After some difficult years, Minnie the barn cat is coming into her own, she has found her place on the farm and in the sun, it is on Maria’s fiber chair, now sitting in the middle of the yard and Minnie’s new favorite spot on the earth. She sits there all day, sun or clouds, I took Fate out at 3 a.m. last night, and Minnie was still sitting in her new throne. Suddenly, she is even more regal than Flo, Minnie is the Queen Mother of Bedlam Farm.
She sits in her chair and talks to everyone who passes by, saying hello, complaining and commenting on life on the farm. Three years ago, Minnie’s leg was severely damaged by some animal attack, we think a ferret. Her leg was amputated and as you know, I have always been uneasy about our decision to amputate, it’s cost and the toll it took on Minnie. I don’t think people have the right to inflict great suffering on animals without their being able to consent.
But I am feeling good about it, seeing Minnie in the fiber palace her beloved Maria has built, string by string, day by day, for more than a year. Love is much more powerful than hate.
I decided to work on love when I realized that hate was too much for me, Martin Luther King said he gave up hate because it was too much for him to bear. I understand what he meant.
I was intrigued to learn a few years ago – it was mostly after I put Orson down after he bit his third person – that entire websites and blogs were devoted to hating me. “I hate Jon Katz too,” one eager late comer proclaimed in one hurriedly constructed site, she was anxious to get aboard. “I hate Jon Katz with a passion!,” headlined another blog, pointing out with pride that she didn’t just hate me in the ordinary way, but with much more feeling.
Only last year, someone I have never met and know nothing about launched a global campaign to ban me on Facebook from writing about animals. Her site vanished one day.
But more than forty people had signed up in days. She seemed to think it was a lot.
Today, something I saw on the news made me think about hate, and I Googled “Hating Jon Katz” and I saw there were about 340,000 hits. Wow, I thought, that is not quite the big league, but it is substantial for a mid-list author. I started to get a big head about it, I mean after all, John Updike wrote that the only true Hell for a writer is to be ignored. If you are not hated, he said, you are most likely dead.
Then I started nosing around.
Justin Bieber has more than 8 million hits for “Hating Justin Bieber,” and the I Hate Justin Bieber Facebook Page has nearly 400,000 likes all by itself. I am a wart on the ass of life. Perspective is important.
I decided to Google “loving Jon Katz” and there were not as many – about 357,000 hits. I’ll be honest with you, most of them were nice reviews and comments about my books and quite a few were comments posted on my own pages on the blog and on Facebook. Google’s search engines are not nearly as focused on love as hate. And these days, you can get a quarter of a million hits on line by posting photos of your new kitten.
The Internet is an amazing place, we will never escape our own lives or be able to hide from them, those Jon Katz pages will be up there forever, archived in the genes of the universe. I think of future generations of people – writers, bloggers, dog lovers, donkey lovers, misfits – who will puzzle over these sites and try and figure out what to make of me. I wish I could help them, but they will have to make up their own minds.
I wonder what my beloved grandmother Minnie would have made of these sites, I think she would have thrown up her hands in horror, convinced that the police would be here shortly to drag me off to prison or worse.
In case my head swells, I went and Googled “Hating Donald Trump,” I was reminded again of what I small fry I really am in the hating universe. Walter Palmer, the Minnesota dentist who shot Cecil the lion, has 550,000 hatred hits on Google.
There are 44 million hits for “hating Donald Trump.” I can hardly get my head around that. It seems we have gotten very good at hating people in America, especially online, where it is easy and free. Lots of people do it. If you don’t do it, you are on the fringe. I spent a few minutes thinking about who I hate, and I will be truthful, I really couldn’t think of anyone that I hate, with or without passion. Now, when it comes to disliking people, that is different.
Lots of people annoy me, and I dislike lots of people. Including Donald Trump and Justin Bieber, both high up on my list, but I would not go so far as to say I hate either one of them. I briefly hated my fourth grade math teacher, Mr. Hauser, but then my mother told he broke down and cried when told I was repeating his class, and I felt sorry for him.
Where does this go? I think often about what it means to give a good life to dogs, and why it is that it gives so much pleasure to some people – me included. I think that is because it is hard to give good lives to people, even our children. But it is possible to give good lives to dogs. Watching the photo above in my computer, I was startled by it, it showed so much drama and life. Red and Fate have very good lives, I think. They love to work together, and have figured out how to do it.
I think giving good lives to dogs is the opposite of hating or being hated.
Red, raised in a barn in Northern Ireland, has a sweet life. He keeps an eye on things, he helps keep the sheep in place while Fate circles them, challenges one at a time, builds her confidence, tests her eye. He is with me almost every minute of every day. Fate hangs out with Maria all day, they are seen everywhere together, making quilts, flirting with guys in town. They both ride in cars almost everywhere, and each has friends (Red has countless girlfriends) tucked all over town, at the cafe, the dentist, even the Post Office.
Red is a therapy dog, something I doubt Fate will ever be, she is way too active and curious, I can see her pouncing on the bed of some unsuspecting hospice patient and scaring the wits out of him. These two have acres of woods to run in every day, sometimes two or three times, and beds in several rooms of the farmhouse.
