Whiteouts are one of the most amazing experiences of the winter for me, especially mystical with a calm dog like Red, whose attachment to me (and mine to him) are profound. i can only think of three or four times I have been in a whiteout up here in the country, I find them sometimes frightening, always beautiful and sometimes – like the one today – mystical.
A whiteout is a weather condition in which visibility and contrast are eliminated by snow, sometimes sand. The horizon disappears completely and soon, there are no reference points at all, leaving the people caught in one disoriented and with a deeply distorted sense of his or her environment.
Red and I were going out in a snowstorm – not a huge one – and suddenly, the world just disappeared.
One defintion is “a condition of diffuse light when no shadows are cast, due to a continuous white cloud layer appearing to merge with the white snow surface.”
I would add that no surface irregularities of the snow are visible, and there is no visible horizon. A dark object may be seen, or mysteriously appear or disappear.”
Once I was walking in the woods during a whiteout, and I felt utterly lost. Usually up here the whiteouts don’t last long, a whiteout is a function or side effect of a storm, but not a storm itself. I have learned to be still, and appreciate the stillness and beauty.
Red is the same way, when I stepped outside to do the afternoon chores, we both were shrouded in a sudden whiteout just a few steps from the farmhouse. There was no danger, and Red never disappeared, moved, or took his eyes off of me. I never lost sight of him, and once or twice – I had my Canon out with a new art lens on it – the chairs or apple tree would appear, then vanish.
The whiteout lasted about a minute, and Red was still looking straight at me, waiting, as he always does for me to catch up.
It was all beauty, no fear and no disorientation. I think Mother Earth is blowing me a kiss, or perhaps an angel or cherub is using the snow to come to earth, or go up into the skies. I thought it was quite wonderful.
It’s called “The White Van.” I do not know how many miles it’s driven, and I don’t really want to know.
But I call it Ali’s Magic Coach, and I often think of what a wonderful movie, documentary, or short story it would make. Ali’s van is a kind of mystical home, for him, for the young refugees he drives to school, to soccer practice, to lessons, movies, doctor’s appointments, practices, and most of the places they need to go.
Ali is part friend, teacher, counselor, father, mother. When a teacher has a problem with one of his kids, they call Ali, not the parents, who often can’t speak enough English to talk to the teachers. Some of them live with relatives, their parents never made it our of their countries or the refugee camps.
If they need clothes, Ali f get them clothes. If they are hungry, he feeds them. If their families need help, Ali gets help to them. If they need help with homework, Ali helps them. If someone tries to harm one of these kids, or calls them names, Ali will descent like a Mommy Bear, roaring and with claws out.
He is a gentle giant, a sweet soul. Do not mess with his kids.
These kids come from what some politicians call the “shithole” countries, that is, countries in trouble, torn by civil war, genocide, persecution or natural disaster.
Somehow, their parents made it to refugee camps in different parts of the world, some got lucky where chosen off of decades-old waiting lists to leave their camps and come to America. Sometimes, relatives got them out.
These children have horrific stories to tell and live challenging and sometimes grinding and difficult lives. The coach is a magical carriage, whisking them off to learn, see, have fun, stay off of troubled streets.
Much of their lives revolve around Ali’s Magical Coach.
He takes them on their amazing journey through America, their new and sometimes very strange home.
When he pulls up to school, or for soccer practice, or a skating rink or pizza place, the kids pile out, sometimes it feels like a clown car in a circus. The bus is like a home to the soccer kids, they love to be in it and around it. It is their safest place, I think.
They love the van, they sit on the roof, on the hood scrunch together on the big wide seats, curl up and lean against one another, their brothers and sisters. They are community. We shall walk together, live together, die together, they sing.
The coach belongs to RISSE, the refugee and immigrant support center of Albany. It can be seen sailing across bridges, on highways, outside of indoor soccer arenas and outside of Chinese buffet restaurants. Sometimes it stops at Wal-Mart for urgently needed supplies.
They alone know the experiences of the other, they understand each other. When I asked a very shy boy a question, fix or six others stepped in front of him and told me to give him some time to answer, he needed more time. Ali has taught them how to love one another and take care of each other, because so often in their lives, there has been no one to take care of them.
No one bother’s anyone else’s property, no one steals from another. Ali tells them about honor and brotherhood, and assures them America is a great country, the greatest, and its fever about refugees and immigrants will pass. He tells them when the kids born in America taunt them, call them names, tell them to go home where they came from, make fun of their clothes and accents and food, he shows them how to be proud and dignified and patient. Last year, they burned the RISSE headquarters to the ground – it was arson – and slashed the tires on all of the vans.
