Living in upstate New York, I used to be smug about my winters, proud of them in a perverse way. Being here, enduring howling Canadian blizzards, I guess I felt strong, proud, superior to those people playing it safe in Georgia or North Caroline, Florida, bragging about their mild winters while I was proving my mettle. Getting through the winter up here was an accomplishment, something distinctive, I still have my frostbitten fingers to show for it.
I very much remember my first winter here, Rose and me, we had barely arrived with the sheep and one donkey when a monster storm roared down from Canada and slapped me upside the head, there was three feet of snow, drifts that blocked the door, shrieking winds, then right after, temperatures 30 degrees below zero. The panicked animals broke through the old fence and took off into the meadow and down into the woods. I was alone with a six month-old border collie who seemed to be begging me to let her enter the fray, do something about it. So I did, I released Rose and she tore off into the storm, gathered all of the animals into a culvert and marched them back into the pasture, looking at me contemptuously. My new life had begun.
Tonight, we await yet another in the endless line of big storms and bitter cold weather that has characterized this winter. But my perspective is different. Philadelphia of all places had three times as much snow as we have, it is colder in northern Alabama than it is here many nights, the photos I see from the Midwest make my little town look like Orlando and people in Georgia are trapped in their homes and offices without power for days.
How curious that this template has shifted so dramatically in such a short time, and , and our winter has been pretty ugly, but no as ugly as that of many others. I wonder what kind of people follow the lead of the Weather Channel and actually call the new storm “Pax,” as they like to do, they personalize storms the way some people personalize animals. I can’t imagine calling this storm “Pax,” how strained and presumptuous.
I think that the extreme weather this winter has done something interesting though, I think it has bound all of us in a new way. We are all in winter, not just some of us, we are all tested by the snow and the ice and the cold, we are all, for perhaps the first time, listening to the messages of winter, the messages of the earth, and pondering them in our own way. For me, it is a powerful reminder that the earth is wounded, calling upon us to help her heal.
My winters are not so special any longer, they are our winters, we all know them now, feel them, from Texas to Mississippi to Maine, we are all counting the days until they are over. My frostbitten fingers throb every day, reminding me of the dangers of hubris and narcissism. This, in a way, is a life changing circumstance, this common knowledge will change all of us, will bind all of us together in a new and different way. Tomorrow, we may get seven or 10 inches her, wind and snow and ice, things are much worse in Northern New Jersey, Philadelphia, even Atlanta.
I can’t really write about winters as I wrote about my blizzard and Rose, your stories are better than mine. I am her with a new dog watching my back, digging the sheep out of the snow, he is tough like Rose, undeterred by weather.
Still, in our polarized culture – even the weather itself has become politicized – anything that connects us in this way – in life, not cable news – reminds me of our real connection, our common humanity, of what it means to be a human being caught in the net of life, in its drama and glory. I’ll find some new dramas to write about, there are plenty on a farm with animals. Now I can share this story with you and we all know what the other is speaking of and feeling.
Stay warm, stay dry, let’s trade stories on the other side.
As some of you know, today marked another extraordinary chapter into my willing evolution into the new world of writing. Publishing has changed, writers are changing, I am changing. It began with my blog, then my photography, videos and podcasts, my new book tour, and most recently, my turning to Kickstarter to help me fund my 15-year-long project, “Talking To Animals.” Like Henry Beston, I too believe we need a wiser and more mystical concept of animals in our world, if they are to survive, if we are ever to learn how to live with them. It is not enough to rescue them, we need to understand them, listen to them, talk to them.
For 15 years, ever since I first came to Bedlam Farm, I have been working on this. When Maria came into my life, the idea really took fire, as she is a true animal whisperer, she knows how to communicate with animals, they respond to her emotions. We have learned much together about how to make animals feel safe and calm, connected to people without losing their true natures. My wonderful Canon camera is wearing out, I want to get a faster, even more powerful camera so I can get closer photographs of the animals, more details, a sense of their eyes and emotions.
I hope to construct the outlines of a new kind of language for communicating with animals, one that involves emotion, spirituality, food, attention and clarity.
