Growing up a native New Yorker—that’s Noo Yawkuh—rodeos were rare, but I loved western television shows and anything “cowboy.” My first rodeo was at a Long Island indoor sports arena, where my friends and I had to cross a picket line of animal-cruelty protesters to get inside. It seems the protesters outnumbered the audience. It was a while before I went to another rodeo.
Twenty-five years later, I…
