Month: August 2015

I used to hang up the phone every time I talked to my sister and feel sorry for her. She was living alone with dogs, she suffered terribly when they died, she lived in the middle of absolutely nowhere, far from much of her life. Poor Jane, I thought, she lives alone, she lives with dogs, who will care for her as she grows older? I was used to feeling sorry for my sister, I had done it all my life.

And she often hated me for it, I learned later. She did not want anyone’s pity.

As I began to heal myself and face myself, I came to see that it is very often no gift to feel sorry for people. My sister can take good care of herself, she has been doing it her whole life, and she chose her life and is happy with it. How patronizing and revealing for me to presume to feel pity for her when she felt none for herself and was in need of none.

I realized it was an arrogant thing to do, that it said more about me than her. Pity and compassion are different things, so is feeling sorry for someone and feeling empathy for someone’s suffering. I came to see that I often felt sorry for people when I talked with them or met with them. I felt sorry for one friend who had a chronic illness and would not treat it. I felt sorry for another friend who chose to avoid looking for a partner or spouse in life.

Feeling sorry for others was a way for me to feel better about my own sorry and often unhappy life, a way of feeling superior to others.

I felt sorry for a friend who was once lived a creative life, but now is not, she seems happy to be a housewife and shopper and pool person. She is relieved to have money. I felt sorry for another friend who is so enmeshed in the life of her family, so dutiful and obligated and busy, that she does not make time for herself and has given up on her dreams. I felt sorry for a friend who was eager to retire and gave up work he loved and was good at to drive around the country visiting national parks.

How could he give up his work, I fretted? I was sure he would soon be miserable. He is not, he loves driving around the country visiting parks.

I had this revelation about myself a few months ago- why is it I don’t ever have revelations about me that are flattering? – that I too often had the habit of feeling sorry for people. I believe that when I feel sorry for someone, I am most often reflecting the sorrows and regrets in my own life. I have no right to make such judgments about the lives of others, people may seem lost or sad to me, but each of us is on our own path, pursuing our own dreams. There is no single definition of happiness or contentment.

People do not need to lead my kind of life to be happy.

My sister loves her dogs as dearly as anyone loves anything, and is happy every minute she is with them. She is, in fact, happier than most people I know.

My friend chose to avoid the American medical maw and health care system, he chooses to manage his illness in his own way with his own diet and program. Who am I to say that is wrong? My creative friend loves shopping and swimming in her pool, it makes her happy, perhaps much more so than struggling to live a creative life in this Darwinian world.

Some people project unhappiness to gain sympathy and support. People who inspire pity are often very powerful people. It is not easy to get someone else to take care of you, to worry about you, to feel sorry for you. That takes a great deal of creativity, of strength, manipulation. Quite often, I have learned, the people I feel sorry for are very powerful people, more powerful than I am.

Because the people in my family felt so sorry for themselves, I grew up loathing the very idea feeling sorry for myself. I wish I had more pity on myself, it might have spared me the awful crack-up that came with my self loathing and hatred.  It kept me from seeing the truth about myself before it was too late.

It was always easier for me to feel sorry for other people, and it still makes me nearly ill to feel sorry for me. I’m not sure I want to change that. If I had spend more time worrying about me, and less time worrying about others, I might have spared myself and others a great deal of grief. My friend Paul committed suicide a few months ago and I have  been working hard not to feel sorry for him. We own our own lives, no one can take them from us.

I wrote in one of my earlier books that the people to pity most are those who don’t feel anything at all. None of the people I feel sorry for fit that category. They all feel quite a bit.

There are some people who claim to be my friends who sometimes feel sorry for me – when I had open heart surgery, when I struggled to sell Bedlam Farm, when I write openly about my struggles and failings. They are not my friends for long. I do not accept the pity or presumption of anyone who presumes to tell me how I feel or feel sorry for me. I do not want them around me or in my life. I do not care for people who tell me how I feel rather than ask me. I don’t wish to be one of those people.

So what business do I have doing this to anyone else? None, of course, I am grateful to discover that, it is not necessarily admirable to feel sorry for people.  I feel empathy for the poor, I do not feel sorry for them. We are all responsible for ourselves, we cannot carry the loss, grief and pain of the universe in our hearts and souls, that is not compassion, that is a kind of self-degradation.

