Day: October 12, 2014

I think more than anything else, people loved seeing Red at the Open House. I need to find a way to let people see him work through out the year, it brought great joy.

Alice crawled out of the bushes Friday while we were herding sheep with Red. I have never really wanted a cat before, but I wanted to keep Alice. She seemed so smart, alert and affectionate to me. I have never really been that closely attached to Minnie- she is really Maria’s cat, but Flo has opened me up a bit to the world of cats to me, she is my cat.

Today Alice went off to Massachusetts to live with the daughter of my friend Lisa Dingle. She will be happy there, it will be a good and loving home for her. It was an interesting experience in perspective for me. I wanted to keep her, I even argued to keep her, but Maria was sensible and intractable. We have two cats, she reminded me,  they need our attention. It is hard work to handle a lively and curious kitten. She is a white cat who might attract the many predators who roam up here – hawks, owls, coyotes, foxes.

There were other practical decisions. Where would she sleep, did I really want three cats in the house on freezing winter nights along with three dogs? How would we keep her from slashing Maria’s fabric, our sofas or curtains?

Still, Alice got to me, I wanted to keep her.

I was walking to Maria’s studio to tell her that we should keep this creature who had popped into our lives – or more likely, been dumped nearby – when she came into the house and told me that she had decided to give the cat to our friend Lisa, her daughter and son-in-law were looking for another cat and would love her. It wasn’t really a joint decision, it had been made.

But I do not believe an animal should ever be brought into a house where one of the people is against it. It isn’t fair to the person or the animal. So it was over.

All animal lovers know that decisions to take in a stray dog or cat are rarely sensible. None of us every really need another animal, we don’t really need dogs or cats in our lives at all in the practical sense of need. It is often – and sometimes sadly- a decision of the heart. I didn’t need Red, or a 3,000 swiss steer or a third donkey.

When I saw the brave little starving creature pop out of a bush as a dog and sheep and a score of people crowded around, my heart decided to keep her, and it maybe that my newly refurbished heart is not really sensible right now.

I don’t really buy the need for a  sensible life, I’d rather have a life full of meaning. I know everything Maria said was true, but were it left to me, I would have kept this cat and figured out a way to make it work. We do not always get our way in life, and very often that is a good thing. Learning that was a gift to me.

This morning, we packed Alice into a crate and sent her off on a journey to Connecticut, where she will live the life of an indoor cat, freed from predators or the travails and dramas of the outdoors. It was a good decision in so many ways, but I told Maria I didn’t really buy it. It was, for me, a sad decision.

I am learning that if you live long enough and keep your mind open, life will spin around you like a kaleidoscope, it will look different every time you open your eyes.

It is a very long road from disconnection to connection, and a lonely and painful one. I believe that it is connection that human beings most seek, most crave. It was all around me this weekend at our open house, which drew more than 1,000 people to our farm and our town in the last two days.

Connection presented itself in so many ways. When Bridget, my pharmacist, came to see me and Red and the farm. When Scott Carrino closed up the Round House Cafe and came to sing two beautiful songs that he had written. When Ken Norman, the farrier who helped save Simon, came to talk about the night they found him. When Connie Brooks opened up her bookstore and held an early morning signing so people coming to the farm could be sure to get a signed book. When the wonderful people of the Creative Group At Bedlam Farm came from all across the country to meet one another. When our young friend Tyler Lindenholl worked so hard to help with parking, clean up the farm, help us out.

When people from California, Oklahoma, Alaska, Florida, Texas, North Caroline, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan, Canada and Alabama, flew, drove and trained to Cambridge, N.Y. to share my life with Maria and the animals of the farm with us. When Dot and Carol from Cardiac Rehab came to see me. When George Forss came to do portraits. When I saw faces of the people who love the New York Carriage Horses and who came a long way to thank me for writing about them.

Everywhere I looked I saw connection. In the people meeting one another for the first time, in the laughter, in the love for Simon and for Red and Lenore. And most importantly, for one another.

It is a longer list than this, it would take me a long time to list all of the connections I saw. Mine and Maria’s, the animals. A classicalmusician and teacher from Alabama named Denise Gainey – a member of the Creative Group At Bedlam Farm – came to Cambridge to meet some of the people who had shared her extraordinary writing about the illness and death of her mother, and to thank them and move forward with her life. It was overwhelming, I think, something new, something very powerful, hard for me to absorb.

I lived in the world of disconnection for so long, it is a cold and angry and fearful place, there is little light there and no warmth. At the Open House, I was enveloped in connection, it was all around me, there are so many good and loving people in the world, and for so many years, I never really know them or were certain that they existed in the world. A harrowing journey from one world, one life, to another.

