I saw Fate standing in the woods looking for Red, I think, she is always aware of him. The sun rose up behind her and shone right on her, and I found myself looking at a portrait of a strong and fit young working dog, keen and ready to move. She is still a puppy, but more and more looking like a young woman.
I sometimes think of Red and Fate as farm managers. They went and collected the sheep this morning while Maria and I cleaned out the barn, and when I came out to work with them, I found they had put both of the sheep in the corner of the pasture, and Red was holding the sheep while Fate was practicing her eye strength. These two are very trustworthy, they rarely are alone with the sheep together – Red often sits with the sheep while they graze – but I trust both of them completely.
I lost two valued friends this year, and while I certainly take responsibility, it takes two to destroy a friendship. But I attribute the loss of both in part to the increasing reliance many people have on social media platforms like texting and Facebook Messenger, and the decline of many people’s willingness to speak to other people in real time, even on the phone. I rarely blame technology for the ills of people, but these were especially painful occurrences for me, a human and technological failure combined, and I am trying, months later, to understand.
Many people have actually forgotten how to talk to other people, there are now people in the world who have never learned to do it.
In his encyclical on climate change, Pope Francis wrote eloquently about the effects of technological innovation on employment, social exclusion, social break down, increased violence and a rise in new forms of social aggression. When media and the digital world become omnipresent, their influence can stop people from learning how to live wisely, to think deeply and to love generously. In this context, the great sages of the past run the risk of going unheard amid the noise and distractions of an information overload.
When people are in conflict with one another, I have come to see that texting and programs like Facebook Messenger are toxic methods of trying to communicate and work through problems. Reading short passages in bursts are not the same thing as talking in real time, listening to voices, grasping nuance and meaning. People who want to resolve problems, who care about the people they are struggling with, will seek to speak to them or, better yet, look them in the eye if it is possible.
Of course they will. If they can’t bother to do that, then they don’t really care.
Social media platforms are a place to hide, a way not to understand, a form of social aggression all their own. In one case, a man I have known for years took offense at something political I wrote, or that he thought I was writing. I rarely write about politics, I hate the labeling of all thoughts into a left or right. My friend is a passionate follower of talks shows and cable news, he identifies himself a follower of the “right” he was offended by a sentence I wrote that was sympathetic to Planned Parenthood. ( I am sympathetic to Planned Parenthood, I know so many women who have been helped by it.)
My friend – we worked together on a newspaper a long time ago – sent me a long and angry text, and I responded by urging him to call me and talk about his anger. He didn’t, he sent another text even angrier than the first, and I got angry and responded that this was not a way to communicate with friends. In a series of exchanges – none of them about the issue – our friendship of nearly 30 years disintegrated right before my eyes, and on a screen, and without a phone call or cup of coffee.
He was angry, and didn’t want to deal with his anger, only with my transgression and his sense of victimization. I told him at least five times that Facebook Messenger was not a place to resolve this, I told him I never argue about politics, I’d prefer to take rat poison with my tea. I’m sure we had differences, I said, it doesn’t matter to me if he agrees with me or not, or if I agree with him. I have known him for a long time and respect and appreciate him and the work he does, he is a journalist.
I used to think that this was a problem men had, but online, I actually see much more hostility and aggression coming from women. I’ve had to ban a score of people in the years I have been writing on Facebook, all but one are female. That is a surprise and disappointment to me.
I lost another friend a few months later. I noticed on my Facebook Page that someone I had known and admired for years was putting up comments that seemed increasingly agitated and pointed to me, it was almost as if everything I was writing was annoying or offending her. I wrote a message suggesting we talk, it seemed we had a problem. But, I said, I would not try to resolve this on Facebook Messenger or social media. We had to talk on the phone, she lived far from me.
I received several angry messages from her, including one that said we could only talk if I would be honest, and I wasn’t sure what this meant and asked again if we couldn’t speak to one another directly. I can’t honestly say what happened, except what followed was one of the most painful episodes in my time online, there were a series of increasingly angry and outraged messages – some from her, some from me – and I saw a relationship of years vanish into the digital ether. Again, I had this sense of losing control, of being pulled along by something dark inside of me.
