Bedlam Farm Blog Journal by Jon Katz

Color and Light
5 January

Color And Light. Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Storm? The Weather Channel Is..

by Jon Katz

We’re all set for the storm. My prediction – 4 to 8 inches here, a real storm but a pretty ordinary one for January.

The Weather Channel is a revealing and lucrative corporate Ponzi scam. I wonder if people know that every time the cable channel “names” a storm, their advertising triples immediately and stays tripled until the storm is well past.

I also wonder if anxious people know that every bit of their “forecasts” comes from the government’s National Weather Service, which has been predicting the weather for over a century. And for free. They have a nice, calm, and truthful website.

Here is their forecast:

“Heavy mountain snow and coastal rain continue across the West Coast. Strong thunderstorms, heavy rain, and flash flooding will be possible for the south through Saturday. A winter storm is on tap this weekend for the East Coast. Heavy snow, freezing rain, and flooding will be possible. Hazardous travel conditions are likely. Meanwhile, a series of intense storms continue to impact.”

On Monday, we will all be here and ready to work again. There will be some casualties; there always are in large storms.

No videos or promises of the end of the world on the federal site. Not yet. Just the facts. It seems we need drama and fear to pay attention to anything.

The federal site is not nearly as excited about Ari Salsari, who also shares the name of yet another storm the channel has named. It will be a good week for the channel. Both storms, said Salsari, will be “memorable,” but neither will be all that dangerous or destructive. He was deeply concerned today, promoting not one but two storms to “name” status. We used to call it a snowstorm.

The farmers still do. I’ve never heard one of them put a name to a storm. The city people are storming the groceries for milk and cereal. I know, I was one of them.

Why, I wonder, wouldn’t people look at the government site, which gives the cable channels all their weather information and is accessible to taxpayers and easy *(and quieter) to read? The danger is evident here – people who aren’t paying attention to the storms can be caught off guard).

They’ve just heard the wolf cry “dangerous” too often. For me, the weather channel warnings are much more alarming than the storms itself.

I’m paying attention, but not to them.

We are getting those apocalyptic warnings about this weekend’s storm. Still, as I go through the data, cautious and concerned, I see nothing coming but a 4 to 10 or 12-inch storm of the kind that delights skiers and innkeepers and poses no serious threat to snow plows or anyone who has lived in upstate New York for more than a day.

It is a popular sport, like football, when the Northeast or other parts of the country get hysterical about normal storms. I know it is helpful for people to be warned of danger; some of our storms have been dangerous, and more will be. I can no longer separate the hype from reality; perhaps the weather channel can’t either or doesn’t need to. Fear sells; it’s almost as profitable as Mr. Trump.

 

I’m eager to take the Monochrome out in the storm and see if it can catch the beauty of the winter pasture

Zip was annoyed with me for skipping our morning meeting. He sat in the wicker chair and glowered at me through the window. “You are a spoiled brat,” I suggested. He yawned at me.

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My Health
5 January

My Cannabis Struggle: So This Is What Prohibition Must Have Been Like

by Jon Katz

I’ve had trouble sleeping my whole life, and a good friend, a doctor, suggested I look into taking a couple of cannabis gummies before bed and see what happens. What happened is very good; I am sleeping longer and more comfortably than ever, from bed wetting to panic attacks to seven hours of sleep.

I appreciate this very much and am vigilant about purchasing the gummies legally and using them sparingly. I take two gummies before bedtime. I love sleeping well; it is a new experience – I took sleeping bills like Valium for decades, and they rarely worked.

(Above: the first place I went to buy some cannabis for sleeping. I won’t be going back.)

When I set out to search, I was amazed. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of places in New York where cannabis can be purchased in different forms. They are almost all illegal, and all cannabis sales everywhere are unlawful, according to the federal government.

I guess they don’t speak to one another or care.

I found no legal outlets in my town or county and none in Saratoga or Saratoga County. Illegal sellers are all over the place.

For most people who want cannabis as a medicine or “recreational drug,” there is no choice but to break the law. I might be getting old, but I am proud to say I have never knowingly broken the law, and I’d like to end my life that way. Truth and honor matter to me.

What I heard was that the authorities are not shutting down the illegal cannabis stores; they are constantly shutting down the legal ones – the bureaucratic regulations and, paperwork, and obstacles are astounding, renewals and inspections take forever and continuously change.

In our divided government and polarized world, our representatives seem unwilling and unable to agree on licensing, payment, and legality or do much else other than call one another names.

I found one legal cannabis seller 20 miles outside of Saratoga and about the same distance from me. I was surprised to drive up today and find the shop, a former gun shed, closed. The shop was not inviting or reassuring; it was tiny and shabby. I was nervous but took the plunge.

(First Cannabis, right, new one on the left.)

I had this weird feeling that I was somehow breaking the law or skipping around it. That felt strange.

The young woman who sold me the cannabis shrugged her shoulders when I asked her how to use it. “Just try a little at a time,” she advised. She had nothing more to say. I had to show my driver’s license the first and every time,  and because of the federal refusal to legalize cannabis, I couldn’t use a credit card.

