Red is a master herding dog, I sent him out to bring the sheep out of the pole barn and across Lulu’s Crossing and into the back pasture and he got them there quickly and efficiently, but you might notice that he forgot something – Liam the wether was hiding near the Pole Barn in the upper right corner of the photograph. “Look back,” Red, I said and he turned and circled and Liam came flying down to join the others.
It is a joy to work with Red, he is a pro, and he is strong but also kind in his herding. He will defend himself, but only if seriously provoked and then only with the force that is absolutely necessary.
I respect Ron Dotson very much, I feel a special connection with this shy and good man. He lives in a small town in Idaho, and comes to see me once in awhile. I was happy today when he came into the Round House Cafe while I was eating lunch today, he was with his son Jordan, who I met three years ago when he was half the size. He is entering the University of Ohio at Columbus in September, he and Ron are vacationing at a cabin an hour or so away from Cambridge.
My friendship with Ron is unusual, and our lives are very different. Still, I feel quite close to this man, a Vietnam Veteran who has devoted much of his life to his own ministry, he helps the needy. Jordon and Ron are on a father-son trip before Jordan goes off to school, Ron messaged me that he was coming, he and Jordan will come by the farm this week.
Ron is very reserved, and almost phobic about not bothering me. He does not ever bother me. It’s a curious thing, but the people I always want to see are the ones who are wary of ever coming by. We are very much at ease with one another, we share a similar sense of humor. He contacted me several years ago when he came to the area, and he visited the farm. He has been reading the blog for years, and some of my books, he especially loved “Running To The Mountain.” Spirituality is an imprortant part of his life. Jordan is a lot like him, he is quiet but articulate, and has the same twinkle in his eyes, the same eagerness to laugh. We had a good time at lunch, as we did three years ago.
I told Jordan I had resolved some years ago to never tell young people that they were getting bigger, since that is one thing every young person does, and is not remarkable to them. Still, I had to say something, he is twice the size of the young man I saw a few years ago.
Can you call this relationship – we see one another every few years and Ron is not online much – a friendship? Yes, curiously, I do. When I see Ron, and now this is true of Jordan, it feels like no time has passed. I think we both share the experience of rebirth in some way, and although we have different paths to faith, I think of us both being spiritual people.
What is friendship, anyway, except the experience of trusting and understanding another person. And perhaps accepting them.
I was happy to run into Ron today, happy that he and Jordan will come to the farm next week before they go back to Ohio. They’ll meet Chloe, see the donkeys, watch me train Fate to herd the sheep. Ron is a good man, he has been through a lot and seen a lot, he gives back all the time. I was grateful once more for the Round House, it seems to enter and alter my life when it wishes, it has a presence and a spirit all of it’s own. I was eager to take this portrait with my new $369 lens, Ron had read all about
My life and Connie Brook’s life are deeply interwoven. I go into the bookstore two or three times a week, either to buy books or to sign books people have ordered. Connie is firmly enshrined in the Bedlam Farm lexicon, people all over the country love dealing with her and her staff, and love the bookstore as much as I do.
Connie is a book lover, but also a shrewd businesswoman. She spends a lot of time working on inventory, keeping up with new books, and maintaining a level of customer connection and service that is not imaginable for any large corporation. She reminds me and so many other people why bookstores are important, and why we need them in our communities. She is very important to the town of Cambridge, where I live.
People can order any of my books by calling Battenkill (518 677-2515) and I will sign. I should mention this more often, but I mention it a lot when one of books is out. My next book, “Talking To Animals,” will be out sometime next year. This is the first Fall in decades that I will not have a book out, although the paperback edition of “Saving Simon” will be published the first week in August. You can pre-order it now or wait until it comes out.
If you purchase it at Battenkill, you will help a very worthy bookstore and I will sign and personalize it for you. You can also order it online at Battenkill’s website, they take Paypal and ship anywhere in the world.
Connie is never as relaxed as she appears, but she is always gracious and efficient. She is the new bookstore owner, managing her store with a very close and professional eye, struggling to find time to do all of the reading she wants to do, and taking care of her son (and husband) as well.
I realized today that I hadn’t mentioned her in awhile. The store is doing very well, she is working on an expanded children’s section. If you are thinking of buying my books or anyone’s new books, think about Connie. She has performed a good-sized miracle, steering her beautiful store through some hard times into a bright and sustainable future. Books live, in part because of people like Connie, for respect them and fight for them and make them available to the rest of us.
My landscape is dynamic, organic, it is always changing, I am always struggling to capture it, to keep up with it. New images startle and enchant and inspire me.
It seems that hate is out this year. I believe that is the real reason the effort to ban the carriage horses has failed so surprisingly and spectacularly.
