12 November

Writer’s Life: The Return Of The Author

by Jon Katz
The Return Of The Author
 Libby On The Pumpkin Wagon

This year, for the first time in nearly 40 years, I didn’t have a book published. For most of the last two years, I have been distracted and preoccupied by writing on the blog about the New York Carriage Horses and other things on my blog, which has evolved into the centerpiece of my writing life.

But I am still a book author at heart, even that that means something quite different today than it did even 10 years ago, and today I finished Talking To Animals, my next book, and sent it off to my agent, who will read it and then, if he likes it, sent it off to Simon & Schuster, my new publisher.

If they like it, and I can finish any revisions in a reasonable time, then it will be published next year, probably in the Fall.

If felt really good to send the manuscript off, I got a lovely letter from Rosemary Ahern, my free-lance editor. She is a great gift to me. “I probably say this every time,” she wrote me (she doesn’t), but this is now my favorite of your books. Reading through the final version yesterday, I was so plealsed and moved by the way all the stories and ideas come together. I’m very excited.”

Being an author, the first thing I thought was “well, that’s nice, but she’s probably just saying that to be polite.” Then I thought about it and remembered that Rosemary is not capable of guile or insincerity. I think she really likes it. I hope my agent and the publisher likes it as well.

Publishing has changed, fewer bookstores, fewer book reviewers.  I love working on my blog, but there is a special magic still about writing a book and seeing it published. I miss book readings and book tours, I hope I will have both next year. Finishing it – at least the first draft of it – has taken a load off of me.

The book is late because I spent most of the last two years writing about the New York Carriage Horses and researching their story. The book is paid work, and that will be helpful.

I also love the subject. The book looks back on my many years of learning how to communicate with animals, it also calls for a wiser and more mystical understanding of animals that we seem to have in our world right now. The carriage horses informed much of the book and helped me focus my ideas about the future of animals in our world.

I go back to the first dog in my life – Lucky – and then through my other dogs, a Swiss Steer (and a beef cow), barn cats, chickens, goats, roosters, sheep, donkeys and ponies. Each one taught me something about talking to animal and listening to them. If we can do this, we won’t have to argue about how the carriage horses feel, we actually see how they feel. They can tell us.

If you can’t understand them or communicate with animal, you can’t make intelligent decisions about their future,  you can’t save them in our every day world. I also write about my sad conclusion that the animal rights movement has squandered it’s moral right to speak for the animals in our world. There is a hateful and cruel streak to the movement that has damaged its credibility, threatened its future and clouded the future of animals, once in our every lives. Animals like the horses are being driven to the margins, to slaughter to extinction. To save them, we must keep them in our everyday lives.

I’m excited about the book, I think it turned out to be more helpful and prescient than I would have imagined. So the author has risen again, and he is excited. Stand by and wish me luck, I will share in the process. it felt so good to write this book, and to send it along.

Publishing has changed radically since I left Random House a few years ago, I’m not sure quite what to expect. I will find out soon enough and pass along the news.

 

12 November

Kelly At The Bog. Community.

by Jon Katz
Kelly At The Bog
Kelly At The Bog

I think Kelly has the best smile in my town, perhaps the county. It is quick and genuine. I remember that when I first took her picture she never flinched, fixed her hair, told me what her good side was or asked me what I would do with the photos. Strong women are like that, they look you in the eye and dare you to do your best, or your worst.

They take their chances. Kelly has a master’s degree in economics, she worked in the New York State Legislature for a dozen years, she is very happy working the Bog (Foggy Bottom), an eclectic and friendly sometimes biker bar known for the best hamburgers around.

We were there last week, the wood stove was red hot and it was like a steam room, tonight it was cold and windy, the stove was off. Kelly is steady no matter what, she tends the bar, takes orders, brings out the food. She does the work of two or three people with grace and a steady smile, always courteous and patience, and very efficient.

She even remembers from week to week what it is we like to drink and order. Kelly has a radiance that the photo picks up, she is very much a part of the community that has increasingly come to define our life in Cambridge, N.Y.

