Search Results for: I Saw An Angel Last Night

(Please be cautioned that this story is hard to bear…)

We sat in a tiny  apartment with two couches and a beat-up old chair. It was dark and small, but to Hawah, it was a temporary paradise. She was different from the terrified and discouraged women I met last week in a Dunkin’ Donuts. She was happy, even  radiant.

“Today, I am happy,” she said, “I have hope again.”

Hawah, a refugee from the Libyan Civil War told us that she thought of killing herself Saturday as she sat in a crowded, dirty shelter afraid her children would be taken from her. They had violated the shelter curfew. Every morning Hawah went outside to look for bottles to cash in at the grocery store.

Omranaso did not have a happy face or ready smile, and for good  reason. She soon told us a horrific tale that was hard for Ali and I to even hear.

Hawah fled Libya  during the bloody civil war when the soldiers came to her house to seize her sons for Army duty. She had eight children then, only two are with her now, the others are scattered, shattered by the war her husband’s illness. She wants her family back.

Hawah said her life fell apart after her husband Hassan, a crane operator in Libya, also a new  refugee to America, had collapsed days after coming here and was rushed to a hospital, where he was diagnosed with spinal cancer.

He is in a coma, the doctors say he is not coming home.

We met these two women in a dark and cluttered apartment a few miles from the Albany’s towering state office buildings. They are friends, companions on a journey through a Hell most of us cannot even imagine.

After her husband fell ill,  Hawah was evicted from  her apartment because the city cut her  subsidy to pay for Hassan’s care, and she couldn’t cover the extra money. She was locked out of her apartment with all of her  belongs inside and her two children in school.

She never imagined caring for her family in America alone, she loves to cook and has a ready smile and warm heart. She is looking for work.

When she called him and begged for help, Ali rushed over and took her and her two children out of the shelter and found her a place to stay for a few days. Today, we found a possible  apartment for her, paid the deposit and first months’ rent and will move her there on Thursday morning if she and the landlord are in agreement.

I am prepared to write her a check for $1,300  for a  deposit and as many months rent help as I can get, I’m hoping for one year.

She said she is happy for the first time in many months, we could see it on her face.

Omranaso is struggling in a very special and different way.

She has lost  her family, she is clearly traumatized by her experiences and struggling for some safety and peace. She told me she just wants a few months of safety and time to put her life together. I told her we could give her that.

Omranaso is a refugee from the horrific Syrian Civil War.

She was captured by the Syrian military, tortured for months, she lost her husband, saw her mother die and crawled through a cemetery to get to Turkey and nearly died on the way, and then to a camp where she spent four years.

We didn’t realize these two were close friends until today, when we arranged to meet both of them to help them put their lives together. I shake my heads at the idea that these two women are a danger to us, or that we should have turned them away, as we are turning so many others away.

They embody the heart and spirit of America to me, and I will work hard to help them.

Her story is the most wrenching and painful that I have yet heard from a refugee, although there are many like it. Ali could barely contain his tears as he translated her horror story.

These two women met in an English language class, they have become dear friends. They are lucky to have found one another, they understand one another in a way few people can. As Omranaso told her story, Hawah clasped her hand and held it, offering her courage.

Until seven years ago, Omranaso lived happily with her husband in Eastern Syria. He began to act strangely, leaving the house at odd times and disappearing for hours.

One night, he left and didn’t return, she went out looking for him and learned that he had run off to join the terrorists fighting the Syrian Army.

She  set out to find him, and ran into an ISIS checkpoint. She might have been killed for not covering her head, but someone recognized her, she was taken home, threatened with her life if she ever left the house again without a man, and told never to go outside under any circumstances without covering her head and face and body.

She never saw her husband again.

The militants said they would bring her food and care for her if she got sick. But women could never go outside alone, they said.

Weeks later, they came back to her house and said her husband was not coming back, they expected her to take several other husbands, ISIS warriors, women were expected to have more than one husband and meet their personal and other needs.

She knew what that meant, she wouldn’t say what they did to her.

She swore she would never submit to that life, she dressed as a man in her husband’s clothes and fled towards Turkey, where she hoped to find a way to get to America. She was captured at a checkpoint by the Syrian military, who knew what her husband had done – it was a small town –  and suspected her of being an enemy of the government.

She was taken to prison and tortured.

She told us some of the details of her torture, but I feel uncomfortable repeating them here, for her sake and your sake.

She did tell of us the day they found her mother and brought her to the jail to see her daughter hanging naked from the ceiling – she sobbed while telling us this – and being tortured in the cruelest of ways, and they said they would do the same to her mother if she didn’t confess.

She  said she had nothing to confess.

