 Okay. Good evening, everybody. Welcome to another edition of Virtual Playhouse from the Bedford Playhouse. My name is Dan. I'm the Director of Development and Programming. I'm coming to you actually from the Playhouse tonight. We have a really great program, the latest installment of our author series with a great conversation on a book, Horse Crazy by Sarah Maslin Neer. Before I introduce our moderator and guest for tonight, just a couple of quick things for those of you who may be still not quite used to zoom in the age of COVID. There is a Q&A button, which you can find at the bottom of your screen if you are on a PC or laptop. I believe it's at the top of your screen if you are on a iPad or your phone. Please feel free at any point during the conversation to post a question in the Q&A forum. There will be some time at the end when Sarah will take your questions and feel free to make comments, post thoughts, anything you'd like to engage with. Please use that feature. Refrain if you don't mind from using the chat feature that tends to get things a little confusing. So the Q&A will be where we'll be focusing to take your questions. I want to just mention very briefly that the Bedford Playhouse is currently open in restricted capacity and observing all of the proper protocols for safety and cleanliness. If you are so inclined, please visit our website. We have some great programs, both virtual and live coming up over the next several months. We're still in something of a delicate period with regards to our operations. So if you enjoy tonight's program and you'd like to see us continue to do more things like it. Please consider before you shut down your devices, making a contribution to the Playhouse, which you can do via our website, which is bedfordplayhouse.org. And any amount is appreciated. We're offering memberships. We're doing some culinary events, a whole slew of different things, trying to sort of diversify for our audience a little bit. So that being said, I want to introduce tonight's moderator. I'm going to forgive me for reading this because it's very impressive and I want to make sure that I give it its due for her accomplishments. Diane Lloyd Roth, her first word was horse, and she started riding at the age of six. She graduated from the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia, with a double major in economics and political science. The best opportunity for her first employment out of college was retail. She learned the retail business in a boutique in New York, Pennsylvania, and then was hired away to open a boutique in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where she fine tuned her skills. She was hired by Jager of London to open stores for them, which culminated in the opening of their flagship store on 57th Street in New York City. In 1985, she opened her own high-end boutique, La Moire in New Canaan, Connecticut. She introduced Donna Karen, Richard Tyler, Giorgio Armani, and many other quality retail designers to Fairfield County. In 1990, she expanded into the estate jewelry business. She continues to consult with personal clients in state jewelry, personnel styling after closing her retail store last year. She's dressed clients for the Oscars, the Tonys, the Emmys, the White House, and Buckingham Palace. She's also been quoted in the New York Times, New York Post, various other magazines, newspapers, and online on dressing for special occasions, as well as how to invest in a state jewelry. Please welcome to the program, Diane Lloyd Roth. Hi, Diane. Hi, Dan. How are you? Great. The floor is yours. I want to thank you and the Bedford Playhouse for asking me to do this. My lifelong love of horses made the book a great read and it's such a great opportunity to have a conversation with Sarah and to talk about this extraordinary book that is not just about horses. I think that's the people, if you're allergic to horses, afraid of horses, never been on a horse. This is a great book to read. It's such an amazing compilation of her life and growing up, and every, I said she should have named it after her father's favorite opera, but she turned victorious instead of horse crazy because she certainly has on many levels in this. So, you know, I'd like to introduce Sarah so we can have a conversation with an extraordinary woman. I was waiting in the wings of the opera. I feel very glamorous. It's me. Thank you so much for the lovely introduction. Well, you so deserve it. The book is a fantastic read. And I think the thing I want everyone listening to understand is not just about horses. It's about an extraordinary life. And you say in the book how you failed and then you succeeded that every failure of yours led to success. And I think that's an important lesson for all of us. You know, don't give up. And you've certainly overcome, you know, some incredible physical with horse mishaps and bad ones, which all of us who ride have certain sympathy for, as well as, you know, being attacked in New York and covering, having old tea parents who were extraordinarily famous and growing up in that shadow, but making a way for yourself. I mean, the book is impressive. And it's a very good read. So I want I who read constantly it's a great reads everyone run out and buy it to all my friends to buy it. I should make a run for it. I want to tell everyone I'm wearing first of all my horse crazy neck gator, a couple different brands partnered with the book but I'm outside on the street believe it or not in Los Angeles, where I'm about to head and this is for the real diehard horse and the people in the crowd to Monty Roberts his own ranch the man who listens to horses, the 85 original 85 year old original horse whisperer, we're actually going to be collaborating on a super secret special