Month: October 2009

Chris, Toby and Collin of Mannix Marketing in Glens Falls, N.Y., helping to sort out the future of
Bedlamfarm.com. Lenore came along.

   October 29, 2009 – Okay, okay, to all of your jeering Red Sox and Phillies fans. It was just one game. We’ll see tonight.
 
  The re-thinking of Bedlam Farm is continuing. Met for two hours today with the Mannix Marketing web team to continue the simplifying and redesigning of this blog, which as much as anything, has been an expression of my life these last year years, not only in terms of my personal existence, but the photography and writing. I have faithfully recorded my life here, good and bad, and for better or worse, as openly as I can, and am committed to continuing that process.
  We’ve redesigned the home page and simplifed the site. Next, how to present the photos in ways that are comfortable and rational. I am scrapping the photosbyjonkatz.com  site and we are moving many of the photographs to a new site coming up soon on the Farm Journal page. If you look up, you see a photo of a Kinney Road barn. That will change and you will see different photos from my archive. If you click on the photos, you will be able to scroll back and see as many as you wish. And you won’t have to go off of the Farm Journal page. More details to come on that.
  I also want to make something clear. These photos are offered to anybody to use in any way they wish. You can use them as screensavers, print them and hang them up, or paint off of them. I want them to be open sourced, to move freely and easily through the world. That’s why I take them, in part. Some, a few, I will sell as fine art. You are welcome to use any that you wish.
 We are adding a “share” button so that you can e-mail any of the photos to friends or family members. Also, we will soon be dropping the subscription feature. It’s getting too big, and is too difficult to maintain, a victim to success, I guess. The site can be accessed here, and on Facebook and Twitter, but we won’t be able to automatically mail them out any longer. Just don’t have enough space and bandwidth for that.
  There are some other changes as well, but enough for now. I can’t say enough about the people at Mannix Marketing. Can’t recommend them highly enough for anybody who needs a site designed or maintained. When I looked for Web designers, many people told me I was crazy to venture out of New York City. They were wrong. I couldn’t have done better.
  I look forward to meeting with Chris, Toby and Collin. The coffee is good, the conversation is great, and they listen. They are also available round the clock, seven days a week. It is so nice to call somebody at 2 a.m. in a panic, and somebody is there.
  Blogs and websites are not really about technology, at least not for me. They are expressions of my life, my aspirations, my creativity. Like dogs, they are mirrors of my life, and the crew at Mannix understands that and helps me bring the site to life in ways that are meaningful to me, and hopefully, to you.
  I want the site to work for me, but I want it to continue to mean something to you as well. So we are working to make it simpler and more coherent and to reflect my work. We are working on a “Rose In A Storm” page, and the “Bedlam Farm for Kids” page as well, in connection with the children’s books, due out in 2011.

Lenore contemplates her life

  It is difficult, I think, to take the measure of one’s own life. We are too close, and rarely see ourselves clearly, or as others see us.
  We are bombarded by the pressures and expectations of other people, and by the demands of life – worrying about work, money, our loved ones, our health and well-being. More and more, I see in my world that the ability to change is a seminal measure of life. People who can change not only survive, but can take a shot at meaningful lives. People who won’t change, can’t change, or think they can’t often seem mired to me. To do what one loves often requires both change and risk.
 On the book tour, I met a man who lived in a poor Midwestern town who has seen factory after factory close, his friends and neighbors unemployed and discouraged. He packed his family up in their mini-van, drove to Charlotte, North Carolina, and got a job. “I just woke up one morning and said I had to get moving for things to change. So we’ll see.” I was impressed. He was 59 years old.
  I met an owner of a restaurant who decided that every entree was now going to cost only $12, no matter what it was or previously cost. His business is up 40 per cent from last year. I know a writer who abandoned his literary novel and wrote a book on how to cope with the new real estate market, and just signed a three-book deal with a New York publisher. “I’ll get to the novel later,” he said. “I just want to be a writer.”
  I don’t know how all of these stories will turn out, and it’s dangerous to draw too much meaning from any of them. I have changed my own life, quite radically, and quite often, in part because I want to keep doing what I love, and I know that requires me to change. To get a farm. To sell a farm. To have animals. To not. To write memoirs. To stop writing memoirs. To take photos and build a blog. To write fiction. To write children’s books.
  I’ve seen Maria change, and she is also living her life, and loving it. For both of us, change was often painful, and quite frightening. It is one of the things that joins us.
  For a long time, I changed because I didn’t know any better, and it was a way to hide. Now, I change because I no longer need to hide, and I do know better. As with the people I’ve met, I have no idea how it will turn out. There are no guarantees.
  Change is a difficult thing to do. It is also an important thing.
  It always gives me hope, and moves me forward.

 Rose’s “House” in the Adirondacks.

  October 28, 2009 – Cold, rainy, gloomy. Spent the day driving through the Adirondack Park, looking for sites for my next novel, “Rose Running,” which is mostly set in a poor, remote Adirondack town, of which there are many. The story calls for Rose to find an abandoned home in the Adirondacks, and hide out there, seeking what shelter she can from predators and hostile elements.
  I’m going back up this weekend, to look for more spots to set the story. I hope to rent a house for a month or so in December/January, when much of the Adirondacks are abandoned and snowbound. I found some towns that are deliciously eerie, heavily forested and largely void of people. It’s a great setting for a book. Going to watch the Yankees thump the Phillies.

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  For those who asked, my recipe for Turkey Glop, which I made tonight for Maria and I: ground turkey, simmered in a pan with ketchup and various spices (my secret) and chopped onions, red peppers, a bit garlic, cooked for 20 or more minutes on medium heat. This is a great winter meal – warm, healthy, filling. I also cooked up some hominy beans, which were tasty. And some grapes. And tea.