I am happy to give these dogs such good lives, because they return the favor and help give a good life to me, along with Maria and others. I know hatred well, as well as those people who put up those websites. Surely, that could have been me.
Hatred and anger have often been a part of life for me, sometimes from my side, sometimes from others. Hatred is a part of our world, a symptom of disconnection and broken spirits, it corrupts and corrodes every soul that it touches, I think sometimes it is a virus that spreads, that embeds itself in the spirit like a tick.
It digs in, sucks life out.
Some people say hatred is a gift, but I wouldn’t go that far. Hatred begets hatred, I know that. Hatred of me does make me pause and ask myself, who do I want to be? What is it that I can bear? Hatred may not help me to know who I want to be, but it has taught me what I do not want to be. I am filled with passion for so many things, including my own good life, I was happy to talk to myself today and say I have never hated anyone with passion. Or even without it.
Mark Twain once said that a lie can travel halfway around the world while truth is still putting on its shoes. If you watch the news, you can see that truth is taking a pounding almost everywhere in our country, it is being supplanted by argument and ideology. The truth nearly bled to death during the worst of the New York Carriage Horse controversy, it was often on its knees, begging for mercy and relief..
I have a friend who describes herself as progressive, she is a dedicated environmentalist, she believed it was cruel for carriage horses to work in cities, and said they were not suitable for life in urban areas. She is an adjunct professor at Rutgers and I asked her if she thought it would help the environment in New York if horses replaced some of the cars, trucks, buses and sightseeing trams that clog the city’s streets and spew carbon emissions and other pollutants into the air.
Of course, she said, that would be wonderful for the environment.
I’m confused, I said. This is what the carriage drivers have done. Why aren’t you out on the streets screaming to keep them there? I don’t know, she asked me, perhaps because they are being abused? But I noticed it was a question, not a statement. Better yet, I asked her, consider this bit of irrationality bordering on insanity:
According to the city of New York’s environmental website, 6 per cent of all the deaths that occur in New York City each year are attributable to air pollutants in New York, almost all caused by exhaust from motorized vehicles and engines.
There are approximately 8.4 million residents in New York City. In 2007, the last year for which records are available, more than 54,000 people died in the city. Six per cent of these deaths then (it would presumably be higher today) would be 3,240 people.
So, according to New York City’s own records, cars and other motor vehicles caused more than 3,400 deaths a year, just from breathing the air alone. This doesn’t include the many thousands more injured and killed in motor vehicle accidents (see below). In the 150 year history of the carriage trade, the horses have not killed a single New Yorker. There is no legislation pending in New York City to ban or curb the use of motor vehicles.
You don’t need to be a scientist to reason that for every few horses that replaced a truck or car or sightseeing bus or taxi, some New Yorker might well live rather than die. In the past several years, animal rights activists in New York have spent millions of dollars building prototype vintage electric cars to replace the horses and add more automobiles to New York, they have had the full support of the mayor and the city government in their effort to ban the carriage horses.
If you are looking for the truth in this, you will become a wanderer, off in the desert looking for something green.
People said it was progressive to take away the jobs and livelihoods of innocent people for no reason, and ban them from their traditions and way of life. It was said the horses were being abused when they were not. It was said they were overworked, underfed, confines in tiny cells, when they were not. It was said they were unhealthy, choking on dreadful urban fumes. It was said it is cruel for 1,800 horses to pull light carriages in Central Park. It was said horses were dangerous to people and themselves in cities. It was said there were wealthy and beautiful rescue farms lined up all over the country to take these horses and feed them for the rest of their lives. It was said it is torture for working animals to work.
People who say they love animals and speak for them accept the idea without question that it is moral and proper to kill the horses in order to safe them from their safe and well-regulated lives. They would, they say, be better off.
And one of the most startling of claims, still visible on the web pages of just about every one of the organizations seeking to ban the carriage horses, that the horses are destructive to the environment. The Coalition To Ban The Carriage Horses has claimed repeatedly that horses contribute to pollution and climate change, first by dropping manure on the streets, and then, by slowing traffic when they go to and from their stables, thus increasing automobile emissions and adding to global warming.
It is the draft horses causing traffic congestion and pollution, they claim, not the cars, sight-seeing trams, trucks and buses.
The mayor, who has never owned an animal, ridden on one, or lived with one, said banning the horses was his “number one” priority, that horses no longer belong in the urban areas where where they have lived and worked for thousands of years.
All over the world, young farmers and truly progressive-minded communities are seeking ways to bring domesticated animals back to work to replace the cars, trucks and buses (and diesel fumes) that are slowly destroying life on the earth with their carbon emissions. Horses are returning to farms all over America to help farmers and the environment, there is no more urgent place for them and their work than the crowded and disconnected urban areas of the country.
Horse power is one of the cleanest and most effective forms of power ever used.
