Day: May 6, 2014

This little lamb completely wore me out today, I’ve lived with animals for more than two decades and he has taken me to the ringer, I don’t ever remember a rascal lamb like this one. Tonight when I went into check on him, he was standing in the black bowl where I put the fresh hay, stomping on and eliminating there. There was water all over the floor and it looks like he was walking around in the water bowl.

Before, when Deb Foster came by to check on things, I had fallen asleep inside of the house, when she texted me I told her I had just passed out and fallen asleep. She took this mean that I had collapsed and nearly called the police. That cursed lamb did this, I said, I am fine.

After he got his head stuck in the wooden planks in the stall, he seemed to be hurting and settled down. That didn’t last long, he is all over the place. Maybe I can get Darryl Kuehne to take him home before Maria gets back (Just kidding. Sort of.) I’m going to bed.

The small town of Cambridge, N.Y., where I live has many parts. On a given day,  you will sit down next to a farmer, a Fedex driver, a publisher or producer, a Sheriff or a truck driver, an artist or poet or wood craftsman. On Tuesdays, the Cambridge Buddhist discussion group, founded by Donna Wynbrandt and George Forss, meets at the Round House Cafe and talks about Buddhism.

They are an earnest and genial group, the Round House is a welcoming place, all sorts of groups meet there now. The religious discussion groups I’ve been to are pretty grim in tone, this group has fun.  I love the town I live in, it surprises and delights me every day.

I often think the most creative things are the ones that are in front of us all the time, we are so familiar with them we don’t see them. I am learning that about photography all of the time. My friend Rod Wilson loves wood, and he caresses it like a lover and sees things in it that I would never see – the stories of trees and their wounds and lives and illnesses and strengths. He turns these plans into beautiful sculptures.

Lots of people have pointed out that the greatest art is in nature, I am grateful to have my eyes opened to the stories of trees, I will see them differently from now on, and  am eager to see what Rod eventually does with this wood when it is seasoned and aged.

My friend Rod Wilson is a wood craftsman and artist, a sculptor, a poet and photographer, he invited me to come see an ash tree taken down by the town that he salvaged and took to a mill to be cut into planks that will be cured for several years. I was shocked watching Rod as he ran his hands over the freshly sawn wood and told me the story of each tree, it’s age, it’s wounds, it’s growth – it’s life story.

This was an extraordinarily creative thing for me to see, as I walk and drive by trees all of the time, as we all do, but I know nothing about them and their stories. What wonderful sketches or drawings these tree stories would make, even the different colorations and shadows tell a story, the story of each tree is different, individualistic, just as the story of each human is. Rod has changed the way in which I look at the world and see it. I hope to take photographs of these planks, they seem beautiful and simple art to me, the stories of trees.

I am much enjoying my friendship with Rod, he is a viscerally creative man, I am pestering him to get a blog and put his work up s that everyone can see it, he is reluctant.

Red at the office is inspiring. He is professional, a gentleman, unmoved by distractions, unbribeable. He is also a workaholic.