Day: March 29, 2014

The Crazy Artists Club had its second meeting Saturday at the Round House Cafe, George Forss and Donna Wynbrandt joined Maria and I, we were all reveling in the first reasonably warm day of the year, it was over 45 degrees, mud season arrived with a vengeance, the farm is a bog but much of the ice is finally melting.

I love taking pictures of Donna and George, theirs is a love story, pure and enduring. Donna told me about their first date, arranged by a minister who brought Donna to George’s house and told her he was a nice man but he didn’t have the usual “middle-class values.” Their first date was at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens and they have been together ever since. Admission was free then, Donna said, which is probably why George took her there.
Donna said George has changed since she first met him, he is more sensible, she said. Wow, I said, I would love to have seen him before.

One of the things I love about my life on this farm is that I see something every day that I have rarely seen before or  that simply causes me to stop and smile. Because I am a photographer, I can sometimes capture the momenta and share it. This morning is one of those times, I was getting into the car to go teach my class and I looked up and started, I saw the gray hen riding along one the back of one of the Border Leicesters, as if she were riding a taxi to the barn.

She looked right at home up there. I’ve seen our hens ride on the donkeys before, picking the ticks and debris off of their backs, I odn’t think I’ve seen them ride around on the sheep. It was a nice sight.

At the Round House Cafe, life happens every day. I think there is something mystical about it.

This week, a carpenter and a healer met at the Round House and decided to think about living together.

The artist Donna Wynbrandt and I continued our creative dialogue; she drew my hand on the camera shutter, I took a photo of her with George Forss, her partner and lover.

Maria met with her creative group, three women who support each other.

A high school student brought her clarinet and performed in public for the first time. I told her she had done well,

and she said, “oh, really, I thought I would puke.”

A good friend of mine decided to buy a truck and a trailer and take his wife across the country on a long trip, they would just head out for two months.

A deputy sheriff talked to his father and decided to apply to the New York State Police.

The cafe owner sang a song to his friends and customer.

I invited a man there to have lunch with me, and we became good friends.

A group of widows met on Thursday, as they do every Thursday, to talk about the men they loved and miss.

A woman came up and said she didn’t want to bother me, but she moved upstate because of my book “Running To The Mountain,” and she wanted to thank me.

I think the Round House Cafe is a mystical place.