10 April

In The Wind, A Creative Connection

by Jon Katz
Creative Spark. Connection

Usually I jump out of the car and Maria sketches while I run around dodging traffic and setting up the camera, but tonight, she was out of the car along with me, both of us drawn by the wind blowing in the sunset behind a truck, and I had my camera out and she had her video camera out and I was truck by the fact that the two of us were doing this odd thing and neither needed to explain it to the other. I caught the last of the sunlight falling in her, and it touched me, this moment out there on that windswept hill. More photos on my Facebook Page.

10 April

Rural Landscape: Oh Wind, That Sings So Loud A Song

by Jon Katz
A Wind That Sings So Loud A Song

Maria and I went to Glens Falls for dinner and to pick up some art supplies for her work, on the way back, we came across “The Flats” near Argyle, an open flat stretch of land where new homes, stark and very much alone, dot the landscape. There was a numbing, strong cold wind blowing across the flats and each of us jumped out of the car and saw our own opportunity: me, to capture the sense of isolation about this big new house in this vast and empty space, and Maria, getting a video of the wind blowing some plastic around a truck. We could barely stand up in this wind, and I dug out  the last verse of Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “The Wind:”

“Oh wind, a blowing all day long!

Oh wind, that sings so loud a song!

O you that are so strong and cold

O blower, are you young or old?

Are you a beast of field and tree

Or just a stronger child than me?

O wind, a blowing all day long

O wind, that sings so loud a song!”

10 April

Reinvention. Becca Addy’s Blog

by Jon Katz

 

Reinvention

For some time now, the Net has been a hive of individual expression, a miasma of blogs, sites, personal and commercial. There are all kinds of blogs. Blogs of contention. Political blogs. Blogs for very personal and creative expression. Some are difficult and  noxious, some are refreshing and inspiring. My favorite blogs are what I call sites of affirmation. These are blogs that express the process of rebirth and reinvention, that light the creative spark and allow it to work in words, drawings, photos and ideas. That are nourishing, uplifting. It is my goal for bedlamfarm.com to be such a blog, and I always looks for other blogs that seek the same thing.

Some blogs just get mired in arguments and lament, and these tend to wither and wane, authors and participants exhausted by more tiresome conflict. Others seem to just lift off, points of light and spirit that refresh the soul. I think BeccaAddy’s blog is such a blog, a chronicle, a digital memoir of a life reinvented, restored, reborn. Becca had some rough times, but this is not a story of her life’s struggles, but of her choice: she chose life.  Like me, Becca decided to turn away from a life of fear and anger and regret and change her story, and she has clearly done that. Come and see for yourself. I am happy to share becca addy’s blog.

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