Day: December 18, 2016

I looked out into the pasture when I went out to feed the animals and say Maria and Chloe, walking out in the snow together, out towards the woods. I loved the image.

I’m trying to figure out the grandfather thing, an important and challenging new experience for me.

I would like to be thoughtful about it and now be swept up in the “cute” and marketing storm that can surround the experience. Today, we went to a chain baby story in Vermont to buy some clothes for Robin, who we are visiting towards the middle of next  week, just after Christmas.

It was my first visit to a chain baby clothing store. I didn’t much care for it.

My daughter Emma has graciously given us the gift of two days and nights in a nearby apartment, we can visit Robin and Emma and Jay and also wander around New York City a bit. A very thoughtful gift, visiting the city is expensive and there is no extra room in their apartment.

Maria and I were a bit overwhelmed at all the clothing choices, we decided to buy clothing for nine month old babies, even though Robin is just half that age.  Babies outgrow their clothing so quickly we thought we’d  plan ahead.

I’m also bring two more rattle toys that make all kinds of noises and have all kinds of buttons to push. She will have fun, she loves the two rattles I brought, even though they are driving Emma and Jay crazy.

I see at the store that grandparenting has drawn corporate marketers in large numbers. There were all kinds of way-too-cute grandparent T-shirts and pajamas with slogans like “grandpa’s little angel” and “the world’s cutest granddaughter.” Yuk, they made me slightly nauseous.

And Emma, like me, is not into “cute.” She would burn any T-shirt like that.

The store clerk also asked me if I cared to register for “Grandparents” Day, which comes once every week and offers coffee and a discount. No thanks, I said, I have no need of a grandparents day. I hate to be a curmudgeon, and there was no point in giving the teenage cashier trouble.

But I don’t want to be so closely labeled or identified as “grandpa,” I’d rather be know for who and what I am. That is not my name.

And I don’t need to give Robin those cute T-shirts or pajamas. She doesn’t need to carry my name around on her chest, and my name isn’t “grandpa” in any case. She will call me what she chooses to call me, I hope is something original and personal.

I have learned the importance of boundaries in recent years, and they apply to grandparenting as well as so many other things. I do not tell Emma and Jay how to raise their daughter; I do not ever say anything to make them feel inadequate or insecure about their parenting; I stay away from the “cute” side of grandparenting, that is just another label to put on a child that has nothing to do with the real world, and I’m not going to any “grandpa” activities of any kind.

They are just another way to label people and most often, too often to make grandparenting about money and gifts.

In addition, I value my own life, and I respect Robin’s and Emma’s right to live theirs without undue involvement with me.  As someone who has never been called “cute” or identified in that way, I am happy not to put the tag on her. The store experience only reaffirmed that idea.

Spoiling grandchildren is a sacred part of the experience, I get that, but boundaries matter. They lead to healthy relationships. They are just as valuable, in my mind, for grandparenting as they are for anything else.

As promised, an update on our thoughts about Chloe and where she ought to be. A number of people have contacted us about Chloe, but one, a woman, a horse lover soon to move to this area and live on a beautiful farm, seems a promising place for Chloe to be.

We are planning to meet with her shortly – she has been to our farm and seen Chloe – and talk to her, but she seems to want to give Chloe the life she deserves, with work and companionship and good care in a beautiful place. This is a process that will unfold over the next  few months, there is nothing imminent about it. It just feels good in its very preliminary stages, and as always, I wish to be open about it.

Maria loves Chloe but worries she is too busy to give her the work and attention a working animal like a Haflinger-Welsh pony wants and needs. This is a personal decision for her, but I support it. I have written often about my belief that working animals need to work, that is what love means to them and for them.

People with pets write me often to say love is more important than work, but any border collie owner or anyone who lives and works with working animals knows that work is love for them. It is not abuse for carriage horses to pull carriages in Central Park, it is not abuse for most domesticated Asian elephants to entertain people and work in circuses, it is not abuse for ponies to work and give rides to children, it is not abuse for border collies to herd sheep or  police or search and rescue and bomb-sniffing dogs to work to save and help people.

All of these animals have been bred for centuries to work with people, to entertain and uplift us, to support humans in many other ways, from therapy to farming. It is a sad thing when the idea of animals lifting the spirits of people and showing them how animals and humans can do amazing things together is seen as cruel and is banned in the name of loving animals. There is nothing loving or knowing about it.

