When Maria and I first got together, I was living in a different reality, financial and otherwise. Our first trip together was to a first-class hotel in Boston, men in red uniforms bowing and scraping, a gorgeous room with a giant bed and a hotel with wonderful and expensive room service.
Maria, who had never had hotel room service, was a bit stunned. It was fun, but also rang a bit hollow, I recall.
Today we are living in a different reality, and a happier and healthier one. Our ideas of fun have evolved. A month ago we toyed with the idea of staying in a lovely and expensive Vermont inn for a couple of nights, it would have cost about $600 for food and room and fees for two nights. We scrapped the idea.
It just didn’t seem like us.
We are always looking for ways to survive the holidays, to make them fun and meaningful rather than depressing and intense. More and more, we have drifted away from ritual and obligation. Family is many things, but it has always been a struggle for both of us. I know it is a wonderful thing for many other people.
Then, we were driving by a funky old 50’s kind of hotel, it looked simple and clean, like something Norman Rockwell could have painted. (And might have, for a while he lived just a few miles away.) I loved the old neon sign which read “vacancy.” It looked like a peaceful little haven, unpretentious and welcoming.
So I had this very strange idea that we should spend a night there, it was a kind of throw-away fantasy, I thought of it as a joke. The motel is just over the border in Vermont, about 20 minutes from the farm. We’ve passed it a thousand times.
I joked to Maria, let’s go stay here in this motel one night during the holidays. We’ll bring good books, we’ll go out and eat something simple, sleep and read and come home the next morning. I’ll bring some earphones and listen to some Norah Jones and Leonard Cohen albums. We’ll sit up and talk.
That would be a neat holiday. It can’t be expensive, I said.
Maria, who gets things and love signs that I am mad, thought it was a wonderful idea, different and interesting.
I told her I thought it was really a dumb idea, and then I dismissed it. What kind of person stays at a motel 20 minutes from home? But it kept coming back. I kept thinking of it, I kept mentioning it. We love traveling together, we love reading, we love getting away for short trips. We could do all of those things and be home the next morning in time to work.
Let’s do it, she kept saying.
We both woke up early this morning thinking about it. I went online and saw there was a special on for this motel, after New Year’s I could get a room with a King-sized bed for a little more than $70. The room had nice reviews, but also made clear this was not a first-class suite in a Boston hotel.
It was near some good family restaurants that were inexpensive. It was near a diner that served good breakfasts. The room looked fine, we saw it online. There was not much more than a big bed and a dresser with a big screen TV (which we never turn on.) The booking service said the room offer at that price – it is a quiet week for motels and hotels – would expire tonight. We can cancel anytime until the day before the reservation.
I booked it. We are going in a couple of weeks.
I guess the bottom line is that we are not only re-inventing our lives, we are re-inventing our holidays. Neither of us could care less that this is not a first-class hotel or an expensive and lovely old inn. We will be as happy to have a hamburger or a salad as a gourmet meal that costs $150 dollars.
I think we both need simple holidays, we need to be with just us. We need to be safe and feel safe and pause to be grateful to the many wonderful things in our lives. The next few years will challenge us, in a number of ways. I have to take care of my heart, Maria is building a wonderful artistic business, we will have to work hard to stay grounded and positive and do good in a country where ever single day seems to breed turbulence, anger and controversy. And so many people love it.
To some extent, we both will interact with the world and work for our values, we must also built our own world and take comfort and nourishment from it. Somehow, in ways I don’t fully understand, the motel is the beginning of this phase of the journey. Think of all the small trips we can take, the places we can see.
What we love is being together, being free to be ourselves, and celebrating love and connection rather than the heavy traditions and obligations of others. We know so many people who slog through the holidays because they always have, and always must. We don’t wish to be those people.
I still think this whole trip is a bizarre idea, Maria think it’s a wonderful idea. I am excited about going. If it all works out, this could open up a whole new idea for holidays and getaways. Our estimate of the cost is $125, tops, unless we order a lot of drinks at the restaurant.
