Thursday afternoon, Maria is driving me to airport where I will catch a connecting flight in Chicago that will take me to Tulsa, Oklahoma for the Nimrod Readers and Writers Conference, I will be teaching a Masters Class on Memoir And The Blog, attending various dinners, doing interviews and giving a reading from my next book Second Chance Dog: A Love Story, due out on November 12.
I’ve been invited to some literary conferences before, but have always turned them down, gatherings of writers have never been much fun in my experience. This one sounds pretty neat. Maria will be staying behind to make her art, care for Minnie, run the farm. Lots happening in our lives. Minnie is slated to have her stitches taken out on Friday and if Maria judges her ready, she will be a barn cat again. Since the attack on Minnie, we’ve kept Flo in the basement at night, but today we let her stay outside again, there is no sign of any intruder. Minnie is more than ready to be free, she is plotting escapes day and night. Good for her.
Maria and I have not often been apart in our marriage but it always healthy to see different places, avoid farm chores for a couple of days and I hope I can be useful in my teaching. This new direction for me has been satisfying and successful. I love teaching my Hubbard Hall Writer’s Workshop, I am close to wrapping up the Art Of The Blog class which has been rewarding for me, and I hope the students.
When I return, things will heat up, I’m doing a Ted Talk in the New York City area on November 8 or 9 and then, the book. This one is special to me, it is the story of me, Maria and Frieda and that wonderful and awful winter of 2008. It is a book willed with second chances, much love and happy endings.
This weekend I hope to get a feel for whether literary gatherings are right for me. I decided today to teach another class at Hubbard Hall this coming Spring: Making A Short Story. I’ll limit the class to seven people and each of them will have to submit a writing sample and then write a short story from beginning to end – ideas, structure, execution. Maybe we can publish them as a book or e-book, if they come together.
I’m putting together my online campaign for Second Chance Dog, it will involve posts, videos, and lots of give-a-ways – at least 70 copies of the book with the help of Random House. I am glad Congress will take a few days off from messing up the country, especially before my book comes out, I remember my first novel Sign Off was published the day the first Gulf War broke out, and it vanished like a rock tossed into the ocean. I feel badly for the writers whose books came out in the last few weeks, their books are among the many victims of our elected officials.
There is plenty of time to pre-order Second Chance Dog from Battenkill Books, anyone who does will be eligible to win one of 100 free bags of dog food offered by Fromm Family Foods. You can pre-order the book on the store’s web page or call at 518 677-2515.
I am happy to see that my new header is up on the blog, I love it and am proud of it. It connects my blog to the notion of books, of a new book. I thank those of you who have subscribed to the blog, you make the blog, my photographs, my writing here possible. You can use your credit cards or Paypal to subscribe, you can cancel at any time. Depending on what you can afford, you can subscribe to the blog for $3 a month, $5 a month, or $60 a year. It is, I believe, the future of writing. Today I went to the Post Office and got a bigger P.O. Box for all the letters I’m getting – Post Office Box 502, Cambridge, NY., 12816.
I am not taking a computer to Tulsa, I will take my Ipad and my camera. One of the healthy things about trips is they rest my head, disconnect me from our buzzing technologies, I will be reminded how much I love Maria, the farm, the animals here and my life. I’m thinking of taking my 35 mm lens.
I decided the way I would handle the Shutdown/Debt Ceiling stuff was to think about why I love my country, what is so good and special about it, even this week when it doesn’t look that great. I met so many people this week who were frightened that I decided to pay some attention to the events today and I went on politico.com to check on developments – I used to be a political writer – and I was surprised to learn of the impact a small group of Republican women – all U.S. Senators – had on reaching a bi-partisan agreement to end the government shutdown and the debt ceiling crisis.
Senators Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Kelly Ayotte (New Hampshire) gathered a group of 19 Democratic and Republican senators and spent the last two weeks talking through a way to reach an agreement that no one loved but everyone could except – the once radical and unprecedented American model of governing. I was fascinated watching these women get up and speak about the experience – they were so completely different than the men behind the warring microphones we have been enduring for weeks, months, years.
