I seem to be having a morning meditation with the former barn cat Flo, who is rapidly losing her appetite for the outdoors. I’m coming to believe that Flo was a house cat once, I suspect she may have been abandoned and dropped off at the farm. Minnie wanted to go outside and chase mice today, even in the bitter cold, and we let her. I was glad to see it. I see that cats are experienced meditators, they know how to center and gather themselves and sit peacefully and in silence. I am grateful to have such a meditative creature with whom to greet the sun every morning. This is the first meditation group I’ve ever belonged to.
I consider myself – perhaps foolishly – to be savvy, but the horse carriage story has surprised me from the beginning. It is about much more than horses, it is a mirror of our world, an onion that peels and peels. It is about human arrogance and ignorance, the imperfect nature of politics, the destructive power of new media. It is also the story of the new and growing danger animals face, not just from their abusers but from the people who profess to love them. The horses are caught in the great human disconnection from the animal world, in a sense they are already gone from our world, even before they can be banished by the legions of the righteous marching in their name.
So here I was, shocked once again on my first carriage ride to learn that the carriage horses very clearly belong in Central Park, much more than the unknowing creatures who walk on two feet. They are not, as we are told again and again, intruding into the Central Park of cars, trucks and buses. They were always here, the park was built for them, they are so natural and at home in it, they fit so naturally into it. The intruders are us foolish human beings and our greed and destructive creations, we are the ones ravaging and invading the the animal’s world, one could make such a better case for banning us than them.
My ride was an awakening thing, a spiritual thing, a pure connection to the natural world and to the world of these horses, in some ways the most important animals in human history. Riding in my carriage horse, I came to a new understanding of history and the intention of the visionary minds who built Central Park. They were the kinds of idealistic and creative minds that seem to have vanished from our public life today.
It is so easy to forget about the ride In Central Park in all the swirl of arguments, accusations, charges and counter-charges, political maneuvering and anguish, we forget that it is really all about “The Ride.” Few people in cities want to do the things tourists do, it always seems so superficial. In a sense, this is why the horses are in so much trouble – only tourists see them and get to know them. Nobody who knows horses think work is cruel for them, nobody who has ever seen a stable believes they are treated inhumanely. But nobody in New York does know them, they are for the tourists. I have been seeing the horses lined up outside of Central Park for most of my life, walking by them, avoiding them. But I guess I never really saw them before.
The ride, the point of the carriage horse experience, has been lost in all of the modern-day media clutter and website shrapnel. The carriage horses have been in Central Park from the moment it was opened in 1853, and people have been riding in carriages pulled by them just as long.
I have been writing about them for weeks (I’m not sure the New York Post and I have ever been so much on the same page before), but I have never ridden in a carriage until last week. Why?, I wondered, since I seem to care deeply about their fate.
I think it’s a cultural thing, to be honest, a class thing, a snob thing. I wonder why people who profess to love animals so much are so eager to ban these animals from their city, and my writer’s nose picks up a whiff of elitism in this bitter argument, because it’s in me too, or was. I always saw the carriage horses as a tourist thing, a bit of a tacky thing, something people from Kansas do, and Japanese tourists with their big video cams do, not things authors and city-wise people do. The horses and the carriages and stables are not owned by Manhattan swells, by the trendy and media savvy, they are owned by the old working-class families of New York, the men and women who follow the work of their fathers and grandfathers, they might be firemen, police officers, construction workers. They don’t know how to talk the talk, they have none of the fancy sheen that covers the trend-sitters in Manhattan in Brooklyn, they look like working people in their jeans and overalls, they don’t eat Asian Fusion, they don’t know how to put up nasty websites to make their case, their are bewildered by accusations that are unproven and can never be answered.
They seem to me people who play by the rules, they seem bewildered when the rules are suddenly changed or ignored, as is happening to them now. They are not cool, they don’t have reporters over to dinner parties, or quite grasp how politics and media converge these days, they don’t Tweet their case, they don’t shout or demonstrate, at least not yet. Riding a carriage horse was, for me, just like hopping on one of those loud and garish double – decker buses that tell people what the Hudson River is and when the Statue of Liberty was built. I realized a few weeks ago that I could not write authentically about these horses if I did not meet some of the people who own and ride them, go and see them in their now notorious stables (these stables are to horses what well-run day care centers are to kids, they are about as controversial as a Caesar Salad.)
I was happy to take this ride, excited about it, like a little kid perhaps. Being near a big horse does that to people whose hearts are still beating. A carriage ride is not an argument or controversy, it is a personal experience, between the rider, the driver and the horse – and the park, this beautiful park unlike any other. People have been riding on or behind horses for thousands of years, it is a part of all of us, I suspect. I loved the purity and simplicity of the ride. I have never seen New York or the power and imagination of man so closely entwined before, side by side, one providing the backdrop for another. There is no perspective of the city quite like the one from the back of a carriage horse. I will not leave it for the tourists again.