And they are all of those things – dignified, patient and proud.
They do not fight, ridicule one another, laugh at each other. They say please and thank you. They clean up after themselves.
They are happy when anyone else succeeds, understanding and consoling when they fail. They demand little from life, and give much. Ali is scrupulous about following the rules of his coach. Only so many kids, only so many miles, and the van is scrupulously maintained. I love the love that swirls around the magical coach, at how safe and at home the kids feel in the coach. Lots of love and connection and emotion rides around in that coach.
Tomorrow, the magical coach is coming to my town, the soccer kids are having lunch with the Mansion residents. The Round House Cafe is catering the lunch – sandwiches. The Mansion is providing materials for the kids to make their own fudge sundae, some of them said they never heard of a fudge sundae, and had no idea what it was.
I went to Battenkill Books today and picked out 15 books and buttons for them to get when I meet them, graphic novels, books about dinosaurs and snakes, trivia and odd facts, the habit of animals, 100 unbelievable facts, stickers and posters, Star Wars and history, the Black Panther. You can just give them the bags of books, they will not fight over them but read them to each other and pass them around, and then bring them home to their brothers and sisters, and then pass them around again.
They read them aloud in Ali’s Magical Coach on the way home.
I know something was up when I went to open up my Post Office Box, where I go every day to check on the mail and the messages from the Army Of Good. The box is small, but can handle a goodly number of letters. When there is a package or something too big for the box, Wendy, the clerk, leaves a small key to a nearby locker which I can open.
Today, there were a few letters and three keys to the two biggest lockers on the wall. I heard Wendy, who reads my blog and has handled many packages, yell down the hall, “this just be stuff for the Mansion from you. We filled the two biggest lockers, you’ll need our big mail cart that we use for the carriers.”
Wendy was excited, that is a lot of parcel mail at one stretch for the Cambridge Post Office, and she wasn’t kidding. This big cart quickly overflowed, we couldn’t fit all of it in there, we had to carry excess packages out to the car. Wendy did the match, she said tomorrow was likely to bring even more parcels.
This is a lot of notecards, and thank you (I think we do have enough notecards here or on the way). The Mansion residents and staff will have enough cards and letters for a long time, and a bunch of people sent stamps in smaller envelopes.
For those of you who don’t know, I wrote a post last week asking for help, I realized that the Mansion residents need notecards and stamps so they can try to respond to the letters that they love, and also so the residents can write back and thank people for the letters and gifts that they sent.
I also realized that many of the residents don’t have the money to buy these things. Boy, did you respond. This cart is probably just one load of many. I can’t quite believe you all, you are so full of compassion and empathy, and a drive to go good. The parcels seem to come from every state in the Union, and also from Canada, England, Ireland and France.
It will take a few days to sort through them and organize them, I promise you all of these will be put to good use. If there are any left over, I’ll distribute them to other elder care facilities in the area. None will go to waste. I might even sell a few of them at our “Night Of Four Skits” night in April to raise money for some outings.
I am a bit shell-shocked, and so was Wendy and Maria. I will get over it and be appropriately grateful. What a wonderful thing we are building here. I was thinking of writing a piece about being true to the heart.
I feel all of you are being true to the heart, as I hope be as well. Thank you, thank you, I have to go and haul some parcels into the farmhouse, and I have no idea where to put them. Wendy says the cart will be available tomorrow. You have a lot of good people out there, she said.
I admire Gus, I’ve come to realize. And I identify with him. Part of it is projection, I imagine, we often transfer our own traits and emotions onto our dogs. Yet this is a dog with personality, and I think, character. We all lover our dogs, even the ugly ones, and see them as beautiful. That is part of the wondrous alchemy between people and dogs.
I believe, as you know, that we get the dogs we need, and then we project our own needs onto them. The truth is, for all the best-selling books and opportunistic behavioral studies, we just don’t know what dogs think most of the time, and it’s so easy to assume that they think the way we do.
That’s what we need from them, to be what we want them to be, and because they give us what we need, we take good care of them. The truth is, a good dog is a dog who doesn’t behave at all like a dog, but like the dog people think a dog should be.
Dogs love to have sex, dig holes in gardens, chew on sofas, roll in disgusting things, fight with each other. From the moment they are born, we go to work changing them, dashing around madly, classifying their natural behaviors as “bad,” forcing them and cajoling them to be “good” dogs, which is to say, dogs that can no longer do much of anything that is natural to them, or that they love.
