Our friend Mary Kellogg, the poet, has what I would call a Mt. Rushmore Face, I could see it carved in granite. Mary has character and grace, and she is, at 88, as imposing and beautiful as ever. I was shocked to see her today, you would never know she was lying in agony on her kitchen floor a week ago from a bad fall.
Her daughter told me she was in great pain, but she never said so and was shocked that they called ambulance, she was quite prepared to ride to the hospital or call a doctor neighbor for some help. No big thing she said. It was a big thing, but her surgery was successful and Maria is up and walking around, with a little help.
In a blink, she will be home, heading outside to feed her deer. I was happy to take some portraits of her at the Washington County Rehabilitation Center today ( Mary Kellogg, Washington County Rehabilitation Center, NY-40, Argyle, N.Y., 12809.) The camera loves Mary, and I think, on some unconscious level, Mary loves the camera. She has great stature.
Mary has many special meanings for me. The first thing Maria and I ever did together was to edit and publish her first book of poetry, My Place On Earth. I think that was the beginning of our love.
I often write about the Strong Women I photograph, like Kelly Nolan at the bog. They don’t mind having their pictures taken, they look straight into the camera and dare it – and me – to take their pictures.
Mary has never once primped herself up, fixed her hair, or gotten shy or flustered by the camera. She knows it is what I need to do and accepts me for who I am. I hope I will always do the same for her.
People like to tell older people what to do and how to live, as if they can preserve them forever. Mary is her own person, in every sense of the word, she has a Georgia O’Keefe face. I love this photograph, it is Mary.
Yesterday, Maria and I and Red went to visit our friend Mary Kellogg, the poet and a central figure in our lives together. She had fallen in the kitchen of her farm a week ago and broken her hip, and after surgery she was taken to the Washington County Rehabilitation Center in Argyle, N.Y.
Mary had gone out to feed the deer in the snow, as she does twice a day on her remote farm near Granville, N.Y. and fell on her wet books when she came into the kitchen. She lay on the floor and managed to crawl to the phone to call her daughter Nancy, who lives nearby.
She was rushed to the hospital by ambulance and surgeons repaired her hip. She is in rehab, up and walking. Mary came to me when she was in her early 80’s – she is 88 now – and showed me some poems she had written.
They were wonderful and Maria and I edited and published her first book of poetry, My Place On Earth, which is in its 3rd printing and sold nearly 2,000 copies. She followed that book with Whistling Woman, and then How To Dance.
The break was serious, but Mary is already up and walking, several times a day. She looks great. She is a poet of rural and family life, and of the animals that still live in the woods and forests. She is an advocate of the independent life, free of fear and convention.
She is a monument to living a life of meaning and aging with grace.
We are working with her on a fourth volume of poems, yet to be named. She promised today to turn over the rest of her overdue poems when she gets home from rehab, which should be in about two weeks.
Mary, who is indomitable and fiercely independent, lives on a 30-acre farm on the top of a lonely hill. I was the first person to ever see one of her poems, she started writing poetry when she was 11 but felt even her beloved husband Richard would think poorly of her if he saw her work.
She writes beautifully of life on the farm, then and now. Many people have urged Mary to leave her farm and live somewhere safer and with more help. I think it will never happen. Mary is bound to her farm, and her life, and she rejects other people’s ideas of safety and caution, just as Maria and I do. She is an inspiration to us, not only for how to age, but how to live and feel.
We were so glad to see her today, and we brought Red, who did his therapy dog thing and ended up in the arms of many staffers. Mary is doing well. Members of her family were urging her not to go outside in the snow and feed the birds and deer. That will not happen either.
When Mary goes outside, she whistles, and the deer come close and eat the sweet feed she tosses on the ground for them. This winter they must have appreciated her greatly, she identifies them by sight, and they come out of the deep woods when they hear her whistle.
Mary also feeds the ridiculously strutting wild turkeys, she laughs at them and is writing a poem about their antics. Mary can no longer tend her beautiful gardens by herself, but her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren often come up to help her.
She loves living alone on her farm, she weathers storms, power outages, and a phone that has worked only sporadically for years.
Mary’s two much-loved cats died recently, and she is reluctant to get another one. We asked her if she wanted fish, we have an extra tank, she said she would love one, so we are going to bring her one with some fish. We both think she will love to sit and look at them. When a family member suggested she stop going outside to feed the deer, she winked at me.