project. So I've just landed. And I'm out here in LA, squeezing this important talk in before I had to meet the legend. I'm really so jealous. I'm terribly jealous you lucky lucky person. But the book is I like the way you set it out with horses your chapters are named for horses. And I think for women, you know women have an unusual and close relationship with horses. You know, are close to our fathers and I often wonder and maybe you can talk on this if sometimes we seek the horses because they're big and they're protective and they're warm and, you know, if we have a father figure. When we're growing up it's a big kind of looming person. So, maybe that was some of the connection. And I think that a little bit in the book as you rightly point out you know I grew up in New York City. It's a very unusual background for being so horse obsessed. And yet I endlessly sought them out. I ended up as a teenager becoming a mounted parks enforcement officer in Central Park patrolling on horseback. I taught riding lessons at a actually a stable on an island in the middle of the Harlem River. And I really try to unpack in the book as you say it's about so much more than horses. It was I so inexorably, ineluctably drawn to them. And I realized in unpacking that it has a lot to do with my father. I'm not exactly in the way you mentioned, but but related so I'm the daughter of immigrants. My father was a Holocaust survivor. He was born in 1930 he was a little old man by the time I was born. And I always wanted to sort of have the protection. And I realized of being part of this upper crust this class this Ralph Lauren created world, and I wanted to subsume myself in it, much like my father had tried to hide as an Aryan during the Holocaust, I wanted to really fit into this elite world. And I pursued male figures who were the American father I never had my father spectator sport was opera, you know, and I really, you know, kind of cruel manly man trainers that almost as a compulsion to fill up that void exactly what you're speaking of to try to insert myself both in American identity and in that quintessential American family that I didn't have. But what I loved about your father is how he felt when he got you that first horse. He had one he took his recreation money and said, we must buy something he didn't buy the horseman but we must get something luxurious. Yeah, not that wonderful rug that to say you know to the Germans, I won I defeated 80 million Germans, and under his breath I have this carpet I can walk on with to fully flesh out the anecdote you're speaking of. My father ended up applying for reparations from the German government. And when they got the measly some, you know, my father said the blood money from them. My mother said, well, let's use it to fix our car. Let's, you know, put it towards something we need and my father couldn't stand the idea that he had needed help from the Germans for anything. He wanted to express that he had persevered without them. So he said the only thing that we could get was something luxurious something we don't need and they bought this oriental carpet as you mentioned, and his favorite part was that he could step on the Germans all the time. But in a way that relates to writing because it was such a luxury luxury to have it's such a luxurious sport, and my father, the best, not revenge, but the statement that he was not an erasable person as he had people had tried to erase my people from this planet was in living well, and in pursuing these trappings of the elite, not because it was posh, but because it meant I am here, and I'm part of this. Living well is the best revenge. And I think he recognized that and I love the story about when he was in the stands at the Hampton Classic, and you go in and you ride this wonderful round but you're thinking I don't fit it's not my horses and has posh is a lot of drivers and you leave and he watches all the rounds, and he accepts your, you got second place and there he is a Polish immigrant survivor he goes up and gets your rosette. So I told that story actually at my father's funeral and I only realized the significance of that story in my life. I had competed in this very prestigious horse show. I was sure I didn't belong there I was a nobody so I left after I competed put my horse away, but my dad who knew nothing about horses stood by that ring the entire day, making in the sun. And as you say when they called in the winner circle, all the horses trotted in and my little old dad trotted in, and he took that second place ribbon from the judge, and he put it on his chest and he turned to the judge and he said, I defeated Hitler. Yeah. And that moment for him was that, as you say his favorite opera was Aida and the net the favorite aria from that is return of venture tour return of the victor, and for him success was returning victorious. But my father, and I had a tense relationship around this passion of mine, because for my family, who was all about achievement in very specific zones riding was unimportant to them. This year I had this passion that wasn't newspaper bylines that wasn't Ivy League degrees, and was really to them insignificant. So there was a lot of tension between my passion for this and what they wanted for me. And ultimately I realized that passions can align and actually dad I'll tell you something. I only came out as a horse girl, about two years ago. I kept totally secret because of this statement from my family that it wasn't valuable. It wasn't a value. And then I was speaking to a friend about what I wanted to write about. I wanted to tell my colleagues because I would be seen as maybe not tough, not hard minded enough to tackle these very difficult subjects that I tackle as a news reporter. If I reveal that I love pony so