I asked for $9,000, that was pledge in two days, and today, when the project funding period ended, I had $16,576, 184 percent of my goal. Here’s what happens next. In two weeks, I will go to New York to B & H Photo, I will get the camera I have lusted after for some time, the one the experts tell me will take this project to the next level, the Canon Full Frame DX 1. I might trade in some of my existing lenses for a new micro lens and a new 70-200 mm telephoto, the one I have is going to pieces. There are the inevitable accessories – batteries, cases, flash cards – and I will take the remaining money and use it to take more time with this project, which I expect will be both a book and an e-book.
In the Spring, we are expecting lambs and we are also considering getting two pygmy coats to help eat down the pasture brush and join the farm family. There will be lots of photograph and write about. I am very grateful for Kickstarter, the whole notion of democratic funding is exciting, it is helping so many people in the arts continue to do their work and expand their creativity. So thanks again, we will travel this path together. I am grateful.
There are all kinds of charges and accusations leveled at the carriage horses owners and drivers, but the two most frequently cited as the basis for banning them from New York are danger and abuse: it is not safe for people or for the horses for them to be in New York, and secondly, the horses are chronically mistreated and abused. These allegations have been repeated so loudly and often that almost everyone – including me – believed many them to be true. I have gone to New York to see for myself and have been on the phone and riding Google ever since. It seems that most, if not all, of these accusations are not true.
Two days ago, I wrote about the fact that only one horse has been killed in New York City in the past twenty years, a statistic that suggests that horses are safer, not at greater risk, than they have ever been in the city. If you read through old books and stories about New York City horses, it is quickly apparent that they were truly overworked and abused, and died harsh deaths and young ages with little or no regulation or medical treatment. That history seems to have been lost in the discussion of this issue.
Today, I want to write about the many accusations of abuse leveled at the carriage industry and also to de-construct some of the distortions and accusations repeated so frequently in the media and on the numerous “animal rights” blogs and by the city’s weak-minded politicians that they have entered the public consciousness. There are three things that stand out as I delve deeper into this story:
One is that this sad controversy reminds us that there is a desperate need for traditional journalism when it comes to stories like this, the truth is much too fragile and manipulable to be left to ideologues with websites. And the truth is taking a real beating here, that was almost immediately clear.
Secondly, the hysterical assault on the carriage horse industry evokes for me the show trials of Stalin’s communism, they violate almost every legal and ethical rule of American justice and fairness. The attacks on the carriage horses are the modern media equivalent of a Kangaroo court, there is no response, dialogue, even minimal sense of fairness and decency. What characterized the communist system of law was the presumption that if you are accused, you are guilty. The process went from there. That is much of the story of the carriage park horses – the belief that because they exist and work in New York, they are abused, because work is abuse and the only role for horses in our world is grazing freely in sylvan pastures. Because some people own them and ride them for profit, they are criminals and abusers, ironically subject to chronic insult and vicious abuse. The protesters who gather in Central Park on Sundays even make fun of one of the carriage driver’s teeth.
Finally, as one examines the accuracy and reasoning of the arguments put forth by groups like the A.S.P.C.A. and NYClass, the leader and major funder of the assault on the carriage horse industry, it is simply shocking to me – as one who considers himself a progressive – that a mayor of a great American city would be so unfair and unthinking as to embrace, even endorse, this kind of reckless and unsubstantiated rhetoric. Whatever you think about the horses, this has been a profoundly disturbing and unfair process, it reeks of injustice, not only to the horses, but to the people who own and ride them. How does one get past the idea that people who embrace and disseminate the cruelest and demonstrably false and hysterical accusations could possibly and honestly represent the welfare of animals?
“Bill de Blasio is one of us!,” trumpets NY Class’s ethically troubled website, which makes it clear that the so-called animal rights movement now owns a mayor, perhaps a first in American politics. The mayor says he need not bother to go see the stables, he has been given all the information that he needs. If that is so, his curiosity and sense of fairness suggests it is not only the horses that are in danger.
This week, I decided to focus on the many allegations of abuse – and quite honestly, an almost complete ignorance about the lives of animals that are not pets – that have dominated the discussion about the horses fate. Most New Yorkers, including the mayor and City Council President, believe that the use of horses to pull carriages is in itself cruel and abusive.
