Bedlam Farm Blog Journal by Jon Katz

Photography
6 February

Photography: Pictures From A New Lens. I Have A Lot To Learn. Come And See The Soul Of Some Sparrows

by Jon Katz

My new lens came today, and I hoped it would be everything. I will need some instruction on how to use it best. My Leica Akademie friends are waiting for me. I took the lens out for a test drive today. Here are the first photos that I took with it. I have work to do to figure out how to use it properly.

Just as I like to capture the souls of flowers, I’d love to capture the souls of birds. A few sparrows came to the window, and the Leica 100-400 kens did well with them. I have to aim the center focus in the right place. I want to capture the feelings of birds, the sense of them, not just a pretty headshot.

In the meantime, we’re trying to solve the. Kitchen crisis: We must remove our faithful stove due to rat and mouse urine. We can’t turn the stove on.

We’re checking out some new ones on whirlpool.com. Looks like eight or nine hundred dollars.  I feel like the forces of nature are testing us and our house with water, rats, and wind damage.

We’re up to it. Maria and I will pick out a new stove tonight, and we have a terrific appliance person from nearby Schuylerville to take it from there.

He’ll deliver it and remove this stove. The smell is beautiful. Curse the rat.

The sparrows seemed to move slower than some of the other birds. This will be a touch of my patience, which is not great in the best of circumstances.

I’m beginning to have an idea of how I want my bird photos to look and feel. That will take a while.

I found the sparrows to shore more emotion than I thought, just like flowers.

But has a photogenic face and a wonderful baleful wise man look.

The lens caught the menacing stare of Zip; I would hate to be a mouse looking up at those eyes.

The lens picked up the red flower in the sun.

Maria moved our little Mexican metal donkey to the front winter and in the light. It stood out. The lens has excellent depth and detail.

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Bedlam Farm Book Sale
6 February

Bedlam Farm Book Sale: Five Books, Two Mysteries, One Short Stories, Two Novels, Great Prices

by Jon Katz

 

 

Sorry, these books are all sold. Thanks. More coming soon.

 

As promised, we offer five new books for the new Bedlam Farm Book Sales Program today. They are each $10 plus shipping. If you are interested, please email Maria at [email protected], and please do not send any payment without messaging here to ensure the book is still available. They go fast.

This is turning into a happy success. We get to find good homes for the books we love and reduce the literary clutter in our farmhouse. You get to get beautiful books at great prices. All of the ones we offered for sale were gone immediately. We’re just getting started.

These are the five books we offer today – novels, mysteries, short story collections, and acclaimed novels. We are only selling books we love.

Abraham Verghese’s beautiful novel Cutting For Stone is about a medical family and their lives and struggles in Ethiopia.

Margaret Atwood needs no explanation; her collection of short stories – Old Babes In The Woods –  is as surprising and mesmerizing as so much of her writing is.

The Paper Palace is a best-selling work of literary and women’s fiction by Miranda Cowley Heller about secrets, love, lies, and the hard choices of a woman’s life.

Killingly is a grim novel Based on the unsolved real-life disappearance of a Mount Holyoke student in 1897. Katherine Beutner’s Killingly, said the New York Times,  weaves a haunting spell of intrigue, longing, and terror.

Raging Storm by the popular Ann Cleeves (Vera, Shetland)  is a Mathew Venn mystery; it’s classy and fast-moving, as all of Cleeve’s books are. It is suspenseful without being bloody or awful. Venn is Cleeve’s first gay detective.

If you wish to access these books, email Maria at [email protected]. Please don’t send any payments without contacting her first to ensure the book you want isn’t sold.

I’m thinking of selling some of the beautiful dog and animal books I used to research and write my books about dogs and cats and other animals and animal and human attachment theory, a longtime interest of mine. Some of the books deal with training and knowledgeable studies about how dogs think if anything, and what they feel. They are valuable to animal lovers.

The books are marked with my notes and circling; some pages have been turned down. Otherwise, the books are in excellent and readable shape. They would be helpful to anyone interested in learning about animals, their thinking, intelligence, aggressiveness, and ways of training and communicating. I have many of them, and they are all in excellent condition.

