Day: January 26, 2015

In the last few years, the corporate behemoth has gobbled up our weather, just as they have devoured Christmas and Thanksgiving and turned our most cherished holidays into discount shopping sprees. it is my role to understand life, not to judge it,  but if you have a farm with  animals, you have to pay attention to the weather. Other lives than yours depend on it.

Big storms make me nervous, because animals can suffer helplessly if their humans are not prepared, and in my life here, I have been caught unprepared in storms that nearly took my life. I was struck by the role of the Weatherman (and women) in our culture, they have, of course, been tragically corrupted by their new corporate masters, they are more visible, more influential and much more programmed than ever before. I heard from a lot of them today, I thought their place in our culture is disturbing and compelling. And important.

Climate change is a serious business, and so are the new Superstorms  and environmental crises now regularly threatening our cities and many parts of the country – storms, floods, droughts, wildfires. In a sense the Weathermen are our connection to Mother Earth, they shape our view of the world and it’s environment, they are important. How sad to see them turn into the weather world’s local news anchorpeople, shouting hysterically, peddling fear and hysteria, sending mixed messages, turning the very environment into a dangerous and fearful thing.

Instead of explaining our world, they simply present it as another animated monster threatening us and our lives.

When the Superstorm strikes – in my town we now call this news Weather Panic – we are given perhaps our greatest opportunity to help many millions of people understand how the earth is bleeding and needs our attention. Mostly, the message we get is “be afraid. You better pay attention to us every minute because your life and your family’s life depends on it.” If you pay attention to the news, or to movies or publishing, you may recognize the corporate ethos: frighten them enough, and they will pay anything to listen.

I was struck watching the morning news shows. The anchors and weather people could hardly stop chuckling and giggling for a moment, even as they assured their viewers that a terrible catastrophe the likes of which had never been seen was bearing on us. On the Today Show, the anchors were convulsed over the idea that so many mothers would be rushing to the grocery store, only to find the shelves empty. On show after show, I saw nearly hysterical Weatherman, enthusiastically spouting warnings and topping one another in the grimmest superlatives. Wait until tomorrow, wait until 4 a.m., you haven’t seen anything yet, this is one for the ages.

What, I wondered, was the point of this? But I knew, of course. Corporate marketers understand that people are drawn to fear and danger, they are led to believe they can protect themselves by injecting it into their veins. They become addicted to troubling news, never to good news. There is big money in bad news.

But for millions of people, the very earth they live in becomes the enemy, a danger, not something to love and care for.

The rhetoric about the new storm, which the weather channel inexplicably named “Juno,” was simply outrageous. The storm was “historic,” “shatttering,” “threatening”, a giant “bomb”,”deadly,”  “unprecedented.” Even though it was clear by evening the storm would not break previous storm records, it was described as an event that would be dangerous and  horrific beyond imagination.

It is, of course, important to warn people about storms, if you read the old Farm Journals, there are so many accounts of families and children and animals killed in storms they did not know were coming, it is technological boon to be warned in time. It is a technological nightmare to have our understanding of climate, environment and weather co-opted by bubbleheads and hysterics and corporate marketers whose primary function seems to be to titillate and frighten, not educate or inform.

I am lucky to live where I live, the farmers here have a good bead on perspective. They know quite well that the climate is changing, and they know storms can be dangerous. They also know better than to use the language of Apocalypse to scare the wits out people.  It snows in the winter, and sometimes gets very cold. That is a part of life. The Weather might help us out, they might point out that there are things we can do, if we can take our heads of the sand, to try and save the planet and reverse the horrific and man-made pollution that most scientists believe is response for these storms and destructive weather events. I didn’t hear that in any of the breathless accounts of the onrushing storm.

Rather than simply be frightened into stampeding the market for milk, or rushing out to buy batteries, perhaps we could try and save Mother Earth for ourselves and our children. We do not need these Weathermen to tell us which way the wind blows, they don’t seem to have a clue.

I enjoyed working with David Snider, an experienced theater director and manager, and with the Hubbard Hall actors who were reading my play aloud Monday night. All writers are egotists at heart, and so are all actors, I imagine. We understood one another right away, I think and I loved the way they threw their ideas about my play around, it was a kind of living editing and collaborative that book writers do not get to experience very often. I could feel my play – “Last Day At Maple View Farm” come to life, shed it’s excess fat, lose some of it’s wordiness, find it’s focus, chuck it’s occasional preachiness.

When the first night of readings was done, David Snider (the executive director on the left) and I looked at one other, we both had that gleam of a good creative experience, there is not too much like it. Tonight, I sent David two additions to the play, to help lighten up one part that seemed too heavy to both of us. Each time the play is read aloud, it takes form, evolves, right up to the last minute. Writers and playwrights are notoriously grumpy and difficult about seeing their words cut, I have never felt that way, editing has always improved my work, without feedback there is stasis, you cannot grow and learn.

I like this photo, it captured the intensity of the experience. My play will be shown along with other works, at Hubbard Hall’s Winter Festival Of New York, a showcase for new works. “Last Day At Maple View Farm” is performed as a staged reading, not a full production.

