22 January

The Clarity Of Cold

by Jon Katz
Clarity Of Cold
Clarity Of Cold

This kind of cold takes over the air and the matter on the ground, it envelopes life, shapes it and dominates it, gets into the house, the bones, it turns the animals passive and anxious, it alters movement and becomes a consciousness all of it’s own, bitter cold has a clarity that nothing, not even extreme heat has. It is a part of winter life here, and in many other places, and I get used to cold, I do not get used to being this cold. There is a penetrating clarity about it, life is sharp and intense.

22 January

Business Meeting, Anne And Scott

by Jon Katz
Anne and Scott
Anne and Scott

I was wandering around Cambridge bothering people and taking their photos – I went to show Scott the photographs I’m offering for the George Forss-Jon Katz photo show – and I saw two people I am close to, our bookkeeper Anne Dambrowski and Scott, having bookkeeping meeting at the cafe during a lull. I loved the intimacy of the photo, the sense of a meeting, the sense of purpose, the way the light just draws you right up to them and out the window. I am coming to love taking some time each day to look for scenes of my world, my life, and the people in it.

Anne has been our bookkeeper for five years, she has saved and protected us so many times, I can’t begin to count them, it took me several years to understand what a sweet and competent and dear human being she is, you have to let people reveal themselves. Anne is devoted fencer and gardener, and she is an artist who makes masks.

22 January

Lunch Window, Cambridge Co-Op, Zero.

by Jon Katz
Lunch Window, Cambridge Co-Op
Lunch Window, Cambridge Co-Op

It was below zero when I went into the Cambridge Food Co-Op to get some clams and dough for tonights white clam pizza (with Ricotta, tomato sauce and arregano), I was struck by the blue frost on the Co-Op window, I asked if I could do a still life and everybody said sure, why not? I set out some grapefruit and apples and I decided to flood the photo with color, go for a Manet approach to the lunch table at the co-op, there is usually somebody sitting there with a laptop sipping coffee or having lunch. It is a gift to have a co-op, to get fresh fish, vegetables, fruit, good and healthy foods.

22 January

Frieda And Minnie: The Most Improbable Photo

by Jon Katz
Frieda And Minnie
Frieda And Minnie

I learn from animals and about them every day if I listen, watch and wait for them to evolve and adapt. Frieda, our Rottweiler-Shepherd mix, is a ferocious hunter with enormous prey drive, she has pursed cats all of her life and tried to kill them, sometimes successfully. Our barn cat Minnie, whose rear leg was amputated a few months ago after an attack from some kind of animal, has always avoided Frieda, never coming near her outside, vanishing whenever she appeared in her fenced-in space, Minnie was always acutely aware of Frieda, and if Frieda even sensed her, she would pursue her aggressively and instantly.

For the last couple of months, Minnie has been spending nights and cold days in the house, she and Frieda have been steering clear of one another, Frieda has never seemed to pursue her since the operation and Minnie’s recovery, almost as if she sensed Minnie had changed or come to understand she was no part of the household. Still, I never expected them to be napping together in the morning sunlight on a bitterly cold day, it touched my heart, made me appreciate Frieda’s own big heart and the remarkable ability of animals to adapt and evolve. I can’t tell you I know what happened,  other than these two very disparate creatures – the once abandoned hunter and a ferociously independent and wily barn cat – came to be sleeping head to head on the floor of our farmhouse as I passed by with a camera.

Minnie is sleeping right on Frieda’s bed, Frieda came by and lay down beside her. A generous thing. A loving thing? I don’t know, people will tell their own story, I don’t think I really know.

There are so many sad stories in the animal world, so many happy ones. Animals communicate with one another in ways we have never been able to understand.

22 January

The Central Park Horses, cont. Breaking Faith With Animals. How Red Is Abused, Every Day.

by Jon Katz
Red And His Abuse
Red And His Abuse

(Unlike the Central Park horses, Red works in all kinds of weather, including -10 temperatures this morning.)

I realized last night, reading through some of the news reports from New York, that my working dog Red meets the abuse and mistreatment criteria for the Central Park horses, and by their lights, ought to be taken away from me and sent back to Ireland to roam the hills and pastures there. It was fascinating – and revealing – to substitute Red and his life for Chester, one of the seemingly doomed horses of Central Park and compare the lives of the two and the ways in which people see them. And to see the ignorance and hypocrisy that swirl around public ideas relating to the rights of animals.

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In our polarized country, I often try an experiment when I find myself on the opposite end of an argument or idea. I do not argue my beliefs online, my life is not an argument, but more and more, I try to assume the people on the other side are correct, I put myself in their shoes and try to see the world from their side. This helps me learn and understand much, and often prevents anger and rigidity, it softens my ideas and keeps my anger in check,  it is the foundation of compassion and empathy. It reminds me that there are two sides, at least of everything, way more than just the simple-minded notions of the “left” and the “right.”

I have been writing and reading about the Central Park Horses ever since I became aware of the massive, well-funded and highly organized effort on the part of people who call themselves animal rights advocates (and who the media call animal rights advocates) and the political and bureaucratic power structures of New York City to ban the Central Park Horses from Central Park and New York City, and exile them to the rumored but so far largely mythical “rescue farms” waiting to take in all 200 of them.

The horses have been in the park since 1858 and are loved all over the world, but it seems there is a pervasive idea in urban New York City that their lives are grim, filled with too much work, abuse and dangerous traffic. That their time is come, the mayor says the discussion “is over,” no point in any more. Apparently, the mayor of New York City has more power than I thought mayors generally have. The Mayor and City Council President and a broad array of activists have made it a major priority of the new administration to get rid of the horses, above just about everything else.

