Search Results for: I Saw An Angel Last Night

The Better Angels are calling me in this season of rage and victimization,  I’m getting underway, I called the U.S. Committee For Refugees And Immigrants last night, and I volunteered to help the few Syrian refugees that have been admitted to this area. Maria is also volunteering.

That is my response to the election, my way of going forward, my disengagement from the muck and the mire. Arguing on Facebook is not my path.

Maria and I are willing to do whatever we can do to be helpful to this weary and traumatized people, none of whom has been accused or convicted of committing a single terrorist act or other crime in America, according to the FBI. I cannot wait to invite them to our farm.

There are more than 90 Syrian refugees in my area, I am eager to meet some of them.

I told the USCRI that I could help in any number of ways, from sponsoring refugees to teaching them English (I am a literacy volunteer), to driving them to job interviews and doctors appointments, to writing about them, photographing them, doing some therapy work with Red – they are under terrible pressure right now.

Maria has enormous skills to bring to this project, she is going to India to teach the victims of sex trafficking how to make potholders, she is eager to teach and welcome these new Americans and help in any way she can.

These are the people who 27 American governors have said are too dangerous to be admitted to their states, and should be deported back to Syria. In Texas, now an open carry gun state where college students can bring their weapons to class, they are terrified of these battered women and children, they don’t wish to let a single one in their state.

I spoke to one refugee already, she is the mother of three small children, she was separated from her husband and third child a year ago – he was severely burned in a bombing attack and remains in Syria seeking treatment – and she works several jobs to support her family.

Her husband, a bookkeeper, is trapped in Syria with their asthmatic child.

She is terrified once more because if Donald Trump does what he promised to do, he will not permit any refugees to enter the United States from Syria while he is President, because it is a country with terrorism. She wonders if she will ever see her husband and son again.They are in great danger, it tears at her heart to think of them stranded in that Hell.

Last week, she was in an upstate mall with her daughter and four teenaged boys followed her, taunted her, demanded she take the scarf off of her head and urged her to “go home.” Fellow shoppers intervened and shooed the boys off, but it was frightening for her.  She knows there are many good people in America, she has met many. “But this is not the America we dreamed of in those awful days” she said, “I pray every day our family can be reunited.”

In the conflict, she and her husband lost their home and savings. Now they may lose one another, they may lose everything else.

It is time for me to speak up and get moving and use my blog and talent to persuade anyone I can that this awful view of refugees is a great and profoundly un-American wrong. It is not acceptable, it is not just politics. These refugees are not terrorists or dangerous aliens and invaders, they are us. A few different ticks in history, and it could just as easily be me, desperate to get to America, where people were not persecuted for who they happen to be.

The refugee experience is  deeply embedded in our civic DNA and in the lives and souls of almost all of us, in our history and institutions and greatness.  I am the descendant of immigrants, brave and resourceful people who underwent incredible hardship to get to this country, a place of welcome and safety and liberty for them. To me, that is the core of what America is about, not the slamming of doors, but the opening of doors.

For generations, we have been reciting, worshiping and basking in the immortal words of Emma Lazarus, etched on that remarkable statue in New York harbor:

“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!,” cries she, with silent lips,

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

We used to recite this poem in my elementary school, I wonder if anyone still remembers it. Who are these refugees, if not the homeless and tempest-tost, the tired, yearning to be free? Vote for who you wish, I think, but wasn’t this the point of the long and hard fight for the world’s first democracy?

To me, these are not cynical words, clichés to be dismissed, they are our national faith and sacred obligation .For me, they are not an argument.

To reject them is to reject our better angels and drive them away, to usher in a darker world of conflict and selfishness and shrinking vision. We can’t shut the world out, we live in it.  This country did not become great by turning its backs on the wretched  refuse of those teeming shores.

I am not interested any longer in the Election/Donald Trump Hysteria, or in  joining the raging arguments and gloomy forecasts, or in denigrating his supporters. I am not looking to wear any pin.

My task is to look inside at what I care about and this is the  issue that goes to the heart of me – the demonization of these suffering people, the truest victims, the awful injustice of treating them in this way.  This goes deep into the moral soul, it says so much about who we are.

