Our new Romney Izzy went off to the shearer today, Jay Bridge (and Maria) picked her up and put her in Jay’s truck, they went off to his farm, where his sheep are being shorn today. Red did his usual stellar job pushing Izzy into the small stall so Jay could grab her and get her to his truck. Red is worth his weight in gold. We put Fate in the back area where she shrieked and screamed.
Izzy will be back in a day or so, a light lighter and more comfortable. We are still talking about the other Romney, a white ewe, but the people who have her say they have not been able to catch her over the past two days. They know where she is, but not reachable.
They are asking if Red and I can come and round her up, they say she is a bit of a mess. We’ll be glad to go help round her up, she also needs to be shorn and cleaned up, especially in this heat.
After a fierce bit short thunderstorm, the sky opened up and a strong beam of sunlight lit up the farm down the road, and began racing towards our farm. I had the IR camera and hopes it could catch the feeling of the big and dramatic sky. I think it did.
This morning, Fate and Red teamed up to help Maria move the sheep out of the pasture and into the Pole Barn. Our friend Jay Bridge is coming to pick up Izzy and take her to his farm, where his larger herd is being shorn. Fate and Red actually make a good team, she rides shotgun, Red moves the sheep.
If Red couldn’t work for any reason, though, I think we’d be in the market for another sheepdog. Red is invaluable. Later, he’ll get Izzy into a stall where she can be easily rounded up for transport.
Ace Noble is a hardware store in my town, a big company that took over the struggling store and made it sizzle, even in our small town. Brian Carroll is the manager, and to me, he symbolizes the idea that even though chains and corporations can be impersonal and disconnected from people, they can also be very personal, welcoming and connected to their communities.
For me,the hardware store is Brian’s world. That’s what I call it.
Trained as an anthropologist, life has taken Brian on different twists and turns and led him to the hardware store. I don’t know how many times I have come running or whining to Brian for help – the lawn mower won’t start, I can’t unscrew the nozzle from the hose, I need a new latch for the gate, I can’t put the new fan together, the bathroom door just fell off.
Brian has the gift of seeming to be grateful for every request for help, as if he is waiting for you to come through the door. I tried to buy an axe to chop wood at the hardware store, he told me wouldn’t sell it to me unless Maria said it was okay. He seems to knew where every screw, bolt and told is.
You can ask him the dumbest questions – and i do – and he listens carefully and explains it mercifully, as if I couldn’t possibly be expected to know how to turn a screw to the right. Okay, I am mechanically challenged.
Community is about being known and accepted, for better or worse. There are people here who like me and people who don’t, but there is no one I’ve yet met who can’t accept me. That has not always been the case for me.
Brian guided me into the strange world of my new grill, which I new use regularly, just like any outdoor guy. He laughs at me often, as Maria does, but never makes me feel dumb or small. And he is always happy to let me return any of the stupid and incorrect things I invariably buy.
I wanted to do a portrait of Brian because he is one of those people who makes a small town like mine work, and who grasps the power of community, even in a corporate chain with a monopoly – rarely a good thing for community in a small town. He keeps a jar of biscuits by the counter for Fate and Red, and hugs customers who are having a rough time.
He spends much of the day wandering the long aisles of the crammed hardware store, answering questions, quiding people, giving them tips. I wanted to catch him in the paint aisle.
My wife knows her way around a hardware store, she stomps up and down the aisles like any contractor would, looking by herself for the right screw. She never asks for help. I can’t find the lawnmowers without help.
I am not one of those men who are at home in hardware stores, for me it is like being dropped on Mars with aisles. I don’t know where anything is, what anything is, or what anything does. Brian and his staff have made me feel somehow at home in this alien word.
Brian is almost pained when I don’t bring the dogs in. Perhaps the key to community is in finding people who love people and letting them love and serve people. My curator has to approve all the photos, but I’m happy to include a portrait of Brian in my portrait show. “People Of Cambridge.” I’ll call it “Brian’s World.”
