A Saratoga social services agency brought a dozen developmentally-disabled people to the farm today for an early afternoon visit. Some wanted to sit and watch, others came into the pasture and gave carrots to the donkeys, watched Red and Fate herd the sheep. It is always a touching and powerful thing to see what it means to people to brush a donkey, see working dogs work, sit in the sun and look at the mountains and hills. Flo found some laps to sit, we are happy to live in a place that brings so much pleasure to people. We hope they return.
This morning, Maria sat down to breakfast and suddenly, she burst into tears. Maria’s emotions are always close to the surface, but I was startled by the pain in her face, we had just gotten up and done the farm chores. She said she was upset about the raging national discussion about gender, political power, sexual assault and decency.
Maria said she didn’t have words for it, but when she saw Michelle Obama’s speech, and she heard Obama talk about her hurt, she knew precisely what she was talking about, she remembered a time when she was swimming and she heard her father and one of his friends talk about her nice “body structure” as she walked past. She was humiliated, disgusted, but had no idea she had any right to feel that way.
Decades later, the pain of that moment was still fresh. Words matter. She was hurt, it was still there. Words hurt.
Imagine, I thought if that friend had stuck his tongue in her mouth, or touched her breasts, or said how much he would like to grab her private parts. Or did.
Michelle Obama said these kinds of remarks about women – Donald Trump’s remarks – were an insult to “decent men.” The Republican candidate for vice-president, Mike Pence, said on television he did not understand what her “claims” were. I wonder what part of “assault’ Mr. Pence was not able to grasp.
So I have been thinking about and writing about what it means to be a decent man.
This is important to me, to others. For awhile this morning, until I could not stand it any longer, I watched a parade of men – and some women – say that men talk like this all the time, it was a long time, ago, it is no big deal, and besides, the women are certainly, absolutely, patently and brazenly lying, they were just seeking fame, or part of a global conspiracy to affect the outcome of the election.
it was long ago, who cares? What does it matter?
These denying men seemed emotionally dead to me, older, mostly white, they seem to speak almost too rapidly to think, as if they are in a rush to get all of their words out. They seemed empty in their souls, devoid of empathy. To me, they simply did not seem to get it. Or was I the one who doesn’t get it?
Nobody has ever or will ever nominate me to be vice-president.
All kinds of elected officials, sworn to serve men and women, in many parts of the country, were speaking out all day, they said it was just the talk you hear in the locker room, it didn’t matter, it was only words. This, they said again and again, was a minor thing compared to who might get appointed to the Supreme Court, to the horrible consequences of Hillary Clinton, to the dread deeds of her husband.
These accusers are liars, they said, without question. Mr. Trump scoffed at the idea that he would be attracted to any of them. He vowed to disprove their claims completely by Friday afternoon. On Friday afternoon, they said they would disprove all of the accusations “at the appropriate time.” What, I wonder, is their idea of “appropriate.” The panelists and questioners and anchors seemed to be numb.
Just as many women fear, these women who spoke out were threatened, belittled. Their courage has prompted other women to speak out. It seems Mr. Trump told the truth about at least one promise, he did to women exactly what he bragged about doing to his sycophantic bus mate, Billy Bush.
I have no idea if these women are speaking the truth or not, it is not for me to judge. They seemed far more credible to me, than the people assaulting them on television yet again.
It made me angry and it was deeply offensive to see their accusations dismissed in this way. To me, they were testifying that a candidate for President of the United States did to them just what he said on tape that he often did and wanted to do and had the right to do to women.
Women speak all of the time about men who “get it,” and men who “don’t get it,” and watching the quislings and apologists wrap themselves into pretzels, I learned a great deal about this idea of “getting it” in the past few days. A young man I wrote a book about called Geeks – his name is Jesse Daily was arrested in New York City on two counts of groping young girls – touching their rear ends. Jesse faced five years imprisonment and went through hell for two years before being acquitted on all counts.
I believe Jesse was innocent, but I wasn’t there and he was accused of doing far less than the Republican nominee for President is accused of having done. And in scores of interviews I never once heard him say the things about women that Donald Trump said.
The decent men do get it.
