Bedlam Farm Blog Journal by Jon Katz

“When I got older,” M told me after our reading session last week, “people started moving away, and then they started dying. My friends, my neighbors, my family, my husband and brothers. It felt like pieces of me were just getting cut away, and sometimes it feels like there is just a hollow shell. left me. I’m so tired of missing people…”

Many people are lonely as they age. The social and community contacts that sustain us are often diminished, sometimes completely severed. And there are fewer and fewer opportunities to make friends.

I notice that people in the Mansion care for one another and look one for one another, and empathize with each other. Yet if you ask them, they will often say they don’t really want to make friends any more, not in the old way. It’s just another thing to miss.

The people there also miss the tasks that brought them to other people – raising kids, working, taking care of shopping, houses and cards. Nobody talks much about missing human contact, but almost everyone feels it. And they wanted to talk about it last week at the Mansion.

“There is no substitute for a husband or wife, or caring for a child, having a friend of 30 years. I’ll ever have that again, and what can I say?” It hurts.

“You don’t have any way to mask the loneliness,” said W. Most of what you had is just gone.”

My own view is that much of this loneliness could be eased or modified if the extreme elderly were not so isolated in nursing homes, assisted care facilities or even in their own homes. We tend to look away from the elderly, we hide them away and often avoid them. They rarely get the chance to mix with the people who might help them feel more connected to the world.

The residents love to see dogs and cats, kids and younger adults, they love their doctors and aides. But very few people from the outside world come to the Mansion.

“It’s safe in here,” said A, “I don’t want to be anywhere else, but it’s  not the real world.”

After my reading hour every week (I read again there tomorrow afternoon at 1 p.m.) I opened a discussion about aging.  It was very real and very honest. The residents very much wanted to talk about it.

We’ve talked about struggling for words, not been seen, feeling invisible. Last week we also talked about loneliness, a subject I will bring up again tomorrow. It’s important, and I saw they wanted to talk about it.

I’ve chosen a nice mix to read tomorrow. A new book called God, I Needed A Puppy, by John Gray; The Wonky Donky by Craig Smith (a favorite);  Willbee the Bumblebee, also by Craig Smith and a new choice for me, Where The Sidewalk Ends, poems and drawings by Shel Silverstein.

Hug O’ War

“I will not play at tug o’ war.

I’d rather play at hug o’ war.

Where everyone hugs,

Instead of tugs,

Where everyone giggles

And rolls on the rug,

Where everyone kisses,

And everyone grins,

And everyone cuddles,

And everyone wins.”

• Shel Silverstein

I like the mix. I think they will love Silverstein’s poems. If we have time, we’ll also read about Maud, the 88-year-old murderer from Sweden.

I hope I can touch the loneliness.

Why did I get Bud? Why did I want him? What was his purpose in coming to me?

As I’ve written, dogs are spirit animals, some more than others, I believe they come and enter our lives for a purpose, they come when they are needed, they leave when they are done.

Dogs mark the passages of our lives, if we are thoughtful and open, they make us better people, they teach us how to listen, they promote patience, they demand that we be less frustrated and impatient, and those can be lessons we carry over to the rest of our loves, to people and meaning.

This is why we love them so much, because consciously or not, we sense how important they can be to us, how connected we are to animals, how much we need them, just as they need us.

Why did this strange dog come to me, via the emotional and complex rescue pathway? Why did I get a dog so different from all my other dogs? He’s new still, so many things yet to see and learn.

Bud challenged my ideas about dogs, about training and communicating.

He has forced me to step out of myself and renew my vows to communicating clearly, to listening, to slowing down, to accepting his very different and untamed ways. Slowly but relentlessly, his purpose in coming her is revealing itself.

My dogs are almost always puppies, raised from birth and taught to blend into my life.

Bud is like a rocket who landed in our midst and explodes every day. Boundless energy, no training, brimming with instinct, disruptive untrained, loving and loyal.

Two dogs really, one a wild animal, running amok, marking, chewing, stealing.

The other, a complete love bug, a cuddler, a dog who will curl up on my stomach when I rest and share heartbeats with me.

He tests my spirituality and sense of self.  His presence is emotional in the way animal rescue can bind us to them in very deep ways.

I can either yell at him all day to stop chewing on shoes, humping Red, chasing chickens and cats, tormenting donkeys and eating every revolting thing a farm can offer.

Every time I stop yelling and start training and visualizing and thinking and training is a growth for me, a step forward, proof that dots make us better if we are self-aware.

It is never their fault, it is always our failure: to listen, to learn, to wait, to think. Last night, I set up a new crate for Bud, his old one was too small and it the gate broke.

I told him to go into the crate, a command he knows, and he looked at the crate and balked. He was terrified, and refused to go in. I started to grab him by the collar and drag him, and shook my head and said out loud “what the hell are you doing?”

And I stopped and waited an hour and then got some of his favorite treats. I threw one into the crate. He balked and backed away. I left the room. When I came back later, he was chewing the treat, it was out of the crate.

I’ve tossed a dozen treats in there since and we also put his food bowl in there in the morning. There are few things on this earth Bud loves more than his food bowl, and he went in eagerly (I left the crate door open) and he rushed  in and ate  his food.

I’ll do this for the next four or five days until he rushes into this crate just as he does his other crate. It just took some thought and patience. Dogs don’t do what we wish just because we want them to. We need to see it through our eyes.

It feels so much better to help him love his crate and see it as a safe and nourishing place than it did to try to drag him in there. Having Red has spoiled me, I sometimes forget that all dogs are not like him.