You don’t have to agree with all of the state’s politics to love Vermont, the dream of American politics, the civility and sense of common purpose, survives there, perhaps because the state is riddled with smaller communities where people don’t only know one another from Facebook and Twitter.
While our presidential political system is polluted with hatred and insult and ugliness, I saw voters all over Vermont today standing together supporting different candidates from different parties. Before the beautiful old town hall, on a tree-lined Main Street, they chatted, shared coffee and muffins, it was a scene from Mark Twain’s America, not ours really, not for some time.
Was it real? Can we ever return to it? Is it too narrow and white and scrubbed an image to reflect the new America, in an ugly transition from one country to another. I don’t know, but it was nice to see. Politics can be uplifting, and problem-solving and hopeful. It seemed in Vermont that people still listen to one another and cling to a sense of commonality. There is a middle, not just a left-and-a-right.
Nowhere did I see any sense of cruelty or bitterness or conspiracy, although it must exist, out of sight on Election Day.
But it is a special place.
It is, of course, one narrow slice of America, not even the one I might prefer to live in – I love the grit and reality of my town.
But it was touching to see it – I stopped to take photos at the voting places we passed on our way home from Vermont – and I was uplifted by it. This is the America that Norman Rockwell painted, it was never the whole story or the true America, but it reflects a past where people spoke to one another rather than shouted over one another’s heads. This scene touched me, I saw it repeated all over the state.
This scene seemed kind of Norman Rockwell’ish to me, we were in the waiting room of the Cambridge Valley Veterinary Service, Red is being treated there for arthritis, Fate for torn paw pads. They both waited calmly in the waiting room with Maria.
Last winter, the Glenville, N.Y. police, assisted by animal rights informers and activists and animal rescue workers, raided the farm of a young farmer named Joshua Rockwood. They impounded his three apparently healthy horses and charged him with 13 counts of animal cruelty for having frozen water tanks and unheated barns and feed that was not stored on the premises and visible to them.
They alleged that two of his many pigs had frostbitten ears and that his horses had overgrown hooves.
Hundreds of farmers and animal lovers were outraged by the accusations, the winter was the most brutal in a century, temperatures plunged to -27 for days on end. None of Rockwell’s animals died or were injured during the awful cold wave. Rockwood is a young and idealistic farmer, raising free range and pasture fed animals for food. His farm is called West Wind Acres. One of the people who rushed to support Joshua was Ken Norman, a friend and our long-time farrier.
Joshua is a quiet, polite, proud and stubborn farm geek.
He is almost obsessively preoccupied with learning everything he can know about farming, studying manual after manual about grazing, soil, light, nutrition and biology. He wishes to spend his life raising healthy animals who produce healthy food for local people. In a sane world, he ought to be going to a luncheon getting an award from the Glenville Chamber Of Commerce, rather than fighting for his very existence.
His hopes and dreams and livelihood are on the line, the people running his community are trying to put him in jail or out of business.
Joshua’s agonizing year speaks to the moral bankruptcy of many elements of the animal rights movement, who have abandoned their role as a defender of animals and in too many cases become a rogue and Orwellian militia. In this case and many others, they are simply out of control and without any rational agenda for saving animals or even helping them. They increasingly seem engaged in the business of harming and persecuting people, many completely innocent of wrongdoing. Just ask Joshua or the New York Carriage Drivers.
I have been talking with the Southern Poverty Law Center and am sorry to say the people who say they speak for the rights of animals are increasingly come to resemble a hate group, not a group with any idea about how to keep animals in our world as they are increasingly taken from us. You can read the definition of groups that promote hate and extremism here and draw your own conclusions.
Ken Norman has a far better right to speak for the welfare of animals than most animal rights organizations. He actually saves them and does not ask for money to do it. Ken and his wife Eli are life-long rescuers and caretakers for horses. They have 30 on their farm. They gave us Chloe, our pony after caring for her for years when she had no place to go.
