10 July

Blue Star Rising

by Jon Katz
Blue Star Rising
Blue Star Rising

Saturday, Maria and I will get up early to go to Blue Star Equiculture, to see our friend Pamela Rickenbach and to attend a remembrance ceremony for Paul Moshimer, who died a month ago. Paul is on my mind, of course, but so is the idea of Blue Star, especially the idea of Blue Star rising.

Last year, Pamela asked Maria to make flag, a symbol of the Blue Star Prophecy, the inspiration for the Blue Star name. Blue Star was stunned and shaken by Paul’s death, but the Blue Star idea is much bigger than one person, and Paul’s death seems to have inspired and invigorated it anew.

The future is at Blue Star, every thinking person in the world knows we need a new and better way to live on the earth, to live with one another, to live with the animals and keep them in our every day lives. Blue Star celebrates the love of people and the love of animals, the horses are sacred spirits there, the ancient partners, healers and guides of human beings. Blue Star is what Pope Francis had in mind when he wrote his encyclical, Blue Star is what the medicine men says the world needs – to respect the animals, to live in harmony with people, to heal Mother Earth.

More than that, there is none of the hatred, rage and judgement that seems to have infected the animal world and endangered the lives of so many animals. Blue Star is about saving animals and keeping them among us. It is also about the future. A remarkable gathering of intense and idealistic young people have come to the farm to carry on Paul and Pamela’s work. The place has more energy and focus than ever, the future seems to have arrived.

Blue Star is moving in the right direction at the right time, this is a model for where the world must go if people are to survive here and if animals are to remain in our everyday lives.

There is the great love of the horses, the passionate devotion to the environment, a commitment to loving people and treating them with dignity. Each of us, says Pope Francis, has a vision of good and evil, and people must be encouraged to move towards what they think is good. Everyone must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he or she conceives of them. That alone would be enough to make the world a better place.

Blue Star is the better place, it is full of hope and good, everyone there is moving every day towards what they think is good. I am always eager to visit Blue Star and to see the rising of this powerful idea

Out of darkness, light. Out of death, life. Out of hatred, love. Out of greed,  selflessness. In the coming months, I hope to write frequently about Blue Star. But tomorrow belongs to Paul Moshimer.

7 June

Blue Star Rising: The Children Have Come, The Kingdom Belongs To Them.

by Jon Katz
Birthing The Future
Birthing The Future

From left, Mithra, Josie, Brian, Ruth, Jay, Loretta, Taylor.

It was Jesus Christ who said “let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” I thought of this beautiful plea today when I left Blue Star in the afternoon, I thought that the children had come, they are building a new kingdom.

It felt to me as if I saw the future today at Blue Star Equiculture, this mystical farm in Massachusetts, this place of life and death, but more than anything, of promise. My soul rises when I see the energy and compassion of the young gathering there, warriors for sure, but for a very different kind of struggle.

Blue Star is a rescue and retirement home and center for the study of working horses. It is also an organic farming center pioneering news ways of environmental farming. But it is much more than that now.

When I first went to Blue Star more than a year ago, I believed that I had seen the future for animals and the people who love them. A place that cherishes the connection between people and animals, that supports it, that offers haven and meaning and redemption to people and animals, and treats them all with love and dignity and care.

I have to come see that the Blue Star is bigger than people and animals, it is the birthing of a new way, the rise of the young, of new values, of seeing the world anew. The promise of a better world. This is a place of harmony and passion, of love and connection.  The heart of Blue Star has been torn open, it is beating stronger than ever.

Paul Moshimer, the co-director of Blue Star, the husband of Pamela Rickenbach, the founder of Blue Star, is gone.  A soulkeeper to so many people, a mentor to the young, a lover of the horses, a hero life saver for much of his life, died two weeks ago. When I heard the news,  I feared that the Blue Star dream had been shattered, that it might perish with him.

Paul loved the young people drawn to the farm dearly, he helped and encourage them in every way that he could, they were so important to him, he was so important to them. Paul is very much alive in their spirits and dreams, in a powerful way they are his children.

Strong as she is, I wondered if Pamela could do it alone. It is not a simple thing to care for more than 30 draft horses, to  pay for their feed and wounds, to give them wonderful lives and to rescue others in need. Their partnership was profound. I am not wondering that any longer.

Death paves the way for life, it doesn’t just take it away.  It opens the door to change. The  Reaper is, I think, an angel of promise and hope, not just of loss. Into the void left behind by Paul’s decision to take his own life came a host of spirits,  the young people – interns, former and current students, people from other states, even other countries.

And just like that, the dark and empty hole began to fill up with color and light.