There is a convenience store a few miles down the road, and I had to go there and bring back the cash. Cash is the only way you can legally buy cannabis; I am told that illegal sellers welcome credit cards and don’t tell the truth to their banks about what the cards are being used for.

I wonder who we think we are kidding? A teenager waiting in line with me one day didn’t have the proper ID and couldn’t buy any. I asked him what he would do. “I can buy this stuff everywhere,” he said, “my dad, a cop, just asked that it be legal.” Easier said than done.

I asked the soft-spoken and articulate young person in line what he made of this. “It’s all bullshit,” he said.”Everyone I know uses this stuff; everyone bought it illegally, and no one we know has ever been arrested.” He was right.

My seller’s license had expired, and there was no way of knowing if and when it would be renewed. Certainly not in time for me, who is running out of the cannabis I had purchased for $30 a package. It is well worth it to me.

The maker of the cannabis I was using owns a nearby grocery and food shop; she was frustrated and embarrassed by having to close down.

“They were supposed to get back to me today, maybe Monday,” she said. So were her customers. I was surprised by how much I wanted to get those gummies and have them on hand. I drove an hour to get to this place but swallowed my announcement. This, too, I thought, might be a simple message: find a legal spot and go there.

She was apologetic and angry. She said the paperwork and bureaucracy was suffocating. A woman from Massachusetts came into the store and was told there was no cannabis to sell, and she wasn’t sure when it would be available. She said she would leave and find an illegal seller; they were all over Saratoga.

I was upset also and resented the idea that I might soon be an insomniac again.

I said I would come back, but I won’t. I got on the car phone and called every cannabis store in Southern Vermont. I found two in Bennington. The one on the phone sounded great; I called Maria and said I was heading to Bennington, about an hour from where I was.

I got on the phone and called a cannabis dealer in nearby Bennington, Vt., a state that legalized marijuana recreational products a couple of years ago.

I’m low on my cannabis supply, and a big storm is coming this weekend. This medicine, if I can call it that, has been transformative, solving a life-long and troubling kind of insomnia. I wanted to get to the right place and buy a significant enough amount to last a few weeks.

I wanted to get to a place I trusted. And I want to keep sleeping well.

A polite woman answered the phone. She told me her store opened a year ago and invited me to come. She said she would walk me through the program. They have their license and an ATM in the store for people who don’t want to pay in cash.

I had gone to the bank before heading to Vermont and had the cash. It cost the same thing as the cannabis in my state – $30 for each of the sleep packages, each package lasting a week, depending on how it was used.

I was relieved to see this new and recently renovated store in a beautifully refurbished building, bright, clean, roomy, and attractive. It was the right place for me.

A person at the door asked for my ID, and when I got to the counter, I was asked to show it again. The salesperson walked me through how to use the cannabis – take it 90 minutes before bed, he said. That was something I didn’t know.

The store has a license and is unlikely to be arbitrarily or suddenly dropped or canceled. Vermont seems to have its shit together.

There was a number I could call anytime for advice or assistance. There was the ATM above to draw cash. The store looks both reassuring and very serious.

I came home with four new cans of cannabis, the lowest-level gummies on the market. I understood what I was getting and how to use it. I marveled at how easy it is for bureaucrats to live in their world and respect only their selves.

So this is what prohibition felt like. A law that cannot and will not be obeyed, a government whose legislators live with their heads up their asses and in their own narrow and clueless world. And a regulatory process paralyzed by narrow and out-of-touch interests.

___

The Rohrabacher–Farr amendment, first passed by Congress in 2014, prohibits federal prosecution of individuals complying with state medical cannabis laws. The recreational use of cannabis has been legalized in 24 states, three U.S. territories, and D.C. Another seven states have decriminalized its use.

All 24 states that have legalized ignore the federal government, something the banks don’t dare to do. I’ll dream tonight.

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The Mansion
5 January

Mansion Meditation Class: Choose Joy And A Small Glass Of Wine. Sipping The Juice Of Life

by Jon Katz

I’m learning that it’s okay to be spiritual or religious and still sip on the juice of life. It’s a relief.

Until the mid-1600s, the standard image of a spiritual person or a monk was the hermit in a dry and barren desert. Religious and spiritual people were supposed to be silent, sober, and very serious about their worship. St. Benedict changed all that; as they came to be known, the Benedict Rules created a different kind of prayer, faith, and holiness.

Religion was about joy, he said. It was holy to be happy.

(Photo Art and June, good friends at the Mansion)

Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, spiritual guide, mentor to me, and the father of meditation for everyone, was a hermit and spent much of his life complaining bitterly that he was not permitted to seek or promote a love of life.

