31 August

Last Trip To O’Hearn’s Pharmacy

by Jon Katz
Last Trip To O'Hearn's
Last Trip To O’Hearn’s

This afternoon, I’ll drove over to O’Hearn’s Pharmacy for the last time, I have some medicine to pick up and some skin ointment to buy, but mostly, I’m going to give Bridget a hug and say goodbye. She is pretty drained from several days of tearful fearwells, memories, and laments. Even, she says, some anger. She is closing the pharmacy after more than 40 years.

The best way to describe it, she said, is that it’s like an Irish wake. It is the end of an era for the town for sure, an era that has already vanished for most of the country. Small things and independent things do not fare well in the face of big regulation, big government, big chains. It is almost impossible for businesses like pharmacies to complete with big chains.

I’m been thinking about how to get my head straight about all of this, and I’m going to once again recall the sage advice given me some years ago by the Rev. Billy Graham, who I was writing a story about on one of his crusades through America. He told me to never speak poorly of my life or lament it. Taxes will always rise, gas and food prices will only go up, change is the only constant. Don’t spend your life complaining about it, he said.

I am not likely to ever get better advice than that. And I have mostly honored it.

If we cannot accept change, we cannot understand our own lives, or accept the true nature of life in our world. Change is not good or bad, it simply is. The old days were not better than the new ones, young people are not dumber or stranger than they used to be, they are smarter and far more interesting. The world is not a more dangerous place, it is a mess as it has always been.  Everything we love in the world is likely to die or change in our lifetime.

That does not make the world a bad place, it makes the world a real place.

Bridget understands this as well as anyone. The pharmaceutical profession was destroyed the day Wal-Mart started offering cheap prescriptions in their chain stories decades ago. She has not set foot in a Wal-Mart since. I don’t go there either. After that, being a pharmcist was no longer about relationships or personal service, it was all about money.

That’s how America works. That’s how capitalism works. That’s how corporations work. That’s how globalism works, that’s what the economists and politicians have  decided upon.  Small and individual are not big words in the new economy. What are people for? To be pawns, tools and enablers in the new economy.

This is the world we built, the way we choose to live. If profit and loss is our only faith and the lowest price always our spiritual life, then the florists and the bookstores and the family restaurants and Bridgets of the world and the corner grocery stores – and the mid-list authors, too – will ultimately all be gone. We don’t know each other any longer, that is the price most of us have chosen to pay for the lowest possible cost, that is what Bridget will take with her.

Something new and different will replace us, that is the nature of things.

The town is hurt by it, there is a lot of pain about it.

I am looking for my place in this. I owe Bridget much. It is not the end of the world, for sure. My Rite-Aid is nearby, the people are nice, the service is efficient and prompt. Computers don’t really need to know who I am to collect and sell me my medications. I accept change as a spiritual and personal challenge. Do I mean what I say or am I just blowing smoke, like people who run for President? I don’t really know.

I don’t wish to speak poorly of my life, or lament the way life is. If I wish to be better known, I can make some new friends. I can do the work. Lament and nostalgia are a reflex, I hear people lamenting the nature of life all the time.

Bridget is closing on September 2, I don’t want to be there when she takes the sign down, as required by law.

Today I’m going to get my pills, I will pay for my last order from Bridget, give her a hug and close the door on this chapter. I will move on, swimming in the tide of life. I will look ahead, not back.

The Rev. Graham cautioned me to never speak poorly of my life. You life is listening, he said.

30 August

Animals That Love. A Covenant Between Humanity And The Animal World.

by Jon Katz
Animals That Love
Animals That Love

I met a couple recently – they had read several of my books – and they were eager to meet me, talk to me, show me photos of their dog, a mixed breed who had mauled two other small dogs and killed one, and who so terrified their parents and in-laws that he had to be kept locked up in the basement whenever they came to visit, or when visitors came to their home.

So far, the dog had only growled at their two children, he had not harmed one. They loved this dog, they beamed at the mention of him or his name.  I  realized after a few minutes that they were proud of having this dog,  he had been abused, they said,  and they had saved him from certain death. No one else, they said with great pride, wanted him or could handle him.

I  realized  – I have heard this story many times before – that they were seeking my approval and admiration and did not notice or care that they weren’t receiving either from me.

I believe strongly that we make our own choices, and we are responsible for them. They are as wise as I am. I do not have magical answers for anyone else, we each have to make our own way, I do not tell other people what to do. People should get whatever dog they wish, hopefully in a careful and thoughtful way.

