5 December

The Couple From Match.com. The Meaningful Life

by Jon Katz
Zelda

The couple came over to the farm yesterday afternoon to get some books signed. A friend called me and asked if they could meet me, they had read my books and wanted to give them as gifts for Christmas. I agreed. They both appeared to be somewhere in their 60’s. He had gone through heart surgery, she was living downstate. Both had ended 35 year marriages, as I had.

They seemed very much at ease together, full of plans for travel. Once they met, he decided to leave his 30 plus career with a local financial institution and they would travel, spend time together. He was thinking of selling his house in the country. I had no doubt they would be together. She was learning to love the country, he was learning to love the comforts of suburban life. I asked them how they met, and they said they met on Match.com, the online dating site and the favorite dating service of the farmers and rural people I know.

Going on  Match.com was difficult, they said. They both were conservative, traditional middle-class people. He is a leader in his community, a volunteer firefighter, a warm and open man who exudes honest and community.  The process involved a lot of rejection, you had to be strong, they said, and believe in yourself. Then they found each other, met for brunch near Saratoga and she said she was so relieved that he had bothered to put a jacket on and dress up. A lot of them had shown up in T-shirts, she said. I liked these two very much. They were very different from me, they adhered closely to the rules – corporate jobs, lots of savings, good pensions, IRA’s. I have not played by those rules. But they both decided they were entitled to love and wanted it in their lives.

Their idea of a meaningful life is very different from mine, yet in many ways very similiar. They both refused to accept the low expectations of other people, the diminishment of opportunities and dignity that marketers and corporate economists bring to aging in America. They understood the importance of love. He says everyone he knows says the same thing to him that people say to me: “you look so happy.” I felt a strong kinship with these people, and I think they with me. She said that in her late 50’s, she asked herself if she might be entitled to love, and she decided that she was. They both found it on Match.com, a course that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. Technology can connect people as well as disconnect and divide them.

A meaningful life is not just my idea of the way I want to live. It comes to people who can change, take risks, be strong and can open their hearts up at any point of life, and follow their dreams. They looked so happy.

5 December

Staying Focused

by Jon Katz
Focus On Work

The life of the working dog is not simple, you can just ask Red. This morning I asked  him to go get the sheep and bring them out to the barn so we could check their coats. The donkeys, diligent guard animals all, moved right in front of the sheep and took up their positions. Lulu and Fanny are easy with Red, but they don’t like him herding the sheep, they still think he is a coyote, as they did Rose. Red has more focus than any other living thing I have known.

He moved up, determined to carry out his task, lay down and then began to navigate his way through the clusters of donkeys. The sheep, hiding from him, at first, knew they were marked and that he was coming, and they moved out to the other pasture. Simon is getting easier with Red, he keeps an eye on him but challenges him less. Red pays no attention to obstacles. He gets it done.

5 December

Bedlam Farm Calendars

by Jon Katz
Calendar

I love these shots of Red posing in front of the donkeys who are posing in front of the sheep. All my animals know about cameras, and they are happy to pause and preen and be still for me. They know where the hay comes from, I think and see I always have a camera hanging off my shoulder, they see it as just another part of me.

Lots of people lately have asked if I would consider publishing a Bedlam Farm Calendar, but if I am slow to learn, I do eventually get there, and I am wise to this bait and switch. This request gets strong during the holidays, traditional calendar buying time.  Whenever I put a particular kind of photo, I get a slew of messages from people suggesting it be sold as a print, a notecard, turned into a book or children’s book or put into a calendar. It took me several years to get onto the fact that enthusiastic people are quick to say I should sell something, but slow to buy something when I do. I have many matted photographs and notecards to testify to this phenomena. A woman from Florida send me a nearly desperate message urging me to write a children’s book about Lenore so she could give them to her children.

I told her to go to Amazon or her bookstore and check out the two children’s books that I have written about Lenore. She wrote back to say they looked great and she would put them on her wish list for next year, as things were a little right. The Internet has turned print publishing on its ear. In an era where tens of millions of people are taking photos and videos, using art programs and trawling the Net for free stuff (including mine), the idea of buying images is fading. Few people buy calendars when they carry one on their pocket all day. And fewer and fewer people are buying hardcover books. An editor warned me about spending too much time putting things up on my blog. One day, he said, people will have no need of reading your books, they can just read you ever day for free. This is sometimes true, I know, I can feel it.  There are  photos of animals here every day. But I told my editor that one day the blog would be my book, and that idea has only grown in my creative consciousness.

Digital photography has democratized an art, and there are tens of millions of people taking great photos by the billions every week. Why would people spend money buying images of other people when they can have so many for free? I wish it were otherwise, at least my bank account does. It is expensive to prepare photos for sale or print out notecards. Calendars are fading out just as expensive print photography is not selling to many people. The Internet is the birthplace of free stuff on a grand scale, and it seems to push the price of everything down to the lowest common denominator. In our culture, you can never blame people for wanting to pay less for things, or get things for free. Big corporations know how to manipulate this impulse and get a lot of money out of people. Small creative entrepeneurs generally do not.

