Day: September 2, 2013

I’ve never met anyone remotely like my friend George Forss, who I have come to greatly love and appreciate. George is one of the world’s most famous urban landscape photographers – he is a legend – and for various complex reasons, he moved to upstate New York after 911, and he runs small art gallery in Cambridge, N.Y. – the Ginifor – takes photographs, cares for his brother Mickey,  and loves the artist Donna Wynbrandt, who loves him back. The two care very deeply for one another and are almost inseparable.

Last week George messaged me about his new You Tube Video, The King Cobra Speaks, recounting his experience of communicating with an alien while the shadow of a King Cobra flashed across the alien’s face. It is a different kind of video than you might normally see on You Tube, but George is not conventional or ordinary in any sense of the word. His book “Enos” is an 800 page exploration of aliens and God, and George himself is a U.F.O. Investigator waiting for the big call. If you think about George’s messages, many of them speak to human greed, violence or confusion. His works also contains a lot of messages about our dysfunctional political system, and believe me, his messages from the aliens make more sense.

Last week George fell down the long and narrow staircase above his gallery and landed on a vacuum cleaner. He eventually made his way to a doctor who found he had broken his ankle in two places. The doctor told George to rest and keep his leg up, he was concerned about an infection. I brought George an omelet Sunday and some scones, and this morning, Maria and I brought George and Donna some sandwiches and fruit. George was not resting, nor did he have his leg up, he was at his computer and on Facebook having an argument about physics, flamingos and aliens with a follower. “I have some followers on Facebook now,” George confided. Okay. He was cheerful and busy.

Last year, George got an eye patch to rest one of his eyes when he is on the computer, giving him something of a Pirate demeanor when he sits by the computer.  I love many things about George. He never complains about the digital photographic revolution that supplanted him, or the attack on the World Trade Center, which ruined eleven years of hard work. He is sweet and generous to everyone, he is a wondrously brilliant photographer, I learn so much from him just by being near him and he has overcome some nearly unendurable hardships to live a full, meaningful and creative life.

George will not do what the doctors tell him, probably not ever, he and Donna have their own way of doing things. But he always seems to figure things out, he knows how to survive, he is both brave and uncomplaining. He believes that aliens are directing his life and he hopes they will arrive one day and spirit him away. He is not worried about his leg. “The doctors tell me I have a high threshold for pain,” he announced today. “No,” said Donna, “that’s what you always tell the doctors.” Oh, said George, same thing.

It breaks my heart sometimes that we live in a world where Justin Bieber has four mansions and a pet monkey and George Forss charges $30 for a portrait sitting. The world has it’s own sense of right and wrong. You will never hear George Forss complain about fate, he lives in the moment with grace, decency and passion. Sometimes I bleed a bit for him, but that is a misplaced emotion. His life is filled with love, friendship, creativity and joy, all he asks for (except maybe for an alien sighting.) His friendship is nothing but a gift to me. This week, George has agreed to set aside some time to teach me about the settings on my camera, which he understands far better than me.

I love George very much, I know he will be hobbling around town on his cast one of these days, riding around in  his U.F.O. Investigations Vehicle taking photos of the rural landscape, his new passion. I know Donna will keep a close watch on him, make sure he is fed and gets to an orthopedic surgeon.  You can see his wonderful work on New York’s Park Slope Gallery website.

I have three muses on my desk at the moment, two Homer Simpson statues (he is my role model as a parent, and my mysterious statue). Thanks, Jackie Campbell, for the new Homer.

Monday is my day to report on improvements and changes in the blog and other news and to remind people of my subscription program, the idea that makes bedlamfarm.com, the Farm Journal and my photography possible.

The new mobile web design is up and running, you can see The Farm Journal on your smart phones and tablets much more easily.

I am working on a re-design of the blog header to include some moving photo images and also some quotes from the blog, I’m working with Mannix Marketing to create more of a feel of a book on the blog, since the blog is becoming the book, and has already become my living book. So look for some classy graphic changes to make the blog feel like more of a living book. Paper books are beautiful, but they are also static, and the blog is a living, moving, visual book.

