All done for the day. The hamburger meat I left on the stove burned to a crisp and filled the house with smoke. I must do some cleanup; I would hate for Maria to walk into this smelly mess from belly dancing. It’s a mess. I’ve never learned to write and do anything else simultaneously.
Here is the color and light, as promised. It was an intense week; I’m happy the weekend is coming up. We have nothing planned, and I hope to keep it that way. I’ve got some great reading to do.
We went for a walk this spring-ish day, which was warm and sunny. I focused on pictures of our animals, sometimes neglected for our flowers, snails, and forests.
Above, Zinnia plunges into the full pond. She loves the water. They seem relaxed in the sun, eager for attention.
I loved our walk; the animals were relaxed and happy to see us. We ran the very busy Zip, carrying a mouse into the barn. The mouse got away, and there was quite a chase. Zip prevailed. Zinnia plunged into every pond she came across. Birds are soon going to lose their feeders, they were all over them today.
He was too close for my camera to focus on, but I did get a fuzzy photo of Zip with his mouse. He was happy—he had gotten himself a mouse. Nature is rough at times.
I took a beautiful series of pictures of the hens close up. They make for beautiful portraits. Maria did some love with Fanny; it was a sweet time and a lovely walk. Maria is at a belly dancing class. I just left a hamburger on the stove, and the house is filled with smoke. Yuk. I got to go.
The old hen, cleaning her feathers.
I am peering behind the apple tree.
Grooming. I love the lines.
Zip carrying his mouse into the barn.
Maria is communicating with Fanny—the two love speaking with one another.
Bird on the feeder.
Sheep waiting to eat.
I received two must-read books this week, and I wanted to share them with you as I begin reading them tonight.
Tommy Orange has written what is described as one of the most important books of the year. Orange’s first book, There There, became an instant classic. This new book, the novel Wandering Stars, is a sequel and is also being described as a masterpiece.
I’ve started the book – just a few pages – and am afraid and excited to read it.
I expect it will be powerful, disturbing, and meaningful.
It’s a novel described as an eloquent and heartbreaking indictment of the effects of the massacre, dislocation, and forced assimilation and murder of Native American children. It is also a homage to the importance of family and ancestors’ stories. It focuses on the slaughter and tragedy of Cheyenne children and the effect on their families and the Native American culture.
The book is also described as an extraordinary piece of writing. Orange is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes of Oklahoma. There There won the Pulitzer Prize and a slew of other awards. I found it a brilliant and painful book. I have high hopes for this one.
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The second book is an emotional trip for me.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez was my all-time favorite novelist and writer. Every one of his books was a significant event in my life.
He died a decade ago after losing his memory to dementia. He was writing his last novel—Until August—as he was losing his memory. “Memory is my source material and my tool, ” he said in one of his last interviews in Mexico City. “Without it, I am nothing.”
I doubt that anything he ever wrote could be “nothing. ” My favorite of his was One Hundred Years Of Solitude; years later, it remains the best novel I have ever read.
As his memory faded, he gave up on the novel and asked that it never be released. His two children, Rodrigo and Gonzalo Garcia Barcha honored his wishes, put the book away for a decade, and re-read it last year.
They said it was not his best work and reflected his worsening mental condition, but they said there was a lot of magic in it. One of his editors also edited it.
They said it also showed his gifts and brilliance and was good enough to publish and be read. I appreciate their honesty.
Marquez could write about his dog, and I would want to read it. This is the story of Ana Magdalena Bach and her curious love life despite being happily married for 27 years. It sounds like Marquez to me, and I am very grateful to be able to read his work in any form, memory or not. Even his worst will be better than most writers’ best.
It will be an emotional experience for me; the book is only 123 pages and has the original manuscript re-printed at the end. The children acknowledged that they were betraying his wishes, but I’m glad they did. I’ll treasure this book, one page at a time. I’ll let you know how it goes.
I want to share two changes in the blog. The first is about credit card donations.
The credit card security and transactional fees are staggering and increasing monthly. I can’t afford them without endangering the blog itself. The money from the blog and the Army Of Good should be used for its intended purposes, not for credit card companies.
Credit card donors will soon receive an email from the card transaction company serving us canceling credit card donations. I hope you find alternative ways to support the blog and our work. The blog will always be free, but I need donations to help the Mansion residents, refugee children, and the Cambridge Food Pantry.
