Bedlam Farm Blog Journal by Jon Katz

I’m happy to report that there is a new Amazon WBNT Wish List up today. There are seven items, ranging in price from $7.90 to $13.99, the all relate to desperately needed office and desk organizing supplies (if you went inside the offices of WBNT, last refurbished during the Korean War, you would understand the urgent need for these small things.)

The Wish List is moderate and inexpensive. The costs might seem especially modest, but given that the radio station has next to nothing, it would mean a lot to them.

We are hoping to rebuild this station, one step at a time.

I’m going to buy one of the desk organizers right now, I enthusiastically support Community Radio, the true voice of the people, especially in the age of corporate media. Just look what they are doing to our country.

Community radio is a radio service offering a third model of radio broadcasting in addition to commercial and public broadcasting.

Community stations serve geographic communities and communities of local interest, due to live streaming, they are almost all, including WBNT, able to broadcast nationally.

They offer content relevant to ordinary people and community interests that are almost completely overlooked by commercial or mass media broadcasters.

Like an intelligent and thoughtful broadcast about our pets and animals, there is almost nothing like that anywhere in the commercial media spectrum. At WBNT, I am  trying to support this kind of relevance.

Most modern media is no longer accessible to ordinary people. Their agenda has little to do with us.

I have volunteered to host a weekly two-hour radio broadcast  called “Talking To Animals” – this and every Wednesday from one to 3 p.m. on WBNT1370. You can live stream the broadcast here. You can call the broadcast for free by dialing 866 406 9286. Please do.

I am judging the success of the broadcast by how vigorous a conversation I am having with you – ordinary animal lovers. I have no interest in doing this broadcast alone.

You will most likely not ever be on CNN or Fox News or Cesar’s weekly dog training show. But you are welcome on my show to tell your stories and talk to me, and hear my replies.

I welcome any question you have about animals, as long as it is somewhat relevant to other people. I think your stories are important. If  you live within the broadcast area, you can call 802 442-1010, also free of charge.

I am not accepting any payment for doing this work, and no one has offered any.  I get the freedom to talk about what I think are important things. You can hear some of them on Wednesday.

It’s just right for me, and I think, for many of you.

So I hope we can build this kind of a broadcast together. It starts (and ends) with  your phone calls: 866 406-9286. You can hear my broadcast live just by clicking here. It’s as simple as that.

I understand it will take a long time to make this program work, the odds are long, but I am up for it. I can do it with your help.

If you prefer,  you can e-mail me your questions and comments at [email protected]. I will read them on the radio and discuss them.

If you like the broadcast, or want to support community radio, you can donate to the station here, or send a donation to WBNT, 407 Harwood Hill, Bennington, Vt., 05201.

And please, if  you care to, check out the new WBNT Amazon Wish List.

I suggested it to them last week, and thanks to the Army Of Good, they have already sold out the list twice. It’s a worthy cause. I love these Wish Lists, you can choose what you want to give and send it directly to the people who need it.

If Amazon asks for it, the WBNT address is 407 Harwood Hill, Bennington, Vt., 05201. The phone is 802 442-6321. See you Wednesday, one to three p.m. 866 406-9286.

In 1963, Boris Levinson, a psychologist and academic researcher, wrote a book called Pets And Human Development. Dr. Levinson had a theory that turned out to be both prescient and ground-breaking.

He was one of the very few scholars or animal lovers who foresaw the rise of the pet therapy movement, and the growing need for animals like dogs to support humans emotionally.

Levinson predict saw the growing alienation of many people from family, community, religion, politics and technology. In a sense, he was predicting the story of our times.

In what was a shocking argument a half-century ago, he predicted that disconnected and alienated humans would increasingly turn to animals and nature to heal their unease and their wounds. He said that once we cut ourselves off from animals and nature, we would become unmoored,  our spiritual strength would be drained, and we would turn to division,  argument and anger.

The veteran psychologist saw that our society was even then  becoming disconnected from nature and the animal world, and thus from one another. This book was very important to me as I began researching and writing about dogs, and then, living with animals.

I could see it happening, in myself, all around me.