She is an extraordinarily brave and determined woman, she was determined to somehow make her way to freedom or die trying. And she said she had learned there were worse fates than death.

Her mother and her friends – they were waiting outside the jail – brought their gold jewelry and  gave it to the soldiers, who took the bribe and later freed Omranaso.

After she was released, she set out to find her mother – her entire family had been killed in the conflict, including her sister and brothers – and when she got to her home, she found her mother was also dead. She didn’t want to talk about it. She went to the cemetery to bury her mother, and since the cemetery was close to the Turkish border, she decided to go alone to find a crossing.

She made it to Turkey and through the border, but she had not eaten in days and was nearly frozen.

She collapsed in the woods and was found by some farmers, they took her to the hospital. The Turkish government was kind to her, they arranged for her medical treatment and contacted a human rights group which took her to a United Nations camp, where she lived for four years.

She came to America a year ago, she is living in a crowded one room apartment with three people, and she is afraid of them, they are not  Arabic and she does not speak English.  They are rough with her and she desperately wants a place of her own.

We found her a job working for minimum wage in a women’s clothing store sorting and folding clothes. The owner is a friend of Ali’s. She is looking for a studio or one room apartment, we are contacting Muslim and other landlords in the city.

Ali says a one-room apartment would cost between $500 and $600 dollars, and the county social services will pay $300 or $400 a month.

We are planning to make up the difference for between six months and a year, it should be doable and then, between her job and her subsidy, she will be on her own. We are measured and bonded in this work, Ali and I have discussed it a thousand times, we do what we can when we can, but the refugees must make their own way in America, they know and accept this.

We – the Army Of Good –  also paid off $415 in debts she owed to lenders while she looked for work and  struggled to survive. She hated owing people money.

It is very difficult for the refugees to find jobs at first in America, few of them speak any English or have cars, so the jobs the can take are limited and low paying, at least at first. The federal government seems to take no responsibility at all for the refugees, many seem to be very alone.

Ali knows several people who know Omranaso and testify to her honesty and drive.

Her face is filled with pain and sadness, her trauma so visible. She could not tell this story without breaking down and weeping several times. She had a brother and a nephew, the boy died in the camps. She is all alone here, I had been told she had a son, but she doesn’t.

Again, we will help her get on her feet, and for relatively little money. Then we will move on. There is a woman from Afghanistan  who we are told needs some help, we are meeting with her next week.  We hope to have an apartment for Omranaso this week.

I was touched by the closeness of these two women as they clung to one another on the sofa, both had experienced awful trauma and suffering, their love for one another was a balm to the human spirit. The only time Omranaso smiled was when she looked at Hawah.

Last week, someone from Syria wrote Omranaso and said her sister might be alive. She knows there is no chance of bringing her to America right now, even if that is true. But she hopes it is true.

I thank them both for telling me their stories, and as we left,  Hawah invited me and Ali and Maria and Saad to dinner at her new apartment and Omranaso took my hand, and touched her heart, and said “thank you, Jon.” She walked away down the street, she said she didn’t need a ride.

I’m looking forward to that dinner.

Ed Gulley has turned to poetry, he is having a great conversation with the world about life and death.

I remember that Maria saw the artist in  Ed Gulley before I did, but neither of us saw the poet, although I suppose in some ways it’s the same thing.

When I first met Ed, I did not think of  him as someone who would sit down and take the time to write poems, or want to. He is a giant of a man who pulls calves out of cows as easily as I take cereal out of the cabinet.

A couple of weeks ago, Ed was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, and in a day or two, he  began writing poems, usually in the middle of the night, scratching them out on computer paper in his favorite  space, the couch in the new addition he built last year, his new throne room and headquarters.

Ed does not need a creative writing workshop or graduate degree to write his poems, they are his feelings, right out of his head. Ed and I share one very powerful trait: we have nothing to prove and nothing to protect. We are who we are, and it’s enough. We respect that in one another.

I am not really going to review his poem.

I couldn’t review the work of a close friend, let alone a person suffering from inoperable brain cancer, even if I wanted to. Too close. But I can write about it.

Ed does not need to be patronized or coddled, but what I think is most compelling about the poems he is writing is that he has turned to poetry to communicate with the outside world as he begins to grapple with the import of an illness he believes is terminal.

Ed is writing a very  rare kind of chronicle, a journal of life, and perhaps, death. He wants to share it.

Ed is a big, outspoken, calloused, lifelong dairy farmer, I admit to stereotyping him. The only other poet farmer I know is Wendell Berry, who is also an author and he is nothing like Ed Gulley.