So last week, I met my friend and carriage driver Christina Hansen at the West Side Livery Stables and rode to Central Park on a carriage pulled by King. Maria and I took a ride for $90 dollars. I was grateful to have my stereotypes busted wide open, to get pulled off my high horse, pardon the fun.
The ride was different than I expected, just as everything about this “controversy” is different than I expected. I had been in the park a hundred times, but never seen it from that gentle height, or passed through it so slowly. I never understood that the horses were not intruding on the cars and trucks, the park was built for them. Riding along slowly in the open air, the magnificent skyscrapers of New York were our backdrops, our silent guides, they accompanied us almost every step of the way. I had never seen them this way, at this speed, from this vantage point. They seemed like a wonder of the world, especially set against the rocks and terraced landscapes and trees and statuary of the park. New York seemed grand and quiet, the graceful buildings rising up into the mist, I felt as if I were on a sheep suddenly coming into beautiful harbor.
I had certainly never come close to grasping the beauty, planning and brilliance of the park itself. In a way you can’t really get a sense of it walking through the tunnels and down the paths. The park is a shining jewel of a public works project, a brilliant inspiration with its curves, landscapes, trees and bushes, horse fountains and carriage turn-a-rounds. It was good to hear Christina describe it so lovingly and well. In our time, there are no great works being built, hardly any animals. On a carriage ride, I was reconnected to both.
Even in winter, the ground covered with snow, I could almost smell the gardens, I cold feel the arches of the big trees, cathedral like and so beautiful. What a curious world, I thought, in which a city would not fight to the death for these horses to be forever pulling these carriages on the paths and and bridges built just for them. How arrogant to tell them we belong here and they don’t Riding in the carriage I was, for the first time, connected to the city’s past, to the horses great role in the building and planning of the park.
I could see from the first that the politicians of New York and the people who call themselves animal rights activists know nothing about horses, that is evident to every horse and animal lover in the country, so many of whom are following this painful story outside the peculiar bubble of New York itself. I did not imagine that the politicians in New York also know little of this great, the place where the horses work. The city has forgotten the ride, the point of all this, the reason the horses are here. It is just to make money, they will say, as if the ride itself has no meaning or value. How striking that a movement that purports to believe in animal rights would take away the most fundamental right of these horses, to be in this place built for them.
The ride does have value, I was glad to pay for it. The sound of the horses clopping along was mesmerizing – I nearly retched at the thought of seeing this park in an eco-friendly electric vintage car, the clip-clop replaced by the whine of an electric battery, the car intruding on the historic horse paths. Who, I wonder, will come to ride in them?
This, I thought, is a city where romance is dying, where magic is being banished, where imagination shrinks and individuality is pushed aside. I was transfixed by the roads and curves, by Belvedere Castle, by the brown towers of Central Park West, by the horse fountains and turn-arounds, by the gray towers of Central Park East, the looming majesty connected so closely to the natural world, to the animal world, to the patter of the driver, the snorting of the horse, who paused every now and think to drink from one of the beautiful horse fountains the park planners thought to build.
I had a sense that I had come across the point of the park, lost in all of the politicking. In “Central Park, An American Masterpiece,” by Sara Cedar Miller, a beautiful book published by the Central Park Conservancy, Miller makes clear that Frederick Law Olmstead, the park’s legendary designer, had horses very much in mind when he designed the park. “The expense of owning a pleasure vehicle or a horse for recreational riding also tended by default to separate park visitors into different socio-economic groups, as the well-to-do were in carriages or on horseback and the poorer working classes were on foot,” she writes.
The design of the park, writes Miller, was meant to echo the social situation on the city’s crowded streets. The middle and working classes of the city were fascinated by the wealthy, and Frederick Law Olmstead designed the park’s bridges and walkways so that the different classes and cultures in the city could see one another, mix with one another while on their separate but very close paths.
Olmstead had this idea that the rich and the poor, the carriage horses and the walkers, would all benefit from mingling with one another on the park paths. “…we propose to run footpaths, close to the carriage roads,” he wrote,”…it is hardly thought that any plan would be popular in New York that did not allow of a continuous promenade along the drives, so that pedestrians may have ample opportunities to look at the equipages and their inmates.”
How shocked Olmstead would be to learn that in New York in 2014, much of the city government is mobilizing to make sure that mechanical conveyances and pedestrians never mingle with horse-drawn carriages or even ever get to see them again in the park that was designed with them in mind. In Olmstead’s time, the idea that work for horses is cruel would have been beyond his imagination, there was nothing controversial about making sure the horses had paths, bridges, fountains and turn-arounds in the park he was designing. I imagine Olmstead would have banned the taxis and cars, not the horses.