much. And my friend said to me, Sarah, he said, passion translates. That's all that matters. If you want to write about this subject. People will get that it's a passion and that is what writing is about and that's what literature is about and making people feel. It's an accolade that the whole world cares about if it's something you care about people will get it. Well I love the part where after your father died you're showing, and your mother's there, and your mother finally recognizes what the horses mean to you and actually buys you trend spotter. Yeah, wonderful horse and you said it was finally a connection that she understood at last your passion may not have under stills thought horses halters were collars. I finally had that connection to you, which I thought was great. Thank you in the book I didn't quite realize it was going to be such a personal book. I had originally pitched it to Simon and Schuster as an almanac of the horses that I've met around the world when I'm investigating stuff and reporting for the times my secret is that when I'm done I put down my notebook and I go find the horses, and I hadn't picked this almanac of horse crazy horse crazy people just like me. My editor said, you know, horses are personal. And, and this is your story and I realized when you look at a dog or a cat right we both have dogs, they make you go like oh how cute. But when you look at a horse, you feel something kind of like looking at a mountain range or the sea rolling in. The story to me speaks to the emotional personal feelings that horses and gender, and I realized that the horses. The story of horses was my personal story. And what you're alluding to with my family. I end up speaking about how I come from a very fractured family. I have three brothers who are much older than me I'm the last in a new marriage. And they don't love me, and they don't have any relationships with me. And I write in the book, having no, having brothers you don't have is harder than having no brothers at all. And, again, that's what drew me to these animals, because horses would always need me, always be there for me, I could sit in their stall for hours and tell them the stories that I longed for my family to listen to. And among them, I could belong to a herd in the way I didn't really belong to my family. And that's that great story when you're on the plane when you go as a horse groom, and then you're coming in for the landing and the three horses, hang their heads out and press into you because they're frying as one of them and they're joining with you and saying, you know, are we going to make it and horses are herd animals and people aren't around them don't recognize they're also a flight animal. They run away they don't stand and fight except for occasional stallion. But I think it's you convey that a lot that you know you can become part of their tribe or herd, which is great. And, you know, he says that horses make one demand of humans, which is that you are their safe place to be. And horses became my safe place to be. And in that mutually reinforcing relationship, I found my tribe. And in the book, what you're referring to is I decided I would pull all the threads of horses in my life to their logical place. So I have this Dutch warm blood called trendsetter. He's, I realized he's Dutch. How the hell do I have a Dutch creature in New York City. So I pulled that thread and I went on a horse importing Odyssey and actually flew in the belly of a 747 with three horses. And turns out the only thing you need to fly with horses is snacks. As long as they have a million snacks, they're happy with whatever it is. The prey creature the herd before it's designed to be constantly eating and if it's constantly eating it's in a safe place. But the one thing Diane that they, where it breaks down is you can't tell them what's happening to their body when you're starting to land. So they're perfectly happy flying and all of a sudden they're like what is it why are my ears popping. What are these butterflies in my stomach and you can't say oh no no don't work. So in that moment when the landing gear came out these three horses pressed under me in the way that they do with a dam into her utter when they're falls. And I realized at that moment they didn't see me as human as in control they saw me as part of their world. And it was one of the most profound moments I ever had standing in this horse box in a cargo hold plummeting through the sky. And the horses spoke to me in horse language and I it sounds fluffy, but they have a very specific system of gestures that they use one another and here they use it with me, and it was probably the, the moment of feeling I belong most in this world. I thought it was great. The other down the chapter I thought was the funniest was on the briar horses. At that convention, and the descriptions of the people and the horses said, no they're not all the same and how you go in thinking oh you know these are a bunch of crazies but then as you get into it you realize they're their own people they're individuals they love Did you have briars Diane. No, I had, you know, I never had briars I'm older than yet, but I had a shorts. Oh yeah, whole horse that I love they had little wheels and that was as close as I got. So the nominati it's here briar is a plastic model horse, and I used to collect them when I was younger my family couldn't afford horses but briars were the horses that were accessible. And so I, I got them every Hanukkah every birthday. And there used to be these things called photo shows where you could send in a picture of your briar, you know, posed in the yard like it was in a field. And it turns out it has become a worldwide phenomenon, but people do live shows with these bite sized plastic horses. So