24 July

Team Pizza: Friday Nights At The Round House

by Jon Katz
Dominick and Scott
Dominick and Scott

I call them Team Pizza. A new ritual in our town on Friday nights, one Maria and I have come to cherish when we are in town. Dominick and Scott set up their tent behind the Round House Cafe next to an wood-fired oven built on the grounds of the Hubbard Hall Arts Center. They set up their tent around four p.m., get the fire going and wait for the orders to come in.

The pizzas take about 20 minutes to make, they are fresh and delicious, vegetables and tasty cheeses, soon Dominick and Scott are covered in dough and exhausted. We can eat the pizza in the cafe, but we prefer to sit out back by the picnic tables and eat outside and talk to Scott. Dominick is focused on his work, he is not a big talker, but he is a big smiler.

There are regular fans of Pizza Night at the Round House, they come and sit by the tables with their kids, talk to Scott,  eat their food. A sweet contrast to the mayhem I felt in New York City earlier in this week when every restaurant was loud and noisy and crowded, the people seemed about to burst through the doors.

Our pizza night is sweet and quiet.

Maria and I had a first tonight, we ate our white pizza – tomatoes and basil and cheese and a little pepperoni on one side – out in the open, a storm system sprinkled us with rain, a giant rainbow framed the town, Red came along and sat at our feet. One night, when it was incredibly busy, Maria and I helped make the pizza, we did the toppings, Scott was exhausted. So we feel a part of Team Pizza sometimes, a team I can happily join.

24 July

Tornado Alert: A World Of Warnings. Taste The Fruit, Do Not Be Afraid To Live…

by Jon Katz
Watches and warnings
Watches and warnings

The new way of living seems to be filled with watches and warnings. Early this afternoon, my cell phone began honking in the middle of an interview, startling both me and the reporter.  I jumped up and tried to figure out where the noise was coming from, I thought an appliance had gone mad.

I didn’t ask for any warnings, I figured out that this was a civil defense alert, when catastrophes occur warnings are sent over cell phones, I’m sure many people reading this have received them. An abundance of caution I think, the new rationale for more warnings.

This was a tornado alert, warning of tornadoes, high winds and hail, urging precautions and preparations. Get inside, get ready, go into the basement if necessary, and I looked outside and saw a dark and quite menacing cloud hover over the farm. The air was still. There was hail and some heavy wind nearby, but no tornadoes came, thankfully. I’m not suggesting the warning wasn’t valid or necessary, I couldn’t really judge. The sky looked quite threatening. Up the road, hail the size of golf balls rained on farms.

Everyone in town was talking about the warnings, also the dangers from new kinds of tick-born diseases that are lethal and going around. Be careful, people told me.  My friend Scott told me to watch out, the worst ticks are too small to see. How, I wondered, am I supposed to watch out for ticks I can’t see?

You’ll get awfully sick, he said. Take it seriously. I will try, Maria and I walk in the woods just about every day of our lives, I have already had Lyme Disease, somewhere out there, there is probably a tick waiting for me to bumble along on the path. Scott and I love one another, we often warn each other about things. I warn him about working too hard, and he very reliably ignores me.

I am trying to understand a world so full of warnings.  It seems life is becoming dangerous. The weather has become serious, and a lot of people are profiting from our concern about it. They sell warnings, I can purchase them on the weather sites for five or six dollars a month, then I can be warned on the hour. I can’t say the warnings are not necessary, perhaps they will help convince a doubting world that climate change is real and will threaten us and our children.

I get warnings online all the time now on sites and in alerts – about my heart, food, the dogs, health, dog food, human foods, hackers, identity thieves, regular thieves, the heat, tomatoes, defective cars, predators, frauds, deer, terrorists, dog thieves, getting old, not having money for retirement or health care. My mother-in-law, who is 86, bought a shredder to destroy her documents and bills.

On my recent train ride to and from New York I was warned every five minutes to say something if I see something, I felt a bit reckless taking a nap. In New York there was a camera on every street corner and more warnings. At the baseball park, I went through a metal detector and emptied my pockets. Ipads are not allowed at the ball park.

