Bedlam Farm Blog Journal by Jon Katz

Thanks to Kaaren Andrews, Joan Gibson and Nancy Forsythe for suggesting the name “Lash LaRue” in honor of the real Lash LaRue, who made over seventy-five Western movies and starred in  his own television series.

We are scraping wall paper off of the bedroom wall in preparation for a new painted color and we found this cowboy behind the outer wallpaper layers. I asked for help in naming him.

I promised  a signed book to anyone with the best name for us, and I’ll send one to teach of you if you’ll send me your s-mail address: [email protected].

And thanks to the couple of hundred people who sent me suggested names through e-mail, texts and  on social media. This time, I asked for the advice and was delighted to get it. There were some great names offered.

And people love to join in stuff like this.

I was drawn to the name Lash La Rue right away – it had style and when I started looking online, I really got hooked.

The critics say the era of the Western movie was over by the 5o’s,  LaRue was the last of the series Western stars.

I was up until 3 a.m. watching some old La Rue westerns. His main weapon wasn’t a gun but an 18-inch bullwhip he kept coiled in his holster and drew like a gun.

LaRue trained Harrison Ford to use a bullwhip for his role in Indiana Jones. he died in 1996 at the age of 78. People thought he looked so much like Humphrey Bogart that movie fans often came up to him asking for Bogart’s autograph.

I watched his breakthrough movie – he was the Cheyenne Kid in “Song Of Old Wyoming” in 1945. I couldn’t stop watching, those movies were fun and easy to take. I can’t say he was a great actor, but he made for a good Jimmy Stewart kind of hero – few words, all business, and always victorious. There is no tension about who’s going to win in those movies.

There are no fuzzy boundaries between the good guy sand the bad guys.

LaRue tried to look more like a bad guy than a hero by wearing an all black outfit and showing his bullwhip when necessary. But he was always on the side of justice and law and order.

Fawcett comics published a series of La Rue comic books but the western movie fad crashed quickly by 1960.  LaRue made a living doing appearances at western film buff conventions, he put on a show with his bullwhip while running a souvenir sales booth.

Like many actors of that era, LaRue lost his savings as the result of alcoholism, several divorces and drug abuse. A preacher named Bob Woodward converted him to Born Again Christianity and he became an evangelist on the rodeo and country music circuit.

LaRue died of emphysema and was cremated in the Calverton National Cemetery in Suffolk County, New York. His real name was Alfred LaRue.

I think that’s a perfect name for our cowboy, who will remain in his place on our bedroom wall. This restoration begins in earnest tonight, on New Year’s Eve. I’ll be scraping alongside my wife.

It is not uncommon for dogs to eat their own feces. It is a natural behavior for many dogs, and while there is some danger from parasites, it is not especially dangerous or harmful. Human beings (like me) react sharply and impatiently to this habit, we have a hard time stomaching the idea, especially from beloved companions who like to lick us and cuddle with us.

We love the idea of Bud as farm dog, we don’t love the idea of Bud wolfing down enough poop to fill the belly of horse. What goes in, comes out.

I’m doing well with Bed’s recall and basic obedience – come, sit and stay – but Bud was scarfing up so much poop on our farm (donkeys, sheep, chicks, dogs) we were wary of bringing him out into the pasture.

So I put my training cap on and went to work. I got out my can of Pet Corrector, an aerosol air spray that makes a hissing sound dogs hate (you can be 15 feet away) and brought it outside.

This was one of the toughest training issues for Bud, because his poop-scarfing was obsessive and continuous, it wasn’t about him being hungry. Carol Johnson, Bud’s rescuer, said when Bud was abandoned outside in a metal pen for more than a year, he survived in part (his pen mates died of heat stroke) because he ate feces. So it’s an instinctive and deep-seated behavior, those are the toughest to work through.

Poop eating wasn’t just an occasional habit, it was the difference between life and death, that make sit a hard habit to break.

The spray helps, don’t react sharply to it but it doesn’t harm them in any way. I also came up with an alternative behavior. Instead of eating poop, I walked closely alongside Bud and led him out towards the back pasture. I know he loves to explore the pond and marsh back there.

When we came into the pasture and he lowered his head around the donkey manure, I hit the spray and he backed off, then I held out some treats and led him out beyond the sheep feeder (see the video).

Bud loves to go back there and I used it almost as a reward for not eating the donkey or sheep droppings.  After the third day  – and only three hisses from the Pet Collector, Bud began running straight out towards the back of the pasture and out to the pond, his favorite exploring site.

Yesterday, he had a confrontation with two ducks sitting in the pond, he circled and barked until they took off, disgusted. But he loves to look for them there.

In any case, the spray can and the alternative behavior theory seems to be taking hold with Gus, he came out of the pasture and walked past a lot of poop and headed straight out of the gate. As he turned toward some sheep droppings, I used the can once, and he went right of the gate and towards the house.

This, judging from my e-mail is a very common problem. I’m going to talk about it on my radio show Wednesday, WBTNAm1370, Wednesday from one to three p.m. Please call: 855 406-9286, or e-mail me a question, Wednesday the 2nd of January, one to three p.m. You can live stream the show here, or download a free Simple Radio App. You can hear it anywhere in the country and much of the world.

