Big Farm Day

It's a big farm day in Bedlam, one of those days that blows the idea of writing right out of the window. Our thermostat blew out, so we are getting it replaced and having the furnace cleaned. The shearer, Jim McRae is coming noonish to shear the sheep. Todd Mason is coming by (weather permitting) to fence in the rear pasture in the woods. I'm finishing a video about Frieda to put up on You Tube when "Second Chance" dog comes out. Zelda is on the alert, keep an eye on Red and I have to figure out how to get her into the pole barn. Red will figure out a way.

What Donkeys?

Red may be (along with Lenore) the most grounded dog I have ever had the privilege to live with. He just doesn't rattle and nothing will deter him from focusing on his work. There are some things only the very best breeding can offer. Donkeys are guard animals, I got them initially to guard the sheep and they are always uncomfortable – sometimes very hostile – to dogs coming near the sheep. Donkey see dogs as coyotes, as threats. Donkeys are also very smart and intuitive and they figure out after awhile that a dog is part of their community, but they always pay attention. Simon went after Red a few times, Red just danced around him.

Now Simon and Lulu will come up to Red and sniff him carefully – this is one of the ways equines gather information and communicate.  You may notice in the photo that Red never looks the donkeys directly in the eye – eye contact signals aggression both in dogs and donkeys and other animals. Red stays focused on the sheep, never on the donkeys.  Red sits still and allows the donkeys to smell him carefully. This says to the donkeys, I am here, you can check me out, I am not a threat to you. Of all the dogs I have had, Red is by far the most grounded, focused and calm working animal. He is a professional, even taking risks to stay at work. Even Rose, a wonderful dog, moved away when donkeys came near. In this way, Red permits the donkeys to get comfortable with him and also allows him to herd the sheep calmly. He keeps the peace.

I am quite blessed to have been given this amazing animal by Dr. Karen Thompson, who read "Izzy & Lenore" and decided God wanted me to have this dog. She would not accept any compensation for him. At the time, I thought she was crazy. Now, I see she was just correct. So these wonderful border collie, born and bred on a farm in County Tyrone, Ireland, came to Virginia and then ended up at Bedlam Farm. Life is strange, life is wonderful. I have changed Red's life and he has changed mine. Can't imagine what' s next. In the short run, it's shearing. Shearer coming to trim the sheep this afternoon.

Mr. Cool

Red is the Dean Martin of working dogs, Mr. Cool. The chickens come across him every now and then in the relentless pecking and they sometimes consider him just part of the grass, and peck up and down his back for bugs or other kinds of food. Rose would have eaten them or taken off, even Lenore runs from them, but if Red is in a stay, he stays.

Waiting At The Hardware Store

Sheep shearer is coming to the farm tomorrow to trim Zelda, Ma and the other three ewes. Maria is going to sell the wool as yarn and roving as before. I think Zelda deserves to be a sweater  but the last time she became a shawl. Zelda likes the shearer, he is a Buddhist and he chants to her. I hope she's in a good mood or he'll be lying on his butt in the Pole Barn as I have more than once.  I took this shot at the hardware store of three dogs waiting for their human.

Zelda This Morning

Every morning, Zelda appears by the hay feeder to wait and watch. I love the part of animals that is mysterious, they are an alien species with an alien language. We do not have a language with which to speak to them.

Scarves from hankies

Some very loving and wonderful people are sending Maria vintage handkerchiefs from all over the country and they are amazing to see. This one above came in this week and will be a part of one of the scarves Maria is making from the handkerchiefs. The handkerchiefs are art in the own right and they speak volumes about the artistry of the women who conceived and design them.Maria wrote about them today on her blog. She will offering the scarves for sale there.