Ken saved our donkey Simon’s life when he was found starving and near death on a farm. He helped him heal his wounds. He has treated our equines with love, skill and tenderness, kept them strong and healthy. He is worth listening to.
He has devoted his life to caring for horses and to saving them when they have been mistreated. Nobody asked him to join Joshua’s cause, he came running.
Ken studied the documents and photographs relating to the case that were made public and found them to be outrageously unfair and misguided. He called them “bullshit misdemeanors.” He came with me to the first several court hearings for Joshua. He contacted Joshua and offered to help. Ken had other things to do this year, he had both knees replaced surgically last December, he has been in physical therapy for months.
When Ken saw that Joshua was looking to install a series of tire water tanks – giant heat-absorbing tractor tires with gravel or cement base and fresh water – Ken scoured neighborhood quarries for old loader tractor tires to bring to him. He would not take any money for his time and trouble. He found five and brought them out to West Wind Acres not ever comfortable taking in public.
I thought it might be useful for people for people to hear Ken Norman speak in his own voice. So I recorded a short video this afternoon at Joshua’s farm. Ken is not a seeker of the limelight, he is a man of few words but those words count. He is incapable of guile or artifice and would never assist or support anyone who harmed a horse or other animal in any way. Neither would I.
Listen to Ken Norman yourself, the video is probably the longest speech Ken has given in his life. About 20 words. Ken is, after all, a Vermonter.
He is representative of the many good and honest people who have done in recent months what should have been done in the first place – reached out to Joshua in that difficult time and offered to help rather than spy on him, inform on him in secret, and nearly ruin his life and farm. I have been worried about Joshua, he seems exhausted to me, and overwhelmed by months of court hearings, legal conferences, and the awful disruptions the arrests have done to his farm. When his face was plastered all over local TV as an animal abuser, he lost many of the happy customers who were buying his safe and healthy food.
You do not get 300 people to show up at your court hearing in support if you have behaved badly or dishonestly.
Joshua needs for this to be over. He sometimes seems overwhelmed, he did today. He will not quit.
His wife is afraid to let their two children outside for fear the informers will come by and see that they are alone, and tell the police, who, she fears, may come and leave them alone. Getting to know Joshua, I know the toll it takes when you have to live in fear of every mistake, mishap or accident, knowing informers may be driving by with the power to ruin your life without much, if any, checks or due process.
Joshua has heard all of the horror stories from other farmers, as have I, and he has now lived them: farmers afraid to leave their cows out in snow, animal lovers afraid to let their horses take naps in an open field, herding dogs stolen from pastures because they are not confined or leashed. And now, trapped in this awful Catch-22. How to keep your water tanks from freezing when every water tank freezes in temperatures that cold. And now, a young and conscientious farmer is arrested and threatened with jail because his water tanks froze in Arctic temperatures.
This is the kind of fear Russians knew under Stalin, and the East Germans knew from the Stasi, who turned hundreds of thousands of citizens into informers. It is not the kind of fear Americans are supposed to know. We got rid of our secret informers long ago, we rebelled against them. Now, they seem to be back. And they are hurting people in the name of loving animals.
Joshua has spent tens of thousands of dollars on legal fees and is working feverishly to prepare his farm for the winter and make it raid-proof. People with long lenses still come by take photos of his farm, drive by at dusk or at night, eager to find evidence of abuse. They run and hide when they are spotted. He is a strong man, but how could he not live in fear? And why would we make him?
The informers are wasting their time. They won’t find any evidence there, there isn’t any abuse on Joshua’s farm. But life happens everywhere, and now farmers and animal lovers and carriage horse drivers have to fear life. As a culture, we are losing our ability to comprehend the difference between life and abuse. We are so disconnected from farms and the real lives of animals we no longer know what they need, what is healthy, what is the unavoidable nature of life itself.