The idea of the park was to provide common ground, an inclusive space for the interaction of all of the elements living in New York, those on foot, those in carriages, the rich and the poor, the Bluebloods and the immigrants. This, believed Olmstead, was the pathway to the American Dream.
This idea along was worth brooding over on my carriage ride, as Christina turned around every now and then to point out a statue, a building, a historical footnote. King seemed to know he belonged in the park, he trotted amiably along, neighing to passing horses, pausing at his drinking fountains, he seemed to need little guidance on the paths. He trotted at his own pace on rubber-rimmed wheels on flat roads, he was not working too hard.
On the way, people looked at us, photographed us, waved at us, and I thought of those poor children of the future, sticking their heads out of their eco-friendly electric cars, never imagining the park they were riding through was built for bit and beautiful animals they would never see there again.
I spent a good chunk of my morning inside George Forss’s darkroom, a mystical place, a witches brew of lights, sounds, buzzers, chemicals, smells and sounds. Please don’t expect me to tell you how it works, this place is a spiritual manifestation of genius, it is a portrait of George’s mind, only he knows how it works and what goes where. To turn on the darkroom lights, he must first turn off the refrigerator in the kitchen and the light over the back door. He knows where every piece of equipment he uses came from, most of them scavenged from garbage cans or given him by friends or photographers tossing them out.
George throws nothing out, he uses everything, the room is filled with gurgling tubes, wires, clotheslines, bubbling tanks. When I got in there and George turned the lights out, I realized it was too dark for me to take any photos, I just didn’t know how to do it in pitch black, so we talked and George explained his darkroom process, I could follow little of it. George sees like a cat in the dark, he has spent half of his life in darkrooms, he is wary of the digital experience. He watches his prints as they develop, he soaks and turns them and then brings them into the adjoining room, a bathroom with sink and toilet, criss-crossed with clotheslines where he soaks the prints, hangs them up to dry, and then irons them in some complex but effective process for flattening them out.
He is almost in a trance when he works, talking out loud, looking at the print, mixing chemicals, muttering, explaining what tube goes to what wire, explaining the odd switches and buttons gerrymandered to turn lights on and off.
George is meticulous in his darkroom work, a lost art that digital photography has nearly obliterated, it is getting harder for George to find the chemicals and darkroom paper he needs for his work. After an hour, we emerged and the amazing thing about George’s Frankenstein Lab darkroom is that it is magical, it produces the most beautiful and polished photographs. He has gone to work on his Kickstarter project “The Way We Were,” he is as excited as I’ve ever seen him.
I made one of the most wonderful and gratifying short trips in my life this afternoon, I drove over to George Forss’s gallery, found him in his darkroom/bathroom preparing to iron a gorgeous photograph that had been soaking in a tank and drying on a clothesline hanging from his ancient bathroom ceiling (I always think of the laboratory in Young Frankenstein when I visit George.) I came with good and exciting news.
The purpose of my trip to see George was to bring him a certified check for $8,200 that a donor who wishes to be anonymous decided to send him to match the goal he had set for his Kickstarter Project “The Way We Were,” which has become something of a sensation in its three days of existence, raising more than $11,500 dollars. To this he can now add another $8,200, his funding goal. And there are 27 more days to go for his project. George asked for the lowest amount possible to publish his book, he can use every other penny he gets. Last year, he struggled with a chronic heart ailment, he has no health insurance or pension of any kind. And he never rests.
The donor wished to remain a secret until George had met his funding goal – she didn’t want to deter anyone else from contributing – and wishes to remain anonymous because she wants no thanks, attaches no strings and always tries to help worthy people when the she can.
The donor e-mailed me on Friday and I knew right away she was genuine and sincere, it was clear from her message. She is thoughtful and sensitive, she attached a beautiful two-page letter to George to her check: “I asked Jon to be the middleman in this situation because I felt he would be able to explain it to you rather than a check showing up unexpectedly in your mailbox. He knows I am sincere. I hope you know that now too.” I am here to support you, George, she added, she said he was free to use the money in any way he saw fit.
The donor wrote that George’s work and his life touches her heart. “It is historically important as art and as documentation of a time that we won’t be able to recapture except through your photographs.” She wrote that she was also touched by George’s qualities as a man. “Your dedication to your family and your partner gives me hope for humanity. Your commitment to your faith gives me hope.”