In The Rain

Outback Jack

Jack Metzger is a friend and an artist. He is well known and loved locally as "Outback Jack," he has spent years driving around the country and collecting beautiful and compelling things from businesses and farms, from old signs to this pulpit like desk that came from a hardware store in Troy. Every word I write is written on an old farm or tavern table I bought from Jack, who is making many of the old and discarded things he find into sculptures that are shown in art galleries and sold from his business, "Jack's Outback" on Main Street in Cambridge, N.Y. He is gifted and seems to know every house, person and farm in the county. Jack had a warehouse sale this morning and half the town turned up and when I pointed the camera at him, he knew just what to do.

Loving To Dance

Florence Walrath didn't seem to skip a beat in her memoirs, she not only lived life fully, she grasped the  lessons of live even as she lived it, which suggests, to me, a person of unusual insight. She had her homilies about life and death, work and family, responsibility and manners and those ideas and values became the foundation of her life. She didn't wonder about the right thing, she seemed to have a sense of what it was, and she just did it. I imagine her to be as inflexible as she was admirable. In her writing, there is a strong strain of athleticism, from work to riding to dancing. She seemed to pride herself on being a caretaker, a good girl who followed the rules and took care of others. I met a woman recently who was a friend of Florence's and had a photograph of her dancing when she was 100 years old:

"Although pretty as a baby, Bill turned out to be a beautiful boy, deep red hair, brown eyes and a complexion to go with it. I helped take care of Bill (her nephew) when Blanche went somewhere. The two of them (niece Betty) were a hand full. One day they were sitting on the lawn by the road. I could hear them laughing and each time I looked, they were just sitting there. I would hear a car toot but still they seemed to be just sitting. Then one man stopped and told me they were throwing stones at the cars. They both got the whip on their legs for that and they stayed away from the road…I often laugh thinking what a good time they were having.

   Since I was a small girl I loved to dance. I could do all the square dances, but Mark's mother used to pay me a dime to dance the round dances with Mark. This was at the Lauderdale dance hall. Later I thought I would die if I did not get to the dances at Hedges Lake each week. I most always went with Alfred Becker and his girl. After the dance I came home with Percy Morris and his wife. Now Mother liked that idea and always let me go. Later one morning, Mother said who was the stout fellow you were dancing with, he is a beautiful dancer. I was surprised and said how did you  know who I was dancing with? She told me then she had been over nights watching, you see she was making sure she could trust me. She need not have worried as up to this point, I thought boys were good pals to dance with. I always had all the dances, some good, and some I helped teach. Boys asked me out on dates but my love was still dancing and sports. One night Roy Armstrong and  Hap Bottom came over. Hap wanted a date with Blanche. We had a good laugh when I told him he better ask her husband.  I went out with Roy often. He was a wonderful dancer. He worked at Hedges Lake. he soon learned my interest was more on sports and dancing. He married one of the girls who had a camp at the lake. No hard feelings."

Meditating With Dogs

There is something affirming and deeply spiritual about meditating with dogs. It is a part of my spiritual practice.

Art Of The Blog

This Fall, I'll be teaching a four-session course in "The Art Of The Blog," a subject I have been immersed in for some years and which I feel very strongly about. Blogs have become a profoundly important of our evolving culture. They are, in many ways, the new newspaper, the new book, one of the most powerful means of affirmation and expression in human history. They are a critical element of the contemporary creative life.  My blog has become the most important element in my creative work. Blogs are also feared and misunderstood by many people.

Many people are reluctant to start a blog, they are anxious about losing their privacy, about exposing themselves to ridicule or hostility, about seeming presumptuous, about sharing too much of their lives with strangers. They have lots of excusesThese concerns generally occur along generational lines and they also raise a lot of gender issues. Older people are not often at ease with this kind of exposure, this putting oneself out in the open. Blogs are not dangerous, but many people are anxious about the climate online.

Most of the hostility online comes from men, and the combative and war-like political blogs are almost always conceived by men, who bring their aggressive style of interactions online. Women write nasty things, too, as I can testify, but I think many of the better blogs are from women, who communicate more naturally and understand that the best blogs share emotional and experience, not just opinion. I have worked hard to keep my blog free of conflict and hostility, and I am proud it is a safe place for people to come.