Everywhere, there were signs urging me to report suspicious people to the police. I would hate to be a suspicious acting person on a train, it was as bad or worse as the animal police driving around snooping on farmers.

What would a suspicious person look like? On the Amtrak video he was quite politically correct, of indeterminate rage, age and ethnicity. He seemed kind of bland and inoffensive to me.

I am thinking more and more these days about the meaning of the word Orwellian. I’ve used it to describe the authoritarian logic of some elements of the animal rights movement. The word is sometimes used to describe a particularly anti-libertarian government policy, but it is also sometimes used to describe the peculiar, nonsensical thought process behind  the fictional Oceania’s social structure–a thought process in which ideas that are obviously self-contradictory are accepted as true based on the fact that an authority figure is asserting them.

Government enters our cell phones without our permission, ostensibly to frighten us, but of course if they can talk to us, then they can hear us, I guess we already knew that. Amazon knows more about me than my mother ever did.

An abundance of caution. Corporations tell me every day that they care about me, but then they don’t, shuffling me to outsourced caring people in Asia who can’t talk to me. I feel quite safe in my life even though deer run into our car and i almost died last year of heart trouble. I think the idea of an abundance of caution is Orwellian, it fits into the idea of a peculiar and non-sensical thought process. One disturbed man fails to detonate explosives in his shoes, and a nation has to take their shoes off in airports forever. To be safe. An abundance of caution, I think. Nobody much objects, so it must make sense.

I want to live my life a certain way, a spiritual way, that is not always compatible with so many warnings. I want to be selective about the warnings I listen to, I am wary of living in a fearful world where I must be vigilant all day every day. Frankly, I can’t keep track of all the things I am supposed to be careful about. I told Scott I didn’t want to hear any more warnings, even though I knew they came from a place of love. I just don’t care to live my life in so much fear, there is a point – it is personal to every single person – when the cost of being so vigilant overwhelms the point of living.

If you are warned about dangerous things all day every day, the world will cooperate and will soon enough seem a dark and dangerous place. Can anyone really keep up with the warnings and alarms?

This thing about warnings and alarms is different for every person, but I am thinking about it more and more.

Perhaps the real issue is that our world is becoming more dangerous, perhaps we are becoming more anxious and overwhelmed with warnings. I would think the world has been much more dangerous than now for much of human history, think about 1940, they just didn’t have cell phones that honked at us about it and sent out so many e-mail alerts.

I love life, I think it is glorious, challenging, fascinating and filled with magic and mystery. I cherish every of it, and I have my own warning. Do not be afraid to live your life. Live your life every day as if it were the only day of your life or the last. Do not waste it in fear and alarm.

And I have Henry David Thoreau’s warning up on my study wall next to my computer:

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”

This is a warning I am happy to get, I wish I could get my cell phone to warn me every day about a life lived in fear. I will heed iyt every day of my life.

24 July

Helping Joshua: Eat Healthy, Buy Chicken And Meat. Lots To Sell, A Good Cause

by Jon Katz
Help A Farmer
Help A Farmer

Joshua Rockwood, my friend and the Glenville, N.Y., farmer fighting for his existence against what seem to be absolutely ludicrous and unknowing charges of animal cruelty and neglect, tells me he is selling meat – fresh chickens and lots of beef – until 7 p.m. tonight (Friday) and between 10 and 2 p.m. Saturday.

He hopes to sell a lot this weekend, both for freezer space and cash flow. I know most of the people reading this do not live near Glenville, N.Y., a sprawling agricultural/ suburban community between Albany, N.Y. and Saratoga Springs. Joshua keeps sheep, pigs, cows, and chickens on a 90 acre farm.  But many people do, and I believe Joshua can ship to many places. You can also call 518 357-3315, or e-mail him at [email protected].

In March, just after one of the worst cold waves in the history of the Northeast, a secret informer called the police to say he was mistreating some of his animals. Joshua’s farm was raided, his three horses seized, he was charged with 13 counts of animal cruelty and neglect.

