I was reading the spanking new Bejosh Farm Journal blog the other day and I saw a new sculpture, the farmer/artist/writer of White Creek. “Wow,” I said the Maria, “I love that, it was made for our back porch.” Maria laughed, and then agreed. Today I went over to Bejosh Farm to take a photo of Mr. Blockhead, made by Ed out of bricks lying around the farm and a tree trunk.
Maria had conspired with Carol Gulley to buy this piece for me and she surprised me by handing the Gulleys a check and loading Mr. Blockhead into the car. He is now on the back porch, photo from me to come tomorrow (I think Maria scooped me for once).
Ed is evolving as an artist, he has the artist’s gift for seeing the things other people don’t see in a different way. His creations, all from discarded “junk”, the detritus of a working farm, speak very much of the way he sees the world, he is wise and wry and unforgiving. And he misses nothing.
He and I have become good friends. I became friendly with Carol Gulley in cardiac rehab two years ago and we hit it off right away. We love the Gulleys, I don’t recall life without knowing them, they are full of life, life, stories and creation. Maria and I love talking with them.
Their blog is special, and Ed is going to show his work this Spring and Fall at our Open Houses. He wants to bring a cow over for a milking demo as well, it should be a lot of fun. I respect Ed as an artist, he calls his work “junk art” but it is much more than that, it is a pure and exciting kind of folk art. I am happy to have Mr. Blockhead on the farm, he will fit right onto the porch, which is turning into a gallery of art – Ed’s milk can chair, Maria’s Fiber Chair, and now, a many made of bricks.
The porch is becoming the heart and soul of the place. How sweet of Maria to give me this gift.
I call them angels, the big men in trucks who can repair and fix and alter just about anything that needs repairing and fixing on a farm.
I am not handy, Maria is handy, but her work is her art, not repairs. That is hard enough work, I don’t care to see her spending much time on carpentry. On a farm with an old farmhouse, we need a good man or woman with a truck who comes running when there is trouble, and helps us get out of it. Fallen gutters, broken windows, gates that are eaten by donkeys, delivering and stacking firewood.
These men come and go. Some, like our friend Ben, evolve into specialists and give up common chores. Some, like our good friend Tyler, enter high school, have girlfriends, study harder, play football, take part-time jobs and are not always available. Life is organic, it moves on and changes, we change with it.
In the best sense, handymen remind me of some animals, especially dogs. They come and they go, they appear when you need them, they sometimes stay forever, they often move on, they mark the passages of life. I think of Ben Osterhaudt working so hard to get the farm ready for us and help us move in, I think of Tyler roaring over here on his ATV, he will always be in our lives I hope. If Tyler isn’t available for this Open House, Ed will be here, handling parking, greeting people. He loves people and is much loved in our town.
We have a list of things that need to be done. Buying firewood. Fixing the windows blown out in the wind in the barn. Painting some corners of the farmhouse exterior. Putting a new gate in the pasture, a new gutter on the roof. Clearing a path for us out into the woods.
We don’t have the funds to do all of these things at once, but they do need to be done, one at a time. And we have just met a new angel with a truck (not big and nice and old). His name is Ed Atkins, he works with his brother Jim sometimes. They are incredibly nice and hard working people, they will do almost any task, are very experienced, and are inexpensive and a pleasure to talk to and work with.
We’ve already given Ed a bunch of tasks, and he is on it, we are happy to know him and work with him, you will be seeing his photo often here, he is part of the Bedlam Farm family now, and I imagine he will be with us a good long time. Old farmhouses are always eager to know a good handyman.
Ed and I had a long talk about second marriages today, and the difference between women raised in the country and women raised “down South,” like New Jersey and Long Island. We both believe in love. We will get along well.
I found the old copper pot in the woods at the first Bedlam Farm, it was in 2004. I know nothing about it, really, I took it to a metal worker to scrape the dirt and mud off it, and I was astonished to see what it really looked like. I have used it all these years to store keys and other things I don’t want to lose.
In the way of material things, I forgot about the pot, I don’t think I have even looked at it in years, the morning sun caught it sitting on the shelf today. It has been right in front of me every day for more than a decade. I felt abashed to be so cavalier about such a beautiful thing, it is quite old and quite special to me.
It is probably the oldest thing in my old farmhouse.
I remember the sense of discovery finding this pot buried in the dirt, exposed after a heavy rain, near the ruins of a long-abandoned farmhouse in the woods, a spot inhabited by a ghost I once saw walking on the path with my dog Rose. Her hackles went up, and Rose, a strong and fearless dog, whined and refused to go one step down the path.
We both were staring at a tall man in a slouch hat and cloak, I could see the red barn right through him, and then he walked towards me and vanished, but Rose would never again walk on that part of the path. And I don’t believe in ghosts.
I suspect the copper pot might have belonged to his family, I heard from an old storyteller that the people int the farm died of fever while their father and husband was fighting in the French-Indian wars. The old woman told me the ghost would leave if I told him he could, and so I left a note for him in the foundations of the farmhouse, and I never saw him again.
I never heard much more about it, never thought that much about it. But it was nice to re-connect with the copper pot, and with that time, a magical time for me of discovery and connection. It is still a magical time for me, and seeing the pot was a sweet meeting of memory and hope. And ghosts. I hope he is free, if he exists. Maria asks me how I can doubt his existence, since I saw him and so did my dog. I can only say it is my nature.
It is March, and the chipmunks have begun to come out of their nests in the deep woods, and Fate, ever on the lookout for a reason to run madly back and forth, has awakened to the hunt. The chipmunks love stone walls of course, so Fate now climbs to the top of every one stone wall in the woods and rushes back and forth in search of the chipmunks. She has never caught one and would have no idea what to do with one if she did catch it, but is having great fun rushing back and forth, pouncing and sniffing.