We are working on pricing.

I no longer need these books; they were used for research for my books.

They are the best and most accessible books on pets and other animals. It’s up to Maria, but we’ll soon pick a date to sell some of those books and see how it goes. I have shelves of them. I’m also looking to sell some of my spiritual books and guides.

To buy a book, please email Maria at [email protected].

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My Health
6 February

Surgery For One Toe: Is Aging Fair?

by Jon Katz

Maria and I went back to see Dr. Daly this morning to check up on my re-imagined foot. She says the foot is doing well, but I need additional surgery to straighten one of my toes, which will be in a week or so. I must return to the surgical boot and skip showering for a while. The rest of the foot looks good, and this week, we’ll also see David Messiner, the orthotic specialist who built my brace. It’s time to upgrade the padding.

(Maria photo: The doctors and hospitals are wearing masks again; COVID-19, despite claims to the contrary, is still here.)

A good friend of mine is going through some serious medical issues along with a family member. It’s been a rough year for her family, and we are having a valuable discussion about her statement that it isn’t fair for her partner to be going through a lot of different health problems.

What isn’t fair about it? I asked, thinking about my intense healthcare year. Her family member did everything he was supposed to do, she said but ended up with even more health problems. He’s older than me. The fates have done them dirty, she suggested.

The family has been through a lot and has handled it courageously, something I often hear from older people dealing with doctors and hospitals. They do feel unlucky and surprised by their illnesses.

Her messages got me thinking about fairness and old age and wondering if there is such a thing as “fairness” when one gets to be my age. I have a curious philosophy about aging and health; most people my age don’t share it or even want to think about it. I don’t claim to be correct; I’m just trying to be honest about my feelings. And I don’t ever tell other people what to do.

I don’t believe there is anything fair or unfair about health issues and the elderly. I see it as life, not as a shock or trial. Nobody likes to get sick or feels good about it. Yet it will happen to all of us who have lived a long time, everyone reading this, everyone we know, and everyone we love, including pets.

Because discussions about aging and death are considered heresy by the mainstream media, people are rarely forced to think about how they will die until it’s upon them. At that point, it’s almost impossible to change.

Sickness, age, and death are the things we all share, no matter politics, religion, or other values. Everyone and everything we love will die as well. There is no difference between woke and the rest in the other world, between red and blue or right and left. Death is humbling and universal at the same time. It would be helpful to talk about it and think about it before death is on the table.

Aging is its own master, and it moves at its own pace. I follow it; it doesn’t follow me. How I respond decides how long I will live.

It’s not about one decision a doctor makes; it’s about the thousands of decisions I’ve made all of my life. Aging doesn’t happen in a bubble, and I never thought about it when I was young. When I got older, I hid from doctors, claiming I didn’t like Western Medicine (at that point, I didn’t know what it was; I was just afraid to be tested.) That lousy decision nearly got me killed.

I don’t see what fairness had to do with it, to be honest. Stupidity on my part was closer to the truth. Lots of people die horrible deaths – illness, violence, guns, car crashes. Life can seem unfair. But we are all responsible.

My doctors are tasked with putting the puzzle together; they’ve done a great job. My attitude has changed. Moping and depression are toxic to me. When there is trouble, I get to work and keep going.

What do I think of this? It isn’t straightforward, and everyone has a different idea. I’ve formed my feelings about it.

Up until my open heart surgery in 2014, I had never set foot in a hospital (I got the tonsils out when I was four), and since then, and recently, I’ve had six or seven surgeries, some serious. I’ve been scrambling to understand my body, what I did to it, and what I can do in the future to preserve my life.

The bottom line for me is that as we get older, we get sicker. Even 50  years ago, I would have been dead many times over by now. So would my 80-year-old friend, who feels cheated somehow.

Is it “fair” for me to have gotten this far while billions of humans have no health care of any kind; they get sick and die the way they used to? Is it “fair” for a mother to go shopping at Wal-Mart and get killed by a broken and ill person with the same rifle they use in combat? Or is it “unfair” for our congressmen and women to hide their greed and callousness by refusing to stop gun violence?

