9 December
Good Monday Morning From Bedlam Farm, 12/9/24 From Maria
by Jon Katz
Bedlam Farm Blog Journal by Jon Katz
8 December
Flower Art: Bringing Flower Power (And Gladiolas) To Light Up A Dark And Gloomy Day. Pick Your Color. Mine Is Red And Green Today. Slipping From Fear
by Jon Katz
In my daily life, fear often causes me to lose myself. My body is there, but my mind is sailing everywhere; sad and ugly news finds a home there, a magnet from the Devil. I often plunge myself into a photograph, a book, a good deed, my wife and friend, or anything that might carry me far away from my body and the “reality” intruding on me. People seem sad, fearful, angry, or distracted to me. But this is not the reality. The reality is inside of me, not outside. I am learning to put the book down and go inside; I know I’m often back to the fear. I am learning to do something different when that happens, to go back to my inner peace, dive down deep, a place that is always there, to my clarity, to my flowers, sometimes to Mother Earth, a sacred Goddess, and later to color in a flower that brings me back inside of me, back home. Back home. I find the little boy crying in bed, sitting with him, and telling him a story. He loves stories. We comfort each other. I think of my wonderful wife.
I look deeply in front of what is excellent in my life now. When I practice, I am solid like the earth when I go in, not out. I face my fear and worry directly, and it melts like butter in a frying pan. I am so much more than that.
Green means nature and life to me.
The white rose means grace and beauty to me.
This color means hope.
Today, the red means strength and power, sorrow and joy. Sometimes, it means sadness.
8 December
Bedlam Farm’s Holiday Lights Go Up Today
by Jon Katz
Even though they were Jewish, my parents enthusiastically celebrated Christmas, perhaps hoping to assimilate into the country both of their parents fled to. Maria’s family was Catholic, and both families had Christmas trees, gave presents, and enjoyed the feeling of the season.
We all kept this a secret from my Grandmother, who would have been horrified.
Maria and I do not religiously celebrate Christmas. We don’t go to services or get Christmas trees (we did for one year), and we are going away for two days the day after Christmas to a beautiful inn in Vermont, as we have done for years. That will be our only vacation of this year or next.
We do celebrate what is still, to us, the spirit of the holiday. We don’t shop for bargains; we deliver Christmas meals to families who ask for them. We will spend Christmas morning delivering a dozen meals to older people who can’t get out and people who asked to bring a meal to their homes for any reason.
A local community group organizes this Christmas meal program. For both of us, it is the true spirit of Christmas: the celebration of the life of a religious leader who introduced the idea to a rough and often cruel world that being human meant helping people with nowhere to go.
I will also make an extra effort to thank people who sell things to us and whom we meet during the day. Smiling and thanking people goes a long way toward fostering empathy and goodwill.
I wonder if Christ would spend the holiday looking for bargains on wall televisions. We look forward to it, to delivering the meals, and to getting a meaningful holiday. We hope it will last one day, but we are happy and fortunate to have this one.
We honeymooned there when we first got married and have returned every year since.
This afternoon, Maria strung a series of lights on the front porch. It will help light up our home and our dark road. We realized today that it will also make life easier for the Amazon Delivery people who have to drop off things on our porch occasionally.
I’d love to leave them up all year, but she likes to keep them only through the Christmas holiday. It does make them unique.
We expect a beautiful Christmas of love, giving, and hope.
8 December
Stay Clean, No Matter What: Dish Soap And Tide Are The Cambridge Pantry Items Today: Cleanliness And Pride
by Jon Katz
Sarah’s items today, a matter of pride and need:
Amazon Basics Dish Soap, Fresh Scent, 30 Fl oz, Pack of 4, $15.40.
Tide Liquid Laundry Detergent, Clean Heavy- Duty, Original Scent, 24 Loads, 34 fl oz, $5.50.
The people who come to the Cambridge Food Pantry are almost painfully sensitive to shame and pride. Nobody wants to need help eating and feeding their families.
(Photo Above, Diapers on the shelf)
Most work hard and long jobs and can’t keep up with the greed of some American Corporations. No profit seems like enough; that’s how the system seems to work sometimes. I never take photos. It makes life difficult for the pantry and its members. I know they feel shame, guilt, and depression over their struggles to feed their families.
Being clean and proud is very important to them, and also to Sarah and the food pantry staff and volunteers. Mixed in among food as healthy as Sarah can find are what I call the “Items Of Health,” things that stretch budgets (including the pantries) and often require pantry patrons to give up some food for other items.
In every independent rating, Tide is voted the best all-around cleanser for clothes, stains, and odor. Tide never stays more than an hour or two on shelves. The pantry members cannot afford the supermarket prices for Tide; the pantry wish list offers it at a much lower price.
One of our missions is to ease their shame and discomfort by making sure they have the items they need to be healthy, clean, and proud, especially during the Holiday season.
Today, Sarah has asked for help getting Dish Soap and Tide—two items that always disappear quickly—back on the shelves. These items are important for health, pride, morale, and cleanliness.
We are deeply grateful for any help you can provide. These items are currently available at discounted rates on the Amazon Wish List Program.
You can access the Wish List any time, day or night, and browse and choose your items. You can also access the wish list by clicking the green button at the bottom of every blog post.
8 December
Zip And His Third Winter. Waiting For Zinnia (Not Me) To Play In The Snow
by Jon Katz
At first, I thought Zip was waiting for me to come out in the morning, but this week, I realized he was waiting for Zinnia. The two of them have invented several games to play when it snows. One – today’s – is for Zip to play hide and seek while Zinnia madly races around my car, barking in search of him.
Zip hides behind a tire and swats Zinnia on the nose (claws in) while he races from one side of the car to the other. They can do this for a long time. A second game is for Zip to run to the garden bed and hide and then make a break to the barn while Zinnia rates back and forth, trying to catch up with him. Zinnia is…well, not built for racing a barn cat.
They have several games like this – I’ll get a video, or Maria will play them when he has time. I have as much time watching these, too – they are inseparable now – as they seem to have been playing.
Zinnia is a snow dog, but so is Zip. He loves to listen and watch for mice and moles to make their way under the snow, looking for food. I never thought Zip, a natural barn cat, would mind the snow or the cold—he doesn’t—but I didn’t expect him to have this much fun with the winter—and Zinnia, too.
Zinnia also loves snow but never had a playdate – a fraction of his size – to play with.