The young people came because they were drawn to the Blue Star idea of a better and more meaningful way to live than many of their elders have chosen. They feel deeply their responsibility to Mother Earth and to the animals, our partners in the joys, travails and future of the world. They understand technology, but are not enslaved by it, they can turn their devices off and listen and talk to one another. They see the culture of fear that enslaves so many in hollow lives and work in order to be secure and responsible. They sleep on floors and in trucks and out in the pasture, they walk in mud and manure all day long, they shovel and dig and brush,  they plant and nurse, they share every morsel of food they have.

They see a world mired in greed, worshiping money and promising security in a world that money and spiritual blindness is devouring.They say no to it.

They see a world in the grip of war and bloodshed, and reject it.

I have been to Blue Star a half dozen times, I have never heard a one of them whine, complain, speak poorly of their lives, or ill of any other. And they have suffered plenty. They are the real news, the big story, but you will not see them on cable news, their life is not an argument, they  are the biological opposites of the cruel and disconnected people who run so much of our world and who claim to speak for the rights of animals.

These are not the people frantically stashing away money so that they can buy themselves more empty time at the other end of life.

These are the people respect one another with a gentleness and trust that takes away the breath of people who live in the so-called real world, where judgement and cruelty and division are the currency of the time. They are deeply connected to the culture and ways of the First Nation, the keepers of the earth. They do not use animals as a club against people, they seek to restore the broken bond between people and animals.

It is a mistake to romanticize the young any more than the old. These are not saints, they are very human, as Paul was, as Pamela is. This is not the habitat of the holy, but of the real. I think they are binding themselves to one another for life, and to those us who wish to cheer them on, cry for them, and dream with them.

Pamela is a prophet and a mystic. She is a strong and powerful person. Wreathed in sorrow and loss,  she opened her arms to the future, not the past,  and it came right through the door, and is coming still. The young people at Blue Star want to pick up the dream of a better way and make it happen. They are the light cutting through the darkness. If you ask them, they will tell you to a one that in a time of cynicism, anger and greed, they are turning away from both. The Indian Chiefs say that we will either learn to live in harmony, or perish together.

They have lots to do.

It is time to stop pretending that old have all the truth, clutching their hoary and failed wisdom to their bosoms. The old days were never very good, we can only build a better future. Listening to the kids at Blue Star, I feel some shame and sorrow, I want to apologize to them for the world we left, for the many messes we made. Sometimes it seems their elders have forgotten what it means to be human.

But more than regret,  I feel a sense of hope when I am there. It is time, it seems, for real change, and these amazing human beings bring a  strength and quiet dignity that one can touch and feel.

I am happy and proud to stand with the children of Blue Star, to take their photos, and give way. I bow to them and cherish them and cheer them on. I am humbled to try and tell their story.

They are meaning to build a better world than was left them. Many of them understand pain and cruelty very well, they are determined to never inflict either on animals or people.

In our world, Jesus Christ is oft invoked, little followed. At Blue Star, the children have come, and the kingdom of the future is theirs.

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You can follow these dreams or support them yourself here.

1 June

Blue-Star Rising, A New Beginning: Believe In The Good Things Coming

by Jon Katz
They  Believe In The Good Things Rising
They Believe In The Good Things Rising

I was standing by Paul Moshimer’s favorite place at Blue Star, the waters behind the farm, the site of a Native-American peace post, and I was surrounded by the people who live and work at Blue Star Equiculture. They were looking at me, listening to me read something I had written for Paul.  I was nearly struck down by the power of their faces, almost all of them young, quick to laugh, quick to cry, able to listen.

Paul had taken his life just a few days before, and few people were as hard hit by those in front of me, huddled together by the river.

Watching them, listening to them was a revelation of sorts, I felt it almost physically. Oh, I thought, this is not an end, this is a new beginning.  Blue Star Rising, this is their future and glory.

In nature, life and death are one, death clears the way for life, and often makes it possible. These open faces were heartbroken at the death of Paul, he was a father to them all, and a mentor and friend.

So this is what is happening, I realized. The next thing, the Third Way, the hope and resurrection for Pamela and Paul’s idea of the Blue Star.  A community learning to live in harmony, restoring the bond between human beings and animals, understanding animals in a wiser and more mystical way, beginning the long and hard process of healing Mother Earth. A better way than the rage and cruelty of the world beyond.

It was right there, looking into my eyes on the riverbank.

If you spend any time at Blue Star, you will also be deeply touched by the hearts and souls of these young people, they are hope and the salvation. They are not saints, they are not perfect, that is too much weight for anyone to bear. But they are special, extraordinary, if you ever doubt the power of animals to affect human beings, you can see it in their lives.

