30 January

Wild-Eyed Ladies, Mansion Connection. Jenny and Peggy

by Jon Katz
WIld-Eyed Ladies

I went to the Mansion today and was happy to see your letters and messages and Valentine’s Day greetings and gifts are already beginning to arrive, and are warming the place up on this cold week. On the bulletin board was this very lovely letter to Peggy from Jenny of Arizona, she also has unusual hair and is told by friends it is the coolest hair she has ever seen. Peggy has often been told the same thing.

“As one wild-haired lady to another, I love the pictures Jon has posted of you. You obviously have spunk and it’s clear you’ve lived a wonderful life. I’m glad to “meet” you – even if its only a letter this time.” Peggy loved the letter and the staff posted it on the downstairs bulletin board where everyone could see it.

The staff also has a box with letters and cards, there are almost enough for everyone. There is a Valentine’s Day party at the Mansion on February 14th and I’ve been invited with Red. I’ll be there. I’ve got a bunch of invitations to come to dinner at the Mansion while Maria is in India, I’ll definitely come over for dinner one night.

Thanks so much for the love and work that goes into these messages and gifts, I wish you could see how much they mean to the residents there. If you are inclined to send something, the address is the Mansion, 11 S. Union  Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.

The residents names are Jean A., Mary, Gerry, Sylvie, Diane, Alice, Jean G., Madeline, Joan, Allan, Carl (Bob), John K., Aileen, Christie, Helen, Connie, Alanna, Barbara, Peggie, Dennis, John R., Bruce, John Z.

And thanks Jenny, you seem pretty great yourself, good to meet another wild-haired lady in this curious, but somehow intimate, way.

30 January

Cross To Bear: Act Justly, Love Mercy…

by Jon Katz
Act Justly, Love Mercy…My Cross To Bear

Saturday morning, I got a beautiful message from a Presbyterian pastor thanking me for something I wrote and quoting Jesus from the Bible: “And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with God.”

The message touched me, it is also in the Old Testament. I have not converted to Christianity, I think organized religion is not the place for me, but I am a lifelong admirer of Jesus Christ (please, do not send me more messages about how I am going to burn in Hell for not embracing Jesus as the Son of God, I’m prepared to pay for my sins, thanks.)

But we all have our own God to answer to, and mine is also asking me what I require of myself in a time of enduring argument, conflict, misunderstanding and anger. I think we all, on whatever side, will have to choose how we want to handle what is a great spiritual challenge as well as a political one.

I have many good good friends who voted differently than I did and feel differently, we are resolved to keep talking with one another and listen to one another, that is what is required of me. I appreciate them, I always learn from people who disagree with me, I believe in an open mind.

Saturday, thinking about this lovely message from the pastor – she wanted to use some of my writing in her sermon – I was moved suddenly – and strongly – to go into a vast antique store with lots of old jewelry. I told the owner, an aging hippie with white dreadlocks down to his navel, if he had any crosses to sell.

I believe Christ sought to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly. This is the path, I think.

The store owner said he had plenty of crosses, he walked me over to a giant case,  unlocked and handed me a felt display bar that was two feel long, there were a dozen crosses on it, gold and silver ones, some with jewels, etches, engravings, different sculpted figures. I said I wanted a simple one to wear and he pulled out this sterling silver one, he said he liked it, it was simple and dignified

The sticker said $24 but he told me it was only $18 for me, there was a sale going on and I agreed to his price.

I put this cross on – it fit right away – and I am grateful to have it. I want to wear it for as long as there is so much anger and argument raging around the world, I am requiring myself to not argue my beliefs, not dismiss the beliefs of others. I want to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with my God.

What, Maria asked me – by now, nothing surprises her about me – what does it mean to “walk humbly,” and this was a difficult question to answer, I am not the humblest person in the world. Humility is precious to me, but not always easy to summon.

Walking humbly for me means listening, not arguing. If means living my life well, and by example, not self-righteousness. I am no better than anyone else, people are not evil or stupid because they disagree with me.

I want to be merciful to the needy and oppressed, I want to be tolerant of my brothers and sisters who see the world differently than I do. Difficult sometimes. I believe in the truth, but I do not own the truth. I know we all have our own truths and live in them.

So I will wear the cross and touch it and think of  it whenever I am drawn to argument, to contempt, to panic and hysteria. It has some mojo, I can feel it. I want it to ground me, we are all in for a long and bumpy ride, and my wish is to keep my faith and values and humanity intact.

I hope I can take it off one day, when we all or most of us have learned to speak with one another again.

i bought the cross because it will comfort me, and it already has and remind me of who I wish to be.

30 January

Rosemary, Learning To Love Sheep Again

by Jon Katz
Rosemary

I loved my sheep when I first came to live with them in the country, more than a decade ago. My wonderful dog Rose and I took them out into the woods, even into town, I was a shepherd, it was in my blood. I loved lambing, even on bitter cold winter night, and was touched by the wonderful mothers sheep could be.

Rose did not like the sheep to get close to me, and they learned not to try.

As I became closer to my dogs, herding and working dogs all of them, the sheep and I drifted apart. Part of it was that I was always with the dogs, and so the sheep and I could not really get to know one another. I also got busier and had less time to spend with them. I stopped lambing and that further pulled us apart.

Red is a professional, but he is a forceful herding dog, and the sheep keep their distance from him, he brooks no nonsense.

When Maria came into my life, my relationship with sheep became even more distant, she is so loving and connected to them I think I backed off, being open is not my natural state, and it was easy to turn it over to her and take photos of it. That was pretty much the way it stayed until a few months ago when Maria and I decided to bring these four beautiful but abandoned sheep, the Romneys, the Gang Of Four, to the farm.