I saw the animals there on Joshua’s farm days after his arrest, they were well-fed, hydrated, secure. They are still. There were no protruding ribs, sores, skittishness, sluggishness, or any signs of mistreatment, even in that awful weather. You can’t hide wanton abuse in a few hours or days. Before the arrest, two veterinarians came to West Wind Acres to examine Joshua’s animals, they were pronounced healthy and hydrated and well cared for.
Ken Norman says he saw photographs of Joshua’s horses, they looked “fine.” He wonders if the police or animal rights activists had ever seen horses that were truly abused.
Online, supporters of Joshua have raised thousands of dollars to help with his legal fees and his new shelters and tire water tanks. Joshua is still mired in legal preparation and negotiation, he hopes to get back the horses that were taken from him, some say stolen from him. The animal rescue farm and their veterinarian are asking for many thousands of dollars in payments for boarding and vet fees, whether he is found innocent or not.
This blatant conflict-of-interest makes everyone queasy, the people deciding to take animals from people should not be the ones charging lots of money to give them back.
Joshua has said he will not plead guilty to a single thing that he did not do and he is determined to stand on principle for his reputation. He has fought so hard, he says, in the hopes that what happened to him will not happen again to any other farmer in need. Good for him, but I see the toll it is taking on him. Nothing about his arrest and persecution seems just or right to me. It is an abuse of authority and judgment.
In a just world, the police and the animal welfare people should have done just what Ken Norman did today. Knock on the door. Offer to help. And help. Joshua would have been happy to accept. The taxpayers would have been saved a lot of wasted money.
For our part, I think we can soon help Joshua again. To cross the finish line in this sad drama. I do not care to surrender to anger and cynicism. Joshua is a good person. The truth matters.
He may need assistance to get his horses back. I am happy to help with that if I can. That might make him whole, depending on the legal proceedings. Stay tuned. And thanks for helping this much and for this long. Community does live, people want to do good, right is different from wrong, and can prevail.
The shrinks all say our problems leave scars that heal but never completely leave us, and I am learning every day of my life that this is so. Every time I think i have solved a problem and left it behind, I am humbled and dragged to the earth, wings breaking into a thousand pieces. I keep vowing to let go, but they won’t let go of me.
All I can do is be aware, and then be more aware.
The holidays, I see, are a scar that will never fully leave me, and I have learned hat this is very true of many others.
But it is not true of everyone. I have come to see this as the great holiday divide: the space between the Perfect Holiday and the Not Perfect holiday. Lots of people have, or say they have, perfect holidays. Who else would be buying all that stuff?
I am not a Perfect Person, and have never had a Perfect holiday. I have never had one that is not shrouded in angst, anxiety, pressure and guilt. Maria shares this experience, and we are determined this Christmas to have our first grief and guilt -free holiday. Our hearts are pure, but the odds are long.
We will be at home, with one another and the animals, our books and our music and each other. No gifts, no dinners, no family. Maybe some friends, if we can find any who share our Not Perfect experience.
What do I mean by a Perfect Holiday? You know, the Disney one, the Rockwell one. The happy family, trembling for Santa, brimming with expectation. The beautiful meal, the radiant decorations, the carefully hung wreaths and balls, the perfect and beautifully wrapped gifts, the weeks of planning and excitement, the gathering of the loving clan at the big table, lots of laughter and gobs of love.
No wonder so many people get depressed at this time of year. Who, I wonder, actually lives like this? There must be many, or even the marketers couldn’t get away with it, but then I wonder if this idea of the Perfect holiday isn’t just a vast marketing creation. Disney World is always sold out at Christmas, for just between $5,000 and $10,000 dollars a week. I would give a lot of my own money to see the Jewish radical Jesus Christ at Disney World, I imagine he would lead a mob of angry Not Perfect torch-bears right into the Magic Kingdom or the new blocks-long Disney Gift Shot to settle some scores.