this I had to see for myself. So I pulled my obsession with those plastic horses with logical thread and just logical conclusion. And I went to one of those model conventions, and to my shock Diane, it wasn't children playing with them. But you know, I really got my comeuppance in that chapter because I came into that convention center. And by the way, they groom them, they put them in stables, it's, it's the real thing. And the real thing. And I came in really in violation of the tenets of being a good journalist, I came in full of judgment job is to stay loose with my conceptions of what's right and wrong and what reality is my job is to absorb process and then present. I didn't do that. I came in thinking, these aren't real horses. How could this give you joy? In what way are you winning anything? Also, mind you, they're competing identical manufactured plastic horses against identical ones. It's not like they paint them and make designs. They're competing out of the box. But I really, I really got my comeuppance because as I spent the day with them, I realized that here were people doing something I so rarely am able to do, which is not care with other people. They totally don't care. They just embrace their joy and so much of my relationship to riding and why I was compelled to be part of the sport was about presenting a certain type of American, a certain type of being in the world. And these people did what I could not, which was be free and joyful with those horses that became so real to them. And so I, I loved it. I bought a plastic one when I on my way home. Yeah, I said, when you go out, you said you picked one out of the bin. I thought it was great, but I also loved when you talk about being on the park patrol and when you go for the triumph. Yeah, you on this huge draft horse, and you're there trying to get the horse to move trying and you're hitting and it's just standing there like and you're thinking, I failed, I failed. And when it goes, you're hired, you're like, what? Well, the horse didn't go backwards. Well, you touched on that in the beginning with your intro that a lot of my road to achievement has been through failure. And I'm a journalist, a professional writer who can't spell. And I was always told in these elite circles that I grew up in and these posh private schools that it was because I was lazy and dumb. And I really thought to myself, I'm really sure I'm not lazy and I think I'm not done but like, I just can't spell maybe they're right. And so I really struggled, I failed throughout high school. I got a D in English, you know as a writer who's a scandal. And so when I took that test for the parks department, and they put me on this giant draft horse in the middle of a actually one of the wonders of the world I call it a stable on 89 street in Manhattan that the horses walked up stairs. And I lived on the fourth floor of that description. And I couldn't, as you said, make the horse go. And I got off that horse and returned the reins to the Ranger and actually got off right on the mounting block where it got on because he really hadn't moved for half an hour. And I thought, you failed again. And she said to me, actually this horse normally flies backwards with people, you prevented him from moving at all. Welcome to the mounted unit. And it was really a moment for me that failure isn't always the end failure. I still can't spell. And it's made me that much more cautious with my work that much more scrupulous that much more intense. I did a big investigations into nail salons in New York City. That was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2016. And it got a tremendous amount of pushback from people who didn't want it to be true that these workers are being exploited. But because of my issues with spelling, I have been so scrupulous with every note I had translations in English and Chinese and Korean, and I had every iota marked down because of my anxiety about my failures that actually the story ended up robust and was impossible to impeach. And so that writing lesson and that lesson the Ranger taught me really was about failure as part of a process. The other story like as you went to Vogue went through all the layers up. That's a great failure. That's my favorite. In illustrating that point I described getting a job interview at Vogue and I went through five layers of interviews ended up 32 girls and then end up me and one other girl. And I wrote, she only though she was happy instead of she only thought she was happy on the test. And when they asked me what the, what why did that I said well you know I'm not perfect. Well, Vogue is of my interview. And as I left I realized Diane I was sobbing, not with sadness that I missed that job, but with relief that my life had seemed laid out in one direction that you know, nobody turns down a job at Vogue. And I realized that it had opened up paths for me by that door being closed and so failure is a tremendous part of my life unfortunately or fortunately, but it's really a process to embrace and also Diane writing as you know because you're a passionate equestrian is mostly about failing. Oh my God yes. That's what makes it so compelling that it's impossible to really master. It isn't I was talking to someone at the barn and we're training a young horse and I said, and she's saying oh you know I haven't been able to get him to this level. I said but writing is about evolving. Yes, never going to know it all but you're going to keep evolving closer. Like I do dressage now because when you're young you bounce when you're old you break so no more leaping over fences, but it's true we're always with horses evolving. And you have like you know the number of horses you've had each very distinct, very different personalities very