Day: December 16, 2016

Tomorrow, author Rachel Barlow and I are scheduled to do a Meet And Greet/Reading from the Battenkill Bookstore here in Cambridge aimed at Christmas book buyers and anyone else who cares about our work.

Maria and Red are coming to, and I know who the big draws are these days.

People can come and see us or they call call and speak to us directly – 518 677-2515. I am going to read from Talking To Animals: How We Can Understand Them And They Can Understand Us and Rachel will be reading from her newly published and very funny parenting and illustrated book A Is For All Nighter.

Fate, as often happens has intervened. We are in a brutal cold wave and a winter storm alert has been broadcast for Saturday and most all of Sunday – ice, freezing rain, and some snow.

Rachel and I will be at the bookstore, but perhaps not too many others.

Alex Dery Snider, a very gifted writer and a student in my writing class proposed a neat experiment for the program: she is going to help us broadcast our readings from our books (I’ll be reading from a galley) which will be aired on Facebook and maybe, if we can do it, on our blogs.

So anyone can hear us, wherever they are.

It will probably be aired on the Battenkill Bookstore Facebook page, or failing that, my blog or Rachel’s: rachelbarlow.com.

If you want to drop by, we will be there from noon to 2 p.m., but please be careful. And you are free to call between noon and 2 and Rachel and/or I will be happy to talk with you.

Connie is selling Rachel’s book, a great Xmas present for young parents, and she will be taking pre-orders for my book, due out the first week of May, 2017. You can order the book online, or call the store at 518 677 7136. They are shockingly nice.

Talking To Animals is a lifetime project for me, the story of my efforts to learn to talk to animals and listen to them. I will sign and personalize any copies of my book purchased through Battenkill, and so will Rachel.

The bookstore takes major credit cards and Paypal, and there is still time to get books shipped for Christmas. So hopefully you hear from us tomorrow, this is just the kind of experiment writers need to investigate. And your orders will also help a wonderful independent bookstore.

This will be fun.

The chickens peer out of the roost and if they can’t see the ground, they don’t come out. In this kind of cold, they don’t come out either. Maria brought them an afternoon snack, a broken egg, some old blueberries and some slices of apple. They hopped out of the crate, ate their food, and then hopped back in.

Chickens have remarkable instincts about some things, they are like Labs, they are very smart about what they need to be smart about, very dumb about everything else. And they are very lucky to have a human like Maria around, their diet is diverse, healthy and generous.

I would love to come back in my next life as one of Maria’s animals.

This kind of cold is especially draining, it affects the body and the mind. This morning, it was so cold it fired up my angina, and I felt it in my chest. Extreme cold does that sometimes, I am getting used to it.

This afternoon, I went out to do the chores and felt fine, although I can’t be out in this cold for more than 10 or 15 minutes, my old frostbite wounds from the first Bedlam Farm fire up.

Maria was upset with me this morning for going out alone to start the chores, but I told her I wasn’t giving up going outside in the winter, we both had to get used to it. I’m not unable to work or do my part, I won’t fall into that routine. I have to come and go. I know it is hard for her, but she has to accept it, as do I. It is nice to be loved and cared for.

I saw Maria in the barn pulling a hay bale down and I had my new 135 mm portrait lens and took a portrait of the cold in the barn, this cold changes matter, you are never really warm. It is part of life here, but winter is asserting itself. Tomorrow it will be 30 degrees warmer, and still just about freezing.

I am getting re-acclimated to the beauty of the winter pasture, and of winter.

I’m married to a Bad Ass Babe, and I was delighted to come across my secret artist’s website (where I got the bad ass leggings) to get Maria’s first Christmas present, a small pouch that reads “Bad Ass Babes Club.” Maria has all kinds of pouches and containers that she scavenges, mostly from things I try to throw in the garbage.

Christmas is a loaded issue around here, Maria does not like to get a lot of presents, especially expensive ones, so I have adopted many guerrilla tactics to give her presents at all. Sometimes I sent them anonymously – fooling no one but there is no evidence, and lately, I’ve just been giving them to her quietly in the week or two before Christmas.

This week, we don’t make a big deal out of Christmas or presents, the whole thing is just spread out. I recognize the irony of being married to someone who does not wish to be given anything, but she has to deal with the irony of being married to someone who loves to give presents to the people he loves.

Immoveable object meets immoveable force.

That seems to work. She was delighted with her first Christmas present, she will figure out what to do with it. Maybe she’ll make a Bad Ass Babes Club Tote Bag.

It’s a cold, cloudy day and I was trawling for a still life, and this blue caught my eye from the kitchen windowsill. I love the juxtaposition of the donkey someone sent us, and the flower and bottle. There is beauty everywhere, really, if you learn to look for it.