And this prediction came well before the rise of the Internet, and cable news, and the extreme polarization of our political culture, It came before angry mobs on social media and Facebook, and trolls and thieves invading our lives and civic life, and a broken and divisive political system.

“Part of the alienation from themselves and society which men are experiencing today derives from the fact that we have withdrawn from contact with animal life and nature,” he wrote.

“We have been destroying the living tree on whose branches we sit. We have forgotten the language of elemental emotions and thus feel  a yawning chasm within.”

We are, he cautioned, leaving the genetic and other lessons of our past behind us when we live so far from nature and animals.  We are becoming unmoored from the fundamentals of life, the hidden lessons our past.

Levinson, who did exhaustive studies on animals working with people, believed that the reactions of our body and mind ought to remind us that we were  designed to deal with different types of stresses from those to which we are now exposed.

We were, he said, programmed to live in mutual adaptation with animals. Today, the big idea of many people who think they are  animal lovers is to take as many animals as possible away from us and drive them from the earth.

Thus, the carriage horses and ponies and elephants are mostly gone already, sent to extinction in the name of saving them from our cruelty.

“Our dreams  remind us of a past we personally may not have experienced,  but which is probably a symbolic residue of the travails of our ancestors,” he said.

We become instinctively horrified, he wrote,  when we learn that our environment, the cradle of human life, is being destroyed or polluted. Animals too, modify nature, Levinson said.

Beavers build dams, birds build nests to protect themselves against inclement weather; trees modify the local climate, the soil, and the temperature. But we are the only species that consciously destroys our very world.

“We need animals to reinforce our inner selves,” Levinson wrote. “We must revive our intimate associations with nature and its animals if we are to survive as the dominant species on earth. It is possible that man can survive without animals, he said but we would surely be a depleted race, shorn of most of our emotional strength.”

Today, the question isn’t just whether we can survive as a dominant species, but whether we can survive as a species at all.

I can’t help but wonder, every time I watch the news, if these predictions are  already becoming true. Every day I see depleted men, shorn of their ethics and emotional strength.

I believe that I am seeing Levinson’s predictions come to life right before my eyes. Most of us are living without animals and far from nature. We have a political system that is paralyzed by broken and disconnected people.

We have people who are unable to speak to one another any longer in a civil way. Our communities are being bulldozed and abandoned.

We are, as Levinson note, rolling evolution backwards, despoiling our very environment, driving animals out of the world in the name of protecting them from us, when we are their only salvation, and they ours.

This is an important subject to me, I have lived with some animals almost all of my life, in the past two decades I have left my ordinary world behind to be closer to animals and to nature. This has saved my life.

They have both – animals and nature –  affirmed Levinson’s predictions, they have healed me, connected me to my past, helped teach me how to live in the world, even as I have tried to teach them some of the same things.

In fact, I live in mutual adaptation with my animals, we change and grow together.

Look at our news and see how angry and alienated we have become from one another, one can hardly go online without encountering angry and broken people, hating and quarreling with one another, and with their very own souls. We live in the harsh glare of the “left” or the “right,” into which all thought and power is increasingly channeled and labeled.

I do believe we are broken when we live apart from nature and away from animals. I believe it because it happened to me.

I believe that trees and flowers and plants and dogs and donkeys can heal us in much the same way they have always healed us, we lived on the earth together.

You can trace this discord almost precisely from the time people fled the farms and lives with animals to work in jobs they hated for people who care nothing for them. People no longer have callings, only jobs.

Odd, but I have often thought that if member of Congress could bring their dogs and some donkeys to the Capitol, we would have a softer, more peaceful and compassionate government. One whose leaders could work with one another.

I hope to discuss this issue, among many others,  on Wednesday on my new radio show, “Talking To Animals,” on WBTNAM 1370. You can call the show anytime between 1 and 3 p.m. on Wednesday, the 24th. Please call if you want to discuss this or any other topic relating to dogs, cats, or other animals.

I believe we need an animal show that deals with this kind of topic, and I don’t care to host a show that isn’t a conversation with others. So if people don’t call, it won’t work.