We feel especially close to Mary, she comes to each of our Open Houses to read from her books of poetry (you can buy them through Battenkill Books, 518 677-2515). She will be reading at our October Open House this year. She will start feeding her deer about the same time.
Mary has great character and courage, we love her very much and will be bringing her books and cookies and Red. And us.
Mary enjoys getting letters, many of you have read her works. If you would like to write her, the address is Mary Kellogg, The Washington County Center For Rehabilitation, 4573 Route 40, Argyle, N.Y., 12809. She loves photographs of animals and will be at the rehabilitation for about two more weeks.
I’m putting up some portraits of Mary on Facebook in an album.
“I decided it is better to scream. Silence is the real crime against humanity.” – Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope.
I’ve been teaching writing for some years now, and in all these years I’ve hardly ever met a woman or a student who did not wonder if her story was important or worth telling, or who didn’t believe that it would be of interest to anyone but herself.
In all of that time, I have never heard a man tell me that his story was not important or worth telling, or wouldn’t be of interest to anyone but himself.
Voice is the foundation of identity, and it seems that in our culture many women have had their creative voice taken from them or hobbled, or silenced.
Or taught that no one will care about their stories.
“It’s easier not to say anything,” wrote Laurie Halse Anderson in Speak, “Shut your trap, button your lip, can it…Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say.”
If you are silent about your pain, wrote Zora Neale Hurston, “they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”
I am not a psychiatrist or sociologist, I can’t say for certain why so many people believe no one wants to hear their stories. Millions and millions of people want to hear other people’s stories every day. I am one of them, so, probably, are you or you wouldn’t be reading this blog..
My very talented and creative wife was nearly mute when we met, I have watched since as she found her voice, and she is as strong as any man’s, and as important. All she needed was a sense of safety, she did all the rest. Now, her art is all about voice.
No one could silence her now, or make her feel that she should not tell her story. And she no longer doubts that her story is important.
Everyone’s story is important, there are those who know that and believe it, and those who don’t.
Recently, one friend struggled to write a gripping, riveting story of life and death, yet she was nearly paralyzed at the thought of telling it. I know another woman, a student, who was passionate about her life, yet terrified to post her personal feelings on a blog or in public.
Joseph Campbell wrote that in his lifetime of teaching, he met thousands of women who were his students who had been creatively undermined by a father, lover, husband, brother or spouse. They gave up their bliss and creative ambition and often, he found, led what he called “substitute” lives.
Many came back to him later to try and re-capture their bliss. Many did, he wrote.
His belief was that many men were instinctively threatened by women with a strong voice, and often pressured or undermined them out of following their hearts when it came to writing or expressing themselves creatively. Get a day job. It’s dangerous out there.
Many women have told me that some women are also threatened by other women with strong voices.
Today, many women who were silenced are beginning to tell their stories. Many women and men are hearing them. It is, to me, a story-teller, a stirring thing.
I had a student once who made it clear in her writing – which she shared with no one – that she had been abused by a parent, and shrouded in shame, she had never told anyone. I encouraged her to write her story, and she did, and she found her voice and her strength. People did care about it. People wanted to hear it.
I believe it is so important to find one’s voice, man or woman. I believe everyone’s story is important, and needs to be told. I believe blogs have given people an extraordinary new tool to tell their stories, find their voices, give people strength.
In a sense, we are our stories. Through all of my trials and difficulties, I believed that my story was important, I always told it, through depression and panic and illness. I believe that telling my story saved me, grounded me. Maria feels the same way. I belong to group called The Creative Group At Bedlam Farm, it is an online group based on Facebook, although many of us know one another face-to-face now.
We drink up one another’s stories, encourage one another to tell them, celebrate the good that they do. I vowed some time ago to tell my story in an open way, to free myself of secrets, to liberate myself from shame and guilt and sorrow. My stories have done everything I wanted them to do, and I tell them still.
There are men and women on the group, but to me, the most compelling thing I have seen there are the women who have decided to find their voice, share their lives, end their silence.
They emerge from the silence and find their center, their voice, their art and their salvation. They often find their partners as well. Their blogs are a catalogue of strength and voice and endurance, a record of bravery, and honesty and voice.
Stories presage rebirth and resurrection, they are a harbinger of true voice.