The NY Class website – check it out for yourself – is the focal point of the campaign to banish the horses. Steven Nilsick, the founder of the site, says that the horses are routinely abused, starved, confined in stables where they can’t lie down, overworked, never move about freely or get to graze on grass. The site claims the horses are “shackled” in harnesses, confined in “cells,” covered in sores, lying in waste, that they are dehydrated, denied medical and health care, exposed to conditions that cause permanent injury and death. The site says the stables have no fire-protection systems, that the drivers don’t clean up after the horses, who create dangerous odors in Central Park and leave waste lying in the streets that poses life-threatening dangers to the health of animals and people. NYClass says that the drivers are not only cruel but dishonest, thieves who not only abuse the horses but gouge tourists and overcharge residents, that they fail to report income. In addition, says NY Class (other websites parrot pretty much the same arguments), there are no economic benefits from the carriage horses because the city spends so much money monitoring the horses and repairing roadways damaged by the carriages.
There is, of course, no acknowledgment from the animal rights groups, NY Class, the Coalition To Ban the Carriage Horses, the mayor or City Council President – from anyone, that there is or has ever even anything good or worthwhile about the horses, no empathy for many people in and out of the city who love them, have ridden them, who pay a lot of money to ride them, for the tourists who come to see them, the children who remember them, the young lovers who snuggle in them see them or the many people who see them as iconic and evocative symbols of the city. There seems to be no one – journalists, politicians, activists – who speaks for them, for me. The carriage people have become cardboard cut-outs, caricatures of pure evil, it is a jarring failure of journalism and political responsibility. And of fairness. Those who see magic in the horses and their relationship to New York and are troubled by the savage and relentless campaign to banish them are simply co-conspirators in a great conspiracy to harm animals.
The site claims everything is in hand, absolutely no one will get hurt – all the drivers will have nice jobs riding electric eco-friendly go carts, every single horse will go to a rescue farm, they are all already spoken for. I wonder if this isn’t the biggest lie of all, the horses are private property, NYClass will have nothing to say about where they go, most of them will most likely be sent to slaughter, sacrificed so people can feel righteous about saving them.
On this and other sites, carriage owners are not presented as human in any way – they are greedy and callous, they house the horses in inhumane stables in fire-trap buildings, work them to death, send them to slaughter when they stumble or stagger. This de-humanizing is essential to a campaign like this, in order to believe all of these accusations, one has to eliminate the idea that there are human beings on the other side of the issue. This was another cornerstone idea of communist justice.
The site alleges that slow moving carriages hold up traffic, delaying drivers for “hours.” Because of this congestion, says NYClass, the hordes contribute to increased car exhaust, polluting the air and contributing to global warming. Beijing is often cited on animal rights websites as a city that doesn’t have carriage horses, thus New York doesn’t need them either.
Where to begin? I could spend months listing the inaccuracies, hysterical assumptions and just plain falsehoods on these sites. These untruths are a shame, because they completely undermine the credibility of the movement and obscure whatever real issues about the horses ought to be discussed. I was a reporter for some good years – the Atlantic City Press, the Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, Boston Globe (I started as a copy boy for the New York Times) – so I have some experience at gathering information. But I have to be honest, the facts here are readily available to anyone who can use a phone, talk to people, call government agencies, go see the horses, use Google, read reports and studies. This may be the first time in the annals of animal welfare that the use of horses is believed to contribute to global warming rather than the cars and trucks around them. Or that Beijing is a model of animal welfare and environmental reason. They eat dogs in China and the pollution is so thick it is doubtful horses would survive long.
More importantly there is this quite striking fact: there has been only one arrest for animal cruelty in the carriage horse industry in its entire 150-year history. That was in December of 2013 when a carriage driver was charged for working a horse – Blondie – who was limping, suffering from Thrush, a hoof infection most often caused by unclean stalls. The driver was suspended, the Thrush was treated, Blondie is currently on a five-week vacation on a farm in Pennsylvania owned by one of the carriage horse owners. City law requires that each of the carriage horses gets five weeks off a year on a farm where they can graze and move about. So it isn’t even true that the horses never get to graze. Five weeks vacation?
