How a Donkey Transformed My Life by Memoirist Marjorie Winslow
Posted by Kathleen Pooler/@kathypooler with Marjorie Winslow/@MargieWinslow
“If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.”―James Herriot
I am thrilled to feature memoirist Margie Winslow who will share her journey to her memoir, a story of how her donkey Caleb transformed her life. Margie and I are IWWG sisters having met at the summer conferences. She is the author of an animal memoir, Smart Ass: How a Donkey Challenged Me to Accept His True Nature & Rediscover My Own. When Margie read an excerpt from this memoir at an Open Mic reading at one of our summer conferences ,the group was so mesmerized and enthusiastically requested she be given more time to continue!
Welcome, Margie and Caleb!
Marjorie and Caleb
How a Donkey Transformed My Life
KP: What is Smart Ass about?
MW: Hook: When an oversized donkey barges into the life of an overstressed college professor he wreaks havoc with her assumptions about what is most important in life.
The author assumes that her new donkey can be trained to perform like a horse, but soon finds out that Caleb has other plans. He is not a wannabe horse. He thwarts every attempt to subdue him; his wild spirit insists on expressing itself. By insisting on remaining true to his own unique self, he challenges the author to rediscover her own.
KP:Why did you decide to get a donkey…as an overworked, middle-aged, urban-based college professor with no experience with large farm animals?
MW: As a geologist and a professor at an urban university, I found myself at a crossroads at the start of the new millennium. After thirty years of fieldwork in South America, Alaska, and the Caribbean, numerous back injuries had taken their toll. A heavy teaching schedule and administrative duties had all but doomed any opportunities to pursue new challenges in faraway places. With my oceanographer husband away at sea for months at a time and the prospect of starting a family no longer an option, I was looking for the perfect animal companion to help navigate the next phase of my life. Most people would choose a cat or dog. I chose a donkey. Why a donkey?
Every Christmas, starting at age five, I had pestered my parents to buy me the “Genuine Mexican Burro” that was advertised in the Sears catalog. The brown -and -white drawing featured a small shaggy pony-size animal with rabbit ears. The first time I turned to the page and saw the burro’s huge dark eyes gazing shyly toward the viewer, I was mesmerized. I felt an intense yearning that was impossible to describe. For several years I begged my parents to get me this donkey until, finally, under the tree one Christmas morning, I found a large gray stuffed donkey. I later became horse-crazy and took riding lessons, until at age twenty, I was thrown and injured, which resulted in a decades-long avoidance of horses.
I never saw a live donkey until I was in my late thirties and came across hardworking donkeys while working as a field geologist in the Dominican Republic. Their steadfastness in their harsh environment captured my interest. What were these animals like? The comical ears brought back memories of that long-ago Sears ad, but it was their stoicism that captured my interest.
But that only partly explains why I became the owner — or should I say unwitting wrangler and straight man — of a seven-hundred-pound donkey.
When I returned home from the field in the spring of 2001, I found several donkey -and -mule organizations and magazines. According to the rapidly growing pile of books and articles I acquired, donkeys were steadfast and safe to ride. But other adjectives that experts used to describe these un-showy animals — affectionate, playful, smart, undervalued — struck a chord in me
KP: Are donkeys stubborn?
MW: When donkey owners are asked whether donkeys are stubborn, we insist that they are not. “Oh, no. Not at all! Circumspect, independent-thinkers, problem solvers who need time to decide if a command is worth following, but never, never stubborn.” Then we try not to smile.
KP:Where did donkeys come from originally ?
MW: The deserts of North Africa.
KP: In what ways has your donkey changed your life? Your life’s outlook?
MW: Caleb challenged me to accept his true nature — and helped me rediscover my own.
KP: Why did you decide to write a book about him?
MW: I had written two previous books about misadventures on the path to becoming a geologist while working in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship. I had written about my experiences since childhood. About ten years ago I regaled friends with anecdotes about my donkey, Caleb. They encouraged me to write the stories down. I wrote the first story —about when Caleb and I showed up at a very traditional hunter pace (cross-country race), in Mexican garb, thinking that it was a Halloween costume event. Two weeks later I was diagnosed with Stage III breast cancer. Throughout surgery and cancer treatments, I wrote stories to comfort myself and to entertain my fellow patients.
KP:What do you mean when you write that Caleb serves as both a mirror and a foil in your life?
Photo Credit: Free Pexel.com
MW: With rose-colored glasses firmly in place, I convinced myself that the side of me that had always felt underestimated as a woman in a largely male profession — the outwardly docile but tenacious striver — would resonate with a donkey’s spirit. That was the mirror part.
As Caleb seemed to take pride in opposing every single one of my goals for him, we matched tenacity with tenacity. Another mirror, actually, but at the time I thought of him as my foil. Thwarting every effort of this lifelong achiever seemed to be his goal.
KP: What do you mean when you wrote: “like the medieval court jester, donkeys speak truth to power?”