I don’t care who voted for who, nor do I believe that our world or way of life is coming to an end, or that the Nazi’s are heading for the capital. I have no idea what Donald Trump is going to do, and I would be surprised if Donald Trump knew either.

The America I love is truly a land of liberty and generosity, and I have to decide just who I am and what kind of country I am living in. I dedicate this to my own spirit, but also to my grandmother, who saw so much of her family slaughtered  and persecuted and who clung to this idea of the golden doors, the country of justice and opportunity.

It saved her life. Perhaps mine too.

For her, opportunity was a modest thing, a small Mom and Pop store, and a tiny flat for her husband and three children. She was not looking to be a billionaire. Her little store and small apartment sheltered and nourished her family for more than a half-century.

My grandmother always said her home was a palace for her, she was luckier than the Queen Of England to have made it to America. I am grateful she did not live to see this dream fade in so ignorant and hateful a way. Those doors will not stay shut, I believe, my America has a bigger heart than any politician.

I am eager to meet more of these huddled masses, yearning to be free. I am proud to be sharing this journey with Maria. I imagine  Red will bring great comfort, given the chance, and if he is wanted. I hope I can take some photos and help people find work and navigate our strange world, maybe learn how to shop here, or how to read and write.

I hope I can turn even one mind about who these people really are, and about how little danger they pose to us. They are not our greatest danger, but our great salvation.

There is a lot of stake in this, and I feel it. This is who I am. Or am not.

There is no safety or comfort in shutting the golden door in the faces of the needy and desperate. There is no national virtue in destroying families, in separating husbands from wives, or mothers from sons and daughters.

There is no comfort in cowardice and blind rage.

My better angels are on the rise, and when I finally meet them face-to-face, they will know me and welcome me, and I will give thanks for them, and pray with them for a just and compassionate world..

 

I have not yet spoken with Craig Mosher, although I drove to Rutland, Vt. today to sit in his first interaction with the Vermont criminal justice system. His hearing lasted about two minutes and resulted only in scheduling the next hearing at 3 p.m. on July 11. I will be there then as well.

Ken Norman, my friend and farrier and guardian angel to farmers and animal lovers in distress,  came to the hearing also and joined me on my bench.

I don’t know Mosher, but my heart sank for him. I also made it a point to think of Jon Bellis, who died last July in the road outside of Mosher’s property. He was in the courtroom too, in many ways. I did not want to forget him. He is why we all were there. I believe in empathy, it is so essential to being a human being.

He looked quite lost, even stunned in the courtroom, as if he could scarcely believe where he was. Neither could the many friends and neighbors who showed up to cheer  him on.  The courtroom was SRO.

“This is bullshit,” said a constable who had known Mosher all of his life. “It makes no sense at all.”

It is an awful thing to have the full force of the criminal justice system brought down on a person, especially one who has never been in any kind of trouble with the law, and for decades has run a successful business and lived a life full of work and family and community. Mosher is a little league coach and also considered a local hero.

Joshua Rockwood, the Glenville, N.Y., farmer arrested for having a frozen water tank in – 27 degree temperatures, and many others  who find themselves in this position – the animal and farming world is roiling in controversy –  can testify that it will be a long year, and a grueling and difficult process for Mosher. If his friends and family and supporters truly stick with him, he can get through it.

Mosher is not only fighting for his freedom, but his reputation and his future, and his soon-to-be depleted bank account. The criminal justice system in America is very expensive, I hate to think what might have happened to Rockwood, a good and honest man, if people all over the country had not raised $70,000 to help his ultimately successful defense.

The patently absurd charges against Rockwood were dropped. Mosher’s case is much more complicated, it involves the death of a human being and charges of extreme and criminal negligence. And the death of a human is perhaps the most important thing a judge and jury will ever consider.

The case seemed even more troublesome this week when State Police affidavits  claimed Mosher’s animals – cow and bull – had escaped at least five times, and that Mosher had been warned by a truck driver minutes before the accident that killed Jon Bellis that his bull was out by a nearby motel. According to the police, Mosher did nothing and soon after, Bellis and the bull were both dead.