I believe blogs are essential for creative people, the Internet has become the dominant media in the world, and people who wish to remain relevant and share and sell their work need to understand them. They are the most effective way to reach the people who buy books, art and who are curious about ideas. In the course of writing on this blog, scores of people have written me to say bedlamfarm.com has inspired them to begin their own blogs, and I have also seen my students in the Hubbard Hall Writer's Workshop learn the power of the blog as a creative, not a technical tool. Their blogs are thriving. I love those messages, they lift my heart.

Blogs for me are not about technology, I am not a technical person. They are about individual expression, and about empowerment. It is easy to toss up a blog, they are free, hard to create a good one. That takes faithfulness, hard work and persistence. It took three or four years before bedlamfarm.com really began to grow, and it's growth involved time, photography, social media and old fashion blood and sweat. I resolved at the beginning to be open, to share my life, not just be another site selling stuff. I also committed to posting regularly and frequently so people would see something new when they came here.

I have always refused to post comments on the blog, this is a monologue, not a dialogue or an argument. I do allow comments on Facebook they are interesting, useful and almost always civil. Social media is important, but I believe the blog is more important. The blog feeds Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram and most recently, my podcasts. The blog is the engine that drives the rest, the center of the work. Bedlamfarm.com received more than 130,000 visits last month.

Social media is very useful, very important, but the vast majority of comments and notifications are not useful, thoughtful or necessary. Social media is communistic in that everyone's pages look more or less the same. Blogs are fiercely individualistic, each one is very different from. The blog's true fathers were Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, two patriots who did not believe in big media but saw media as democratic, personal and individual. The first journalists were farmers who posted pamphlets up on their pasture fences for people to read as they past by. Media became hopelessly corrupted when corporations took over our communications networks and made them all about marketing information for profit.

Media was never conceived to be noxious corporations marketing anger and violence and conflict for profit. Media was always meant to be us – individuals who care about their world and are willing to express their own values and opinions. Blogs teach writing, expression, the development of thoughts and ideas.

Jefferson's dream sounds like a blog to me. The corporatizing of media – cable news networks – are a nightmare, not a dream. I'm looking forward to teaching the art of the blog, to discussing notions of blog writing, creativity, integration with social media and issues relating to privacy and community. Blogs are not about software. They give each of us the opportunity to express our selves, our lives, our faith and our values. They are about the growth and preservation of ideas and values and their free expression in the world. And done well, they are art in the truest sense.

Tai Chi

As I've written, I'm building a spiritual practice. For the first time in my life, I am, for now, my own spiritual counselor.  I think I'm done with therapists, analysts, doctors and counselors. I'm doing my own counseling. It is a strange, exciting and disturbing feeling, a seminal change. I am already meditating regularly, walking in meditation. My photography is a critical part of my spiritual practice and Tuesday, I am exploring another dimension: Tai-Chi.

I'm taking a private Tai-Chi lesson. Many of you are perhaps familiar with Tai-Chi, a Chinese martial art form practiced for defense training, but in our culture, for it's health and meditative benefits. It is a program of moving and feeling, considered especially beneficial for people seeking a spiritual center and for older people using movement to stay fluid and balanced.

I will report back on how the lesson went. I've taken Tai Chi lessons twice before in my life, and I loved it both times, but for various reasons, I wasn't ready to pursue it. I think I am now. I am beginning to see a spiritual practice – something I have wanted for many years – beginning to take shape. As with anything else, it takes a lot of work, discipline and preparation to do it well, I think. My instructor links Tai Chi closely with Joseph Campbell's ideas about mythology and the hero journey. I think I have found a person I can connect to in this way. A big step forward for me, I think.

