21 January

The Windowsill Gallery

by Jon Katz
Windowsill
Windowsill

If you live with an artist, windowsills become museums and galleries, each offering shows of their own. As with all museums, the shows change, the exhibits revolve. Each windowsill is different almost every time you look at it, a mix of shapes and colors and surprises. We love to go to art galleries, but anywhere Maria is is an art gallery, she is viscerally creative, and as with a museum, you never see the exhibits put up or taken down, they just appear. I walk by this windowsill every morning, and it is no longer a windowsill to me, it is a gallery of contemporary visions of art and color. I will start putting up photos of my windowsill gallery, especially when it catches the sun coming up behind it.

21 January

Simon’s Time

by Jon Katz
Simon's Journey
Simon’s Journey

Simon has been with us for nearly three years and I have begun work on a book about our time with him – Simon’s coming, Rocky, Red. I was determined to record Simon’s arrival – we all considered putting him down, his wounds and suffering were so severe. Maria and I worked very hard on Simon. His teeth needed work, Ken Norman, the farrier worked on his legs and hooves, he needed balms and ointments for lice, sores, rain rot, infections, bites that were probably from rats, grain, ointments, balms. His eyes were swollen and infected, and I think it was awhile before he could hear. He was weak and numb, hardly able to move, and starved nearly to death. After a few days, it was clear to us that Simon wanted to live. Looking at the photos, I felt a powerful sadness, I’ve never known quite how to feel about Simon.

Donkeys are mythic creatures, among the most spiritual, worked and abused creatures on the planet. Because they are gentle and accepting, it is easy to mistreat them, and it seems to be a part of human nature to destroy and mistreat animals as well as to love and cherish them. Thomas Aquinas always wrote the reason we needed to be good to animals is that it is a measure of our own humanity, our own evolution. I have always felt as bad for the farmer and his child as I did for Simon. No one will come to rescue them.

Simon from the first evoked those horrific images of concentration camp survivors, he was barely a skeleton, it was some time before he had the strength or confidence to walk far.  He was a testament to the damaged human soul. Maria says we connected from the first, Simon and I, that the shock of seeing and caring for him opened me up. We have a connection for sure.

I didn’t want to put up the most graphic photos – too painful for me, perhaps as well as for you. You can see the rain rot on his ears and skin, his skeletal frame. That’s enough really, I think. Simon is filled out, happy and healed. He has bad legs still twisted and will perhaps always be that way, says Ken Norman, but otherwise healthy and strong. He is generous, he is always happy to see people, he carries no grudges. As we learned with Rocky, he can be possessive and territorial, aggressive defending Lulu and Fanny, she sheep, our chickens or his food. I am grateful to Simon. He did open me up. He did challenge me to be more human. Maria and I took to healing him as if he were a child of ours, and I suppose in so many ways he is.

I do not call Simon a rescue donkey or think of him in that way, nor does he think of himself in that way I am sure. He is a character, smart, loving, difficult, stubborn, intuitive. He is a donkey. I kiss him on the nose every day of his life and whenever he sees me, he lets out a bray that can be heard for miles (so my neighbors tell me.) My choice is this: I can either be angry on his behalf or grateful for his appearance in my life. In the Spring, I will resume my halter walks with Simon, two asses in the road. We will go behind the farmhouse and off into the woods. I have always loved reading about those strange writers who talk to donkeys, they have written some lovely books. Hopefully, I can do as well.

21 January

Afternoon Feed. Below Zero.

by Jon Katz
Cold Night
Cold Night

Going below zero tonight. Grain for the donkeys and the sheep. Fresh hay to warm them up. Stacking firewood in the living room. Wrapping insulation tape around the pipes to the frost-free. Putting tape around the back doors where the cold seeps in. Winters define us, in many ways. I think sometimes of warmer climates, but then Spring would not be the same for me. My frost-bitten fingers ache in the cold, a reminder of the first winters at Bedlam Farm, a shock for me, but also good preparation.

21 January

Happy Birthday, Rev. King. On My Knees

by Jon Katz
Happy Birthday
Happy Birthday

I find Inauguration Days hopeful, even in a country so angry and divided. I also realized that I hadn’t though much about Martin Luther King’s birthday, which is also being honored today, especially fitting for the inauguration of an African-American president. Nobody sells anything on this holiday, so most people don’t pay much attention to it, as compared to what used to be called Thanksgiving and is now called Black Friday.

Still, an important day, it needs to be marked. For all that I am uncomfortable with politics, I have always seen the election of a black president as testament to the evolving and generous spirit of my country, a spirit drowned out by the angry politicians and the yammering screamers in cable news and the rest of most of the media.

For all of the cynicism and divisions in our time, I paused this morning to remember Dr. King, and what he meant to me. Like many others in America, I was horrified by the images coming out of the South in the 50’s and 60’s, even though I was a child, they touched me deeply, and forever shaped my view of the world. I remember loving Dr. King’s oratory, his rhythmic cadences, his disciplined appeal to the better side of us. Dealing with so much anger and hate, he never seemed angry or hateful, and I noticed that.

In Providence, a black family moved into our neighborhood and the father, a minister, would sit with me on his porch and talk. Some of our neighbors had scribbled “nigger go home” on the walls of his house – this was New England, not Mississippi – and tossed rocks through his family’s window. He had a son my age and we played marbles together in the back yard and wandered through a neighboring cemetery.  Be thankful you were not born black, his father told me one day when we were sipping lemonade on the porch, and then we talked about Dr. King.  I told him I hated the people frightening and killing children in the South, barring them from schools. It was true, but I also  though it was something he would want to hear.

He leaned over to me, and tapped his pipe and moved so close to me he frightened me. I remember the smell of the tobacco smoke and his deep and powerful brown eyes. “Son,” he said, “you can’t use “hate” and “Dr. King” in the same sentence. Dr. King, he said,  reminds us every day not to hate our enemies, he preaches love and forgiveness even though he is almost surely a flawed and human man himself.” Don’t, he said, ever hate anyone on his account. One day, he said in one of our conversations, you will live to see a black man who is President and whether you like him or not, if you live to see that, “get on your knees and say a prayer for the soul of Dr. Martin Luther King, for he will surely be in heaven looking down and smiling.”

When I read that President Obama will be inaugurated holding Dr. King’s Bible, I thought of my neighbor, I have long ago forgotten his name, and I did kneel down and said a prayer for Dr. Martin Luther. I am sorry I forgot to do that before now.  I have lived to see an African-American President, and I did kneel down and give thanks to Dr. King and a prayer for his soul. America is a good and great country, and Dr. King’s will be the spirit that prevails, not the anger and hatred shown to us every day of our lives.

 

 

21 January

Start The Week. Inauguration Day.

by Jon Katz
Starting The Week
Starting The Week

I like to put photos of Red working on Monday mornings. It inspires me to get a good start on the week, to be focused and professional, to e upbeat and creative. Red cuts no corners. On Inauguration Day, new promise for new beginnings. Perhaps this yer we will come together some and restore our faith in our wonderful country. We can only set the tone inside of our own heads, the rest of it is beyond us.

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