Month: January 2016

Maria had another restoration attack this weekend, she decided it’s time to brighten up our dining room, the darkest room in the farmhouse, the one that gets the least amount of direct sunlight. She painting the lower panel of the walls a salmon color, and the ceiling a brighter color called “Turquoise Twist.”

She had the mad and obsessed look in her eye that she gets when she fixates on a project and we rushed to the hardware store to mix and buy the paint, Brian there knows the drill. She came home, cleared off the table, threw up tarps and plastic covers over everything and went to work.

I retreated to my study to write, my standing on table days with a paint brush are over, she says. I know better than to meddle. Updates to come. This one won’t take long.

Ed Gulley, a friend and dairy farmer joined the writing class last week, he wants to start his own blog and capture the life of the farmer, an endangered species without much voice.

Ed has a lot of voice, he is a natural writer and story-teller, a great boon to the class.  He wrote a short piece about his very tough and sharp-tongued and demanding father, also a farmer, a man he struggled to love until later in life. Of his father he wrote, “one could say looking back, these well placed words carried immense reason and power, as even today they echo throughout my days as if scripted in a movie.”

When he smashed some fingers with a hammer, all his father said was “it’s a long way from your heart.” He said his father taught him how to endure pain and to work hard every day.

In  his early teenage years, Ed wrote in his piece, “when I was a half-foot taller and 60 lbs heavier than my Dad, as I was struggling to lift something or loosen a bolt on a piece of equipment he could come and accomplish it with ease.”

His father told him “I’m a tuff son-er-bitch I be, I got a double row of tits, one on each side.”

To his surprise, Ed finds himself quoting some of those same old catchphrases to his own kids. “I’d say a farm amount of those seeds grew.” I think it’s going to be a sweet blog.

Ed and Red have bonded, Ed is a mush for dogs.

Dr. Jen Baker-Porazinski is a doctor, a family practitioner in Washington County, New York. She is also a student in my writing class, which met this morning, and she has turned to writing to help her sort out her intense and complex feelings about practicing health care in America. Her writing is clear, powerful,  and revealing.

She first came into my writing class several years ago, when she was wondering if she could write about medicine from a frustrated doctor’s point of view. She no longer wonders, she is writing and writing.

When she writes about healing, you get the feeling that if she were designing our health care system, it would have great meaning and compassion and connection, as most doctors intend when they enter a system that everyone knows is out of control and pleasing to almost no one.

Jen sees more than 20 patients a day, she has little time to spend with any of them, she is practices conventional medicine, and is also exploring alternative medicine. She is kind and intuitive and committed her patients, she wishes she could make them happier and healthier and spent more time with them. She is also struggling to be the kind of doctor she always wanted to be in a system that seems sometimes to serve  no one but insurance companies and pharmaceuticals.

Jen is chronicling her journey through through the world of medicine through the eyes of a caring and loving physician.  It is mesmerizing.

All of us in the class are in awe of the work she is doing, and are offering the best insights and encouragement that we can. Jen is a listener and a learner, doctors are often accused of arrogance and detachment, Jen is never arrogant and connects very easily with people. She listens and learns.

I hope her writing turns into a book, I think everyone who brushes against the health care system – patients and doctors – would benefit from it, and I am grateful Jen has come into my class and is so committed to her very powerful writing. Doctors are human beings, too, very much so. It’s easy to forget that on the other side of the white coat.

I know she is a fine doctor, she is a fine writer and wife and mother as well. She enriches our writing class.

The border collies sit like wolves on a hill, sometimes, the snow and wind and ice doesn’t bother them, they don’t seem to notice it. They keep watch on the sheep, they will sit there for hours, watching, waiting., until somethings moves and stirs them, or they are told to move. I love watching them like this, especially in a storm, they seem at home, at peace, fulfilling their purpose. I am always astonished when people wonder if working animals like to work.

Chloe does not care about snow or storms, she is strong and hardy, she rarely even goes into the pole barn for shelter, it is always open for her. When she sees Maria, she sticks her head out to give her a  kiss on the nose. She does the same thing for me, she is sweet and stubborn, just like her human.