Day: January 14, 2014

Friendship, like love, comes when you are  ready for it, I think, when you are open to it. I have had few friends in my life, none that I have kept for very long, or that have kept me. The reasons for that are complex, not really important to me now. Scott Carrino and I met less than a year ago, when he and his wife Lisa opened the Round House Cafe in Cambridge, N.Y., my town. Scott wears many hats, he is a Tai Chi instructor (mine) a musician, co-host of a farm institute and retreat, he is an idealistic man, a gentle man, a worrier, a creative, a dreamer an animal lover.

Twice, he brought boys from a New York orphan’s  home to the farm, but I had to guess that he was once an orphan in that very home himself. He didn’t bother to tell me.

Scott and Lisa’s cafe has turned him into something of a small businessmen, and I guess I am a small businessman too now, writing has changed and writers are learning a lot about the financial realities of life, and quickly. I am also learning about friendship. We talk about our businesses and how we are learning to run them. Scott is a very good friend, an  honest and open man, we both are achingly busy, he is intensely involved in the creation of the Round House Cafe, the heartbeat of our town in many ways now, we share a lot. It is natural to hug him when I see him. I love his earrings and Tai Chi pants, he does not look like a businessman.

I started going to see Scott on Tuesdays for my Tai Chi lesson, and then I started giving Scott writing lessons in exchange, and then we simply made it a point to get together and meet to talk about things – life, work, peace of mind, love and compassion. Scott sometimes plays songs he has written for me, as he did today, and I was excited to tell him about my Kickstarter campaign, and  how much it symbolized the new and exciting ways the Internet is changing the creative world. Friends always want to hear about each other, not just talk about themselves.

Friends make time to talk to one another, no matter how busy. Friends keep an eye on each other, life is filled with challenges and pressures. Listening to Scott work so hard to figure out how to run a cafe, hire staff, get supplies, anticipate business, cook food, deal with regulations and equipment – it is an education. He is equally mesmerized by my efforts to stay relevant as a writer. Today we both were laughing at an NPR radio report (yet another) on how much money one needs to retire securely. This time is was eleven times our annual salary. We both had a good laugh at that.

Scott means a lot to me, we support each other. I love his cafe and I might sell my white clam pizza there. Many people in the town know and love Scott, are eager to support him. I do not have such a history of being known, I have never stayed long enough in one place to be known. Scott is a gentler man than me, I think, but we are gentle with each other.

Scott is hosting my photo show with George Forss in February. My mentions of Scott on the blog and my photos have driven a lot of people to the Round House Cafe, and one blogger even bought an expensive painting they saw hanging on the Round House wall in one of my pictures. Scott and I are in one another’s lives. He loves donkeys and we are both plotting for him to get some. Sometimes he comes to the farm and we sit outside and talk. It is easy to talk to Scott, we never are without things to tell one another, we are always amazed when our time is up. We talk about family, kids, life.

It takes a strong man to sing a song to another, a strong man to love hearing it.

I am learning so much these past few years, one of the most important things I am learning is how to value friendship. Friends are important, like love, one of the threads of life. Every Tuesday, we make time for each other, even if only for a few minutes, it is the garden of friendship, the root.

There are several other men I know who have become my friends. Curious, I think, that the first step towards making friends is to simply let it happen. It is human nature.

One of the high points of my creative life will be 7- 8:30  p.m. Thursday, February 20, when George Forss and I have a joint photo show – “Landscapes” – at the Round House Cafe, Main Street in Cambridge, N.Y. This photo is one of about a dozen that I will be showing and offering for sale at the show.

It is a wonderful privilege to show my work alongside George Forss, a legend for his urban landscape photography, a genius and brilliant artist. He inspires me with his work, his life, his humanity and creativity. He is a wonderful friend, he has taught me a lot. Our photos will be on display in the cafe for about a month and we are working to mat and frame them as cheaply as possible – we are using the best paper – and I think the show – curated by Maria and hosted by my good friend Scott Carrino – will be a high water mark for me and my photography, hopefully for George.