The truth is I don’t know what happened, and will never know. Perhaps it was all my fault. I have a temper, when assaulted, I can get plenty angry. My sense of it was that the messages she sent me were offensive and completely out of any proportion to the issues between us, although I couldn’t even tell you what they were. It became clear to me that she didn’t want to speak to me, didn’t want to resolve any issues that might have arisen between us. I couldn’t even say what they might have been.
Our messages seemed to take on a life of their own, spiraling back and forth with injury and accusation. She called me a liar, suggested I need help because I had no friends and couldn’t make any, I knew I needed to stop this cycle, and I believe I tried – we all see through our own prism – but it was as if we were locked in some demonic ritual beyond our awareness or ability to control. No matter how many times I said we shouldn’t be talking this way, we were. Why couldn’t I stop? Because messaging can be an addiction, a destabilizing act of social aggression. Just look at the posts online. I am horrified to see that I am not immune to it, none of us are immune to addiction and the miscommunications that epidemically occur when we see only text, and have no other context in which to understand what is being said or why.
Two friends are enough for me to sacrifice to this cultural laziness and disorder. No wonder the country is so angry. By the time cable news and social media are done with us, we will have lost the ability to empathize, listen or resolve anything. That sees to already be happening.
I practically begged my friend to talk with me, we had never had any conflict, we always respected and admired each other, it didn’t seem we were actually arguing about anything. It seemed almost Orwellian to me, it was not rational. But the anger became the means and the end, expressing anger and victimization, outrage and injury, that was the point, that is what killed two friendships.
This was especially painful for me, I value friendships and there is very rarely this kind of conflict or anger in my personal life. I value directness, in me and others. I am quite certain if I had been sitting face-to-face with either of these people, we could have handled these issues in seconds.
I have learned this lesson, this round hurt enough and startled me enough that I have begun to understand what happened. I failed my own resolve. I was right the first time. We never should have tried to resolve a complex emotional issue over a social media messaging program. Facebook says it is about connection, but as Francis said, used unknowingly, it can be even more effective at disconnection.
I understand now that once anger injects itself into a message, I must stop. And mean it. I don’t need the last word, I am happy to give it away. To insist that we either stop talking or really talk. Online, all kinds of communication are now so ubiquitously new and simple. It has never been easier to make a connection, it has never been easier to lose one.
A friend send me a link this morning of a video showing a team of Amish draft horses freeing a giant tractor-trailer that was stuck in snow and ice in Ottawa, Pa in February of 2011. The video is a huge hit on You Tube and ought to be required viewing for the oddly disconnected and misguided people who believe it is cruel for working horses to pull a light carriage on flat ground in Central Park for part of the day. It is a curiously telling film, revealing in its own simple way.
A mayor with his head on straight would get on the phone and hire a bunch of horses to help run the city right away.
The video got me thinking about the New York Carriage Horses and my own curious and personal – and somewhat lonely – obsession with marking the collapse, at least for now, of the furious, vicious and lavishly funded campaign by the Mayor of New York, a millionaire real estate developer, platoons of clueless reporters and TV stars, and horses of animal rights fanatics to ban the carriage horses.
A year or so ago, nobody thought the horses and the carriage trade would survive it, but thanks to their own determination, Liam Neeson sticking his famous neck out, and the skillful political maneuvering of their true saviors, the Teamsters Union, the ban effort collapsed. The horses are safe for now. The animal rights groups and their wagon loads of cash were routed.
Nobody thinks this fight is over but the horses and the carriage trade have struck a mighty blow for individualism, ethical government and the future of animals in our world. There is absolutely no good reason to ban the horses and many good reasons to keep them in the everyday lives of New Yonkers. The big lies – the horses are being abused, work for them is cruel – have been exposed and rejected. Absolutely no one outside of the echo chamber that is the animal rights movement believes them.
