Day: December 6, 2017

Ali was watching some of his soccer team members get into the RISSE van, and one of them turned to him and asked  him, “Ali, you have a family, why do you spend so much time with us, helping us out?”

Ali teared up a bit, and answered quickly. “Because you are my family.” Ali sometimes tears up when he talks about his soccer team, and they sometimes cry when they talk about him. It’s difficult sometimes to explain the vast differences in culture in the lives of the refugees.

A couple of months ago, a woman wrote scolding me because there was only one female on the soccer team, as if RISSE or me were keeping them off. I didn’t know how to explain to here that most of the refugee girls have no desire to play soccer with the boys – they are quite free to do so – many do not come from cultures that promote co-ed sports, or sports for women at all.

They are forming a dancing ream, and so far, the girls don’t care to  join that either. The soccer team is a powerful symbol to me, Ali has taken it upon himself to shepherd them from their hard transition to America.

Their parents rarely come to the soccer games, they work two or three jobs and also do not come from a culture where parents come out to cheer their kids in competitive sports. It is alien to them, and many don’t have cars – they live in cities because they can only take public transportation.

The boys on the soccer team are especially needy right now, and I intend to support them as fully and continuously as I can. Ali is like a brother to me, we are very much on the same page, we support each other.

He and I have an arrangement. When a member of the team needs something, he tells me and I try to get it for them. Ali and I talk all the time about the fact that giving is selfish, it makes us bigger. Last week, he told me the story of Bae reh, he is from Thailand. Like most of the soccer kids, they have few winter clothes or boots. The refugee families are fleeing persecution, violence or natural disaster, they come with little or nothing but the things they can carry or wear.

I have started ramping up a clothing drive, and clothes are now coming into the RISSE daily. But it is really just a drop in the bucket. Bae reh, like many of the refugees, wears sandals and socks, he has no winter boots.

Ali told me he yearned for some Timberland boots, a size 7. He has younger brothers, Ali said, so when he outgrows them, they will be passed down the line, used for many years. I gave them to Ali today when I saw him in Albany and he passed them along to Bae reh when he picked him up from school to take him to after school classes at RISSE.

“He will be so happy,” he said. Then Ali sent me this photograph, and it made me so happy. Every time I do this work, I feel bigger, better, stronger, more whole and grounded. How curious.

Giving lights a light in the heart, for the person who receives and the person who gives. Ali is determined to keep the kids busy during the winter, even on weekends and holiday breaks. We are planning ice-staking sessions, movies and some birthday parties.

We make a living by what we get, said Churchill, we make a life by what we give.

Sunday, he is taking the kids out for a pizza run (courtesy of the Army of Good) for $90. He’s invited me to join him, I think Bae reh wants to thank me in person.

I will try and go if I can. I feel good that Bae reh got what he wanted, a fine pair of boots to get him through the winter. Thanks so much for supporting this work, if you wish to donate in any amount to it you can send a contribution to me at P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816, or via paypal, [email protected].  Please mark it for the refugees or soccer team. Thanks.

It seems like  I’ll be going to Albany at least once a week for the foreseeable future, that is where I meet the refugees and immigrants coming to America, see Ali and the RISSE soccer team, and today, will see Mawulidi Diodone Majaliwa, give him the money for his carvings, and collect some more to sell.

I’m also bringing some clothes I picked up for the winter Refugee Clothing Drive, they need jackets, sweaters, snow pants, winter socks, scarves, gloves,  especially the children. Used clothes are welcome, as long as they are in good condition. You can send them to ISSE, 715 Morris Street, Albany, N.Y., 12208.

Most of the refugees came here hurriedly, they couldn’t bring much with them. They need everything, especially as the winter approaches.

Many people are liking swap.com, a consortium of thrift stores and also finding wonderful discarded winter clothes in their attics. I’ve got to get going, when I return it will be with some fresh carvings to sell. Maria is handling the sales, [email protected]

There is a substantial waiting list, if you are interested, I’d get on it. Thanks.

As is obvious by now, we love Gus and are delighted to have him. I’ve put up a score of photos and stories about how cute he is, how wonderful he is, and how interesting small dogs are. Lest  you think this is all cute, i have to tell you something.

Gus is disgusting.

I have sworn to be honest, and also open here on the blog, so I think I must also write that as much as we love him,  Gus is not only disgusting, he is perhaps the most disgusting dog I have ever lived with. He makes Lenore, or loving and late Lab, seem like a Paris dilettante in comparison, and Lenore would eat just about anything. Gus makes her look like a picky eater.

Gus eats any vile thing he can get his mouth on – donkey manure, dog feces, bits of rotten wood, chicken droppings, sheep feces, garbage. He eats stuff so foul I can hardly bear to look at it or smell it. Gus is an affectionate dog, a licker and cuddler, but many times I have to say, “not today, not after what you ate!

Twice a week, I have to lean over and pull something long and awful out of his butt, and more than once I have come across him eating or licking fresh dog feces, still steaming (sorry). This, I have to say, is not uncommon to the breed (he is a Boston Terrier) but disgustingness isn’t something that comes up all that often in the literature and oh-so-helpful websites Bostons and how endearing they are.

“Oh yes,” one Boston lover told me in town the other day, “they are all like that.” Thanks for telling me.

They are endearing, and we do love Gus. But is isn’t all adorable, for sure. He is continuously spitting up and vomiting the gross things he wolfs down all day.  Sometimes, he just retches and gags for amusement, nothing comes out. We’ve asked the vet about this, and she laughs. Oh yes, say the Boston Terrier lovers, they are all like that, there is no way of stopping them.

