Maria’s “Yes, No,” dress lives outside of her studio on a hangar, it sits in the sun, rain and wind, a part of the elements. It was one of the first things she made when we first got together, it hung at an art show at Gardenworks in Salem, N.Y., that she and I put on together to encourage new artists. I showed my photographs for the first time, Mary Kellogg read her poetry for the first time, and a young artist named Anthony Armstrong showed his sculptures.
It was our first coming together, Maria and I, the first thing we did together, the beginning of our ambition to encourage the creative spirit in people. I have not been in touch with Anthony for some years, Mary is still writing her poetry and I am writing my blog and books and taking pictures, Maria has blossomed as a new kind of fiber artist, a descent of the Gee’s Bend philosophy of personal art with discarded materials.
The “Yes, No,” dress captured Maria’s spirit at the time, it’s dual message was pretty clear: stay away, I am not sure. About men. About me. About art. Maria had not been doing her art for years, that made her miserable. When I gave her one of the Bedlam Farm barns, she was suddenly happy, radiant. She was an artist again. Maria was closed up then, cautious, fearful. She wanted to say yes, she often said no.
The dress was one of the first creations to emerge. It suggested distance and uncertainty, and studded nails if anyone got too close.
I got close, and I did not get stabbed or bleed, but it took a lot of chocolate and cheese and popcorn over many months. I put a note on Maria’s car windshield, it said “I will wait for you, no obligation.” She went home and ate it.
it has been a privilege to see this proud and strong spirit emerge and the liberated artist emerge and flower. Art is Maria’s soul, it has brought her to life. And to love.
For some reason, the “Yes, No” dress never frightened or discouraged me, Maria I have always seen beyond the surface appearance of each other and into the soul. We knew one another’ss true self from the beginning, the craziness was just a sideshow. Her ambivalence and wariness is a part of her still, but around it a person of sweetness, openness and strength. A person of “Yes.” If she had a “Yes, No,” dress, she is no longer a “Yes, No,” person. She has said yes to art. To love. To me. To friends. To life.
It is interesting that she always keeps this dress nearby, she sees it every day, it sits like a sentinel outside of her studio. I love it, she says, it is a great piece of art and “it keeps me from ever forgetting who I used to be.”
A dog is not like a child, but it is true when you live with a growing thing every day, you can miss some subtle changes that might be visible to others. Training is tricky that way, sometimes you have to stop and think to observe. Our training goes on pace, it goes very well, it is a pleasure to work with a dog like Fate. She is bred to shine in the pasture, she has all the right moves and instincts. She just needs to get a little bit older.
And she is. Today, I noticed that the sheep are beginning to accept her. When she runs around them in circles, they become anxious and defensive. When she moves slowly or lays down, they accept her. She is getting more and more at ease around them, they with her. The next phase, I think, is when her eye strengthens (instinctively) and she learns to move them with it. That has to come naturally.
She is smart as a whip and we are beginning to communicate almost wordlessly. She is always aware of me, and also aware of Red. Generally, I put him in a lie down not far from the sheep, she leaves him and focuses on the sheep, she circles them and we are working on “walk up” (slowly) to the sheep. She is getting it.
After ten or fifteen minutes, I put Red in the house, and Fate comes into her own, following the sheep, circling them, watching them while they graze. I think they are beginning to understand her as a dog, not a rabid raccoon or skunk. Our training sessions are short, ten to fifteen minutes. It was warm today and I don’t want to push the sheep. Fate has almost boundless reserves of energy, but after a few minutes in the sun on a hot day, she gets a bit unresponsive. When I see the long tongue, I call it off and she goes and jumps in her water tub.
Red is nine years old now, he runs as fast as ever, but he rests afterwards, he is more easily tired. They are a strong combination, they work well with one another, and they work off of each other. Fate is a fun dog, she always has a good time, she loves to work with me and Red. How lucky I am to have this in my life.
I’m glad I started her early, she has a lot of poise and confidence now, and I get to see the ways in which she has grown up.
We went to the Foggy Notion’s bar and restaurant Thursday, we saw our friends Kim and Jack Macmillan there, but I also wanted to toast the victory of the New York Carriage Horses, a lot of beautiful animals were saved when the mayor gave up on his effort to ban the horses, a lot of jobs preserved, a way of life survived until the next battle. I appreciate the opportunity to photography Kelly, who tends bar and waits on a score of tables. She has the best smile I have yet encountered.
A great day for working animals, for the idea of animals remaining in our world. I confess to being near tears as the mayor of New York City tucked his tail between his arrogant and elitist legs and ran from the New York Carriage Horses. I got a bunch of very lovely messages from carriage drivers, thanking me for writing about them.