I realized a couple of weeks ago that I need to do some thinking about how to survive this year’s presidential elections without getting angry or crazy, or surrendering to much space in my head to enraged mobs, or to worthless and undeserving people and media arguments.
There is no angry mob in the history of the world that did any good, from Frankenstein to modern-day America, so I’ll stay on the fringes, where I belong. I am proud to say I have never been a part of any mob. You are invited to be on the fringes with me.
There is really no escaping politics this year, it is in the air, online, everyone is talking about it. I can limit how much of this stuff I drink, but I’m not sure I want to avoid all of it, or should. I do live in this country and love it, I do care about it. My daughter lives here, and possibly, her children one day,
It’s an odd balance to have to strike, following all of this without being subsumed by it. I’m going to work at it. I mean, it’s going to be a long year, I want to try and be helpful, for me, for you. Reader beware: If you want to argue about who should be President, or whether the right is better than the left, or vice versa, do both of us a favor and stop reading now.
First off, I decided to share the experience with someone I admire, but also someone who is an alter ego, someone brilliant and wise but very different from me. I chose H.L. Mencken, the great journalist, cultural critic, and political observer of some decades ago. I dug out a couple of his books, and ordered a few more online. I remember that when I first moved to the country and bought my cabin, I chose Thomas Merton as my grounding and spiritual guide and partner.
His own journals and writings grounded me and supported me when I need it.
I think Mencken will do the same for me this year, I will read him every day, or as often as necessary. It looks to only get louder and meaner. Mencken has already helped me, offered me a way to look at things.
Mencken was a cynic, and in many ways, an angry, even hateful one, but he had a genius for grasping the soul of a new and rambunctious nation. He wrote in the mid-part of the last century, and was widely read and influential. He had such low expectations for politicians and the wisdom of the people that almost everything that happens in politics seems to turn out better than he might have expected.
He wrote once that a good politicians is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
We live in a democracy where the will of the people is supposed to prevail, but rarely does. Do not get upset by ugly and frightening political movements, he wrote, they will always fail because the big money and power people in New York and Washington know real revolutions are bad for business and upset stockholders. They are not going to give up their power because we say they should.
One way or another, most radical political movements are doomed. The people make revolutions, but the big boys and girls always suppress, co-opt or define them. Thus it has always been.
We live in the Corporate Nation now, and no CEO wants the bottom line disrupted or massive amounts of wealth re-distributed. They always find a way around the will of the people if they need to. Sometimes that is a travesty, and sometimes a good thing. The will of the people is not always wise or benign either.
H.L. Mencken believed that democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. In one of his famous utterances, he wrote that no one in this world, so far as I know – “and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me – has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
His view of democracy is harsher than mine, but he does offer perspective. And perspective is the ticket to surviving the election year, the pundits and screamers on cable TV are not going to be of much help.
There is a great blood cry in the land now for radical leaders, everyone seems to want a leader who will change a political system almost everyone thinks is damaged or broken. The term political radicalism refers to political principles intended to alter existing social and governmental structures through revolutionary means and changing the values of a culture in fundamental ways.
Traditionally, Americans have hated and feared radicals, shooting them, deporting them, jailing them. Radicals have always been driven to the margins of our political culture, there are hardly any in elective office and you will not find any spouting political wisdoms on Fox News or CNN or in the pages of The New York Times. The American political system has always pushed citizens towards the middle – it was designed to prevent violent conflict through negotiation and compromise – and so the most interesting people are the ones we never hear from.
They are not allowed anywhere near TV cameras or microphones.
In recent years, the middle of the political system seems to be vanishing – there are few moderates left in Congress,and politicians reject compromise and negotiation – and perhaps that is a reason why this election features the stunning appearance of two increasingly beloved radical politicians: Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. They are both quite different, of course, and exist on opposite ends of the political spectrum, but they are both raising hell with conventional ideas about who can run for President and how.
They are both suggesting that our system of government no longer works well.
It seems many voters are agreeing with them, and getting radicalized as well.
There is almost no political trend that H.L. Mencken did not foresee or understand. That is why he is so valuable to me this year. I need some help in sorting this new reality out.
And he does make me think, rather than argue. Mencken wrote that the notion “that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen, driven to despair.”
I guess I have to concede that I am a political radical also, I am not a member of the “left” or the “right,” but I do like the idea of altering social structures through revolutionary means, if necessary, and changing the values of the culture in fundamental ways. I believe in caring for the poor, among other things, I believe health care and education are human rights. I believe in small government generally getting out of people’s way. I believe in full equality for women. I believe government is a necessary evil, given that we are not good enough to be trusted with governing ourselves.
In my mind, there is no label to describe me, I get to define myself.
My idea about surviving this election is to pay some attention to it, but not too much. I want to know what is happening, but I don’t want to swim in it or have it supplant good books and movies and sex and peace of mind. My life is not an argument and neither are my political beliefs.
I look at it this way. I argue with my life, I vote with my life, I make my statements through the way I live, not through the arguments I make, or the posts I put up on Facebook or the yammering boobs of the left and the right. They are in my mind, polluting the sweet spring of freedom.
All I can do is live honestly and lovingly and with as much compassion as my complex self can muster. That is my vote, that is my argument. If you are looking for a fight, there are plenty of other angry places for you go go. If you are seeking a way to survive the angry din, stick around. I will try to help you.
I truly do not care who you decide to vote for, it is not my business. And I have interest at all in fighting with you about your choices. If you want to label yourself, that’ s also up to you. I don’t play that game. Trust yourself, your face in the mirror is the only one you need to respect.
Me and my Election 2016 buddy, H.L.Mencken will be covering Election 2016 in our own eclectic way.
Wrote Mencken: “Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem – neat, plausible, and wrong.”