But perhaps ways of slowing them down. We have tried some things to put in the other dogs food to make it less appetizing to Gus, and are experimenting with different food and diets. Gus loves to snuggle in bed with us in the mornings, the breed is also notorious for that.

And once or twice a week, he also loves to spit up revolting things right on the bed, if we are not alert to enough to hear him gulping and gagging and toss him out of bed. We are getting good at this. In the morning, when he picks up a giant ball of donkey manure, I yell “leave it,” and he usually does, after gulping down some good chunks. God knows what he is eating when I’m not looking.

Inside, he will eat balls of dog and cat fur, chunks of wood from the logs, bits of plastic or tissues from the bathroom.

Some of that is puppy stuff, and will ease.

Some of that is just what Boston Terriers do.

“Oh sure,” chuckled Jamie at the Farmer’s Market, who loves his Boston Terrier madly, and then listed the many trips his dog has made to the hospital because of the dreadful things he had eaten. Jamie thought this was a riot. Small dog owners are different.

Gus, it seems will eat just about everything (and no, he doesn’t have worms. Because of their size, they don’t have the digestive systems of larger dogs, so there is much burping and farting and gulping as he tries to process the gross things he loves to eat.

When I got Gus, one of the reasons was that I wanted to learn about small dogs. And I am.

Gus is a forager, a ratter and he lives quite close to the ground. On a farm, that is a great place to be for a dog that will eat anything. We are beginning to realize that his disgusting side is not really a phase, the other Boston Terrier owners we know just nod their heads, and say yes, they really can be disgusting dogs.

I thought you should know.

 

I started to put this photo up as just another cute shot of Gus on a donkey, but when I thought about how much comfort this brings to people, how it makes them laugh, my mind took a turn and I got angry. So I ended up writing a different kind of piece. It isn’t really that cute.

Unlike many animal rights purists, I support the idea that animals can and should be used to uplift and entertain people.

By the logic that has now led to the slaughter of so many circus elephants, it is wrong for me to put Gus up on a donkey.

Gus on his donkeys entertains people, makes them laugh, and gives dimension and humanity to dogs and to animals like Fanny, whose appeal and gentleness are being forgotten as their work vanishes from the earth, and they are taken from us.

Making people smile has been a godsend for so many animals in our world for thousands of years. For me, living with animals makes living with humans more bearable.

Comforting and uplifting people gives them work, connects them with people, makes them valuable to humans and gives them desperately needed work to do as their habitats vanish. At our October Open House, almost everyone wanted to see Gus on a pony. (A few even wanted to see me!). He was happy to oblige.

As the humorless, magic-hating politically correct animal movements suck up money and support from well-meaning but gullible animal lovers, and our society is actually banning the use of animals for human entertainment (just like Gus in this photo), I think of Gus and Fanny as a symbol of the need for us to bring animals more closely into our lives, not drive them away from us and towards complete extinction.

They have the right to make us smile and laugh and love.

So where exactly are all these  new and mystical elephant preservation farms that are supposed to be providing safe and idyllic homes for all the unemployed circus elephants saved from their horrible work with people? You can look all day, but you won’t find them. There hardly are any, and the ones that exist are literally collapsing under the weight of the great cost of maintaining them.

Animal rights people love to save elephants and ponies and donkeys from people, they always have reservations waiting to take them all in, there they will live in paradise for all of their natural lives. Except that is a giant lie, there are only a handful such places for these animals, the loss of their work is an almost certain death penalty.

We haven’t yet found a single giant rescue farm promised by animal rights activists in New York City ready to take on the 200 carriage horses people who say they love animals are trying to drive from New York and other cities.

Carriage horses, perhaps the luckiest and best cared for draft horses on the earth, are also almost certain to go to slaughter slaughter when they are finally driven from the city by real estate developers and animal lovers who seem to hate animals.

I think of this every day when we put Gus up on Lulu or Fanny and he takes a ride around the pasture. Every day I get messages from children and adults thanking me for taking this photos, telling me how much they mean to people, how much they make people laugh, how much they miss them when they don’t see them.

I’m glad people find the donkeys cute, they are being slaughtered, just like horses, in mass numbers because there is no longer any work for them to do with humans – on farms, in circuses and fairs.

Last night, at a local restaurant, a mother came up to me and asked why I hadn’t taken any photos of Gus on a donkey lately, her daughter looks for it everyday. I love to hear this. This is the sacred gift of animals, they have always comforted, uplifted and entertained human beings and made our sometimes hard lives more bearable?

My donkey Simon was loved by many thousands of people, many of whom traveled far to see him. Was this abuse? Demeaning for animals? An act of abuse by people? And if it’s okay for Simon and Gus and Fanny and Lulu, why is it a crime a domesticated elephant who has spent his or her life with humans working in a circus and being fed every day, far from poachers, drought, climate change and human development?

Do you think this is cruel or demeaning for Gus? Do you think it should be illegal for Gus to do this because it clearly is entertaining for humans?

At the rate we are driving animals away from us and killing them it’s no longer that remote a possibility. If they can come for them, they can come for you and your animals. I do not care to live in so humorless and angry (and ignorant) a world. Almost no one who loves animals and knows them thinks it is cruel for animals to entertain or  uplift people. Just watch the news. Have we ever needed them more.

Perhaps you might think of this the next time you buy the idea that it is torture for a child to ride on a pony’s back, or cruel for an elephant to be in the circus under any circumstances, or abuse for a 2,000 lb carriage horse to pull a light carriage through a beautiful park.

It’s not them we are speaking about, it’s you.

My idea of animal rights is a movement that saves animals and keeps the among us. I am grateful to have a dog who entertains people and makes them smile, that is one of the reasons I am here on this earth, him too.