By The Montana Maven and Cowboy Clay (with some additional help by the Catskill Contrarian).
One of the main tenets of The Tao of Cow (which is more like the Tao of Cow…Boy) is “Shit Happens”. This principle is not as pessimistic as it sounds. It’s just what is. “The best laid plans of mice and men” is just another way of putting the same principle that you just got to try to do your best and embrace the yin and yang of things. You need to explore and embrace those pesky opposites of what you are and what you’d like to be. Judgement is for your own actions. For everybody else you should just be kind. You can’t control other critters whether it’s cows or coworkers. Better to let them be.
I’ll try to explore every week some of the guideposts within the “Tao of Cow”.
#1 Things Will Work Out…Until They Don’t. Then You Move to Plan B”. Try it for Three and Then Go to Plan C. I find this the most useful of Cowboy Clayisms. No sense in crying over spilled milk. Crack open a beer and meditate on what’s next. For example; in moving cows from pasture to pasture, it helps if they want to go. If you are patient and your help knows a thing or two, you may get them to go thru the gate. But sometimes “shit happens”. Your neighbor’s horse is young and jumpy and spooks the cows. Then the cows start kicking up their heels and running in the opposite direction. You can wait until they quiet down and try again or try to get them to another gate or call it a day. The rule of three works here for cows and students. Try something about three times. After that call it a day and give yourself a break.
This goes for machinery too. If you are cutting hay with an old swather, it’s bound to breakdown. You try to fix it. You try this and that. You spend a couple days, maybe three. If nothing works, you call your neighbor and ask if he can cut the hay for you.
Another way of looking at it is “It Can’t Always Be On Your Schedule”. Entertainment projects whether it’s filming a TV series or filming a film have their own schedule. A film company is a large machine with many gears and cogs. Sometimes something puts a monkey wrench into the gears of that fairly well oiled machine. It could be that sudden thunderstorm. It could be a nervous star. It could be an idiosyncratic director. It could be the dog that won’t Stay! It can never be a grumpy grip or a cranky coach. So you suck it up and get out of the way and wait your turn.
P.S. It is also the job of the Cow…Girl to pushback on the Tao of Cow…Boy. For example, the phrase “Cowboy Up” is used a bit too frequently on a ranch. “Hey Honey, the plumbing really needs upgrading.” “Cowboy Up!” He replies. “I don’t think we should wait until it breaks.” “I’ll Get To It,” He replies. “Sigh.”
Okay, let’s add another word for being mean or pissed off which can make you mean. Specifically, a pissed off mean cow. But a word that can be applied to mean pissed off people in general.
my old horse died today. i guess it doesnt matter much to anyone but me. i bought him back in 92. my friend and i were at the cort bar just celebrating another day i guess when a pretty girl stopped in with a trailer load of horses from arkansas for sale. she was full of smiles and full of figure so after a few drinks and a ride under the street lights ( on the horse not the girl ) i became the owner of my new friend pepper. the next morning with a heavy head and a lite pocket book i walked out to examine my new purchase. he was big and black and i guess compared to his previous owner you might even call him ugly. while i was saddling him up and sobering up i wondered if perhaps i had over payed but when i stepped home on him all my doubts were dismissed.there was no buck no runaway. he wasnt real handy with the rein but he had this perfect smooth balletic lope that felt like whiskey on the water. later when my pards and i would be heading out to the gather they would all be bouncing along at a trot shaking their bones and i would be sitting up there on pepper rocking in my chair like a baby. man he made me feel good.he wasnt the cat quick cutting horse type for pushing and sorting cattle but he had the persistence and patience to get the job done.he had the heart to go anywhere i asked him no matter how tough, he would never balk or back down. when it came to roping and dragging calves to the fire he would always get me in position to throw a good loop and he could pull any critter i caught. man he made me feel good. when he got old i didnt ride him any more.i didnt use him for any thing more than just to see him and bring the memories of all the miles ridden together that make me feel good. so my good horse died today. i guess it doesnt matter much to anyone but me. but man it makes me feel bad. 