different ways of trying to get them to do what you want them to do, which is achievable. But it's you know the book was great in capturing that I loved the horse that was afraid of plastic bags. Yeah, you know the fascinating thing and what makes so endlessly compelling about this sport is, I don't want to use the word partnership. I think that that is a little euphemistic because partnership implies to people to entities that are in it for the same reasons and the horses very much subject to our will. I wouldn't call it a partnership. I, in some ways it's an enslavement and I battle with that ethical dilemma in the book as well. But that imbalance in that relationship and those characters and personalities make it manifestly important that we have a respect for the animal and that we try to give it back what we take from it. And I'll be a little more specific. Horses can't exist without humans. The idea of a wild horse is a fiction. Horses died out on the American continent 10,000 years ago. The mass extinction that they don't know why it happened. There's no such thing as an indigenous horse except the prezwalski wild horse in Mongolia, and they were reintroduced by Spanish conquistadors. And when we have this idea of a horse wild and free, the truth is we've constructed them so they're big and we can sit on their backs but that means they have spindly little legs that aren't good for holding up for a lifetime of work. We've created ruminants who stay stalled all the time so they get a lot of stomach issues that can kill them. And I think that ethic of responsibility for the creature that we've created that has been the perfect complement to humankind is really important to keep forefront of mind. And I think it makes you a better person caring for something larger than yourself. Well, also that wonderful passage about Shinkantin Island, the two sisters who, you know, you're having a, and they had, you can buy the ponies and return them to the wild. Yeah, you're having a conversation thinking, well, how is that your pony you can't ride it you can't groom it you can't, and then you realize, well what they've done is give it the pony a level of freedom that they're still cared for. But it was an epiphany that, you know, yes I have horses I ride, but they actually gave a horse its freedom. And they have a horse in the truest sense of a horse, what we imagine about an animal I say that the horse is the American flag in equid form, right. And that ties to this fantasy we have about our identity, and those girls who bought their pony only to set it free on the preserve of Shinkantin Island. They maybe have what it really means to have a horse, which is that boundlessness. I do want to speak to you and about identity and horses, because as a Jew I always felt like I was an interloper in this equestrian world that was the Kennedys, not mine. And my dad would always say, I'd say, you know, this is Ralph Lauren's world he created this. And my dad would say, don't you mean Ralph elitists. And that's Ralph Lauren's real name, his original name is new from Queens like me. And that spoke to me that identity is what you create, and that can be crafted. And part of the exploration into identity. I talked about black cowboys in the book. Because I worked for a black cowboy in Harlem, and turns out Diane one in four cowboys in the American West were black. Yeah, I was surprised. But during the pioneer and they've been totally erased from literature and from the silver screen by racism, because as the great cowboy black cowboy historian William Lauren Katz incidentally also a Jew from New York told me. She said, if black people came into the American cowboy story, they came at the end of a whip and in chains. And that's not the America people wanted to remember about ourselves, because the cowboy supposed to represent the best of American identity. And so in the book I actually went to Texas riding with a postman, who's been resurrecting life savings the story of the black cowboy in the black cowboy museum. And that's a lot of commonality with people erased from the narrative. And the truth is we make our own narratives. Yeah. Well that's it. And you say that at the end of the book which I said you was my favorite passage when you're talking about recognizing when you're on the hunt. And that's when the energy comes up to you and, you know, recognizing what your father had meant, but you have a passage you said that epitomizes to you you wanted to read about, you know, in your book that is your favorite. I do, I do, and I love the past you chose it's the end of the book but I didn't want to do any spoilers so I And it would be great if people could queue up their questions because I think I'll read this part and then this will be our last bit of our schmooze and take some audience questions was that what we decided. Sounds perfect. So, Diana and I both are writers and we know what it feels like to be lent their power, because that's what riding a horse is, I say on my own. Two legs I'm Sarah lent for more I'm permittable. So I wanted to read this passage that really I hope expresses what it feels like when horses lend their power to us mere mortals. So this is about riding this type of horse if you can see its ears are curlicue on the cover. It's called a Marwari horse it's indigenous to India. There's a secret that can't be exported, but there's one woman on Martha's Vineyard who smuggled 12 of them in an unconventional way. She's a chapter in the book I won't. I won't give it away. Anyway, so I will read about my first time riding a Marwari in Rajasthan when I was on assignment. After the assignment I was not assigned to ride a horse with the Marwari galloped at an impossible speed, bunching and coiling underneath me, the brown and