14 April

Rocky, Rocky: Can You Tell Me What You Think?

by Jon Katz
What Are You Thinking?

Rocky, Rocky,

can you tell me what you think?

I know you can’t, I do,

but I sometimes can’t help

watching you, out in your pasture,

and wondering.

Can you tell me what you are thinking?,

Do you miss the loving woman,

with whom you lived for so many years?

Can you tell me if you know that she is gone?

If you sense your age,

your time coming, too?

Can you tell if you are proud that, you kept your contract,

your part of the bargain? So faithfully.

Do you think of me? Of Maria?

Do you ride your spirit through the grass,

along the fence? And dance in the dark and wind?

Can you tell me that?

Do you wait for us? Notice us?

Can you let me know if you are brave, as you seem,

and accepting?

Is this so? When so much of life  around me is gone,

and in shadow.

Can you tell me if you feel the brush, along your neck?

Do you know that you can’t see, but only smell, and feel?

Can you say what you think when you look up at the farmhouse,

and see the sun

coming through Florence’s glass and lamps,

and the gate she came through to walk to you,

do you see her in your mind?

Will you meet her in another place?

Can you hear her spirit echo through the pasture,

see her reflection on the rain that falls on the big trees,

on the flowers,

in her voice calling out to you on the wind.

Rocky, Rocky, can you tell me what you think?

14 April

The Three Stooges. Who Is The Stranger In My Bed?

by Jon Katz
Laughing with the Stooges

In our humorless and anxious culture, slapstick is sorely missed, at least for me. iI’ve always loved slapstick, from W.C. Fields to Jerry Lewis to Bugs Bunny to the Marks Brothers and even the Three Stooges, an admittedly low end and sophomoric form of the genre. I almost had to be hospitalized when Fields kicked Baby Leroy across the room in “Never Give A Sucker An Even Break,” I was laughing so hard, or when O.J. Simpson (yes, O.J.) was pushed off the stadium upper deck in “Naked Gun.” Slapstick reminds us not to take life too seriously, as we do in our warning-obsessed, regulated, lawsuit obsessed, argumentative and politically correct culture.

I try to laugh all of the time, at myself and others, in my writing and photos,  amidst all of the warnings and regulations. There isn’t enough of it.  It’s too bad because we all need to laugh, it is important, like love, and slapstick made us laugh,  almost always targeting authority figures, from priests and  rabbis to bossy spouses to nasty bosses to officious cops.

Slapstick was made for people with authority problems, people like me.

So when I learned the Farrelly Brothers had taken on The Three Stooges, and this movie was to be released this weekend,  I was excited. I wasn’t sure Maria would want to go. My former girlfriend has a great sense of humor, but doesn’t laugh out loud much. Her humor is quiet, as she is, and she is sophisticated, artistic, unlike the man she married. She expressed a strong interest in going, to my surprise, but I was pretty sure she wouldn’t like the crude antics of these former Vaudevillians, with all of their slapping, poking, and hair-pulling. “Are you sure you want to go?” I asked, and she said sure.

I have to admit I did not know the person I sat next to in this theater. From the moment the first (not the last) nun got hit on the head with a church bell, the soft-spoken artist I married was howling. Howling. I could barely hear the movie over her guffaws, thigh-slapping and belly laughs.  She had trouble getting her pretzel into her mouth, drowning out the teenagers behind us. She claims I laughed even louder than she did, but I can’t imagine how this could be possible. We both loved the movie, and it was great to be reminded that in the age of cable news, fearful lawyers, doomsday doctors, angry people online,  pompous politicians, and angry commentators, it is precious to laugh. There is no left and right in slapstick, anything is a target.

When Mo and Curly pulled the armpit hair out of a stuffy monsignor, and Mo dropped a lobster in Curly’s crotch I thought Maria would need assistance. She claims I have a screechy, high-pitched kind of squeak when I laugh. She had never heard that before, she said. Who is this stranger in my bed, I wondered? I turned to her, and I said, “nice to meet you. Who are you?” We resolved to laugh more. I guess we just keep evolving, knowing one another.  And we also resolved to get on Netflix and order some W.C. Fields and Marx Brothers movies.

At the end of the movie, we are brought back to life by an appearance by the Farrelly brothers, striking a more contemporary mode with a lawyer-inspired warning to children not to poke one another in the eye or hit each other on the head with a hammer. The commentary broke the spell, for sure, and stopped the laughing cold. It was very American. As a kid, I saw every slapstick movie there was, and none of them needed to caution me that the slapping wasn’t real or that I should not throw nuns into a swimming pool.

14 April

The New Chicken Lineup

by Jon Katz

Well, if you last tuned in Friday, there’s a new chicken line-up at Bedlam Farm. Fran is doing well, recovering slowly, and Saturday we found Maude, the speckled gray and white dead in her roost while laying an egg. There are no no-kill farms. Life happens. So we have a new hen – Maria has named her Shirley Partridge. I’ve renamed the Swedish Flower Hen Freaky, because she is, and there is Shiva, the enormous white chicken. They are a good bunch, really, easy going, calm and industrious, as chickens ought to be. They will be fun to photograph, for sure, once they get used to me shadowing them. Fran goes in and out of the barn, rests a lot. We think she is doing well, although we have learned that you never really know.

Not in the real world of real animals.

14 April

Fox News. Fran: Into The World. Good Day

by Jon Katz
Fran: Into The World

 

Good day for Fran. The other hens have stopped pecking at her and she loves to walk around the pasture by herself. She loves to sit in the sun. She rests often and still cannot lift her right wing, where the few really chewed her up. We are sticking with it, and she is doing better. She walked around for an hour this morning, the longest,and got some good  bugs.

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