Time to gather myself, pack and get ready for Disney World. I imagine when you next hear from me, hopefully tomorrow, the photo will be different. Be well and thanks for all your support, we fly to Florida on a cloud of love and good wishes.
Red and I went out to the pasture this afternoon to speak to the animals as they took shelter in the Pole Barn. Deb the lamb came out to hear the message. I explained that I was going to Florida in the morning – the high tomorrow is supposed to be 8 degrees. Sorry to leave you all behind, I said, but you have grain, warm water and shelter, and since you are desert and mountain animals, this will be appropriate for you.
I am sorry to leave you for a few days in this winter, but not really all that sorry. Maria and I will be gone for a short period, we will warm up and return enthused and invigorated, ready to ride out the rest of the winter with you. Deb Foster loves you and will take good care of you. Tyler will be around to clean up the place and keep an eye on things also. I am one of those people who does not care to bring my animals on vacation with me, I think separation is good for both of us. I am sorry to have lost Simon, but grateful he took ill why we were here to care for him and to say goodbye.
I can’t promise to bring you anything from Disney World, but if I see something appropriate, I’ll ship it up or bring it back here. I think Deb would look great in a Minnie Mouse ear hat. We’ll be gone in the morning. Be well.
Nina Galicheva is a photographer and horse lover, she has been riding and drawing horses since she was seven years old. She and I are on the same mission, we met in New York City and have become friends. Nina is a passionate chronicler of the struggle to save the New York Carriage Horses, she understands how important it is – for them and for us – that they remain in New York City.
She is a brilliant photographer and designer. “My mission,” she writes, “is to remind people about the special role that horses play in our lives, the teamwork relationship they offer. And we should remember and preserve it for future generations.”
It is my mission too, and the mission of many animal lovers all over the country and the world. You can help save the horses by going to ninagalicheva.com and looking at her powerful art, there is a variety of horse-related work and projects there, and if want something that is not listed – like the calendar shown above that she sent me today – you can e-mail Nina at [email protected].
The campaign against the New York Carriage horses is unjust.
If they horses are banished from New York, they will be in peril, forced onto rescue farms where they will languish idly for the rest of their lives, or, as is likely end up going to slaughterhouses in Mexico and Canada, their lives destroyed and endangered so that human beings can feel good about “saving” them. Hundreds of honest and hard-working people will lose their jobs and way of life. These are not the people who abuse horses, these are not the horses in need of rescue.
They have broken no laws, been accused of no crimes, violated none of the hundreds of regulations that govern their work.
Nina has sacrificed much of her energy and time on behalf of the horses. She was born in Russia, and worked in Manhattan as a designer, she was out of work for some time and captured the power and connection of the horses in her photography. She is working again now, but still fighting to save these beautiful animals from the people who claim to speak for their rights, but do not.
Please take a look at her website. If you are able and so inclined, please support her work, the mayor of New York has asked the New York City Council to ban the horses, a vote will be taken in four or five months. Your support matters, the horses call to us to remember them, to honor their place in our history, their productive and meaningful lives in the great park in New York City. They bring so much pleasure to so many people, they are loved and well cared for, they are the luckiest horses in the world.
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Please support them if you can. ninagalicheva.com is a great place to start. Her great work shows us what the horses mean to us. (20 per cent of the sales from her Support Working Horses album will go to Blue-Star Equiculture, the horse sanctuary and retirement and home for rescued and retired work horses, including the New York Carriage Horses).
Red’s life is full of challenges, as our all of ours. Today, it was Liam, refusing to leave some hay that fell to the ground. He got right into Red’s face and gave him a bit of a butt to the head. Red’s response was to get right back in his face and give him a withering look back, eye to eye, and nice and close. Liam was a minute or so away from getting bit on the nose. I won’t move, he seemed to be saying, yes you will, said Red. He did.
Tomorrow, a new chapter in the lives of Maria and I, we are heading off to Disney World for six days. I will be bringing camera and computer, so I will not be signing off you will be hearing from me, but the photos will be very different. Disney is a lifelong interest of mine, for many reasons, I have often written about Walt Disney and Disney World, his remarkable life, his complex and difficult personality, his lifelong fascinated with technology and the world of tomorrow. I hope to be writing about some of these things this week in Florida.
Disney’s life personifies the tragedy of technology, which brings things and takes things away, sometimes in equal measure.
The trip is the result of a very generous group from the members of the Creative Group at Bedlam Farm, a very vibrant and creative group of people who have created a safe place online in which to share their creativity – photos, blogs, poetry, photography, painting, fiberworks, weaving and sketching, digital college and more. (We are thinking of a Creative Group store online to sell the amazing works of these people, hopefully by Summer.)
When the members of my group learned of my Open Heart Surgery, they got busy and started raising money for Maria and I to go to Disney World in January, a time when even the most devoted country person in the North thinks of being warm. We tried to refuse, but they bought a bunch of Disney gift cards that are not refundable or returnable or transferable. We folded, and have not looked back.
Our magic bands arrived recently, I just checked to make sure out flight arrangements are secure and we are running around scrambling to pack and get ready. The trip is a Godsend, really, it is not something we could have done for ourselves this year, Disney is as expensive as it is fun. Since few people on the group are rich, if any, I much appreciate their sacrifice and generosity. They should not have done it, but I am glad they did.
I may not be low-key, but my Disney philosophy is. We will sleep late, make few reservations, walk and walk, sketch and photograph, talk and sit by the pool and read and listen to music. I had a good time pointing out to my friends up here on Friday that at 2:15 Friday morning it was 100 degrees warmer in Orlando that it was in my town of Cambridge, N.Y.
I am not big on struggle stories, but this summer kicked off with Open Heart Surgery and then offered up a lot of life, including the deaths of Simon and Lenore. Maria and I are worn out, drained, edgy and very tired. Our farm and pet sitter Deb Foster will take over the farm, we could not do better than that. Red will get a little bit of work and a lot of cuddling, and Frieda will get as much cuddling as she is in the mood for and will tolerate. That is usually not much.
We are leaving the farm at 4 a.m. on Tuesday, returning next Monday. I expect to be blogging pretty regularly from there, perhaps will be quiet for a day or two along the way, we’ll see. As you know, it is hard to keep my camera in the bag and my mouth shut.
Disney World is a complex and overwhelming place, in America, corporations have to grow or die, and it just gets bigger and bigger there, more and more expensive, and more and more complex. It is also great fun, a world in which to vanish and be well cared for and warm. It takes as much planning to be there as to get there. We plan to chill. And walk and walk. I wanted to meet some dolphins, but that tour is sold out.
I like to think of themes for my photographs, I don’t have one yet for Disney, one of the most photographed places on earth. Something may occur to me when I am there. Maria and I have being poring over menus and choices she has been muttering for two days about $40 salmon dinners, which she says we are not ordering. Yes, dear.
Thanks for all your warm and very good support in recent weeks, it was felt and appreciated. I like writing about grieving, it is needed, I think, and I will do more. In the meantime, I will thaw out, look for Walt Disney’s ghost and snow crab legs, I am thinking about what to bring back for Tyler.
The group – this campaign led by my friend Lisa Dingle, who knows how much I love Disney World (almost as much as she does) – raised enough money to pay for our airfare, hotel, passes and some good meals.
