I thought this was settled in the war before this war. Equality. This winter, around the fireplaces, there is hot debate in the high houses and the lowlands about equality. Who shall have it; who is unworthy. After all, the firebrands say, man was given dominion over the lesser animals.
When I was a boy, once a month, my father, brothers, and I took the farm wagon thirteen miles to Fredericksburg for supplies. While there we would take the Rappahannock Bridge to visit my aunt across the river near the ferry farm. On one winter crossing, we heard a crashing and splashing from below the bridge; a horse had bolted, turning a wagon, its dry goods, and its driver into the icy river. I turned to my father, but he was already out of our wagon and running to the river. He jumped in the frigid water to pull out whatever life was struggling there. He did not weigh the merits of the man or the equality. Whether the drowning there was a man, woman, light, dark, two-legged, or four, life was leaving and my father was there to pull it back. I am convinced the firebrands would let a majority drown without a second thought on the matter, but where I was raised, life, all life was precious and was not ours to rule or roll over.
Where I was raised, everyone works hard; the man and boy, the woman and girl, the draft horse, the bee, the bird in the wood; all have equal worth. At day’s end, we all eat and sleep, appreciated for our contribution. Not one is thought to be the lesser being.
If man was given dominion over all animals, no one told the crows.
~Michael Douglas Jones
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