We love to take animals away from people, we take little responsibility for what happens to almost all of them we remove them from human contact. They die, they have no purpose.  They go to slaughter. Or they languish and deteriorate, without the physical and mental stimulation that comes from the work they are bred to do. Working animals without work suffer greatly, they become disconnected and disoriented, often aggressive and listless. Their muscles deteriorate, so does their spirit.

If you have ever known an elephant trainer in a good circus,  you may know the extraordinary bond they have achieved with their elephants, you may have witnessed the cruelty and suffering that afflicts both human and elephant when they are separated. This is no more humane than ripping a champion show or agility or working dog away from the people who love and train them. It is simply abuse in another form.

This idea that animals must be removed from work and people  is selfish, not selfless. We need a new and wiser understanding of animals than this if they are to remain on the earth.

Maria loves Chloe very deeply, that is precisely why she is open to the idea of a new home for her, a place where she can be challenged and stimulated and continue to help people learn to ride. If she didn’t care about her, she’d simply languish on our farm, as so many horses do on so many farms.

Trainers and vets will tell you, if asked, that the saddest thing they see are horses with nothing to do, no work or stimulation, their lives are primarily about eating hay and dropping manure.

Chloe’s life is better than that, and she will always have a home here. If there is a better one, we will be sad to see her go, but will gladly help her get to it, and be grateful for the chance. I know that conflicts with the philosophies of people who seem animals primarily in terms of emotion, and human ideas about family.

We love and celebrate and defend the idea of working animals here,  the cruelest thing we can do to Fate and Red is deny them the opportunity to work. Love and work do not conflict with one another when it comes to the lives of working animals, they are very much the same thing.

In the meantime, we are happy to have Chloe here, and appreciate her very much.

Because of where I live – in upstate New York – my dogs, to some extent, have always been defined by winter, we have brutal cold and storms here. This winter provokes many people to dream of warmer climates, but not me. Winter sharpens the senses, makes the other seasons all the more beautiful and meaningful.

Red’s focus and faithfulness is never sharper than during a storm, when he takes up his watchful position and defies the sheep to challenge him. They never do. Red pays the cold and wind no mind, it makes no difference to him if it is 80 degrees or – 10.

Minnie In The Pole Barn

In another dark and troubling time, one of my journalistic heroes, Thomas Paine wrote that “Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good”

Mine too.

A half century ago, I decided to cover the revolution rather than join the revolution. Actually, the 60’s were more of a resistance than a revolution, and I began my work as a radical writer for a liberation news service, and then chose to  became a reporter, which was the more comfortable place for me to be.

I wanted to be in the middle of everything, but I’m not really a joiner, I’d rather watch. Intimacy has always frightened me more than real danger.  This fits my own perennial role in life as an observer. I suppose I was always afraid to get too close to the fire.

Since then, I have largely avoided politics, often didn’t vote, paid as little attention to the process as I could. Now, I am intrigued to see that I am paying a lot of attention, and without too much self-consciousness or drama. I am joining the New Resistance forming to the harsh and angry politics sweeping the country.

Actually, I think the New Resistance has joined me.

The New Resistance has formed all around me, is taking shape everywhere I look and I want to join, from a small band of heroic journalists, to the tens of thousands of volunteers rushing to help the refugees, to the countless acts of humanity and compassion spring out all over the country. I am going to mentor a refugee family soon, I am expanding my therapy work with Red, I am sharing my thoughts as they evolve.

I see a new Army Of Good rising up, they will be a powerful force to be reckoned with. The country was born in revolution, it can be reborn in another.

The members of the New Resistance are fanning out to do good, looking for opportunities to help others, to stand up for the values we see as best and most authentically representing our country. It is a moral movement, which does not mean it is always right, but it seeks a moral and humane way to live in our troubled world.

The Corporate takeover of American institutions – our media, culture, weather, health care, work, incomes, judiciary, and now, our national political system is nearly complete, that is our new reality. And it has happened with the support of many of the “people,” perhaps dazzled by the replacement of truth and facts with emotion and rage.

Some revolutions begin in hope, some in anger. The New Resistance has some work to do. Anyone who has every come close to politics understands that the rich will always screw the poor, it is the doomed outsiders who always come to their aid.

This New Resistance is, perhaps the movement I have been waiting for. Curiously, Saturday Night Live is a gathering place for the New Resistance, it’s biting skits are front page news all over the country. On Sunday morning when I wake up, that is my news.

