Red is back at work (light duty) sitting on the hill in the South pasture, keeping an order. I’d say he is 80 per cent better, I’m planning on taking him to his debut Thursday as a therapy soccer dog at the request of the RISSE soccer team, made oup of recent refugees and immigrants to the United States, scheduled to play somewhere in Clifton Park, N.Y.
Red is still on powerful antibiotics for the next two weeks (thanks for the vet-approved probiotics, whoever sent them) and seems a bit restrained to me, but it’s hard to tell with him, he is a very calm creature.
Had to put this photo up, off to bed for me, Robin left me a gift; her fever. Maria too, but she is in much better shape than I am.
Donald Trump Has Been A Gift To Me: Buttercups in the meadow
It has always been this way for me, I work until I get sick or someone tells me I am exhausted, and then I crash for a bit.
Today, I went to see a friend, a healer, and she asked me how I was, and I was surprised to say I was exhausted, which she noticed. I have been working hard every day all day for months, writing, taking photos, blogging, working on my new book, pushing my current book.
And Robin passed along her fever on her happy visit. I have a good fever and am bleary and fuzzy. And exhausted. Maria agrees. I am getting into bed and drinking a lot of night cough medicine. I long ago used up my codeine cough medicine and do not dare ask for anymore – I was a valium addict for decades.
Maria is cooking up some chicken soup for me, I am surrendering to the liberation of exhaustion. There are lots of things going on her – grandkid visit, refugee kids, Mansion residents, immigrants, Red’s illness, the farm, writing, etc. This weekend was epic, I’m done for a bit.
I laughed when my friend reminded me of my open heart surgery and the need to rest sometimes, and I am no hero, no brave man, but I just never see myself in that way. My heart and I are good friends, but my body whispered in my ear that she was right, and so was Maria. Time to listen and get to bed. See you in the morning.
It feels wonderful to let go sometimes, it is the key to a spiritual center. Thanks for being there.
When I was a kid, one of my great pleasures was watching Saturday morning cartoons. I especially loved Bugs Bunny, a cheerful wise ass with a strong ego and perspective. His nemesis was the hapless Elmer J. Fudd, a self-described millionaire.
Elmer Fudd’s main task in life was pursuing Bugs, often with his shotgun.
Bugs had no problem fending him off, outsmarting and humiliating him.
Fudd may have been rich but he was not smart. I loved Elmer Fudd, and I identified with him.
I remember that often, when he was defeated or embarrassed – which was all the time – he would puff himself up and announce “My name Is Elmer J. Fudd. I Have A Mansion And A Yacht!”
And I do admit – I have to be honest – that these days, he does remind me of our President, who is, in his own way, telling us the same thing quite often. Fudd has endured.
For some reason, Fudd’s declaration became my catch phrase when I was beleaguered or frightened or humiliated, which was also most of the time. When my gym teacher yelled at me, or I had an accident in class, or some teacher was scolding me, or my father was lecturing me, or the principal wanted to know why I was not in school, I would always stop and think “My name is Elmer J. Fudd, I own a Mansion And A Yacht.”
This all came back to me this morning when Maria was kidding me for forgetting to make her toast crisp enough, a long-standing joke between us.
I turned and drew myself to full height – she is, after all, not much bigger than a forest elf – and announced “My name is Elmer J. Fudd. I own a mansion and a yacht!”
And she cracked up. “You are so strange!,” she said.
Elmer is still inside of me and will remain there, a testament of the power of imagination to touch and alter the life of a child. Like Fudd, I used it to preserve my dignity and sense of power.
I remembered that when I was wheeled into the operating room for my open heart surgery a few years ago, all trussed up in a flimsy gown and sprouting tubes, that the last thing I remember saying to myself – I don’t think I said it out loud, but I might have – was “My name is Elmer J. Fudd, I have a mansion and a yacht!”
Somehow, I internalized Mr. Fudd’s determination, pride and conviction that he was meant to get that rabbit.
Yesterday, one of the social media furies – her name was Mary – lit into me for buying a puppy rather than rescuing one. I should be ashamed of myself, she said, there is only one way to get a dog. I wasted no time in replying.
I wrote: “My name is Elmer J. Fudd. I own a mansion and a yacht!” It worked like magic. Mary went silent, she went away and never came back, shaking her head, I am sure, about the madman babbling about his mansion and yacht.
This is, in fact, quite often my secret reply to the legions of peckerheads and toothless ducks who try to tell me how to live my life, not because I asked them, but because they think they can.
Try it. It is better than any argument. I am Jon Katz. I have a farm and some dogs.
There are all kids of good photos, but one of my favorites – and it is a rare photo for me – is what I call a tableau picture. It captures a place or moment or feeling. This morning, Maria was out in the grass taking one of her meditation videos – the tall grass blowing in the wind. Fate is very close to Maria, she is mostly her dog, and she has the gift great dogs have of sensing the moment and entering it without disrupting it.
Fate, an intensely active dog, came over and lay down next to Maria as she took the video and lay still. I loved the image, it captured the connection between them and the connection of each of them to the other. I deliberately overexposed it a bit and used my Petzval 58 lens, the Russian glass.
It’s Spring again, of course, and Fate is back out in her beloved meadows. I sat down to photograph some wildflowers this morning and there was a rustle in the grass ahead of me and out of the green mist came Fate, heading straight for me. She must have smelled me or heard me working the camera, she appeared like an apparition, and I just hit the trigger. She seemed mystical to me, coming out of the meadow like that.