We have come to know Ed as an artist, and there is absolutely no reason he should not be a poet, now that he is taking some time to think about his life  after  decades of long, hard  days on the farm. Ed is a creature of nature and the land, and also of family. He is also interactive by nature, he loves messages and letters, and feeds off of them.

To me, what is most relevant is that the poet inside of him – inside of all of us – is beginning to come out to join the artist inside of him. Ed the artist has spent considerable time the last few years making sculptures out of farm implements that people all over the country are buying. Check out his very popular Bejosh Farm Journal, which he also started last year with his wife Carol.

I’m beginning to think Ed is a prophet, he is seeing spirits everywhere and talk about ghosts and specters, and I don’t think it is the illness speaking, although that was surely a trigger. A few centuries ago he would almost surely be a mystic, a good candidate for being burned at the stake or drowned. When he first told me he was seeing spirits on the road, I assumed that was his brain disorder speaking, but I no longer think that is the case.

He is seeing something.

“My spirit floats across the room,” he wrote in his new poem, “Thank You,”

“Special tasks to do.

Raging Bull’s eyes

He is almost done…

Tweak those horns.”

I see that Ed here is speaking of the work he wants to do to finish his giant Bull sculpture, his great work, while he can.

He stopped working on his art (and the farm)  because he thought it might endanger him, he sees that this is not the case is returning to his work, to the farm on a smaller scale, to his art to finish some of his important pieces. He might also do some haying, he says, he misses riding in the tractor.

“A special time!,” he writes

“These things I do,

Made with love,

for all beautiful spirits,

out there..”

Stream of consciousness, one thought stitched together with another.

So Ed has begun a dialogue with the outside world, something he never thought to do, or had time to do. For now, poetry is his medium.

He is using the creative spark to come to terms with his life, or possibly, the end of his life. A rare thing for a dairy farmer to do, I think. A rare thing for anybody to do.

I can’t say if these poems are good or not, or literary or not, I don’t know. I thought of the spiritual writer Richard Rohr when I read them, someone sent this quote of his to me recently, it is curiously timely:

“If you inner imaginarium is rich, intelligent, and not overly defended, you will never stop growing spiritually. The artist is a prophet, someone who helps us be self-critical and creative so we don’t stay stuck in the status quo. The prophet models and embodies a new way of thinking and being that allows us to imagine a larger, more inclusive way to live.”

In a way, I believe there really no good or bad writing, only our writing, true to each of us. The thinkers and the gatekeepers like to say who should be allowed in, but Ed isn’t asking permission to think.

I am listening as Ed begins his great spiritual journey, his dialogue with he world. He is talking to the fates, the angels, the spirits who rule the world. I’m not sure always what he is saying, his poetry, unschooled and impulsive,  can be difficult.  But I believe it is important.

Rohr also wrote that we do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.

Ed means to do a lot of living now.

The world changed for Ed Gulley today, and for his wife Carol, and also, for me, and for Maria. Ed has a brain tumor.

Ed and Carol came to see Maria and I this afternoon, they came straight from their doctor’s office to talk to us about the  tumor the size of a golf ball discovered on the back of his head. They call it a Gilioma. Carol announced this on their blog, the Bejosh Farm Journal this morning.

Ed and I are very close friends, in fact, he affirmed my fading faith in friendship. We joke we are brothers from another mother, and somehow, this is true.

This is his challenge, not mine, and I will not take any piece of it from him, but I will be honest and say I was deeply shaken and dispirited by this news, it brought me to my knees.

I was so happy to see him when he came by this afternoon, we threw our arms around each other, just like men like Ed (or me, to be honest), never do.

Ed is what people mean when they describe someone as being larger than life. He is bigger than everyone in almost anything he does, i body and spirit. He is tall, imposing strong, loud, forceful, opinionated, certain, funny and deeply introspective.

His withering gaze can freeze milk in cans, I’ve seen it happen.

Ed is a presence that fills every space he is in, and whatever faces him down this road, he will not be quiet or acquiescent about it.  Ed is absolutely not going quietly into any night.

“Your poor doctors,”  I said when he told me about his brain tumor.”

They are in for it.

Ed cannot abide bureaucrats, rule-makers, stupid people, doctors, prevaricators, lazy people, ideologues, politicians,  or anyone who tells  him to do anything. I suppose this is what makes us brothers.

Ed is a farmer who adores his cows as much (sometimes more) than members of his family, he calls them his “best friends” and knows all of their names.

And he does love his family. And all the animals of the world. And farming, and tractors and farm implements and art and family farms and independence and nature and helping cows give birth.

There was an artist inside of Ed, pushed back all of his life by the grind of the family farm, by cold and hard-driving parents, by the milking and haying and shoveling and calving and long hours in the hot and cold. Like all family farmers, Ed saw his world recede and in most cases, vanish. He made lots of noise about it, to anyone who could listen.

