Day: June 14, 2014

When I first moved into the other Bedlam Farm, flush with movie deal money and many delusions about life and responsibility, I poured more than $100,000 into farmhouse repairs, more on the barns outside. This was a lesson in hubris, in the two years Bedlam Farm was on the market, no one offered to buy it and mostly people squawked about taxes and wallpaper. People said they didn’t want a lot of barns. So we pulled it off the market and rented it out.  If the browsers noticed all of the improvements, they didn’t say. In our new farm, things proceed more slowly and deliberately.

Our 1840 farmhouse is solid as a rock, but there is a lot of work to be done inside, we are moving very slowly, one project at a time. Our friend Ben Osterhaudt moved on to bigger things, we have a wonderful new carpenter and restorer named Jonathan Bridge, he is a geologist by training, he quite (he does sing and whistle) and easy to work with. We discovered a few months ago that the tiles in the old shower were beginning to disintegrate and fall down into the tub. The wood behind the tiles was getting a lot of moisture, Jay came in this week and took the tiles off – we have chosen some pretty new ones. Our bathroom is operational, just shrouded in plastic.

Jay returns on Monday.

We are getting there.

The most remarkable thing about animals to me is their adaptability, their drive to live, they do not get caught up in the emotional struggles of life the way people do. Before Maria and I went away, she and her brother Jake were inseparable. Now she and Pumpkin, Sock’s lamb, are inseparable. Debbie is already a beautiful ewe, her coat is coming in, she is strong and healthy. She and Ma have moved on, they are not looking for Jake, I think life has become easier for Ma.

Whenever we look into the pasture, Deb is with Pumpkin, they are a fun couple. We are thinking of giving the sheep to a farmer sometime later this year. Life is about change and adaptation for us, too, the lambing experience has helped Maria and I both to see that we want to focus on the work we love – we have a lot of it to. We will always have animals, but we do not need to have sheep.

Many of you have wondered about Red, and that is a good and interesting question. Red is more than eight years old, and he has a full and engaging life. He does therapy work with veterans and others, and I would like to expand that work, he has a special gift for it. Red also is my right arm and shadow, he goes everywhere I go, his life is busy and full. I can also take him to sheep farms that are nearby to give him work to do.

Red will be fine. We see that we need some rebirth and renewal if we are to keep the creative focus in our lives. We have some big decisions to make, including the sheep. But I think we both know what is central to us, and that is how have to keep focusing and re-focusing are lives. We will never get there, it will never be done, but we get closer all the time.

George has kept me abreast of each photo that he has chosen for his new book ‘The Way We Were,” scheduled for publication this October (he will be selling it at the Bedlam Farm Open House On Columbus Day Weekend). The book project, funded by George’s wildly successful Kickstarter Project, will be a collection of 73 photos taken by George before 911. The book captures a time and place in New York City, and the world before the world changed.

This photo shows the John Lennon Memorial constructed in Central Park, across the street from the apartment complex where Lennon was shot and killed.

George’s urban landscapes of New York City  became  famous all of the world, after 911 he moved upstate – his world changed too –  to the town where I now live, opened an art gallery and continued his photography. He will be at Bedlam Farm this coming weekend and will be available to do portraits of people coming to the first 2014 Open House, Saturday and Sunday.

George’s stunning exposures and his darkroom and processing work drew praise from all over the world, including Ansel Adams, whose printing techniques George has studied and uses. George is a photographic genius, and I am happy to have a disc of the photos in his upcoming book. He has asked me to do an introduction and I am thrilled to do it. I’ll post some of the photos from time to time. The photographer Gordon Parks write that George’s life is a testament to the fact that genius will triumph against all odds. You can learn more about George and talk to to him on his compelling blog.