Today, I saw Fate and Red both bring great joy and love to three children. I will always remember how many people came to see Simon, to love and touch him.  He gave back every good thing he was given. Today, I saw the smile on Maria’s face when she jumped up on Chloe and rode her bareback around the pasture. She trusts this pony, the pony trusts her. Love passes between them, the pony makes Maria strong and proud every day.  And I saw how delighted she was when she threw a frisbee for Fate. Or how much the donkeys love and heed her, how these animals nourish her and bring her love every day.

I am touched beyond words when people with dementia, people dying in  hospice, brain-damaged and traumatized veterans from our wars grab Red, hold him, pull his ears, drop to the floor to hug and in return, receive patience and love from him. Love, love, love, that is the point for me.

I remember Lenore keeping love alive for me, sitting in the pasture with Simon rubbing balm on his swollen gums and in his infected eyes, how many people have come to the farm and seen these animals and been loved by them. I remember a dozen school-children swarming all over her, her tail never stopped wagging. Fate is a dog like that, she is full of love.

When I began my life with animals,  and decided to study them and write about them, I remember reading about the Peaceable Kingdom, and reading the books of James Herriott, the great English veterinarian and animal writer. I had this philosophy – still have it – that if animals get what they need – food, good shelter, attention, proper health care – they will trust people and love them and bring them joy. They will be good to one another.

I have only had one animal in my life with animals who hurt people – that was Orson, the border collie who bit three people, including a child severely, and who I euthanized. I did not, I decided, ever want to be responsible for any animal of mine ever causing pain and bloodshed again. Many people have called me a murderer for killing Orson, it was one of the best decisions I ever made in my life, it was my coming of age as a responsible human being.

I could never again say I didn’t know it could happen, I knew there were many steps I could take to make it very unlikely to ever happen. And I took them. I knew Frieda would make it to the other side because she had never, for all of her troubles, harmed a human being. She would not have stayed on our farm if she had.

On our farm, the animals do not fight with one another. They take their turn, are easy with strangers, are almost always easy with one another. They are not animal saints, they are animals who live in harmony with us, with each other. A Peaceable Kingdom. They take turns, they wait their turn, they do not fight over  food or water or attention. They know they will get what they need.

I chose my animals carefully, so does Maria. If I got a shelter dog or rescue, I made sure they were thoroughly temperament tested, with children, food, even loud noises. I always want to know as much about the dogs I bring into my life as it is possible to know. I want to know the same things people say they want to know about their food – where did they come from,  how were they  treated?  I train them lovingly and well, feed them only their food, socialize them with every kind of person, exercise them and give them important work to do, even if it is no more than loving people. Maria visits every animal every day, sometimes with food, sometimes with brushes or combs, sometimes with nothing but love.

We make sure they are comfortable, and get them treatment the minute they are not.

For me, animals are all about love. About my learning how to love well, about my receiving the bountiful love from them that animals have always offered people, for all human history. They have always been inseparable from us, we have a struggle on our hands to keep them with us in the world now.

I see this harmony in my dogs and donkeys, I see it in the big working horses who need people so badly, I see it in our pony, our puppy, our imperious barn cats. I am very proud to have two barn cats that any child can approach or pick up in safety, or at least in as much safety as animals can offer.

I know that many people – their numbers are growing – have a different view of animals in their lives and in the world, a different idea of what it means to be moral.

I know that dog bites are epidemic in America now, they are increasing by nearly 50 per cent  a year, many of them on helpless and unsuspecting children. I asked the couple who told me about their dog how they would feel if their dog bit one of their children or someone elses. Well, they said, children have to learn how to behave around dogs if they wish to not be bitten. It is not the dogs fault.

I was interested in learning in my writing about the carriage horses in New York that the mayor was eager to ban horses, who have never killed a human being or harmed a child, but not dogs, who have killed a number of children and maimed many.  In 2012, the New York City Department of Health reported that more than 7,000 bites were reported by doctors in the five boroughs of New York City, as mandated by law. (Many are believed to go unreported.) The upper extremities, lower extremities, and face were predominantly affected. The peak incidence occurred during the summer months and in children ages 7 to 9 years old.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), tentative dog bite figures for New York City in 2012 were 7,432, more than half involving children. The American Pediatric Association reports dog attacks on children to be both epidemic and exceptionally traumatic,  since they often occur around the face, eyes and neck. Dog bites on children, says the CDC, are increasing throughout the country at a rate of 47 per cent a year and in nearly half of those cases, require reconstructive facial surgery. That is just New York City.

