Chicken Meeting

Every morning, after their corn meal and table scraps, the chickens gather under the lilac bush in front of the Pig Barn. I lay down sometimes and listen. And I imagine Fran is talking to the other chickens about life. Do not take it for granted, she says. Do not listen to hens who think the world is too grim a place in which to lay eggs. Do not live in fear, even though the fox is right up the hill, and I will always remember what his sharp teeth can do.

We can live a small and fearful life – the life everyone expects of us chickens – or we can live a larger life. Take our walks. Find our buds. Encourage one another to appreciate the good things we have – garbage, worms, bugs, the freedom to walk around. I can tell you, it can be taken away at any time. Life happens. Let’s go get some worms. I whisper to you of life and remind you not to waste it on foolish things and worries. Do not listen to the prophets of doom. They are the worms of existence.  (Be back Thursday.)

Into The Wild

Each day, the camera reminds me of how much the leaves grow, how green they are at first, how solid and whole. For many years, I did not notice that, but the camera reminds me to notice it, and appreciate it every day. This grounds me, reminds me what is important, pulls me out of my sometimes dark and gloomy self. See the light, I think. Be back Thursday.

Off On A Mission

We are off on a mission for two days. Be back Thursday. Bringing a camera, Ipad but no computer. It’s nice to give everyone a rest from me for a couple of days, I think. I appreciate all of you.

Proposing To Each Day

Every morning, when I wake up,

I propose to the day.

Will you marry me?, I ask.

Be my partner, my love, in life? All day?

To the last minute?

I ask nothing from you,

other than your presence in my life.

And we exchange our vows.

I promise to be faithful, and loving.

To grow and learn and change.

To cherish each day,  forever.

To renew myself, and give rebirth to my life.

Each day, I vow, I will honor you.

By living my life.

Telling  my story.

Making something beautiful,

And affirming the light and beauty and promise of the world.

And my beloved day, I say, I will not diminish you or waste  you,

in fear. Or anger. Or argument. Or judgement.

Because you are a gift that I cherish,

And will never have again.

And then, wondrous and sacred day, if I keep my vows,

and do right by you, I will propose to you again,

first thing tomorrow.

And now, the bride and groom can kiss our kiss of life,

and walk down our aisle together.

Rescue Dog

George only took Jake out at night. He adored the puppy and hated to be apart from him so much, but things were getting bad and he was getting desperate. He had become increasingly furtive, lying to his wife, kids, friends and neighbors. There was no one he could trust anymore. He was a haunted man, always looking over his shoulder, unable to sleep, go out, talk to anyone. His friends never called him anymore, nor he them. They had stopped e-mailing one another.  It was for their own protection. They were all  frightened even to go online and talk to other dog lovers, who pursued and attacked them mercilessly. There were informers everywhere.

George had paid careful attention to the dog patrol’s routine, and they swung by at almost precisely the same times every day – 9 a.m. and then 3 p.m.  They had stopped by several times, looking through the house, listening, scanning the ground for leavings and marks. An informer had told them that he had a dog, the officers told him roughly.  A bought dog. They had big red jackets and patches which said “Therapy,” “Rescue” and “Petsavers.”

The informer had said the dog was a purebred Labrador Retriever puppy. Was this so, they asked, as they had before?  No, said George, a lie, not true, he had once had such a dog, but that was in the other time, when people could get dogs any way they wished, when they could even – he lowered his voice - buy them from anyone they wished. When different choices were permitted. He had always had healthy, happy dogs, he thought, but did not say that out loud. No one wanted such dogs now.

At the end of the Other Time, the breeders had all been finally driven out, moved to Mexico, were hiding in caves in Oregon. Dogs that were not rescued or abused quickly vanished, as the idea of dogs as sad and piteous creatures grew and became the dominant idea about them. At first, it was blasphemy to buy a dog. Now, illegal. At first, it was said that no one should buy a dog when so many were free. And then, no one could afford to buy a dog when there were so many for free. And then, there was no one to sell them.