Saint Benedict’s Rule organized the monastic day into regular periods of communal and private prayer, according to Wikipedia –  sleep, spiritual reading, and manual labor – ut in omnibus glorificetur Deus, “that in all [things] God may be glorified” (cf. Rule ch. 57.9).
Benedict writes Joan  Chittister in her excellent book “Grace–Filled Moments,” which changed the focus of monasticism and said it was all right for monks to have fun and share their love of life. “Rather than isolation from the components of life,” she wrote, “Benedict wanted those who follow his moderate, profound spiritual counsel to learn to live an ordinary life extraordinarily well.
He even told his monks that a modest glass of wine daily “is sufficient for each” and both devout and healthy.
Today, I told the Mansion residents about St. Benedice and said that many people are profoundly spiritual but not necessarily known for their asceticism and self-denial. “St. Nicholas, the modern for the modern Santa Claus, she writes, gave gifts to everyone. Jesus did the same thing.
The residents were shocked and curious to know more. I said I was a fan of St. Benedict and that I was one of those who believed that the purpose of spirituality was to bring happiness and fulfillment to everyone. Spiritually, like religion itself, is under siege today; our national temple is full of thieves and money changers.
Our government was once much more significant than corporate fatcats, but now the fatcats seem to be in charge.
 “It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer,” said Jesus, “but ye have made it a den of thieves” (verse 22). The Bible says he went to the temple to drive them out and was killed for his condemnations. Our politicians and lobbyists better hope that he isn’t returning.
This is my idea of spiritualism, I told the residents. I’m one of those people for whom spirituality has brought love, joy, and happiness. It can be done. I can acknowledge trouble and danger but won’t let it take me over.
There is something about joy that is as holy as suffering.
Genuinely holy people know that life must be enjoyed, disciplined, severe, and grim. Life is much of what Chittister calls “the juice of life.”
Spiritualism does not require us to be grim and joyless. Joy is an essential part of the human condition.
I believe I have the right to be happy, as Benedict believed.
I am meant to be joyful because life is exemplary and should be enjoyed, not simply prayed over. Deprivation does not need to go with faith.
The residents’ heads were nodding. They said this was some of the best reading so far in the class, something they fully accepted and were relieved to hear.
“I never heard this,” said Claudia. “I want to find joy.”
The idea that religious belief had to be dour and only serious came at a time of religious extremists, who were taught that the body is terrible, even evil, humor was sacrilegious and a distraction, and even portraying the fruit of the vine was a sin. The body was evil, the home of sin.
And worshipping lightly or with joy was a form of heresy and could be punished by death.
Reading this aloud, I felt we are going through such a time in America. Religious extremists are seeking to deny same-sex marriage, homosexual rights, and trans-gender rituals and medications and deny freedom for trans parents and their children to define their own lives.
They are demanding that zealots and politicians take over our culture and tell parents and teachers what their children can reach.
To me, the rights of a family to make their faith health care and spiritual decisions are private and sacred. It is, to me, a sin, according to the Christian bargain, to persecute people who define life and family differently than we do. Politicians don’t dare to tell Mormon families how to define marriage and faith. Yet, they deprive many families of the same rights nationwide. As long as everyone looks like them, it’s okay.
Benedict called for “extremism in nothing, moderation in all things.” This transformed the idea of joyless faith and worship. It would work as a needed national anthem.
Chittister wrote that if the truth is known, “moderation is far more challenging to achieve and follow than extremism in either direction.”
It seems that for many people who call themselves religious, total abstinence and rigid doctrine are easier than perfect moderation.
I wish St. Benedict were running for President.
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The Mansion
5 January

Ready For The Storm

by Jon Katz

I got a message from a reader asking if we panic in the country when a big storm is approaching and run to the store for milk and bread. This reminded me of my prior life in New York City and New Jersey (or Baltimore and Philadelphia and Washington, where that is just what other parents and I did – flock to the grocery store as if access to food would suddenly disappear).

We don’t do that up here.

The farmers don’t need the normally hysterical Weather Channel to tell them the weather. They look outside. Living in Upstate New York, a heavy storm is nothing to panic about; it’s just another winter day.

Here, we can plow roads, haul out generators, fill up animal water tanks, clear off the front and back porches, move the hay feeders, stockpile some water in the bathtub, and dig out the mailbox. I love taking pictures of the winter pasture; I’ll give the monochrome a test and a workout.

Our generator can run almost all the electric devices we need, including the water pump, refrigerator, cable lines, stove, and lamps. We don’t drink milk and have plenty of bread in the freezer. Nothing is cozier than sitting in front of a wood stove – we need very little heat – while a storm rages outside.

We dump hay into the pole barn, and the animals can care for themselves until the snow stops. We don’t name our storms; we call them storms.

First, Maria went out to the barn to bring the shovels onto the porch. Mike is our snow plow person; he comes early and clears the cars. This morning, I’m heading to the Mansion for a Meditation Class. More later.

 

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4 January

Color And Light, As Promised. Thursday, January 4, 2024. I’ll Sleep Well Tonight

by Jon Katz

I was overjoyed today to learn That Faith, the Intellectually Disabled student from a local high school, was hired by the Subway food chain to work in their store here this summer. Faith is impressive and hard-working; I’m proud that the blog played a small role in her hiring and shows the world that these children can work as hard and efficiently as anyone.

I see this as a powerful new path for me; other disabled children in Faith’s school need help. It is a perfect match for the Army of Good; we specialize in helping the young and the elderly get the small things in life they need. I’ll sleep very well tonight. More later. I have my idea about praying. Sometimes it works, even if  I don’t believe in God.

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