I wrote about the horses for more than two years, but the struggle has gone dark, at least in public, there isn’t much more for me to say. I have to get paid to paying work. The rag-tag Army of photographers, artists, political activists, writers, horse lovers, oddballs and videographers and other angels who appeared out of the mists to fight for the horses are still around, but heading back to their own lives and work mostly. I get e-mail every day, some from New Yorkers, asking if the carriage horses are still there.
Outside of the trade itself, no one knows what has happened, what is happening, what might happen in the future. Will the mayor introduce the ban again? Will the carriage trade fight on to the end? Are they angry? Happy? Relieved? None of the above?
Stasis has descended, the surreal story has become even more surreal. Far from the battlefield, we can only scratch our heads, peer over the horizon for clues, and hope for the best. I am told that the drivers and stable owners fear that the city will try and yank the driver’s city medallions next Spring, a way around the stalemated ban. But that seems to be hearsay, not fact.
Since the awful struggle of this year, the carriage trade hired smart lawyers, unleashed great lobbyists, found aggressive spokespeople, and begun a steady stream of photographs and stories that show the horses and the drivers in a better light. There are good photographs of the horses, drivers and stables on social media every day. Accusations are answered quickly and persuasively. But everyone in power seems to be saying the same thing: lay low, be quiet, be wary.
No one outside of the circle – at least no one I know – has any idea of the horses are truly safe, or just hanging on waiting for the next blow. The fear surrounding the industry is wrenching. There is the widespread belief that they all are only one horse mishap or accident away from the whole thing firing up again. Hundreds of New Yorkers are mowed down, killed and injured every week by cars, bicycles, pedicabs and taxis, but if a single horse trips and falls, the wolves are howling for the blood of the carriage trade. I don’t blame them for being paranoid and frightened. Mostly, I think they are traumatized.
I realized a month or so ago that since the ban collapsed, the controversy has vanished from public consciousness. That seems dangerous to me, especially if they really believe the fight isn’t over. The issue needs to stay in the public eye, public attention is fickle, there will be other issues, other distractions.
The Teamsters have other issues to worry about it and a contentious mayor to deal with. Most of the people in the carriage trade seem to wish the whole thing would just blow away. There is no unified voice in the carriage trade, no leader, no single person with the authority to speak for the horses. The people in the trade are a diverse – and often contentious – tribal collection of immigrants and their descendants, working people who have never looked for trouble and don’t want any more.
“Most of us just want to earn our money and go to work,” one told me last week. “We are frightened, it has been a horrible ordeal for us and we are afraid to call attention to ourselves. We don’t have anything like a leader, and most of us don’t even like the people who are speaking for us all the time. We aren’t in a celebratory mood, we expect the fight to flare up at any time. We don’t want to do anything to call attention to ourselves.”
I don’t think any individualists – the carriage drivers are surely that – like anyone who speaks for them or tells them what to do. I sure don’t. My relationship with the people in charge of the carriage trade have always been touchy. I am an outsider, and an odd one at that. I have been thrown off of one of the trade Facebook groups, denied entrance to another, and quit a third when people started suggesting what I should and shouldn’t write.
I don’t blame them for a thing. When, after all, will I ever learn?
They carriage trade ethos is, after all, very different from me. They are war refugees, living under siege. I have made openness a cornerstone of my work, the lawyers and lobbyists and “leaders” in the carriage trade are secretive, political and very cautious. They are also, it should be noted, successful.
The lobbyists work behind the scenes, not in front of the cameras, or on public blogs or websites. They see little percentage in public statements, ceremonies, discussions about strategy or protestations of gratitude.
This is a major discomfort I have with them, perhaps the only one. Many thousands of people, animal lovers from all over the country have rallied to their cause, signed petitions, written letters, come to New York to ride the carriages. The people of New York City, the residents, labor unions, business associations have stood solidly behind the carriage trade in the face of an ugly campaign of lies and often hysterical accusations.