Everyone is entitled to a fair and impartial trial. But the decent men don’t treat women in this way, and they don’t assume they are lying simply because they claim to have been harassed or assaulted. So many women have had this experience, and it is such a painful ordeal for them to speak out about it – just look how these women are being attacked and vilified all week. Is this the kind of “fame” anybody seeks?
It’s so much easier for them to be silent.
In my second piece on male decency, I tried to describe what, exactly, The Decent Man is. Here, I thought I’d write about what the Decent Man is not.
*Decent men do not talk about touching or molesting or grabbing women against their will. And they do not laugh when other men talk about it.
*Decent men do not assume that all women who claim to be abused are telling the truth, nor do they assume they are lying. They believe they should be heard, and taken seriously and listened to, and if justified, fully and respectfully supported.
*Decent men do not make fun of women because of their looks or their weight.
*Decent men do not demean women nor ever touch them or put their hands on them in ways that are not invited or welcome.
*Decent men do not dismiss menacing and harmful words and language as trivial or unimportant. Words can maim and wound and even kill.
*Decent men do not see women as objects to be trivialized or belittled or patronized. They do not further injure women who claim to be molested or assaulted.
*Decent men “get” that times have changed, and consciousness has changed, and women will no longer accept the kind of treatment we are reading about every single day.
*Decent men understand that it is no longer up to men to decide what women will accept or tolerate. It is up to them to “get it,” understand it and accept it, even if they don’t like it.
*Decent men do not avoid responsibility for the inevitable mistakes and transgressions that befall every human being, or blame others for their wrongs. Decent men apologize, deeply and simply and reflexively, for their mistakes. They do not cruelly attack their accusers nor do they dismiss their behavior as too long ago or too trivial to matter. They apologize, deeply and sincerely, they do not blame others, and if they mean it, their apologies can be accepted and they can move on.
They embrace humility and empathy, not arrogance and denial.
I have done this many times for the many mistakes I have made in my life, although I cannot imagine uttering the words Mr. Trump spoke. I have been forgiven almost every time.
Donald Trump, by any of my measures, is not a decent man.
I understand that people feel very strongly about this election, and many will disagree with me, and I apologize for causing anyone any discomfort. My blog is not about causing discomfort.
But his behavior matters, a great deal, I have never seen women so upset and in such distress in my lifetime, it is a great wave that I believe will now sweep over this troubling man like a Tsunami and do considerable good, for all the trauma and pain. Michelle Obama has lit a great fire, and it will burn and burn.
She did it just by being authentic, by showing her feelings. This isn’t politics.
The greatest evil is not radical, or even political, it has no roots, and because it has no roots it has no limitations, it can go to unthinkable extremes and sweep over a country, even the world. When we forgive and look away, it is not the person and not the crime that is forgiven; in rootless evil there is no person left whom one could ever forgive.
My own notions of decency have evolved, and are clear. A decent man would speak out about this and say as clearly and loudly as he can that treating women in this way is wrong, and that in order to be deserving, our leaders need to stand up for justice and decency, not rationalize criminality, hatred and the worst kind of sexism.
The first galleys of my next book, “Talking To Animals” arrived today, it will be published in May of 2017.
Now you can pre-order “Talking To Animals: How You Can Understand Animals And They Can Understand You,” from Simon and Schuster. If you order the book through Battenkill Books, my local independent bookstore, I will sign and personalize it for you, and we will send back a gift – a Tote-bag, picture post-card, even in some cases, a potholder. Free stuff.
In publishing we call it inducements. The Darwinian rules of modern publishing today are this: the writer writes the book, hires his own editor, does his own marketing. The publisher prints the book and ships it out. I’m in.
It’s between me and you, and my primary marketing tool is my blog and posts on Facebook. I think that will really work for me, and I love comebacks, challenges and independence. My blog is my savior as a writer, in many ways. I am an eager to explore the new world of the writer. It is my life to live and make meaningful, I accept responsibility for my fate.
This, I think, is an interesting book. Eighty years ago, author and naturalist Henry Beston issued an important call in his much-loved book Outermost House for a more intuitive and mystical understanding of animals. His book helped spawn the animal rights and rescue movements, but in many important ways, his plea has yet to be answered.
I hope to help address that in Talking To Animals.
