It is always a gift to watch George work, he is very much unlike me. He takes very few photo and thinks carefully about each one. The animals drive him crazy because he will often wait hours to take a photo and they never sit still for him. I think I take 100 photos for each one he takes. Ma and her lambs got the idea and they posed for George, I think he got a shot off before they moved. He has a Frankenstein camera, a Canon digital that I bartered for some photos, and some hybrid lens he dug out of a trash can. George does not buy retail.
Ma shorn looks like a battlefield after the battle. She is not that old, but she’s been around, I am surprised by how wonderful a mother she is, full of nourishment and concern, but also calm and gentle. Deb is my favorite lamb, she is also gentle and sweet, she loves the camera, and the camera loves her. Ma and I sit together each day for a few minutes, we are bonding. I am impressed with her, mothering is very good for her.
Whenever I go to New York or near the park, the drivers go by and sometimes give me a thumbs-up, many read the blog and are following the dramas of the lambs as well as the horses. I give them the thumbs-up back. For years, the people in the carriage trade have been dehumanized, portrayed as greedy abusers, thieves. There is an awful whiff of elitism in this campaign against the carriage trade, whenever I am in New York City I try and capture images that reveal the people behind the arguments and accusations.
They are not saints or perfect people, we cannot offer utopia for people any more than we can offer it to animals. And that is the point really, animals are not her to live in paradise, they share the joys and travails and love and sorrows of the world with us, we are their partners, not only their wards. That is the point of the horses, really, they have always worked alongside of us to build our world and live in it. The carriage rides are their last work for us, at lelst for now, their work with us ought to be honored and preserved. And they and the people who keep them in our world and work with them deserve respect.
Valentina and her mother drove from Jersey City, New Jersey to touch a New York Carriage Horse. Valentine does not speak English yet, nor does her mother, but her Aunt Sofia spoke some to me. She said Valentina is adopted, her birth mother died several years ago, her father lives in another country now. She had a cat, but he was killed by a truck outside of her apartment. Sofia said she warned Valentina not to touch the horse, but Valentina ran up and grabbed him before she could stop her.
What did she say about the horse?, I asked.
“She asked if she could kiss him on the nose?,” her aunt said.
If you wish to understand the carriage horse controversy, I would suggest you do what the carriage drivers have been asking the animal rights demonstrators to do for years – touch one of the horses. None of the demonstrators has ever done it, but all of the children do.
Some of the horses love it, some tolerate it, but so many people do it, it is commonplace. Where else in the great city could a child do something like this? There is something quite magical about the horses, touching them will change the way you feel about them, and for good. Valentina knows this, her aunt was horrified when she was told the city is trying to ban the horses. Children seem to know this intuitively, they come up and touch the big horses all day, and many of them do kiss them on the nose.
I asked Sofia if she knew that the city was trying to ban the horses, and she was shocked. “What a stupid thing to do!,” she said, and she asked me not to say a word about it in front of Valentina. I did not. In the end, Valentine was too shy to kiss the horse on the nose, but she told he aunt she wanted to touch him near his heart, because she loved him so much.
This is the fun part of lambing. Liam and Pumpkin are becoming guard lambs, they are taking up positions on the rocks and checking us out from a safe distance. Liam is twice the size he was last week. I wish sometimes that lambs could remain lambs and not grow up to be somewhat dull sheep. These two are much fun.