If a carriage horse shows up lame to work, it is front page news for days and the lead story on TV. If a child’s face has to be put back together after a savage dog bite, it is not news at all.  Nobody has or ever will suggest banning dangerous dogs. That is our new moral compass when it comes to animals. And it isn’t the dog’s fault, of course, dogs do not make moral decisions, they are not good or evil. We are.

You and I both know the young couple so proud of their dog will one day add to those numbers, perhaps even with the faces of their own children. I wonder if they will blame the children for that. I suspect they will.

We each have to make our own way in the world. We are each responsible for what we say and do, from choosing a dog to posting cruel messages online.  I am proud of some things in my life, not proud of others. I am  proud of the fact that I will never knowingly keep an animal that might harm a child, or add to those awful statistics. I am proud of the fact that every animal on this farm – every donkey, pony, dog or barn cat – is, to the very best of my knowledge, a loving  and grounded creature, safe around human beings and children.

I know that any animal can harm a human being in the right circumstance, we can never know for sure what they might or might not do, they are not like us, they are alien creatures.  I never take it for granted. But I work hard to lower the odds, hurting people is not what animals are about for me.

A moral man or woman will, in my own mind, make it a goal to promote the love of animals and the love of people. This, to me, is part of the covenant between humanity and the animal world. This is where the contemporary animal rights movement has lost it’s way.

When I think of my life with animals, i think about the love I have felt for them – they did, in fact, teach me how to love and helped me to understand and find the real thing. And I think about the love they have shown me through my ups and downs, travails and joy, happiness and fear and loneliness.

When I look back on my life and it’s ups and downs, there has always been a dog nearby, a dog standing with me, loving me,  helping to ground me, to feel save and to understand what love can mean to a human being. I celebrate that ethos, that is what animals are about for me,  for us.

30 August

A Witchy Cat Moment. The Cat In The Photo

by Jon Katz
A Witchy Cat Moment
A Witchy Cat Moment

I try and compose my photographs pretty thoughtfully, I wanted to take a photo of the clothesline with some of Maria’s fabric hanging. I am sure there was no cat in Fate’s empty water pool – I was about to fill it up – when I took the photo, I never saw Flo in the picture until I saw it on the computer, and it startled me.

Because when I put the camera down I didn’t see her there either. In fact, I didn’t see her at all before, during or after the taking of this photo. Obviously, she was there, but why? And how did she get in and out so fast? Why would she walk in an empty dog pool, she never comes into the dog are when the dogs are there, and both dogs were over by the fence. How could she vanish so quickly?

Or maybe I am losing it and just not seeing what is right in front of me. Maria says this is what cats do, they appear and disappear, it was just one of those witchy cat moments. I don’t believe in ghosts or psychic transference. Or do I? Maybe she wanted to get onto the blog, Flo gets jealous of the dogs, she has a big ego and sulks sometimes if no one pays attention to her. Perhaps she is trying to send me a message.

30 August

Timmy Turtle

by Jon Katz
Timmy Turtle
Timmy Turtle

I wanted to offer Ed $50 for Timmy Turtle, Ed’s latest sculpture, but Maria said she wanted to sell the sculpture at the October Open House at Bedlam Farm, Ed and some of his eclectic folk art will join us there. Ed is having a great time making his art, his workshop is a farmer’s nightmare, full of junk, metal, tools and what some might think of as trash. Carol says she often has to go out there at night and drag him inside the farmhouse to eat dinner.

Ed says he has no idea what to charge for his artworks, Maria and he will sit down and try to figure it out. He wants to start a blog and write some, I’ve invited him to come to my short story class at Pompanuck Farms, I hope he does.

30 August

Tommy Turtle (And Lovie)

by Jon Katz
Tommy Turtle
Tommy Turtle

Tommy Turtle is one of a series of “turtle” sculptures that Ed Gulley works on. He loves this one and won’t sell it. (Lovie is one of the five or six working dogs who hang out in the farm). He makes his art out of discarded and old farm and metal tools and implements, it is original and inventive.

Like Maria (she did get an MFA in art studies), Ed functions outside of the established art culture. He makes what he likes and doesn’t really care what anyone else thinks about it. It is the purest kind of grassroots art.  Tommy Turtle lives in a special corner of the farm near the barn.

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