Bedlam Farm Blog Journal by Jon Katz

We visited every Mansion resident at the Danforth Monday to offer them some freshly  baked cookies – oatmeal raisin, chocolate chip, ginger – and to see if they needed anything I might be able to provide.

We talked to the Danforth Chapel to talk and distribute some cookies. Jean appreciated her comfort doll, she loves her baby very much. Alice loved her  African violets and was watering them faithfully.

Brittany was happy to let go of the doll for a few minutes, I think she had been carrying her around for much of the day.

I was impressed, as always, by her patience and good humor.

The strain was evident on some of the residents. One has been sleeping most of the day, another waved  her balloon at her roommate in frustration.

They are all healthy and well cared for, just anxious and eager to get back to their “home.” I don’t know when that will happen, I think it will be soon.

I’ll be back in the morning with some books and Word Search puzzles.

Maria wanted to come with me today to see the Mansion residents who have been evacuated to the Danforth Adult Care Center, she and I stopped first at the Mansion to check on the residents left behind there, we then went to the Round House Cafe to pick up some cookies to bring with us.

We were surprised to be greeted at the door by Sylvie, Jean and Mansion Aide Brittany, who was holding Jean’s  comfort baby doll for her while they went for a walk through the hallways.

It is always uplifting to see Brittany’s loving and patient with the residents, she was holding the comfort doll for much of the day.

Jean is holding up one of the cookies Maria gave her from the Round House box.

Brittany was working hard to provide activity for the eight or nine Mansion residents at the Danforth, they had told me that they were bored.

One Mansion aide is always available at the Danforth.

My visits to the Danforth have helped me to appreciate the work Julie Harlin does at the Mansion to provide the residents with nearly continuous daily activities from outings and trips to crafts to movies to art classes and readings to concerts from local musicians.

Brittany asked for some help in getting a hold of Word Search Puzzles, which the Mansion residents love.

I got a dozen cookies at a local Dollar Store and will bring them tomorrow (tonight is my first acting class in Bennington, Vt.) I ordered eight of them on Amazon, they will arrive in a day or so.

The work at the Mansion continues, nobody can say exactly when the residents will be permitted to return, it could be as soon as Wednesday, it might be as late as the weekend.

New York State health officials have to okay the resident’s return, they  were evacuated hurriedly last week after water began leaking from the roof.

The cookies were a hit, but not, of course, a substitute for getting home. I don’t know when our Homecoming Party will be held.

I can see the strain on the residents from their sudden move out of the only home they know now and into an unfamiliar place. Their fragility and dependence on routine has ever been more evident.

I’ll continue to visit them every day.The flowers on Saturday helped, so did the stuffed animals, and  hopefully, the cookies. Tomorrow we’ll add puzzles and animal books to the list.

Many of you are asking if it would be helpful to send packages, thanks but this isn’t a good time. It’s not clear how long the residents will remain where they are, and the staff is extremely busy now. Unwrapping and distributing packages would be difficult.

The residents are scattered in different places.

Last week, much to my surprise, I broke Bud’s intense and somewhat disgusting habit of eating animal feces – dogs, donkeys, sheep and chicken. I used my Pet Corrector aerosol spray to break him of this habit, it worked in a couple of days.

Several people wrote to chastise me for the spray, saying it was “aversive,” and not positive, the way I say I like to train.

They are write, of course, it is not positive.

But it’s pretty benign too. You can stand 20 feet away from the dog and hold the can behind your back and hit the button, and they will stop what they are doing – eating junk, jumping on people, chewing shoes – instantly, and in Bud’s case,  never do it again.

If I wanted to train him out poop eating in the positive mold, t would only take  month or two and a few more cans of Odor Off and Lysol to clean up all the vomit and diarrhea that was becoming a new reality of our little farmhouse (a little stench goes a long way in there.)

It’s common for dogs to eat poop, but it isn’t particularly healthy. There are plenty of worms and parasites in the poop around here, and Bud is a heartworm survivor.

We don’t need to do that again.

I opted for the can, and and have no regrets. We have moved on, and the can is gone.

Without stopping to eat gobs of donkey manure, Bud now happily sails past the sheep and donkey droppings and runs happily around the pasture, exploring the wood line and the pond and getting to run, which he loves and doesn’t do when eating poop.

He also comes when called, even from a good distance away. Positive training can work too. The problem with absolutism with someone like me is that I am not always positive.  I can get angry and pissy in a flash, I have a short attention span, and am easily frustrated.

This post-poop pasture era has opened up a whole new world for me. I can bring Bud out there when I do the chores. I don’t have to yell at him at all, which is profoundly positive, and he can run, which he loves, and get on with his farm dog life.

I like the Post-Poop period, beyond the poop is a richer life for us all.

When the Actor Christine Decker  stood up to speak to the audience during the intermission of a play we were attending that she had just directed at the Old Castle Theater in Bennington, Vt., I sat up.

Christine had acted in a short version of a play I wrote that was performed at Hubbard Hall in Cambridge, N.Y., several years ago.

