I was taken with the big horses that came pouring out of the West Side Livery Stables, the oldest working stable in the city. It is a few blocks away from Hell’s Kitchen, it is surrounded by encroaching development, big developers are drooling over the property, and every big-deal politician in the city and animal rights group in the city is vowing to shut them down. Given that, I have to be rooting for them to survive. I talked to a firm that buys and sells horses at weekly auctions in Pennsylvania and New York – one auction is held very close to me.
He says older draft and farm horses will almost surely go to slaughter, he said it was most likely most of the carriage horses had been rescued in the first place and would probably be dead if they were not in New York. There are few horse rescue farms, he said, and most of them are overwhelmed and nearly destitute, the number of animals without work or purpose or people who can afford them has exploded. It is difficult for me to quite grasp why a city would be so eager to ban such beautiful creatures, but then, I love to be around animals, it lifts me up to see them and be near them.
I got to the stables a bit early, as snoopy journalists and photographers always do and I was taken aback to find this big fellow waiting for me, standing a few feet from his carriage, waiting patiently to be hooked up. He gave me a look from the underside of his blinder and I came up and rubbed his forehead, which he enjoyed. How wonderful to see him there, the commuters driving by honked and waved at him, I suppose some of them see him every day.
I went up to him and apologized for the human race. You deserve to be here, have work and purpose, I said. People are fighting for you, I do not know if they will win or lose but the thought of you being sent to a rescue farm or a slaughterhouse is a painful thing to contemplate. I am sorry you have to face it. You seem to me to belong right where you are, showing off your grand style to all of these drab commuters and their harried lives. You are a handsome and healthy fellow, you make everything around you look shabby and gray.
George and Donna met on a blind date in Brooklyn more than 30 years ago, they have been together ever since, except for the times when Donna struggles with her medication and vanishes for awhile, until George can find her and bring her home. Donna is a former street person, she knows how to live anywhere and how to take care of herself. She says she stopped being a street person when she couldn’t run any longer and it has been a long time since she has run away, although her very powerful medications can still cause her great discomfort and confusion.
Their love is a strikingly beautiful thing, filled with joy and heartache. I have been photographing these two for several years, some of the photographs reach so deeply into my heart that it aches just to look at them. They are inseparable, they never stop supporting and encouraging one another, through the most difficult and painful challenges of life. She is a prolific artist, he is a brilliant photographer, a world famous one, pushed out of the way by the 911 tragedy and the digital revolution. Theirs is a creative connection, a testament to the power of loyalty and encouragement. Nothing stops or discourages or deters them, they are creative every day of their lives, in every way they can be.
I asked George where he took Donna on that first blind date, he says he took her to the Botanical Gardens in Brooklyn, he doesn’t remember if he spent any money or not, I asked him if he was cheap. He says he doesn’t know.
Today I was helping George with his Kickstarter Project, we are very close to launching it. Donna came with him, and while I was videotaping the room and some of his photos, Donna sat across from George and worked on some of her sketches, she is putting them into a book. These two live in their own world, they always completely understand one another, even if the rest of the world cannot always understand them.
The two of them were sitting in front of a window, suddenly I saw Donna reach out her hand to touch George, to feel his forehead. It was such a beautiful moment it took my breath away for a bit, but I had my camera in my hand and moved quickly enough to capture this moment. It said so much about what love really means, what it really is. It is not about age, not about beauty, not about money or style. It is pure, it transcends life, it is the purest expression of the soul. There, I saw it in that window of the Round House Cafe, George and Donna, a love so pure it can be unbearable to see.
– We just finished editing a brief video that will be included in George’s Kickstarter Project “The We Were.” The project is going live Thursday morning around ll a.m., but I want to give the people who read my blog a sneak preview. You can see it here.
I hope you will consider supporting George’s Kickstarter project tomorrow, he is seeking $8,200 or more to publish some of his greatest photographic works, these show New York City in the days before 911, “The Way We Were.” Look for it in the morning, I’ll write about it on the blog of course.
This was our carriage, rider and horse for the ride in Central Park. I’m going to write about it tomorrow, I have a bit more research to do. Our horse was King, a character, he was quite vocal, he talked almost every horse he passed, it was an exciting thing for me, very different from what i expected, as almost everything about this story has been. This photo could have been taken 150 years ago, in some ways. More tomorrow. Got to work on George’s video.
I was much impressed by Carmelino, our New York City hotel doorman. He was well dressed for the cold, he was energetic, even creative in his dancing out into the street to hail taxes, his eagerness to help, his cheerfulness. His was the first photo I took with my new lens, the Canon 24-70, widely regarded as one of the best lenses Canon makes. I like the depth of field that blurred the background so the face is clear and the eye is drawn to it. Good lenses do that. New York is a photographer’s feast.
The carriage left the stable at 9:45. Maria was on the left, I was on the right, Christina Hansen, the driver, was up top holding the reins, turning occasionally to speak to us. King, the 14 year-old former all purpose farm horse was out front, doing the pulling.