This next year, I hope to expand my catalogue of e-books, which people are buying. And I will keep writing hard paper books, which some people are still buying. When writers and photographers lament this new world, I always think and say the same thing. We don’t have any special license to be preserved or subsidized. We have to go where people go, and they are not going to framed photographs, notecards or calendars. Maria disagrees with me. She has sold hundreds of my notecards at her site and she urges me all of the time, as other people do, to sell them in photo, notecard, even calendar form. Much as I love and respect her, I don’t agree. I don’t have the heart for it. People who say they would like to see me make things are Houdini’s in my mind, they often seem to vanish when the things they want to see are up for sale. It is just human nature, I think.

This makes me sad sometimes, but the truth is, I love giving the photos away for free and I don’t love spending money to make things people no longer really want to buy. I think of my free photos – I don’t watermark them, they are yours to use, unless told otherwise  –  as little angels sailing out into the universe carrying messages of light and meaning. That is better, I think, than selling calendars.

5 December

Siri In My Life. Elibigible For An Update.

by Jon Katz
Siri

Like everyone else, I drift farther and farther into the various ecosystems that make, sell or manage my technology. I still have this idea that I can purchase what I want if I have the money, but technology moves the other way – so many decisions involving our technology, from computers to software to cell phones, are not in our hands or under our control. Yesterday I called AT&T. I confess to still being loyal to companies – I so clearly remember when AT&T was one of the great companies on the earth – even when they are no longer loyal to me. A nice man named Brian helped me sort out the various text messaging plans and then said he had good news for me. I was eligible for an update. I could get a new cellphone for as little as 99 cents or as much as $200.

“Hey, great news,” I shouted to Maria. I am eligible for an update! Finally, I could get Siri on my cell. I flirted with various cell phones, but had my heart set on Siri, so much so that Maria said she was starting to get a little jealous. Lord, I thought, can you get in trouble with voice recognition software? Maria volunteered to get me a new cell for Christmas and we went to Glens Falls to meet with Mike, our AT&T adviser. Red came in and greeted each of the salespeople and customers in the store. A woman told me she had five Pit Bulls and a border collie and I told her I wished peace and compassion for her. The security guard at AT&T said he loves Siri and calls her up and asks her how to dispose of dead bodies. She jokes with him, he says she doesn’t rattle.  He didn’t say he was kidding, but I could see he was. Red loved him.

Mike is nice, knowledgeable and fun. He gave us a half dozen new cell phone options, sold me a Bluetooth speaker for my car and office, showed us where the spiffy new Iphone cases were, and walked Maria and I through our various options, and there were many various options. Maria is eligible for an upgrade too, but Mike suggested that I simply delete the date in my existing phone and give it to her. A free upgrade for her, she is sensible and mature, and has no interest in Siri at all.

It turns out (no surprise here) that all of this cost closer to $500 than $200 but I introduced myself to Siri in the car. She gave me the forecast, the shortest route home, she texted two people, took me to my daughter’s website, called two friends. She understood me well and was professional and helpful. To be honest, she exceeded my expectations. I will use her to text, make calls, remind me of the day’s appointments, keep my schedule, maybe take some photos (the camera on the Iphone does panorama shots). I suspect I will use the Iphone more and the Ipad less. What Siri does for me is turn the small device into a large device. The size doesn’t matter much anymore.

More and more I see these technologies coming into our lives, and my life will not be as quiet or simple as I keep saying I want it to be. This is the challenge, for me, and I am thinking on it. This phone is a remarkable piece of technology and can manage my information in a number of ways that will help me, including Siri. It is much easier to talk a message through her than type on on those small screens. That is the boundary, I think, to see it is an information management device, and not as a handheld amusement park. I’ll keep you posted. I love Siri, but I don’t really need to joke or flirt with her or try and upset her. Real women are better.

5 December

Get Started: Meditation. Be Ignited. Or Be Gone.

by Jon Katz
Get Started

Meditation is an old and honorable practice, perhaps this is why few corporations and no health care plans would consider paying for it or encouraging. It is, for me, the key to awakening. My own practice is deepening. Breathing, visualizations, objectively seeing the way my feverish mind works. Meditation has brought me face to face with fear, anger and a self-directed life. Meditation is free, and portable. I can do it in the car waiting for Maria to do her chores. I do it while feeding the animals and listening to them eat their hay. I did it yesterday walking the dogs. It is a portal through which I walk into the realm of peacefulness, growth and change. It slows me down, quiets the fear, opens up the better parts of me.

Sometimes it brings up fear, anger and resentment, and it is always healthy to see and recognize that. The world is going one way, and I (Maria too) are going another. Journeys are always easier when they are shared, and I am no Buddha sitting still for days. Meditation is how I get started, and also how I end the day. My appreciation for this ancient form of health is growing, and I am late to it, as I am late to self-awareness and growth.

Mary Oliver says: “Be Ignited. Or Be Gone.” That was my morning meditation.

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