One or two people recognized me and a reporter e-mailed me asking if I was there.  I am sorry to say I am getting too familiar with this.

I passed by Mosher as he parked his truck outside of the courthouse, and then met him again in the men’s room. We smiled at one another but didn’t speak, almost as if we ought to know one another but didn’t dare take the step. He seemed a nice man to me, courteous, quick with a smile, he had many close friends. It is something I look for at court hearings, I wonder how many people would come to cheer me on if I were in that kind of trouble.

Not as many as came to cheer Mosher.

That does say something about a person.

I didn’t want to bother him by introducing myself, he had other things on his mind than me. I knew meeting me would make him uncomfortable, and I know his lawyer told him not to speak to anybody. I was not allowed to take photographs inside the courtroom, which was large, clean, pleasant,  and crammed with Mosher’s friends and supporters.

As always, I was searched and frisked, my big camera checked. (I was not allowed to use it.)

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I want to say a couple of things about this visit and this story:

First off, I do not know and will not expect to know the details of the tragic accident that led to this court hearing. It is not for me to judge anyone.

Mosher is in the system now. There is no doubt that the business of owning an animal is being criminalized, I have been to more criminal hearings as an author writing about animals than I saw in months as a police reporter in Philadelphia.

It was eerie in Rutland, I feltl like a combat reporter dropping on a war zone, and in a way, that is what the deepening conflict in America between people who understand animals only as pets, and people who live and work with animals, is.

Every farmer I know feels embattled by clueless prosecutors and politicians, fanatic animal rights informers, and animal lovers who know absolutely nothing about farms or about animals that are not dogs or cats, and think all animals should be treated like dogs and cats. I know nothing about this prosecutor, mostly because she will say nothing.

I will not be poring over affidavits and court documents and deciding of Mosher is guilty of involuntary manslaughter. The good reporters of Vermont can do that, and that is the ultimate job of the judicial process, not people on Facebook. I was not there.

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The prosecutor, whose name is Rosemary Kennedy, made me uneasy, not because of the indictment but because of the appearance she is giving of hiding behind the grand jury process. She claims she can’t speak about the Mosher case because grand jury proceedings are secret. That is like Donald Trump saying he can’t release his tax returns because they are being audited.

Prosecutors are in complete control of grand jury proceedings. A favorite saying of defense attorneys is that a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich if the prosecutor asks them to. And of course Kennedy can discuss the broader issues of the case – why she chose so extreme a penalty for a tragedy that has always been considered an accident, even if there is negligence – without divulging any details of the grand jury hearings.

Mosher is 61, he could go to jail for fifteen years.

Several people at the hearing told me that Kennedy is removing all critical or questioning comments on her Facebook Page as soon as they appear, and she refused to explain the case to a group of concerned county legislators who met with her last week on another matter.

A judge and jury will have to decide Mosher’s guilt or innocence now, not me, but something does feel wrong about it.  I can’t be any more specific than that.  It’s just what I feel in my gut, and over the years, I have a good if not perfect record gut-wise. A reporter often  has to live by his or her instincts, they are often better than reports and affidavits. I was a good reporter.

The portrayal of Mosher as  a callous and arrogant and lazy and reckless man does not fit the man who built those fences I photographed above. Nor do they fit the hero who jumped on his tractor after Hurricane Irene and spend several days – without getting pay – clearing roads and freeing panicked and trapped residents and tourists.

Several women told me stories of Mosher appearing through the mud and muck to clear their roads or take them to the pharmacy for medicine and the grocery store for food after Irene. “He saved us,” said Gloria, who is 77 now. “We will try to save  him.”

It’s possible, I suppose, that he is a Jekyll and Hyde, but so far, that is a stretch for me.

After the hearing, I drove out to Killington, about 20 minutes outside of Rutland, to visit Mosher’s home and look at his fences. I live on a farm, and have many friends who are farmers, and I know that fences say a lot about the people who built them.

Mosher’s fences are impressive, they are carefully built to keep animals inside. There is four-strand barbed wire and sturdy three plank hewn wood. The fences run over many acres, they cost a lot of money.

