Month: July 2013

I used to shun dealing with business, I thought it was inappropriate for an author, unseemly. I like it now, it is affirming and authentic. So Monday is the day for business. I thank you for subscribing to bedlamfarm.com. I have come to see the blog is a new form of living book for me, and I see that I need to be paid for my work, just like everyone else. You can subscribe to the blog for $ 3 a month, $5 a month, or $60 a year. The blog is not accepting donations or contributions, I am not a charity or worthy cause. For now, the blog will remain free to those who can’t pay for it. In a week or so, people will be able to subscribe using their credit cards as well as PayPal. I can’t handle contributions sent by check or mailed to me, too many bookkeeping and other issues.

These changes are important, they are also expensive, as is the blog’s maintenance and my photography. My photographs are free to you, and can be used in any way you wish – screen savers, files, printed copies. I don’t bookmark or copyright them.

Here’s where I see things going, as of now. Somewhere between six months and a year from now, free access to the blog will be limited – maybe to one day’s content, or one week’s, I’m not sure. To access the full content, people will need to subscribe. I will offer a way for people who are financially pressured to access the blog for free, still working on that. I would suggest that people only subscribe if they see the blog as useful, informative, entertaining or uplifting. It is payment for content used, and that only. This subscription is somewhat akin to what a newspaper or magazine used to be. Blogs are the new magazine, a new form of book.

Soon, a mobile/smart phone version of bedlamfarm.com will show up autoamatically on your phones and tablets, easier to navigate, larger buttons for small thumbs. By the end of the year, 50 per cent of the readers of this blog will be seeing it on smartphones. I will be increasing the frequency of the podcast, and will continue to support the Open Group At Bedlam Farm, a creative community, perhaps expand the idea to other focused creative groups. I have a lot of ideas for bedlamfarm.com, is evolving into the foundation and cornerstone of my work. I very much support the idea of writers and artists being paid for their work, not only for selfish reasons but because it is desperately important if art and writing is to prosper in the new world of digital publishing and culture. This is a way in which I buy local, support art and individuality, from Battenkill Books to me. You can do the same, we all see the world in different ways.

I am getting clear on this subscription business, it feels right to me, I am moving slowly but deliberately in this direction and will continue to be open with you about it, every step of the way. It is exciting, the new writing, I can see it clearly now. You can subscribe here. For several years I wondered every day about the future of writing, the future of me. It is just about here and I hope you will choose to be a part of it.

Maria was working at the food Co-Op in Cambridge today, I decided to take the dogs for a walk on the road this afternoon. I have been working hard with Frieda on this country road, getting her to walk alongside me off-leash. This would not have been possible a few years ago, Frieda was explosive, she would have taken off after deer, chipmunks, but I am going into my fifth year of training with her and we are still progressing, if slowly.

I am careful with Frieda off leash I don’t want to see her run off in the deep woods near us, there is so much trouble for her to get into, so many things to chase. I have her “heel” walk alongside my left leg, I do not let her stop and if she looks around I slap my leg, call her to “heel” praise her for moving with me. Walking with humans is a new idea for Frieda, her head is always swiveling away, when she looks away I bump her with my leg or body and force her attention back to me. She walked with me a quarter of a mile down this country road, she posed for me with the dogs off leash. We are always making progress with Frieda, one step at a time. We are getting there.

These book reviews are written in conjunction with Battenkill Books of Cambridge, N.Y. If you wish to purchase “This Is Paradise,” please consider buying it from Battenkill, my local bookstore, where I work as Recommender-In-Chief. You can call the store at 518 677-2515, visit their website or e-mail [email protected]. Amazon and corporate publishers are working to strangle independent bookstores. Think local, buy local. If you want bookstores to survive, consider buying your books here or at your local bookstore. We want to do business with humans, we want bookstores to survive.

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There are lots of wonderful things about “This Is Paradise,” a collection of wonderful and evocative short stories about Hawaii by Kristiana Kahakauwita, a native Hawaiian who studied writing at Princeton and now teaches in Washington state. It is surprising, beautifully written, original and even inexpensive (a $16 paperback from Hogarth.)

Kahakauwita brings us Hawaii from the perspective of the native people who live there, and who are being increasingly pressured and displaced by the kind of rampaging corporate development and greed that has laid waste so many once beautiful parts of America, especially the coastlines.

Hawaii advertises itself as paradise and so do the airlines and hotels that lure tourists there and drive property values so high that Hawaiians can’t live there anymore. This is a fresh view of paradise, disturbing and compelling, a pressured but still vibrant culture. In the opening story, a group of hotel maids go to the hotel bar to have some drinks and overhear Susan, a tourist, whispering to her brother: “Everyone talks about aloha here, but it’s like Hawaiians are all pissed off. They live in paradise. What is there to be so mad about?”

“We look at each other,” says Lani,” and we feel the heat rising in our faces. Our families are barely affording a life here, the land is being eaten away by developers, the old sugar companies still control water rights. Not only does paradise no longer belong to us, but we have to watch foreigners destroy it. We have plenty of aloha for someone who appreciates. We have none for a girl like this…” The story is told in the voices of  the women of Waikiki, they present a haunting portrait of life as it is actually lived out of sight of the big hotels.

This haunting opening – Susan, a Haole (white) meets a surprising fate – sets the tone for a mesmerizing look behind the polished face of paradise. Hawaii’s story is that of the many paradises in America, from Maine to Florida, San Diego to Seattle that have experienced the same fate in one form or another.