It was an overwhelming thing for me to see that my writing about George captured his genius and good heart so well, that others could see in my photographs and writing what I saw from the first moment I met George. His generous spirit and brilliant soul emerges despite the greatest odds and the darkness and suffering that has sometimes cast shadows his life. He accepts life with grace and love, I have never heard him complain about it or speak poorly of his life, the creative spark shines brightly in him.
The check arrived today, I told George a check was coming from an anonymous donor but I didn’t tell him the amount or, of course, the identity of the donor. He always tries to figure things out, he called me several times this morning throwing names at me – George is an intuitive, he will eventually figure it out – but he won’t hear the name from me or Maria. I drove over to George’s gallery, found him in his darkroom where he has been busy all day getting to work on “The Way We Were.”
“It’s the candyman!,” I shouted, through the darkroom door, “get out here, crazy man, and face your destiny!”
He came out into the light, blinking. I handed him the check and the letter, I took out my camera, I promised the donor I would get a photograph of George receiving this check. George’s mouth opened, his jaw dropped. “This is for the whole amount,” he said softly, disbelieving. George processes things differently than most people, he is so articulate about photography and his work, he struggles sometimes to articulate how he feels, but I could see it in his moist eyes and the gleam that surfaced so brightly. He said he couldn’t make sense of this week, impossible dreams coming true each day. “I would pinch myself,” he said, “but I’m afraid I’ll wake up.”
Time to think about buying a computer, I said, so you can communicate with all of the people sending you money and buying your work this week. No need to rummage in trash cans and build another one.
“Why would someone do that?,” he asked quietly, then he said “wow, wow, wow, wow,” as the implications of this began to dawn on him. George’s hard life had just changed, his work would be seen, shared. For many years, people have told George he wasn’t famous anymore, his time had passed, his kind of photography was no longer in vogue, he needed to let other people try to figure out how to sell his work.
I have never scolded George or told him what to do, but I did give him a short lecture today. “Don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t sell your work again,” I told him in his darkroom this morning. “You learned this week that people see the beauty of your work, they want to own it, buy it, it doesn’t matter if you are famous or not, it matters what you pull out of that tank and hang on your clothesline to dry.” Look at this letter, I said this afternoon, look what somebody thinks of you. George looked at me as he often does when I say something he doesn’t quite know how to respond, he changed the subject and talked about a photo he took here or there, the lessons he learned. Often when George is anxious, he brings up the aiiens, talks about their messages to him. He was quieter today. So far, and to my surprise, he hasn’t credited the aliens with the success of his Kickstarter project.
He did launch one of his old stories, about a crazy man who taught him archival printing in the basement of his Brooklyn house.
“Oh,” he said. “oh,” as I finished my brief lecture. But he heard me, I could tell, he was going over it.
“Go in peace, George, with a smile,” the donor wrote at the end of her letter, “and just be you. Its time for your photos to be seen by a world that is now willing to open its eyes to what you have captured and continue to capture. Your eyes see for the rest of us.”
I am going to talk to this angel tonight or tomorrow – she is shy and quiet, sounds like a writer to me – and thank her for her generosity and sensitivity. I want to thank her for her contribution to George’s work and also for giving one of the happiest and most joyful trips of my life, one that reaffirmed once more that life is good, people are good, that genius and creativity will triumph against the greatest odds.
Maria and I went out to dinner Saturday with George Forss and Donna Wynbrandt to celebrate his amazingly successful Kickstarter project “The Way We Were.” The project was launched Friday to help George raise money to publish some of his wonderful photographs of New York City taken before 911. George asked for $8,200, afraid to ask for more, this morning he had raised $11,265, and there are still 27 more days to go. Today we’re having posters made up to distribute in Cambridge, where George lives.
We cancelled a planned fund-raising evening, we’re not certain we’ll need it. George went right to work this morning in his quite spectacular bathroom/office complex, a maze of rooms in the middle of his house filled with infra-red lights and tanks of chemicals, tubes of water draining out to sinks, buzzing timers and rows of clotheslines where prints can be hung. George loves his darkroom, he is the prince and the master there. I stayed with him in the dark for an hour or so while he printed the first photographs for the book “The Way We Were,” which should be done by mid-summer, he hopes to publish it in late September or October.
George is clearly very happy and excited, he has more or less decided to buy a new computer, a laptop (he likes to make them himself out of discarded parts). His response to confusion and stress is to take photos and develop them. How exciting, such good people on the blog and out in the world. I told George the Internet has given people like him a whole new way to sell his lost photographs. He doesn’t need galleries or magazine stories or critics, he just needs to let people see his work and they will make up their own minds. Once they can see his photographs for themselves, out of the hands of middle-men and gatekeepers, they will know what to do. If you are so inclined, you can still contribute to George’s project here, he will make very good use of the money.