white stallion was a blur. I can see earth dropped beneath us and the undulating tail of the undulating trail whipped through the pulverized rock of the quarry and dipped and rose and rippled my horse's body billowed and constricted with every oscillation of the terrain. In front of us, the black horse's hopes flicked in and out of the dust flaring up behind that stallion and the cavalry officer mounted on him before us. He was loud with a rat attack clatter of hoax on unmind marble, then a rumbling of distant thunder when they hit soft packed dirt. The officer ahead of me darted back a glance over his shoulder as we careened down a slope, and I realized he was checking to see if I was still on by divine grace somehow I was. Then he went faster. He knocked out of me as my stallion whipped through the hot air. He was going too fast for me to inhale, blasting into the air so that it compressed and felt almost solid, too thick to gasp. Tears from the wind of our flight streamed from my eyes, the flesh of my cheeks flattened against the pressure as this stallion tore into the atmosphere. Then, he went faster. At the edge of a green marble ravine the officer pulled up, and my horse dropped from flight to an easy walk without a hint of a jolt. The man pulled a beat up flask of water from a saddlebag and reached across the space between his perspiring black horse and my sweating painted one to pass it to me. I spilled some out on the fur to cool my horse's shoulders before taking a deep glug. The officer grinned at me, and I saw in his face, the democratizing effect of a shared passion. We can speak the same language, and we were worlds apart, but in the saddle we were peers. I peered through that heart-shaped gap in the world above my stallion's mane, and we stood on the edge of the marble crater. We four were silent then. The officer and me, full of the ecstasy of a horse's pure power, loaned to us mere mortars for a moment we hope will never end. Holding his red beret to his head with one hand, the officer tipped back the canteen to his lifts. The water ran from both ends of his white mustache to rain on the exquisite horse beneath him. Neither minded at all. Well, the best part of that passage is in the beginning when you leave and the man in charge of the horse says, you know Gallop. The only word he spoke in English to his cavalry officer was no Gallop. When we got around a corner and I went Gallop. I love that. And let me try to see if I really could. It was the best. Oh, thank you. Oh my God. Do we have any questions? Yes, we do. Someone saying that she appreciated the fact you didn't shy away from some of the cruelty of the horse world, found it to be fully honest book about it. You know, thank you for saying that because I ended up after I outed myself as a horse curl. I ended up applying some of my question knowledge to my journalism, and I did two large exposés on really mythic figures in the sport Jimmy Williams who's deceased and George Morris who's living and he's sort of the living legend. He's, if you imagine Babe Ruth and Tom Brady together. That's George Morris stature in the horse world and Olympic coach and gold medalist and a pedophile. I ended up doing a large expose and he was banned from the sport for life because of my work a year and a half ago. And I received a tremendous amount of pushback there where I stand with George groups because people couldn't bear to see this legend this luminary in the horse world revealed for what he truly was and they didn't want to believe it. And people asked me you know you love this for why are you revealing this Sarah and I said because I love it. It demands if you love something we demand it be excellent. And I revealed it's dark side, because I know it can be so much more and so I really never shy away from those discussions even in things I love and cherish deeply so thank you for saying that that was a hard moment. I was shopping for a horse with my trainer and some people wouldn't do business with us because of what I had written. You're very balanced in the book about talking about the good and the bad of the sport, which is as it's grown it's gotten better but when you talk about the training methods of one of the trainers that you work for and you know really how horrifically cruel you are to the jumpers. Yeah and I participated in as a young girl. I was instructed to remove the water buckets from my horse's stall the night before a competition so they would be quiet. And I think about it now I am talking about it and I have goosebumps it fills me with heart that I wouldn't let my horse tried her heart out for me for August day slaker thirst for you know 24 30 hours. And at the time, I thought, these are people with illustrious equestrian pedigrees, who am I I miss interloper it felt wrong, but I didn't have the confidence in myself to step up, and I have reported my way into understanding horses, far better. And I think become a better person because of it. I think they do make us a better person. You know, if you're in caring of them and understand like you said how dependent, they are on us. You know, and we gain as much as they do maybe more from a relationship. Let's get some more questions you're all quiet they're 23 of you. Come on, speak up list I asked all the questions I want some questions. If they haven't typed any to me so you know I've been doing something really interesting lately Diane I've been working with a therapeutic riding organization in New York City called Gallup NYC. And it has really helped me understand the compelling nature of horses, because they have these children, some of them are teenagers who've never even lifted a spoon to their own lips on with their own power. They're actually in a wheelchair, they're seated, always