12 November

Buying A Headband For Maria

by Jon Katz
Headband For Maria
Headband For Maria

I was walking down Main Street past the Hubbard Hall Store – I buy all of my Christmas presents for Maria there and I saw a basket in the window with this quite outrageous pink headband in a basket. It sort of called out to me to be with Maria that often happens to me with gifts. But I wasn’t sure. Maria dresses as she does everything, with an artistic panache and individuality, but this one seem close to the edge for me.

But I loved it, and then I saw it was marked down from $19 to $14. I bought it, the salesperson and I had a lot of fun talking about it, I described Maria to her – she wears her  wedding dress to shovel manure in the pasture, I said – and she said “go for it,” she can always return it.

I brought it right to Maria’s studio, and she was startled by it, a little unsure. “Is it too much?,” she asked, “over the top.”

Kind of, I said, but it has a lot of style. I think it loves being on your head. So I think she loves it. I can’t wait to see it out in the pasture. I love giving Maria things, since she never buys anything for herself, it is a special joy. There are people who need many things, people who need few things.

I love this headband.

12 November

How Fate Was Named

by Jon Katz
How Fate Was Named
How Fate Was Named

After Lenore and Frieda died last winter, Maria and I agreed to get a dog. As many you know ad nauseum, I am not into prolonged grieving, I think dogs are all about joy and treasure for me, I never want to turn them into a misery. I hope to never mark the anniversaries of all of their deaths, I never have. Dogs are a gift to me, I am grateful for them every day. When one of my dog dies, I have a good cry and start looking. We all need to do it in our own way, but it is the most healing thing imaginable for me.

I have no reason to mourn a thing when I have dogs like Red and Fate. People ask me how Fate got her name, after the deaths of the other dogs, I eventually got around to e-mailing Dr. Karen Thompson, a saintly human and a genius of a dog breeder and told her we were looking for a dog.

I had been to shelters, trawled through rescue websites, called and visited breeders, we thought an English Golden Retriever, then another Lab, then a half dozen shelter dogs, all of whom fell through for one reason or another. When I e-mailed Karen, she e-mailed me right back in minutes.

“How do you feel about a puppy?,” she asked. “I have a puppy that has to be returned to me, the owner’s life just changed, she can’t have a dog right now.” She sent me a photo of Fate with her blue merle eye. A pirate dog, I whispered to Maria.  “I can keep her her for awhile until you get here,” she offered. I showed the photo to Maria.

She told me that Fate’s mother and father both came from Wales, strong herding lines. She was pretty lively, she said. That is the only understatement I have ever heard from Karen, Fate is a rocket-propelled missile, she leaps over chairs and sofas with a single bound. For her, exhaustion means lying down for two or three minutes.

Why do we love her so much? Because we are all crazy in just the same way, that that is the secret of celebrating a dog.

“How about next weekend?,” I asked.

Karen was startled, but she said sure.

What was the dog’s name?, I asked.

The next weekend, we went and got her. I didn’t want to live this creature lying around a day longer than necessary.

Karen mumbled something about fate, I thought she said the dog’s name was Fate. What she actually said was that it was fate that the dog became available minutes before I called. Karen is a famous and much respected breeder, her dogs do not sit around for long. If I’d called at any other time, I might have waited a long time.

So I told Maria her name was Fate, and it was, in fact, fated. A great name for her, and I didn’t even think of it. Karen is something of a mythical figure to me, she sees things most people do not see. Love pours out of every word and every e-mail. And every dog she breeds.

 

12 November

Touch: Talking To Chloe

by Jon Katz
Talking To Chloe
Talking To Chloe

The evolving conversation between Chloe and Maria continues. Maria is teaching Chloe “touch,” when she says touch, Chloe touches whatever Maria is holding with her nose. I might be going mad, but I think I see the bot of them smiling in this photo, they each seem to love the exchange and get considerable joy from it. So, so do I.

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