Day: September 13, 2014

The people in the carriage trade in New York City have been so battered and dehumanized, they have lived for so long under ugly siege that they are almost afraid to even consider victory, let alone proclaim it. The long and often hateful campaign against the New York Carriage Horses has never been marked – not for a moment – by a great or thoughtful debate over the future of animals, or their welfare. It’s trademark has been hysteria, cruelty and distortion and the manipulation of media, emotion and money.

The ideology of most of the loudest  people campaigning to ban the horses is to never listen, quit, learn, accommodate, or negotiate. In that sense, the controversy can  never be over. The people behind this campaign who say they are for the rights of animals seem incapable of speaking to or listening to anyone but themselves, they are viscerally anti-democratic.

But in a larger sense, and no matter what mayor of New York decides, the horses and the people who own and drive them have already scored a remarkable victory.

I asked a friend in the carriage trade Sunday if things were looking up, and he said “maybe, but we can never relax, it isn’t over, it will never be over.”

But it does seem over, it almost seems that the animal rights movement has failed to convince a single person that the horses ought to be banned, after all of this fury and millions of dollars.  No one who knows anything about horses or animals has ever thought the carriage horses were being abused, or believed that they are suffering by hauling light carriages in Central Park. No one who knows horses believes it now.

This struggle has never really been about animals, it has always been driven by a fringe and fanatically obsessive campaign of cruelty and rage that has kept honest  hard-working people in an awful state of limbo and uncertainty for far too long, and which threatens to put the horses and other horses in peril in order to save them. Government in New York has failed in it’s duty to protect freedom and property. This is the controversy that should never have happened.

Last year, a New York Times editor wrote that the struggle over the carriage horses was not worth a minute of the mayor’s time in New York City in 2014. He was correct, but it has gone on for years and years, and in one form or another, will go on still. It has cost an enormous amount of money and taken the time and energy of thousands of people and many public officials. It is almost painful to think of all the animals – or, for that matter, all of the children – who are truly in need and could have benefited from all of this money.

The so-called progressive mayor, who has soiled himself by hiding  from the carriage owners and drivers and refusing  to meet with them or visit their stables, insists he is about to ban the horses imminently, by some legislative maneuvering – also anti-democratic – if necessary. But it becomes more and more apparent by the day that the drive to ban the horses is faltering, as the Wall Street Journal reported last week.

On Friday, the mayor told New York Newsday that an “ultimate ban” on the carriage horses is about to be enacted – for what seems like the hundredth time – the legislative debate over the carriage horses is about to begin. Odd, but his statements seem increasingly surreal rather than threatening. Perhaps me and the vast army of carriage horse supporters are deluding ourselves. Perhaps the mayor of New York is deluding himself, we will all find out soon enough.

Sitting on my farm a couple of hundred miles from New York (I was a political writer for some years),  I don’t have a crystal ball, nor do I have any hesitation in saying the movement  to banish the horses and replace them with vintage electric cars has failed, and profoundly. A senior political writer in New York, a former colleague told me this morning that the mayor has only a handful of votes in the City Council for a ban on the carriage horses. Furthermore, he said, the mayor’s office cannot get anyone to introduce or sponsor the ban at all. Sometimes we can get too close to see what we have done.

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“The thing is,” my friend said, “in nine months of promising to ban the horses, neither he nor his friends in the animal rights movement have convinced anyone that the horses ought to be banned, in fact opposition grows by the day. The mayor is obviously not playing from a position of strength.”
I believe this analysis is correct. The ban is simply not happening, despite promise after promise and declaration after declaration. Barring some unforeseen and unknowable circumstance, the long campaign of rage against the horses and the carriage trade is a catastrophe, a landmark event in the life of a movement that professes to speak for the rights of animals, but mostly seems to promote hatred for the people who live and work with them.

When you consider the opposition, it is now staggering, even though the New York media seems reluctant to connect the dots. Last week, City Council Consumer Affairs Chairman Rafael Espinal, the elected official who chairs the committee that oversees the carriage horses, said he would oppose a vote to ban the horses and put hundreds of people who have done no wrong out of work. Espinal said that after following and considering the story all year, it is clear  that the horses were well-cared for and important to the life and commerce of New York City.