Rosemary, above, in particular, caught my eye and I fell in love with her a bit, she is beautiful, alert, and quite posed. The Romneys, unlike our sheep, are imperious, quite regal. They obey Red but are not unduly impressed with him, and they are certainly not frightened of him.

The other Romneys and I are connecting also – Griselle, Biddy, and Izzy. Sheep of entitlement. I love taking their photos, the eyes, the wool, the different shades, their willingness to look me in the eye – few sheep do that, and let me in.

They seem to like it when I get close and talk to them, take their photos. I am trying to spend more time with them, sometimes I even leave the dogs outside the gate. Since the Romneys pay  absolutely no attention to Fate at all, she can come in with me.

I love taking their portraits, they have character and presence. And they like to pose, they act like they deserve it, as royalty often acts. The other sheep and I are spending more time together also, and I am paying more attention to them. They are divas, like my mother, and my grandmother, and  I have a soft spot for divas.

The farm is like that, it is a wheel that turns and turns. Things come and go, leave and come back, my own emotions are always in flux. Winter is different from summer, Romneys are different from Cheviots, none of them are like a pony or a donkey. Perhaps it is the photography that has pulled me back, perhaps the Romneys have just seduced me, as Flo did. Either way, it’s nice.

30 January

When Politics and Life And Art Collide. Take My Hand When It Trembles…

by Jon Katz
When Politics and Life And Art Are Personal

Maria wrote a piece on her blog this morning about her realization that her art and her politics are personal, and in many ways,  the same thing.

“This is new for me,” she wrote. “I have the confidence and belief in myself to speak my mind, to make myself heard.”

Every morning, I watch her work so faithfully on her new fiber chair, taking off her fingers in the cold, weaving our baling twine into art. What could be more political than this, the resurrection of an old and forgotten chair, rotting up in the barn rafters.

This was a true and wise thing for her to write, I think. When I met Maria, she seemed voiceless at first. I quickly realize she had many things to say, many strong passions and feelings, but she did not feel entitled to give voice to them. She has lots of voice now.

Politics and art are both personal, perhaps inseparable. None of us are free from politics, whether we engage or not. Maria’s politics immediately began showing up in her work. Her populist and feisty potholders, her women on quilts finding their voices, rejecting the boundaries of stereotypes, her goddesses spewing lightning and power, her love of Mother Earth and animals.

All of these are political, and I think her art came out before she did in so many ways. Maria and I both told each other many times that we are not political people, and in a way, neither of us quite noticed that this wasn’t really true.

I do not accept the very suffocating idea of the political world being confined to a “left” and a “right”, I think rationale people can see what that is doing to our civic system. We need more choices than this. For me, our two parties have failed to provide us with a unifying vision for the country or the future.

It is fine with me if people disagree with me, it is not fine with me if they only wish to argue with me.

They say that conservatives are liberals who got mugged the day before, and I wonder if creative people who say they are not political are just lacking in self-awareness of themselves and their work, waiting to get knocked in the head by ugly political realities.

To be creative in the Corporate Nation is in itself a political act. So is the philosophy of encouragement. So is the idea of life having meaning beyon making money for retirement. My photos are inherently political, so, I have come to see is my blog, although not through the narrow prism of the left and the right.

Lots of people tell me they admire my life and would like to have it, but there is often something hypocritical about that, because very few people actually try to do it. Living a meaningful life in our time is an act of rebellion and defiance. I do not have a million dollars in IRA’s to carry me through the last years of my life, and I hope I never do. That would be the end of me.

My life and my art are also personal, like Maria’s. I reject the conventional idea of life – the only idea of life – drummed into our heads before we can think. Get a good job doing work you hate for people who care nothing for you, abandon the natural world, exploit animals for our personal needs, not their well-being, submit to a substitute life so you can end your life dying slowly and painfully in places you don’t want to be. Embrace the corporate notions of life, death, health care and money.

My whole life, everything I write, every photo I take is political in that way, in a Thoreau kind of way, I am strong in my own life and getting strong in my own truth. I don’t need to argue it, I need to live it.

There are many wonderful ways to live and love, and they do not all require vast amounts of money that will go to someone other than me, whatever happens.

Donald Trump has challenged me to be more overtly political than I am comfortable being. My life is not an argument, I will simply life it as i see fit and do good when and where I can. There are all kinds of ways to make ourselves heard, as Maria is discovering. When our values are discarded so contemptuously, and without explanation, politics and art make love to one another.

There are times where I too must simply muster confidence in myself, nourish the belief that allows me to speak my mind, and hope that I will be heard. How lucky I am that I have someone so strong and gifted to share this experience with me, someone who can take my hand when it trembles and say, “yes, yes, this is the right thing.”  I hear that voice quite loudly.

I hope I can always do the same for her, or even better, that she will always be able to do it for herself.

30 January

Two Dogs Together

by Jon Katz
Two Dogs

It is rare to get my two border collies still in the same place long enough to get a still shot of them. Fate is moving every second, Red is always happy to look at the camera. But I have very few shots of these two wonderful creatures together. After we do our morning chores, Red sits by the door waiting to go inside and get to work with me.

Fate is usually sitting by the pasture gate, or eating chick food, or sniffing out the tracks of the rabbit, her new obsession and nemesis. I made a strange clucking sound – animal photographers learn to do this – and Fate froze, trying to figure it out. It might be awhile before I get this kind of shot again.

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