King, an eight-year veteran of the stables, knew precisely what he was doing, he stayed to the right, maintained a slow but steady pace, pulled up when we got near a car or bus. He paid no attention to the people walking, hailing cabs, the honking, a couple of sirens, clusters of traffic slowing him down. He needed little direction. Christina had to keep an eye on his pace and rein him in once or twice as we approached a red light.
Halfway to the park, we turned right on a cross street, I think it was Restaurant Row, W. 46th street. As we approached a light, King whinnied and seemed suddenly agitated, pulling ahead, then trying to back up, bucking a bit. Christina, calm but concerned, pulled back on the reins, talked to him, and then we looked up and saw a huge crane lowering a bucket down almost over our heads.
If you know equines, it was a disturbing sight. King is a big strong horse, he pulled the carriage like it was a stroller, I did not care to see him freak. The bucket was moving slowly, and it was not, in fact, coming within feet of us, but anyone who knows horses understands this is about as frightening a thing to a horse as might occur on a ride like that (short of cement mixers, which almost every horse or donkey hates), a giant mechanical object coming down as if on top of him from a monstrous grinding machine. The websites of the animal rights groups trying to ban the horses are filled with stories, images, descriptions of horrific accidents between horses and cars, trucks and people. (Statistically, the records show one horse death in 20 years from traffic, several collisions or scrapes between horses and vehicles and no human deaths or serious injuries from horses in the 150-year carriage horse history, nobody can even count the total number of rides.)
By now I am used to statistics about the horses that shock me, like only one arrest for neglect in the history of the carriage trade, and that 537,000 New Yorkers were injured in collisions with cars, trucks and bicycles in 2012 alone, 155 fatally. The mayor never mentioned them in his campaign or inaugural speech, where he vowed to get the horses out of the city.
Sometimes, I just wonder, what is this horse carriage flap all about, really? It does not really seem to be about the welfare of animals, the horses seem to be in much less distress than the people trying to get rid of them.
Still, those images on the websites came to mind, as they are meant to do. This kind of thing is precisely why the mayor of New York and his supporters in the animal rights movement say the horses have to go – too dangerous, too much traffic in modern-day New York.
I thought about what I would do if Christina lost control, if the horse bolted or ran against a truck or taxi. I thought of pushing Maria out of the carriage (she later jeered at this idea, saying she could take care of herself and I’d probably just push her under a wheel); then I thought of saving my new camera equipment clustered at my feet (okay, I might have thought of that first but only by a micro-second or two); I thought of doing a John Wayne and leaping over the front of the carriage and crawling onto King’s back and pulling on the reins to save the day, saving the lives of many children and sweet old ladies.Then I thought of my being run over by a bus.
And of course, I thought of poor Christina hauling this crazy author around, facing a true public relations nightmare, the kind the horse-hunters were practically praying for. Well, Anderson, Katz came up her to take a ride, but the horse bolted and threw him under a truck. I could picture her relaying this in her calm and matter-of-fact manner, maybe with an ironic twist or two at the end. (Things happen, Anderson.) But if I survived it, what a sweet blog post!
What happened was actually much more interesting than anything that went through my mind. Christina stayed cool and appeared confident (she later said she was a bit nervous, King was cornered in traffic, he had nowhere to go.) She talked to him, held the reins firmly, I thought at one point she was thinking of getting out of the carriage and going down on the ground to hold his head. She said she was thinking of that, but wasn’t sure what might happen between the time she got off the carriage and the time she got to King.
But then the construction workers, sitting in cabs about 30 feet above us on the crane, began shouting to one another “turn it off, the horse is getting scared!” I heard the message being relayed up and down the crane quickly, and in a few seconds, the crane stopped, King settled, Christina took a deep breath. The light turned green, King walked quickly out into the street to turn left towards the park, the construction workers were waving their blue hats and cheering, and King was trotting calmly up towards Central Park South. It was a valuable moment for me, one that brought insight and a lot of feeling. In the animal world, the most minor of incidents, in the over-heated world of animal welfare it could easily have led every newscast in town, filled blog posts for days on end. I told Maria that this whole story is just screwy, the carriage drivers should all get big raises, not sentenced to eco-friendly vintage electric go carts as punishment for abusing horses.
We all have different ways of looking at the world, and many people might say this was why horses should not be in New York, it was too dangerous, what if they spooked, bolted, ran into traffic, there is a lot of construction there? Maria and I both saw it differently. The driver knew what she was doing, the construction workers wanted to help and joined in, the horse held his ground.
I’ve seen all during my writing about this issue that many people seem to have lost touch with the true nature of animals, lost awareness of the true meaning of living with them. This makes sense, 90 per cent of Americans now live along the coasts, the only animals they see are on websites and Facebook. How could they know what they are like if they don’t live anywhere near them? People tell me every day the horses must leave because there is no grass for them, as if grass guarantees the happiest and most meaningful of lives for all equines. They don’t know, I realize, that Percheron draft horses eat two huge bales of hay a day and would go through the grass on an average horse rescue farm in about two hours. And that for at least half of the year, most horses are eating hay anyway.