My friend says they made all of the “right” decisions and just got sicker as if the illness could have been prevented,  but after my experiences, I also don’t think of health care in terms of “right” and “wrong” decisions. Sometimes we got lucky, sometimes not.

I take responsibility for my health; I don’t blame the doctors of the hospitals. They do the best they can; I do the best I can. TV and the movies have fostered the idea that doctors are magicians who can cure anything. When I’m sick, I get to work and stay there until it’s better. That isn’t possible for everyone. It was possible for me.

I learned early on that this isn’t true for me, this idea that if I made good decisions, I would remain healthy. It was a good decision for me to decide to have a toe amputated rather than risk infection (I’m a diabetic). It was a poor decision to wait several years to do it; that decision almost cost me my whole foot.

It is unfair for me to have these foot difficulties, or is it just the luck of the drawn, the way I ate and exercised, the decisions I made about my diet, smoking, drinking and exercise, and health care long before I was diagnosed? It seems those were my decisions, not my doctors.

I feel that so many people I know feel understandably persecuted by the ways of life rather than accepting life as it is. Because it’s taboo to mention or discuss death in our culture, people seem stunned when the predictable and the inevitable occur. I always felt severe health problems were for others, not for me. A friend dealing with open heart surgery called me last week to ask what he should think about it.

It’s not for me to tell you that, I said, that’s your job. Attitude, I have learned, is critical, especially for men; we are notoriously depressed, even angry, when they get sick and need surgery, according to the nurses I have spoken with. I won’t heal quickly if I don’t think I can heal. I have no data to back this up; it’s just my feeling.

I am not happy to undergo all these surgeries, but I am grateful and thrilled to be in good health at age 76 despite these difficulties. I owe a lot to the doctors, I owe a lot to me.

Nothing about this seems unfair to me, although healthcare inequities are unfair.

Only an infinitesimally small number of people have access to the kind of health care I have and the doctors who have helped me to be healthy and stay healthy. This morning, when Dr. Daly told me I needed another surgery on my foot, I did wince a bit. But mostly, I was grateful. Another problem was forestalled by good medicine and my willingness to do what needed to be done for my foot.

I’ve become a fan of preventive medicine. Stop it before it gets bad.

Dr. Daly performed a miracle on my foot. I was inches away from severe infections, and together, we agreed to get ahead. My history of health care is the story of my arrogance, denial, and anxiety. Doctors had nothing to do with it. I nearly killed myself a half dozen times without knowing what I was doing or what the d decisions I was making were really about.

If anyone mistreated my body or gave it short shrift, it was me. If anyone is responsible for getting healthy and staying there, it’s me. My doctors are not Gods and Goddesses. They are human, like me, and some things make the right decisions and sometimes the wrong ones.

I only ask that they do their best, and they ask the same of me. My cardiologist says attitude has much more to do with health and recovery than medicine. When I see her, she asks me if I am happy. If I say yes, she says, “Great, so you are healthy.”

I believe she’s correct. I’m happy to have the chance to fix this toe so it can stay on my foot and help me walk.

I have nothing to say but thanks to the spirits for giving me much more life than I had a right to expect. I will be grateful for any more that they can spare.

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Zip
5 February

Conspiracy!: Zip Is A Spy For Joe Biden, Says Fox News. He’s Actually A Cat Called Benjamin Butttton, And Here’s The Big News. I’m Taylor Swift

by Jon Katz

I knew there was something different about Zip. Now we know the awful truth.

A dozen right-wing media outlets are reporting today that our unusual new cat Zip is a secret Joe Biden operative; he is a psy op dark Web A1 re-creation of Taylor Swift, also known as a spy called Ninga, or perhaps a cat called Benjamin Button.

That’s why Taylor Swift saw him at our farm this morning.

Swift came to meet Zip and eat some of our great 8-seed bread from Covered Bridge Bread. I just thought she was a wildly famous pop star. But now, she is more. She is a new Moonraker, a la James Bond,  plotting to take over the world. Her partner is Zip. I offered her a bar of soap I made yesterday, but she said she didn’t need it.

