Robin, my granddaughter, broke a finger today when it got caught in the hinge of a Brooklyn restaurant door. She ended up at the emergency room and has to go see a specialist tomorrow.
It was a rough afternoon for everybody, but Robin seems to be handling it well. I gather it was pretty painful. It will be a difficult couple of weeks for her parents, she’ll need a lot of help eating and dressing, even playing.
I have a curious relationship with sheep, I usually bring the dogs with me when I’m out in the pasture, lately, I’ve tried to spend more time with the sheep by myself and with my camera. I want to take better photos of them. So they need to trust me. It’s working.
They are getting more comfortable with me, and I can now stand close to them while they eat in the feeder, they are at their most primal then. I let them sniff my camera and see it.
I love their heads and the detail of their wool coats. They manage to rush the food without every running over or into one another. Their eating is focused and intense, there is something quite wild about it, even though they are being fed in a feeder. I have a wide angle lens that is small and can get close to them.
Their energy is infectious. Eating with them is a kind of scrum, I like it.
Maria is an artist in her soul and heart and bones.
She has always wanted to be an artist, it just took her awhile to go for it.
She is beginning to live her dream, which is not the same as a perfect life. The Creative Life is as hard as it is fulfilling, and she has now past the point of not return. She will always be an artist, in part because she is so talented, but also because she is strong and committed.
Watching her grow and fight and work to get her life has been one of the most thrilling and rewarding experiences of my life. It is only natural and fitting that Maria now has her own museum. I’m in love with her, but I also believe she is a remarkable person and a brilliant artist in her very own way.
The Williams College Department of Art thinks the Williams College Museum Of Art is part of the college, but it isn’t really. It is Maria’s own museum.
The museum is perfect for her. A sweet and creative place.
It is close from the farm – about 45 minutes by car, which is close for up here. It is small. It is free. It has a creative and modern sensibility, its contemporary art collection is impressive, it’s always different and interesting.
It is quiet, very often she (we) can wander the galleries alone. It’s the most peaceful art gallery I have ever seen.
I see it as a kind of place of worship for Maria, when she needs a vitamin shot of art, or some artistic refreshing, we go there together or she sometimes goes there alone. She wanders the galleries – we are known there now, and she knows every corner of the museums.
When we go, we spent about an hour, it revitalize Maria, lifts her up. She is always beaming, smiling, happy there, it’s as if she breathes the art, drinks it out of one of those silver chalices in a glass case there.
I love seeing her never-fading excitement when she looks at the paintings and artworks, her sense of wonder, I love watching how it lifts her up and restores her. This isn’t just something she likes, it’s something she needs. And whenever she asks if I want to go, I always jump at it. I do.
I’m not an artist, but a writer, but I know how draining and lonely creative fatigue can be. If I had my own museum of writing around, I would go there often. We both work alone, and that can sometimes be hard. Sometimes you just need to feel and see the work of others, it keeps me or her from falling in ourselves and getting sale and worn. I do this by reading books and seeing movies.
She has a museum.
Sometimes we go have lunch or dinner at a Mexican restaurant we love, there is also Thai and Persian food nearby. People know us now, greet us, smile at us. It’s an odd thing to say, but people love to see people in love, women especially can just sense it, and they smile at us.
There is a used library book store with current books in great condition and large print books for the Mansion residents (and puzzles for them.) The restaurants and book store are just around the corner.
“This is your museum,” I said recently, and Maria laughed dismissively. Oh no, she said. I don’t have a museum. “It is,” I insisted. “It’s free, lovely, smart and quiet. It’s you.”
She does have a museum, but she is much too modest to say to, or think that, but I believe she is coming to like the idea.
And this is the perfect one. A good one, a small and accessible one – we can park right in front of the museum for free. The staff is friendly, the guards are usually reading novels, art students greet us and talk about the exhibits. The other visitors smile and talk about the art.
We went yesterday, and I got this shot of Maria reveling in the art in her museum. Every time I look up, she is starting at something, calling me over to show me. I can’t ever muster all of the enthusiasm she has, but I love being with her in her museum. And I do drink up the art, just in a different way.
Art is life for her, the museum is her Church, her place of meditation and inspiration. I get to sit in her pew.
Thanks to those of you who wrote me about a name for our new Podcast, broadcasting in early April. Special thanks to Anitra Demirjian. (You can our trial broadcast at the end of this blog post below.)
She wrote this message: “I realized from listening to your podcast that I really do enjoy radio, reminds me of when my grandmother listened to her huge wood-cased radio in her living room. Even though you and Maria are not exactly like Burns and Allen, you could call the podcast something after the old radio shows, like “Katz and Wulf!”
Maria and I loved that idea, and so did Chris Archibee, our wizardly and creative digital marketing consultant. So we’ve got our podcast title: “Katz and Wulf on Bedlam Farm.”
Thank you Anitra.
The name works for us.
We’ll be working with Mannix Marketing, my blog partner since the beginning. The podcast will be recorded weekly in 20 minute sessions. We probably will start with some music.
