Blue Star Equiculture is an idea as well as a physical place. It is an idea for the times, as timely as it is desperately needed in a divided and suffering world.
Blue Star began as a way of offering the hard-working New York Carriage Horses a safe and loving retirement home on a historic farm in Palmer, Massachusetts. It has grown into something much larger and more significant – a movement to save working and domesticated animals from greed, development, and a wealthy and increasingly hateful animal rights movement that does not believe animals should live or work with people anywhere in the world.
Blue Star is a mystical place, for me, for Maria as well. The horses are recognized as individual spirits who need to find ways to continue their work with people, a magnificent partnership that has existed for thousands of years, one of Mother Earth’s most beautiful relationships. And to the Native-Americans, a sacred and historic trust and obligation.
The horses, they say, bring the water and the wind, they shall take it with them if they are driven away. Their message – invoked and repeated by Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama, among many others, is that we will either learn to live in harmony with them and one another, or we shall all soon perish together.
This is not an Apocalyptic or Dystopian message, I have come to see, but a crossroads for people who choose to care for the animals, for one another, for the earth. It is time for the Blue Star idea, that there are some things as or more important than money and development.
We have been struggling for years to find a true understanding of animals in our world. Once, we saw them as beasts of burden, to be worked and worked, and then we came to see them as piteous dependents, understood only through the prism of human cruelty and abuse. Today, we are banishing them from the earth, the horses, the ponies, the elephants. If they get the horses, they will one day come for the dogs, and the cats and the service animals who have always uplifted the hearts and minds of humans.
Blue Star has a new idea, and a better one. Their idea is to treat humans and animals in a new way, to keep them together, to live and support them in our world.
Blue Star suffered a grievous loss earlier this year when Paul Moshimer, one of it’s most important guiding spirits, decided to take his own life, perhaps too burdened by the great responsibility he had undertaken. His beloved wife Pamela Moshimer Rickenbach, is committed to keeping the Blue Star idea alive. I believe it is important for every person who seeks a better and more humane world and who wishes for animals to remain in our everyday lives and keep them on the earth to consider helping Blue Star move forward and show us a better and more loving way to understand animals and the people who wish to live among them and support.
Sadly, the movement that claims to speak for the rights of animals seems to be turning greedy and cold. More and more, it has become an unrelenting source of hatred, fear, and controversy. It has no vision for keeping animals engaged and on the earth, it has no idea other than removing them from people, and abusing the people who would live with them and work with them.
Everywhere, the movement seeks to remove animals from their work and from people, isolate them from children and the poor, take away their future, place them at risk. It is a crime to drive the animals from their work and lives, they have nowhere to go. If the horses and the elephants and the ponies lose their place in our world, they will perish and die, as is happening all over the planet. Their survival depends on us, they are not equal to us in their power, they cannot be saved unless we save them, not ban them.
So we are at a crossroads when it comes to understanding and saving animals. We can either let them go or embrace a new idea for animal rights – keep them in our everyday lives, making their lives safer and better, making sure we do not lose sight them or consciousness about them, vowing to know and understand their true needs, not our emotionalized and unknowing projections of what they must have. The most basic right of any animal is to survive in our world.
So called animal rights activists have harassed it’s workers and threatened, targeted and vandalized the Blue Star farm. They believe it is cruel for draft horses, who have worked hard for human beings for thousands of years, to work at all, or even to be retired and cared for. It is hard for me to understand, but I have witnessed some of the irrational hatred directed at Paul and Pamela. And experienced some of it myself. Blue Star is not about hating anyone. Neither am I.
It seems that Blue Star’s crime is supporting the idea that animals can and should work with us. These same people believe it is wrong for people to own dogs or use them to herd sheep or help the blind cross streets. If you meet and speak with the gentle and caring people at Blue Star farm, and read their writings, or watch their videos, you can see for yourself just how outrageous this persecution is.
Blue Star has been offered $7,500 in matching funds in their new reorganization and re-commitment to the future of working horses and working animals. They have raised more than $2,000 this week and are seeking $4,500 more. By supporting Blue Star, you can also support the humane and loving treatment of human beings, something the animal rights movement has abandoned. One cannot thrive without the other. You cannot love animals and hate people. You can contribute here.
It would be inspiring if Blue Star were able to benefit from the generous offer from the Leo S. Walsh Foundation to match contributions. It costs a lot of money to feed and care for the beautiful draft horses that depend on Blue Star for their survival. We are all bombarded with requests to help keep the bright side of the human spirit alive in a stressful time. Blue Star is the idea for me, especially for animal lovers.
Blue Star has launched an important fund-raising campaign at a critical time for them. Please consider supporting it, either by contributing directly or joining the Blue Star “herd” and saving the lives of the horses who have done so much for us and for our ancestors.