George is printing up his photos and mine. You can see some of his great works here. I know most of you live far away from us, but those who are nearby might want to come bye and eat the cafe’s great food and see George’s great works, my photos too.

A little more than a year ago, a farmer stopped by my farm and asked me where he could find a copy of my book on animal grieving, “Going Home: Finding Peace When Pets Die.” He said he needed it, he has just lost Skip, his beloved border collie and farm companion of more than 14 years.

I had seen this farmer and his dog, Skip was a classic farm dog, herding cows, sheep, even goats, running alongside grumbling trucks and sitting up on tractors. He was always near his farmer, out in the fields, in the barn.

When the farmer went away, he dumped a big bowl of kibble in his barn, Skip would take care of himself, he only slept in the house in brutish weather, otherwise he slept in the back of the pickup or one of the barns. He drank water in streams and puddles, roamed the farm at will, guarded all of it’s boundaries, raising the alarm when anything unfamiliar appeared.

I saw how much the farmer loved Skip, and how happy Skip was in this wondrous life for a dog. Skip got his rabies shots, and the farmer gave him to him himself, he did not go along with spending money for vets. They each seemed to accept and respect each others life, and Skip got to live the way dogs were meant to live.

“How did Skip die?”, I asked the farmer. Oh, he said sadly, I shot him out back of the barn.

I must have looked a little surprised – I was, I don’t hear that very often – and the farmer explained that Skip was getting lame, was in pain and sinking quickly, he couldn’t keep up with the truck any longer, he was struggling more and more each day.

“I couldn’t bear Skip being in pain, and then dying on some stranger’s linoleum floor,” the farmer said, “he would have hated that, I wanted it to be quick and familiar for him, he deserved that.” So the farmer, an experienced shot, got his .22 and shot Skip once in the back of the head, then buried him on the top of a hill by the pasture overlooking the farm. It was, he said, Skip’s favorite spot. “He can watch over things, like he liked,” he said.

The farmer looked stricken, and I got him a copy of my book.

There are all kinds of ways to think about this story, many people would be absolutely horrified at the notion of shooting their dog. People spend lots of money to have dogs cremated, save locks of their hair, die on the floor of veterinary clinics.

The farmer’s love for Skip seemed very pure to me. I thought it was a beautiful and loving story, as powerful an example of a compassionate heart as I have ever heard.

In our time, there is this deepening idea that compassion for animals means keeping them alive at all costs by any means – through surgeries and medications, in crates for years, on rescue farms. We cannot let the Central Park horses live their lives and have work to do, we must send them off to “no-kill” preserves where they can lose any real purpose for living, they can only exist.  I do not always see that as compassion, true compassion is thinking of the animals, not ourselves, of what is best for them, not what makes us feel better about ourselves, of accepting the laws and dictums of the real and natural world, not imposing our notions of mercy onto them.

They are not our children, our brethren, they are a nation unto themselves.

The farmer loved his dog and thought of him first, helping him to leave the world quickly and in a familiar place. “I owed him, that,” he said, tearing up, taking my book, shaking my hand, driving off. Compassion means many things, animals can teach us what it really means.

My former girlfriend is recovering from her abscess, she is a bit grumpy and dopey on her antibiotics and pain-killing medication, but I pointed out that as she is so short, such a tiny person, that the medication would work quickly. It takes normal sized people longer, I told her. Soon after that, she sassed me as she and dogs headed out to the pasture for the morning farm chores, sticking her tongue at when I took out the camera.

Maria may be challenged height-wise, but she has plenty of attitude and a keen sense of barnyard fashion, she is changing the whole notion of the farm wife heading out to do chores. This is what happens when you live with an artist, for manure-shoveling, watering and hay hauling in oozy mud,  Maria got her pink books out, her green hoodie, a denim skirt, black tights and an orange quilted jacket. I see from this photo she is returning to herself.

Two or three times a week, she wears her wedding dress. I am calling her the Bedlam Barm. Barnyard Fashion Queen. I am also getting stylish in my farm clothes, I changed jeans today and switched from one blue denim shirt to another. Aren’t we something?