This is evolving into one more well-meaning tragedy visited upon animals by people who believe they know what is best for them. No one who knows anything about horses believes these active and engaged working animals will be alive for very long, this is a campaign to kill and banish animals so that they can be rescued from meaningful work and connection with human beings.

I have been researching the criteria of abuse and mistreatment that underlies this campaign and is used to justify it, and I think this issue has great interest and relevance for anyone who loves animals, as I do, it goes to the very nature of what is really good for animals, what their rights truly are, and the epidemic tendency in or culture to misunderstand animals – especially domesticated working animals – by projecting human values and ideas onto their lives.

So is a working border collie different from a working horse in New York, and if so, why? Is there one set of values for horses in the park and another for the countless dogs in New York City who live in closet-sized apartments and never run free in their entire lives, apart from ghetto-ized tiny dog parks? Red is a working animal, it seems quite appropriate to me to compare his life with the horses in Central Park.

Red has a much rougher life than Chester, one of the park horses I met in New York last  week and who has been widely photographed as a result of the assault on the horses in the park. Chester can only work a total of nine hours a day, according to New York City regulations (much of that time is spent standing by the curb, gnawing on a bucket of oats, getting patted and photographed by tourists). Red is on call 24 hours a day. Chester can’t work if the temperature is above 90 degrees or below 18 (odd since the people trying to exile him want him to return to grazing in the wild, where he would be out in all temperatures.) Red was out this morning in -10, moving the sheep, he works all summer in temperatures up to 100 degrees, the sheep have to be moved regardless.

Chester’s work is straightforward and calm, he pulls a carriage. Red encounters all kinds of difficulties – ice, snow, mud, manure, savage flies and mosquitoes and clouds of gnats, he is butted by ewes, kicked and trampled by rams, chased and sometimes bitten or kicked by donkeys, sometimes challenged by raccoons and even bobcats, watched by coyotes, usually from afar. Red gets worms, has ticks, his claws are sometimes torn, he is often cut on rocks, shards of ice, there are often scabs and cuts on his skin.  He has gotten splinters from fenceposts, been cut on hidden metal and wire in the pasture.

Can you imagine what the people campaigning against the placid lives of the New York horses would make of this? Any of these things would get Chester’s owner and carriage rider arrested and fined, even jailed.

Chester gets five weeks off a year, often more, Red gets no vacations, has frequent bouts of diarrhea, dry coat, debris in his eyes.

In New York City, Chester is widely seen as having a life of drudgery, one thoughtful person on my Facebook page said the very existence of these horses and the drudgery of their lives diminished all of us as human beings. If this is so, then what does Red’s life say about us, about me? Is his work drudgery, and if not, why? Is it perhaps because border collies are beloved objects of movies and TV, widely praised by the affluent and educated people who often own them as intelligent, praised all over the media as appealing and hardworking? Why is Chester an abused dullard, he works hard and well, is much-loved and admired?

Our notions of animal welfare and animal rights are chaotic, thoughtless, politicized and above all else, self-serving, more about us than the animals we profess to be protecting. People who have pets seem to have no understanding of people who have animals, especially working animals. Where I live, in upstate New York, where there are working animals everywhere – donkeys, horses, dogs, goats, barn cats –  I do not know one single human being who is not mystified and appalled by the determination of the mayor of New York and his many political allies to ban the Central Park Horses, and in New York City there are very few people willing to stand up and speak for the real rights of the Central Park Horses – to have work and purpose in their lives, to stay connected to human beings, even in the most urban of areas.

I understand, after all, who wants to be against the rights of animals?

If the horses lives are grim, make them better. If people mistreat them, punish the people, not the horses. (There are 18 New York City police offers assigned to watch over them. Nobody but me watches over Red.) If they need protection from trucks and busses, move the trucks and busses, fight for the horses, they were there first, they deserve to be there always. Working horses are no different from working dogs, their instincts propel them to the same things, the same lives. It’s just that most people in New York seem to know nothing about them.  By the lights of the mayor of New York, and the people who call themselves animal rights advocates, Red is an abused animal, exploited, mistreated, living a life of misery and endless labor, he ought to be out in the wild, chasing wild sheep.

Nearly half a century ago, a psychologist named Boris Levinson wrote a book called “Pets And Human Development,” in which he warned that urban and suburban Americans are becoming disconnected from the natural world and from the world of animals. This would cause humans to be damaged, broken, and eventually, people would need to reconnect with animals in order to heal themselves from the fragmentation and depredations of technology, politics and greed. Levinson was prescient, I think, his prophecy has come true.

Chester is living a good and meaningful life, he needs to be saved from activists, not from work. The mayor plans to replace the horses with $150,000 vintage electric carts to ferry tourists around the park. What a truly grinding and soulless substitution. For me, loving animals is much about the romance they bring to our lives, not about killing the romance that remains.

How sad that the many of these well-meaning people in New York, all of whom call themselves animal lovers, have lost sight of the fact that what Chester and the horses and the people in cities need is more animals in their lives, not fewer. Chester is no different than Red, they are brothers, bred to serve and work with people. Banning them is a cowardly and lazy solution. As we disconnect from the natural world to make room for more condos, Wal-Marts and Wall Street-bought apartments, we are truly diminishing ourselves and breaking our faith with the animal world.

 

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