The very definition of a good dog is a dog who doesn’t get to do what he wants, only what we want him to do.
In the natural world, Gus would long be dead or eaten because of his megaesophagus, he would not have survived it.
But I am working very hard and spending a lot of money to keep him healthy. megaesophagus is a testing disease, it challenges the dogs and the humans. One of the things I admire about Gus is that he never succumbs to his illness, he never looks sick or acts sick.
When I come downstairs in the morning, he is waiting for me atop the sofa, with a twisted rope to throw. It is part of our morning ritual. When he spits up, even on me, he swallows hard, licks my hand, and runs off to find a toy.
It is not pleasant for a dog or human to have this severe acid reflux, this regurgitating or vomiting. Those are not things that feel good, to the dog, or to the people who love the dog. I can it is painful for Gus, and uncomfortable. Many megaesophagus dogs are listless, depressed, lethargic, no fault of their own.
Gus almost never looks or acts sick.
When I am sick, I hate to act sick. It makes me feel vulnerable and useless.
When I had open heart surgery, I got up out of bed the next morning, and insisted on taking a walk. It wasn’t that I felt great, it was more that I didn’t want to be sick or look sick. I couldn’t bear it. I walked so much they sent me home after three days, a record in the intensive care unit. And it wasn’t because I was Superman. I really didn’t want to seem sick.
I refused to let the illness shrink or diminish my life. I don’t talk about it or think about it.
Yesterday, I was in bed with a nasty cold, but when Maria asked me if I still wanted to go to the RISSE soccer tournament, I was almost insulted. Of course, I said, I’m not really sick. What does that even mean, I wonder.
Yesterday, Gus seems to be transformed by the new diet, at least for a while. But when he is sick, and he has been very sick, he will spit up, shake his head, look at me and Maria, and go and grab a toy to bring me to throw for him, or play tug-of-war.
Therein comes what is perhaps the projection. Like me, he’s not interested in looking or acting sick, even when he is.
Gus is an adaptable dog, which helps. He has cheerfully accepted a muzzle, even though he can no longer eat the grisly stuff he loves to eat. He cheerfully accepts a sweater on days when it’s too cold for him. He stands on his hind legs to eat, which helps move the food through his esophagus. He sits still for medications.
Even when I know he’s sick, he isn’t sick, he never seems sick, he never succumbs to it. I don’t know if that’s what’s really going on, or if Gus is just an oblivious or perhaps not so bright dog. But he is smart, and he seems keenly aware of everything around him.
I have come to admire the way he is dealing with this disease, I almost get the sense he is determined not to let it diminish his life. Isn’t that strange. He is a tough little dog, full of life and spirit.
If you wrote that, I would probably roll my eyes and remind you that dogs are not people.
Great news from the Bedlam Farm Creativity Desk. The “fish” potholder above is now on sale on Etsy, the wildly popular global creativity and arts site. It will join about a dozen other Maria potholders there, the first time she has sold any of her art anywhere but on her blog.
Maria has decided to sell some of her very classy and popular potholders up on Etsy as an experiment. She is committed to her blog, and to selling her work there. She has established a deep relationship with many people who are interested in her work.
This is a big step for Maria, she is quite conservative when it comes to using the scores of marketing sites online, she has no wish to be everywhere all the time. But Etsy is a good place to sell some of her potholders.
People looking for her potholders have often told her they would like to have them posted and available at all times, not just when she posts them on her blog or gallery. They will continue to be sold for $25 plus shipping. And it is very easy to buy things on Etsy, it takes a second, I know I’ve bought a lot of birthday presents there, they have their stuff together.
Maria can explain this for herself, but I know she has been thinking about experimenting with selling a limited number of potholders only on Etsy.
The potholders unique and very different from most of the potholders sold there. And it won’t take anything away from her blog, to which she is quite passionately committed.
The potholders have a lot of significance here. Maria doesn’t make decisions impulsively, or quickly and some people (like me) do, she thinks them through carefully and thoroughly. She explains her reasoning today on her blog.
She has transformed the humble potholder into a creative and very personal art form that almost anyone can afford. They have become a mirror of her life, her feminism, and her belief in women and voice.
The potholders are signed works of art, but something more than that. People who buy them are always sending her photos them hanging on walls around the house, or sometimes, even in the kitchen.
They have become very personal, something she loves. She wants to make art that is accessible to people, not beyond their reach. People constantly tell her she undersells her work, but that’s her choice and it works for her.
She knows her audience and has a strong sense of her own artistic identity, and I love and admire her for that. Of course, I love and admire her for just about everything except her right thumb.