At the Open House, we were all pilgrims on the same path, we were all looking for the same thing. It was exhausting, draining, exhilarating, inspiring. This Open House was bigger than the other Open House’s. It connected our lives very strongly to our town. People went to Round House Cafe- it is famous cafe now, someone said, like Alice’s Restaurant. They flocked to Connie Brook’s bookstore, she had a record-breaking weekend. George Forss opened up his tiny Ginofor Gallery, it was swarming with people when I stopped by. They visited Jack’s Outback Antique shop and brought me toy donkeys and sheep. They filled the B&B’s of the town.

In the morning, I had breakfast at the Round House, Scott said it was the busiest weekend he had ever had, the staff said it was a weekend of hard  but joyous work, they loved the laughter and connection they felt all weekend. I love Scott, he wants more than anything to do good and be good to people. We have the kind of friendship I have always wanted and could never find. The therapists say it happens when you are available.

Somehow, it seemed a celebration of connection for both of us.

I signed scores of books at the farm, maybe hundreds over the weekend. I was thanked for my books, my photos, my writing about the horses. It was humbling, I felt every second that I did not deserve it, I was not worthy of it, it was so different from so much of my life that it was hard for me to believe it.

Maria has become a shining star, her art studio was crammed with people all day, both days, and she sold out of just about everything she and the other artists had made. A big thing, a beautiful thing in so many ways, for so many reasons. We did this together, a celebration of our live and commitment to one another. She has come so far. Both of us. People said I looked good, they seemed relieved, genuine. I said I felt good, I said I was lucky.

Simon the ham, getting famous now,  basked in the attention, he filled his belly with carrots, was hugged and petted and kissed for hours, he basked in the glow, whenever I spoke, he brayed loudly, commenting on my talk.

And Red. What can I say about him, he put on an amazing show, we herded the poor sheep a dozen times over the weekend, and in between his demos, he greeted just about every single visitor while Lenore was run ragged by kids throwing sticks and balls. People just love to see him work, it is a pleasure to see how happy he makes people. He is such a remarkable creature, he works so hard for me, and for others,  it is difficult to imagine life without him.

In some ways, I think the Open House was an antidote from the seemingly harsh world around us, a world filled with anger, violence and hatred.   I had this persistent feeling, as the last person left, that the Open House is the real world, this is the true spirit of human beings, their true nature. It is an affirmation of the connection and humanity we all want and need. I am grateful, I am awash in relief that this road has brought me to such a beautiful place.

When the Bedlam Farm Open House ended late this afternoon – the farmhouse is littered with the exhausted bodies of people and dogs – I thought of many things and many people. One of them is Dot, my friend and fellow member Cardiac Rehab, whose connection to Red – and to me –  has moved so many people so deeply. A couple of weeks ago, I put up the photo (below) of Dot leaning over to kiss Red in Cardiac Rehab, and the photo became famous, it went viral, was shared many times, it touched so many hearts and spoke so powerfully of the meaning of working animals in our lives.

We had more than 1,000 people come through the farm in two days, perhaps more, I lost count today, one image keeps recurring to me, one among many. It was Dot. She was the face of the Open House, and the love and connection that I felt everywhere I went, everywhere I looked.

Speaking, walking, moving and bending over is not easy for Dot, I do not know the precise nature of her illness, I know what it costs her to move from one place to another. I know what it takes for her to work on the arm-strengthening machine, to get in and out of her jacket, to walk down the hall with a nurse, to bend over to touch Red.

Whenever she looks at Red, she smiles, and it is the softest and most beautiful smile I have ever seen. I was surprised to see her at the Open House, I can’t imagine how she did it. She had to maneuver her walker slowly and very deliberately across the grass and around the farmhouse yard to Maria’s studio, where she bought a copy of my book “Saving Simon” and asked if I could sign it. I was so touched by her determination to be there, to support my work, to see Red do his.

When I found her, I thanked her for coming and gave her a big hug. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she said, looking down at Red, tears filling her eyes. Red was anxious to do his work, but he ran over to her and they connected. We put a chair out of her, and she beamed with pride as Red herded the sheep and I talked about how I got him and what it was like to have him. When the herding demonstration was over, I looked up and Dot was gone. I did not see her leave.

What a gift photography is, that I could capture her soft and beautiful smile while she watched, the sadness and joy and love in her eyes, Cardiac Rehab is a different thing for each of us,  a hard thing for all of us, but it an especially difficult and challenging thing for Dot, who never complaints or laments her illness or her life.  She almost never speaks, but her eyes speak volumes. It meant the world to me to see her there, my eyes filled with tears as well, she is, I thought, the most beautiful woman at the Open House, and in so many ways.

Dot was the perfect symbol for the Open House, in many ways. Bravery and devotion is a difficult thing to define, and so is grace, but I suppose I know them when I see them, and they filled the day with meaning for me, for me, for my dog, and for the terrible beauty of life, love  and connection.

Well, we are having a blast at the Open House, the Round House Cafe was rocking with happy visitors to Bedlam Farm this morning, they went from the cafe to Battenkill Books to George Forss’s gallery. The second day of the Open House begins in about an hour – at noon. It would be hard to top yesterday, stories and photos to come.