As animals vanish from our world, we need to understand them and their needs more and more, yet we seem to understand them less and less.
“Saving animals does not mean taking them away from people,” I write in the book, “forcing them out of work, and out of cities and suburbs and towns. It means just the opposite: it means finding work for them everywhere we can and as often as we can…Every animal banned or banished is another drop of blood for mother earth and for the idea of the great partnership between people and animals that has existed for all of human history.”
The book chronicles my 15 years of learning to communicate with animals – dogs, donkeys, barn cats, even sheep – using food, visualization, body language and active listening. I begin with my first dog Lucky, continue through to the New York Carriage Horse controversy and Red and Fate.
To understand animals is to know what they really need, not what we think they ought to need. I detail how I realized that the New York Carriage Horses were not being mistreated, but were well cared for and exactly where they ought to be.
I illustrate my ideas about communicating through the animals I have lived with for more than a decade. I describe how I have kept my dogs and cats away from roads and understood that a struggle ewe was not dying but giving birth to twins. I describe the impact of animals on my life and work.
If you wish to pre-order this book – I think it is, in many ways my most important – you can do so through Battenkill Books. They take Paypal and most credit cards, they ship anywhere else in the world, and they are nice as Hell. Connie Brooks has defied conventional wisdom by starting a beautiful bookstore in a small upstate New York town and making it work.
You can help her and me and hopefully you animals by ordering this book through Battenkill. This one is important, I believe the future survival of animals depends on our understanding them in Beston’s new and more mystical way, not emotionalizing them and driving them to extinction.
For this book, there are no fancy and expensive book tours, no elaborate publicity campaign. This is it, and I am excited about it.
Your animals will thank you, and I will thank you and you will get a gift in return. Check it out.
Fate has added a new “Spin and Run” move to her herding reportoire. She has great interest, does wonderful outruns, has the most fun I’ve ever seen a border collie have around sheep. Still no interest in pushing them around. But we are all having a good time. She likes to spin and turn a bit when she is far a way. Come and see.
In the morning, we both go outside before breakfast, carrying our cellphones and camera. We fill the heated water tub, Maria usually brings treats for the pony, donkeys and sheep. Sometimes we tell Red to keep the sheep off, sometimes Maria has enough for every one.
We are doing something new. To keep order – feeding time can be disorderly – we use Red to keep the sheep in one place, we walk Chloe into a stall in the barn and close her in with some hay. Horses, like dogs, need some down time, and horse people say being in a stall for a pony is just like being in a crate for a dog – calming and grounding.
Chloe eats for an hour or so, and is then released. We fill up the feeders, check hooves and coats, make sure the dogs have gotten some running time, and then go inside for breakfast. Chores are the structure and foundation of farm life, they focus us on why we are here, what is important, they are things we both share, trading ideas, taking turns, helping each other out.
We see how the hay looks, who is eating it and how much. We walk the animals to the pastures together, clean out the barn together, one or the other of us is always taking a photo or video of something. We are constantly strategizing about running the farm – when to heat the water tank, when to clean it, how much hay to put out, how much to order. when the wood is dry and ready to be covered, how to stack it.
We check each of the animals every day for health, make sure no one is limping, look at their weight and their eyes. It is not really possible to run a farm alone,
The farm teaches us how to manage our days. We don’t eat until the animals are fed, we both know the importance of being at work early, the morning is precious creative time, not to be wasted or given away. It always brings us closer together. It was Maria’s idea today to put Chloe in a stall, to make feeding time easier and more peaceful, she can be pushy and bossy.
It was my idea to put flat stones out by the gate so Chloe would make holes by pawing the ground in excitement when we come out in the morning. Holes collect water and freeze in the winter.
After chores and breakfast, we go our separate ways, usually for the day. Maria and I are happy together, but we also understand the importance of space and boundaries. I rarely go into her studio, and never uninvited, she rarely comes into my office. Her dog sits with her, my dog sits with me. Then, they become both of our dogs.
Farms teach us how to manage our lives, it is in a small away an awesome thing to be responsible for the care of an animal. As strong as they are, they are also profoundly helpless, dependent on us for food and water and shelter. People often forget to be grateful, but animals never do.