I upset a friend who told me her heart broke for every suffering animal in the world, she worried about each one and wanted to save them all. I am sorry to hear it, I said, if you feel sorry for all of the animals in the world, then you feel sorry for none. You are finding a way to feel sorry for yourself. She did not care to hear it, I am sure.

All of this is really about me, not them. I am learning to understand the boundaries of my feelings and their interactions of the world.  Feeling sorry for people is just another way to lament life, to give pieces of oneself away. I hope I never stop feeling compassion for people. I hope I am never unable to stand in their shoes. I hope I do not again presume to feel sorry for other people, and always remember that this is always about me, and not about them.

Dorothy Parker once wrote that misfortune, and recited misfortune especially, can be prolonged to the point where it ceases to excite pity and arouses only irritation. Finally, after many years,  I got irritated with me.

Flo in her throne on the porch. A great barn cat.

In two days, as of noon today, 225 people from all over America have raised $11,005 to help Joshua Rockwood keep his family and his farm and his animals healthy and safe in the face of a cruel and unjust persecution by local authorities and the new and Orwellian hysteria spawned by the movement that says it is for the rights of animals. We are more than halfway there.

Joshua needs $5,000 to meet his gofundme project goal

“Never give up,” wrote Laurie Martenson on his project page as she donated $15, “a lot of people are pulling for you.” This support is touching to see. The contributions are not from the powerful or the wealthy, the big media has no interest in Joshua, politicians have run away from him, secret informers have targeted him and frightened his family, the police have raided his farm and taken his horses away, the town government of Glenville, N.Y., sleeps through this travesty, obliviousness to it’s implications.

Joshua has touched many people in a profound way. He is fighting for his farm and his freedom and his life with dignity and restraint. He has turned down a deal that would have dismissed 12 of the ludicrous charges against, he will not plead guilty to something he did not do, he says.

The contributions are coming in steadily,   mostly for $5 and $10 and $25.  And from everywhere in the United States and a number of other countries. The $100 contributions stand out, but this awakening is a people’s revolution, farmers, fathers and mothers, animal lovers, even some teenagers. We all sense something of ourselves and our own lives in Joshua and his struggle. It could have been our farm raided in the bitter March cold wave by police officers who know nothing of animals or farming. Our water tanks that froze. Our barns that were unheated. Our horses – or dogs or donkeys – taken away, held for thousands of dollars in ransom by people with staggering conflicts of interest. Our bank accounts depleted by enormous legal fees.

Joshua was arrested on charges of animal cruelty and abuse in March, he is not yet even close to a trial date or resolution of his case, and winter looms. He is studying and planning and thinking about how to prepare for it, he seeks funding for four tire water tanks and a large Greenhouse Shelter his pigs, cows and cattle. That will help him to grow and improve his farm and perhaps also keep him safe from the prying eyes of the secret informers who upended his life and who spy on their fellow citizens and neighbors and look to report them for the new and arbitrary notions of animal abuse.

I have come to know Joshua and am proud to call him my friend. He worries about me as much as I worry about him. And he worries about a lot of people – customers, fellow farmers,  friends, neighbors, his children, and his wife, who is terrified to let her children play outside in case the informers claim they are being abused and try to take them away.

It is a beautiful thing to see this people’s uprising against an obvious injustice, an obvious overreach of government. In a democracy, wrote John Locke, it’s inventor, government exists to protect freedom and property. When it seeks to take freedom and property away, it is called tyranny. Here, and in many other cases around the country, the movement that says it is for the rights of animals has lost it’s way, lost perspective. Animals are not better than people, they are not entitled to more rights than human beings have. They are our partners, not our dependents, they share the joys and travails of our world, they cannot be given a perfect life any more than we can guarantee that to ourselves and our children.

The billionaires will not be writing checks to Joshua’s gofundme project, will not step in to fund his farm improvements. They are out buying their next presidents.  It seems the people will come stand with Joshua, and they are making themselves heard. He is on the right side. We are helping to save one life, one at a time. Our one kind of powerful Super Pac.

“Stand strong,” Joshua Miller, who gave $10 this morning, “the folks are  rootin’ for you and yours. Your case impacts us all. Best thing that could happen besides you being completely vindicated, would be for your efforts to be wildly successful. I only wish I could give more.”