Bud is learning to trust me,  and this was hard work and took a long time. I violated this trust by trying to drag him. I only did it once, it was chilling to me.  How simple to destroy that trust. How easy to slip into old and embedded ways.

But Bud is as forgiving as he is arousable. Trust and love are so much better than shouting and anger, all around.

What a metaphor. So this is why Bud has come. To reinforce old lessons and teach me new ones. To help me grow and learn and change. To enhance and deepen my spiritual life.

To have a better dog,  you do have to be a better human. In the final analysis, there is just no way around it.

For me, every Monday is a new week, a rebirth. A cold day with a beautiful Spring sky.

Today, we should finalize our plans and costs for our new podcast, Katz and Wulf On Bedlam Farm.

This Wednesday, another broadcast of “Talking To Animals,” Wednesday, one p.m. on WBTMAM1370.

I hope to finalize wedding plans for Ruth and Wayne at the Mansion.

I  hope to know how much money to try to raise to get Kathy Sosa’s eight-grade refugee and immigrant class to the FDR Home in  Hyde Park, N.Y.

I will read to the Mansion residents tomorrow afternoon, and teach my Meditation Class there on Thursday.

I hope to meet with private school officials in Albany to help  Noorul Hotak, the very gifted Afghan refugee students get a full scholarship to a school that can help him develop his extraordinary mathematical skills.

I hope to talk with Christine Decker about the play I’d like to write for her and with her.

And oh yes, a trip to the dentist for some heavy-duty teeth maintenance. I’m bring my Iphone, ear plus and music by Aretha Franklin and Billie Eilish.

I do see every week as a restart, a chance to understand who I am and who I want to be. Every day is a gift, every week another opportunity to lead a meaningful life. Nobody can take that away from me, I don’t care what’s on their silly news.

My friend and inspiration, ELS Teacher Kathy Sosa, needs help in getting her class of refugee midde-school students to the beloved home of Franklin  Delano Roosevelt in Hyde Park New York.

Her public school in Albany has no money to fund the trip, so I offered to try to raise the money for her class to go. She is putting together an estimate – a school bus for a day, some food, and admission. She has 30 students, but some of them may not be able to go.

When she figures out the cost, I’ll try to raise the money on the blog. I admire Kathy greatly, she is the very dedicated teacher who helped get Eh K Pru Shee Wah into the Albany Academy. We are working together to get full scholarships to some very good schools for gifted refugee students.

Kathy has what I call a “will to meaning.” She has three or four different jobs, some in different schools. She is always  fighting to teach her students and improve their lives. I think people with a “will to meaning” are sacred.

The most fundamental human characteristic, wrote the philosopher Viktor Frankl in his book A Man’s Will To Meaning, is our possession of what he called “a will to meaning.”

We need a sense that our lives matter, without that we struggle. History suggests that when people feel they make a difference, they find is easier to survive difficult times and hardships.

On psychologist wrote that suffering all by itself may not destroy people, but suffering without meaning will.

There are all kinds of reasons why people’s lives matter to them. They might contribute to the lives of other people, they might have acquired learning in their profession, deep friends, a love of art, or perhaps a sense of mission guided by strong values.

I believe that meaning is essential no matter how my life is, good times or bad.

I have a will to meaning. I didn’t always have one, and the difference is profound. I believe a decade ago, after my divorce and other troubles piled up just ahead of the Great Recession, I had lost a will to meaning, I had given up on love, sex, and a sense of purpose in my life.

I had given up on life, to be frank.

I have all of those things now, although.

In my work at the Mansion, I see that old age can bring loss of hope, loss of faith, the absence of a sense of purpose in life. One of the Mansion residents told me that her purpose in life, her will to meaning, is to be a friend to the other residents. She works hard at is, she is vibrant and engaged.

I believe I will always have the power to decide what meaning I will choose, and who I wish to be and am. Concentration camp survivors wrote that everything can be taken from a human being one of the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s own way, own sense of purpose, own will to meaning.

People like Kathy Saso not only have a will to meaning, they provide one for people like me. If I can’t be here, I can help her, that defines me and gives me the strongest will to meaning I remember having (maybe becoming a writer was as strong or even stronger).

If she decides she can go ahead with the trip, I’ll ask for help in helping Kathy and her class of refugee and immigrant students (she teaches English as a second language) setting to see the home of one of America’s most influential and beloved presidents.

It’s something she very much wants them to see. It gives me meaning in my life, and hopefully, yours as well.

Maria has zeroed in on her new metal desk. We don’t know how old it is – maybe 1930’s – it came off of a farm, and it was either used in a milking parlor – its very sturdy or perhaps in a hospital. The metal folders would be great for milk records or medical charts.

She’s vacuuming it, scrubbing it with cleaner and next, a wire brush.

I think she plans to finish tonight.

We saw this in a local restoration store called Shiny Sisters, which restores and reimagines old furniture. I got my new heavy London Bankers desk there for my study.

This one is odd and very different, it  just practically screamed “Maria’s desk.” It cost $65 and the plan is for it go into a corner of the living room.

Jack Metzger, who runs Outback Jack’s he successful antique store and gallery in town, came by to bring Maria some fabric the other day, he offered to buy it. This is the sort of desk that would cost several hundred dollars unrestored.

I’m not as creative as Maria when it comes to restoring the farmhouse, but I’m great at spotting things like this.

I think I’ll run out and bring home some Sushi so Maria can keep on working. Once she starts, she is determined to finish.  This is great fun for us, I’m into the world of bargains.