If you live in the area, you can call 802 442 1010. If you live outside of the area, you can call 866 406-9286. There is no charge.

WBTN is an AM/FM station, but right now, only the AM is working. They hope to soon get an FM transmitter. This is a community radio station, they are long on heart and short on money and staff an equipment

If you wish,  you can live stream the broadcast here between 1 and 3 p.m.

Hope to hear from you, there is a lot for animal lovers to talk about and think about. I want my broadcast to be an oasis of dialogue and good information about animals.

If you have stories about how your dogs and cats and other animals have healed and grounded you, I’d love to hear them. Call 866 406-9286.

I don’t know of too many other places where you will be able to have a conversation about the connection between humans, animals and nature.

I see in the videos – watching them has been an important tool for training. Come and see.

I recommend taking videos of your training, seeing your own confidence and clarity. I am learning a lot and wincing every day over what I’m doing wrong.

I am also proud of Bud, he is working hard to understand me and respond. He is as smart as he is distractable,  and as near as I can tell, he has no attention span much at all. This is said to be a common trait of Boston Terriers.

But it’s new to me, and it’s shaken my confidence and throwing me off of my game. I’m getting my training mojo back. I’m willing to work as hard as he is, and for as long.

Bud is smart and eager and attached to me, if I can’t train him to stay, it’s my fault I am changing and adapting to him more and more every day, and I never blame him.

I’ve trained a lot of dogs, but never a Boston Terrier or any kind of terrier. They are different for sure. I’m better understanding the BT’s reputation for independence, distraction, and hyper-vigilance. You can see all of those traits in this video.

What I’m doing now is more visualization – protecting what I want to happen – feeling and showing more confidence, using fewer words, using hand as well as voice commands,  turning my body in different directions, lengthening the distance.

When he loses it, I get him back to where we started and doing it again. This is the first training Bud has ever had in his life, and he is 18 months old. So I can expect some confusion, and bumps along the road.

Don’t believe what the training gurus tell you in their books and TV shows. Training a dog cannot be done in four weeks at a dog store chain, it never stops, and it is often messy, frustrating and difficult. But I believe it is worth it, only a trained dog can be the kind of loving and spiritual partner we want.

But and I are just getting started. I hope we never stop.

And dog training is no about obedience, it is about having a spiritual relationship with our dogs, and by showing them how to live in a hostile and alien world.

It was Maria’s idea to put a lamp in the window, in the front of the farmhouse. She said she thought it was good to offer a light to the world, a sign of warmth and community, so people riding down the dark road would see a light and perhaps feel some warmth, even joy.

I thought was a wonderful idea, typical of Maria’s love and empathy, thinking of the people driving down the long, dark highway that lies in front of our house.

It is expectation itself that brings new joy to our lives, I think, we are the only species on the earth whose expectations can bring joy and hope.

“You are sad now,” Jesus told his followers, “but I shall see you again, and your hearts will be full of joy.”

People without hope in the future cannot possibly live creatively or peacefully in the present.  Those who expect joy to come out of sadness, and light from darkness can find the beginnings of a new life right in the center of their world.

This, I think, is our hope here at the farm, a small, soft light to the world.

In is in this hope of expectation, I think, that we moved some furniture around and put a table in front of the window and a lamp on the table. Light out of darkness, the expectation of joy. One day at a time, one step at a time.

Every time I look out the kitchen wind0w,  Fate and Bud are whizzing by at 50 miles an hour, each trying to grab the other’s color to  drag each other around.

I got a shot of Fate reaching to grab Bud’s collar and flip him over so she could gnaw on his head. It didn’t work, Bud saw it coming and spun around in the nick of time.

When they come into the house, they both are covered in smile and drool from mouthing each other. They spend the day wrestling racing madly back and forth and burying bones and treats and stealing the bones  and treats of each other.

In the house they hoard their toys under the dining room table and then chase each other around.

It was quite chilly this morning, and I expected that Bud would want to come into the house at any moment and sit by the wood stove. He never did, he was out there in the wind and chill for hours wrestling with Fate and chasing her.

Fate needed a playmate, and I guess Bud did two. They are raising  Hell together.