She played the wife of the farmer struggling to deal with the collapse of their dairy farm, a story that was all too prescient and is not all too familiar.

I was knocked out by Christine’s remarkable understanding of my character and her respect for what I wrote. Her presentation of the character was stronger than my own creation of her.

It was a thrilling collaboration for me, a kind of mind-blower.

I thought then that I could learn from a person like this.

I have hardly seen Christine since that play, and I didn’t know she was offering classes at the Old Castle, or even that she was working there, until she told me.

Instantly, I surprised myself – and shocked Maria – by whispering to her, “I’m going to take that class if she’d let me…”

I went right home and sent her an e-mail asking if she would let me in the class. She wrote back and got it completely. It would be an honor she wrote, she was sure the class would help me with my writing.

Since I have no wish to be an actor, this was what I wanted to hear

And so she did let me in  and I am taking the class.

People have asked me why I’m taking the class, and the truth is, I don’t know, I can’t really say. I have no desire to be an actor or be on the stage, as much as I love audiences and applause.

I guess I’ll find out soon, the first class is tonight from 7 to 9 p.m. Maria wants to pay for the class – the  fee is $200 – as a Christmas gift.

Two things come to mine today, I have this feeling it will be an important day. I admit to being nervous, this out of my comfort zone, for the bulk of my life I’ve worked alone in dark and quiet rooms.

I am not the collaborative type, I’ve regretted it every time I’ve done it.

Maybe it’s time to open up a crack or two and let something else in.

One thing driving me is the idea of the inner creation, a process that exists inside of me all the time, every day. It isn’t that I need lessons to spark creation, life itself is the spark of creation for me, and for Maria as well. I am a bundle of need: for love, for support, for information, for protection, and for my creativity.

The desire to receive for the self alone dominated my early life and has recently been transformed into a desire to receive for the purpose of sharing.

Joseph Campbell said the joy of aging is that we finally have learned something about life, and even learned how to laugh, and  the responsibility of aging is to pass along what we have learned in the hope it will be useful to others.

For me, this is the true path to eternal life.

What I know can live on and on, long after I’m gone. That’s not a morbid thought for me, but a joyous one.

I call it the Mysticism of Aging. I know our culture denigrates the elderly, sees them only through the prism of decline, deterioration,  sickness and death. The  young know nothing about us, really, and how could they and why should they?

Growing older is something one has to feel to understand. It is mystical.

It is not, for me, a period of decline and pain and misery.

I have felt some of those things, and have no illusions about where I am heading, or what the outcome will be. I see it all the time.

For me, this idea of inner creation is a way of understanding not just the creation of the universe, but the process of self-creation and rebirth in which  I participate every minute of my life. So does my wife and partner in creativity.

I see this as a rich period for me, not a bleak one. I reject old talk in all of its creepy forms.

The real death in my mind comes when I stop thinking, learning, changing, loving or growing. When I begin the downsizing of my soul, enabled in this shallow idea of our culture that the task of aging is to disappear and then die.

It’s too small a window for me, the inner creation that fuels my life would just wither and die, and I’m not ready to wither and die.

Christine has the magic inside of her, she is just one of those passionate people on fire with her creativity, she is excited to be living in the world. She wants to share what she knows. I want to learn what she knows.

I guess I’m taking the class because I have this very strong feeling that she has something to teach me that I need to know.

I’ll share the experience, of course.

First off, I want to thank all of you for your generous and immediate response to my call for help in assisting the Mansion residents, most of whom were evacuated from the Mansion hurriedly last week on New Year’s Day after water poured into the building due to structural and other problems.

A few of the residents were able to say in a separate wing, some went home with families or friends, the bulk were transferred to other assisted care facilities, especially to the Danforth Adult Care Center in Hoosick Falls, N.Y.

They were understandably traumatized and bewildered by the move. This has been a wrenching few days for them, but the Mansion staff and contractors are working to get them back “home” as they now call the Mansion.

You have sent over $1,000 in a very short time. Some of this money has gone to flowers, stuffed animals, clothes and books. We are hosting a Homecoming Celebration as soon as the residents get home, hopefully by Wednesday. I think that will cost between $300 and $500, we’re looking for a band to play some music.

I am not sure what the other needs of the residents are, there was some damage to a few rooms, I really don’t know if any of them will need new clothes. If so, I’m ready to jump in.

If there is any money left over, I’ll put it in the Mansion Fund, and use it, as we have been using it, to support the residents and their needs.

I want you to know how much your help meant to these people, bewildered and frightened. The flowers brightened their rooms, the stuffed animals gave even the “tough” men something to hold and be with, and today I’m bringing a box of cookies to the Danforth right after lunch. I think one of the best things Red and I can do is just show up.

I had the means and opportunity to move quickly, to restore some semblance of order to their lives, and to represent continuity and stability.

The Mansion staff, as always, is loving and committed.

The residents often thank me for “showing up,” it is a sad reality that they have very few visitors from the outside.

I’ll know more about what’s happening later in the day.