Small miracles are as amazing as big ones, and today, a sweet l miracle for my book, “Saving Simon: How A Rescue Donkey Taught Me The Meaning Of Compassion,” and for my Orphans Book Tour. Random House sent me an a-mail saying the book has just gone into a third printing – 2,000 more books.
It’s a small printing, but an amazing one, given that there was no book tour or any kind of promotion planned by my publisher. They call it an “orphaned” book when it is abandoned like that – I am leaving Random House for Simon & Schuster – and I decided not to abandon my book and launch my own book tour, here on the blog and at bookstores and libraries that will have me.
Friday, I’m speaking at the Saratoga Northshire (6 p.m.) and Saturday, at Northshire in Manchester (also 6 p.m.), two great bookstores in one weekend. I’ve also been working closely with Connie Brooks at Battenkill Books. Connie has ordered a huge load of the red tote bags pictured above (Simon loves to pose) and is giving everyone who buys a copy of “Saving Simon” from her wonderful bookshop a free tote bag as well as free signed (by me) photo notecards of Simon.
People who buy the book from Battenkill will be supporting me, Simon, a wonderful independent bookstore and a story that deserves and needs to be told. The book is about Simon and me, about compassion and meaning and change. You can check out some of the early reviews here.
If you buy the book from Battenkill, I will also sign and personalize each copy (within reason, I reserve the right to edit inscriptions that make no sense to me). You can buy the book from Battenkill online or call the store at 518 677-2515.
Last week I was thinking poorly of my publisher when we had to drive 10 hours in one day back and forth from a book signing because no money was budgeted for travel or hotels for the book tour. Maria had to do most of the driving, much was at night on some dark country roads. But every time I get ticked off, I choose to get excited once again for my book, so many writers are so much less fortunate than I am, they have never had one book tour. My signings and readings for this tour have been special, they have great meaning for me.
I don’t know how far I can take a book, even one as praised as this one is turning out to be. But I will find out. I do not believe in whining or lamenting, but moving forward with as much grace and energy as I can muster.
These readings and signings have been very special, each one was wonderful. And my blog is yet another miracle, Connie has sold nearly 1,000 books and the Christmas season is just getting start.
I am going to the Westhampton, Mass. library in the next couple of months (no date set yet) and then to Iowa and other places next Spring. I’m mulling over other offers. I am proud of my book tour, Simon was orphaned and so was his book, but Simon has an iron will to live, and so, I think, does his scribe. I will never walk away from one of my books, surely not this one. Simon deserves better.
So thanks for your support, we are not into the Christmas season, and my wish is to get Simon at least one more printing, maybe more. You can order the book through Battenkill by clicking right here. People are loving those tote bags, and you might win a potholder, notecard or signed photo as well.
Sunrise at the farm is a ballet, a beautiful exercise in nature and symmetry. We head out to do the morning chores as the sun rises over the corner of the pasture, backlighting the animals. As I fill the water buckets, Maria moves to the donkeys feeder with an armful of hay. Red takes up his position, prepared to move the sheep to their own feeder on command. The donkeys move towards the feeder. As winter takes hold and the pasture freezes, the grazing animals have no food but hay and they are hungry in the morning. in a minute, the scene will change, the sun will rise above the feeder, Red will move the sheep, the donkeys and the sheep will all be eating quietly at their feeders. A beautiful daily ballet, the way I love to begin the morning.
The proposal to ban the New York City Carriage Horses – sponsored by the mayor of New York and several organizations that claim to speak for the rights of animals – is unjust and misguided. There are many animals in our world who need help, these are not the ones. There is no evidence that the carriage horses of New York are being abused or mistreated. Most, if not all of the claims advanced by the proponents of the ban have been found to be false, exaggerated, or completely invented. You can help.
A legion of equine advocates, veterinarians, journalists, trainers and behaviorists have visited the stables, found the horses to be safe and healthy and content. Most of the horses are rescue horses, there are few good places for them to go if they are banned at a time when 155,000 horses are sent to slaughter each year. If there are places for nearly 200 large horses – dubious – then 200 other horses who truly need rescue will perish.
It is not abuse for working horses to pull light carriages on asphalt in Central Park. No less an authority than Buck Brannaman, the inspiration for the movie “Horse Whisperer” and one of the most respected horse trainers in the world, says the carriage horses are lucky, happy and healthy. The horses to pity, he says, are the ones with nothing to do all day but stand around and drop manure. That would be the fate of these remarkable working animals if the mayor of New York and his allies in this angry fringe movement get their way.
We need a wiser and better understanding of animals than this if they are to remain in our world. The New York media does not, as a rule, get it. The carriage trade needs our help. This is a just cause for anyone who loves animals or owns or lives with one.
No one who knows or loves horses believes it is cruel or abusive for them to work with people and be safe and protected and regulated. These are the lucky horses. Then there is the human issue, 300 hard-working people who will lose their livelihood. The campaign against them is outrageous – a sad story of harassment and abuse in itself. Please consider helping to stop this injustice. The people who decide the future of animals in our world ought to know something about them. You can help by going to this site set up to help stop the ban.
I thought this might be a good a time to write you a letter, we have been talking to one another for nearly a year, mostly through my blog, sometimes on my visits to New York. I am moved to tears when you call out to me in your carriages, recognize me, give me the thumbs up, thank me. Perhaps it is a time to get more personal. I want to lift your spirits high, sometimes words can do that, and in my soul I want to feel the power of fairness and justice.
