It got up to 44 degrees and today and Maria and I suddenly realized we hadn’t really been able to take the three dogs out for a long walk this entire year, it has either been far too cold or there has been too much snow or rain. We have a fenced in yard for them, and Red and Lenore have been out for short walks – Frieda struggles in the cold now – so we put the three of them in my car and headed for Macmillan Road.
It was a beautiful afternoon – arctic cold returns Wednesday – and the walk was long and sweet. Tomorrow, we have to shovel some snow off of the back door, too much water floating around the house. We walk the dogs every day, it was a shock to realize we hadn’t been for a good walk with the three of them all year. That is a sign of a real winter.
I get a lot of e-mail and comments about orbs in my photos. I think they are sun spots projected onto the digital image, many people believe they are representations of spirits and ghosts. I am open-minded about it, I think I’ll ask people to tell me what they think on my Facebook page. Just because I don’t understand something doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
Early Monday, Maria and I are heading off to New York city for two days. There are two parts to this mission. The first one is to take my Kickstarter money and go to B&H Photo and speak to their grumpy but helpful and knowledgeable staff about my new camera. I am not 100 per cent sure which one I am getting, looks like the new Canon 1DX, a full frame camera. There are several others I might look at, but I have been researching cameras for some months now and I believe this is the one that might help me the most with my new project, “Talking To Animals.”
I will bring some lenses to trade in, I hope to get some new lenses to go with the camera, I expect it will be a few hours of talking and learning at B&H, I’ll keep people posted. Maria is coming along, that will be helpful, cameras and lenses are heavy.
The second purpose of the trip is to take a carriage horse ride for myself – my first – and get a sense of what a ride is like, whether the accusations about the rides are true – that the rides are unsafe, the drivers unreliable and dishonest, the time for this kind of ride in New York long past. I’ll be riding with Christina Hansen, a driver and resolute defender of carriage horses, it will be good to see her in action. The carriage horse story has been a powerful learning experience for me, it has re-awakened some of the journalist in me, although I have been rusty and slow to get focused. There are well-meaning people on both sides of the issue, yet more and more, I feel an injustice is being done to the horses and the people who own them. They are not, I believe, being abused or mistreated, there is little or no evidence of that. Life in New York seems much safer for them than for the people and dogs and bicyclists who live there. They ought not be run out of their way of life, their work and tradition.
The horses ought not be condemned to an invisible life without work or meaning or purpose, a life of eating and dropping manure. That’s where I am now. The issue has struck a very deep chord among people all over the country who love animals and are tired of having their lives and the nature of animals so cruelly misrepresented. Lots more to come on this issue in this year. I’m getting a load of the horse people, and they are a tough and determined crowd, they are swarming like a bunch of angry bees.
I should say – I wasn’t sure about mentioning it – that I have received several curous e-mails in the past few days – I guess I am being read by many of the people who want the horses banned – that repeated the wording of the first one: “we know who you are, we know what you are writing, we know that you are coming to New York, we know what you look like, we will be waiting for you.”
I appreciate the attention, I get a reasonable amount of unpleasant e-mail, I do not take it too seriously. For one thing, I don’t believe the organizations working to ban the horses are dangerous, I do not believe they are out to hurt people, they ought not be demonized any more than the carriage horse owners and drivers. I still believe it is possible to disagree with people in America without hating them, if anybody does show up I will try and talk to them. Any wingnut can sent a dumb e-mail, it means little to me.
In my interesting and varied life as a journalist and author, I’ve had stalkers, I’ve been shot at, stabbed twice, had my car burned out from under me in an urban riot, been chased and beaten up in a couple of others, been knocked unconscious by a famous mayor, had a cop fire a blank-loaded gun at my head to scare me (he did), and had my life threatened too many times to count. Most people don’t care for reporters and lots of people don’t like authors with strong opinions who write about animals either. Tough e-mails do not do much to scare me, hostile e-mails are always the work of frightened people, in my experience. The people I worry about are the ones who don’t send e-mails.
If there are any people waiting for me out there on that carriage, I hope I get a good shot of them with my camera, I will get a good story either way. I’ll be around Sunday, then taking off early Monday, back on Wednesday. I can’t wait, the camera is a great step forward to me, thanks to the good people who helped me get it, and I am eager to consider my own personal truth for search for meaning in the great and sad New York Carriage Horse Controversy of 2014. Tomorrow, I’ll be writing on the blog and posting about whether or not the horses are “happy.” This will be a fitting piece to discuss with my carriage horse.
Zelda and Red begin their work days like two commuters heading for the train station. Red comes out and stands by the gate, Zelda appears and checks him out. Soon the two will be quite involved with one another, because each is the other’s work. Red will be moving Zelda and sheep around, Zelda will be keeping an eye on him. As the leader of the sheep, she is the one the other sheep follow. Red seems to know this, the two of them are always keeping an eye on one another.
