Month: November 2010

Lenore, on our morning walk

This is a true story, told to me by a brave and determined woman.

A woman I know, an animal lover and reader of my books, had a long and happy marriage, more than 50 years. Her husband became ill late in life, and died after a long and painful illness. She suffered grievously after his death, experiencing fear, depression, acute loneliness. She suffered terribly.

In her 70’s, she and her family began thinking about downsizing her life, and she did. She went through the worst of the grieving, and began to tentatively explore the world. She got an e-mail from an old boyfriend, and they talked on the telephone and they hit it off, so he came to visit her over the holidays. Together, they had an ever better time, talking for hours, walking, sharing life, two sometimes lonely people looking for connection. They decided to move in together, and soon.

“I am in my late 70’s,” she wrote me, “and time is precious.” Her family is upset. They have urged her to be cautious, to wait, warning that it’s too soon, it might not work out. She told me she is going ahead and having him move in after the first of the year. If it doesn’t work out, she says, well it doesn’t work out. In the meantime, she’s going to enjoy every second of it.

I love this story. She is living her life, and not allowing other people to define her. Good for you, friend.

I don’t think there is a single thing in my life that has been meaningful that the people around me told me to do. Not getting the farm, getting dogs, or donkeys, writing about them, even seeing Maria. I remember when I first started taking photographs, someone I worked with in publishing called me up and told me to stop taking photos. “They look like Hallmark cards,” he said. “You’re a writer.” I have known for a long time not to listen to people who tell my how to life. That gets lonely sometimes, but it works for me.

I’m struck by the beer cans that pop up in the leaves along the road, almost every day.They tell their own stories, and are beautiful in their own way. Something to mark my early morning walks. Like the Daily Egg.

Just heard that “Rose In A Storm” made the Boston Globe bestseller list this week, and I think the book is really starting to move for Christmas.

This is a big day for my former girlfriend. She gave notice at her day job, and in a couple of weeks, will become a full-time fiber artist. She will work on her art in her  Studio Barn, set up the Pig Barn at Bedlam Farm Gallery, which she will run, and work on other activities with other artists, including the new Gallery 99 in Glens Falls, N.Y. This is the dream of a lifetime for her, and I appreciate what it took for her to come this long and painful and fruitful way. She is very brave, very strong, very creative and very good, and so she will do very well. She already has. I just made reservations at a good restaurant so we can celebrate tonight. A surprise. Sssssh.

It is gratifying beyond words to see how this profoundly loving human being worked so hard, day and night, to get to where she is. I suppose that in all the world, only the two of us will really know what went into our amazing trip together, and her own struggle to live her life. We joke that we are warriors against fear. We chose life together. At the end of our wedding ceremony, I said that I was a story teller and Maria was my happy ending. This is a great day for her.

Love you, girl. Lips to the world. And just live.

“Independence Day”

“Between painting a roof yesterday and the hay

harvest tomorrow, a holiday in the woods

under the grooved trunks and branches, the roof

of leaves lighted and shadowed by the sky.

As American from England, the woods stands free

from politics and anthems. So in the woods I stand

free, knowing my land. My country, tis of the

drying pools along Camp Branch I sing,

where the water striders walk like Christ,

all sons of God, and of the woods grown old

on the stony hill where the trush’s song rises

in the light like a curling vine and he bobwhite’s

whistle opens in the air, broad and pointed like a leaf.”

– Wendell Berry

Somewhere between my former life as an editor and journalist and my life as a writer, the newly corporatized American media have evolved, in many, mostly awful ways. One of the worst was their discovery that if they published and aired alarming and argumentative stories – “Fire on Main Street. Photos as Eleven!”, people are more apt to watch than if they just produced or published informative stories. If we get the dogs we need, then perhaps we get the media we deserve, and shame on us.

Editors used to decide what they thought was significant, but the corporate entities that run media now are more interested in numbers and profits.  Numbers and ratings matter, and profits, not truth or coherence.

So the media have become our culture’s foremost transmitters of hysteria, conflict and alarm. You can see this in the animal world, whenever a dog bites somebody, or in stories like USA Today ran recently warning dog owners to refuse to disclose the price of their dogs to strangers, lest lurking dog thieves at dog parks will spirit their animal away. Today’s contribution comes from the New York Times, in a story titled “Animal Lovers, Beware of Ownership Costs.” The story warns that in a “struggling” economy (a/k/a “in this economy”) pets may cost far more than people expect.

As an example for Americans, the author cited one Manhattan couple that spends $15,000 a year on Skye, their Black Labrador, including dog walkers and a special camp for him when they are away. Now there’s an example we can all relate to.

Gee, don’t all of us spend that kind of money on our pets? I hope to hide this piece from Tracy, our pet and housesitter. She’s making peanuts compared to the people who watch over Skye. I hadn’t quite thought of sleep-away camp for the gang. I used to think I spoil my dogs, but now, I see, I’m an abuser.

The Times questions the estimates by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals projecting the annual cost for a large dog in America at $875 a year for food, medical expenses, toys and a few related expenses, and $560 for first-year setup costs. The ASPCA estimate for a cat is $670 a year with first-year expenses of $365, for a total of $1,035.

I think it’s hard to generalize.  I think those figures are close to what I spend, not including veterinary emergencies, which occur fairly regularly. I haven’t gone through all the bills, but I think I spent about $1,000 a year on each of my dogs, including food, treats and veterinary care.I would say that’s pretty cheap a price to pay for the things these animals have brought me.

This alarm, like many,  seems especially thoughtless to me. When the recession hit, the media was filled with hysterical reports of animals being abandoned by people who couldn’t afford to care for them. But pet industry statistics actually show that the number of dogs and cats in America has increased in the last several years, and that is not surprising to me. In “struggling” times, people seem to turn more to dogs and cats for support, unconditional love, and companionship. Dogs make us feel good. The news makes us feel crummy. Maybe we are spending too much on media?

The pet industry did not suffer in the recession, and rather than see the acquisition of pets as alarming in difficult times, it seems they actually do much better work in comforting or supporting people than corporations or politicians do, or even most religious institutions.

It is surely a rational thing to consider the cost of a dog or cat before you get one. How, I wonder, would you calculate the costs of not having a dog or cat in our hyper-stressed, mechanical, divided, techno-driven and money obsessed world?

Maybe we could just greet the news media every day when we come home?