This is September so I will begin ramping up my podcasts. This week I will record a podcast of several of my “Dog Love” poems, which many of you have said you loved. Thanks for that.

My subscription program is up and running and doing well. You have four options for subscribing to the blog, depending on your preferences and income. You can subscribe for $3 a month, for $5 a month, or for $60 a year. You can manage your own subscriptions using your credit card – you can upgrade, downgrade or cancel the subscriptions at any time – or you can use Paypal which offers the same options. Subscriptions can now be purchased in other countries as well as the United States. Most people are comfortable with the $5 a month option, but the $3 choice was a good idea, especially for people who are pressed for  money, and I’m glad we offered it.

Subscriptions are not donations or contributions, they are payment for the work it takes to produce and create the blog and its content, the words, videos, podcasts and photographs. The Internet is changing, writers and artists are working there and cannot offer all of their work any longer for free.  My readers have moved online, this blog is my continuing book, I am eager to help create a new publishing context and history. If you cannot afford to subscribe to the blog, the blog will remain free, it’s content fully accessible. The subscriptions not only pay me for my work, which I appreciate, they make the blog possible. Thanks for subscribing.

My next paper book, “Second Chance Dog: A Love Story” is coming out in November, you can pre-order it and Maria and I will personalize and sign it. It can be pre-ordered from Battenkill Books, my local bookstore. Battenkill takes Paypal and ships anywhere in the world. You can call and order the book 518 677-2515, or order it online.

Tess Wynn and Cindy Chambers have both followed my blog for some time, both of them are members of the Open Group at Bedlam Farm, both are strong, outspoken women with strong ideas, wonderful observers with a rich sense of humor and an awareness of the foibles, joys and turns of life. Perhaps part because both of them are nurses (Cindy, a psychiatric nurse, retired last year), they are direct and passionate about their life, families and work.

On the Open Group At Bedlam Farm, the creative arts group formed as part of my social media universe, Tess and Cindy have become very good friends, two of the personalities in that vibrant group that stand out. Tess has begun a wonderful new blog, she is a natural writer with a distinctive and powerful voice. Cindy is an animal lover and a shrewd and intuitive observer.  I think the connection between these two is humor, a passion for life, a sense of some hurt and pain, and fierce loyalty to the things and people they love. They just seem to spark off of one another.

It was a wonder to be present when the two of them finally met yesterday at the Bedlam Farm Open House, I heard simultaneous shouts of “Tess!,” “Cindy” and saw the wondrous moment where a virtual community really comes to life – when people get to see, touch and feel the presence of one another beyond e-mail, messages and social media. The Internet is miraculous in its ability to bring people to one another, but there is not a substitute for human flesh and feeling. Tess and Cindy greeted one another the way photographers do when they see their favorite cameras.

This was really a remarkable moment, to have these two strong and wonderful women standing in my  backyard. Tess really wanted to see Simon, CIndy has always been drawn to Frieda, she identifies with her in ways that become clear when you get to know her.  I could see the long unrealized power of the virtual community, and also the power of the physical one as these two people transcended time, space and geography to come together. Cindy looked me in the eye and said “I love you, Jon,” in her very direct way, and then scolded me for writing that Simon was a “wussy” donkey. Don’t use that word, she said, it isn’t right, and I said I wouldn’t.

These two women have not only connected with one another, they have also connected with Maria, perhaps for the same reasons. A generation ago, I was a writer on Hotwired, one of the first blogs on the Internet, and I watched as the first idealistic bloggers recoiled in horror when the Internet was overwhelmed by angry and disturbed people who turned it’s open spaces into cesspools and by corporations who have taken over so much of the Internet and turned  turned so much of it into a virtual shopping mall. Capitalism, it turns out, is more enduring and powerful than technology.