There is always a risk around animals, as there is a risk for anyone who drives a car, crosses the street or takes a plane. I’ve had many close scrapes on my farm, been butted, kicked, knocked over, trampled, bitten and bumped. I’ve seen animals killed by predators, drop dead of heart attacks and strokes, stumbled over groundhog holes and break legs, die of poisoned weeds and mysterious infections. I’ve shot dying lambs to stop their agony, send a beloved steer to slaughter, put down a dog for biting three people, sent old sheep off to die to avoid the big vet bills that would come.
There are people who live with animal fantasies and people who dwell in the real world of real animals, it is a wonderful place, it is not a pretty one. My border collies have had their stomachs ripped open by barbed wire, their paws shredded by rocks, they’ve been kicked by donkeys, nearly run down by snow plows and kids in snowmobiles. Should they all be removed to rescue facilities where they can be safe from their own lives, safe from the things I ask them to do so I can write books about them?
Am I one inch better or purer than a carriage horse owner? I exploit my animals every day and I pay for them by writing about them. Does it matter that I love them, as many of the carriage horse owners and drivers clearly love their horses? Are my dogs abused and unhappy because they get to have purpose in the world beyond eating and eliminating?
In recent years, the idea has grown in the animal world that loving animals means protecting them from the realities of life, from permitting them to have any risks, to keeping them alive at all costs by any means, increasingly confined to preserves and rescue farms, sometimes in animal prisons called no-kill shelters (for humans, life imprisonment in cells is the second worst punishment we can conceive of for the worst offenders, yet we consider it merciful for dogs and ourselves righteous for providing it for them.)
In these facilities, we lose sight of animals, they lose contact with us, they become dependent creatures, they live in confinement, in wards and as victims, not an equal relationship but a patronizing one. More and more, their only work is to meet our emotional needs, and that is fine with us as long as they don’t have to work. The primary prism through which we see them becomes abuse and need, a sorry way to view the animals of the world. When a carriage horse runs into a car, there are photos of the stricken animal all over the news, the images haunting and unbearable, they live on the Internet forever, they spawn on Facebook. When a horse dies on a rescue farm, or a dog is euthanized in a no-kill shelter, we never see it, rarely know of it, do not have to think about it. If we saw photos of all the dogs put down in shelters each day due to over-crowding or behavioral problems, we would probably have to ban them from our world as well, who could bear to look at it?
But that is not perspective, that is not truth, that is hysteria, it is the nourishment of the mob, not the animal lover. Those of us who live with animals know better than that, no animal has a perfect life, no animal gets a no-kill ride in the world. Thus our outrage and concern is highly selective, we react to what we see, not to what we know.
I thought of the moment where Christina and the construction workers reasoned quickly and handled a tense situation and it was a beautiful thing to see in its own way, a gift to me writing about this mesmerizing story. It was like the great morning urban mix outside of the horse stables, a coming together of different elements of a city to live and work alongside the people living in their midst. What, I wanted to ask the mayor, did God put all the animals on the ark for? To eat grass on rescue farms?
The construction workers were not angry or horrified, they were cheering Christina and King, and so was I. They seemed to grasp that it is not abuse to be in the world and risk the things the world can bring. There are risks to being an animal, to being a human, to being a human among animals. That is what it means to be a human. That is what it means to be an animal. I chose to take those risks almost every day of my life, when I stand behind a donkey, wrestle with an aroused ram, get knocked down by a frightened sheep. For me, this is a much safer risk than taking a corporate job and waiting to get laid off or than watching a kid’s face when he learns the horses are gone and he can ride in an eco-friendly vintage electric cart.
I take these risks because I mean to remain connected to the natural world, because I want animals to be a part of my life, I am broken without them and nature, the world is broken without them. Animals have helped me grow and heal, love and learn, by loving them wisely and well I have begun to learn how to be a better human, just as Thomas Aquinas preached: we are merciful to animals so that can find or own humanity. But instead, we are being asked to keep all of our condo towers and trucks and send the horses away.
We learn nothing from animals we can’t see and never get to know, we fall deeper and deeper into our screens and Facebook timelines, our angry and dehumanizing messaging to one another, our polarizing cable news channels, as our anger and disconnection from each other grows and grows. The further we get from the natural world, the more we lose touch with ourselves.
Sitting in that carriage with Maria, Christina, wondering if King could handle his fright, touched by the intuitive and compassionate engagement of the construction workers, high above us on their crane, I thought again how willing I was to take some small risk for the very great rewards. This was just where I wanted to be. Last week, I learned that more than 60 per cent of New York City residents want the horses to remain with their carriages, to stay with the city. Now, the mayor has to ignore the majority of his constituents to get rid of the few remaining animals in New York, animals who have been there since the 1600’s.
It was important to me that I write about this, I am sure some people will take it and see it through their own lens, as is their right, but it would have been dishonest not to share it. If a writer does not try to tell the truth, he is worthless to himself and everyone else.
Perhaps the pollster will return to them one day soon and ask the people of the city if they are willing to take any risks at all to keep the horses in their lives, to give the horses real rights, to keep animals in our world, to save the rescuers who would send the horses off to slaughter or those mythical rescue farms with their endless fields of grass.