They need to hear that their work is appreciated, they need to hear the carriage trade will not run away or go away. They deserve to be acknowledged in some way.
I keep seeing a ceremony of some kind in Central Park acknowledging the vast support the carriage trade has received, expressing gratitude for it and reaffirming the importance of keeping the horses in New York, where we can all see them. The carriage trade has no plans for such a ceremony. To them, it’s a dangerous idea.
I am a bit player in this long drama, I came late to it, had little to do with the outcome. But it has loomed large in my life and head, and I’m bothered by the seeming eagerness of the very political people running the carriage trade defense to go underground, work in secret, and refuse to say a word to the outside world about what is going on behind all those closed doors. I don’t care for secrecy, we live in a transparent world, we have the most amazing tools to reach out to our own communities and summon the help we need.
The import of the carriage horse issue goes far beyond New York City. New York is our big stage, everything that happens there reverberates everywhere, the horses have sparked a great awakening about the future of animals and the validity and importance of keeping them in our world. Lots of people are watching and listen, it is not an issue that ought to go away.
I hear from a lot of the carriage drivers, many feel the same way. But they are workers and lovers and free spirits, not warriors. They just want to live in peace and keep their way of life.
This seems short-sighted to me, as one who has no standing at all in the carriage trade, the animal rights movement, or New York City politics. This is why I love Beavis & Butthead, because I am stupid I am free. because I don’t know what I am supposed to think, I can try to think. There was a beautiful and meaningful ceremony in Central Park on Saturday honoring the horses and their connection to human beings. It was led by a Cheyenne elder, a great spiritual leader and friend of the horses.
I couldn’t get to New York Saturday, and I have something different in mind, something personal. I understand that my place in the world is outside of groups and organizations, leaders and pastors, chiefs and lobbyists. I just never stay on the inside for long, its not in my DNA. For better or worse, I live outside of the circle, that is my own destiny and spiritual path. In the city, they have been knee-deep in the blood of this ugly conflict for years while I was sitting on my farm with my Apple computer.
It was, of course, inevitable that I end up not behaving the way I am supposed to behave. I have never learned to do that. I tried to explain to one frustrated lobbyist, that once a writer opens up on a cause, he or she almost never shuts up. It’s not really even possible. But they can’t really understand me any more than I can really understand them. It’s good that we share the love of the same cause.
I have no business telling anyone in the carriage trade what they should do, or what they owe to people, or how they should thank them, that is up to them. I have no business agreeing to be on their Facebook groups, I support the team, I am not on the team.
I do owe it to myself to follow my own beliefs, and I am called to host or co-host a small and private ceremony of gratitude and hope for the New York Carriage Horses in Central Park. Gratitude that the ban has collapsed for now, hope that the horses will remain in New York for good, and that the people in the carriage trade can live in peace and prosperity, at long last.
A couple of people in New York have offered to join me in this. I will keep you posted. This is important to me, I mean to hold that ceremony, even if I have to be there alone.
As long as I’ve lived in the country, I’ve taken photos of my dogs on different paths. When I first came up to the country with Julius and Stanley, my Yellow Labs, I didn’t take photos. I took my first dogs on the path photo at the first Bedlam Farm with Rose and then with Izzy, Lenore and Frieda. Great dogs all, and every dog I have had up here understands that posing for photos is good and honest work for them, and they willingly do it.
This morning, another chapter in my book of life, a new path in some beautiful woods. Two different dogs, Red and Fate. Two great working dogs, two wonderful companions. I like the dogs in the path photos, they are a chronicle of my life, and my life with dogs. They remind me of the paths of life that all of us are on, they are harbingers of crisis, change and mystery.
We are all on our own paths, they always change, the cast always evolves, there is no stasis in our lives, perhaps because dogs do not live as long as we do, they help us see the nature of our own world. I think my dogs are never more at home than when they are out in the deep woods running and exploring. And posing on their path.