There was the President singing Amazing Grace, the sad and doomed campaign of Donald Trump, the Pope urging us to heal the planet, Caitlyn Jenner inspiring us to embrace acceptance.
Nobody told NYClass, the animal rights organization spearheading the effort to ban the New York Carriage Horses. They seem bent on being hateful as a strategy to banish the horses, they seem to be shooting themselves in the foot, one toe at a time. The definition of fanaticism. A fanatic is a person filled with excessive and single-minded zeal, especially for an extreme religious or political cause. By definition, they do not know when to quit. A rational politician does.
A few weeks ago, NYClass launched a half-million dollar leafleting campaign that said all of the carriage drivers were racists and homophobes and used hate speech to insult them. Thus, they claimed, they could not possibly be treating the horses well.
Many members of the public were outraged, and some members of the City Council thought this campaign was a grotesque overreach. Many people who gave a lot of money to NYClass thinking they were helping to save animals were surprised to learn where the money was really going. City Council members were offended by the idea that banishing the horses would end racism and homophobia in New York City.
IThe campaign against the carriage horses was a sure thing two years ago. The carriage trade was beleaguered and demoralized, the city’s new mayor, elected in a landslide, promised to ban the horses on his first day in office, he said it was his most urgent priority. Millionaire and billionaire real estate developers seeking the horse stables and a broad and wealthy coalition of so-called animal rights groups – the A.S.P.C.A., NYClass, The US Humane Society – had launched a massive and co-ordinated assault on the carriage trade that began in the mayoral race and had come to a head after the mayor’s inauguration.
No one in New York, including the carriage drivers, thought they had a chance.
Now the ban has failed, at least for this year, the animal rights demonstrators who have been harassing the carriage drives for years are turning in frustration on the mayor, accusing him of foot-dragging on his promise, and demanding that he find a way to shut down the carriage trade. One way or the other, he will regret his quite unholy and unfair alliance. In politics, be careful of which devils you get into bed with, they will eventually get around to eating you too.
NYClass (“we love animals, we hate people”) is proud to not learn from it’s mistakes, admit their failed strategy, or be humbled by it’s rather spectacular failure. This week, they launched a new campaign with a new spokesman, the rapper Russell Simmons, who quickly and publicly stuck both feet in his mouth by comparing the carriage trade to slavery and the holocaust. Simmons refused to apologize to shocked reporters, he did acknowledge that he thought the holocaust was a “horrific” event.
I am harboring the growing suspicion that the carriage trade has infiltrated NYClass, it seems almost inconceivable that they would seek to offend and alienate Jews and African-Americans in New York City, two powerful groups you might want on your side in a political battle. Up until today, the pamphlets accusing all of the carriage drivers of hate speech (imagine if a public figure accused all blacks of being criminals or all Jews of being greedy) were hands down the most offensive ads in the history of the animal rights movement, Simmons has upped the game.
In an interview later in the day, he said he was the leading person in the black community when it came to combating anti-semitism, a major surprise to Jewish community leaders. Reading his nearly incoherent comments about 100 billion animals birthed into suffering, I could only think of the Tracy Morgan character on 30 Rock, who might make the same speech. Perhaps he was not intending to make any sense, that would be the best outcome for him.
When Simmon’s comments exploded on social media, he refused to actually “fucking” apologize. Really, are these the people we want deciding the fate of animals in our world?
But then, if one looks back on the ugly campaign against the horses, it has been a dysfunctional circus all along. By all rights, the horses ought to be long gone. Two years ago, no one supported the carriage horses. Now, all three newspapers do, the City Council does, Central Labor Council does, the Central Park Conservancy does, the Working Families Party does, the Chamber of Commerce does. So do 64 per cent of the city’s residents, including every single age, racial and ethic group and gender in the city. Some campaign. NYClass and other groups have spent millions of dollars to rally almost everyone in the city behind the carriage trade.
How do you screw up a sure thing?
– By repeatedly and demonstrably lying about the treatment of the carriage horses, by inventing false or fantasized incidents of abuse, by falsely accusing various carriage drivers of crimes and violations that the police said did not occur, by ignoring the increasingly impassioned testimony of veterinarians, behaviorists, equine advocacy associations and horses lovers to the effect that the horses are healthy, content and well cared for.
– By spending tons of money in the wrong way in the wrong places. Countless millions of animals suffer real abuse, the animal rights groups spending so lavishly in New York to get rid of the well-cared for horses are not helping a single one.
– By proposing that the beautiful and iconic horses be replaced by ugly vintage electric cars to add to the insanely over-crowded and packed roads of Central park – cars, taxicabs, pedicabs, bicycles. And then claiming it is better for the environment to have $160,000 electric cars clogging the park than carriage horses, for whom the park was built.