So that you know, you don’t need to wait for the emails. You can cancel credit card donations anytime and switch to PayPal, Venmo, or mail donations.
Monthly donations can easily be shifted to Paypal, which offers monthly contributions. Venmo can also be used to send individual or one-time contributions. Most donations now come from PayPal, and Venmo is becoming more popular, especially among the young. We’ll provide a link that makes donating in simple (and inexpensive) ways easy.
This is a heads-up that it’s getting close. Thanks for your help. Please consider keeping your contributions coming. They are needed.
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Secondly, many of you followed the week-long arguments on the blog about Zip and whether or not he should be allowed in the farmhouse. It might surprise you (probably not), but I am a street fighter, and street fighters fight back; this is perhaps the only thing I have in common with Mr. Trump.
I had a lot of fun this week, and I was proud of my position and what I wrote about it. But something troubled me. I don’t need to argue at all, especially with people who are clearly troubled.
The messages I was getting were so unhinged and extreme that they gave me an easy path to ridicule and laugh at the people who sent them.
We did manage an honest discussion, but none of the nasty messengers participated.
The week allowed me to vent my spleen against elements of the animal rights movement I believe are harming, even killing, working animals and harassing good people.
And they were so loopy- accusations of corruption, dishonesty, sadism, and abuse – that they also inspired me to take out my natural side and have some fun. I had fun the whole week, poking my harassers and being ironic.
If I’m an animal abuser, I hate to think about what the real ones are getting away with.
However, the fact that broken people took the animal rights position doesn’t make them animal rights advocates or spokespeople for the movement.
These assaults have been good for me; they made me stronger and helped me to stop publishing things for the sake of argument or as an outlet for the residual anger I have carried in my head for most of my life. I strengthened my identity by defending myself, and most of the anger melted away.
One thing that bothered me was the assaults I printed and wrote about.
They come from someplace other than official animal rights officials or the many animal rights people who are sometimes mature and conscientious but have different ideas and values than me. The movement has fostered and enabled a culture of anger and even hatred toward animal owners, and for the sake of animals, I would hope they would do better than that.
While many are obsessed with where barn cats sleep, thousands of animal species are vanishing. Their priorities seem warped.
I realized belatedly, and this week especially (you should have seen the messages I didn’t post!) that I was unconsciously ridiculing and enabling people who are not healthy or rational and exploiting them by using them as targets to make a point I believe in. I don’t want to do that anymore; while I feel proud of everything I wrote and about our decisions involving Zip, I don’t think it’s quite right to be quoting people I know who are suffering from various forms of mental illness.
So, I’m instituting some new rules about messaging.
I won’t publish any comments from people who are not respectful of me and my work or who can’t rationally and civilly argue their positions without calling anyone names, me or my readers.
These people represent nothing but illness. I doubt they can help themselves, and I don’t wish to laugh at them or at their expense—there are plenty of sane targets to talk to, discuss, and argue with. There are at least two sides to everything, but these people do not need to be given an audience on my blog.
This is part of an evolution for me.
I’ve been writing online for a half-century and seen the spiraling of hostility there and on social media.
A psychiatrist I know and trust tells me that many people with mental issues go online these days to express themselves freely and target people they don’t know. It is, he said, a virulent form of mental illness and should be treated in that way.
People sometimes accuse me of not tolerating disagreement, but anyone who reads the blog regularly knows otherwise.
I love to argue, but I’m not comfortable with hate and cruelty.
People who disagree with me straightforwardly and respectfully have nothing to fear from me. I enjoy people like that, and I grow with challenges and questioning.
So, I will expand my new program of deleting messages from people who don’t seem healthy or rational or openly express hatred. And I will continue to permit commits that disagree with me purposefully, practically, and courteously.
If you don’t believe me, try.
I want my blog to be consistent with my spiritual direction and good for me.
I can’t imagine why people who hate what I stand for expect me to do their dirty work and publish their venom. I thank the many good people who read my blog and have thoughtful things to say. They will always be welcome here.
The last straw was a person who called me a dozen names in her first post and said my dogs smelled—a reason Zip might suffer, she said, even if he came in the house. This woke me up. She said Zip was crying piteously to be let in from the cold. (Zip was out every night looking for mice and found quite a few under the snow.)