below everyone. And on a horse is the first time they're tall is the first time they feel even the horse is moving that they're moving on their own impulsion. And what that does for your mind, you know, every teenager, even one deeply physically compromised by cerebral palsy is still a teenager, you know, they don't want mom to wash their hair, you know, leave me alone mom. The horse gives its this gift of its power. And if that's so compelling for me, you know who is able bodied, what, what does it mean for somebody who has no power. And you said about young girls and horses, initially women and horses, I think they're so compelling to young girls in particular, because in no other arena in a little girl's life, is she in control of something so large and powerful right and what's less in control than a little girl, you know, and here 1200 pounds will listen and respect her. And that's compelling and powerful. It's also a sport where we are completely equal with men, you know, in riding. Yes, not only do male and female horses compete equally against each other, it's the only Olympic sport where men and women compete equally. And Christine just asked, Diane, I want to shout out Christine because she's the one who invited me here. And Christine was a source as a journalist who has become an admired friend. I really respect what Christine does in making the world a better place so love you Christine. Actually you speak about veterans and equine therapy. I'll talk a little bit about something that happened to me that I read about in the book. When I, in 2010 I was sleeping in my apartment in the West Village and a man came through the window and stabbed me. And he was trying to rob me and he ended up stealing some stuff thankfully that's all that happened to me because normally in those instances the police told me you die. And after that happened, I started to hear the world incredibly loudly. I couldn't shut off any ambient noise because I was hyper vigilant it's a type of post traumatic stress disorder. I was always listening for danger. And in speaking with Monty Roberts, he told me that that's the baseline of horses that horses are hyper vigilant in this world, because they are only pray. And I couldn't turn the world off and horses helped me learn to communicate with silence because they only speak to each other in a language of gestures. You know they're winning on TV right? But that's not, we both know that's not how they really communicate. And they helped me quiet down the world again. And ultimately I realized that a horse doesn't have a choice to be a prey creature, but I do. And so Christine's question about veterans, they're very valuable in with veterans and post traumatic stress disorder actually that's what the class I'm going to work with Monty this weekend is is Mustangs who've never been handled by people are going to be gentle by veterans, because by quieting down their minds and the animals minds, these fragile creatures both human and horse can heal each other. And so it's a very valuable therapy for post traumatic stress disorder. It's why I'm able to walk around in the world. It's amazing. Now we have another question. Do you think some people are just born horse crazy. This is from Katie. The story, like you the stories my mother tells me if my love for horses start when I was two or three, but how could someone so young know and why don't we outgrow it. So Katie, I sort of push back against the idea of essentialism with horses right that you that one person is a horse crazy and another person may found it late in life and isn't because when you read the book, you know, it's all about finding your place. So, I sort of, I reject that that there's such thing as a person who's horse crazy or person who's horsey. I think we come at it for so many different reasons. And in trying to understand that exact question Katie became this book. And I engage with lots of people about their, their reasons sometimes it's because they were broken and horses healed them. Sometimes it's because they were lonely, and didn't have a place and horses became a herd. Sometimes it's because they needed power. Other times because it's horses have big amber eyes and look at you with so much more behind them than just a reflection. The question are some people who are crazy. I think even those people playing with plastic horses who never touched a real horse in their life have just as much status as the other horse crazies in the world. Another one this is from Bonnie Masslin. Why do you think girls predominate the sport of riding but men end up dominating the sport in the highest levels in the competitive world of riding. The question mom. I've actually been talking about this with her she's a little bit of a ringer. It's it's unclear. I've actually been looking into the numbers a young man just won a very prestigious competition the McClay equitation finals which is judged subjectively, and I looked back since 1938 38% sorry 1933 38% of winners of McClay finals have been male. And then I looked at the numbers of how many young men there are in the sport under 18. 