I knew he was different but never thought he came out of a quickly degenerating country’s darkest, mad digital corners.

Fox News is leading the charge, has bought all of it, and is reporting this looming Swift-planned political Armageddon every night. Last week, a Fox News anchor begged viewers not to believe anything Taylor Swift ever said, including the name of her new album or anything about Joe Biden; The Tortured Poets Department. Aha! Welcome to La-La land.

Who does she think she is kidding? Take a look.

Then, run to Costa Rica and hide. It’s Stupid Time In America. Perhaps the Internet wasn’t such a great idea after all.

I should have suspected something with Zip. He’s just too cute, too bright, too different. He flipped me in seconds.

Zip was always a different cat; he came out of nowhere and is exotically photogenic, intelligent, and determined, even for a cat. I no longer believe he is a cat; stop worrying about him.

The conspiracy sleuths studied photos of both Zip and Swift and insisted that Zip and  Taylor Swift looked just like one another. Just glance at this dark web photo.

Where did he come from? What does he want?

How smart and devious to plot the overthrow of the President from an out-of-the-way and quiet farm in remote upstate New York. Everybody loves donkeys. And Super Bowl champions. It figures once you read behind the lines.

I thought she came to the farm to visit with me and Maria this morning and maybe buy one of our mystery books or novels on sale.

Nobody suspected a thing until Fox News broke the story along with a sister network called “Impeach Everyone, and hate everyone else: Be a Republican Congressperson).

Instead, she locked herself up in the barn with Zip for a long time; you could hear the purring of the farmhouse. They were plotting!

Zip knew what he was doing. Swift, who dared to endorse Joe Biden and other Democratic candidates in 2020, has scared the Jesus out of those hard-ass brutal guy warriors of MAGA.

There is no fooling them; it seems Swift isn’t even real but a 3D or A1 representation of a wildly popular singer and songwriter and hidden Democratic pervert. Now they are picking on cats, of all things. It’s a nasty political move if you ask me. Cat people are tough as nails.

 

It doesn’t get any darker than this, but the secret of Bedlam Farm is out. When Taylor stopped by to join us for breakfast today, I thought Zip liked her too much. Swift is a notorious cat lover; she just wanted to come by, she claimed, to urge me to let Zip sleep in the bedroom on cold nights.

I agreed with her instantly; she’s impressive. Zip finally got in (I thought someone was using my computer all night.)

The proof:

Just look at the dark eyes of Swift and compare them to Zip, and you can see something eerie going on here. They are brother and sister. I never noticed the two of them together here; they were always out of sight.

First, the alleged Taylor Swift (a/k/a) Zip or Zippidoodle, as he is known in the other secret world, is a notorious cat lover, which we never knew was suspicious.

I always thought cat people were a little strange, but I’m just coming to love them. I never seem to get on the right track at the right time.

Swift has a long and well-documented love for her cats.

Being a cat is the perfect cover for her, and so is being Zip.

The so-called “Blank Space” singer is the very proud owner of three cats, including Scottish Folds named Olivia Benson and Meredith Grey, and a Ragdoll cat named Benjamin Button.

In a mass secret plot, it seems the cats are not cats but “woke zombies” who fled Florida and Texas to plot the next revolution, scheduled after Swift’s plot to endorse Joe Biden.

The teachers were caught reading a book by Toni  Morrison in a school toilet. Governor DeSantis and his secret police squad are looking for them both.

The woke cats, it turns out,  were only pretending to be friendly and sleepy. They were scheming.

Zip, it seems, was culled and nourished from the dark world of the Democratic Party,  home of pedophiles, progressives,  vaccine zombies (ugh! Liberals), and the school teachers chased into hiding for having taught young children that slavery was terrible and gay people are out to turn girls into boys into girls again.

The evidence is so convincing when you look at it. Swift’s boyfriend is Travis Kelce, a NFL player from the dark side.