There is absolutely no reason it would not help our cities. Jared Diamond, one of the most prominent biologists in the world, has written (Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fate Of Human Societies, W.W. Norton) that horses are the “perfect” domesticable animals, they live within dominance hierarchies, have a great tolerance for other species, are genetically malleable, and have predictable herding instincts. Humans could never have built cities like New York City without horses, and biologists, environmentalists and behaviorists almost universally believe the horses time is coming again, they can help us once more.
And another interesting truth: According to New York City health and veterinary records, there is no evidence of any carriage horse dying from respiratory disease from the city’s fumes. The horses are examined regularly, by five different city agencies. The symptoms of respiratory disease in animals – hacking, rheumy eyes, heavy breathing – are simple to detect. The horse live much more easily and safely in the city than many people do.
Soon, they argue, we will have no choice, if there are any horses left.
Donkeys, mules, horses and elephants are all being brought back to farms and communities, and biologists and scientists are beginning to argue that the best chance of keeping animals in the world and helping the environment is to bring animal species back into cities.
This is now a seminal idea in urban planning, it makes so much sense to reconnected disconnected urban dwellers to nature and to the world of animals. If work is found for many endangered domesticated species, they can be saved as their habitats vanish. And for the carriage horses, good and safe and nourishing work has been found – they connect visitors and residents of New York to their extraordinary park, built with carriage horses very much in mind.
More sad truth: In New York City, the full weight of the movement that claims to speak for the rights of animals is desperately committed to removing them. How can animals possible survive in our environment if the people entrusted to fight for them are committed to removing them from our every day lives?
If you separate the angry ideologues of the animal rights movement from the discussion, you might want to look at it this way: what if a truly progressive mayor took office in New York City, and an animal rights movement had it’s head collectively removed from it’s ass?
What if instead of banning the horses, they decided to fight to keep them, to pressure developers to build big and beautiful stables for them, if they chose instead to ban some of the pedicabs, taxes and traffic that clogs Central Park, maim and injure and kills scores of pedestrians every year, and greatly contribute to carbon emissions and pollution? According to the New York City Police Department, 156 New York City pedestrians – a figure that does not include drivers and passengers of vehicles – were killed on city streets in 2014. No New Yorker was killed by a carriage horses in 2014 or any other year.
What if horse-pulled carriages took some people up and down Broadway and major streets in New York, if tourists commuted by horse carriage from the bus station to their offices, brought office workers to their subway stops, if tourists did their sightseeing on horse-drawn wagons? What if horses replaced cars on the city’s most congested streets during day time hours? Imagine Broadway or Central Park with no cars or trucks?
The more you think about it, the more rational and appealing – and necessary – it seems.
Young farmers have been increasingly turning to horses in recent years to save costs and protect the environment. It is also true, as any farmer will testify, that is possible, even likely, to love a cow or a horse, hard to love a tractor. You can learn more about working horses from Blue Star Equiculture, a draft horse sanctuary and organic farming center. The Massachusetts farm is a pioneer in bringing the big horses back to work in ways that are environmentally sound and healing and far less costly than machines.
My friend Ed Gulley, a dairy farmer, dotes on his cows and goat and dogs. “I fix a tractor,” he says, “I don’t love it.” Horses can sell merchant goods locally, transport the poor and elderly to doctor’s appointments, do therapy work with children and the disabled and the mentally ill. They can do many things cars and trucks can’t do, and have done those things for people for many thousands of years.
Perhaps the greatest irony of the carriage horse controversy is that the carriage trade, almost unknowingly, and for all of the suffering and harassment they have endured, has paved the way for this revolution in understanding animals, this way of healing the world, they have undertaken a great and controversial experiment that has worked.
The horses live comfortably in urban stables in congested areas, they walk up padded ramps to large stalls, where they are fed regularly and examined continuously. They live in one of the most congested urban areas anywhere, they are productive, healthy, create jobs and feed scores, if not hundreds of families. They are much loved by residents, tourists, children. By people.
They harm no one, live longer and are better cared for than almost all of the horses on the earth, according to the most respected equine veterinary organizations in the country. Buck Brannaman, the inspiration for the movie “The Horse Whisperer,” and the best known horse trainer in the nation, has written that the carriage horses are the lucky ones, they have good and healthy work to do, the ones that are abused are those that languish in pastures and stables with nothing to do, without work or human connection. This was the fate the carriage horses were spared this year, when the mayor’s ban collapsed. No knowledgeable animal lover seeks a fate like that for a working animal.
In New York, the carriage trade has become much more sensitized to the environmental issues in the city than the people attacking them. Workers follow the horses around the park and collect their manure, back at the stables the manure is collected by farmers for fertilizer. The stable water is clear and clean, the feed free of dirt or rodents. The horses, pulling light carriages on asphalt (not concrete), do not pollute the air in any way, nor, says the police department, do they have any measurable impact on the flow of traffic.
For me, the truth is a beautiful and fragile and sacred thing, the carriage horse controversy reminds me to care for it and honor it. When truth dies, awful suffering and injustice often follows.
The truth is that the carriages horses are as much an environmental issue for New York and other cities as a political issue. Horses have always helped human beings, that is our deep and profound connection to them. They are needed in New York City as much as anywhere, the pressing issue is not how to remove them, but how to keep them and let them help save our lives and our world.
