The scions of culture have it that you are not a writer, not an artist, not a photographer unless they saw you are, unless you have glowing reviews, are pursued by gallery owners and publishers, agonize alone on your mountaintop with your tormented gifts. I don’t see the world that way. You are a writer or a photographer or an artist if you think you are, feel you are, say you are, there is no one in the world who can tell you what you are. That is a gift no one can take from you. When I began taking photographs – I am not into lessons or workshops, into people telling me how to think – a brilliant photographer who was dying at the time, sent me e-mails every day about my photos. You can take a beautiful photo of anything, he said, it isn’t what the camera sees it’s what you see.

Again and again I have felt and seen the power of this good advice. Maria went into the barn this morning to shovel it out, as we do together every morning but I can’t go into the sun while I am on my antibiotics for Lyme Disease, so I hung back and saw this beautiful image. Can a picture of manure being shoveled out into a field be beautiful. I think so, it was too me, you can judge for yourself, I thank this good man for his wonderful advice every day and I pass it along. I do not like advice and I do not tell other people how to think and what to do. The creative spark is sacred to me and it is so easily snuffed out by thoughtless and angry and fearful people.