They love one another as they love the horses. There is no cruelty, judgment or competition among them. Trust is their drug. You will not see them with their faces in their cellphones all day, or sending sometimes mindless messages on Facebook.  They are not on the left or the right, they are not Luddites. They know technology, but their eyes are looking at one another, at the horses, at the hard work they do every day. They are not planning for their retirement funds or seeking a way to score on Wall Street. They are fighting for meaningful lives in community and nature, and with animals.

And they are very strong.

“We want to live in a different way,” Pam’s daughter Zoe told me. “The culture outside offers us no way to live, we don’t want our lives to be a scramble for money, or to trample people.” Blue Star, she said, is a different way, a life of meaning and freedom and community. It is the answer for them and for people like them, living outside of the circle, yearning for a life of meaning and compassion.  A life where people once again live with animals in their everyday lives and learn from them, rather than run and hide from them and permit them to be taken away and vanish.

I asked them if I could try and capture this spirit in a photograph, and they all understood, I didn’t have to explain, and agreed. My work is understood there, and so is theirs.  I feel as accepted as they do, and that is as rare for me as it is for them – and I asked Pamela to come and be in the photograph. No, she said at first, this is their moment, they are the answer now that Paul is gone. No, I said you are the answer too, this is the joining together you pray for, the call of your horses, who made it possible, the Third Way. No one is excluded at Blue Star, every kind of person comes there is touched by the wand, is sprinkled with the sparkling magical dust.

And then, there are the mystical horses, I don’t even know how to talk about them, they are the wizards and spirits and guardian angels of Blue Star. One by one, they come up to me and touch their noses to me, and look in my eyes, and I feel something shifting inside of me.

It was a beautiful thing for me to see these young people, they lift my heart, the writer and photographer is almost always intruding and invasive, there is sometimes no other way to tell stories, to document the truth. Pamela took me aside, and she said, “I want you to move freely here, do not be afraid of it, the horses have chosen you to help tell our story.”

After I took the photos, and sat by the fire for Paul, I wanted to  help out, I grabbed the manure rake and started shoveling the manure and Brandon, a  young man who comes to the farm on weekends and is powerfully connected to the horses – everyone there is – came rushing up to take the rake. As I get older, that happens sometimes. I’ll do that, he said, I’ll take care of that. I want to do something useful, I said. Don’t you know, he said, how much you do?

He could not have seen my eyes grow moist, or understood why I was so started to hear a 17-year-old man – very much a man – say that to me. These young eyes and hearts are the new prophets of Blue Star, Pamela saw that right away, and so, I know, did Paul. In our last talk together, in my living room a month ago, Paul said he hoped I would continue telling the story of Blue Star, and of the young people who flock to the farm and see a better future than the one the world has chosen for them. I thought it curious that he would ask that, I understand it better now perhaps.

The Native Americans often sing of the Blue Star, the better way, the new beginning. We must, they say, restore the bond between people and animals, especially the horses. We must learn to live in harmony, or perish together. This is the magic of Blue Star, it’s power and importance. You can see it coming together there, you can see a future that is possible for human beings, and for animals. These young people know how important they are now, they all sensed it, they are rising to it, right before my eyes, I saw it.

Yesterday, I walked among this chosen people, saw the fire in their eyes, the sweat and dirt on their bodies, their love for one another. These are the outsiders, the oddballs, the ones told they had to fit in, the strong and braves ones who found their own path. I know, I was one of them, still am. So is Maria.

They laughed and joked and bantered, but never with sting, there is no cruelty in the barns and pastures at Blue Star, some of these people told me how broken and in pain they were when they came to Blue Star, how the horses and Pamela and Paul had saved them,  how this would be their work.

Sunday, Pamela asked me to sit down with her and watch one of Paul’s favorite videos, it was a poignant and brilliant affirmation in music of one of the most powerful spiritual ideas in the world, I Believe In The Good Things Coming. Paul watched it again and again, almost every day. He believed very strongly in the good things coming, and in helping them to come. At Blue Star this weekend, in this photograph, and in every one of my visits there, I saw this in the faces of these young people, of our future, whose time has come.

Death does make room for life, and affirms it. They believe in the good things coming.

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Helping Blue Star. We are at a crossroads, as the elders believe. We will learn to live in harmony, with one another and the animals, or we will destroy our world together. If you see fit, please help Blue Star. The farm is in Massachusetts, but it belongs to everyone. You can donate, become a member of the herd, or send them good thoughts and good wishes. You can purchase blankets (Maria designed the farm’s symbol) posters, or help with hay. If you live nearby, you can join the volunteers there.

