Bedlam Farm Blog Journal by Jon Katz

This weekend, our Open House, again. Our eighth.

I first thought about an Open House eight years ago, I was in a very different place than I am now in so many ways. I was somewhat famous then, books had a different place in the world than now.

I had a different place in the world than now.

I was a best selling author, and TV crews often came to the first Bedlam Farm, a much grander and more dramatic farm, almost a movie set. it was a beautiful setting, but a loveless life, a lonely life, and broken life.

I went on lavish book tours, spoke to large crowds of people, famous Hollywood producers came by to meet me, they wanted to tell me about their dogs, they invited me to their mansions.

They were fascinated by my move to the country, my escape from my ordinary life. They thought I was a dog whisperer who could tell them the secrets of their Labs and Newfoundlands.

They were invariably disappointed, I was not what they were looking for, and they looked elsewhere, as rich people can do.

Maria and I had just come off of a horrendous couple of years, we clung to one another like shipwrecked people bobbing on the ocean in one storm after another waiting for rescue.

When the mask I was wearing cracked, I lost faith in it, and I regressed into the darkest parts of my psyche. Campbell called it a wasteland situation, my life had become a wasteland and I was dying in pieces every day.

Joseph Campbell was still wildly popular then, and one of his books, Pathways To Bliss, became a kind of bible to me, made me see that I was on a Hero Journey, not just a trip to the country, or a mid-life crisis, the term used to put down men who wish to change.

I began to understand that I was gripped by a calling.

“Mythology begins where madness starts,” he wrote in Pathways. “A person who is truly gripped by a calling, by a dedication, by a belief, by a zeal, will sacrifice his security, will sacrifice even his life, will sacrifice personal relationships, will sacrifice prestige, and will think nothing of personal development; he will give himself entirely to his myth. Christ gives you he clue when he says, “He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.”

I did sacrifice all of those things, and while that sometimes frightens me, I take full responsibility for it, and would do it again in a moment. So would Maria. Every year, in the days before our Open House – this Saturday and Sunday, 11 to 4 – I try to stop and remember the idea of the Open House, to be faithful to it.

Maria and i found love in one another, we share our calling.

We live creative lives, we live for encouragement, for ourselves and others, we live to share what we know and understand and what we do not know and understand. To work only for money is just another kind of slavery, and we have freed ourselves from that awful bondage.

We did all of this together, we share a closeness what was once unimaginable to me.

The idea  was to celebrate our reborn lives together, and open them up to the people who share them with us. Part of that idea was to honor the art of rural life, the creativity we see all around us,  and to celebrate Maria’s miraculous resurrection as an artist, a calling that had been lost to her, but then been found.

We both survived our Hero Journey’s, we traveled through dark and unfamiliar places, we lived to return to the ordinary world. On that journey, we awakened. We answered the Call to Adventure.

There was an a wakening of the self to an  unknown, unexpected world. The hero, wrote Campbell, becomes aware of a new, unusual, exciting, forbidden and foreign world, previously closed off from us.

That’s what the Open Houses were really about, we had survived and returned to the ordinary world. We wanted to rejoin our world, we had come out of the darkness.

We also sought to acknowledge the importance of our lives with animals, to share our wonder and love for them. I sometimes have lost sight of these ideas, but I always come back to them, and find them again.

These ideas remain the core of the Open House. Poetry readings, gifted artists showing and selling their work, sheepherding, Belly Dancing, donkey tours, meeting Bud and Red and Fate, Lulu and Fanny.

We honor our own personal revolution.

So the hero outgrows his old world. The old concepts, ideals and emotional patterns no longer fit, no longer make sense. The time for passing the threshold has come.

Revolution,  wrote Campbell, doesn’t have to do with smashing something, it has to do with bringing something forth.  You have only to find the zeal in yourself and bring that out.

This is what we have done, this is what we have called our brothers and sisters in this world to celebrate with us this weekend. Saturday and Sunday, 11 to 4.

This morning, Bud was banned from the pasture off-leash pending some training. Yesterday, the sheep and I were astounded by Bud’s challenge of them, he stood in front of them, stared them down and dared them to move. They didn’t.

Maria asked me to go be her “assistant” on WBTN this morning (1370 a.m., 96.5 FM) in Bennington, Vt., they wanted one or both of us to talk about the Open House this weekend around 10 a.m.

That station is a community radio station, as anti-corporate a media as you will find anywhere, and the perfect place for me.

I was supposed to be on for 10 minutes, Maria was anxious about not coming, she was afraid I would end up talking about dogs, my blog, my books instead of the artists she wanted to talk about.

She was right. The host went right to dogs, and we hardly skipped a beat. I love the place right away, it is crowded, musty, dirty and in desperate need of some new equipment.

I’ve thought about doing a community radio show for some years, but it somehow never seemed to come together. This time, I think it has.

The station is in desperate straits, it was shut down a year ago but refused to die. It has no money, hardly any staff, and is desperate for volunteers. I think I can help, and it is the perfect thing for me to throw myself behind.

It has nowhere to go but up, and there is a dedicated fanatic fighting to keep it going. People always tell me my posts ought to be in the New York Times, but that is the last place I want to get published (and probably the last place that would want to publish me.) WBTN is the kind of place I want to be, and I love the Fish Fry trailer parked out in front. I have to ask what what’s about.

Community media is an important cause for me, it is the only answer to the corporate media that has become so obnoxious, polarizing, greedy and destructive.

While I was on the air, I got talking with host Tommy Toscano, a conductor and composer,  about everything but the Open House (the show is being replayed at 5 p.m. tonight)  and quickly  got fired by text as Maria’s assistant, even before I got into the car to go home.