I thought of this several times recently. Once, when I saw a clip online this morning of Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress and director. We don’t have a TV. For much of my life, a porn star was someone who would have been vilified and dismissed and persecuted for what she did and was. She knows the importance of telling her story.
She looked into a TV camera during an interview that would probably have paralyzed most people with fear, and told her truth in a strong and unwavering voice. She had found her voice, she seemed invulnerable to me. She seemed authentic. She knew her story was important, she was determined to tell it with humor and honesty, even some decency.
I find her affair mundane and sordid in many ways, what she did was an alien thing to me, but I admired her conviction that her story was important and that she had a right to own it and tell it, even though she once sold it for money. Something about her authenticity and ownership of her life touched me.
Many people I talk to about Stormy Daniels look at me in puzzlement, they aren’t following that story, they sniff, as if it is beneath their dignity and mine. But I see in Stormy so many of the women who have been silenced, who never knew that they could say no, or tell their stories. She is telling her story, and a new story for many others.
Who would have thought that a porn star would tell her story to the whole world, in the face of risk and threats, and be heard.
Her story had pride and dignity, as the best stories do.
I believe this: When people don’t tell their stories or speak their voices, they die once piece at a time. And when they tell their stories, they come back to life, one piece at a time.
Gus’s death was significant for me in many ways, not just the obvious. I think it was the first time I shared the loss of a dog with others, and shared grief with other people.
Gus was a charismatic dog, people loved him, and I recognized that he was not just my dog, but because of my writing and his character, he belonged to many other people. I have always seen grief as an intensely personal experience, and I have never shared it on Facebook or other social media.
I think the first step of grief is to absorb it internally and come to terms with the loss. I’ve never felt the need to go into much detail about the death of my dogs.
Gus’s loss hit me hard, he was young and until the last few weeks, full of life. I don’t really wish to experience it in tandem with others, I am eager to move forward with my life. But this time, a number of people wrote me to ask how they might honor Gus.Tthis was a first for me, but it seemed right, and I decided to open up to the idea.
I had already invited people who knew Gus to come and say goodbye, or brought him to people like Bob at the dump, who loved him. Robin Gibbons, the breeder came by with her son Brian to say goodbye.
I had written more openly about my feelings for Gus than I had done with other dogs, and I made a gradual, if not really conscious, decision to open up. I think I now feel strong enough and comfortable enough to do that.
I suggested that in lieu of flowers, please send donations for the refugee and the Mansion residents. I loved this idea, which hit me out of the blue.
In a sense, this would prolong Gus’s life, and he could continue lifting people up in a different way – by helping them.
In my mind, I thought each donation would heal me a bit, I felt good about each one. And I would feel good again each time I helped someone.
I emphasized that small donations were very welcome. There are people ashamed to send $5 and $10 donations, I know, but those touch me very deeply and mean a great deal to me.
People responded, more than I expected.
I got 40 or 50 letters the first day, from all over the country. Some were messages, some had small denomination bills, some had checks, ranging from $25 to $500. They bought boat rides on Lake George for the Mansion residents and the money to put a down payment on a week-long camp for the RISSE soccer players.
They bought two digital cameras for gifted young refugee photographers.
The thing is, these messages had a marked effect on my healing. I love that Gus is doing good after his death, and I saw each donation in his honor as a bright star peeling back the darkness. I had just come through a bout with pneumonia when Gus died, and I was tired and run down.
The donations in honor of Gus lifted me up, everything is a gift in its own way.
I wondered at the love this spirited little dog provoked in people. Sitting here writing, I’m too close to it, I can’t gain any perspective on it.
“Gus was very special,” wrote Lana. “I so enjoyed following along with your posts – I hope you will get another Boston – thinking you fell in love with the breed just like we did. In memory of Gus – do what you want with the donation – a long time follower of your blog, Lana.”
Thanks Lana, Gus was very special and I am certainly going to get another dog.
So more lessons of grieving. I’m not about to mark the anniversary of Gus’s death on Facebook or Twitter, but I am seeing that here, as in the rest of my life, opening up is healthy and healing. Gus will live on a good while, and the love people had for him can be turned to the small acts of great kindness we are trying to commit.
If you would like to honor Gus by giving a donation to the refugee or Mansion work, you can write me at Jon Katz, Post Office Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816 or via Paypal, [email protected].