George could see that the officers were suspicious, did not believe him. They had searched the house and grounds a dozen times and found nothing although their dogs picked up scents. Old ones, he insisted.  Over the past few month he had moved Jake further and further back from the house, in an abandoned fox den out in the woods. George told no one about Jake, lied to everyone, said he had put the dog down, or shipped him off to Canada, where people were still permitted different kinds of ideas.

George  knew his options were limited. He was running out of time for his dog.  Jake was not rescued. He was not abused. He did not come from a shelter. Or an online rescue group, the only approved ways one could get a dog. In a mad and obsessive impulse, George had looked through old and now forbidden dog magazines, saw the photos of the Labs, went to secret chat rooms online, then driven to a small town in Maine, just below the Canadian border and paid $50 for Jake from the last breeder in the Northeast. The man took the money and then said goodbye, climbing into his motorboat and setting a course for New Brunswick. It was said that there were a couple of Newfoundlands there. And people couldn’t tell you what to do, was the rumor.

The deadlocked Congress had not passed legislation in years, but had unanimously changed the dog laws. There were millions of dogs in no-kill shelters, more coming in from all over the world. It was now a crime to put a dog down for any reason, and dogs could only be purchased by no-kill people for no-kill homes from no-kill shelters,  the only kind that were now legal.  Older dogs were placed in assisted care facilities and nursing homes where they lived on medications and machines for many years more than dogs had ever lived.  All dogs had universal national health care. So there were tens of millions of dogs spending their lives in shelters, and Congress was considering passing laws requiring you to take three if you wanted one.

The working breeds were all gone now, George knew. The border collies, the Labs, the Retrievers, Jack Russell’s, even the Pit Bulls. No more breeding. No more herding. No more hunting. It was wrong to get a dog anywhere but from a shelter, was the thinking, and so it had become law.  There were now more than five million dog play groups in the U.S., many of them meeting in schools and child playgrounds, almost all shuttered by decades of budget cuts and political stalemates. The parks were filled iwth people wearing patches, and dogs wearing vests with various slogans – “Abused,” “Rescued,” “Make Way For Therapy Dog,” “Slow Down: Caribbean Rescue Dog On Board.” George  had no sticker for Jake. He was grateful he had never registered Jake online, or he would have never had a chance to carry out his plan. But now, things were desperate. He was determined to save Jake, and he knew things were closing in.

George struggled to keep himself from crying. But he was determined.  It was time for his plan, to save Jake, to give him a new and free life.  He went out into the woods, slipped the puppy a sedative, and when he was groggy, he picked him up and rubbed mud all over his coat. Jake was light, thin. It nearly killed him to do it, but George had been cutting back on his food for days. He took a knife and sliced his own hand, and then smeared some of the blood on Jake’s nose. He rubbed some berry juice on Jake’s teeth so they would look stained.  He rubbed ointment in Jake’s eyes to make them look runny. When it got dark, he drove to the town’s sprawling new animal shelter, a no-kill facility housed in the former town library, abandoned after years of rejected town budget votes It was now a no-kill dog and cat and bird shelter, housing needy animals from 26 states and 15 different countries. Animal lovers traveled all over the world to find rescue animals and bring them to the shelter.

George waited to see that there was no one around, and tears flowing down his cheeks, he left Jake asleep in his blanket by the rear receiving platform, and he attached this note:

“Dear Shelter. This is Jake. As you can see, he has been badly abused. Stained teeth, blood from beatings, not washed in many months. He looks like a Lab, but he comes from the Deep South, where he was thrown off a truck, run over, attacked by crows and then chained in the rear of a garbage dump. He is part Shitzu and part Rotty, although he looks a lot like a Lab. He is not a Lab. As you know, there are no more Labs.  Please take care of him and find him a good home.”

