Month: November 2016

Maria and I aren’t into the tortured artist writer thing, we think creativity is the opportunity to have fun and be fulfilled.

We are having fun, always trying new things, and this video is one of them.

While many people were spending money online discount shopping and looking for cool bargains, she made four quite amazing Tote-Bags, they are Maria at her best, the bags, made by an eco-friendly company in India, feature trees, goddesses, chickens, ponies, donkeys, cats in different ways.

It is no Cyber Monday or Black Friday here, it is just Rainy Tuesday. You can brighten up your day with some Bedlam Farm Tote-Bags, out of the fevered cauldron that is Maria Wulf’s wondrous and very unique brain.

Each one is different, custom made, signed by the artist.

They are really works that reflect her most inventive and mystical best, I don’t think anybody in your neighborhood will be walking around with one just like it, or anything like it.  I am by no means unbiased, but these are just wonderful. Like the potholders, they show us that good art can be useful and portable and inexpensive.

They are $48 plus shipping and I personally can’t imagine a better Christmas present or stocking stuffer, or gift for a friend or family member with some style. The Tote Bag of the Individual Free Spirit.

Maria is also offering four skeins of Bedlam farm yarn – two from the late ewe Deb. The buyer vanished, as sometimes happens,  and so they are for sale again, but will not be for long. Deb was much loved, here and in the world beyond. They are $20 apiece plus shipping. That is a bargain price.

What makes this “Special” sale special? We are having fun selling things in this new You Tube way, so far it has been very successful. Tote Bags sort of fly out of here, it is unusual to have four to sell.  If you wish to purchase any of these things, you can e-mail Maria at [email protected] or visit her website.

In the video, you can also see Fate, who pays close attention to everything Maria is doing, and you can also observe Maria’s new hair cut. It is the first haircut I have ever given anyone in my life, and I think I am not Maria’s stylist. I love doing things I have never done before. Come and see.

I’ve been walking in the woods and hills around me for more than 15 years now, it is a medication, exercise, creative and spiritual connect. A couple of weeks ago, I was diagnosed with Stable Angina, a sometimes painful and disruptive heart condition that occurs when the heart is not getting enough oxygenated blood when it is under strain, as in walking up a hill.

My heart is strong, my pulse is healthy, but I was upset by the idea that I could not walk any distance again, especially on hills and inclines. There are not a lot of straight roads around here, and that would be a  significant loss for me, and change in the way I live.

And I have to carry a small vial of nitroglycerin tablets to put under my tongue if the pain gets too severe. I have yet to use one, but I have felt pain when walking on hills and uphill trails. The doctor’s are vague, they say I can walk as far as I want, but where and how is up to me.

I have a tendency to overdue things in these kinds of situations, to walk far and long to prove that I can do it.  I can’t bear the thought that I can’t walk any longer, or that walking would be painful for me.You don’t always need to rush to the emergency room and have things implanted inside of you.

Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t. I might down the road, but I believe I can handle my angina comfortably now, and so does my doctor.

This walking thing was causing me some unease and some distress. I walked until I hurt, I didn’t stop frequently enough, so I was always hurting. Not good for the heart.  It’s okay to strain the heart, my doctor says, but not to torture it.

Red is my dog, he is a therapy dog, we work with veterans, dementia patients, residents in assisted care facilities and nursing homes. This week, I decided to see if  Red could be my therapy dog and help me to figure out just what i can do and can’t do.

I decided to work with Red, to use him as a guide and train him to help me stop and wait for me. Red is an astonishingly intuitive dog and I trust him. He knows every move I make before I make it.

Yesterday and today, he helped me to figure out how I can walk anywhere I want, and for as far while still protecting my heart and not being in pain. This was a remarkable experience for me – to be on the other end of therapy work – and I wanted to share it with you. It was very successful, it showed me that I can keep on walking if I just take a few precautions.

As you can see in the brief video, I decided to stop whenever I felt the pressure in my chest building. I didn’t wait for pain. On a mile-long walk up a nearby road, I stopped when I got to the steepest part of the incline, and waited a minute or so. I felt the pressure immediately recede. I had to stop two times before I got to the crest of the hill.

Red completely grasped what we were doing. Every few hundred yards, he would turn to me as if to ask if I wanted to stop, and I checked myself. Sometimes I did need to stop, sometimes I didn’t. I got to the top of the hill easily and comfortably – this had been giving me trouble over the past couple of weeks.

Red, who always runs ahead and sniffs carefully along the road, completely altered his habit, as I was altering mine. He kept a close eye on me, consciously or unconsciously causing me to walk vigorously, but to give my heart a rest when it needed one. At the top of the hill, I turned and walked all the way down without any discomfort at all.

