Ray Telford spent a grueling eight or nine hours out in the hot sun today replacing the old wooden boards the donkeys began eating this winter. The holes are getting bigger, there is a lot of hay on the other side of that wall.
The donkeys have been eating our barn, they get bored when there is no grazing. Even with grass, the holes were getting bigger and they had figured out to pry off the chicken wire.
We are extending the chicken wire further up to avoid further temptation. Ray did a lot of digging, sawing and stapling. He is a find and we are so relieved to staunch the erosion of our barn wall. Donkeys are always playing chess with us, they will think of some other mischief to get into.
This week, some members of the soccer team went to Wal-Mart with Ali to buy new clothes for high school, they asked not to be photographed because they didn’t wish to be stereotyped as “poor refugees.” I understand that and respected their wishes and sent $600 along with them.
Normally, I always photograph the people we are helping so that the people who send money will know where their money is going. Yesterday, I went to the Mansion to commit four small acts of great kindness and also did not take photographs.
At the Mansion, I don’t photograph people in distress, or who are gravely ill, or who are receiving personal items. Last week, I received four requests for personal items. One man needed two pairs of sweatpants for the winter, he had no pants to wear in the colder weather.
One female resident needed new underwear, she needs two sets of five pairs. Another resident did not own any kind of pants, she only came to the Mansion with dresses, and has suffered through the summer before people realized that she wasn’t dressing this way by choice. Another resident was suffering from swollen feet, she could barely get them into her stiff shoes and was limping.
Sometimes the residents ask me directly, and I always check with the staff.
The Mansion staff is always vigilant for problems like this, and they let me know right away if there is trouble. Most of them are shy about asking me for help, but they are getting used to it and we are helping people in a new and useful way.
I delivered all of these items to the Mansion yesterday, and the aides there distributed them last night. They all fit and are what the residents needed. Between my thrift shop network and online shopping, I am becoming a whiz at buying clothes and personal items for men and women.
I don’t liked to buy used items for personal things like underwear, shoes or sweatpants, I prefer to get the residents new clothing. All of these items together cost about $125 and will alter lives for months.
I wanted to let you know that we made four people comfortable and helped them to be cool in warm weather, and warm in the cold weather approaching on Sunday.
Thank you for your help, I wanted you to know what your support is accomplishing. If you want to contribute to this work, you can send a donation to me, Jon Katz, c/o Post Office Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816, or via Paypal, [email protected]. Please mark any checks or donations to “The Mansion” or the “Refugee Fund,” and thanks.
People often tell me that I’ve changed, but I know better.
People can grow and learn but they can’t ever change who they really are. That’s bad news for some folks who are happy to think I am a new person. But I’m not a used car, I can’t just go out and get a new me, and I wouldn’t want to.
Underneath, I’m still crazy and subject to fits of madness. I had one of those last night.
I can just work on keeping the old one in shape and learning. I was reminded of the inner me this morning. I had a dream. In the dream, I decided that Bud needed to be rescued, that he needed to come home.
I kept thinking of that soulful face, he seems to be speaking to me, and quite often I think I hear him saying “bring me home, come and get me.” I understand that this is a kind of dementia, Bud has no idea who I am or what his new home is like and I imagine he is delighted to be living with Carol Johnson, one of the angels of the Friends Of Homeless Animals hopeless dogs rescue group, of which I am a fervent supporter.
The thing about me is that I know Bud is where he should be, and there is no better place on earth for a sick dog – or any dog – than with Carol Johnson, she spoils Bud rotten every day, and he loves sleeping in her bed and eating her chips.
There, he plays with other foster dogs, steals bags of Jalapeno chips and the other stuff they eat down in Arkansas and gives Carol the Stinkeye when she snatches them away from him.
Bud has just lost his favorite playmate, a feisty chihuahua being shipped north for adoption. But there are lots of other homeless dogs to hang out with. And But will be ready to come soon, only weeks away.
Bud will love Fate, my spirited and unique border collie. I hope he loves us too. I’ve never had an unhappy dog, I can spoil them as easily as Carol, and nobody can top Maria when it comes to indulging animals, she brings the chickens and donkeys gourmet treats several times a day, sings to them, coos at them.
Fate is an accomplished food thief, the Pink Panther of dogs, you never see her or catch her or hear her, the chicken sausages and grass-fed beef just sometimes vanish off the kitchen counter without a trace, even when guarded by plates and pans.
Fate will happily teach Bud what he has not yet learned in his innocence, just look at that face, he is without guile. What a team they will make, I imagine him snoring next to Red and me while I write.
In my fantasy, I show up at Carol’s house, swoop Bud up in my arms and rush to the airport for a flight home. That is as far as the dream gets. If Carol objects, I wouldn’t know, she isn’t in the dream.
My life has always been notorious for my impatience and impulsiveness and eagerness to break rules. Just ask Maria. If I have to wait a week to do something I want to do, it seems like an unbearable eternity to me. I think the world is conspiring to thwart me, and sometimes it is.