It is a colder winter than we expected, we are burning through our firewood at a pretty good clip. Mostly, we heat the house with our two wood stoves, and if we keep both of them burning through much of the day, our small farmhouse stays warm. We love wood heat, it is even and comfortable. We are saving a lot of money on heating oil, but we have already gone through four cords of firewood, we will run out in a few weeks. (Tyler has a new stacking job).

I called Greg Burch, who has been cutting wood all of his life, he came by with the first of two loads. It isn’t seasoned wood, if the sun ever comes out, we want to leave it outside for awhile, I imagine we have about a month of firewood left. We’ll see. Next year, we’ll order seven or eight cords. I appreciate the cycle of life and chores on a small farm, it is the structure and foundation of life and seasons.

Bridget O’Hearn is a powerful force in my town, but she can’t mess with Mother Nature. Demolition Day – the day the town knocks down the toppling building (second from right) that has been threatening her pharmacy (far right) for some time has been postponed, so has the celebration Bridget has been planning for so long. Hopefully, it will just be one day.

The storm that is supposed to eat New England tomorrow caused the demolition company to postpone knocking down the offending building until Wednesday, rather than tomorrow, as was initially planned. The demolition is a Godsend to the town’s old men, the whole saga is the Super Bowl for them, they follow every twist and turn. For months, the building, abandoned for years, has been threatening O’Hearn’s, the town’s much loved independent pharmacy.

For those of us who live here, and for so many of you who do not, Bridget’s pharmacy has become a symbol of the individual struggling to survive in the Corporate Nation, where small business everywhere have been swallowed up by chains and box stores. With them goes the sense of community and personal connection that often is part of dealing with a small business. It is a wonderful thing to be known.

I can only imagine Bridget’s frustration, her associate Margaret look frazzled today when I went in to buy some fish oil. “No,” said Margaret, “those are not the kind you usually get.” She was right, of course. The town has a love affair with Bridget, they crawl over barricades, wait in line, hang in there with he. She is almost there.

Up here, we call it “Weather Panic.” Anyone who lives on a farm knows quite well that climate change is very real, we see, feel and live it every day, only a Washington politician could look in a camera with a straight face and deny it. But there are different ideas about how to deal with it. Up here in upstate New York, we know how to handle lots of snow, but Weather Panic is something new.

In our hype-driven, warning weary world, there is a fine line between acknowledging our new environment and responding to it primarily with panic.

I went online this morning to see what the weather reports were saying and I realized that I was poorly prepared to deal with this monster storm, this storm of the century, this historic, booming, weather-bombing,  life-shattering weather event. Watching the mayor of New York appear somberly on TV, I realized I wasn’t dressed properly. I don’t have a parka that says “Bedlam Farm Poobah,” I don’t have a windbreaker that says “Emergency.”

I wondered why Mayor deBlasio needs a windbreaker to stand inside of City Hall holding a press conference? Are the windows open? Is he heading out to shovel snow? If so, he needs a better, warmer, emergency jacket. I know this is grave, unprecedented, shattering, they have been telling me for hours. I wonder if they will ever get around to wondering what we might do about it, other than cover their behinds?

Until about 10 years ago, the government handled weather forecasts, they just told us how much it was going to rain or snow.

Now, highly profitable weather cable channels are packaging the weather, this story has been named “JUNO,” a robust and vaguely menacing event. Ad rates shoot up when a Superstorm approaches, people get nervous, traffic to weather websites soars. We can choose from a dozen different computer projections of the track of the storm, and I knew we might be in trouble when a group of blog readers in Iowa decided to pray for Maria and I last night, asking God to get us through the next day or so.

I remember my farmer friend in Hebron coming by one day and telling me that he never knew winter was so dangerous until his wife bought him a TV. When he was a kid, his father would go to the general store and come back with the news that it would snow a lot the next day. Nobody got too excited about it.

Still, I have a responsibility. I mean to get my hands on a windbreaker today, maybe Maria can stencil “Emergency” on it. I will go out to the Pole Barn and address the donkeys and the sheep, I will urge them to take the storm seriously, high winds and much snow. Stay under shelter, do not wander around the pasture, stay inside if possible, if not, good luck, I will say “do not underestimate this storm.”

I want to make it clear that I am not a denier of anything, I take big storms very seriously, Maria will testify that I fret for hours about where the shovels are, how we will get food and water to the animals if the power goes out, whether or not we have enough food. She is more of the Willa Cather prairie school – get up in the morning, see how much snow there is and get the shovels out.

The world is changing, the climate is changing, but what hypocrites we are, us humans. We ignore Mother Earth, we deny the awful wounds we have inflicted on her, we want to pretend nothing is changing, but in the meantime, be terrified of the weather, panic at the Northeaster. There message to us is this: there is nothing you can do about it but be afraid, and maybe boost the Weather Channel’s revenues by watching it obsessively all day. Everything is okay as long as someone can make some money off of it. Those are not good choices for me.

Here at Bedlam Farm, my message to the animals and the people praying for us in Iowa is this: Lets not be afraid, perhaps we can try something else like loving the earth we and our animals live on and helping her to heal. I suspect when all is done, our civilization will be intact on Wednesday evening, there will be lots of snow on the ground but life will look pretty much the same as it does today. Here at the farm, we have a good working dog, soup in pans, water in the bathtub, food in the pantry, firewood in the sheep, good bread and peanut butter. Emergency Preparedness.

The storm may be bad enough, the panic may turn out to be worse.