So here we are, in that hard winter of fear and uncertainty, our stomachs churned and hearts sank with you when we heard the news, released in the middle of the night, just before Christmas. The battle lines seem to be drawn, it is no longer a time just to talk, but a time to fight. And fight. And fight some more. I was wondering what you might have said last night to your wives, your kids, your husbands – your horses – as you now and officially live in that awful community, the people who are targeted by other people. “Kids, they want to take the horses away, they want to make me to drive green cabs far from Central Park.”
How, I wondered, would you explain a government that seeks to take freedom and property away, not protect it, how could you describe people who claim to speak for the rights of animals but instead exploit them as a way of hating and harming human beings?
I hope you tell them not to despair. There is a ragtag Army out there, they are waiting to hear from you, eager for your signal. They are waiting to send money, sign petitions, march in protest. They are not soldiers or brave warriors, but they are, I suspect, a mighty army, waiting to march on behalf of the things they hold dear: animals, the freedom to live in peace, a way of life, dignity and love, for people, for horses, and dogs and cats and the other animals with whom we share the planet.
I read through the media stories in New York yesterday, they mostly seemed bemused. The New York Times said the controversy was a “steeplechase” now, not just a controversy, they thought the whole thing a cute little chuckle. I wonder how amused the reporter would have been if the mayor had banned newspapers because he didn’t like what they say and if they offered him the chance to drive a cab in Brooklyn or the Bronx instead of being a reporter, and if he had to explain to his children that they might not be able to keep their house any more, or go to college.
Be careful, I wanted to say to the reporter, you might not be laughing in a couple of years.
The Gothamist website joked: “Who is going to tell Liam Neeson?” So odd, I thought, I am not a humorless man, but am I so out of touch that I can’t really see the laughter in this fear and uncertainty for you, in the danger facing the horses, in our betrayal of these wonderful animals, in the loss of magic, mystery and romance in the great park in our great city? In another broken contract with the animals who are our partners on the earth and who share the joys and travails of our lives?
It is hard to bear the thought that this joyless and angry and cruel little army could actually win. So they must not. NilsDesperandum, wrote one of my readers. Never despair.
For you, facing this bleak holiday, these are the times that will try your souls, and those of your families, life with an ax over one’s head is not freedom, is not the American Dream, is not why your parents and grandparents – or you – made their way to America. For most of them, it was a chance to get under from one ax or another. None of them could have dreamed that an angry millionaire and a self-righteous mayor would try to take the horses away without reason, discussion or cause.
The Facebook soldier and the sunshine warrior will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of the horses. But he or she that stands by you now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman, and of every horse and animal on the earth struggling for a way to live with us and survive on our damaged Mother Earth. Persecution and arrogance, like Hell itself, is not easily conquered, yet there is this consolation and hope: the more difficult the conflict, the more meaningful and glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly. It is the dearness of the cause that gives every thing it’s value.
Heaven only knows how to put a price upon our freedom, our way of live, our beliefs. The horses call to us to be mindful that the so celestial a thing as our partnership with animals should be highly valued, is worth fighting for, and fighting some more. If we lose our way of life and freedom and dignity in the world, then what else is there worth fighting for?
The only real prison is fear, said one brave protestor in a brutal country in Asia. The only real freedom is freedom from fear. Nils Desperandum. Never despair.
Fairness is a winning cause. The case against you is manufactured, unjust, cruel and dishonest. You have a winning cause.
I do not believe in urging other people to fight while I sit hundreds of miles away on my farm. My hope is that you do fight, soon, and with the full fury of the just and the wronged. I hope you unleash the lawyers you have been talking to and take your good case to the law, the final arbiter of a conflict that has become eternal. I hope you do it now. I wish you the strength and the courage to fight and fight. And to fight some more. You are surely not alone. It is time to try the souls of your tormentors, to stand up and say, “this is enough, it has gone on long enough, it is wrong and we will no longer accept it as the status quo, this ugliness and harassment can never be accepted or considered business as usual.”
Government is better than this, so is democracy.
Since yesterday, many people have written and messaged me, asking – some demanding – that I organize petitions and letter-writing campaigns, raise money for lawyers, organize demonstrations for the horses. That is not my proper role, I deal in words, in facts and ideas. The rest is up to you. You know, I suspect, that no one can fight this fight but you. If you do not care to fight, the cause is lost for certain. People wonder if the carriage trade will really fight, has the will or the money to hire good lawyers. I hope you answer them and quickly.
A woman posted a message on my Facebook page saying “horses do not belong in the city.” I wrote her back, I said horses have helped build every great city in the world from Rome to New York City, they were in cities long before green taxicabs and vintage electric cars. May we one day come to understand that they belong in our cities as much as we do, and it is a sacred mission to keep them there.
I have come to love many of you and know you well. I love hearing your laughter, listening to your stories, soaking up your gossip. Individuals, living the free lives of individuals. If the horses go, a way of life vanishes with them. I know you love your horses, love your families, obey the law, cherish your way of life. I know many of you come from a long tradition of people who work with animals and care for them. I know you have been cruelly dehumanized and diminished. I believe you are coming to see that your rights have been trampled and violated. You have reluctantly joined that dark tradition of American life, people who have to fight for the rights and freedom long granted to others.
All day yesterday, I kept thinking of the poet Langston Hughes and his magical writing about our place at the table. You have been banished from the table, they will not invite you, sit with you, speak with you. They laugh at you and your suffering. So it is for you to laugh back, be strong, to be at the table when company comes.