Author's Bio

Well, here it is, the first portrait taken of me and Maria and the author's bio photo for "Second Chance Dog: A Love Story," to be published in November by Random House. Much as I am not easy being photographed, I love this photo, it captures the intense love of this wonderful triangle. Maria always looks beautiful to me, but George Forss, brilliant man that he is, captured her  radiance. Frieda got into the spirit of things and didn't try to kill any chickens or barn cats. I am happy to see this photo, as Maria and I have never had a portrait done. George did a great job.

Finishing Up

We began painting Maria's Schoolhouse Studio yellow last Fall, but the winter interrupted the job. We're resuming work on it. Today, going to the dump, now heading to the bookstore for some recommending (518 677-2515). Putting up a clothesline later, weed-whacking, heading out for a walk, going to Williamstown, Mass. for some Vietnamese food.

Flo's Realm

On this farm, our barn cats are much less wild and ephemeral than at the first Bedlam Farm. Flo has claimed the back porch as her territory, she sits on her various thrones and gazes out at the world. We see little evidence of hunting, but then, there are also no mice, rats or other rodents around that we can see. When George Forss came to photograph us yesterday, he and I both saw the same shot at the same time, there is so much going on in this photograph. We are putting up a clothesline in the back yard today, hopefully, we have lots to do.

George Forss

Our second photo session with George Forss went smoothly. Maria and I took it a bit more seriously, dressed up a bit and George and I found a good spot to move the wicker cushion. I was a bit shocked when George told me he only charges $35 for a photo shoot, this is shockingly low for one of the most celebrated landscape photographers in the world. George is the epitome of grace, people are always giving him their old cameras and he is always patching them up and re-using them. He and I shot some photos of Flo – more and more, we are spotting the same images to photograph, and this makes me very proud and happy. I am learning to compose photographs more thoughtfully and this is largely George's doing watching him is so valuable to me, I learn something new every time.

I think we got the images we need for the photo of me, Maria and Frieda for the "Second Chance" book. But I think I need to pay George more than $35. I hear people grouse about their lives all the time – they complain about the Internet, the price of gas, their tax bills. I have never heard George utter a world of complaint about the collapse of photography as an art, the trove of fabulous photographs he took that are sitting in galleries in New York, the very hard work he does to care for himself, his stepbrother, to maintain his art gallery. He is an inspiration to me in more ways than he knows. I hope his dream of encountering alien life is fulfilled. Every day he takes his photos in the old way, he works in his cave-like dark room, he lives his life in grace with his partner, the artist Donna Wynbrandt. How lucky I am to have found him here in my little town, and to have him do the first portrait of me and Maria (and Frieda, the loving Helldog.)

Scott Carrino

Buying local is personal, it supports the individual, it rewards connection and creativity, it cements community. The corporate ethos is only about money, the system does  not permit empathy, the sense of being known, the reality of being cared for. It is soul-killing, it degrades work and security, it rends community.

Here Comes The Corn

Down the road, a neighbor's corn has started to come in. Spring is really  here.

Stinky Labs

Lenore loves her stinky pond, and if you have a lab, you will journey into the messy, the beautiful, sometimes the disgusting (like the stuff she rolled in right after her swim.) Still, all of her love is worth it, and I was enchanted by the reflections in the pond at dusk, when the sun was low in the sky.

Lenore On The Couch

Lenore knows how to live, I think. She loves people, she loves food, she loves her rest. When we moved from the first Bedlam Farm we brought her own private sofa, and its in my office, so I often swivel around and see her dozing. She loves her sofa, and no other dog or human ever uses it. We are lucky to have her and she is lucky to have us, the way it should be with dogs. Border collies do not know how to rest like Labs do.

Nicole and Alliyah

My blog has readers in every state and a number of countries overseas, it is not a local blog and I only occasionally write about local things, but some of them are important and revealing, they speak to broader things. Our small town has a magical new cafe, a friendly place with wonderful food – fresh, healthy, great tasting stuff, and it has quickly become the heartbeat, perhaps even the soul of this town.