I will be honest, and I am not being falsely modest, I have very little to do with this victory. The people in the carriage trade have been courageously – and very much alone – fighting for their lives for years. They remained steadfast, calm, civil and savvy. They overcame a media and literal onslaught against them, hired good lawyers – Norman Siegel and Ron Kuby and listened to them. The Teamsters Union stepped up and saved several hundred jobs and 200 horses from what almost surely would have been an awful fate. The people seeking to save them make it clear they were happy to kill them to do it.
As one political analyst wrote, the New York Daily News attached itself to the mayor’s leg and hung on, exposing one lie after another about the carriage horses. Journalism, very slow to awaken to the true meaning of this story, finally came alive, at least in one corner.
What was my role? My reporting instincts kicked in and I very much enjoyed digging out some facts and truth about this story, I think I did make a lot of people think about it who were not really thinking much about it. I was one of them. As to the impact of that, it was not very big in New York City. The mayor and the City Council are not readers of my blog, as far as I know.
When I entered the story, the carriage trade was embattled and discouraged. Nobody gave them a chance, the mayor and his millionaire buddies – this is a strange kind of populist – had made destroying them their number one priority. Liam Neeson began their comeback, using his celebrity to focus attention on the very big lie behind the mayor’s efforts to ban the horses – they were not being abused, they were content and well treated. I think just about every New Yorker understands this now.
Today, they were celebrating in their carriages. I urged each one who wrote me to plan a party. I will come. The mayor ought to be ashamed of himself, this was a low point in his tenure. He lied and lied, and never had the guts to meet with a single carriage driver and give them the dignity and decency of a face-to-face-talk.
Do not expect any wisdom or humility to infect the animal rights activists in New York City, their power is also their downfall – they can’t learn, quit, listen, or change. That is a fatal combination of flaws in cultural and civic history.
I am very proud of my role in this, but I also have no illusions about it, I was not a deciding factor in this campaign, the drivers and their representatives did an astounding job for themselves. You can speak truth to power, and you can win. They have suffered greatly, they deserve every bit of credit and glory there is in this moment.
A lot of you supported the carriage drivers and horses and I thank you. You did make a difference, your letters to the mayor were read and considered, you made hundreds, if not thousands of visits to New York to ride the carriages, I heard from so many drivers about how those visits boosted their morale and gave them strength and support.
You mattered. You are mattering again for Joshua Rockwood. I think we are in the vanguard of a new movement, a new way of understanding animals and thinking about them, a new and more humane way of keeping them in the every day world. We don’t have to ban them to give them good and safe lives, we don’t have to banish animals from the world and from their work because some have been mistreated.
And most importantly, we don’t have to use animals as a screen for battering and abusing people. That is the awful moral failing of the animal rights movement, a supposedly moral movement. It is not moral to harass innocent people, to bribe politicians to do them harm, to take away their jobs, to push animals our of our lives and into oblivion. We need a better way than that, a better understanding of animals.
The horses have sparked something larger than them, and i am proud to be writing about that.
This week, the mayor of New York City, who said banning the New York Carriage Horses was his most urgent priority, the first thing he would do upon taking office, on “Day One,” has surrendered.
He says he still supports the carriage horse ban, but that the animal rights activists pursuing it would have to get the votes they needed in City Council by themselves, he was essentially moving on to bigger and more winnable things.
Political observers in the city said it was clear that he was leaving the issue behind, and now clear that he was unlikely to ever pass such a ban in New New York City. It is also clear, they say, that he has much bigger and more difficult issues to face than removing a popular and well-regulated industry from the heart of the city.
The struggle altered my writing life, I was drawn very powerfully to the issue, and deeply troubled by the suffering and mistreatment of the carriage trade. I was profoundly shocked to learn that the claims of abuse directed at the carriage drivers were almost all entirely false or invented. It was just wrong, from beginning to end.
In New York, the country’s biggest stage, deBlasio’s withdrawal from his arrogant and ill-considered vow – the activists gave him wagonloads of money for his campaign – was an especially significant milestone in the deepening conflict across American between people who have pets, and people who have animals. It was also a staggering setback for the movement that goes by the name of animal rights, which spent many millions of dollars on the ban, and ran a long campaign against the carriage trade that was as hateful and abusive to people as it was dumb and unsuccessful.
From the beginning, the campaign was marked by lies, exaggerations, distortions and by personal harassment and cruelty. The mayor’s vow to ban the carriage horses sparked a nationwide effort to make work with horses in America illegal. If the ban had succeeded, the animal rights drive to remove domesticated animals – horses, elephants, ponies, dogs – from work with people and drive them to rescue farms and preserves or slaughterhouse would have been greatly advanced.