I spent time at the University of Kentucky program on human-animal attachment, and here it was: a sad, unfortunate person transferring her sickness onto a barn cat she had never seen or met and projecting her brokenness.
What was I doing arguing with that?
Since she was not even close to being civil or rational, I deleted this message, blocked her from posting again, and deleted my second message of response.
Any actual or sane animal rights advocate is welcome on my blog anytime, as long as they learn to utter a civil sentence without calling me or anyone else names.
I should never have posted her first message; it was all venom and hysteria, with no rational reasoning. . I thought it might spark a genuine conversation, and it did. But it bothered me.
I want this blog to be a safe and meaningful place, and I will continue working until it is. It is close.
I thank my flowers for helping to set me on a good path. I thank my good readers for supporting my work and sticking with me.
This place is my work and passion, and I’ll keep at it until I get it right.
It seems that there are all kinds of abuse suffered by the young, and almost anything can bring me or other people back to the image of being mistreated, physically or emotionally.
If you are like me, the image and memory of being abused trigger fear, anger, and depression. Shrinks call this “inappropriate attention.” It may be “inappropriate,” but it also seems commonplace. Young children are fragile, still developing their emotions, and abuse leaves all kinds of scars.
These images of the past take us away from our lives and into a cold and dark place of suffering, anger, and fear. I don’t wish to be there. Pain is inevitable; suffering is a choice.
Abuse, I have learned, is not a rare thing but a common one. I found it both comforting and frightening to understand just how common the abuse of children is. I was certainly not alone, but I didn’t know it. I can help a bit by being open about it and sharing what I have learned.
According to the National Children’s Alliance, an estimated 600,000 children were victims of abuse and neglect in 2021, the most recent year for which there is national data. Child welfare authorities are working to protect the safety of more than 7 million children. Over 3 million children received an investigation or alternative response from child protective services agencies.
It is believed that many more cases of child abuse go unreported.
I used to think about these images and recall them whenever my attention was brought to those dark places, or someone told me about them. I realized a few years ago that I need to develop and practice ways of dealing with these lifelong emotions that pop up when invited. I’ve been working to live around them.
They leave a trail – anger, paranoia, fear, and regret. I think we see it every day.
Instead of looking back, I just look around me. I think of Maria, a flower, Zip and the dogs, my blog, and my life now. I think of birds. (Maria thinks of snails.) Abused children often grow up and develop happier surrogate memories. It’s a good practice.
Some people try visualizations, and Buddhists try breathing in and out, saying, “Breathing in, I know what suffering is in me.” Psychiatrists agree that breathing exercises can blunt and even repair the damage caused by these memories. This has been true for me.
I found that recognizing and embracing how my mind works and why it works that way became a practice when the old ghosts popped up in my consciousness, as they often do.
I am allergic to drama and don’t care to be a lifelong victim. Accepting and acknowledging the abuse and its lifelong aftermath was essential and helped me come to terms with the abuse, which, I have learned, is really not a rare thing in our country. I am moving on. The ghost of abuse will always be there, but I’ve moved him into the closet or the basement of my mind.
Images of abuse – not the abuse itself – are just an image when looking back; it is no longer the reality of my life even though it has often shaped my life. How well I respond to these memories has much to do with how I live my life. I don’t care to live in fear, anger, or the past. Like fear, I consider my abuse memories a kind of geography, a space to cross so that I can get on with living happily and meaningfully.
As the mantra suggests, I well know that suffering is in me, and so is the anger and grief it left behind. How I deal with those memories determines how I live my life.
Images of abuse have haunted me all of my life and brought me anger, sadness, and anxiety.
It’s well past time to move beyond that. Since abuse is very rarely acknowledged or spoken of in the open, it is easy to live those images and let them pollute my life. There is so much beauty and good to think of instead.
Meditation and therapy have shown me that there is a lot more to life than my memories from long ago. I see that life, with all of its miracles, successes, defeats, and promises, is here right now. That’s where I want to rebuild my heart and soul with new and bright memories from my life, not just the life I have led.
I’ve also proven that living in the present is possible and puts suffering in its place—in the past, not the present or the future.
Once I accepted the past, the present opened up, and the images in my mind quickly changed.