Tess and Cindy are more influential than they know, they return the blog and the idea of the virtual community to it’s original promise, they remind us that connection, not anger, argument,  technology, money or shopping is the most powerful human impulse there is.

When I think about yesterday’s Open House, I think of Gifts Beyond Measure, gifts I received all day long, gifts that raced through my head and spun around all night. I woke up at 3 a.m. and the gifts were still rushing past like a slide show.

The Open House was itself a gift, many hundreds of people poured into the farm all afternoon from all over the country.

I received a beautiful vase of flowers from the members of the talented and mythic Open Group At Bedlam Farm, a creative arts group, a virtual community.  Jackie Campbell, who became my friend on the phone from Battenkill Books, where she and I talk about the books we love many Saturdays, brought me a Homer Simpson statue from Minnesota. This shy and private person came so far to see the farm, she came early to chop up carrots and help collect donations for the Hubbard Hall Scholarship Fund (more than $200 and the online raffle of a signed “Second Chance” dog galley will begin tomorrow online.)

Between 25 and 30 members of the Open Group gave me a wonderful gift, they traveled to the farm to meet me and Maria and to meet one another face to face at the farm. Their delight and affection at seeing one another nearly brought me to tears, for years I have written about and dreamed of the virtual community, one that comes together online and also evolves into a real and physical connection. Online relationships can be powerful and enduring, but they truly become real when we know one another as human beings. The Open Group at Bedlam Farm is one of the best things I have ever conceived of or been associated with. It is no longer my group, it has a distinctive and beautifully creative life of it’s own, as should be.

There were other gifts – Jeff Anderson’s slide show of the Open Group’s work, his tomatoes, the cell phone photos of dogs and cats, the hugs and appreciation for my blog, my books, my work.

One especially powerful gift for me was watching Maria’s continuing coming to life, her ascent to the creative, confident, articulate and loving human being I was watching all day Sunday. So many people came to see her and appreciate her and her work, she was swamped all day with people wanting to meet her and see her work. This Open House, along with my life, would be empty and bland without her, she has brought me and so many others to love and life.
I remember that one woman grabbed her in the Schoolhouse Studio and said “I’ve been trying to buy one of your pillows for so long, I just can’t move quickly enough. Can you help me?” This please was so touching and heartfelt. Just give me your e-mail, said Maria, smiling. We’ll work something out. I thought of those long hard years for Maria before I met her, those cold winter days when she was getting up before dawn to care for the emotionally disturbed at a remote home near Fort Edward N.Y., then coming home to work in her freezing studio barn to make her first potholders. Nobody would ever want them, she told me. They will, I said, they will.

Did we dream of such a thing as yesterday? She didn’t dare, I knew it would come.

And so many good people came to see me, hug me, thank me for this thing or that, for this blog or that book, for this photo or that poem. They were all gifts of affirmation for me, what else would any creative person dream of or want?

Gifts and gifts. How gratifying to see Simon up on his feet, preening, wolfing down carrots and cookies and applies, cuddling with children and his deepening list of admirers. Many people came to farm to see this wonderfully loving reborn animal. While Red and I were herding sheep, Simon was braying loudly in complaint, demanding everybody return to pet and scratch him, talk to him. Simon touches me so deeply, he suffered so much, was so near death, he is reborn, he has risen.

And how can I ever repay a gift like Red, who draws gasps and declarations of wonderment and admiration at his focus and work and responsiveness? He is so loving, he is so much loved. Red was a star all day, he herded sheep, greeted visitors, did a therapy dog training demo with me, kept the donkeys away from the sheep. So many people came to see him, one of the greatest gifts I will ever received.

I suppose I should forget me either, for most of my life I never dreamed of such a day, never would have dared to open myself up to it. My creative spark is my greatest gift and it has survived so many challenges and twists and turns, it is my Mother, my faith. It provides for me and for my life.

I am surrounded by treasure, overwhelmed with gratitude and appreciation, I have gifts beyond measure, there is treasure all around me, the heart is like that, blessed and ruined, once it has known gifts beyond measure.