In a way, the small amounts mean more than the big ones, although both are surely welcome. It will take a lot of people to get Joshua over the top, to the $16,000 he needs for the winter and beyond. I am confident now that we will get there, and grateful to be part of this new social awakening.

When you give money to Joshua’s project,  you are donating to larger things as well. To keeping animals in our lives rather than driving them away. To our wish for people as well as animals to be treated with dignity and respect. To the idea that we are all part of a common community, we sometimes need help and guidance, but honest and caring people do not deserve to be persecuted because our feckless governments and political leaders have forgotten their duty, and forgotten as well what it means to be a farmer and live with animals.

An animal rights movement that exploits the love of animals to treat people with horrible cruelty is bankrupt and doomed. Every dollar that goes to Joshua is a step towards a better understanding of animals, the treatment of people with compassion, to a better way and a better world. You can contribute to his gofundme here. Joshua Rockwood is standing strong.

Every farmer I know has a chip on his or her shoulder. This is caused by the growing disconnection in America between people and farming, the natural world, and the real lives of animals. The economists and politicians have abandoned rural life, there are not enough votes in rural communities, not enough money or lobbyists or Super Pacs for small farmers to be considered important in the new global economy.

We have forgotten what people are for in the new workplace. In our lazy and spoiled urban culture, we take it for granted we will have plenty of good food to eat and milk for our children. We no longer have any idea where this bounty comes from, how it is grown and prepared, who the people are who work so hard for so little to prepare it, or how much money they really earn.

In the Corporate  Nation, it is the big corporate farms who make money, buy land, hire lobbyists and own members of congress.

We have mostly forgotten the small family farmer, they are not media savvy people, they are far too busy to spend a lot of time on Facebook.

  I have been taking pictures of dairy farmers for some years now, many have become good friends. They are a proud and ferociously hard working lot, it seems that the entire deck of the economic and political and regulatory system is stacked against. They are continuously tormented by so-called animal rights activists who know nothing of farming or animals, and forgotten by the people who benefit them the most – people who eat and drink milk.

I hope to do my small part to see that they are not forgotten. The are the nicest people and the most fervent animal lovers that I know. And perhaps the most politically naive, they are faithfully loyal to the very people who have left them to the wolves. They are a vanishing breed.

Once in awhile, we hear a farmer’s voice rising up out of the din to speak up for themselves and their fading way of life. This week, the farmers around me are gathering for the Washington County Fair, a huge agricultural fair where no beautify and healthy farmer-grown food is ever displayed, only fried cheese sticks, cotton candy and corn dogs and 58 flavors of ice cream, some of it deep fried

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  Friday, at dinner, my friend Carol Gully told me of an encounter she had at the supermarket, it made  her blood boil. I urged her to write it, and last night, she spent two  hours at her computer, the new one, the first one she and Ed have ever owned (I don’t think Ed has yet to be on it.) I loved what she wrote, helped  her finish it, and asked her if I could put it on the blog before the county fair opens in a few days. She said sure. Carol has been standing by her farmer man, as she calls him, for many years.

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MY FARMER AND ME, by Carol Gulley, Bejosh Farm

“Something happened recently to me that got me thinking about our lifestyle – Ed and I are both dairy farmers – in a different sort of way. It was something that got me angry, but I decided to be positive about it and write about how it made me feel.

I was in the grocery, and there was a woman in line in front of me. She was talking loudly and I realized she was blasting “farmers,” not just dairy farmers but farmers of every kind. She was blaming farmers for the rising cost of food, from dairy to beef to vegetables and fruit.

It turned out she had a lot of things about farmers on her troubled mind, and they were all coming out of her mouth. So I listened while she was commenting on the cost of meat and fruit. She might go broke, she claimed, but “the farmers,” as she referred to them, would never be destitute.

“They make so much on what they sell,” she said, “they are never content or satisfied with what they have.”
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Needless to say, this upset me, we have been dairy farmers for more than 30 years. She  made me realize once again, and not for the first time,  how little people know about where their food comes from or about the people who make and grow and send it to them. They just eat it, and know that when they go to the market, it will be there, they have never had to go hungry or been without healthy food for their dinner table. There are many people in the world who will never know that wonderful gift.

Oh, if she knew just what Ed and I make on the milk we produce.. My Farmer And Me. I kept listening to her, and she kept talking. She said she worked from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m five days a week and not a moment more in order to make enough money for the things she had to buy.