A podcast button will be inserted in every one of Maria’s blog posts and mine. You will be able to access it any time, we will register it, of course, so people can find it. I’m not sure where it will be hosted, Mannix will figure that out.
The blog will focus on our lives on Bedlam Farm each week – our writing about art, dogs and animals and spirituality and life, nature, goddesses, the farm, and of course, us.
As so many of you kindly pointed out from the trial we put up yesterday, and below today (a lot of rave reviews thanks), Maria and I have no trouble talking to one another.
We have plenty to talk about each day, let alone each week. A week is a thousand stories around here, and we will also talk about our connection to one another, creatively and personally.
I am wary of new projects – so many fail – but listening to our first test effort yesterday, we both began to get excited. I think this just might work. The podcast will be free, we hope to attract a few advertisers – podcasts are red-hot right now – and donations will be welcome.
The podcast will be registered so people can find it. At the moment, there will be no call-ins – that takes a lot of new equipment. We’ll try to work up to it. Details to come.
A number of you are asking me if this means the end of the radio show, and the honest answer is that I just don’t know. I don’t expect we can operate there forever, but the show is clicking now. Living in the now.
The fate of WBTMAM is not in my hands in any way. The station is struggling and has no resources or functioning staff beyond Thomas. It doesn’t have an FM transmitter and much of the equipment is older than I am.
It is a wonderful place for me to learn how to do this kind of broadcast, I love community radio. Thomas is killing himself to make it work.
Getting “Talking To Animals” broadcast has been a Herculean effort on the part of Thomas and me. There is absolutely nothing supporting it but the blog.
I’m enjoying it and working hard at it, but I think the podcast will end up being my broadcasting future. Podcasts are easier to access than many radio stations, and simpler to create, although not simple. I will be forthright about what is happening on both ends.
I will be on the air on WBTNAM1370 Wednesday, March 27, one to 2:30 p.m. and for Wednesdays beyond. Please call or e-mail me your questions: [email protected].
Audio: Maria and I Testing “Katz And Wulf On Bedlam Farm.” Here it is. Come and listen.
I have no interest on dwelling in the closed minds of the left and the right, but I know how much the past several years have worn on me, my friends and so many of the people who follow my work and pictures.
So I’l briefly share my thoughts tonight in the interests both of sanity and of possibly being helpful.
I am grateful to Mr. Mueller, he strikes me as an honest patriot and follower of the law. I believe in the rule of law, and he has proven it still matters.
Over the next few days, many, if not all of his supporters will feel great vindication and resentment about his work, and many of his detractors will rage about injustice and fear for the future.
I am not a hater. I don’t hate people who disagree with me, or who support the President. I refuse to label myself or let anyone else label me.
I know too many people who have good reasons to love him, and many who do not. Nobody needs political punditry from me, I am a member of the follow-your-own mind club.
I feel relief that this is over, and hope that just maybe our elected officials and journalists and legislators might step back from their baked positions and actually try to accomplish something for the good of people who need government to help us and protect the vulnerable.
As a former political writer, I am at ease saying that people who expect any great change to come from this are continuously delusional, as they have been for a long time. The supporters of the President will continue to support him, the detractors will continue oppose him.
The people in their middle will just shake their heads in sorrow and frustration. What I hate about politics is not people who differ from me, but people who prefer maneuvering and argument to accomplishing anything on behalf of others.
For all his honesty, I don’t believe Mr. Mueller will change a thing.
Accepting this is the key to staying grounded and positive during difficult times. Tonight, I recommit myself to the work I have been doing – with your help – for three years. I intend to do more of the same, no matter who gets indicted or elected, or what the screaming banshees on cable news are say.
I vote with my actions, my party is sharing and helping. There is nothing rational about the news.
More and more I look at politics through the eyes of my daughter and granddaughter, as they build their lives down in Brooklyn, a different world than the one I live in. The die is cast for me, what can I do for her?
I don’t plan to die soon, but I know I won’t live to see the end of this epic struggle raging in our country. Robin will. She has to live in the bleeding world we are making for her, and for your children and grandchildren.
While politicians argue, Robin’s world is falling apart. While billionaires grow richer, refugees starve and wither. What will she say about me and us when she is old enough to understand what is happening around her?
While people learn to hate one another on social media, and anywhere else, the gap between the rich and the poor grows wider by the day. Neither of those realities will lead to anything good for the left, or for the right.
I care about my country, but I will not attach myself to any left or any right and permit them to think for me or speak for me or put me in their pockets. I won’t join those arguments or learn how to hate and resent other people.
I will continue to find ways to do good and effect positive change for people who need it. That is my faith and my politics. It does not feel good to me to argue and hate, it feels good to do good.
As for Mr. Mueller, I trust and respect him and will accept what he has found.
I am grateful to any of you out there who choose to join me on this path. We are making a difference, I used to laugh at the idea of sending energy, not I am proud of the good energy we can sometimes send out into the world.