Don’t mess with Sicilians.

That was a disaster, but it turned into a joy.

Tommy and I worked it out in about five minutes.

I signed up for my own weekly radio show, “Talking About Dogs,” a two-hour call-in that can be streamed anywhere in the country, you can download a free app, and the station has a 1-800 number that can be called from anywhere in the country.  All you need is a browser.

Tommy is, as near as I can make out, the morning announcer, station manager, maintenance staff and chairman of the board. If WTBN survives, he is the hero.

Tommy said he was  fired from the board a year ago, and the station was closed, but then he was asked to return and clean up the big mess.

The station is hanging on by its fingernails, it is trying to get an  FM transmitter but was just given an AM transmitter, a Godsend. How has it survived,I asked?

“I don’t know,” Tommy said, “I just refuse to give up.”

One or two volunteers come in for an hour a day, the equipment would be shamed by any local high school – the mike topples right off of the arm if you touch it, and you have to speak with it up against your nose.

This is the place for me, for sure.

Community radio  is revolutionary and has been almost totally marginalized by corporate media and government regulators.

This kind of non-profit media is rare in America, and always struggles. It happens when local people produce and broadcast their own programs and participate in the operation of the station.

It is meant to be a community space for people to meet and collaborate.

It can be uplifting, fun and transformative for communities, it can also be a community space for people to meet and collaborate in a time when media and technology exclude ordinary people from being heard or participating.

Corporate advertisers care nothing for me or you, they seek only to reach the country’s prime spenders, the population from 18 to 34.

If you are not in that cohort, you do not exist, except on Fox News, where the average viewer is male and 65 and over. And they don’t care about anyone else either.

Community radio is a global movement, really, its roots date back to a labor strike in Bolivia, the workers wanted to have their say and were ignored by other media. Needless to say, this is a movement that functions on the edge of life, with little money or corporate support.

Americans are increasingly isolated from one another, even from their neighbors, as it obvious if you watch the corporate news channels. I hope I can help WBTN, there isn’t much time, they need volunteers, some sponsors, donations.

And selfishly, I think my own two-hour call in radio show will be something I will love. I did a dog show on WAMC, Albany Public Radio, with co-host Joe Donahue for several years, he got promoted and the show just stopped. But it was fun, we did well with it. I enjoyed it got a lot of amazing calls.

Dog people like to talk and share and argue.

i like the call-in format, it is a conversation with dog lovers and a chance to rationally speak of the many issues facing dogs and the animal world, from training, to animal rights, to the work of the rescue movement.

It would also be great if I could help WBTN get back on its feet. More than ever, this country needs local voices on non-profit radio. Stay tuned, I hope to be on the air within a week or so, I’m thinking about a Thursday afternoon slot.

Audio: Talking About Dogs

Carol Johnson said Bud chased her cats, so we are acclimating Bud and the barn cats to one another slowly. Bud made the mistake of running after Flo, and he got a bloody nose for it.

Minnie is much sweeter and the two seemed to like each other. We’ll do this for a couple of weeks until we get it right.

The thing about training dogs is this, if you are honest, you are humbled again and again. This morning Bud came into the pasture and got cranked up – this is a dog with a lot of prey drive. Everybody was running, and Bud, who loves to run, chased after the sheep, barking and charging at them, and then did the same to Lulu and Fanny, who took it badly, Lulu ran right over him.

Nobody got hurt and nobody got bitten, but I was reminded to be more thoughtful and careful. And patient!

Bud  seemed so confident and careful and appropriate out with the animals over the last two days, I forgot to do the due diligence and train him deliberately and with patience.

I don’t believe in dog training miracles,  you have to do the work and take the time. My fault completely. Bud is a great dog, affectionate, obedient, and enthusiastic about life. There is nothing aggressive about him, but he is a dominant creature. Men.

He’s still got a lot of testosterone in him and as I said, a lot more prey drive than Gus had (or Fate, for that matter.) So he’s  temporarily banned from the pasture off lease.

After the donkey dust-up, which was a bit scary,  I put Bud on a leash and walked him slowly right up to the donkeys while they were grazing. The donkeys were quite calm and so was Bus. This is encouraging.  The donkeys were not upset, and Bud calmed down quickly.

I’ve taught Bud to sit, but didn’t bother to teach him that the animals are not toys for him to chase. Bud didn’t even try to nip or bite anybody, he just like the chase, but prey animals don’t  know the difference. And But got too close.

And as  sweet as they are, either donkey could stomp Bud to mush  if they wanted do. I think Lulu taught Bud a lesson or two about being close.

The donkeys are quite resilient, they’ve been around dogs all of their lives and handle them well. It’s the trainer who has to get to work. And this what I really love about training, it is just like chess, they make a move, you make a move.

Done properly, it’s the most creative thing in the world.

The challenge is to stay patient and start thinking about a different outcome.

For the foreseeable future, Bud will come into the pasture on a leash, we’ll work on being calm around the animals here. Bud is a smart dog, responsive and alert. He wants to please, and picks things up quickly.

I’ll have him stand next to the donkeys and give him some treats. If I’m calm, he will be calm, and then the donkeys will be calm. That’s the beginning. I am confident we can make this work.

He’s a Boston Terrier, not a border collie, so he doesn’t need to be in the pasture at all, if it comes to that. And I won’t to anything that frightens the sheep and donkeys or makes them uncomfortable.

I’ll share the process, honestly and openly. When you train a dog, your own flaws are revealed, there is no hiding.