George sobbed and took one last look, kissed the groggy Jake on the nose, left his bundle on the platform, kissed him goodbye one more time, rang the bell and then ran. He turned and looked back and saw a shelter worker open the door, peer back and forth and then pick up the bundle. George came home and turned on his computer. His heart was about to pound right out of his chest. He sat staring at the town’s animal rescue site for nearly 24 hours, barely eating or sleeping. Finally, he saw it. A photo of Jake, a dog who had been beaten, starved neglected.  Jake’s runny eyes and stained teeth looked appealingly into the camera. Good boy, Jake, said George, sobbing now.

And then he looked at the bottom of the photo and smiled. Hundreds of people had already applied for Jake. His dog had been saved. His dog had been rescued. He was going to make a break for New Brunswick. Maybe there were Labs there too.

Mother's Mothers Day

Mother celebrated her Mother’s Day in style. She ate some tuna, she caught a barn swallow by the feeder, she got a mouse or two in the meadow, she sunned herself right by the chickens near the Pig Barn, sat in the sun in the big barn, and hit in the garden and stared at Frieda for awhile. For Mother a good day.

Dying Dandelions

I admire dandelions. They are always dying, being killed and poisoned but supplanted. And they are always popping up again, unwanted, scorned, overshadowed by the pretty boys and girls. They are tough little suckers, and I admire their determination to be dandelions, even when it seems the rest of the earth is telling them a different story. Perhaps in another reality, the dandelions are the beautiful flowers, and the beloved flowers the weeds.

Florence's Welcome

When we move to the New Bedlam Farm, we will keep Florence’s sign and spirit in the kitchen door window. Ken Norman the farrier is coming to trim Rocky’s hooves on Friday. Word is Rocky will not take well to it.

Simon: Portrait by George Forss

I’m happy to share with you this portrait of Simon, taken by the famed photographer George Forss of Cambridge, N.Y. George came to the farm a week or so ago and was intrigued by Simon, who stood in the pasture watching him. Simon is used to cameras and likes them. He associates them with food and cookies, I suspect. He was fascinated with George and his equipment.

This kind of portrait is completely different from the kinds of photos I have taken of Simon. It is simple, black and white of course, uses light in the very particular way George has developed. George thought about it for a half hour or so, checked his light meter a dozen times, looked through the viewfinder. George sees photos that I do not see. I would rarely take a still photo of Simon like this, but I see exactly why George did. In Simon’s ears, stance, posture, and in the particular backdrop that George liked very much is a true and classic portrait that captures Simon’s spirit and presence. You can learn so much just from watching George work. This photo took an hour to conceive and execute and more time scanning and processing. George has chosen it as a card he will send to all of the people who helped him last week when he was ill.

I am very honored to post it on the Farm Journal. Thanks George. You are unique in so many ways, and I am grateful for your presence in my life. Donna’s too. I didn’t see what George was going for. I do see it now.

Deer Damage

The collision with the deer chewed up the front of my car. The deer was killed.

Living a somewhat public existence, I am experienced at having strangers comment on my life. I ignore angry or nasty messages and have come to understand that in the modern interactive context, consumers of information often feel they own a piece of the subject matter if they are given access to his or her life. This is, I think, somewhat natural. Sometimes you can learn from these messages, sometimes not.

I think sanctimonious messages bother me more than other messages. The truly spiritual and idealistic people I know, those who are truly pious, do not have a need to show and announce their good works. They simply perform them. A good friend of mine has rescued dogs, donkeys, horses, birds and countless cats. She has never mentioned these rescues to anyone, or call her animals “rescues,” other than to say these are her animals and she loves them. The good deed is enough for her. It is not enough for many people. This morning I wrote about hitting a deer, killing it, but avoiding injury to me, Maria or two friends in the back seat. This prompted many lovely messages of concern and sympathy, and some sanctimonious ones, like this one from Karina:

“…I feel it important to respectfully knowledge that someone was hurt, a life was lost.” Writing about the deer, I did not feel the need to write how awful it was, how frightening and disturbing to see this wild creature trashing under the wheels of car, and then circling in panic and dying in front of me. And I had not yet had the nightmares about it that were coming. It seemed self-serving to me to say that, and too obvious to be necessary. Anyone who loves an animal knows how I felt, and has probably felt the same thing or worse.  How curious that Karina would call a deer “someone” and compare its death to the loss of one of my friends. Or that she would think I needed to be reminded by her -  was not present, did not watch that animal die -  that something had been hurt. It seemed clear that her message was not about me, and my experience, but her and what she needed to show.