This winter, I noticed Ed was wearing down, he could not get warm, his legs were betraying him. A couple of weeks ago, he fell out of the skidster and hurt himself. Maria and i started hoping he would think of stepping back. He did not. Life seems to have don it for him.

In recent years, the artist has broken out, Ed sells his farm sculptures all over the country at our Open Houses and on his blog.

We talk about creativity and encouragement all of the time, he has opened our eyes to many things, we have tried to do the same for him.

Ed loves his farm but it is true that he is also more than that, he has a great and hungry mind and is just beginning to use it in new and creative ways.

Ed is the best story-teller I have ever known, a world-class bullshitter, he shames me into silence.

He is the brother I never had, the one you call when there is a bear dying in the pasture,  or a dead sheep that needs to be taken away, or a tree that has blown down on a fence, or a path to be cleared out into our back woods. Or when you are just plain scared.

It is calming just to know he is down there on his farm, riding around in his skidster, slaughtering cows, talking to possums, hawks and chickens, hammering out wind chimes,  cursing the bureaucrats and corporatists who set the price of milk, kissing calves on the nose, feeding crippled chickens and hawks.

Ed is the Last Standing Individual, a dinosaur in a changing world, the man who hates conventional wisdom and never plays it safe. And who lives his own life, an increasingly rare thing in the Corporate Nation. Farmers have fed the world, and the world has abandoned farmers in return.

Ed feels that betrayal every day, even when I urge him to move on.

Ed is the guy you call when there is trouble, and today, he is the one who came to us in trouble, and it seemed to alter the nature of our world.

Ed has been a good friend to me, and I will return the favor, insofar as he wishes. I knew even before he arrived not to treat him as a sick person, or to show him any pity. That would not have gone well.

Ed will go to Albany tomorrow to get some thorough tests that will tell his doctors and him what comes next. He expects they will want to do surgery quickly, he is prepared to accept his fate, whatever it is. The tumor could be benign and simple to remove, or it could be something else,  he doesn’t know.

Like me, he respects life, he does not try to control it.

He came, I think,  to thank Maria and I for challenging him to see the world beyond farming and to recognize his creative spark. It means a lot to him. We were so touched he wanted to tell us this today. We were both in  tears when he left.

Ed said he is giving up farming almost immediately, and dividing the farm up among his five children. Bejosh Farm is a magical place, we love going there. Finally, letting go. He is much-loved in the farming community, farm families are already organizing to launch a fund-raiser on his behalf. I’ll share the details when they become available.

I was eager to see Ed and understand what my role will be in his illness. I understood right away what he wants from me: nothing.

He wants me to listen and nothing more, and in my hospice and Mansion work, I have finally learned to be a good and faithful listener. I can’t make him better, heal his tumor, bring back the life that just changed irrevocably. His children have already taken up the daily farming tasks. I am not there to tell him everything is okay, everything is not okay.

We talked for three good and long hours today, the force is very much alive in Ed. By tomorrow afternoon the doctors and nurses will be rolling their eyes, cowering,  and running for cover. Much of this is bluster. Ed never hurts anyone, his heart, like everything else about him, is big.

Whatever the doctors say, Ed is planning a trip to see the things he wants to see – a rodeo in Montana, some Amish friends in Pennsylvania, a pub in Ireland. “I want to live,” he said, “and get out there.” One thing I have learned about Ed is that when he says he is going to do something, he will do it.

So Ed: I love you dear brother, it broke my heart a bit to hear this news, none of us are larger than life, when it comes down to it. 

 

If anyone can triumph over this Giloma, it will be you. If not,  you will live in grace.  I am not here to tell you it will be fine, or that it won’t, that is not my business, and your right.

 

I am not sad for you, but grateful for your friendship and love.

When we least expect it, life challenges us to test our courage, faith and willingness to change and grow.

There is no point in pretending that such a thing hasn’t happened, or in claiming to be ill-prepared. The challenge does not wait for us to come along, life  never looks back, or pauses for us. We accept life or are consumed by it, and always, always, we learn to let go, we let go.

Godspeed, when I close my eyes, I see the angels gathering to blow the wind gathering at  your back.

This morning, I went out to the barn as usual, but instead of feeding the animals right away, I gave my annual “State Of The Farm” talk to the sheep, donkeys and dogs (said dogs were on either side of the sheep, the strange little dog was in the house, spitting something up, no doubt.)

They all gathered attentively to hear my message, the alfalfa treats in my pocket had nothing to do with it.

I should tell you it was an amazing speech, there has never been one like it, it was..well, amazing.

I told the animals I was happy to tell them that the state of the farm is good.