21 July

The Best Pizza I’ve Ever Tasted. Blueberry Pizza! This Isn’t A Typo…

by Jon Katz

I’m excited. I had blueberry pizza for dinner last night. It was amazing.

I’ve been writing about the food revolution going on here by young people with food carts and new ideas about food.

Still, I was surprised to look online at the offering of Shift Wood Fired Pizza yesterday and find a listing for blueberry pizza, something that gave me something of a start. I’ve never heard of a blueberry pizza, and this isn’t New York City.

Maria and I both balked at first, but we have an excellent record of buying great food from Shift; their pizzas, salads, and soups are unlike anything we have ever seen around here. We decided to give the blueberry pizza a shot, ordering some for my friend Ron Dotson, a minister from Ohio visiting here and coming over for dinner last night.

(I ought to mention their Scape Goat pizza, another surprise we love to order – Garlic Scape Pesto, Tomato, and Goat Cheese on a thin wheat floor base. This is not pizza as I know it)

Ron, who was as surprised as we were,  said this was the best pizza he had ever eaten. I agreed, and so did Maria. It was delicious; it was all gone in a minute.  Recently, I read a story online about young innovators with food carts in New York City who completely reimagined pizza; this is now happening here.

I called co-founder Corey today to get the details for the pizza; it was so different than any we have seen.  He gave me the recipe: Balsamic Shallot base with Whipped Feta, blueberries, Asiago cheese, Mozzarella, Arugula, and blueberry compote.

Corey and Sara took a big gamble refurbishing an old, decaying food cart and starting Shift.

Their first wish was to buy one of the few restaurants in our town that have the water and septic systems to satisfy New York State health regulations. Our small town has no such facility, so they went with the cart.

Corey was a musician and house painter before this, also a student of food and former manager of the town Food Co-Op. Corey said he was inspired to renovate the food cart by the death of his grandfather Phil, a former much-loved town police chief he admired and was close to.

His grandfather died two years ago.

Sara studies and teaches nutrition. They are off to a stellar start. Corey says the work is never-ending, all they do now is work.

They are coming up with surprisingly healthy and delicious food offerings every night of their three-day availability – Thursday, Friday, and Sunday. They have sure changed my diet and Maria’s for the better.

Eating healthy food is important, and I often balk at the bland tastes of so-called organic offerings. This menu is something new.

I’m getting five of their smoothies Sunday morning (they are closed for a few days next week); they are the best, most delicious, and healthiest breakfasts I could find anywhere. I freeze them and have one every few days.

I’m not usually big on touting private businesses on the blog, but this is huge news in a small agricultural town in upstate New York, where a veggie burger is still considered revolutionary and mysterious.

I’m voting for that restaurant one day in town or nearby; brave and creative people deserve to succeed. Their story is an inspiration; their food is terrific. In the meantime, I can hardly wait to see the menus on Thursday, Friday and Sunday (they go to the Farmer’s Market.)

5 July

Photo Journal, Wednesday, Julu 5, 2023: Morning Fog And Mist. A Haunting And Beautiful Time. I Can Feel The Sun Rising.

by Jon Katz

Whenever I see a fog in the early morning, I grab a camera and run out, naked if necessary, but it wasn’t today.

I know the sun is rising and burning off the fog, so I have minutes. The mist has beauty and silence; it seems the world stands still. Everything is more beautiful and peaceful, and it soothes and quiets me.

I’ve been getting up at 3 or 4 a.m. lately; I don’t know why; I can’t sleep. I need to rest during the day sometimes, just for a few minutes. I meditate every morning when I wake up, I come downstairs and sit quietly in the living room until I hear Maria stirring upstairs, and then I go and join her.

We talk for a while and then get up together.

She knows I love to take pictures in the fog, so she patiently waited for me to get dressed and get the right lens.

She’s the pied piper for the farm; the sheep and donkeys don’t like to graze in the hot sun, so they are hungry and ready to eat before it gets warm.

One of us walks into the pasture to check on the cheap and take videos or pictures.  The fog makes it all the more mystical.

The statue of St. Christopher (we think) makes it comfortable to pray, meditate, or stand quietly and look out over the marshes and hills.

At some point, I go into the house and start breakfast going or have a few quiet minutes to think. There is a lot going on in my life and it sometimes gets all scrambled in my head.

 

The donkeys are the last to go out because everything has to be their idea; they do not do what they are told to unless they have no choice.

 

 

When I returned to the house, I could see the sun breaking through the clouds and the first sign of blue approaching. The circle was turned, and the fog would be gone in minutes.

Bedlam Farm