Bedlam Farm Blog Journal by Jon Katz

Ali and Liam both like to lie in the sun in the same spot. When Liam get there first, Zelda comes and stares at him until he moves, which he usually does.

Maria put this hanging piece up for sale this afternoon, it seemed extraordinary to me. It costs $500 plus shipping and took four or five months to finish. She began working on this piece the morning she learned that our friend, the farmer and artist Ed Gulley, had been diagnosed with brain cancer.  Details on Maria’s website.

We are very happy to announce the publication of Mary Kellogg’s fourth volume of poetry, This Time Of Life. This is the fourth volume of poetry for Mary, a wonderful poet and our great friend. The book costs $10 and is available now on Amazon.

The poems explore nature, childhood, love and aging.

Mary always knows where she is, she never runs or hides, and her poems are honest, graceful and profoundly touching.

The book came about because of Mary’s fierce commitment to her poetry – she very much wanted to see this volume published –  and our fierce commitment to our great friend.

Maria worked so hard to bring this book to publication.

This will be Mary’s last book of poetry, she has left the farm she loved so much and where she has lived for more than 30 years and is now living in an adult home in Granville, N.Y.

She worked on her poems for as long as she could and kept them in folder she kept with her and took with her everywhere, even when she was hospitalized after a fall and sent to a rehabilitation facility, where we visited her often.

The book will also be sold at our Open House on Columbus Day Weekend here at  the farm (Saturday and Sunday 11 to 4). I will be reading several of the poems from the book. Several other poets will be reading from their works as well.

I met Mary when she wrote me and asked to visit Bedlam Farm with some of her friends. We instantly became good friends and she showed me her poems, which she had written since she was eleven and had never shown to anyone, even her very beloved husband Richard.

I was in a bad place when I met Mary, but she, like Maria, saw past my troubles and into the better parts of me. She inspired and encouraged me, as I encouraged her.

I was  honored to be the first person to see these books and committed to publishing them. it was while we were working together on Mary’s books that Maria and I became close friends. Maria thought she could never put together a book like that, but she was wrong.

She could and did.

I was very excited to read these poems, and Maria and I set out to publish them.

Mary has been a seminal figure in our lives, the was the first person I told when Maria and I began seeing one another. “Good,” she said, “she’ll keep you in line. A perfect match.”

We love and admire Mary Kellogg so much, she has meant so much to us.

She is fiercely independent, she lived by herself on a 30 acre farm and thought nothing of being without power for weeks. She would not be patronized or coddled.

She loved every bit of nature, every animal, squirrel, deer or wildflower. The natural world was an enormous part of her life and her poetry. She is a wonderful poet, wise and insightful and very much in touch with her feelings.

Mary never surrendered to getting old or complained about it, she lived the life she wanted to live and her strength and compassion and beautiful spirit are very much in evidence in her poetry.

She rejected any form of old talk or the self-pity and narcissism so evident in our culture and on social media. Her books have sold thousands of copies, and I will be very proud to read some of these poems at our Open House.

Publishing this books with Mary has been one the most satisfying achievements in both of our lives, we are so happy to do it one more time.

There is a great lesson in Mary’s life. When I asked her why she had never shown these poems to anyone, she said she was afraid she would look foolish, she just needed some encouragement.

Done. I have learned to always encourage people whose creative sparks are burning fiercely inside of them, but which are hidden from the world, mostly because there is a man around who didn’t want them to burn so brightly.

An emotional audio, hard to speak.

My birdbath is an unexpected treasure, there is always a painting within a painting in the water, every time I move, there are different reflections and colors, some last for only a step or two.

The line between art and life is always blurry where I live, this simple bird bath is a font of imagery and color and feeling. It helps that it lives in the middle of a flourishing garden.

Audio: My Blue Bird Bath

Maria usually makes her movies on Mondays, but we were thrown off by the holiday so she did her weekly video (she actually does a number of weekly videos) this morning. She wakes up thinking about the video – she is a visual artist, after all – and then goes over to the Ed Gulley bench on the back porch to edit and review it.

There is usually a cat or dog hovering around her, Maria is an animal magnet. They know where to go. I call this her Greta Garbo look, she is completely immersed in her movie and takes it very seriously. This morning, she caught me singing from the kitchen ) the “Minnie” song.

Maria loves making these movies, people love seeing them, the routinely gets several thousand hits on Facebook. Come and see Maria’s movie.