If you know much about animals – there is nothing to suggest the writers on these sites do – you can’t help but notice that in many ways, the lives of the carriage horses are superior to the vast majority of the horses and animals on the planet.
Blondie will return to New York in a few weeks. It should be noted that inspectors found no other evidence of thrush, no other evidence of unclean stables. The driver is awaiting a hearing, has not yet been convicted, so as of now it’s safe to say no driver in the history of the carriage horse movement has ever been convicted of cruelty to animals.
This is the big lie write large, I’m sorry to say. Abuse is a legal term, not a moral or political one, although it is now so over-used it has no real meaning at all, a shame for the animals who suffer from it. Abuse is the willful and deliberate infliction of grievous harm and injury to an animal, resulting in serious injury or death. The arrest received an enormous amount of publicity, there are hundreds of Google entries listing TV and newspaper and blog and social media reports about it. When the driver – Saverio Colarusso – was arrested, the A.S.P.C.A. seized on the arrest to say the group believes the use of carriage horses in 21st century New York City is “unnatural, unnecessary and an undeniable strain on the horse’s quality of life.”
You can look at the arrest in several different ways, the people seeking to ban the horses saw it as proof that the horses suffer terribly, but it seemed to me it was an example of the system working. The horse was allegedly neglected, the abuse was spotted, the offender in the process of being punished. Is the bar for the horses now so high that we must assume every human being in the carriage industry is a saint, incapable of cruelty, mistakes or neglect? I don’t know of any industry in the world – surely not journalism, the Catholic Church, or politics – that would survive that kind of standard. I’m sure there has been neglect, I’m sure there will be more. Just ask the dogs crowding the city’s shelters. We are human beings, we are flawed, animals do not live perfect lives any more than we do. One arrest in 150 years is a wonderful record, not a sorry one. The task is to keep animals in our lives, not banish them because a perfect life can not be guaranteed.
It’s interesting to note that the A.S.P.C.A. was, for many years responsible for overseeing the horse’s welfare – this work was turned over to the NYPD last year. The organization never once cited a stable, owner or driver for cruelty in all of the years it was responsible for their oversight. Were they ignoring all of this abuse, or wasn’t there any? Nor do they substantiate their claim that the horses live less “natural” or healthy lives than any other horses anywhere. Surely they can’t be referring to the natural life of horses in the wild, where they are subjected to elements (have no vets around to treat Thrush), are at the mercy of weather, drought, storms and predators, battle one another, search for food endlessly and die young and often brutally? Working horses would not last long out there. I can’t help but wonder if it’s possible the A.S.P.C.A. really doesn’t know that the carriage horses do have a natural life for working horses? This seems much more like Washington-style politics than animal advocacy.
I’m also not clear on why the A.S.P.C.A. would take it upon itself to decide what is “necessary” for tourists, newlyweds, young lovers and others who cherish the horses presence in the city. It seems somewhat beyond the scope of an animal rights organization.
But the bar for the carriage industry is insanely high these days, it could never be met, perhaps that is the idea. The same week Mr. Colarusso was arrested for cruelty to animals, a Queens priest was accused of having sexually molested a 13-year-old altar boy. There was little news coverage, and no one – including the mayor or the City Council President – demanded that the Catholic Church be banished from New York for having abused scores, if not hundreds of human children. It seems the carriage industry needs to go because one driver is accused of abusing one.
Back to the NY Class site. The New York Sanitation Department reports no complaints or reports of increased pollution resulting from the horses. The Health Department has no evidence of any diseases transmitted to animals or people as the result of waste left by the carriage horses. I asked the Department of Environment Services spokesperson if the presence of the horses had contributed to global warming in any way she knew, and she laughed and hung up the phone. The New York City Police Department (and Traffic Division) report no complaints about city traffic being held up for hours, or at all, by the carriage horses. There have been five or six accidents involving the horses in recent years, regretful but not surprising given the number of horses, the nature of the city, the frequency of rides. The danger to humans is much greater, the frequency of accidents a thousand times higher. A Transportation Department spokesperson said they are not aware of any unusual costs associated with repairing road damage from the carriage horses.
