August 13, 2007 –  Warm, cloudy. This week is the last leg of the “Dog Days” book tour. It was as exhilarating as it was exhausting to run around the country for two months and talk to dog and animal lovers about my work. The love that emanates from animal lovers is intense, touching, sometimes overpowering. I always like being reminded that as homogeneous as the country sometimes seems, it is actually quite different. The intensely political animal ethic that exists on the coasts recedes through the Midwest, where people are closer to the farm and animal experience. This was a good time for me. The reviews of my work were generous, and the affection and interest of readers humbling. I had good crowds everywhere – the record was the Forth Worth Book Festival, where I drew 1,100 to the Casa Manana Theater. I still think they were secretly giving away Iphones. And I especially enjoyed Minneapolis, and some of the amazing new architecture there. I also met a wonderful  young woman named Thea Pappas, who works at West Photo, and she has become my photographic guru and counselor, advising me on equipment and settings. I am lucky to know her, and very much appreciate her energy, enthusiasm, compassion and incredible creativity.
  I started taking pictures to relax, and now, they have become something much larger in my life, something I couldn’t stop doing if I wanted to. Funny how the farm is a gift that keeps on giving.
  I am eager, though to do some different things now, and autumn has always been a time of renewal for me. I intend for the next period of my life to be the most creative, useful and productive yet. I am committed to renewing notions of hard work, good work and creative work.  Also to deepening the wonderful friendships on the farm. To writing good pictures and taking good pictures, and meeting my responsibilities to the people, dogs and other animals here, not to mention the farm itself. I am lucky to have these responsibilities and challenges. I want to grow spiritually, and as a farmer and writer.
  Paula and I will spend some time on Cape Cod together in September. I much look forward to that.
  I am very excited about another project.  Anthony and I – he has some exciting challenges of his own – are going to do a picture book about his successful struggle to deal with ADD and other issues in his life. We are tentatively calling the book “Attention Deficit,” and the point is to show his journey, and our journey together, through pictures and some text.
  We both want to make the point in pictures and words that we need to pay attention to people, especially kids, with problems like these.
   It will be a great creative challenge for me. I might self-publish it, so that we can control  it (Anthony’s suggestion), but in any case, we are going to go ahead and do it and see what happens. That will mean a lot of pictures.
  I am also going to get back to work on “My Farm,” my under-way book about my life on Bedlam Farm and its history. “Soul of a Dog,” my next book, dealing with the question of whether dogs and other animals have souls or not, is being published in May.
  Also, I am eager to get ready for Art Harvest, Leap of Faith, “Four Friends Share Their Art,” to be held at Gardenworks October 13-14 in Salem N.Y. (518 854 3250). Maria Heinrich will show her fiber art, Mary Kellogg her poetry, Anthony his concrete art and I’ll show my pictures for the first time. Mary is calling her poetry (framed selections will be sold) “musings while berry picking.” Maria is calling her display “thread to thread,” Anthony’s works will be titled “my life in concrete” and I’m calling my picture gallery – my pictures will also be on sale, to benefit Friends of Hospice, “pictures from bedlam.” The posters and postcards and flyers are being made up now.
  And just to be reminded of life in bedlam, Annie and I caught the goats eating the dug-up cable this morning and is seen scolding them. Good luck with that. Goats, like donkeys, love to do what they are not permitted to do.
  “Now that they know we don’t want them to do it,” Annie said,” they will.” True.