The pastures are beautiful, perfect for sheep, bulls, donkeys and cows.

I don’t know what Craig Mosher did that night when his bull got out and a milk truck driver knocked on his door to warn him, but I do know those fences were built by a responsible person who was going to a lot of trouble to keep his animals on his property. He obviously is not someone who doesn’t care.

The Mosher case has sent shock waves throughout the farming and animal communities, in Vermont and elsewhere. If it stands – regardless of what he did or didn’t do – then the lives of every farmer and every animal owner will be affected, and radically. If a precedent is set whereby animal escapes that result in death or injury can now be considered felony crimes, many lives will change, many animals will suffer.

If your dog slips out the door and is hit by a car or truck and the driver is injured or killed, you may end up in the criminal justice system. That is a good reason for many people to avoid animals.

I spoke with a lawyer in Nevada this morning who specializes in civil suits involving animal accidents – Mosher is reportedly involved in negotiating a civil suit with the Bellis Family. She does not know of a single case in the country where an animal accident has resulted the criminal charge of involuntary manslaughter for the owner of the animal.  “That is highly unusual,” she said. Vermont appears to be making history, but not owning up to it or discussing it.

The death of a human being is a profoundly troubling thing. To me, the life of a human is much more important than the life of a bull or any animal. But is threatening Mosher with jail the answer.

Also troubling is this: a way of life – the human-animal bond – that has existed for many thousands of years – will be threatened, and in some cases, destroyed  if Mosher is convicted of this and/or goes to jail. The scales of justice are pretty tricky sometimes. In this case, a judge and/or jury has to balance a human life, which is sacred, with a precious and important way of life, which is also sacred.

I am no judge or jury, but I will stay with this case and follow and explain it as best I can as it unfolds. It is not my job to judge, but to think and to feel.

I like to think that when angels cry, their tears fall on the branches of trees in the morning light and mist, and dry in the afternoon sun. Angels don’t cry for long, their tears, I think, are as often of joy and celebration as they are for sadness and loss. A lot of angels were in the forest last night, I saw their tears on our morning walk.

I was in a spiritual frame of mind this morning, spirits of the dead had just departed, leaving their messages for me, and were riding in on this powerful beam of light, they were talking to me. Sometimes i am not in a spiritual frame of mind, I am, like Fate, distractable. But this morning, we came out into the pasture, and the light just exploded suddenly over the hills and lit up my world. It was not in the place where the sun usually rises, that is clear from all of my photos. I thought my camera might melt.

And the light was so beautiful and powerful, it seemed the world had come to a stop. Fate froze, the sheep stood with their heads lowered, the donkeys rushed to the barn, the pony seemed frozen in place.

Fate was mesmerized by the light, we both caught the almost supernatural  glow of the birdbath, filled with water from the storm last night.  It was brighter than I have ever seen it, it seemed to be on fire. So it was an angel, I thought, who came to dance in the birdbath, to twirl in the sunlight, to let loose a fireball of light and color over the farm. Perhaps she painted with the pencils and sketchbook she always carries. And thus made it real, perhaps I was looking at a canvas of my life, not my life itself.

You cannot photograph an angel, but you can photograph their light, I have learned this the hard way.

The angel came from the moon, I think, or maybe she slept on one of those giant storm clouds. Perhaps she was a tour guide angel bringing these ghosts from my past down to the farm, showing them the way, making sure they got back when the sun rose and the frost melted away and the sky turned pale and cloudy.  The dead can visit,I think, but they can never stay.

Fate froze in place, uncertain and I saw the angel – my angel, I think –  twirling, like an Olympic skater. She was small, ordinary looking, not glamorous or trim, there were no wings, she was  singing to me, “you see, you see, the joy of existence. The heart is right to cry even when the smallest drop of light is taken away, whenever love dies.”

I see, I see, I tried to shout back, I’ve cried plenty for lost light and love, I’m done with that,  but my throat was weak, my voice stillborn in my throat. And then, of course, she was gone. Fate moved, the sheep ran to the feeder, time caught it’s breath. My world returned.