– By adopting the the language, hyperbole and tactics of a hate group, NYClass has managed to take a genuine issue relating to the the well-being of the horses – how and where they might live in New York City – and turned it into a joke that would be pathetic if it were not so vicious and disturbing to the human beings involved.
The animal rights groups in the city are now obsessed with the carriage horses, It has become the runaway cause, the issue without end, it has taken on a life all of it’s own and without any reason. They have lost all perspective as well as any sense of civility or empathy. They seem to have failed to win a single New York resident to their cause this year, or a single veterinarian, or a single animal lover, or a single authority on the care and health of horses. Given that they are believed to have spent more than $4 million on marketers, publicists, blog and print advertising campaigns, robo-phone calls, pamphlets and leaflets and electric car prototypes in this campaign, that is an astounding failure.
Perhaps hate really is out this year.
At the core, the problem with the campaign to banish the horses is this: It is based on a single, provably false lie. The horses are not abused, they are being saved from the equine holocaust, not sent out to perish in it. Simmons does not seem to know that 155,000 horses without work or purpose were sent to slaughter in Canada and Mexico. The carriages horses are the safest horses in the United States. Like the mayor, he has never been to the horse stables in New York or talked with a single carriage driver. He seems to know absolutely nothing about horses.
The campaign against the carriage trade failed because it is out of sync with our times, it has caught the wrong wave, it is out of it’s time. Even the most expensive campaigns and polished blogs fail when the message is so poor it presumes the general public is too dumb to notice. It seems acceptance is breaking out all over the country, hate campaigns have never looked so empty.
NYClass has not proven or even made the case that a single horse was mistreated or abused in all of the time since the mayor took office nearly two years ago. The police, who work directly for the mayor, have not arrested or cited a single driver for a single violation of a single rule or regulation – hundreds protect the horses. Of the thousands of accusations of animal cruelty and abuse reported to the authorities, not a single one was made against a carriage driver.
We don’t have to hate people to love animals, we can love both and treat all living things with dignity and compassion. That is the message of our times. That is a cause to fight for in our increasingly fragmented and intense world. That is the message of the Pope, reverberating around the world.
The media in New York, which has bungled this story from the very beginning, insists this is a conflict between animal rights activists and labor unions. They have missed the point, or perhaps are uncomfortable with it. There are many people who believe in the rights of animals who do not believe that the carriage horses should be banned from the city. I am one of them, I hear from many more every day. New York City has hundreds of thousands of animal lovers, and most of them don’t believe the horses are being mistreated either, as the polling statistics clearly show.
We – that is, we animal lovers – are profoundly disturbed by the dishonesty and ugliness and abuse that underlies this campaign, and which is an affront to the idea of a democratic government protecting freedom and property rather than taking both away from innocent people. This campaign does not protect animals, it threatens to destroy many people and their ability to work.
It is not progressive in any way, it is ignorant, elitist and bigoted, filled with stereotypes and dehumanizing tactics and language.
Slavery was an abomination that destroyed the lives of millions of innocent people, so was the holocaust. How does an African-American man, a leader, a celebrity, equate the lives of 200 horses that every reputable person who has examined them has concluded are healthy and content and well-regulated, with that kind of suffering and slaughter?
How can any group that claims to speak for the rights of animals fail to even once address the real concerns about the future of the big horses in the city, or ever engage in a dialogue about the future of animals in urban areas? Their campaign has been pure hatred and hostility, there is really nothing else to it. And that, more than any other reason, is why it failed. Lies and distortions are hard to hang onto, the truth does want to be free.
Did slaves get five weeks of vacation and clean beds and regular health care and fresh food three times a day?
Did Jews in Europe have five government agencies regulate their care and health and work lives?
Is the carriage trade slaughtering horses day and night for no reason other than to remove them from the earth?
Can carriage drivers, most often immigrants or their children seeking to make an honest living, be compared to SS officers and thugs who murders millions of women and children in the cruelest imaginable ways? Does that advance the lives of animals, or protect the carriages?
And who, precisely, it is that would exterminate the horses in New York and send them out into peril? The carriage drivers or the people who claim to speak for their rights.
This is not a left-right issue, or a labor-animal rights issue. It is a right and wrong issue. The cruel campaign against the horses is wrong and unjust. The animal rights organizations seeking to speak for the future of animals ought to repudiate Mr. Simmons in precisely the same way Republicans are being asked to repudiate Donald Trump. And if they don’t, they are just as morally bankrupt.
Hatred is the coward’s revenge. Pope Francis said this in his encyclical: Any single act of cruelty towards any living thing, human or animal, is an affront to human decency and human dignity and will corrupt and poison the way we treat one another.
That is why the carriage ban failed, it was corrupted and poisoned by the very people who pursued it, it is an affront to human decency and human dignity.
— Note, in an earlier version, I said Julian Simmons, the name is Russell.