I’m excited about Bud’s training. One by one, we are picking off his biggest problems.

During this holiday season, I hope you will consider to continue your support for the RISSE Amazon Wish List. This was our idea year ago, and it is am even more worthy idea today.

There are only six items left to choose from on the Wish List, every one of them will help support a refugee child or their family or teachers.

What a joy to wake up every morning and look at this list and watch it shrink – it started two weeks ago with 36 items. We are closing in.

My work with the Army Of Good over the past several years has taught me many things, one of the most important is the call to practical action to help others in need: the Christian and Hebrew prophets both heard the same instructions from their God: take real action in the real world.

I call it Practical Action, Small Acts Of Great Kindness. Focused and meaningful. There is joy in this work.

St. Francis and Jesus Christ both preached that practical action is at least as worthwhile as piety or righteous observance. Feeding a hungry person or helping a needy person is just as likely to bring transformation as prayer or meditation.

I put it differently. I don’t need to be a saint to do good, I don’t need to be perfect to be spiritual, even righteous. And it’s a good thing, because I am the farthest thing from a saint around.

So as we approach the New Year, I am thinking the prophets were correct. It feels good to do good.

True sharing, says the Kabbalah, requires a basic shift in the way we see our lives and our relationships to the people around us. I don’t care to prosper at the expensive of others, I choose to prosper by assisting others.

Please check out the Wish List if you can, and watch it shrink.

Audio: Thanks for supporting the RISSE Wish List

We found a cowboy on the wall today in our bedroom, he is here to stay. I’d welcome some help in figuring out what to name him.

Our bedroom up on the second floor has always been a bit of an orphan. Until this year, it had no heat or storm windows, and on the coldest nights, we had to retreat downstairs to the living room to sleep by the wood stoves, as the farmers who built the house might have done a couple of hundred years ago.

Last winter, we put in a baseboard heater and got some flannel electric blankets. We give thanks for both almost every night this time of year.

Busy mice scamper through the walls at night, (I listen to them at night) new storm windows have checked the wind blowing in from the pasture, but there are still flies giving birth almost daily and of course, the occasional bat zooming over head.

An uninsulated storage room nearby makes all kinds of sounds at night, neither of us really wants to know where they are coming from.

And on a hot summer day with a strong sun, the room roasts. Fans help.

Still, it is our bedroom and we love it, and Maria has put her laser like focus in doing for the bedroom what she did for every room downstairs – infuse it with color and warmth and light. Here we go, the scrapers are out, the hard work starts in a few days.

Soon, we’ll go to the hardware store and start sampling and mixing colors. I think this will take months, Maria thinks it will take a few weeks. She is a true obsessive, and when she locks in on a project, she is a force of nature, unstoppable and undistractable.

I just do what I’m told and provide what support I can.

Maria is thinking of painting the room a warm and cozy sage green, sounds good to me. She pulled the outer later off of one wall – people used to just lay one layer on another – and we were startled to find a cowboy/rodeo theme a couple of layers down.

Some children, probably boys, must have lived in this room at one time.

Some soft spots will need plastering, Maria is good at this, and I also love this obsessive and repetitive work. We spent months restoring the walls and rooms downstairs when we moved in.

We love the cowboy we found on the first scraped wall, we decided he is going to be preserved, we’ll paint all around him and honor the history and story of the farm. I’m thinking of calling him Rex, but am open to your ideas. I’d love your advice, and I’ll send the winner a signed copy of one of my books.

More later.

I’ve decided to put this photo up for sale on Maria’s Etsy Page, not because it is getting a lot of praise (some, but not as much as the others this week) but because I love it and Maria says it is one of her favorite photos of mine.

“I love the colors, I love the light, I love the sky, and the tree is like this explosive wild thing, it has great texture and feeling,” she told me. “It’s a great portrait of nature,” she added.

That was enough for me, I also love the photo in a particular way.

It has several elements that touch me.

One is the tree, an apple tree in the back pasture, a tough and enduring symbol of nature, as Maria suggested.  This apple tree, more than a century old, at least, as seen a lot of life. I love the manure mound beneath the tree, a reminder of humility, and also of the real life of real animals.

And as much as anything, it speaks to me of our farm, a place we have come to love, a place I hope I will be for the rest of my days in this world.

It’s rare for me to see all those symbols and elements in a single photograph, it either speaks to you or not. I guess that’s how art works.

And I love the vibrant afternoon sky, and the woods behind us, all lit up by the setting sun over the hills in front of the farm. That is Mother Earth smiling down on me, for all the abuse she suffers at the hands of human beings.

I don’t know how many prints of this image I will sell, but I feel good about offering it for sale. The new and slightly lower price is $125. The photo will be 8.5 x 12.5 inches, unframed, signed and printed on the highest quality archival paper by the Image Loft in Manchester, Vermont.

Available for sale now on Full Moon Fiber Art’s Etsy Page.