Bedlam Farm Blog Journal by Jon Katz

I read about a Flemish painter who loved his wife so much he painted several hundred portraits of her, and sold  all of them. He made a lot of money out of love.

What a nice way to get rich and earn a living. We live in different times, and Maria would never let me take hundreds of portraits of her, and it would seem a bit creepy and obsessive.

Romantic love is not in fashion in the midst of our populist revolution.

I also wouldn’t want to make a living taking pictures of Maria, I’m not a Flemish painter living in medieval times or the Renaissance, she has her life and I have mine, and I want to earn a living off of my own blood and sweat.

Still, I do love taking portraits of her, I’ve always believed the best portraits are of people I know and love or like very much.

Maria is a wonderful photographic subject, her face is always full of emotion and feeling, just as she is,  especially those that reveal a part of her that most people never see.

That would be her vulnerability. This morning, we got up in our hotel room and I saw her sitting perched in the window like a bird, deep in reflection, staring out over the rooftops.

She liked it there, and when she turned to look at me, I saw her vulnerability, one of her most sensitive  and, to me, beautiful traits,  one that touches me and challenges me as a photographer. I only get to catch it once in a while, it is always special to me.

And I don’t walk around pointing a camera at her all day, that would bother both of us

We much enjoyed our 14 hour, mad  dash vacation, our specialty, we found a Mexican restaurant and I got to eat a delicious lobster – I had q taco plate with three small lobster rice and beans. We read, talked, went to sleep, read and talked some more, and then we came home, were we are both back at work.

We both work all the time and get or heads filled with things, and sometimes we just have to see something different to stop the wheels from spinning, to clear our heads. Next Sunday, we are going to a  beach cottage in New Hampshire for three nights, it looks cozy and cheap, and we have to bring out own linens and towels.

And it’s going to be chilly, a high of 65 on Sunday. I will love that.

Our cottage is right on the ocean, and there is a wonderful seafood restaurant just up the road, they specialize in fresh lobster, one of my favorite things. Last  year we went to New Mexico for eight days, this year we are going to New Hampshire for three days.

We are both just too busy and the Open House is almost upon us (Columbus Day Weekend.) About that time, Bud arrives, and we need to be around to meet the truck coming up from Arkansas.

We are excited about this trip, we are both tired and drained, we need to do nothing in a beautiful place for a few days. This year just has never stopped coming.

We always love to come home, we were hardly gone.

The border collies look fine, so do the sheep and donkeys, Nicole Tanton is a wonder as a farm sitter.  Socks, the sheep isn’t limping any more. We learned years ago to wait before calling the vet, sheep either recover or keel over and die, and every vet visit is $200 and up. If it looks bad or painful, we call.

Nicole will take care of things next Sun-Tuesday as well. I’m not bringing any computers with me, I’ll give the blog and all of you  a brief rest.

I know I need this trip. My head is exhausted.

When I got back, I had about a half-dozen messages from blog readers graciously offering me cottages to stay in along various coasts – Delaware, Massachusetts, Maine and New Jersey. We actually have a cottage reserved in New Hampshire close to the Maine border, we have been there before, it is quite lovely and private.

It’s interesting, I was primarily a book writer for a long time, and any kind of contact with my readers would have been considered inappropriate and uncomfortable.

The Internet is a whole different ballgame, so is blog writing, and I have  readers I talk to often for years now. We are a community, especially since the Army Of Good came into being.

It isn’t the formal relationship of the book writer and reader, we share common values and can get to know each other in a completely new and different way. And it is good for me to know the people who read my  blog and my books.

I am also obsessive about not taking advantage of my position or my readers.

And there is really no reason for anyone to give us a cottage for free, we can afford to pay for it and should. I am uneasy being beholden to anyone, it can strain friendships quickly.

And then there is privacy, I like being where nobody knows me or know where I am or who i am. If I can pay for a cottage rental, and morally speaking, I feel I should. If I can’t, I shouldn’t go. Gifts should go to people with no money, I think.

But I have evolved, and am forever changing. I don’t see this quite the way I used to. My life is about opening up to new experience, and how nice for people to think of me in that way.

Requests like this, they are lovely and gracious and I realize they are compliments. I see the people who write as hospitable and giving.  more and more as friends, not “readers.” We have been through a lot together, we know one another quite well.

I also know I’m not there yet, I’m not quite ready to stay in somebody else’s space, even people I’ve been chatting with for your years. This world gets closer and closer, more and  more intimate. It will never be perfectly comfortable for me, but I am getting used to it. It still makes me  queasy to get that close.

For me, it’s a visceral matter of boundaries, it’s about what privacy and friendship really are, and about how much space I really need to enter my head and so some hard work.

The Open Houses have cured me of much of that concern, so has time. These are very nice people. I still need to keep some space in my own head, I doubt that will ever leave me.

I wrote books for a long time. Back when publishers loves writers and  worried about them, they formed a protective cordon around their writers. Publicists did the talking, writers were rarely available, readers were seen as something we needed protection from, and publishers wanted to control us.