Its seems more truth often comes from our entertainers than our journalists or political leaders. Everyone I know is plotting to do good, that is a resistance movement the world needs. And what is the ethos of this new movement? It is quite simple. We seek to do good.

I’m getting involved to protect the lives and safety of refugees, to fight for the role of a free and independent media, one of the crown jewels of our democracy, and to stand for the immigrant experience, the American dream, our light to world, and for Mother Earth, our grieving sister.

The New Resistance movement wants also to work to give the poor hope, and to support the freedom and dignity of women, and the right of all people to adequate medical care.  This is a human right. Curiously, if I had a slogan for my movement, it would be Liberty For All, not just the rich and the white.

I guess many would argue that this is the tired old rhetoric of the left, but I reject these labels we put on one another, this is the agenda of our better angels, of the better side of humanity.

I understand that these are, sadly, now controversial thoughts in our very divided country, and I don’t write this as an argument but as a continuing effort to stand in my truth and share my life.

I’ve been writing for decades online and off, and death threats and nasty messages do not bother me much, it’s a lot like the weather, the New Resistance is about a civil and humane society. I don’t argue with people on Facebook or sent cruel e-mail messages. I don’t really care with others think, I care what I think. We all choose our own path to walk on.

This is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of the country we once had and took for granted, and want back. I do not believe it is too late or that the struggle will take too long for me. I have many more years behind me than ahead of me, and it is my wish to leave Maria, my daughter and my granddaughter with the wonderful country I have grown up and love.

I join this movement in honor of my grandmother, whose love saved my life, and who sacrificed so much to come to America, which she saw as a light and a beacon for the weary and oppressed of the world. I want to help turn that light back on. And for Maria, whose heart and spirit are pure. I can’t speak for her, but I imagine this is a movement she might wish to join.

I don’t know if I will live to see the outcome of this, but there are somethings very much worth fighting for. I believe the most effective resistance is non-violent and moral. Government was created to protect people and help lift them up, not to frighten and persecute our weakest and most helples, or exploit and inflame our darkest instincts.

We bring about change by doing good, creatively and continuously.

I understand that many people are unhappy about the broken promises made to them, but what I see is something I have been writing about for years: our country is truly becoming a corporate nation, about to be ruled by Generals, bankers, oil barons, CEO’s, billionaires, conspiracy theorists, climate deniers and a diverse cast of enraged old white men and women with whom I have nothing much in common.

We are, in fact, now officially a Corporate Nation. A Divided Nation. A Bewildered Nation, unsure now of our ideals and purpose.

I fear the angry populists who so yearned for change are going to get some, I doubt it will be the change they wanted. I don’t see any unemployed factory workers joining the cabinet or the new government. These left behind people are continuously being told they will never be forgotten again, but that is the conjurer’s trick of the demagogue, I fear.

They have already been forgotten, by almost everyone on every side of the spectrum. The live in a world that needs to forget them, they are incompatible with great wealth.

The were forgotten the day after the election.  There is no pleasure to be had in their ongoing, perhaps ultimate betrayal.  Anger is no food, it does not bring good work or send kids to college. But I believe there is wisdom in the decisions of the people. We will be hearing from them soon enough.

Truth does not come from what we say, but from what we do. And truth wants to live and be free.

In my life, I have always most admired the non-violent resistance movements that have been the most successful. At times they have changed the world: the moral power of men like Mandela, King, and Gandhi, Bessie Rayner Parkes.

Success is not final, said Winston Churchill, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts. I am getting to be an old man, and I have seen a lot. I’m happy to have the opportunity of the New Resistance, it is just how I would wish to be remembered, it is a call to be a moral and caring human being.

People are good, given the chance. Now is the chance.

The great leaders of the world promise suffering and grief, not miracles and glory. Paine wrote that the mind, once enlightened, cannot again become dark. I hope to help make it so.

The great resistance leaders all made promises and kept them, they delivered and always preached compassion and humanity while sparking great and genuine revolution, as opposed to promises of revolution. They were sincere people, close to the poor and the yearning, they were not beloved by billionaires and divisive political leaders.

They touched and uplifted the hearts of people.

They turned us away from anger and fear, they did not draw us towards it. So I’m in the New Resistance, I’ve joined and I will occasionally do again what I did so long ago – share the experience with other people.

The circle does turn, doesn’t it?