The dictionary definition of sanctimonious is to make a show – sometimes hypocritical – of religious devotion, piety, righteousness. Some people do good, and others – like some of those who proudly and insistently announce their dogs and cats were abused – appear sometimes to have a need to be seen as going good. Sometimes, it seems to me that what is important is the rescue, not the dog or cat.  I am uncomfortable saying that I am doing good. I would be viscerally uncomfortable saying Simon or Frieda or Izzy were abused, or that they were rescued. I want to do good, I try to go good. But that is between me and my soul, not me and you.

I also wrote yesterday about my friend Nancy’s getting a puppy Daisy, and got many messages praising Daisy’s cute demeanor, but also some thanking me for mentioning that she had come from a shelter. “Thank you for mentioning that,” wrote one person on Facebook, “just saying that will probably save 100 dogs today…” I had the same the same unease as I did with Karina’s message. I wasn’t trying to save dogs, and the message was not about me. I believe that there is no one right way to get a dog, other than the way that works best for the people and the dog. The puppy was not on a religious mission of mercy, nor were the people who got her.  Why does the adoption of a puppy turned into an act of sanctimony, of people feeling good about themselves, of this show of forced and erroneous gratitude? Should border collies and Labs and Golden Retrievers vanish from the world because some people think they have the right to tell other people what to do? Dogs in breeders cages have a right to live, also,  thought. I don’t share this often selfish view of what is good for a dog, and I don’t grasp why people should assume that I do, just because they do.

So I think it is important for me to say that this is sanctimonious to me, this strained injection of piety into other people’s lives, this need to show piety rather than be pious.  And this is the hypocritical part to me. The truly pious people I know do not ever tell other people what to do, nor do you ever know much about the good that they do.  Blessings to those of you who do good for its own sake and permit me to do the same.

Reflections

This photograph was shot through a side window of the house, and the glass reflects the barn and fence and yard outside. It captures in many ways the spirit of Florence, the remarkable woman who lived in the house for 80 years until she was 103. Independent and proud, she called it her dream house, and now, it is our dream house and we are so drawn to it by her powerful and creative spirit. If there are ghosts and she is one, I hope she will hang around her house forever.  It would be a pleasure to have her spirit around. Rocky was her companion for the last years of here life, which ended in December.

It seems Rocky has at least one more chapter to go. Perhaps more.

The New Bedlam Farm

I’m very happy to share a photo of the New Bedlam Farm, at least of part of it. There is one barn down, one standing, and there is an old and beautiful farmhouse behind both. I’ll show some other photos later. Our offer to buy the farm has been accepted, and we have a mortgage. We have not yet sold Bedlam Farm, but that will happen and we are very excited about our new home. It was built in 1854 and has great character and feeling. I know we will be in there shortly. It was meant to be, and it will be.  I am not prone to believing in such things, but I believe Florence, the owner of the farm for 80 years and Rocky, her companion for the last years of her life, called us to this home.

And how many houses come with a 33-year-old Appaloosa Pony?

Life's Happenings

One of my favorite slogans is “life happens.” It does. Happened to us tonight. We went out to dinner with George Forss, the photographer,  and his companion Donna Wyndbrandt. The Cambridge Hotel, usually open on Sundays, was closed due to Mother’s Day. We tried three other places on the phone, then set out for Bennington, Vt., and the Rattlesnake Cafe for Mexican Food.