It needs to be said that hardly any of these accusations are substantiated in any way, even though they are repeated frequently and often appear unattributed in media reports, stories and blog posts. Some of these stories and accusations seem quite slanderous to me – as a former newspaper editor, I would never permit them to be published – and in no case was anyone from the horse carriage industry contacted or given an opportunity to respond. There are no corrections or clarifications of any kind, and readers cannot do anything on the site but sign petitions and send money. On the NYClass Facebook page, people who challenge statements there or disagree with the group’s positions are blocked instantly, their posts taken down. As with the mayor, there is no dialogue to be had here, only righteous indignation. In almost every case, most or all of the accusations on this site against the carriage horses and their owners are demonstrably false. I have no stake in this agonizing conflict, I am neither a horse person nor a life-long lover of carriage horses. I guess I just instinctively hate mobs, they are reliably the antithesis of reason.
But I am responsible for my words, so are the people who make these kinds of charges.
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So this is where we are at the moment. One horse killed in traffic in the past 20 years. One person in the carriage industry – owner, driver, employee – charged with cruelty to animals in the history of the carriage industry (and charged in the midst of a political campaign where the future of the horses was a major issue), dating back to the 1850’s. A mayor who claims the horses are being chronically abused and are unsafe in New York and who has set their removal as one of the major priorities of his administration.
I haven’t put that part together yet. A political reporter in New York – a friend – says that the mayor comes from Park Slope in Brooklyn, the liberal equivalent of the Tea Party in Texas, he lives in his particular bubble – he has never owned a pet, there are no other animals in Brooklyn, where animals are mostly about rescue and abuse. Animals are a very political issue there, he says, there is much anger aimed at the human beings who supposedly mistreat animals, make them work and abuse them. It’s a war crime in Brooklyn, he says, to buy a dog from a breeder, he knows people who lie all the time about their dogs and say they were abused so they can be socially acceptable. Rescue is about all anyone really knows about animals, he says, and animal rights groups like Class are considered mainstream political organizations there.He can’t imagine, he said, that anyone at NYClass would know the first thing about how horses are supposed to live.
Makes some sense. The mayor told a NYClass fund-raising dinner (held to raise money to ban the horses) that he is “proud to be a member of this movement.” I am finally beginning to understand why there is a Fox News.
I called a well-known New York lawyer I once wrote about in a newspaper story, he told me a good lawyer would have a feast with the manner in which the city appears to be moving against the industry on little or no evidence with nothing approaching due or fair process. “I keep reading that the mayor won’t even see or talk to these people, there’s not even the pretense of a fair and objective legal process, it just looks like a mob with a mayor in tow, running amok. This is a licensed group doing it’s job and obeying the law, seems like. I’d love to get them on the stand, under oath.” That sounds right to me, too.
I have to say in all fairness that the carriage horse industry does not seem to have made much good noise defending itself. I hope they get themselves a vibrant blog, a high-powered public relations firm and find themselves a good lawyer. The more I learn about this story, the better the case I think they have. Two weeks ago, I thought the future of the carriage horses was hopeless. The more I learn about the underlying facts and reasoning about the campaign against them, the more hopeful I feel. But no one can the case for the carriage horse industry better than they can make it for themselves. It’s time. As presidential candidates have learned, as mainstream journalism has collapsed social media is a powerful forum for spreading accusations and distortions – they are so easily shared.
I can testify now that there are a lot of people in the world who will rush to help defend the rights of these animals to stay alive, to live in our world, to have meaningful work and purpose in our lives.
The thermometer said – 20 this morning, Simon’s whiskers said it was cold, but the light says Spring is coming, and that is where I am staying focused. My Kickstarter project “Talking To Animals” is about to close it’s funding period, I’ve raised more than $16,000 for the project, I am excited about it and grateful for the support and mesmerized by people’s desire to keep art alive. I can’t wait to get to work writing and photographing it, once the money is transferred to me I’ll head for B&H Photo in New York to get a new camera, I’ll share that process, I will also use some of the money to apply it to the time I can spend working on the project. I thank all of you from the blog and those many people who are new to me and my work. The project ends at 9:21 a.m. this morning, after that, no more money will be accepted. How cool. My goal was $9,000, I guess this is a big vote for the idea.