By that time I was fuming, and I realized I had heard enough. I just wanted to make her see the truth about what she was talking about.

So I said “excuse me, let me tell you about My Farmer and Me. Each day we wake at 6 a.m. to milk and feed our 60 or so cows. Their babies are fed and cleaned before we take our breakfast in the house. Every animal on our farm eats before we do, chickens, goats, cows, dogs. Four seasons are spend fighting rain, snow, heat and drought to make sure our animals are healthy and properly cared for beyond any doubt.

 My husband and I do ever bit of work on our farm, from milking cows to fixing tractors to repairing fences and gates and haying.

We enjoy the smell of newly moved hay or fresh cut corn at night, this life is a privilege we earn through hard work and that is a right we deserve.”

I told her the animals get taken care of on Christmas before gifts are opened and on Easter before eggs are painted and hidden and found. The heart of this farmer is the welfare of the animals on this farm.

And for your information, I added, a year ago we were making $25 or so for 100 lbs of milk. This year the price is down to $16. How would you feel if that happened to your weekly paycheck, which stays the same no matter what the weather or some bureaucrat in Washington thinks. Wouldn’t that give you something to complain about in line?

You can have your five-day work week and be all that  you can be.

My Farmer And Me do not complain about our lives, but sometimes we feel the need to explain it and we wish more people understood it. We love the satisfaction of hard work, the thrill of living on a farm, we love the animals in our care, our family works just as hard as we do, seven days a week, they have all of their lives. We love making good and healthy food for people like you, even though you don’t seem to have the grace to understand or appreciate what we do for you and your family.

I wished her a good and healthy life. My farmer and me will work hard every day to see that gets one.

– August 23, 2015, Bejosh Farm, White Creek, N.Y.

I confess I was a bit wary of seeing “RIgoletto” at the Hubbard Hall Opera House in town this afternoon. It is a two-and-a-half hour opera, and I first saw it at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. I didn’t relish sitting through more than two hours of this dramatic, maudlin and intense of the great old operas.

I planned to slip out during intermission and herd the sheep. I stayed the whole time, I couldn’t think of leaving. The Hubbard Hall Opera Company was great, the lead singers were amazing and I loved seeing the opera in the very intimate setting of this funky old vaudeville house on Main Street in the middle of town.

I am wary of embellishing or romanticizing life  in small town America. My town has plenty of problems – few jobs, snarky people, declining population, the economists have abandoned rural America for the global economy, nobody running for President has even mentioned the struggles of rural America.

Writers romanticize life around them because that’s how they sell their stories, I try not to do that. There is no perfect life, no perfect down. I met a woman from Long Island who said she disliked the country, back home she could get everything she wanted in just a few minutes, she never had to drive very far.

How narrow a definition of the good life, I thought. I have to drive farm for almost everything but a good meal (the Round House) but I love every bit of life here. My town is quite special in so many ways. The people are warm and friendly, we take care of one another.  It is a funky mix of writers, artists, painters, mechanics, handymen, farmers and nurses who work at nearby hospitals (not that nearby.) While almost all the towns around demolished their old theaters and opera houses, Cambridge preserved ours,  it is now the Hubbard Hall Arts And Education Center.

It is, in so many ways, the soul of the town.

The singers were just a few inches from us, we could see their sweat and spit in the lights. “Rigoletto” is a very maudlin, winding opera but the music is beautiful, the singing soaring and intense. It was just a beautiful performance, and I only got drowsy two times in the first five minutes – I get drowsy in the mid afternoon sometimes on warm days. I did not drowse after that, nor did I even think of sneaking out early.

The house was packed, they had to bring in extra chairs for the overflow. It is hard enough for the Metropolitan Opera in New York City to fill their performances, there was no problem selling out in my town of less than 2,000 people. Good for us.

I love living in a town that prizes it’s diners and cafes and yard sales and has a big Opera House right on Main Street, three minute from our farm. I love hearing singers that good in such an intimate setting.  Take that, Long Island lady. I love never listening to myself and most often saying yes instead of no when it comes to going out. Maria loved it as much as I did, and she wasn’t sure she would either.

It was a high, it was so good and beautiful, even though I had forgotten it  takes one of the leads a very long time to die.