Went out into the woods with my 180 mm and an extender and was rewarded by some great shots of the frozen ice drops after the storm, more of which I’ll put up tomorrow. Awful suffering by this beautiful but devastating storm, many people without power for days or weeks perhaps. Ict storms are as beautiful as they are damaging.
 I’ve written a lot about fear this year, and so I am interested in the panic in the country, fed continuously by a nearly hysterical and pervasive media turning so many people into gloom addicts. I am getting some remarkable e-mail from people who have lost a lot and who have struggled, but who have not only survived but are learning to live differently, and in some cases, be more fulfilled.
  I can’t even count the number of these messages. They mention simpler lives most open, more introspective and satisfying lives. Linda writes from Ohio that she lost everything she and her husband have spent their lives working for, and they both are stronger and better people, backing away from the stressful lives they were living, and taking time to do what they love because they have realized that time is important, and so is being fulfilled.
  Everybody survives, and the world is not only measured by money and markets. And all of this change is bad. It isn’t all bad. It may lead to some things that are painful, but profoundly good.
  Speaking only for myself, I believe I see beyond this panic, and into a world that will change. I see growing community, less waste, more thoughtfulness, not anarchy  or Armageddon, and a belated realization that we have been overcome by anxiety, stress and a loss of purpose and meaning in life. So when the market crashes, we feel we will lose everything. Since there is never a mention of a world beyond panic on our radio or screens, that is our fearful environment and it shrouds us in fear and pessismism.
  I think these messages of change and simplicity are true. We are entering a more realistic, simpler and perhaps more satisfying era My own life is being transformed, yet again. I am rethinking my life on this farm, not because I am growing older, or interested in downsizing for its own sake, but because the turmoil in the outside world is helping me grasp the turmoil in my own, and I have had a lot of it this past year.
  Panic is a space to cross, as is fear, a feeling. Today I stopped buying water sold in plastic bottles and returned to tap water. I have stopped buying useless dog treats my dogs don’t need. I have fewer channels on the satellite. I am considering reducing the number of animals on the farm (two donkeys have already gone.) This is not to make a less interesting farm. It will always be a place that makes people smile, as long as I am on it. But it will not be a Disney farm, a fantasy for people to be soothed. It will be a real place, with real change and real life. And smiles, too.
  I write about this place, and it needs to be compelling. But it needs to be a  healther place, one with more perspective, a more cohesive, manageable place from which to write.
  I remember what a wise friend told me a few months ago. Everybody survives.
  I was amazed to hear it.
  The issue isn’t survival, but the kind of survival we choose, and the initiative we take with our own lives, our own stories, our own signals. My friend Steve McLean the pastor reminds me that a country dependent on a stock market for its sense of peace and contentment is an empty country spiritually.
  I don’t want this farm to be insulated from the world, but connected to it. I do not want to live in a false bubble. This is not a perfect or idyllic life, any more than yours is.
   Same of my writing and  photos. They belong in the real world.
  As I have learned to look and live beyond fear, I will not waste time on panic, which is really the story much of our information culture is hammering us with day and night.
  Linda likes my emerging plans for the farm. “Many times in a week I hear way too many people blaming everyone else but not taking a look in their own back yard.”
  She writes that if I give up the goats, she will miss them. “I just love their faces. Many days throughout the year you would post their pictures and they would take me away and make me smile. Thanks! I needed that.” Still, she writes, she will be one of my biggest supporters as long as I take photos and write books.
  Thanks Linda. I am taking a look in my own barnyard. There will be change, some of it painful, and it will lead to a simpler, more honest and more peaceful and spiritual life here.