Red kept an eye on me the whole way, I have no doubt he was sensing my heart and my breathing and reacting to it. I never claim to know what is inside a dog’s head, what a dog is thinking. But I appreciate that Red and I slipped into a new rhythm together that helped me discover a way to have angina and continue my walking, something I was despairing of and that is precious to me.

This was an important discovery for me. My heart, in most respects, is functioning very well. I can do almost everything I used to do. I just need to be more self aware. And to listen to Red when he turns to me, as he does in the video, to remind me of what I need to do. Listening to animals, talking to animals, there is so much benefit.

I think I know how to live with it now, sometimes you just have to figure these things out with your own body. And having a wonderful dog can really help.

Barn cats are independent and mystical creatures, sometimes they want to come in, sometimes they refuse to come in. They love hunting, and often slither out in the middle of the night, if they can get someone to open the doors. Yesterday, a cold and snowy day, they wanted to come in – they are never in the farmhouse from May to November.

They spotted Maria sitting across from the wood stove and reading, and they both cuddled up with her, and with one another.

It was a pretty cozy scene, all three of these strong women curled up together by a warm fire. Minnie and Flo are remarkably sensitive when in the farmhouse, they know where to go and where not to go. They are usually found within close range of a warm stove.

People ask me every day if we are expecting lambs from our Romney sheep, and the answer is, we don’t really know. Griselle, one of the Romney’s, has an udder that has dropped down, she spent a couple of months with an intact ram before coming to our farm.

Right now, we are not sure. In a few weeks, we’ll ask a large animal vet to come by, and he or she will perhaps do an ultra-sound. Right now, I’d say it’s 50-50. If Griselle is pregnant, you can bet the lamb will come when Maria goes to India in February. I’ve seen this movie before. If there is any news, I will share it.

Yesterday, a touching victory for what I like to call the Army Of Good, people who love liberty and the idea of our country and who have compassion and empathy for people in need.

You good people answered the call. In just a few hours, you raised more than $1,600 to purchase 200 Welcome Bags for the refugee children who will be arriving in the United States shortly. And you transformed the experience of children moving to a new land.

The Welcome Bags are the creation of the Capital Region Refugee Roundtable of Albany, a community of our better angels. They plan to greet newcomer refugee children with a colorful Welcome Tote Bag filled with toys, games, socks, art supplies, stuffed animals, hats and gloves.

As a result of this outpouring of support, the Roundtable raised the goal to $2,500 this morning, in order to purchase additional Welcome Bags and other badly need supplies for the refugees. They need about $800 additional dollars.

I imagine these bags will mean a great children to  these children, some of whom have suffered unimaginable horror and long and hard journeys to get to us. You have sent a powerful message that will travel far beyond this community.

Their arrival in America is now fraught with anxiety and uncertainty, even possible persecution. This will show them our better side, our real truth and identity. Kids love bags full of gifts.

The Roundtable’s goal initially was $1,500. As of this writing the fund had received more than $1,600 or 108 per cent of the goal. Any additional funds will be put to good use, the Roundtable has its hands full struggling to meet the needs of these people, mostly displaced women and children. Resources are scarce and desperately needed.

The refugees are being resettled into the United States by the U.S. Committee for Refugees And Immigrants (USCRI).

People who want to help have two options for contributions, the group’s crowdsourcing page. Or, if you prefer, you can mail a donation to Anne O’Brien Carelli, 17 Reid Place, Belmar, N.Y., 12054.

Maria and I are now volunteers working with the Roundtable, we will soon get to meet a refugee family we will mentor and help as they adjust to America. My goal is to transcend the argument, rage and denigration of the political system and to help create an Army Of Good who are marching to keep the true spirit of America alive.

I want to stand for liberty and compassion, nothing else.

People on all sides of the political divide can support that, I believe, and these immigrants yearning to be free can help bring us together, the need not pull us apart. To me, this is the best kind of non-violent, non divisive response to the conflict in our country. All kinds of people from many different political points of view sent money to help welcome these children to America.

And it feels good at a time when many people are feeling bad.

Very few people in America are free of the immigrant experience, apart from the Native-Americans. Some immigrants chose to come to America, some were forced to come here. But the refugee experience is in our national genes, we have opened our hearts and gates to those weary people, yearning to be free.

These families are not coming here to harm us, but to share in the American Dream, long a hope and a beacon to the world. Thanks for helping these kids. I love the idea of surrounding and protecting these refugees with a wall of love and compassion.

For me, and for Maria, this is just the beginning. I will be sharing this experience with you in words and photos in the hope of using the blog to do good and of showing these refugee families as human beings, not as some unspeakable menace. We do not need arguments and name-calling.

People of conscience have very different ideas about the world, and our country is a big tent. I am hopeful about our country, in part  because of people like you.

Thanks for enlisting in the Army Of Good, and for bringing us our first victory, the first of many.