We had excellent hay all winter, and mice did not get into the grain bags. The manure pile is growing at a faster pace than last year, perhaps because of the feed we fed them to help with the cold.

“I’ve done an incredible job on the farm,” I told the animals, who were on their feet cheering every moment of the talk. Only Lulu turned her head away, as if disgusted. The sheep baaaaahed at her. Lulu gave off a strange bray.

It sounded like “more bullshit,” to me, but she just looked at me with her big brown eyes.

“This year, in just a few months, ” I said, “we became the safest, strongest and best farm in history. Our animals grew antennae, transmit signals, can read French, we abolished ticks, the sheep can take hay out of the barn themselves, they have formed their own subscription  blog online.

We have abolished our outdated policy of rescuing brown and black sheep from other farms. We don’t need those sheep here, they just bring trouble. Some of them are killers of  baby rabbits.

Those farms are “shithole” farms, we don’t need animals like that here.

The chickens can no longer lay eggs wherever they feel like it, they must stay in their roosts, and we will only accept new animals to the farm who come from Southern Vermont, where the chickens are white, rich, hardy and very well-bred.”

I am pleased to say we have the best stream of any farm, with the best and freshest water. So much better than it was when those old farmers were here. We have only the best water.

The farm is great, I went on to say, but we will make the farm great again, or even greater…or whatever (great snorting and stomps of approval at this.)

“The donkeys did a stellar job of guarding the sheep this year. We need to support our guard donkeys, and stop making jokes and calling them “asses.” They have given us their best, they deserve our best in return.”

“There were plenty of coyote tracks around, but no coyote came into the pastures, no sheep were lost for any reason. Thanks in part to our four new sheep, the Romneys, we had the nicest wool and yarn ever, and Maria sold all of it. It is the best wool available anywhere in the world. The previous owners of the farm were stupid and weak, their wool was think and scrawny, but we are strong and brave and smart, and our wool is rich and thick.”

Here are some more notes from my speech, which (I’ll be honest with you) said nothing of real value, made no interesting proposals, told little if any truth, was completely self-serving, and basically repeated what everyone already knew and had heard before. It was a sensation, everyone watched,  the best State Of The Farm speech ever made. You wouldn’t believe the stomping and approval.

“This Spring, we will all work together to replace the boards in the Pole Barn eaten by the snow-bound donkeys. We will replace the boards with donkey-repellent wood. This will be a New Moment for the farm. We had a hard winter, but I am happy to tell you that the frost-free pump never froze, the pipes in the farmhouse never burst, the bats in the attic never perished, the mice in the basement had one of their best mice years ever – they got into a giant bag of Red’s dog food and had a fine January, warm and dry and horny.

As many of you know, we have a problem with one of our farm family, Gus has megaesophagus and has done some of the best and strongest and most dependable vomiting – we call it regurgitation –  of any animal we have ever known. The very best megaesophagus a dog could have. As you know, little Gus will eat almost anything that is not cement or hammered into the ground, and happily throw it up. A muzzle, we think, might help.

We are experimenting with different muzzles to see which one fits him best – two are coming this week, so hopefully he will return to the pasture soon. As an aside, a number of people have gotten the idea that it would be sort of cool if Maria would knit or sewed a muzzle for Gus. Healing vibes, it was thought. Er…

Those of you who know Maria, as I do, know these creative suggestions are quite problematic. First off, fiber artists like her do not knit or weave dog clothing, and it would be wisest not to ask them,  the very suggestion could spark violence or retribution or the withholding of favors.

They make art like quilts, hanging pieces and potholders. They talk of Goddesses and mystics, not the making of things for dogs to vomit into and spit bile and yellow gook over. Maria, I am proud to say, had a very good year. She sold everything she has made for a year on her  much-loved website – the most loved website ever – except for one hanging piece and one quilt, both still for sale.

I hear about those two pieces every day of my life, usually more than once, i hope people buy them one day.

I had a great year too, I decided to do good rather than argue about it. I turned in my new book, “Gus And The Big And Small Lessons Of Bedlam Farm” in October, and am still waiting to hear from my publisher. The call will come. I am a five-time New York Times Bestseller. I have a Mansion and A Yacht.

In the meantime, the farm has become a legend in the world of farms.

Here, on Bedlam Farm, in just one year, and all by ourselves,  we have cured climate change, bred sheep who live for a thousand years, eliminated poverty, bred donkeys who pee molten gold, cured cancer,  invented invisible fences, converted vomit into wine, and  manure into cereal that lowers cholesterol. No one thought we could do it, when I came to the country, everyone laughed at me, thought I was a joke.

I could never survive on a farm, they said.