But I am being fatuous and argumentative, even hypocritical
I have loved many of my visits to Disney World, I know so many people love it dearly.
It is no longer the place for me, but that is my problem, not theirs. Nobody is forcing anybody to go, and I have no business telling anyone else where to go. The last time I was there, a couple of years ago, I realized that there was no one anything like me anywhere to be seen. I turned to Maria one morning, holding the free Mouse stickers and Smiley pins the cashier had just given me, and asked “do you see us anywhere here?”
No, she said, of course not, where do you think you are? It was a shock to me. I thought everyone could be get into Perfect World, even me.
I think the issue is that Christmas, which has evolved steadily over the years into a vast commercial balloon that blocks out the light, has become a bar that is just too high for the Not Perfect People. I don’t have a Perfect family, not even a perfect wife, even though I love her dearly. A Perfect Wife would have to be like Minnie Mouse and while I once had a crush on her, I wouldn’t want to marry her,
And I would be horrified if Maria ever described me as a perfect husband. That is not likely. Love is often as much about what we overcome and overlook as it is what we have. I’m lucky that is so.
Most families, of course, are not perfect. They are quarrelsome, divided and fractious. At least one person is unfuffilled, at least one more is furious, jealous, or stifled. Most people are not perfect, they are often unhappy, filled with anxieties and resentments. Most people can’t cook those gorgeous meals or find those perfect presents or start shopping in July to make sure everyone is covered. You could argue that nobody should have to do those things, but that argument was lost a long time ago
Speaking for myself, I believe quite strongly that there are no Perfect Lives, I say this with respect to the Perfect People, it is not for me to define others. And I am perhaps just jealous. Another club I can’t get into.
I assume, perhaps unfairly, a certain measure of hypocrisy and denial in the very idea. Humans are not meant to be perfect, so I am always suspicious that the Perfect Holiday people are blind or lying. Sooner or later, life comes to all of us. This may say more about me than them. As I wrote above, my problems never completely go away, I just tend to rediscover them.
My own Far From Perfect Family was just as miserable and unfulfilled at Christmas as they were on every other day, and I was always overwhelmed by the excessive piles of gifts and the awful crash that followed, when normal life and the horrors of gym and school loomed. I remember bawling over a Hardy Boy book, a present, because I wanted to be one of them so much more than I wanted to be me.
I sometimes imagine what might happen if Disney created the Not Perfect Family Lodge at Disney World, a special $200-a-night lodge where real people could fight, throw their dirty laundry around, scream and throw food at each other, storm out, cook dry turkey, hang tacky shiny balls from Wal-Mart, and be profoundly disappointed in their thoughtless and useless gifts. You know, like the Christmas most people have.
I think the sadness of the holidays often comes from what we don’t have, what we can’t have, what is rubbed into our Not Perfect faces for months before and during the holidays. Everyone says it brings our childhood back, but I do not want my childhood back, I’ve spent years in therapy trying to forget it.
We look in the mirror at Christmas, and many of us always come up short. We live in a marketed world, we can hardly tell any more what is true and what is for sale. I know many Not Perfect people easily swept up in the expectations of the Perfect Holiday. They are often the biggest believers, crying at the very thought of joy.
Like my blessed mother, the holidays bring with them a certain amount of toxic guilt. What is wrong with us, for not being perfect? For not getting it? For not feeling joyous and transformed? It can’t be them, they are Perfect. It has to be us. That is, I think, how it works.
This year, in our never ending quest for a better way, Maria and I will celebrate out utter lack of perfection. We will create our own truth, or try. We do not have the perfect lives, and have little use for them. The idea gives both of us the hives. We will find the center of our true selves, and revel in it, give thanks for it, accept who we are. Somewhere in there, I’ll read a bit about Jesus Christ, just to keep my toes in the water.
We’ll see if that works. If it doesn’t, we can try Disney World again. At least it’s warm there.
