mouse, a cat is not a raccoon, a donkey is not a fisher. When people love animals, it is usually because the animals are appealing to them or know – as dogs and cats and donkeys have learned – how to manipulate us and please us. The spider and raccoon cannot wag their tails when we come home, or snuggle with us on the sofa on cold winter nights.
We have gone from worshiping the best parts of the human being to worshiping animals, one rises and falls in juxtaposition to the other. The less we like people, the more we like animals. We are disconnected from each other, we have little regard for politicians, our priests are revealed as all too human, our business leaders greedy and remote, technology intrusive and complex and dehumanizing. The more disappointed we are in what we see on the news, the more idealized is the animal, who lives free of guile and malice and betrayal.
I do not ever want to worship animals, certainly not at the expense of humans, or posit them as being superior, they are not, to me. Living on a farm with sheep, donkeys, dogs, cats, chickens, cows and sheep has made me love animals all the more, but idealize them quite a bit less. They have some truly awful characteristics, from rampant sexual intimidation and assault to greediness to dullness, vapidity, brute violence and indifference to suffering.
The human being is a miraculous if flawed creature. We can create, we can aspire, we can be and do better. I have to be honest, it seems to me that human beings are bent on destroying one another and the world, and they have gotten off to a good start, and this is not something any animal would set out to do. But that is not their choice. If they can’t do harm, they can’t decide to do good either. They have no conscience, no creative spark, no miracle of creation and invention. They can’t change their minds, even have minds in the conventional sense.
The drama of the human being is how tormented and conflicted we are, how capable of wonder and mayhem. I don’t believe either animals or humans are served by pitting them against one another, or judging them in the context of one another. I am doing animals no favor by worshiping them, they might all end up over fed, on anti-depressants or locked in crates for the rest of their lives. The good news is that humans love you. The bad news is that humans love you.
Animals have taught me how to love humans, how to open up to them, how to be more patient, less frustrated, gentler.
This does not make them superior to people, it makes them important to people, and there is a great difference. I do not wish to see my animals as inferior or superior to me. They are not human in any way, human concepts of rights and freedom are not in their consciousness in any way. I am with Plato. By loving them, learning from them, treating them well, we not only become more human, we become better humans. That is the power of animals to me.
What do I worship? The creative spark? The potential of the human conscience? The ability of humans to create and connect.
The great philosophers – Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas – believed that humans were superior to animals and that a measure of our humanity was how well we treated them. In our time, many animal lovers believe animals are superior to people and devote themselves to the preservation, rescue and betterment of animal lives. In America, this change has almost become a faith. From the l960’s to now, the number of owned animals in the United States has more than quintupled, shelters not longer simply house animals but are becoming life-long habitats in the “no-kill” era, a very new and expensive idea for the world.
What does it mean to be human in our time? Obviously, it means having animals in our lives. There are more than 70 million owned dogs, more cats, and uncounted numbers of horses, fish, reptiles, ferrets, weasels, hamsters and mice. People give animals human names, bring them into the center of our lives. The new work of animals has becoming supporting the emotional lives of stressed and disconnected humans. In much of the world, animals are either ignored or eaten, the idea of feeding pets is shocking in most developing countries. In affluent America, the story is quite different.
This week, I’m going to Palo Alto to give a talk to the Silicon Valley Human Society and I want to talk about the explosion affecting the human-companion animal bond, what it means, where it comes from. I also want to talk about the future for animals and the notion of being humane. In this evolving relationship people people and animals – we are spending billions on pet care and health in this country – what does it mean to be humane?
I think it means a number of things:
– Rescuing animals in need.
– Providing animals with good health care, good food, exercise, attention, veterinary care.
– Expanding our notions of humaneness to include proper training. Training is a catastrophe in America, millions of training books sold, few well trained dogs. Training is essential to the well-being of domestic pets, it keeps them healthy and safe, and other animals and people healthy and safe.
– Choosing a dog thoughtfully and intelligently. People get pets impulsively or out of moral imperatives – simply to rescue things or because they are cute or to offer them as Christmas presents. This can be wonderful, it can also be dangerous and unhealthy for the dogs and cats. People need to be taught all of the best ways to get a dog: rescue groups, shelters, good and conscientious breeders.
– It is humane to respect the true nature of animals. The emotionalizing of animals has become epidemic. It is not always good for them, overfeeding, behavioral problems, the medicating of dogs and assaults on humans are skyrocketing.
Animal advocacy includes the love, rescue and proper care of animals, but it is also more than that. We need to understand the emotional impact of the new relationship with pets, we need to find ways to bring them more into the lives of people and not just confine them to yards, homes and play groups. Animals are healing, they connect us to the natural world, it is humane to be responsible and thoughtful about their acquisition, care and true nature.
Therapy dogs are one example of the ways we are expanding the new work of dogs, but we need to explore other ways to find meaningful work for animals so they can grow, learn, evolve and develop their instincts and intelligence. It is not, to me, humane, to turn animals into children or human surrogates. They are different from us.
It is humane to respect and value good breeders as well as good rescue groups and shelters. Good breeders preserve and expand the best traits of animals, from temperament to health. It is humane to challenge pet owners to train their dogs as well as medicate them. It is humane to protect them from the rapidly growing trend – aggressively supported by pharmaceutical companies and many veterinarians – to medicate them for human neurotic problems like anxiety, depression and separation anxiety.
I appreciate animal rescue – I have a lot of rescued animals here on the farm – I think being humane is that and now, much more. Animal advocacy is not simply stopping abuse. It is stopping abuse and going farther, helping animals integrate themselves into the difficult and hostile world of humans Being humane meets meeting the new challenges humans and animals face as more and more of them are coming together in a landmark re-definition of how humans co-exist with the animals who can adapt to them.
Being human means working with the civic and legal system to bring animals into the workplace and public spaces, to stem the growing efforts to ghettoize animals in backyards and parks. Something is broken in human beings when we are disconnected from the natural world, something heals us when we re-connect.
I agree with Plato, I believe humans are superior to animals in some ways, not in others. When we worship them, we are doing a disservice both to them and to us. The biggest difference is that we have a conscience, even if we don’t always use it, and we can alter and better our lives. There is no animal in the world that can do that, invent democracy, art or theater. In my love of animals I never wish to lose my love of people. Isn’t that, in fact, the definition of being humane?
