My silo
Posted At: Saturday, November 29, 2008 9:43 PM | Posted By: Jon Katz
November 29, 2008 – When the big barn was rebuilt, we decided to put in a glass window so that the indoor silo built more than a century ago could be seen from the outside. In the late afternoon, it is most visible. Outdoor silos are rare in barns, but make sense given the weather here. I love to see the silo in the afternoon light.
Searching for color
Posted At: Saturday, November 29, 2008 9:39 PM | Posted By: Jon Katz
I’m out with the camera every day looking for color in the forest. Found a couple of ferns that struck me, and maybe one or two leaves. Not much left. I will stay on it.
Good morning from the sheep of Bedlam Farm: Solitude and Loneliness
Posted At: Saturday, November 29, 2008 9:32 PM | Posted By: Jon Katz
Who are focused on the barn door, because that’s where the hay is and they are hungry in the morning. Sheep are focused, like all animals, very much on food, and the way it moves around. They seem ready for winter, and we have begun giving them grain.
Sunday will be a quiet day for me. Photos, a trip, I hope to Kinney Road, my favorite place to take photos, and some blogging and some solitude.
Thomas Merton, who knows a thing or two about solitude, wrote that solitude means being lonely not in a way that pleases you but in a way that frightens and empties you to the extend that it means being exiled even from yourself.
This is, I feel, necessary to be comfortable with yourself, and with other people. So Sunday will be a day of much solitude for me, a chance to be exiled from myself, and emptied. Unlike Merton, I will blog about solitude. I suspect he would have loved a blog. I found loneliness can be sweet, and almost always productive. So can connection. I am looking forward to today. I will walk far out into the woods (it is hunting season up here, so walks in the woods are often punctuated by not-too-distant gunfire).
Movie update: A Dog Year
Posted At: Saturday, November 29, 2008 9:46 AM | Posted By: Jon Katz
The Jeering Gallery, jeering at new of the movie
November 29, 2008 – Update on the movie, “A Dog Year,” starring Jeff Bridges and made by HBO Films. The movie is now complete, I am told. It will be aired next summer on HBO’s vast TV network. HBO doesn’t do theatrical film releases any more. The movie, filmed in and near the farm two years ago, is based on my first dog book, “A Dog Year,” and is described as a beautiful, idiosyncratic film about the impact a dog can have on a man’s life.
I have mixed feelings about the impact of all this on my life and privacy, but it can only be good for my writing life. My life has changed quite a bit since the filming, and I am curious to see the movie. I am told the Jon Katz in the film bears little resemblance to the real one, but Jeff Bridges is a great actor and it will fascinating to see his interpretation of me.
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P.S. A number of people have asked me about my photography. I use a Canon Mark III camera, and about six different lenses. My favorites are the 16-35, the 180mm, the 70-200 and, lately, the 135 mm.
Good morning, from Luna
Posted At: Saturday, November 29, 2008 9:36 AM | Posted By: Jon Katz
November 29, 2998 – Got up early and went out in my bathrobe to feed the animals – two bales of hay for the sheep and donkeys (now just two donkeys), checked on Winston, still hugging the heat lamp and gave him some hay, fed the obnoxious and complaining goats, checked the water for the cows, the feed for the chickens, fed the dogs, fed the barn cats (saw a number of mice and bird corpses) and decided I had some first-rate reflecting to to days. Going to see a good friend, a young artist, in Greenwich, then going to see friends in Rupert, Vt.
I must have been a strange sight walking about the hill and the barn in my bathrobe and muck shoes, and hauling hay, and a car went by and stopped, and stared. May not have been the Bedlam Squire they anticipated. At least I was decent