We had  a good time and then stopped for some ice cream and on the drive home, on a long dark road a deer came flying out of the woods and hit my car right on the left front corner. It happened much too quickly for me to brake or avoid it, and it was unsettling to see the wounded deer struggle and flail and then collapse dead. Nobody was hurt, but the car was damaged pretty heavily. I am grateful everybody is okay. It could have been a lot worse. The Cambridge Police came to take the report and I called the insurance company and tomorrow my car will be towed and I will probably rent another one.

If you live in the country, this will happen sooner or later. There are so many deer and so many panic and run into cars or get hit by them. I always think of the particular chain of events that has to occur for accidents. If the Cambridge Hotel was open. If we hadn’t gotten ice cream. If I’d stopped on the yellow light or had some tea after dinner. But everything in life is a lesson, and lamentations and second-guessing misses the point. Life happens to all of us, again and again. That’s what accidents are. Life happening. Each time this happens it offers the opportunity to be accepting, gracious, uncomplaining, and to remember that every single person on the earth has a harder life than I do. I do not ask myself why this happened to me but give thanks for my ability to deal with it. I will have my car back soon enough and I am so appreciative of the fact no one got hurt.  Tuesday and Wednesday Maria and I are heading off for a two day visit to a favorite in. Reading, reading, reading.

Late Afternoon, Guest Room

Late afternoon, guest room.

New Puppy

Our friends Nancy and Bill came by with their new puppy, Daisy. They got her from a shelter in the Adirondacks. Nancy found Daisy on petfinder.org and were planning on taking her sister as well, but she already gone when they got there. By the time they drove to the farm to show us Daisy, she seemed quite a home and at ease. This dog will be running the show.  She greeted Lenore and the chickens and handled both with ease. A sweet match. A nice Mother’s Day scene.

Sometimes it's just right from the beginning

Texting With My Angel

Got a text from my angel, on the move these days.

“How R U?,” she asks. “In LA. Auditioning for American Idol.”

How is it going?

“Grt. Good on high notes.  Randy hates me. I miss Simon.”

My angel is on the way to see her father, across that river,

taking that train a’comin, where faith is all you need to get aboard,

you just have to thank the Lord.

I’m nervous, she says. My annual evaluation.

I have not performed to expectations. Mine or his.

He will ask me, she texts,  why so many people

have forgotten to give the poor some joy, or to laugh,

or love much.

The world has forgotten, her father thinks,

that love is the reason for everything, the point.

The poor and the animals are his children, she says.

He is not happy.

Should I tell him, she asks, that some people

can no longer hear the magic and the music?

And she signed off. “XXOOXX.” Sorry to be so distant, she said.

The angry and the fearful and joyless drain me, she says,

and I am tired. “Thank God for my Ipad. Enuf of me. How R U?”

My angel is turning pages, clicking away on her browser,

reading the blogs faithfully. Keeping relevant, like everyone else. Looking for broadband. Hard to keep up.

Suddenly, she is offline.

“Call Customer Service,” her return reply says. “Angel Support. Your pleas and prayers are important to us.

If we are unavailable,please contact your nearest agent or lawyer.”

And I text her back and try to help.

And I suggest that she understand,

on the road to the promised land,

that Satan wears a suit and tie, and sells fear and war

and warnings and medicine,

and health insurance and IRA’s,

and has made the world an argument, in disguise as a Good Samaratin and  seer.

I told her that good and evil sometimes look the same,

but love and light can never lie.

Bolshoi Diva

Freaky the Hen is the Bolshoi diva. She preens and prepares alone, apart from the other chickens, beautiful and skilled as they are. She has nothing but contempt for the photographer if he is not tossing grain or corn pellets around. She does not even acknowledge his presence. As the stagehands scurry around, and the audience takes their seats, Freaky, whose color far outshines all of the other performers, closes her eyes and gathers herself for the performance. There is nothing else in the world for her but her dancing.