I like writing about some local things – Momma's restaurant, Battenkill Books and now, the Round House Cafe – because they have driven home for me the importance and power of buying local, of permitting the growth of small businesses with values, the antithesis of most modern corporations – just follow the awful news from Bangladesh. I am not political, I found the labels of the "left" and "right" narrowing and distasteful, but I guess I do feel strongly about places like the Round House Cafe, where Nicole and Alliyah seem happy to see everyone and are cheerful and helpful. I had lunch there today with an old friend, and another old friend from my former life wandered in who I have not seen in years wandered in and we had a joyous reunion – I will go and see her tomorrow so she can meet Maria.

Yet another friend who is sweating out a mortgage application came in and half the cafe comforted her and told her it would work out. It did, she got the mortgage. In between, Connie from Battenkill came in for her sandwich, but Scott Carrino, the chef and co-owner had slipped out the back door and delivered it to the bookstore for her. She was shocked and delighted. I call the cafe in the morning, and Alliyah takes my order, knows which dressing I like. I thought I forgot my money one day and they told me not to sweat it, I could bring it in any time. It seems that the veins of the community just flow through there – from noon to 2 p.m. it is intense.

Buying local means jobs for people like Nicole and Alliyah and the other people hired by the cafe, and it strengthens and deepens a sense of community and connection. People from other towns are finding the Round House.  I had lunch last week with an artist using new technology to market her work, just as I am and we traded good ideas. There are not many businesses large or small that are run as well as this one, or that exude such a sense of good will. Usually I bring Maria one of their very fresh salads, and I have been getting her these awesome blueberry scones. I don't eat there every day but I wish I could. I don't want to see everyone I know every day either, it is a small town. But I think the Round House is worth writing about because it has become the soul of my town, a beacon of light, an affirmation of what hard work, community, and creativity can do when they are mixed together and served on their own menu. Alliyah feels like family, she knows my voice and reminds me when I forget something I usually get.

Buying local has become a seminal political idea for me, in a period when I literally cannot abide politics and the anger and stridence it breeds. So I'll take some photos of the Round House from time to time, and write about. No corporate food chain is anything like this. Corporations are devouring individuality and community and are wreaking havoc on small business. We are so lucky we aren't a big enough town to draw them in. But this town has also struggled to keep it's Main Street hopping. I think it's winning that battle.

I don't know if there is a Round House or Battenkill Bookstore in your community, but if there is, I  hope you will vote for it buy doing your business there. Lots of towns have lost their heartbeats, I am so happy mine has found some again.

This is something to vote for, just like my bookstore, where I will be from 11 a.m. to 2:30 recommending books to anyone who wants to buy them from Battenkill. 518 677-2515. You may not be able to get a sandwich from the Round House, but you can vote for Battenkill and strike one blow for freedom and community.

First Garden Report

Maria and I planted five different gardens around the farmhouse in the last few weeks, and flowers are starting to come up. We put four flower holders on the porch to get things going, and dug up gardens and planted perennials, pansies and seeds. We see a lot of life coming up. We also added two Lilac bushes to the front of the farmhouse, a magnolia tree and last year, three maples. All of the are flowering and growing. More garden reports on the other gardens to come.

A Spiritual Practice

In a sense, I have always been drawn to walks with dogs as a form of meditation, all the way back to Julius and Stanley, the two Yellow Labs who accompanied me on my run to the mountain and who walked with me several times a day as I organized my thoughts for writing. At Bedlam Farm, the dogs and I walked to the top of the hill and they sat with me while I read and thought about this next chapter of my life. I have continued this practice, this dog meditation. All of my dogs, even Frieda, have entered into the spirit of this powerful meditation. They spread out and lie down and are quiet with me, they listen with me, they do not move or run off or disturb me. After several years of work, Frieda has not joined this practice, she sat with me on the hill near the farm for a half an hour yesterday.

Given the chance and proper training, dogs are contemplatives, they love to serve us in this way, and I believe it is something they need as well me. Dogs love to serve us, it is their mission. My spiritual practice will always incorporate dogs.