34% of the sport on males and 38% of the young males when so there's something up there. That's subjectively judged I think we have to look at the patriot patriarchy on ponies and type of decisions it makes just make I think we have to think about equitation, which is the discipline of conforming to ideal standard. It comes from the cavalry. So the ideals of the cavalry are male, flat back when you don't have breasts to hunt your shoulders or thighs, a long lean leg when you don't have a female phenotypic thighs. So I think we have to unpack this. So, the patriarchy is invasive everywhere. Why are there so few black writers, it's a soul searching the sport is doing right now. You know, some people say it's an economic thing, but there are plenty of rich black people who are not doing the sport to and what messages are coming across. So, investigating the sport again is what's going to make it better and I'm going to keep doing it. And here's another from Laura Tiramani. Where do you see your journey with horses going what's next. Laura. I could have never imagined the journey horses have taken me on so far from the belly of a 747 to a seaman smuggling rare Indian horse dealer to galloping with the black cowboys to swimming with the ponies of Shinketeague to sitting here in LA about to say, Monty Roberts the legend. I can't answer it horses are a journey and a gift and being in their presence is, is a journey and an adventure. And we never give them back that gift. I will say I'm working on a super special secret project with Monty so watch this space. Here's another one. Have you from MSA. Have you ever felt intimidated by a horse at the start of your relationship with horses. If so, how did you overcome that and find your voice. Yeah, I start the book. That's a great question. MSA. I start the book. And maybe we should take one more after this and wrap it up. Does that work for Diane. I start the book at two years old. I got on my first horse. It was probably to, I should have been writing a pony but my mom talked some people into letting me astride their full grown horse. And I fell off it almost immediately. I was a chanter because I was sure I was a cowgirl. And it's on a lunch line which is a long lead that goes sort of an around delay when you're learning to ride, and it kept cannery and I kept lying there. And I should have been squished, but instead it jumped over me. And rightly or wrongly, that lesson of watching the horse soar above my little head imprinted on me this idea that horses would always save me. I would always be my safe place. That's not been true. I've broken my vertebrae multiple times on horses. I've been fucked off. I've been bitten. I haven't been kicked, interestingly. I'm sure. Yeah, yeah, it won't happen. I'm working with Mustangs this weekend. It's definitely not going to happen. But when you say how did you overcome that and find your voice with them. That misunderstands a little bit the relationship with horses, because it's not about having a voice with them. It's about listening. If you move your body in a way that listens to what the horse's body language is telling you, if you behave among them as a peer, you don't need to be intimidated because you're accepted. There's actually a person I know I couldn't bathe my horse when she was in the barn, because her energy is off and the horse became volatile. And when you recalibrate your language and you're listening with a horse, they don't become compliant. They become your herdmate. And there's nothing to be intimidated from a member of your herd, just like your family. So the last one is. Not a question. Yeah, she's just saying she it's been a joy and thank you. I have a question for you, Diane. Yes. Why do you love horses? And then you can ask it back. The reason I love horses is that when you're on the back of a horse, your mind is totally clear of all the garbage, all the rumblings. Your focus is on what you're doing and the connection to the horse and I find it like you. I was always high energy and my parents were always like looking for something to get me into that would and horses calm me. It is probably the most calm in my day that I have is when I'm on the back of a horse. Very interestingly, there's a biographer of Donald Trump, who told my colleague Michael Barber out something in the interview and Michael called me after you know who does the daily and Michael called me was like you got to hear this. And he is very, very type a person, and he took up riding, because like you it's the only time his mind blanks. And his postulate on why was because the rocking motion of the horse replicates the rocking of the womb. And it's the only time as an adult that were rocked like we were the first nine months of our lives. And that brings you back to a very primal state. And I thought that was fascinating and I put it in my book. But, but yes, the quieting of the mind, especially for high intensity people is, is very valuable in the book my answer to that question Diane is because horses. Because to me they seem like just an inevitability. I don't question my love for them any more than breathing in or breathing out, then I question that. But I think for all of us on this call. Anytime you have a passion. It deserves investigation and gets only richer by that. And so I invite people to ask themselves why do I love horses or why do I love anything I love. It's a great exploration and you might just get a book out of it. The book is wonderful. I can't emphasize enough that there are so many levels to read it on. And it is just a discovery and I think for all of us it when you read it you start thinking about parent relationships, animal relationships, family and then succeeding I think there are a lot of really good messages in it and I'm so grateful to have had this opportunity. Oh, thank you. And I just want to shout out the Bedford Playhouse and also book see which is a shop in Bedford that's carrying this shop local it's such a difficult time support places that throw events like this, you know, give your money to the Bedford Playhouse shop at Bedford Playhouse if you want to buy the book, because, you know, Amazon isn't hosting these lovely zoom meetings or we need community more than ever and so a credit to Bedford Playhouse for creating community, even virtually thank you so much. We need our herd. Yeah, we need our herd exactly. Thank you. And thank you. Thank you. Bye everybody.