My writing class continues to do it’s extraordinary work, to listen to and support one another, and build confidence in the practice of writing. Ed Gulley is a dairy farmer and he is getting ready to launch his new blog – as yet unnamed.
“Hello!,” he wants to write on his first day, “I’m Ed Gully and after 63 years of loving and working on Bejosh Farm – 43 years of which are with my wife Carol at my side – father time has begun to show us subtle hints that slowing down and making changes should be considered.”
The blog,” he wrote, ” will be the Holy Grail for me to conquer due to the fact I still have a rotary phone that the grandkids are fascinated with and due to the fact that I am an old timer and stuck on some things from the past. But all kidding aside, we see stories and photos and great videos going on around us every day and they will be coming at some point and I hope you can bear with us.”
It will be a pleasure, I predict.
Ed and I are different in many ways, kindred spirits in another. Father time is hanging around me too, but you will not read any old people talk here, and I am not about slowing down. I doubt Ed will either. He is a big, roaring dynamo.
Like me, he sees this phase of life as a beginning, not an end. Life is, after all, what you make of it, at any age. He is focusing on his work as an artist, as his gifts as a writer and story-teller, and as a farmer who has lived and is living a rich and full and meaningful life.
Ed offered us in class a list of 10 different blog stories and issues he will raise, and I believe he will give me some real and exciting competition. My blog is called a Farm Journal, Ed’s blog is a rich farm and personal and agriculture testimony. The great blogs are not about issues, but about people, and Ed and Carol Gulley have a very powerful tale to tell.
Ed’s “junk art,” as he calls it, is coming into focus. “We have old guys like Timmy the Turtle and his box turtle brother; Mona the dustmop, a new creation from Carol; Gary The Goose and The Porcupine People.” Bejosh farm is a gallery already, this does not sound like slowing down to me.
It is a gift to have Ed in the class and to see this remarkable man and wife team grasp onto new technology to tell their story and move into the future. I’ll be sharing this journey. We are all born writers and artists, it is usually the adults in our lives who take this away from us. We can always get it back. Writing is not a magical or mystical art, it comes from life, emotion and the art. Many people in my class are showing that.