Well, I stirred the hive, I guess with the new subscription plan, and happily it seems. Accepting subscriptions for my blog seems to be something many people are quite willing to do, and that is a powerful message to me. It is about money and being paid for my work, but it is also about much more than that, as these things often are. There are lots of questions I need to address.

I will be adding, at your request, credit card payment options on the subscription page for those people who do not choose to use Paypal. (This is not stuff I ever imagined I would be doing, but it is part of taking responsibility. I am happy to do it.) People have asked me if the blog will remain free, and for now and the foreseeable future, yes, it will. I understand that things are difficult for many people who have been following the blog for years, and it is not in me to kick them off the site. Down the road at some point, I will ask to be paid for the blog.  I will ask people who read the blog to contribute something, even if it is a one-time payment of a few dollars. Anybody who has a computer can pay that, the amount will be up to them. I’ll set suggested subscription payments and they will be low, as they are now. But that is down the road. I am sure some people will leave the blog rather than pay for it, and I wish them nothing but good luck.

Thanks for your wonderful response to this, I am a bit overwhelmed with the good hearts and open minds.

Another issue has come up that I want to address. It is my address. A good number of people who don’t use Paypal and don’t exchange money online are asking me if they can send checks to an address I choose. They are nervous writing to me, worried I will think them stalkers or being offended at the idea of giving out my address. I get a lot of e-mail, and I can’t answer all of it all the time, so I need permanent options in place besides my e-mail. This is the idea of the writer as a remote untouchable who can not be disturbed by his fans.

I have tossed that conceit out of the window, along with many others but I can’t deal with so many hundreds of messages a day via e-mail and social media. So I have decided, with Maria’s enthusiastic agreement, to share my mailing address: it is 2502 State Route 22, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. I know some people will find this dangerous and reckless, there is the view, enthusiastically advanced in the Fear Machine and sometimes with great validity, that our world is dangerous and that we have to hide our identities and addresses from the many kinds of predators seeking to harm and rob and strike us, our money, our children and homes.

I understand that the world can be a dangerous place, I was a police reporter for some years in Washington, Philadelphia, Atlantic City and other places, I have seen things nobody should have to see and I will not forget them. But I choose to live a free and open life. I will not accept the epidemic idea in our world, advanced by a greedy and valueless corporate media and by the many hysterics who live on the Internet,  that we must live in fear of our neighbors, our community, even our friends. Yesterday at Battenkill Books a young girl came up to talk to Red and I offered my hand to shake and asked her name, and she shrieked in fear, burst into tears and ran away to hide behind her grandmother, where she stood sobbing and shaking. I was horrified. Good girl, said the grandmother, never talk to a strange man. It’s okay to pet the dog.

If people choose to live this way, I respect their choice and respect them, it is not my choice, not when it comes to children, to medicine, to the blizzard of warnings and horrific news that make up our social currency, to the Dystopian view that the world as we know it will soon perish under our feet and we must be eternally vigilant and  angry and wary. I would rather not live than live that way. People have to make their choices and I will make mine. I won’t let doctors take over my body and my health, I won’t hide from the world in a fortress of illusions, the media does not report my news. Some disturbed people have found me long before I gave my address out. I will deal with it. (So will Frieda ):). I do not want to live a life where I have to hide where I live.

We live in a Fear Machine, supported by politics, government, medicine, lawyers, and the media and a myriad of corporations, from weather channels to insurance companies to pharmaceutical corporations to cable news outlets that feed of fear and discord. There are countless pages on Facebook and other social media devoted to fear and anger. That is not the community I’m joining or serving.  We all make up our own minds whether or not to succumb to it or not. This is the vampire world to me, I don’t choose to accept it’s notions of life and safety. My address is readily available to anybody with a computer or a cell phone, we are holding open houses at the New Bedlam Farm on July 21 and September 1, and you can’t have an open house without telling people where to go. We had several at the other Bedlam Farm and we drew thousands of people without any harm, incident or regret (unless you count too many dog cookies to the dogs.). We will take our chances. My address is me, is my voice, I am proud to give it out.

The subscription program is a turning point for me and my work, a significant step towards finding my voice, standing in my truth, shedding the fear of respecting and valuing my own work, a legacy of my former life. It is making me stronger, more confident and creative is affirming many years of hard work and prescient instinct. This is my future, I am figuring it out, and I thank you for sharing it with me. One way or another, you know where to find me.