27 January

Cold In The Bones

by Jon Katz
Cold In The Bones
Cold In The Bones

The forecasters promised us a blizzard and a cold front, and for us at least, they were half-right. We didn’t get  blizzard, although many did, but we did get a coldfront, it’s a whopper, straight out of the arctic, Maria and I were numb after just a few minutes outside. The sheep were hungry and restless, Red has his work cut out for him, keeping them still and at bay until Maria could get the hay into the feeder.

27 January

Tyler’s Wheels

by Jon Katz
Tyler And Matthew
Tyler And Matthew

Tyler never fails to surprise me. Perhaps I’m getting older, but it seemed way too cold today to be out riding an ATV in sub-zero temperature. Tyler didn’t think so, he and his brother Matthew came over to check out the new firewood that needs to be stacked and pick up Tyler’s present from Disney World – an advanced Lego Technics kit. I think it’s right up his alley but we’ll find out.

The temperature was 10 degrees and the polar temperature and wind were cutting, but it did bother either of these young men. i asked Tyler if he was cold, and he just shrugged. Tyler comes by after snowstorms to see what needs to be done, we always have stuff for him to do.

27 January

Wednesday, 8 a.m. – Liberation Day For Bridget And Her Pharmacy

by Jon Katz
Bridget's Day
Bridget’s Day

Bridget and her pharmacy have reached far beyond the borders of our little town, I am getting messages from everywhere asking when the building that threatens  Bridget’s independent pharmacy (est. 1976) is going to be demolished.  She says the building is scheduled to go down at 8 a.m. Wednesday, she is thinking of hiring someone with a trumpet to play taps.

The building next door has been a nightmare for Bridget for years, it was condemned a long time ago and seemed to topple over a bit more each year, but things didn’t get serious – this is a small town – until last November when the town came told Bridget to keep her customers out of the pharmacy.

It was touch and go, but Bridget rallied to have her pharmacy and the town rallied to save it also. Bridget moved the front desk to an adjoining building and her staff rushed back and forth into the big pharmacy all day to fill orders. The town came through for her, all of her customers stuck it out with her, patiently and in good humor. Bridget is a very popular figure in the town, I can say why. When I was being checked out of the hospital after my open heart surgery, the nurse handed me a fistful of prescriptions. You probably can’t get them filled until tomorrow, she said.

I called Bridget – she gives her home phone number to her customers – and she told me to stop by on my way home from the hospital. We did stop and she took the prescriptions, came in early the next morning to have them ready for me when I got up. Everyone has a Bridget story, if there is an emergency, you can drive by her house and pick her up and she’ll open up the pharmacy to take care of you.

And the thing about Bridget is that she never makes it feel like work, she seems to love it. We were all getting worried about O’Hearn’s – more than any doctor, she has helped me understand the medications I am on and their side affects – it looked like the building was getting ready to fall over any second. And the bureaucracy was moving slowly.  The old geezers in town are obsessed with the demolition, they all have their own ideas about how it ought to be done. I’m skipping the last of my codeine couch syrup tonight, I want to be sure and get up on time.

Bridget – like Connie Brooks and her book store just down the street –  is a symbol of individuality and community in the Corporate Nation. It’s a gift to have a pharmacy like that, and a gift to live in a town that knows that.

27 January

Are The New York Carriage Horses Working Too Hard?

by Jon Katz
Are the carriage horses working too hard?
Are the carriage horses working too hard?

Are the New York Carriage Horses really working too hard pulling horse carriages through Central Park. Jeff and several others sent me this photograph of New York work horses hauling snow to the rivers in the great blizzard of 1988. I asked one wagon builder what these snow wagons weighed, and he said about 4,000 pounds, that was not considered a heavy load for draft horses. Until the animal rights movement abruptly redefined abuse in recent years, horses pulled wagons full of bricks, cobblestones, lumber, rocks and debris and wagons full of all kinds of manufacturing products and goods.

Equine vets and behaviorists can the big draft horses can easily haul four or five times their own weight. The New York Carriage Horses weight on average between 1,500 and 1,900 pounds. Light carriages weigh between 1,000 and 1,500 lbs. Pulling carriages in Central Park is probably the lightest work these work animals have been asked to do in their 300 year history in New York City. They are our partners in life, not our dependents, siblings, children, or piteous wards. They have always stood with us and alongside of us as we have done our work and lived our lives.

A score of independent veterinarians have visited the New York Carriage Horse stables this past year, other vets – working for the police and the health department – routinely examine the horses. They have been universally found to be fit, well-cared for, with good clear lungs and well-groomed hooves and bodies. This is the controversy that should never have happened. These are not the horses in need of rescue, the people in the carriage trade are not the people who abuse horses.

27 January

Lulu In The Storm

by Jon Katz
Lulu In The Storm
Lulu In The Storm

I’m impressed by the resilience of donkeys, their astonishing equanimity and adaptability. Donkeys are desert and mountain animals, they can adapt to almost any kind of weather. It is bitterly cold up here, with some snow and driving winds. Mostly, the donkeys stay in the shelter of the pole barn, every few minutes, they come out to forage under the feeder, look around, check the woods.

Their behavior is the same as always, they are alert and attentive, eager for carrots and apples, alert and  steady. I can see by Lulu and Fanny’s coats that they spend a lot of time wandering out in the snow.

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