The women showed a number of qualities their male colleagues and leaders have rarely shown in public life, and not shown at all in recent weeks. They empathized with all of the frightened and inconvenienced people, they understood they each have to to give up something to get something, they wanted a solution more than they wanted a victory or an argument. I loved seeing this, I have considered myself a feminist for a long time, the news from Washington reaffirms my belief that men are destroying the planet with their entrenched models of confrontation, victory and defeat, lack of perspective and insensitivity to human suffering. Watching these men bellow and posture and never listen day after day gave me a window into why wars happen and why people suffer and problems do not get resolved.
They have been labeled the “GOP” women, and they knocked the Senate on its pins, you could see all the male senators rushing to get to the podium to heap praise and wonder on them. Men have been battling on these issues day and night for months, nobody would move, women broke through the testosterone wall.
Women are different from men, they approach conflict and problems differently, I have seen it all of my life, and one of the things I love about this country is that women can enter politics, move up through the ranks and take over a critical debate in one of the most powerful legislative bodies in the world – and then get it done, by dint of hard work, intelligence and a different way of approaching conflict. This conflict is far from over, it is just beginning, but I bet these women have a strong role in how it plays itself out. I do not romanticize women, every nasty piece of e-mail I get is from a woman, but I believe women are the best hope for the world and watching these live video stream of the Senate discussion.
These women changed the world a bit this week, they showed us the potential impact of women in civic life, they just need to take over the country, I am ready to get off my butt and support that idea, I think the world depends on it.
For those of you who are despairing about this week, I would encourage you to listen to these women and remember what it is about this country that is so wonderful, even as it sometimes makes us weep in frustration.
It is clear to me by now that my old Post Office Box is not big enough to handle the mail I’m getting, I didn’t know there were so many letter writers left, so I just switched today to a larger box. It is number 205 and mail sent to the old address will be forwarded to the new box. The new address is Jon Katz (or Maria Wulf or Bedlam Farm), Post Office Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.
Today, the box was filled with letters but most of them were addressed to Minnie, I opened them and shared them with her. I was not expecting mail for the animals, but the cat people are a world unto themselves, and a good number of people sat down and wrote sincere and heartfelt letters to my wounded barn cat, I wonder if there are any other barn cats who get letters sent to them.
One unsigned but carefully typed letter came in with paw prints and photos of a cat. There was a time when I would not have read an anonymous letter to a cat, but that was then and this is now, I was intrigued.
“Dear Minnie,” it began, “I’m sure you are concerned on how you look without that leg and that cone wrapped around your head, but you look marvelous…I think Lady Gaga wore something like that to a premier.” The writer told Minnie that she should she this as opportunity to regain the “Queendom Of Bedlam Farm,” and she felt this experience would help her to overshadow Flo, “if you play this right, you’ll soon be the queen.” Flo will have no choice, she said but to fade back into her life as a barn cat and chase mice.
More advice for Minnie: “Take over any bed you can find, even Frieda’s. She has four legs, she can find another spot. If she gives you a hard time, just get under the bed.” Find sunny windows for afternoon snoozes on cold days, hobble around and look for sympathy, go online to order nickel bags of catnip.
I didn’t realize at first that the sender was a cat, described as a DSH yellow tabby, with his photo attached. “You as a country gal and me as a city slicker could go places with this, perhaps writing a blog on how to manipulate humans.”
I chuckled at this – perhaps I am getting old – but then realized there were at least a half-dozen letters addressed to Minnie, one from a donkey with three legs and two from cats with three legs and one from a Golden Retriever from three legs. I know some animal lovers are odd, but the wonderful thing about a P.O. Box is that you never quite know what to expect, up until today all of the letters have been from humans. Minnie definitely needs to get back to the barn. I could use a trip myself.