Woke up Monday morning to the news that two fugitives were holed up somewhere around Big Twig. They were on the run and had abandoned their car and headed into the hills. At around Noon, word was that they might be heading South on the Boulder Road. That’s a mile from the ranch.
Christo Cows
The Clues are in the Conversation
A few months ago on a website an Australian called the U.S. a “mediocre country”. There are a lot of USAians who would take an exception to that. In fact, most presidents wax eloquent about how the U.S. is the only indispensable nation. Of course, that would make all other countries dispensable. And most countries would take an exception to that.
I often say when speaking to Europeans that the U.S. is an unsophisticated country and not all that smart although most USAians think they are super smart. It’s kind of like being sophomores in the history of the world. We think we know everything. But prime examples of being not so smart is that the U.S. doesn’t have some kind of universal health care system or a decent pension system. It also has stopped making practical stuff and thinks that gambling is the answer to almost everything.
One big reason for this lack of sophistication and smarts is that we don’t engage in dialogue except on rare Websites that have civil discourse or at a town meeting. A lot of USAians talk amongst people who they agree with rather than at “a town meeting” or cafe or watering hole where one must look neighbors in the face and try to make a point and to try to see their point. The French, on the other hand, have their cafe society. They do their duty as citizens by talking “politics”. (“Politics” is a discussion, not a shouting match, of the way we wish to live our lives and what we enjoy and what gives our lives meaning. It has little to do with our politicians who seem to not have a clue or simply not care what the polis is or wants.). The French leave work and go out to a cafe and argue about life and art. They engage in conversation and often use dialectics in search of clues to the mysteries of life. Or at least that’s the way it used to be. When I was in grad school at the University of Michigan, after play rehearsal we would go to a bar, order pitchers of beer and discuss how we would save the world through art. When I did Off-Off Broadway theater in New York City, we would adjourn to an Irish pub around the corner from the theater and argue about the choices our characters should make. We loved to look at all the angles and the contradictions.
But somewhere along the line those personal confrontations became fewer and fewer and didn’t seem to translate into our public lives as citizens. Historian Christopher Lasch in his book “Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy” has a chapter called “The Lost Art of Argument”. In it he writes that “what Democracy requires is vigorous public debate, not information. Yes, we do need information, but information that is “generated only be debate.” So he kind of takes the “information revolution” and turns it on its head. Information in and of itself is worthless without being debated. “Information , usually seen as the pre-condition of debate is better understood as a by-product.”
And how do we gather these clues to the mysteries of life? By asking questions. We try to have what Suzuki calls “the beginner’s mind that is not a closed mind.” We take our ideas and subject them to somebody else’s arguments. If we passionately engage with an eagerness to learn, we may instead of changing somebody else’s mind find that we have changed our mind. So we must listen carefully and be willing to challenge our own beliefs and to say “Maybe what I believe may be wrong.” How exciting and far less dull than passively taking in information from some newspaper or from some pundit.
Lasch gives a shout out to the social historian Ray Oldenburg’s “The Great Good Place” and with Oldenburg mourns the passing of the local watering hole, the cafe, the hair salon, the soda fountain steps and other places between work and home where conversations used to flourish. These were places like the soda fountain steps where kids listened to their fathers debate a local policy with vigor and good-hearted disagreement. Those places where professions mingled as equals are hard to find in the suburbs, but they still exist in small towns and big cities. I was lucky to spend the last twenty years in a small town where wisdom came from caring for cows and not from a book. It came from stories and tall tales told with gusto like the one about a cowboy being out lost in the cold with only two dogs for a Three Dog Night.
Democracy dies if we hide in cul de sacs furtively taking anxiety meds as we peer out of the drawn blinds or retreat to cocktail parties where everybody is of the same class and tows the same party line. So I suggest this year that you get out and find a Cheers bar in your neighborhood and strike up a conversation with somebody who may see things differently than you do. If you don’t have one of those, then go to the nearest town that has one and adopt it as your own. And for heaven’s sake don’t get your information from a newspaper. You can get your questions there though. But also think about this. There may be no answers anyway, only clues.
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Posted in Social Commentary
Tagged conversation, politics, society