All year, Espinal has been undecided about the ban, and his announcement is considered to be a significant sign that the mounting opposition to the ban is being heard, at least in the City Council if not the mayor’s office. After all this, the mayor has far fewer votes for a ban than he had in January, when he promised to ban the horses in the first week of his administration. As more and more private citizens and professionals go and see the horses and talk to the drivers, opposition to the ban has grown steadily.

Espinal is in good company. In notoriously fractious and divided New York, he joins all three newspapers, the Chamber of Commerce, the Working People’s Party, the Teamster’s Union, the Central Park Conservancy,  every child and tourist and true animal lover (and lover) in the world,  the Chamber of Commerce and 61 per cent of the people of New York in opposing the move to ban the horses. In addition, thousands of horse and animal lovers from all over the world have called, written and e-mailed the mayor of New York protesting the ban on the carriage horses and demanding that they remain in Central Park, which was built in part for them.

I have been researching and writing about this story for nearly a year now, and I have been surprised to learn that the animal rights movement in New York has lied repeatedly about the treatment of the horses, invented witnesses to incidents and distorted the severity of some minor and unavoidable accidents, while grossly misrepresenting others. I believe these groups have raised enormous amounts of money under false pretenses, suggesting the wanton  abuse of the carriage horses with little or no evidence. Over the course of this campaign, the most vocal opponents of the carriage trade have revealed themselves to be ignorant of animals, elitist in their contempt for the carriage drivers and people who work and live with animals, and speaking in utter disregard for truth or any factual underpinning for their arguments.

Their campaign has been strident, angry and needlessly abusive. They have slandered the drivers as abusers, thieves and immoral people.

But they also greatly overplayed or misplayed their hand.

Since they listen to no one, they have convinced almost no one as well. The attention they have drawn to the movement against the horses has boomeranged. The video age cuts both ways. The more people see of them and hear their voices of rage, the greater the opposition to the ban, which is far greater today than it was a year ago.  The people in the carriage trade – working-class people for the most part, are learning to speak for themselves. The proponents of the ban are not about learning, they are about shouting. And that is their downfall, they cannot learn or grow from their mistakes, they are doomed to simply repeat them.

Screaming insults at people and poking placards at horses on television is not a persuasive argument for sending the carriage horses -themselves rescue animals – to vanish into rescue farms, or even more likely, to slaughterhouses. Good people can debate the welfare of animals, but there is little or no truth, logic, or rationality in this movement to banish the horses, this is ultimately why it is failing so badly. Truth matters, and people can – and are – going to look for themselves.

These are not the animals in need of rescue, these are not the people who abuse animals.

The horses have spoken to us, they given birth to a new and true animal rights movement, one that seeks to help animals, not meet the emotional needs and fantasies of people. One that advances the notion that it is impossible to love animals and hate the people who live with them.  One that seeks to foster a humane and productive partnership between people and the animals  once again. In New York City, the movement against the horses has no vision for the future of animals, or for the lives of human beings, and no understanding of the real rights of both.

The controversy has triggered a new awareness of the need for a wiser and more mystical understanding of animals in our world. There are people who wish to discuss and debate the future of animals, not just shout abuse at one another. People who seek to keep animals among us, not simply ban them to private preserves where they will never be seen again. People who wish to share their knowledge and love of animals and promote understanding of their real lives and needs. People who will not exploit animals by using them to abuse or hate people.

This is a message of hope, not of hate.

Without people to live and work with, there is no future for the animals in our world. The people of New York have come to see this, in great number because they have turned away in anger and revulsion at the anger and cruelty of the people who presume to speak for the horses of New York. The horses have the right to remain among us, and we have the the right to live alongside of them. That is our true heritage, the real meaning of animal rights, the real need of people who live on Mother Earth.

In this, the carriage horses may have done a far greater service than any of us might have imagined. In life and politics, nothing is certain but change. Day by day, it seems the horses have won a mighty victory for themselves, for all of the people who love animals and wish to keep them alive and in our world. A victory also for people who believe in magic and mystery and who oppose hatred, cruelty and abuse in all of it’s forms, against animals and human beings.