I loved the story of “Wainie,” a young and very tough woman who sacrifices love and peace of mind to follow in her murdered father’s footsteps as a victorious cock-fighter, it is  vivid and strikingly original. In another story, a young gay Hawaiian man returns to the island from San Francisco to be with his dying father and confront the family with the truth about his real identity.

Hawaii is a state that is far from the New York and Washington media concentrations that shape our so-called news. We hear little about it, know little about it. Many of the characters in this sweet and enchanting book speak the pidgin language still used by older Hawaii natives.

In its own distinctly different ways, all of the characters deal with identify – native or mainland, gay or straight, Hawaiian or American. Hawaii is a fractured world, paradise to the tourists who flock there, a constant struggle over money, values and culture for the people who used to live in this island world but who have literally been driven to the margins by growth and money. White people are not beloved, neither are the tourists the locals depend on. This is an honest exploration of the true life of modern Hawaii, from the the happy dancers and singers seen in movies and media reports, very different from the gauzy and romantic notions of tourist vacations.

The stories are filled with rich language, perceptive insights and heart-warming narratives. Love reigns here, and emotion. It is not a light book, but very much a triumph of story-telling and Kahakauwita has a brilliant ear for dialogue. It is entertaining, the debut of a powerful new literary voice I imagine.  It is a searing book, but not depressing, the stories are defiant and quite proud. They could only have been written, I think, by a native. I recommend it highly.

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If you are interested, please call Battenkill (518 677-2515) or your local independent bookstore.

Like many Jews, I’ve always had an uneasy relationship with Judaism. I don’t identify with Israel, I am not comfortable in Temple, I don’t know Hebrew, I find the holidays ritualistic and uncomfortable, I have never been at ease with rabbis. I became a Quaker when I was a teenager, and have, like so many Jews, drifted more towards a secular kind of Buddhist outlook than a conventional Jewish one. Still, I am Jewish, I am proud of that and it means a lot.

I was quite shocked to discover – while lying in bed with Maria browsing on an Ipad with her – that there were Jewish Pirates, I know it’s stereotypical, but I never heard of such a thing. There is even a book out about them called “Jewish Pirates Of The Caribbean,” by Edward Kritzler that describes swashbuckling Jewish Pirates, driven from Spain during the Inquisition, who roamed the Caribbean robbing the ships of the Catholic Empire, seeking money,  help for Jews seeking asylum and revenge on their tormentors, who killed and tortured hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Jews throughout Europe.

I confess to being delighted at this discovery, I don’t remember my grandmother ever talking about pirates when she urged me to be a doctor, lawyer or dentist when I was a child. I like to think I would have made a great pirate, although Maria laughs outright at the idea. Jews generally are delighted to make such discoveries, the Jewish identity is so linked to persecution and dislocation.

I mentioned this on Facebook and this triggered a hilarious outpouring of Jewish and Yiddish wisecracks. I wonder if they Jews on board argued their prey into surrender.  Apparently Christopher Columbus was Jewish – I didn’t know this – and the Jewish pirates played a key role in establishing some of the more raucous ports of the Caribbean, including Port Royal, the setting for the movie “Pirates Of The Caribbean.” I can only imagine the fun Woody Allen or Saturday Night Live might have lampooning a “Jews Of The Caribbean” movie. I’m getting the book. Next week is my birthday, August 9 and Maria and I are heading off to Vermont for a day and my new plan is to get a tattoo of the symbol above, the Star Of David with six inlaid skulls, there is room for it right above my “Maria” tattoo.

I think I will work on my swaggering.

Tomorrow, the next chapter for Red and me, for our lives together. I am going to meet with some veterans officials and some veterans to figure out how Red and I can help with our new therapy work. As I wrote earlier, I’ve decided that working with veterans, especially those recently returned from Afghanistan and Iraq, is where we can be the most effective hopefully.

I have been working at this, I have been talking to vets and their families about what they need, what a dog might do to help them, and there is almost universal agreement that a dog like Red can be helpful, valuable. I know to apply some of the lessons of the hospice work I did with Izzy. You are there to listen, not talk. It is not my job to slap people on the back, cheer them up. That is patronizing. I do not believe I know what they have been through, I do not have an inkling. I am there to listen, actively, to help in the ways that they choose or need.

The primary relationship will be between Red and the vets, not between me and them. I don’t have much to tell them, just a desire to help them open up and be more comfortable, if Red and I can. Red can do the talking, he can also do the listening.

In this work, I leave myself at the door, I am there to offer help. Animals can open people up, relax them, re-connect them to a sometimes alienated and suspicious world. I think the vets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan often have a brutal time, I hear this again and again from them and their parents. The war itself was vicious and murky, it was never clear who the enemy was, there is no common ground on what victory is, let alone whether it could be achieved, there were no safe bases, no safe places.

What can somebody like me offer someone who has been through that? Not much. But I can connect them to Red, he is a spirit dog, a guide. I hope he can help. Tomorrow, my first briefing, a visit to a veteran’s hospital, a meeting with some young and injured vets. I’ll report back. Red is, I believe, ready. We visited an Afghanistan vet over the weekend, just came into the house where he was living. He shook my hand, asked me some questions, ended up on the floor with Red. I could see the healing, it was physical in a way. Time to learn and listen.