Opening: The Chicken Bolshoi

Like all divas, the chickens do not notice the photographer hovering about them, moving with the light. The are deep in preparation, concentration.  They are going over the moves, cleaning themselves off, puffing up. They are stars, assured and above the small distractions of life. Decidedly inferior humans see them as foolish and dirty and even eat them. But the Bolshoi Chickens live in the moment, live in the dance. You are welcome to see the Chicken Bolshoi Ballet.

Chicken's Secret Place

The chickens have a secret place, alongside the Pig Barn, under the lilac trees. They are coming to trust me and my camera. When they are in their secret place, I often come and lie with the camera for a half hour or so, and they tilt their heads and cluck at me a bit, and then go about their business of strutting and preening and clucking. Before I take a photo, I like to imagine the chickens as dancers in the Chicken Bolshoi Ballet, and the lilac bush is their green room, and they are preparing to go on state and dance and they are cleaning and stretching and preparing themselves. They are swirling and preening, a carousel of color and focus.

And I am a fly on the wall, a mirror, just hoping to capture a sense of their glory and stardom. That is what I imagine, lying in the muddy and wet grass, at the Chicken Ballet.

Real Farms, Real Animals, Real Life

A local non-profit group asked me if I would photograph some farms in the country. They said they wanted them to be clean, spotless, pastoral, the kind you see in Vermont calendars. I declined. I love real farms, just as I love the lives of real animals in the real world. New York State is filled with real farms, and they are not pastoral. They are smelly, chaotic. Nothing speaks more to the state of the dairy farm than they astounding way in which cows are fed in the winter – with sileage grown in vast fields and stored in concrete bunkers, dug up and hauled around by giant, noisy tractors,  then covered with tarps and tires to try and keep the wind, raccoons, deer and rats away.

It seems pre-medieval to me, yet dairy farmers have yet to come up with a better, less cumbersome, ugly or chaotic way, even in the digital age. There are some things even the Internet cannot disrupt. Real farms are beautiful to me. They are works of art and imagination and endurance, each in their own way. I cannot expressed my awe and admiration for the people who live on them and keep them going.

Conversation And Connection

During my talk on photography Saturday, someone in the audience asked me what emotions I saw in the animals I photograph. Did I see them mourn? Grieve? Smile? I said I did not feel I could  describe their emotions so clearly, as I believe we do not have a language to capture what they are feeling and thinking. Their minds are different, alien from ours. What, then, I was asked, are they thinking?

I said, of course, that I do not know, and I do  not believe anybody who is not an animal knows. Those of us who live with them and watch them closely have their ideas, and I have mine. I came to realize early in our relationship that Maria has a special gift. She can communicate with animals in a way I have not ever seen up close, yet could see clearly in my photography. I believe we communicate with animals through emotions, not words.  In this photograph, at this moment, I believe I know what Maria was saying to Simon, as I know her well. She was saying: I love you, I care about you. I will take care of you.

What was Simon saying back: I believe he was expressing these emotions to Maria. I am comfortable here. I am safe here. I feel your affection for me, our connection. When this happens, I feel an ancient and instinctive contentment that you can see in the position of my ears, my ears, my quivering lip, the stance of my legs and tail. I trust you.  You bring sustenance to me, and sustenance is life. I am here in this moment with your, our emotions connected, fused for these seconds in this very old and very powerful dance.

That is what I think is being said.

Mothers

My mother is not alive for Mother’s Day, but I will think of her tomorrow. I do have a Mother-in-law, Maria’s sweet mother, Maria Gangi. Big Maria, as we call her, is a sweet and simple woman. She loves nothing more than to be with her family, watch her grand-children work their way through their lives. She turned 83 recently, and I see that she is changing.

When she visits us, she often likes to sit on the porch and stare out at the valley. She is a voracious reader, but I think it is hard for her to read sometimes.  It strikes me that this also what the animals on the farm – the dogs and donkeys especially – love to do. I often see them gazing out across the road, just like Big Maria was doing. I do not ask her what she is thinking. I think I know. And it is not my business. I never like it when somebody asks me what I am thinking. Too private, too personal. Big Maria came to her daughter’s art show, as she always does, and I could see it was difficult for her to stand up for long. Afterwards, I drove her home and she told me how happy she was to see Maria and I together, and how happy we both seemed together.