The book writers all believed and were taught thatthey needed space and privacy to create good books and write well, there is something to that.

A book was considered a rare and precious thing, it took time and great concentration and peace. The blog has been a profound change, now I see that I need interaction with my readers, and they need it from me. The question is always in the Facebook age, how much and how often. I don’t believe in instant friends, I need to know people well to consider them friends.

Facebook and social media are still sometimes shockingly intrusive to me, I am not used them.

I get messages all day long that are not really messages at all – waves, greetings, “how are you’s?” and “let me  tell you about my dogs,” or “can you help me to stop my dog from chewing on the carpet, or will you please read my manuscript?” or “how is Simon, how are the dogs?”

Today, there is a new understanding of reader’s rights. In the book era, people did not assume reading a book would bring them into conversation with the author. Today, people who read books often assume they are entitled to talk with me. Sometimes, they are. But as E.B. White said, there are many thousands of you and only one of me, and i am not going to spend a minute of my life “waving” to people on Facebook or chatting about the daily lives of Red and Fate.

I am sorry to tell people that Simon is dead, but I don’t want to spend much time doing that either. Does it matter?

I work hard all day, and I balk at writing messages to people I don’t know telling them I am fine or chit-chatting.Perhaps I am grumpy. Perhaps I am trying to preserve some creative space inside of my head.

This world has changed me, and is changing me, and for the better. I have alway lived my life with moats all around me, and one of the big stories in our world is that the moats are all getting drained or plowed under.

The castle doors are mostly left open. The question is really how wide.

Emma made a good choice for Robin when she got Sandy, believed to be Kentucky Cur, although Emma and her vet insist she’s a Lab mix. I’m with the Kentucky vets. But she’s getting a DNA test, popular in Brooklyn and elsewhere (and for only $90).

Sandy jumps on people and dogs and bays at pigeons, but is very chill inside, she loves the sofa and sits alongside Emma, who works at home, for much of the day. She and Robin are already great pals, Sandy is not yet sleeping in bed (Jay doesn’t like it) but I think she’ll be sleeping in Robin’s bed pretty soon.

Maria and I both work at home, and we both work all the time, day and night, most of seven days a week. It is part of being bloggers and writers and artists, it is partly our nature. In a couple of weeks, we are going to set out to find a beach for two or three days.

We both recognize that we are exhausted and need a break. Yesterday I decided we couldn’t wait for our little vacation, we needed a short  break right now. So I surprised Maria by getting a room in Brattleboro at one of those funky and cheap motel she loves so much.

One might call them sleazy, but in truth, they are neat and clean. Just cheap. She would get very upset if I booked a room in an expensive motel, those days are behind me and us.

While she was out at her Belly Dancing class, I got online and booked a room for $129 a night for one night, tonight. I have to surprise Maria, because she would try to stop me if I told her about. After some fussing, she is delighted, me too. Time to re-charge a bit.

And I surprised her when she came home. There was the usual huffing and puffing. We don’t need to do this, I have so much work to do, the Open House is coming, I need to finish a hanging piece so I can make some money, we are going a way in a week or so, blah-blah-blah, I thought.

Maria never thinks she is justified in spending money on herself, so I bought the room and paid for it.  All done, one night away for $120 plus one good meal, hopefully at an Indian or Turkish restaurant.

We will be back first thing in the morning to get to work, me on my blog and book, she on her art and  the upcoming Open House, (Columbus Day Weekend, Saturday or Sunday, October, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.) which is a celebration of art.

We will essentially have time to unpack, go to dinner, read in bed, get up early and head home. But it will take us out of our own heads and help to re-charge our worn batteries.

I had a hell of a week, rewarding and exhausting. I spent $6,000 on Sakler Moo’s tuition and $2,000 on Ali’s Red Van (and the rotting roof on the porch cost $1,700.)  I will be awhile getting over that.

But you know what? It was close, but I had the money to pay for it all, and I am grateful and content. See you in the morning.

Audio: See You Tomorrow

As anyone who has grieved for a loved one knows, these are the dark days, the hard days. Carol is getting showered with advice, most of it telling her how bad things will be now that Ed is gone, how lonely she will get, how much pain and misery is ahead of her.

Something about Americans, especially those on social media, revel in telling other people how difficult things  can be, how dangerous and dark. I don’t much care for unwanted advice, and I very rarely give it.

Grieving is one of the most intensely personal and individual experiences in all of life, and I have no  right to tell Carol how she will feel and when, or whether the worst days are behind her or ahead of her. The only thing I do tell her, the only thing I know, is that this is a process and she is in it, and she will come out the other side alive and living her life, something that is unimaginable to her now, in these days of shock and loneliness.

I have not seen much of Carol since Ed’s funeral, she was busy with her family at the County Fair, and I was up to my neck in refugee business in Albany and work for the Mansion residents.

We had plans to visit today, but a friend showed up to visit with her and she wrote me to beg off. We are supposed to have dinner tomorrow night with her.