Two years ago, it seemed inconceivable that the carriage trade could win. They faced a multi-million dollar campaign against them, complete with marketing firms, direct mail programs, millionaire developers, expensive and sophisticated blogs and websites, and a multi-million campaign to pour money on politicians and lobby City Council members. Real estate interests drooled over the stable properties and the animal rights activists had raised unlimited funds, mostly from people online who thought they were saving animals.
It turned out to be a rout, but for the other side. The transparently false campaign against the carriage trade has collapsed of it’s own immoral weight.
The mayor and his allies even spent more than a half-million dollars to built a prototype of a disastrously ugly vintage electric car they argued ought to replace the horses in Central Park, where they have worked safely and have been much loved for more than a century.
From the beginning, the campaign was marked by a pointedly ugly kind of elitism. The mayor refused to meet with the carriage drivers or owners, he refused to visit the stables, or meet with any of the lobbyists or representatives of the carriage trade. Demonstrators harassed the drivers, followed them with video cameras, insulted their customers. Their plan was to force the drivers into jobs driving green taxis in the outer boroughs without ever speaking to them.
The support of Liam Neeson, the actor, was essential in drawing some attention to the misrepresentations of the animal rights groups. When the actor said he knew the horses were loved and well cared for, he had many friends in the carriage trade, 200 reporters were present to record what he said. It was the first time almost any of them had set foot in a carriage stable.
Also critical was the skilled and disciplined lobbying effort of the Teamsters Union, which represents the drivers. The Teamsters offered a pretty sound argument for the power and relevance of unions against very big money and power. It’s hard to imagine too many other entities that could have stood up to so much concentrated power.
The Teamsters campaign was a model of discipline, clarity and persistence, mostly out of sight and behind the scenes. They did their job, they saved a lot of jobs, helped keep food on a lot of working-class tables.
The carriage trade hired two experience lawyers and public brawlers, Norman Siegel and Ron Kuby, and listened to their advice.
It’s a big victory for animals and people who seek to save them and keep them in our world. I believe the horses have triggered a new social awakening, a new sense that animals are being driven from our world by people who claim to be representing their rights but know little or nothing about them. They have also called attention to the growing brutality and vigilante ethos of the animal rights movement, which has become extreme and detached from reality. A movement to save animals ought to support the people who live and work with them, not persecute and harass them.
It is becoming ever more fraught, even dangerous, to own and work with animals in America. Just ask the scores of farmers being harassed and persecuted for failing to meet the impossible new standards of animal rights and welfare being increasingly forced upon them. If you work, aren’t rich, are elderly, it is ever more difficult to adopt a dog or cat in America, this at a time when millions are euthanized because there are not homes for them. A true animal rights movement would make it easier to bring animals home, not more difficult.
The carriage horses were spared an almost certainly awful fate, the mayor and the activists insisted that they would all find good homes on horse rescue farms, but they would never say where the farms were or where the $24 million it would take to feed them for all of their lives would come from.
A rational world would see that the carriage trade has become a model for keeping domesticated animals in our everyday lives. A score of respected veterinarians and behaviorists have examined the horses and testified to their good health and good care. There was an Alice In Wonderland quality to the animal rights people, almost everything they said turned out to be false or the opposite of what they claimed. The carriage horses are are among the luckiest horses in the world, not the ones who are abused. It is not abusive for big draft horses to pull light carriages through Central Park.
So the horses delivered a big victory for the new Saving Animals Movement, in two years, the mayor and the people seeking to remove the horses did not change a single mind in New York City. More than two thirds of the city’s notoriously fractious residents agreed on keeping the horses, all three newspapers supported them, so did organized labor and the Chamber of Commerce.
Everywhere, animals are vanishing from our world, the result of climate change and a skewered and dogmatic view of animals rights. Keeping 200 horses in the everyday life of New York is a powerful thing.
We can keep animals in our world and give them good and meaningful lives among people, even in crowded urban environments. Now, another significant struggle in the animal world, the effort to save Joshua Rockwood, a Glenville, N.Y. farmer and his farm from the same ethos that sought to ban the carriage horses.
Joshua Rockwood has been charged with 13 counts of animal cruelty for struggling to keep his animals warm and watered in the brutal cold wave of March. Although none of his animals died or suffered, his farm and sustenance are threatened. I believe we will have two very powerful victories in the Saving Animals movement this week, Joshua is seeking $16,000 to prepare his water systems and shelter for this winter. The horses have changed the dynamic of the struggle over the future of animals.
The animal rights movement has squandered it’s mandate and moral authority through it’s arrogance, cruelty and rigidity. There is a new movement, it is the Saving Animals Movement, you can help Joshua win another great and seemingly impossible victory here.