That meant a lot to me. Maria and her mother seemed especially close today, very connected.  I wish my mother could have seen it, too, but I am grateful to have at least one mother who did. And I decided to get out my 85 mm portrait lens and capture this mother on Mother’s day.

Buying The Farm

The Mother’s Day Art Show in Greenwich was very successful, uplifting, fun and worthwhile. Maria was busy and happy all day, talking to artists, selling stuff, helping to run things. I love seeing her so fulfilled, it makes me want to cry. The artists sold a lot of their work, I had a full house for a talk on creativity and photography and it is always surprising and very poignant for Maria and I to see and hear what our lives, our blogs, our work and writing means out there. I forget that, all the time. My mind just can’t absorb it.

A number of very admirable people came up to me today and told me they wish to buy a farm, leave their urban and suburban lives, be with animals, with nature, back to land. I’m always surprised at how much I like people who say this, how energetic, idealistic and admirable they seem. And how nervous.  It is hard, they said today, as they worry about health care, savings, retirement and all of the other things they are told they must have to be safe and secure and lead a meaningful life in America. I hear so many people talking about moving to the country, yet all around me, I see that people are going the other way. The biggest business in the country is getting to be people buying farms and properties as second homes. Jobs and schools, farms and businesses,  post offices and main streets are closing, emptying out, and rural people are forced to move to urban areas for insecure and low-paying jobs that they often hate.

It seems topsy-turvy to me. I understand the people who say they fear disrupting their lives and trying a life with beauty, nature animals, farming, cheese or art. It was surely frightening to me, and noone in my life told me to do it or thought it was a good idea. I have to confess that I don’t have many of the things you are supposed to have to be safe – savings in the bank, IRA’s, pensions. I gave most of that up when I moved to the farm and the rest when I got divorced. I have no complaints. This was my choice, and I will live with it. I think people have to make up their own minds about how to live, but this is what I think whenever a young couple tells me they are dreaming of a different life, a life on a farm. I think there has never been a better time in modern history to do it.

There are farms on the market all over the place. They are inexpensive. Interest rates are at record lows. The demand for organic and specialized and gourmet foods and cheeses is high. Enterprises like Alpaca farms are doing well. The Internet makes it possible to sell things all over the world. And it is clear that the country is the future. It is, in conventional terms, more sustainable here.

It is not my place to tell other people what to do, or what risks they ought to take. We each have to make our own way and live with our choices.  But the voice in my head is clear. Everyone I know who has done it has no regrets as frightening and difficult as it can sometimes be. Few go back, if any. We share a common secrete – it is not possible to go back. We can never go back. I think this: I do not live a small life, I think. Do not live in fear. Buy your farm and live your life.

That is what I think, what I wish I could shout. But should not.

Hearts That Bleed

Who are you?

Does your heart bleed?

Are you angry at the right?

At the left?

At the way they screw us?

Is your life an argument, and are you mad,

at gas prices that go up.

and food prices that go up.

And this economy.

And in this market.

And the one percent,

and how they screw us?

And the angry men and women in Washington.

And the banks and our piddling bank accounts.

And what they do to us?

And the cost of our health,

And how the world is falling apart, and

the waters are rising, and our

resources dwindle, and the Greeks will pull us down,

and Armaggedon is the big story of the day,

in all of the news. Get ready to be angry and afraid.

And good luck to you.

Is that who you are? Is that who I am?

No, no, a thousand times not. Thank you so much.

I appreciate the offer.

I see that almost everyone has accepted it. It is, like drugs,

quite addictive. And what do you say to everyone in the world?

But no thank you. Really. No hard feelings, I hope.

Not me.

There is no them. There is only me.

And that is not who I am. Or will be.