They are not laughing now. Thanks for listening.

So the above was humor, and I have learned I need to say that when I try to write humor, before the outraged messages start sailing in from people who have sometimes forgotten how to laugh or smile.

I did – seriously (this part  is not humor)  – think this morning about the state of our  farm and the state of our lives,  me and Maria, and I thought this: Some years ago, we set goals for our selves and our lives together. After our painful and frightening bankruptcy, we resolved to pay off our debts, live lives of independence and creativity.

We have achieved those goals, and they remain our goals for the future. We vowed to live lives of encouragement and we have met those goals, we have tried to help a number of artists and creatives to find their voices and do their destined work. We have paid all of our debts.

Last year, when the country was so bitterly divided by politics, I  resolved to alter my life, to use my blog, my writing, my photography to do good rather than join the raging arguments that are tearing the country apart. I am not a hater, not even for politics. I do not hate anyone, especially the people who disagree with me. I resolved to focus my work on the Mansion residents and on the refugees coming to New York State, most notably the residents and  RISSE refugee soccer team, based in Albany.

The result has been the evolution of a group of very disparate angels all over the country who operate under the name of the Army Of Good. With their help, I have done more good in a year than in my previous 70. And much more to come. I did what I said I would do. This has made me happy, proud and fulfilled. I am less angry and resentful than I have ever been.

I am reminded every day of the wisdom of this path. Yesterday, I wrote about Chairman Mao on my blog, I saw his poster on a recent trip. I said he was a monster, and had killed more people than Hitler. I wrote that he had also brought health care to China, destroyed the feudal system of work, brought women into the workplace, and brought education to the poor.

I got this message from a man named Roger,  who said he had read all of my books, and called me a number of names. “You should be ashamed of what you have done!,” wrote Roger K. “I have deleted any reference to your Blog and will sell your books at the next Jewish used book sale!”

Then, after that, he added “you on the left often call those who do not agree with you fascist and assign them to Hitler, but he comes in a distant third when compared to Mao and his buddy Stalin.”

Roger definitely got to me. A USED Jewish book sale? How dare he?

I told Roger I would work to respond to disagreement with civility and grace, as he clearly  does. But a used Jewish book sale? Poor Rose, poor Orson. Don’t they at least deserve a more holistic, sectarian, burial?

I remembered a waitress I fell in love with when I worked as a reporter in Atlantic City, the reporters all got drunk every night after work, and Rose, a person, a hostess and singer in a popular all night cafe called the Stanley Restaurant, Rose usually got drunk too, along with us.

One night an inebriated tourist demanded she sing Moon River. When Rose refused, he stood up and called her a “no good Jewish whore!”

 Rose stopped, pulled herself up to her full height, walked over to the man’s table and leaned over and looked him straight in the eye. “Listen, mister,” she said with fire in her eyes, “nobody calls me a Jew!”  The whole bar cracked up and the shamed tourist fled for his life.

But back to Roger, he said he would be reading me no more. And how could he? His books would be gone.

Then, of course, I realized that Roger was not Jewish at all, that was kind of the point.

So how do we live in a world like this, where the Rogers of the world can send messages like this all day long for free and without consequence and enter our space and consciousness at will? That’s a challenge for all of us.

Well, I am learning the answer. With patience, and grace and humor. And with love. I set out to do that, and am doing it. I don’t need to love Roger or even like him, but I don’t need to hate him either, he is, like the man in the Stanley Restaurant, a foolish and lost man.

I am happy to tell you in this serious part of my State Of The Farm message that love and grace and patience and humor are alive and well at Bedlam Farm in 2018, and here, we are committed to doing more of the same in the coming year. We are not eating the poisoned candy of rage and judgment, we simply seek every day to go good, and then more good, and then more good after that.

Who knows where this will take us? The idea of Bedlam Farm is growing deeper and richer. It is only getting better, and I mean to keep it small and focused. I mean to be here through the last days of my life, alongside the person I love so much.

I wish the same for you all.

When I was a teenager, I experienced some of the most powerful and troubling physical impulses of my life.

They were sexual, I had entered puberty in my mid teens and was perpetually aroused and tormented. It felt as if my body had gone mad, beyond my control.

I remember having erections that were embarrassing – they were often visible – and kept me from sleeping for weeks on end. I was often afraid to go to school or without a jacket covering my groin.

I remember that these feelings were not pleasant, but painful and intensely uncomfortable. There was little I would not have done to release them or be rid of them.

These sexual impulses were overwhelming, and at times, barely controllable, even uncontrollable.

My friends and I pursued women whenever we could and tried to have sex with them whenever possible. That was almost always foremost in our minds.

We masturbated whenever we could and as often as we could. I suppose our parents knew but never spoke of it.