I didn’t realize that one of the great fears of the newly grieving is that everyone in their lives will vanish and leave them alone. This happens very often, and  Carol is warned about it every day by neighbors and online purveyors of gloom seeking to share their misery and need to warn.

“It’s nice to be doing things,” Carol wrote me, “but I know pretty soon I will be alone and people will forget! But I can always count on your and Maria.”

People will forget, and there is no reason they should all grieve with Carol. They didn’t all lose loved ones last week.

Most people don’t really wish to be around grieving, it frightens them for obvious reasons.

People get on with their lives, as they should, and the grieving are often left angry and alone with their loss and sorrow. We are a Darwinian culture obsessed with making money, and there is no money is helping people grieve, at least not yet.

I don’t actually think Carol will be alone, she has loving children and grandchildren, and a community around her that is committed to helping one another. I can’t say how she will grieve, nor is it my business to tell her.

I know a lot of people who have gone through the grieving process, not two are remotely the same. People have this curious need to assume that their experience is universal.

I wrote back to Carol that I will never forger her or leave her alone, and neither will Maria. I encouraged her once again to be careful who she listens to, this is a time to be around positive and nourishing people eager to live their lives, not live by the expectations of the legions of doom.

I believe we are all responsible for ourselves in the long haul, and Carol is tough and smart, she will live the kind of life she wants to iive and decides to live, in her own way and in her own time.

She doesn’t need for me to tell her that, she needs and will  come to see it herself. I have a good friend who lost his wife in a car crash some years ago, “you have no idea how strong you can be until you need to know,” he told me.

Carol adored Ed,  he dominated her world, she is understandably and appropriate devastated by his loss. She suffers from clinical depression. She is also full of feeling and life and is eager to engage with the world after decades of milking cows and riding around in tractors and, to be frank, living in Ed’s towering shadow.

We are all eager to see and rejoice in the emerging Carol. It is coming.

In the meantime, I will make this promise to her and to you. We will not ever forget about Carol, she is an integral part of our lives, our creativity, and our  history together. There are some things in her life that we can share, some things we can’t.

It will be great to see her tomorrow.

Carol Johnson, the big-hearted spirit who is fostering Albert, says he is one of the handsomest dogs on her up-for-adoption list. “He is good looking,” she says, “and he knows it.” Albert is also the primary playmate of my new dog Bud, who is still living with Carol while he undergoes heartworm treatment.

Like all of the Friends Of Homeless Animal dogs, Albert has a wrenching back story, cruelty and abandonment. He was tied up on a short leash in a yard, escaped and got stuck in the woods, where he nearly perished from exposure and starvation.

He is an alpha dog, says Carol and plays almost all of the time. He’s three years old, and is also expensive by FOHA standards – suggested donation of $650, because of the $1,200 in medical costs for the care he needed.

As I embark on this new chapter of my blog – we  had gotten several  very hard cases adopted already – I am interested in seeing and understanding why some dogs get adopted and others don’t. Albert is healthier and cuter than some of the dogs we’ve helped to get adopted her, yet he is clearly not a dog for everyone, money aside.

(The Army Of Good and I can help with cost if that is an  issue.) It seems to me that Albert needs a home with teenagers who like to do things outside, he sounds like a wonderful agility dog, and he would thrive around a home with a playful dog.

He is a non-aggressive but mouthy dog, he likes to playfully put his mouth on people, a bad habit dogs can always  be trained out of.

The challenge with somewhat hyper and playful dogs is to give them some alternative and stimulating activities other than playing with dogs – walks, ball chasing, pet playgrounds, agility competitions. That usually settles them down, Albert takes out much of his energy playing with Bud.

I’m not a huge fan of dog parks or of excessive playing, it arouses the dogs and cranks them up. Albert needs to learn how to do nothing.

We teach our dogs a lot of things, but we rarely think to teach them the one thing most dogs do not know how to do (unless they are older Labs) and that is nothing.

If someone does want to take a shot at Albert,  will be happy to work with them on some calming training, my specialty. I’ve done it many times, I have faith in it. Calming training is tailor made for dogs like Albert.

Albert, like so many border collies, needs to be cranked down with obedience training,   and a wider range of exercise and activities. So he needs focused training,  an active family, a good sized yard and some work to do.

And mostly, some loving and consistent humans.

He needs a confident and experience dog person, he has the temperament and smarts to be a great dog.

To do what I do requires an ego, I recognize and I think if I keep at it, somebody will want this dog. He is very appealing on many levels, he is bright and fun and loving. He just needs to learn how to live in our world. And I am willful, I know there is the right person out there for this dog, this person will know this as soon as she or see sees Albert.

So I’m going to keep at it. If we helped to get Evie adopted, there is much hope for Albert. He needs some love and attention, and I am sure I could help raise money for the donation feel. FOHA pays for transportation.

If you’re interested call Carol Johnson at 870 260 0032, or e-mail her at [email protected]. She is very open and very honest.

Audio: The right person is out there: