It is November, a gray, misty, cold time of year, the last bridge between color and light and winter. November is an in-between month, nor yet Winter, no longer Fall. The mornings are misty, muddy, dank. If the animals notice, they don’t show it. I come out every morning, looking for the sun. It chuckles at me.
I walked the dogs this afternoon along the road near the farm. Red continued to teach me how to pause and finish my walk and work through the angina. It is not hard once you get the hang of it. I love this perspective, the farm is nestled by trees in the afternoon sun, I love the wide open feel of our home, and the hills and countryside that surround it.
Our little farm is a jewel, and it always glows for me.
Maria has had a long-running conflict with hair cutters, she says she wants her hair cut short, but most of the hair cutters seem to not want to cut it. The other morning, she came upstairs to the bedroom to yell at me to get up and then, abruptly, she came at me with a pair of scissors, which got me up in a hurry. Maria is half Sicilian, something often overlooked underneath her seemingly gentle and genial nature. The other half is German.
“I’m tired of this hair,” she said, frustrated, and waving the scissors around. “I’d like it cut shorter!” Gently, I got the scissors away from her – just step away from the dresser, ma’am – and she asked me if I would cut it. This shocked me, as I have never cut anyone’s hair in my life.
I come from a world where you hire people to mow your lawn, take the garbage away and cut your hair. Middle-class Jews did not cut their own hair, for reasons that were never clear to me. I mean never. As I have lost much of my hair, I suppose Maria would trim mine in seconds, but I never thought to ask.
Maria is impulsive, and impatient. Almost anything can come out of her mouth at any given time, from meditations on the sex lives of trees, to bizarre dreams with flying dragons and bullying men. She will often wake up from a dream in which I did something dreadful and not speak to me for a day or two, as I try to explain the difference between dreams and reality.
So I took the scissors seriously, and once I was in control of them, I wondered if I should try to cut her hair. She has so often been seething at willful hair cutters that I thought it was risky. But then, I love nothing more than to do things I have never done before, as long as they do not involve riding on horses or going on roller coasters. I am proud of not doing those things and hope to get through a lifetime avoiding them.
So I trimmed her hair, holding it out between two fingers as I have so often seen barbers and beauticians do, snipped it across the bottom evenly and also trimmed loose ends on either end. The secret to Maria’s hair, I thought, was for it to hug her head, and not stick out from the bottom. So I cut it that way.
To my amazement, she loved it and so did I. We both thought it was the perfect cut for her, and she said I got the look she wanted when so many others did not. I debuted this look in a video we posted this morning about her Tote Bags. I circled her head and bragged about my first haircut.
I am proud of myself. Not only did I not get stabbed with the scissors, I actually cut someone’s hair. And it looked good!
I have no idea where this will lead, but I offered to cut Maria’s hair regularly, and she may, in fact, cut mine, although she has the easier end of the deal by far. We are even exploring hair clippers. I can maybe set up a booth in front of the farm. I think I’ll call the new business “Jon’s Shear Secrets.”
We found a huge saw upstairs in the barn a few weeks ago, and we decided it had to go to Ed Gulley, who has barns full of industrial farming equipment. He was all dressed up when he came over.
I call Ed’s fascinating farm exhibit – it fills three barns – the Ed Gulley Memorial Museum. Ed asked me why “memorial?”, and i said it was because nobody would ever name a museum after him when he was gone.
He better take his shot now, I said, and he guffawed and agreed. Maria thinks Ed and I were twins separated at birth, I can see it.
Ed also explained to us that this big old saw was an “ice saw,” that many of the old farms had ponds so that the farmers could harvest the ice in the winter and use it all year. The ice, he said, was about four feet deep the farmers would punch a hole in the ice with an ax and then start sawing.
They would pull the ice out with giant tongs, cover the ice with saw dust and it would keep almost all of the year. That explains the shallow pond behind the farmhouse. I can only imagine the work it took to get that ice out of the pond and into the barn or the farmhouse cellar.
Ed has a vast and well organized collection of farm tools and implements, he really ought to open a museum. He has more than enough fascinating stuff to fill one.
And he knows the story of each piece of equipment that he has. He is a master folklorist and a born story teller. Ed is the real deal.
He and Carol came by to look at Griselle, the ewe we think might be pregnant. He says it looks like she was pregnant, but dropped the baby some time ago. Sounds right to me. We’ll know soon enough.
We are happy the big saw has a fine home to go to, there is no better place on earth for it than Ed’s Memorial Farm Museum.
You can get Ed’s stories and ideas on his very popular blog, the Bejosh Farm Journal.
My own idea for growing, learning and peace during sometimes uncertain times is to focus on the refugee children coming to America and their families. This week, this idea took for me, and for Maria. We have joined a group of volunteers working in this area to help the children of refugees by providing them with Welcome Bags when they arrive in America shortly.
The Capital Region Refugee Roundtable, an offshoot of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, asked for help in raising $1,500 to purchase 200 Welcome Bags. So many donations came in quickly that the group upped their crowdsourcing goal to $2,500 and they are only $90 away from that as of this writing.
I’m certain that by the time I finished writing this, they will be over the top. This is a great start, it will be felt all over the country.
My involvement is personal, not political.I don’t think the world is coming to an end, or that our democracy is in ruins. I am not interested in argument or accusation, or in denigrating anyone. We all follow our individual conscience, this where mine is taking me.
I do think it is important that we honor Emma Lazarus and her great work and continue to be a haven for the tired, the poor and the oppressed. That goes to the heart of what our country is about. I want to tell the truth about these people. To me, diversity is not our weakness, it is our strength.
I am the descendant of immigrants who owe their lives to America’s generosity and openness. I am hoping to repay this great debt to America and it’s founding ideals of liberty and justice for all.
I have been researching the story of the immigrants coming to America from war-torn regions and discovering that most, by every honest account, are women and children, the victims of great suffering.
They and their traumatized children are no threat to us and our work, they have done us no harm, committed no terrorist acts, and are thoroughly vetted in a process that takes years. They are not taking our jobs away, immigrants have always been among the hardest working Americans.
I want to meet some and write about their truth in the hopes that honest and good people will make up their own minds about immigration and what it means to be an American.
This is about justice and liberty, not pandering to dangerous stereotypes. I speak for no one but myself. People can make up their own minds, I trust in that. I am deeply touched by the outpouring of support my blog posts – and other people’s work about the children – have generated.
I am surely not alone in this.
We are enlisting in an Army Of Good and in supporting these refugee children, we are helping to build a Wall Of Love and support around them that will help sustain them during their difficult days ahead as they adjust to our country.
The Welcome Bags will include toys, games, socks, art supplies, stuffed animals, hats, gloves, toothpaste, deodorant, comfort blankets. You can contribute directly to the crowdsourcing page on fundabilities.com or you can mail your donation to Anne O’Brien Carelli, 17 Reid Place, Delmar, N.Y., 12054.
You can contribute in any amount you wish. Some stats: it costs $52 to by two cases of winter hats; $66 to buy 100 hackey sacks; $100 to buy 100 pairs of socks; $24 for 100 coloring books; $60 for 100 wildlife puzzles; $40 for 200 boxes of crayons; $115 for 150 foam sports balls; $75 for 100 water-color paint sets.
Every dollar will go to these children.
The refugee children will need all the help we can offer them, even if the group meets its Welcome Bag goal. I am soon to meet the refugee family that Maria and I will be helping, I will follow their journey to America and I will tell the truth about them in words and photos.
Thanks so much, you are all a light unto the world. Don’t believe their news. People do good when given the chance.