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My new e-book, “Who Speaks For The Carriage Horses?: The Future Of Animals In Our World,” is available for $3.99 everywhere digital books are sold. A portion of the proceeds will go to benefit the fund to save the carriage horses.

 

In Provincetown, we chased the sunset. Since I started taking photos, I’ve chased sunsets all over my county, Washington County, and came close to catching a few. This was one of the most striking, the sky exploded in color just as the sun dipped below the cloud bank, it lit up the world and showed me the power of beauty and light. We came close to catching this one.

We found the most wonderful, hauntingly beautiful and touching old cemetery in Provincetown, the Winthrop Street Cemetery, the town’s oldest cemetery. The markers were scattered almost hurriedly over the hill, most of the markers are covered in brush and growth. The inscriptions were beautiful, many poems about the early death of children, husbands and sons lost at sea, about the harshness of life and the blessed relief of death.

The cemetery is hidden from view, behind the town firehouse, there is no parking around it, tombstones peek out of bushes and shrubs, each marker tells it’s own story. Maria read many of them carefully, wrote many of the inscriptions down. We spent many hours in the Winthrop Cemetery, it really got into our heads and imaginations, I will share some of the photos there.

We were thinking about going on a whale watch – Maria said she would love to see a whale – but we came upon the beautiful old schooner Hindu out on Macmillan Pier, they were planning an evening cruise out in the bay, we signed up. I love the water and everything associated with it, I just loved being on that beautiful sailboat as the sun began to set over Herring Cove Beach. The Hindu needs about $250,000 in repairs to the deck, I urged the captain to think about a Kickstarter project. I think he might.

The Hindu has a sweet history, it sailed back and forth to Indian in the spice trade and was commissioned by the U.S. Navy in World War II to hunt for German submarines and engaged one or two.I’ll post more photos during the week, a special trip for me. (Maria is not as crazy about being off-land a I am.)

We returned from Provincetown, Mass.  last night – we spent the last five days  there – to the usual process of re-entry: blog problems, bills, broken gates and backed-up phone messages. We had a sweet and restful time in this enchanting and somewhat exotic old fishing town and creative enclave. We saw a drag show, went sailing, walked for miles and miles, ate wonderful seafood, read, talked, sat on the beach, visited old cemeteries, watched the sun rise and fall, walked on the dunes, hiked around old ponds and trails. My heart came along for the ride, we walked about 10 miles a day, I got my usual share of blisters.

While taking some photos, I fell into an old rock jetty on the beach. I still know how to fall without breaking my camera (or my rental wide angle lens) but the rocks banged up my back and my arm. I forgot that I shouldn’t be walking on jetties so soon after the surgery, it could have been nasty but I was able to climb out and wiser for it. And got a good photo or two, along with some colorful bruises.

I grew up in New England – in nearby Providence, R.I. – and I have been going to Provincetown my entire life,  watching it change constantly. I have walked on every street and beach there, seen the town’s evolution from a funky fishing community and magnet for creatives and outsiders. Writers, artists, poets and playwrights have always loved the town for it’s light, dunes, artistic vibe. Provincetown, like everything else, has changed. Artists and writers can’t afford to live there any longer, most of them have moved away, scattered to Vermont or other towns in Massachusetts.

Every time I visited Provincetown in my life, I ached to live there, to join the outsider artists and writers, to rent a dune shack or a cottage in town, to join the community of creative people who flocked there for the cheap rents and sense of community and support. Their ghostly traces are everywhere – Norman Mailer’s house, the old wharf where Eugene O’Neill’s Provincetown Players debuted wonderful works, Edward Hopper’s dune cottage, the galleries on the East End.

During my first marriage, we came to Cape Cod every year. My wife and daughter loved the beach, loved to sit and read there, I would go to Provincetown and walk the streets, visit friends, sit by the fishing pier and watch the ocean. I cannot sit long on the  beach, I suppose I am too restless. My heart always went there, I felt so connected to the place. They thought I was odd to wander around Provincetown all day, and they were right. I should have seen what that meant, but I was too blind. It often felt lonely to me, walking those beautiful streets.