MW: In the medieval court, the only person who could make fun of the king was the court jester. Jesting evolved in Europe to a fine art of providing social commentary or even criticism hidden beneath the disguise of entertainment.
I first made that connection with Caleb from his blithe indifference to training commands and sometimes outright refusals to obey, even when doing so would seem to be to his own benefit. He would refuse until the trainer quit in disgust (this is the source of another myth about donkeys: that they are stupid) and then do the pattern perfectly.
He made fun of several trainers, yet is kind and willing, and very affectionate when people respect him.
KP: What is unique about this book?
MW: Of the many hundred books about dogs and cats, there are far fewer written —with the exception of horse books— about large farm animals. In recent years, many unusual pet/ animal companion books have appeared that feature more unusual pets.
Smart Ass started out as a collection of favorite stories about the “donkey that wouldn’t”, but as I wrote, an inner story emerged. Why was someone who was raised in the suburbs and working in NYC attracted to such an unusual animal? And why and when did curiosity about donkeys interest turn into a quest?
I had to look deep inside to find the answers about myself
Books about animals come in many types, from memoirs to collections of anecdotes but one thing they often share is that they are written after the animal has passed away. With cats and dogs, this is understandable as their lifespans are so short. So there is somewhat of an elegiac feel to many. Thankfully, Caleb at 21 years old is about at the mid-point of his lifespan. There are many adventures to come!
Book Synopsis
How do you meet a mid-life crisis? Sports car, Italian villa, inappropriate love interest? Margaret Winslow, an overworked college professor in New York City, answered a for-sale ad for a “Large White Saddle Donkey” in the American Donkey and Mule Society’s magazine, The Brayer.
Hilarity ensues, alongside life-threatening injuries and spirit-enriching insight. Through training traumas, expert-baffling antics, and humiliating races, she comes to understand of Caleb’s true, undeniable gifts: a willingness to be true to himself no matter the circumstances, to “speak truth to power,” to trust, and to forgive. As she and Caleb learn to thrive, you’ll learn the importance of being true to your own pure and powerful self
About the Author:
Margaret Winslow is a field geologist with over thirty years of field experience in Alaska, Costa Rica, Chile, Argentina, Antarctica, and the Caribbean. Originally from Huntington, New York, she lives in the lower Hudson valley of New York with her oceanographer husband, Joe Stennett. Caleb boards nearby with horses and ponies, where he continues to steal the show every day.
Dr. Winslow encountered many barriers in the essentially all-male world of field geology in the 1970s. Her thesis project was to map the rock exposures around the Strait of Magellan and Tierra del Fuego. As a young woman attempting to hike and camp out during the Pinochet era in Chile, she experienced many misadventures she later incorporated into her award-winning memoirs and lecture series.
She earned a B.S cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and an M.A., M. Phil., and PhD in Geological Sciences from Columbia University and has published over thirty papers in international scientific journals. She is Professor Emerita of Earth Sciences at the City College of New York. Her National Geographic-funded fieldwork on earthquake hazards and archaeological settlement patterns in Alaska and Chile is featured in the internationally broadcast, award-winning PBS series “Fire on the Rim.”
She is an experienced public speaker and has been interviewed by NPR’s “West Coast Live,” CBS News Radio, WABC Eyewitness News, and by The Journal News. During half-hour interviews on Napa TV in 2015 and 2016, she discussed her travel memoirs, Over My Head: Journeys in Leaky Boats from the Strait of Magellan to Cape Horn and Beyond (2012), and The Cusp of Dreadfulness (2016). In 2018, she was interviewed by the Scott Polar Research Institute of Cambridge University for their upcoming “Women in Antarctica” series. She was interviewed by Bonnie Graham’s radio program, “Read My Lips Radio” (04/30/18) regarding her journey toward becoming a geologist and author as well as her adventures in remote regions.
Websites: http://www.margaretwinslow.com, https://www.margiewinslow.com
Twitter: Caleb the Donkey @margiewinslow
Facebook: Margaret Winslow
New Book! Smart Ass: How a Donkey Challenged Me
to Accept His True Nature & Rediscover My Own
Award-Winning Author of travel memoirs: Over My Head: Journeys in Leaky Boats
from the Strait of Magellan to Cape Horn and Beyond
and The Cusp of Dreadfulness
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Thank you Margie for sharing your journey to memoir with Caleb. Any animal lover will know how our pets enrich our lives.
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How about you? Do you have a pet who has helped you to grow and has transformed your life?
Margie has graciously offered to give away a copy of her memoir to a commenter whose name will be selected in a random drawing.
We’d love to hear from you. Please join in the conversation below~
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Next Week:
Thursday, 12/13/18:
“Fearless Writing by Karen Brown Tyson: A Wow Blog Tour”
Karen is the author of Time to Refresh: A 21- Day Devotional to Renew Your Mind After Being Laid Off, Fired or Sidelined.
