In the warm weather, Luke is usually to be found holding forth on the porch at Outback Jack’s, our town’s enchanting and eclectic gallery and antique and artifact store, smack in the middle of Main Street. Luke comes from the New Skete Monks, who live right outside of town. He is a quiet and gentle dog, although he makes a lot of noise when he sees another dog. Otherwise, he is the store greeter.
He and Jack are inseparable, as good spirit dogs and their humans are. Jack’s porch is a gallery in and of itself, sometimes he shows his own unique art, evocative sculptures made out of old and forgotten things.
Heather has a bead shop on Main Street called “Over The Moon.” Every year, people who come to our Open Houses flock to her store and buy beads and the special socks she sells and that Maria loves to wear. I am loving them also, she now sells men’s socks and Maria got me two pairs. I like them, I have never had socks with colorful patterns before (I will shoot them in color during one of the portraits, in the meantime, you can see them here.)
Heather is often to be found sitting in front of the bead shop reading. She is one of the anchors of our Main Street, people come from far away to buy her beats and funky necklaces and bracelets. I love her face and her smile, I am adding her to my portrait gallery.
My blog is not a local blog, a very small fraction of its readers live anywhere near me. The blog has about 400,000 unique visitors and about four million visits a year. And only 2,000 people live in my town, not too many more nearby. But my weekly portraits – Kelly, Scott, and now Bob – have struck a nerve.
Bob Hershey must be a nice guy, about 100 people – many must have been from around here – wrote to tell me so when I put a photo of him up a couple of weeks ago. He works at the town recycling station. He always rushes out to help us pull the garbage out of the SUV, I thought it was because I was getting old, but I see Bob rushes out to help everyone who comes to the dump. It seems to be in his nature.
He is a soft-spoken man, a quiet man with a ready smile and a very polite manner. When I wrote on my blog last summer that I had declared bankruptcy, and was working my way through it, Bob surprised my by coming up to me at the dump and putting a hand on my shoulder. “I saw what you wrote, “he said, “I’ve been there. You’ll get through it.”
Bob understood that even though I knew this trouble was not my fault, I felt badly about it. I never ever thought I would have to declare bankruptcy.
When trouble comes, some people run from it, some people rush towards it. When I got divorced, just about every friend I had in the world melted away into the ether, never to be heard from again.Some people jeer and snarl, some people understand and empathize. Bob is one of the latter.
I call this photo series “The Americans” because it focuses on very real people who would never get their photo in the media, they are not screaming at anybody or insulting any one. They are just living their good lives, working hard and doing good. Like Scott. Like Kelly. Like Bob.
So I thank you for noticing and I will keep posting my portraits and adding some others. My new camera is liking this work. I joked with one of the other dump workers that Bob was a rock star. He smiled. “It’s the beard,” he said. “People love a white beard.”
Ed and Carol Gulley are the real deal, truth tellers from a small dairy farm, part of culture most people know little about but depend on greatly,. Small farmers have been abandoned by economists and bureaucrats and many of the people who love to eat seem to have forgotten where their food comes from and how it gets there.
The Gulleys work brutally hard every day and have begun to tell their story on their wonderful new blog from the Bejosh Farm Journal. Yesterday, Carol explained to one reader why they can’t keep and feed cows forever when they can no longer milk. We ought to know why, but many of us don’t. Check out the new blog, the Gulleys are giving voice to their dream and the reality of their world.
Every morning, Maria and Chloe do some teaching and learning together. This is yet another of the ways in which we talk to animals and they talk with us. This morning, my weekly writing class at Pompanuck Farm, then a two-week hiatus. The class will reconvene in June, it is the most rewarding and stimulating teaching experience I have yet had.
Today, some friends come to visit the farm, and tonight, Japanese food with the Gulleys at a new restaurant in Vermont. Tomorrow, our friend Eve Marko, a Zen teacher, is coming to help guide us through a five-hour meditation at Pompanuck, we are much looking forward to it. In between, treks to the dump with garbage and some lawn mowing, walks in the woods, blogging and, hopefully, reading.
Tuesday, we head to a motel in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire for a couple of days by the water. We need to recharge a bit, this is one of those years that never stop coming. Time to start focusing on our June 25-16 Open House, we’re calling it a celebration of the art of rural life. Great artists showing their work, a farrier, a shearer, a dairy farmer, poets and writers.
We are excited about it, a return to its roots. Details here.