It was so different this trip. I was, for the first time,just a tourist, wandering around with my camera, asking dumb questions, asking my Google map for help, looking for goo-gaws to buy for Maria, scoping out the best lobster rolls. There is a lot of freedom in that.

I realized that for the first time I no longer wish to live there, that the Provincetown I fantasized about was gone, the rich seem to have found all of the good creative places and taken them over. Sort of like the Pilgrims end up in Key West. I could not really live there. I could no longer afford it, and there is no community there for me to join and the houses, while beautiful, are just a little too perfect.  But as a tourist, I was finally and completely free to enjoy the great beauty, the ocean all around, the beautiful dunes. I think I always disdained the tourists, I never saw myself as one of them. I am one of them now, I saw that this week.

I remember Provincetown when  the old houses were fading and windblown, when the fishermen and their sons used to chase gay men through the streets and harass or beat them up if they could, I remember the fishing fleet stacked up at Macmillan Pier to unload their catches, great clouds of seagulls devouring the spillage.  I remember the Boston Irish families in their cottages on the East End, drinking beer and gathering on the beach under their tattered and colorful umbrellas.

I can’t imagine where Eugene O’Neill would go now to write his plays, or where Hopper would go to paint his dunes.  I wonder how many plays and paintings are being lost in our money-driven culture.

Today, gay people do not have to fight for their rights in Provincetown, gay  businessmen and women run the town and the fishermen are almost all gone. Many, if not most of the cottages and houses have been broken into condos, the town has become a summer place, hardly anyone lives there year round or in the winter any more, and the children have all vanished. Parking and real estate are the two big topics of conversation.  Last year, the old high school shut down, there were hardly any students.

If there are no longer any schools, there are gorgeous and spacious dog parks, filled with sculptures of the Mayflower and other art forms. Provincetown is a dog town, it is sometimes endearing, often quite over the top. If you are so inclined, bring your dog, he or she will be welcome just about everywhere.

Last week, I visited Alice Brock (of Alice’s Restaurant fame), now a Provincetown artist,  in her West End art studio. “I’m a dying breed,” she said “there are no rentals for people any more, the artists can’t afford the houses,  in the winter this place is desolate.” There is one food market and two or three taverns and restaurants.

In the summer it is not desolate. There are hip new Sushi and seafood restaurants owned by entrepeneurs from South Miami, and a string of art galleries catering to the new money, to people eager to put art on the walls of their refurbished old captain’s houses.

Over the years I met many of the writers and artists who were drawn to Provincetown, who shared apartments and cottages and wrote their plays, painted their pictures, took their photos. There is one left, he is hanging on by his fingernails in a decaying cottage outside of town. He is waiting to sell out, to move to Pennsylvania.

Provincetown has never looked more beautiful, it’s houses and cottages are being lavishly and loving restored, you will not see much peeling paint there, or untrimmed shrubs or cracks in the asphalt driveways (many are cobblestone). Gardens are taken very seriously there. And Provincetown still reveals it’s soul from time to time.

T   he drag queens still put on their shows for the tourists, and there are still those tacky-T-shirt and shell shops in the middle of town, along with fried clams, popcorn and fudge. The beautiful old churches are being restored and finding new uses – restaurants, art galleries, the town library which has a giant fishing schooner on the second floor. Provincetown has a Pilgrim monument, but the town is really a palace of change now, a mirror of American life and culture. There is not much of the Pilgrim presence left.

For all of my emotional history there, I have never enjoyed a visit there more.

This vacation was too short, as good vacations are. My surgery felt far away. Perhaps that is because Maria was with me, and love makes a difference. Or because I love where I live and no longer fantasize about living anywhere else. I’ve moved about 15 times in my life, and I tell people the problem with moving is that I always came too, the same face in the mirror, the same problems in a new location.  I am standing in my own truth now, I have found my home, Maria and I are our  own creative community.

I love Provincetown, I will always love it,  I accept it’s evolution with grace, I bow to it’s natural and man made beauty and glorious history, it’s artistic and rebellious spirit, which can never be fully quashed. I don’t want to live there any more, but I can’t imagine a better place to visit.