Bud, who is being treated for heartworm disease (It is no longer legal in most states to transport a dog with heartworm out of state). He’ll be here in October. And I am learning that I can wait, I can be patient, I can stifle my impulses and tame them.
This is good news, for me, for Bud. Still, I wonder about the flights to Arkansas.
The poet Mary Oliver has a new book out, it’s called “Devotions,” and it’s a fat, big and lovely collection of her poems.
Mary Oliver and I spend a few minutes with one another every morning, I read a poem or two to Maria, or sometimes, just to myself. Using my new audio feature (below) I’m going to read the poems aloud that I share, for those of you who would like to hear a poem read.
This is the poem I read this morning, it’s called “Self Portrait.”
“I wish I was twenty and in love with life
and still full of beans.
Onward old legs!
There are the long, pale dunes, on the other side
the roses are blooming and finding their labor
no adversity to the spirit.
Upward, old legs! There are the roses, and there is the sea
My friend Ali was stunned to learn that I was 71, he thought I was about 50 and was genuinely shocked to learn he was a generation off. That’s right, I said, I’m old.
Last night, I read a book which referred to one of the characters as being “an old man now, he was 71.” I’m reading a mystery in which the once tough private detective is 71, and he regular ponders suicide, musing that at his age, there is not much point in working or living any longer.
How is one to process this harsh way of looking at aging. I like to think of it as the only remaining acceptable kind of bigotry, older people are absent from popular culture and many workplaces, thus are inviting targets for people who still need to feel superior to someone else.
I am liking getting older, I find I am happier and wiser and more productive than when I was younger, when I was sadly preoccupied with rage, ambition and dominance. I like to think that as I get older, I actually know something, some of the bad genes just die off, and of course, there is life, which will beat me to a bloody pulp if I get to be too smart for my own good.
As one gets older in our country, you start accumulating doctors like sports teams accumulate players. There are no more wise Marcus Welby’s to tap your heart and say, hey, you need to take it easy now. Instead, specialists see me once or twice a year to check me out and see how I am functioning with diabetes and heart disease.
One of my favorite specialists – I never really see them long enough to get to know them, or vice versa – has a routine. She comes into the examining room and looks at me. She always makes some time to talk to me, she wants to know who I really am as well as what my cholesterol level is.
“You look great,” she said last week, as she sometimes does. “You look very healthy to me.” Since she hadn’t examined me or looked to study any data like the male doctors too, I laughed and asked her what this diagnosis is based on.
“Well,” she said, “I look at the tests, but mostly I look to see if you look vital to me. I look at your color, I watch for your sense of vitality, I pay attention to the energy coming off of you. And I’m never off, people who are sick usually look sick, people who are usually healthy look healthy. It’s a spark you give off, you seem very much alive to me. That is a sign of good health.”
And then she takes her tests and looks at her data, just to be sure. And I was healthy, she said. This time, we talked about things, women do take more time than men, for sure. I will never see a male doctor if I can avoid it.
My doctor asked me if anything was bothering me, anything that I needed to talk about.
I said there was one thing. Once in a while, I said, I felt drowsy – I take about a dozen different kinds of heart and blood pills – and I take a nap.
She looked at me, waiting for the next click. So?, she asked.
Well, I said, I never needed to take a nap before, and I’m wondering why I need to take a nap sometimes now..
She laughed. “Jon,” she said, trying not to laugh. “You do know you’re 71, don’t you? And that you had open heart surgery four years ago, and have diabetes?” Yes, I said, I do know that, not sure where this was going.
“I have 40-year-old patients who take a nap every afternoon when they can, there is nothing better for you that. You race around all the time doing a zillion things, I gather, and good for you for taking a nap. I’d recommend you doing that every day.”
She suggested that i didn’t really know where I was in life, I didn’t know that at my age, I might sometimes need to take an afternoon off, or better yet, set aside an hour a day for a nap. I admit this shocked me and got me to think.
I don’t want to take any afternoons off, I said, but I get the nap idea. I wish more people had a doctor like this, health is many things.
Let me ask you a question, she said. What keeps you vital and healthy? It’s not just medication.
I liked that question, I have been thinking about what health is, apart from the tests and data and numbers doctors use. We are not encouraged to ask those questions of ourselves.
Well, since you asked, I said, I work every day to feel gratitude for the small things in life – for good friends to have dinner with, for talks with Maria, for snuggling in bed, for walking with dogs, for writing on my blog, for taking pictures, for eating a small sugar-free chocolate with raspberry jelly inside, for making love, for a few days of vacation, for the soft whinnying of donkeys wanting a carrot, for photographer’s light, for my work with the Mansion residents and the refugees.
I could go on and on, I said.
I’m grateful for the company of people who like me, choose gratitude over bitterness and offer hope and inspiration instead of argument and judgment.
“When you talk of vitality,” I said, “I think of the light. I am always trying to claim the light, so that I will find myself becoming more radiant, even as I get older.”