It was the closest I have ever come to feeling like an animal and being like an animal.

As aroused as we were, my friends and I never, to my knowledge, forced ourselves on anyone, although we tried often to persuade women to have sex with us. We were sometimes pushy and obnoxious in that way, it was always on our minds.

That was the way in which we came to know women, and the beginnings of the failure of many men to understand them or see them as equal human beings with the right to dignity.

I wish someone had prepared me for it.

One of the interesting things about that period for me was that I never once mentioned what I was going through to anyone – my father, my mother, my family, my friends, my teachers, or uncles.

No one ever spoke to me about these impulses, or ever discussed the dangers of acting on them, or appropriate ways to respond to them.  No one talked of the importance of understanding no, only the importance of yes. To have sex was a victory, to fail a defeat.

At times, that was my only understanding of women – as a way to get relief from the impulses that seemed to have taken over my body. I never thought once about how women felt about me or the other men, nor did we ever speak to them about their feelings about sex and love.

These impulses were often stronger than my own reserve and moderation, my own innate sense of decency.  There were no rewards for restraint.

I do not claim to understand what these powerful harassers in the news today were thinking or feeling, but I do  wonder about the impulses and addictions that they could not control. I was a journalist for many years, and while I can’t speak for all men, I can say with some confidence that these men knew better, they knew what they were doing was wrong.

What, I wonder, overcame their morality and empathy?

This is a secret world I am talking about. It is simply never discussed.  In fact, this is the first time I have ever mentioned my own early sexual experiences to anyone other than Maria.

We do not have any secrets from one another.

I have no harassment stories to confess to or apologize for from back then, unless it is the growing understanding that almost all men are complicit in this brutalizing and exploitation and harassment of women.

It seems to be built not only into the biology of men, but into the cultural and political structures of the country, and the way in which men are raised.

To me, harassment is a men’s problem, not a women’s problem. They are victims, but the problem is men’s to own and talk about and fix. Since we do most of it, we must work to stop it.

More than 99 per cent of all rapes are committed by men in America.

Without men, rape would hardly exist in our society.

When I was an executive producer at CBS News, I saw the corrupting and corrosive effect on men of power. Power is dangerous, it is an aphrodisiac, it does make some men feel invincible and entitled and immortal, it does transform them and quite often brings out their worst angels, or perhaps demons is a better word.

I saw that a lot, it was a major reason I was eager to leave television, along with my bosses’s eagerness to have me go.

These powerful impulses left me long ago, and I do not really know where or when it was I got the idea that abusing or exploiting women in this way was wrong.

I must have come to it myself somehow, since no one ever talked to me about it, or told me what was right or wrong when it came to men’s treatment of women. I just seemed to know that it was wrong,  that kind of cruelty and domination did not ever seem like sex or love to me. What kind of man – what kind of person – treats another human being in that way? The answer is many people, and they are mostly men.

It seems to me, this has nothing to do with sex, but mostly with power.

I knew what it felt like to be dominated and assaulted and harassed, I could not do it to anyone else.  All my life, I have heard men speak in awe and wonder at other men who brag about their sexual conquests. I have rarely, if ever,  heard a man praise another man for treating women well and with sensitivity.

Over these past few weeks, as the harassment issue becomes more and more politicized – the existence of a “left” and a “right” seems a far greater threat to the country to me than the Russians – it has become even more difficult for us to come to understand what is happening inside the psyches of men that causes them to harass and dominate women, often in the most brutal and degrading of ways.

Harassment is now okay  on one level – approved at the highest levels of politics – if it advances a political agenda. You can harass all the women you want in the name of the left, or the right. It doesn’t matter if it’s wrong, there is no wrong in that shameless world.

That is not the message young men need to hear. Some things – harassment and rape – are much worse than a legislative defeat.

This week, I finally e-mailed a friend and mentor who has been accused of sexual harassment, and has admitted that the accusations against him are true. He was fired, and lost everything. He thinks he may never find work again. His wife is terrified, they can no longer pay the college tuition for their son.  He said he was ashamed of himself.

I wasn’t sure what to say to him. I avoided him for weeks.

I asked him how he was and expressed the hope he was getting help. He was  sad, and seemed very regretful in his messages. He referred to impulses and needs that had simply overtaken his moral judgment and ethics.

They were much more powerful than he had recognized or seen.

He seemed sincere to me, he seemed broken, as if he had awakened from a trance.

He said it was all like being in a fever, he simply left his own self respect at times. He said he knew that was no excuse, that there was no excuse. It was an understanding that he was coming to.

He could not explain to himself how he left his morality was left behind as he abused women in gross ways and humiliated himself and his family. What will I tell my children, he asked me?