Since Taylor has 280 million followers on Instagram, it has been reported – repeatedly – that she is a child of the devil, and also another devil, two-time Super Bowl Champion named Travis Kelce, a/k/a Benjamin Button.

Benjamin Button is the name of a notorious actor plotting to corrupt all the political voting software in America. As reported almost daily for weeks by Fox News, Swift (a/k/a her cat, Benjamin Button and the wily Zipster) is attempting to control American politics while using the Super Bowl as a cover.

The first wave in the plot is several NFL photos of Swift traveling the country to support Travis (a/k/a Meredith Grey), appearing in private boxes to watch the games.  

According to Fox News, the couple has been plotting their liberal leanings as a way of brainwashing gullible (female) fans and notoriously stupid, chicken-guzzling, and raw male NFL fans.

This makes perfect sense to the elected leaders of the Republican Party. I’m still trying to work it out.

The story broke open recently when Donald Trump’s favorite (other than himself) Presidential  Candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, posted this on the nation’s favorite hate website X: “Thinking about when Taylor Swift called out the Soros family in 2019 for buying the rights to her music and then how she came out a super liberal in 2020. “Just some wild speculation over here. Let’s see how it ages over the next eight months. ”

Ramaswamy is way too smart to be fooled. Perhaps he learned that the actual name of Democratic Donor  George Soros (the Republican Party’s favorite evil Jew) is Olivia Benson.

The Internet, reports Rolling Stone Magazine, is exploding with theories that the Super Bowl is not a national football game but a “newly discovered “election interference psyop and the Super Bowl itself is “totally scripted: to elect Joe Biden. World War III will then follow, goes the buzz, the Superbowl leading into a 2nd Biden term, and “millions will die” in the civil war that follows.

Zip, Zipdoodle, Zipski, Zipadog, how would you slip into our lives and use our little farm as a secret base to hide your identity and plot here? The donkeys will be ashamed. On the other hand, 180 million followers is a lot of donations. That would fund a hundred new septic tanks.

As an author, here is my favorite newly uncovered plot to prove a Swift/Zip overthrow of the government:

Swifty-obsessed MAGA internet lovers theorize that Swift may be behind the spy comedy movie Argylle.

The film’s production company claims that the movie is an adaptation of the thriller by a mysterious writer named Elly Conway. It turns out that Elly Conway is the name of the fictional author in the movie (played by Bryce Dallas Howard), who has written many spy novels. Many people believe there is no Conway, but his Instagram is suddenly active. Many of her followers believe that she is Taylor Swift, getting ready to rally her Army of followers planning to elect Joe Biden.

How would this all work out? Hmm..I’ll get back to you.

(Rats, I feel like a loser. Not only have I been betrayed by a Tuxedo cat with green eyes, but my book-writing career seems boring and irrelevant. All I did was write a few memoirs about life in the country and my life with dogs. Nobody ever accused me of doing anything but being a little crazy.

I now have a cat whose real identity is false and who perhaps uses my farm as a staging area for a revolution.

The good news is that my blog will take off like a rocket if this is all true.

And I’m saving the real story to the end. Zip is a messenger who comes to plot with me. I AM Taylor Smith, a lumbering and bald 76-year-old man with a bad foot and heart disease.

I am the best imaginable cover for Swift, who can walk the farm every day forever without being spotted. Sorry if I’ve misled you all.

The other big news is that this year, I might watch the Super Bowl with a bunch of paranoid and puzzled dads who don’t care who Taylor Swift is; they want to see some football people knocked on their asses by 400 lb giants of color. Politics is pretty wild now. And they believe every single thing Fox News says.

Stay tuned; Zip denies all and insists he isn’t going anywhere. He did ask if there is room for tanks in the back pasture and would be mind having tanks on the farm. It’s a Super Bowl game thing, he insists.

I want to write more, but I’m secretly at work on my new album and trying on a slinky dress for a concert appearance.

(Note: I’m sure most of you will get this as satire, but times being what they are, I need to mention that this is not true; it’s a satire of our all too strange world, and there is a lot of daunting truth in it Don’t Bet On Everyone Knowing it’s crazy talk. This is America The Stupid)

 

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