The police cited him for having an unheated barn, for inadequate shelter for his pigs, for failing to have adequate feed on hand, and for having frozen water streams and bowls. The arrests caused widespread outrage among farmers and the many people who know Joshua treats  his animals well, and and who know him to be honest, scrupulous and passionate in his desire to sell healthy food to people. He is an enthusiastic part of the local foods movement, his animals are pasture-fed and range freely on  his beautiful farm.

The issue speaks to a number of important questions relating to animals. One is the rise of a secret and unaccountable informer culture (think of the Stasi in East Germany) that has risen to accuse farmers, animal lovers and others of animal abuse. A sacred tenet of the American justice system has been the right to confront one’s accusers. In the new and Orwellian hysteria over animal abuse, you are guilty if you are accused, the informers are protected, not the accused.

Another issue is the disconnection of the police and local governments from the natural world and the animal world – the people accusing Joshua of cruelty seem to know absolutely nothing about farms and animals, including the widely understood fact that few barns anywhere are heated, it is bad for the animals and impractical. There is also the runaway re-definition of what animal abuse is, it seems to increasingly be what people driving by in their cars think it might be. Farmers say they are afraid to leave their cows out in the snow for fear of being raided.

Then there is this Stalinist system of justice – if you are accused, and you may never know the names of the accusers, your animals can be seized, your reputation ruined, your livelihood destroyed and face many months of years of trials, legal fees, hearings and media stories. Very few people survive this process intact, Joshua had 300 people show up at his first court appearance, he has raised some of his fees online. I believe he will survive.

Every farmer I have talked to, every person with a farm, every person who lives with animals rather than pets – farmers, farriers, vets – had said the charges are absurd, the police could have raided any farm in the Northeast during that awful cold and arrested everyone. My own water tanks were frozen for weeks, we hauled water out in buckets to the barn all day. Sometimes, in storms and when the temperature plunged below -20, it took several hours to get fresh heated water out to the animals.

I saw Joshua’s farm and his animals shortly after his arrest, the animals were healthy, active and well cared for.

Two separate veterinarians came to Joshua’s farm at his invitation just before the raid and said his animals were healthy and hydrated. I’ve been to Joshua’s farm several times, talked to him regularly, I know him to be idealist, almost painfully honest and transparent, loving and diligent in the care of his animals, about whom he knows every thing he needs to know.

I believe the arrest is outrageous, a true injustice. Joshua faces tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees, he is threatened with the loss of his farm as well as his reputation. He did not lose one animal to the weather, to sickness or to injury during that awful period of cold. The raids on his farm seem to typify the new excesses of the animal rights movement, which has become a rogue militia in many cases, threatening and persecuting animal lovers, people who work with animals like horses, and farmers.

Joshua is awaiting various rulings on legal motions, his actual trial has not yet been scheduled. He was offered a deal and refused it, he says he will not plead guilty to anything he did not do. I believe every word this admirable young man has said to me. I know he is shipping some of his meat to places as far away as New York City, if you live in the area, please consider buying some of his meat and chickens, if you are farther, feel free to contact him and inquire about shipping.

Joshua prides himself on the quality of the meat his sells, his customers are loyal and supportive and very satisfied. You can check out his blog here Or call 518 361-3167. You can also order online. You can e-mail Joshua at [email protected]

24 July

The Pirate Dog

by Jon Katz
Pirate Dog
Pirate Dog

I call Fate the Pirate Dog now, she is beginning the adolescent phase of the well-bred and very instinctive young border collie, otherwise known as the hell phase. She grabs things, jumps on things, knocks things over, gets distracted, challenges us. We have about six more months of this to endure, we will respond with love, patience, clarity and thoughtful training.

We are both quite mad about Fate, assuming we survive her. She lives above the laws of nature, obedience and physics, she is four or five times as challenging as any border collie I have known, and I have known some pretty wild ones. When she finishes herding, she jumps into the water bowl, drinks, paws at the water spills it, and then pees into it.

Sometimes she looks at me, and says “make me.” Sometimes I do.

A training challenge, we change the water several times a day. I tell her every day that she is a pirate dog, it’s a good thing she is cute and we are crazy.

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