I said  nothing, but wondered to myself why he didn’t think of that sooner.

A good rule for men is to always stop and ask what their children might think of the way they treat women. I stopped myself from having an affair once long ago by doing that. It works.

My friend also never discussed his impulses with anyone, he said. There was no place for him to go. Women can now to go HR with complaints of harassment, he said, but men cannot go anywhere and talk about the sex drives and impulses that sometimes overwhelm their own moral values and humanity. No man who did that would be employed for long, or ever be promoted.

Yesterday, I read a heartfelt and thoughtful piece by Billy Bush, the TV host whose career was destroyed by his proximity to the bloviating Donald Trump and his Hollywood Access tapes. Surprisingly, I found Bush’s piece to be one of the best things I have seen men write about the harassment scandals wracking the corporate, media and entertainment worlds.

“I have faith,” Bush wrote, “that when the hard work of exposing these injustices is over, the current media drama of who did what to whom will give way to a constructive dialogue between mature men and women in the workplace and beyond.

The activist and gender-relations expert Jackson Katz has said that this is not a women’s issue – it’s a men’s issue. That’s a great place to start, and something I have real thoughts about – but is a story for another day.”

Amen to that.

Good for you, Billy, I thought, you are becoming a man.

You were debased and debased yourself by applauding  Mr. Trump and his disgusting comments to you.

In your response, you are reclaiming your own dignity and honor by being thoughtful and honest.

You have paid an awful price, and it seems to have done you some good. “Today,” Bush wrote, “is about reckoning and reawakening, and I hope it reaches all the guys on the bus.” Not yet, but maybe one day soon.

I watched Jackson Katz’s (no relation) Ted Talk about men last night and it also gave me hope that men may  begin to think and talk about how violent behaviors – in politics, the school yard, the NFL, and especially with women – are tied to the definitions of manhood that dominate our culture.

In Washington, winning is everything, there is nothing else. That’s what Katz means.

When I was a kid, we young men thought that pursuing women sexually and conquering them was a sign of manhood, of strength and virility.

It was something we were supposed to do if we were real men.

We were praised for it, it made us seem bigger, when it fact it was making us smaller. I can’t help but wonder if those weren’t the lessons so many men carried into their adult lives, when they should have known better.

Perhaps because of the abuse I suffered, I somehow came to see violence against women as a sign of weakness and cowardice, not of strength.

I had no role models to teach me this, and have rarely, if ever, discussed this with anyone.

I am in awe of these brave women who have put this issue on the dinner table of every awake home in America. They are so much braver than the men who assaulted and harassed them.

But I also believe that somehow, there needs to be a much deeper conversation with young men and now, I see, older men as well,  about their bodies and drives and impulses. About how to control themselves and not hurt women and upend their own lives.

We need to find better way of being real men and understanding and teaching manhood. Like nurturing our wives and children, listening to women, supporting their advance through society so they can protect us and others from ourselves until we can  learn to protect ourselves and others from us. And choosing leaders who stand for something other than themselves.

I have to take responsibility for what men are doing to women, to their sons and brothers, to the world. It all seems like the same thing to me, all of the same piece – our behavior is unacceptable and causing great harm, even catastrophe.

That does not have to be what we are about. It is not what I am about, but for a flick of fate, it could easily have been what I am about.

It is in me, too, I am sure of it.

Billy Bush showed us what it means to be a real man in his piece this  week. Our President could have done a lot of good if he took responsibility and did some thinking about something other than his own survival,  the way Bush, his enabler, did.

I think Billy Bush will be all right.

“On a personal note,” he wrote, “this last year has been an odyssey, the likes of which I hope to never face again; anger, anxiety, betrayal, humiliation, many selfish, but I hope, understandable emotions. But these have given way to light, both spiritual and intellectual. It’s been fortifying. I know that I don’t need the accouterments of fame to know God and be happy. After everything over the last yer, I think I’m a better man and father to my three teenage daughters – far from perfect, but better.”

I’ve said all of my life that the only men I can love are those who have been tortured as children or humiliated as adults. They have to be shocked into awakening. But it’s all in there, it has to be.

So this is all a message for men, who can’t be perfect, but can be better. Can we overcome so much baggage, thousands of years of seeing women in this awful way? I don’t know. Something is happening, and it is important.

This is our problem, almost every woman alive seems to have been hurt by it, but they can’t ultimately resolve it. That falls on us.

Bush has learned the hard way what nobody ever bothered to teach him. There are lots of lessons in that. And in so doing, he seems to have become a real man.

This is a men’s problem. Calling it a women’s problem takes men off the hook. Right now, it seems the hook is finding us.