In the morning, moments of love and connection. I see a pony and a human being talking, exchanging emotions and feelings, making contact with one another. This is why animals need to remain among, and not be banished to rescue farms and preserves. We need them, they need us.
When I met him in New York City, Chief Avrol Looking Horse, the spiritual leader of the Sioux Nation and a guardian of the horse spirit, told me that the New York Carriage Horses, fighting to survive in their homes, were sparking a new social awakening about animals and people. This idea is also central to the existence of Blue Star Equiculture, a mythic horse and people sanctuary in Palmer, Mass, and the reason I am so drawn to it.
It is a difficult thing for me to comprehend, this idea of the horses speaking to me and others in this way, but I have been living it for several years now, so I know it to be true. The horses have triggered a new understanding, a new way of knowing animals, a new way of living in harmony with people and treating people and animals with dignity and respect. This new way of seeing animals is spreading all over the country, it is entering the consciousness of every person who loves animals and needs them in their lives.
Friday, I saw this, graphically and powerfully in the Dover, Vt., Town Hall, where i was the guest speaker at the library’s annuals dessert social fund-raiser. More than 110 people crowded the beautiful town hall to come and hear me speak, and it was a very different kind of evening than I usually expect at readings and talks.
The people there didn’t want to talk about dog training, or dog breeds, or tell their funny experiences with their puppies. We talked about the New York Carriage Horses, the elephants in the circuses, Joshua Rockwood the farmer awaiting trial on animal cruelty charges, the ponies in the farmer’s markets. We talked about the future of animals in the world, the real meaning of animal rights, the urgency of keeping animals in our every day lives, the true nature and reality of abuse, the loss of perspective, the spiritual bankruptcy of a movement that purports to love animals while hating people, the human disconnection from the real lives of farmers, from the natural world, and the real lives of animals.
These are the only things the people at the town hall wanted to talk about, they are eager for harmony and communication and understanding. They listened intently and had powerful questions. The social awakening Chief Avrol was talking about was right there in front of me, under my nose, eager for ratification and liberation.
I said it is not enough to talk about the abuse of this animal or that, we need to find ways to keep the elephants and the ponies and the carriage horses in our every day lives, where we and our children can learn from them, be healed by them, see them and understand them in a better and more mystical way.
I talked about the death of Cecil Lion, how it had once again shown that we were losing perspective about the sanctity of human life, once again exploiting animals to justify the abuse and hatred of human beings. Everyone of you knows who Cecil is, I said, and speaks ill of Dr. Palmer, but how many of us can name a single one of the innocent people massacred so cruelly and in the Charleston church? How many of us have spoken out against the mob justice on the Internet, the threats and violence and cruelty done to his innocent children?
Animals have taught me to love people, not to hate them, It is, to me, an immoral perversion of the true meaning of animals in the world to exploit them to hate and batter and harass and inform on and persecute people. The people attacking this man and dismantling his life are not showing us they are better than him, they are proving to us that they are just the same as him.
“We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it,” wrote Pope Francis in his encyclical, Laudato Si. This is the new awakening. I understand Chief Avrol’s message, I could see it in the faces of the people in that town hall, they were aroused, awakened, alert to the new to protect the surviving animals of the earth, not simply ban them and send them away.
Did anyone understand, I asked, that the carriage horses will perish in awful slaughter if they are taken from their safe and secure work and homes? That there is no place for the domesticated Asian elephants of the circus to go when the protesters who claim to love them finally ban their “stupid tricks” and drive them from their work and homes. That the ponies who are banished from the farmer’s markets will vanish into preserves and slaughterhouses when they are no longer permitted to give rides to children.
Everywhere in our world, farmers, animal lovers, the poor and the elderly are being persecuted and harassed, sometimes arrested and ruined by the new hysteria over animals and their abuse. While 9 billion animals live in horror in giant industrialized corporate animal farms, activists in New York City have spent more than $6 million trying to banish 200 work horses, most of whom were themselves rescued from slaughter, and who are, by every account, safe, healthy and well cared for.
People are awakening to the need for a true animal rights movement, one that will support and help the people who live with animals and love them and who will advance the most basic right of every domesticated animal in the world: to survive and remain on Mother Earth. We must be good and decent to animals and people, one cannot exist independently of the other. Work for animals is not cruel, it is sacred, the key to survival for so many of them.
If they can come for the carriage horses, I said, they can come for my border collie, your horse, your dog and cat. We cannot only see them as piteous and abused beings, they are our partners in life, not our helpless children.
I saw scores of nodding heads in the Dover Town Hall, the new social awakening was coming to life right before my eyes. I saw and hear it in the questions that came one after the other. What can we do? How can we learn more about this? How can the removal of animals from the lives of people be stopped?
It will happen, I said. It is beginning to happen right here tonight. You have to have faith it in. One person at a time, one day at a time.
