I have a new command for Fate that she responds to, “in their face!”, Fate is not yet big enough to fully intimidate the sheep, although she is getting there. She is getting in their faces, holding her ground, a tough and determined little dog. Red, as always, is keeping watch nearby, making sure the sheep don’t move. Fate thinks she’s doing it, she gets very tough when Red is around.
My friend Pamela’s face is poem, canvas of feeling and emotion. I have to confess that I love Pamela, so does Maria – they are sisters in a powerful way. They each understand where the other comes from. Sometimes I wish Pamela felt less than she does, in her face, her eyes, her mouth, her bearing, her hands is every intense emotion in the spectrum.
She has suffered almost unendurable pain and loss and cruelty, her life a shattered mosaic of change and challenge. She has been driven to the edge of madness and back again, she has lost none of her radiance and powerful and heart. Sometimes it takes my breath away to be around her.
She is devoting her life to saving the big horses, the draft horses that built our world and are being forgotten by a greedy and disconnected society. We talked today about the many women who have been burned alive by men in recent centuries for being witches. You surely would have been one of them, I told her, and she smiled, she said yes, I think I would have been burned alive.
She put up a new blog, a new voice, today.
In our culture, we don’t burn women like that to death, we marginalize them, drive them to the edge, keep them off of television and away from big-paying corporations, far from political office, we harass them for their beliefs and demand again and again that they recommit themselves work that is almost impossible.
Pamela grew up in the third world, she understands what it means to be an outsider, to stand outside of the tent. But that radiant smile is never far away, as are the tears of loss and disappointment. I think sometimes that being alive means to feel, and that makes Pamela a person who has shown up for life in the most basic way. I am so happy to know her, to see her launch her own new blog, to hear her commit to moving ahead with life after the shattering death of her husband and my friend Paul.
The horses are her guides, her partners, her inspiration. She will never abandon them.
Pamela has many good reasons to be disappointed in the good faith of human beings, she is more committed than ever to loving people and animals and helping to save the earth.
After the workshop, most of the workshop members joined Pamela and Maria and I for lunch at the Round House Cafe, Scott Carrino reserved a table for us at his popular new cafe in Cambridge. The group has a special chemistry to it, everyone seemed to talk safely and openly about their creative ambitions, their desire to form community, to share and sell their work, to journal for themselves.
Blogs are about voice and identity. Pamela Rickenbach spoke powerfully about all of the women in human history – countless thousands – who were burned to death as witches over the past 400 years. Historians argue about how many died, but there is no argument many women were tortured and killed for raising their voices and speaking their minds.
Now, I argued, we have the most powerful tools ever conceived to stand in our truth and unleash the creative spirit that lives in every one of us. And the worst thing to fear from writing is upsetting Uncle Harry. An exciting time, an exciting day. I was so pleased to share this day with Maria, who spoke of her own artistic encounter with technology, of how she has used her blog to create her art and sell it to the world. More to come tomorrow.
After Pamela Rickenbach and Rachel Barlow set up Pamela’s blog Saturday morning, we went to Pompanuck Farm for a blogging workshop, and it was a special day for me, and I hope for Pamela and the creative people who are trying to find their voices and place in the world.
This was a powerful experience for me, and for Maria. In a very elemental way, my blog saved my life, it gave me the means to see and understand myself, and a way to work out the pain and anger and confusion that had ravaged my life. Maria’s blog has helped make it possible to be an artist in our small town in upstate New York, it has helped her find her own voice and truth and sense of self. It has made it possible to sell her work.
Pamela spoke quite eloquently about the need for people – especially women – to show up, to speak for themselves, to believe that their stories are important. We are coming back tomorrow morning to talk more specifically about how the personal, creative and commercial ambitions of people can come to life on blogs, the new medium of individual and creative expression in the Corporate Nation, where creativity has become a mass-marketed profit center for large corporations.
Pompanuck Farm is itself a beautiful expression of creativity and spirituality, it is a wonderful place to share ideas and try them out. Pamela is the director of Blue Star Equiculture, the draft horse sanctuary in Palmer, Massachusetts. Pamela is a brave and brilliant visionary, she has devoted her life to saving and speaking for the horses who have helped human beings build our world.
Her year has been shattering in some ways. Her beloved husband Paul Moshimer committed suicide earlier in the year, she was continuously assaulted by elements of the animal rights movement who believe it is cruel for horses to work, she has struggled in the midst of this awful grief to re-structure Blue Star, bring in a vigorous and far-sighted board of directors, and keep the more than 30 big horses on the farm healthy and safe.
Her new blog, Yacu-Carolina.org will be a powerful new voice for Pamela, she is a mystic. I believe Blue Star is the way forward for people who love animals and love Mother Earth and who wish to keep animals in our world. There, people and animals are both treated with love and respect, and Pamela has always understood that the way to save the animals of our world is to keep them in the everyday lives of people and honor the work they have always done for human beings.
The people at the workshop spoke movingly about the things they seek, their creative and personal hopes for expression, their desire to channel their energy and inner spirits into a blog, to build their own communities, figure out their passions. It felt great, a perfect day in so many ways. Another coming tomorrow. Tonight, we will take Pamela out to celebrate her new blog. Whatever she feels, whatever she does, yacu-carolina.org will remind us that she has shown up for life, and is living it fully and bravely.
Wow, it went like clockwork, Rachel and Pamela set up the new blog (I was hovering) and it looks great and Pamela has her first post up. It is called Yacu-Carolina.org.
Pamela has a powerful first message, from her late horse Tom Too. Pamela is a mesmerizing spirit, a prophet and I am excited to share her new blog with you. We are heading over to Pompanuck Farm for a blogging workshop with here and about a dozen others. She and I will be posting through the day. Congratulations to Pamela, I am thrilled to see her with this new way of finding voice and identity and sharing her messages with the world. Her first story is beautiful, it gave me the chills. Go and see.