So I thought again of Chief Avrol, and of his wisdom and his vision. There is a new social awakening, and our true love of animals is bringing it to life. Those of us who love animals wish them to remain in our lives, we respect and celebrate the glorious history of animals who have worked with us, and done us so much good, and who do us so much good today. They helped us built the world. We owe them more than we can ever repay, we can at least keep them safe and alive with us. Every child in the world deserves to see them and know them, as a living and sentient being, not as am image on computer screen.
The horses have called out to us, awakened us, to the crossroads facing the animals and the people of the world. We come together – in our individual lives, in the Dover Town Hall, in our love of the animals, to take charge of this home which has been entrusted to us, and to them. We survive only in union with one another, and with the animals, our partners in the joy and travail of the world.
We are all at a crossroads, and many things will need to change course if we are to survive. But the animals do not need to change, it is we human beings who need to change. We have forgotten our common origin, our mutual belonging our shared experience of life and suffering and joy and death. The animals can bring us back to our origins, but not if they have gone, vanished from the earth which needs them so desperately.
The new awakening asks us to to build a future that can be shared by every living thing, animal or human. I have faith that this movement is upon us, I saw it Friday night, it was looking right at me.
Maria went right to the 25 cents are of the Brattleboro, Vt., thrift store, she went through the glasses, the books, some pieces of fabric. The volunteer behind us tipped us off to some good mugs and glasses, we almost bought two but then moved on.
I am taking photos now of thrift shop people. Thrift shops are almost always non-profit, many set up by churches or hospice organizations. They are often run by volunteers, I find them by looking at the “Workers Only” signs at the back of the stores. I knock and they let me in. When I ask to photograph them, they laugh and shake their heads.
Some ask me what I want the photos for, most just smile and go about their work. They love their work, they go through donated clothes, sort and label each one, tag and register it for cleaning and/or pricing. They talk, are usually at ease with one another, I get the sense that these sorting rooms are safe and quite places for them. They chuckle and flirt a bit and tell me the guys are always after them for photos. They invariably seem to be trusting and generous and quick to laugh.
The thrift stores have captured my imagination, I will look for the workers and volunteers to photograph.
I’m not sure I ever set foot in a thrift whop before I met Maria, if I did, I don’t recall it. I am not much into clothes, but I always bought my clothes at retail men’s stores, now from the L.L. Bean catalogue. I don’t change my styles much, I don’t change them ever – blue chambray shirts, jeans, chinos.
Maria does not ever buy anything retail, everything she wears comes from thrift shops or second hand clothing stories.
She is transformed when she goes into one, she is eagle-eyed and proficient, she can spot a nice piece of clothing or fabric aisles away. She professionally scans the aisles, spotting a neat fabric, a shirt or skirt she likes. Most of the things she buys will end up in a quilt or potholder, some she will wear.
I stopped buying her retail gifts, she always got ticked off at me when I did.
When we travel now, we always visit thrift shops. I like this world, I feel at home there. I have entered it with my camera and open eyes and it is special and precious to me, a culture of very real people, very real life, much of it surprising. This morning, in Saxton’s River, Vermont, we went into the church thrift shop on Main Street.
The thrift shop workers I know are friendly, open, they agree to have their photos taken, they have lots of stories to tell about who comes in, what they buy.
You can pick up a big paper bag at this church store, and stuff it full of anything in the shop for $3. The store is huge, as old church basement are huge. This store was well-organized, everything clearly labeled. A group of locals was manning the desk, greeting visitors, helping customers, eager to talk. There were men and women inside, and most were not browsing idly, this is where they buy their clothes, dishes, children’s toys and clothes.
Periodically, Maria will come up to me with some colorful fabric she finds, she could not be happier. In the children’s section, five or six kids are buying school clothes, September is not too far away. “Thank God for this place,” her mother tells me, “there are good clothes here, I can’t do a new wardrobe every year. And they grow so fast.”
Her husband has found some work shirts, he is trying them on. I don’t think I ever bought thrift shop clothes for my daughter, we went to malls and Gap kid’s stores.
I don’t buy clothes for myself in thrift shops, there is nothing much for me. I buy handkerchiefs, odd things for my office, glasses and plates (we drop a lot and break them.) Sometimes I buy jewelry or pins for Maria. She is happy in these places, at home, it is my world now, and I am drawn to photograph the volunteers in thrift shops. A breed, for sure.
I don’t know what thrift shops used to be, but I know what they are now, important sources of clothing and household goods for people who are pressed financially, and for many who simply want to buy things cheaply. My mother was like Maria in one way, she never bought anything retail.
It makes no sense to Maria to spend a lot of money on new clothes, when there are so many good and interesting ones in thrift shops. And she finds everything she wants and needs. It is a particular mentality, thrift shop people. We got two bags worth of stuff, it cost $6. I am getting serious about photographing the thrift shop volunteers, they are mostly women, they are open and friendly and full of stories. Their faces are full of life.
