This morning, I got a quite remarkable and unusual message from Jennie in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
She is a long-time readers, she is worried about me, and was writing to urge me to be more like the President, Mr. Trump and use social media more effectively.
This startled me a bit, I don’t often hear that. I wondered if it was meant to be a joke, but Jennie appeared serious.
“Look how smart he is, using social media the way he does, he has 42 million followers on Twitter, how many do you have on Twitter or Facebook?,” she asked.
I was taken aback, I have no idea how many followers I have on Twitter, I rarely go there even though the blog feeds onto it. I am never attacked there, and so far as I can see, barely noticed at all.
I admit to being shocked – I think she was just trying to help – and sitting out there in Iowa, where the President is much more popular than I will ever be anywhere, she was just trying, as she put it, “to light a fire under your butt.” If he could do it, she said, why not me?
Jennie said she voted for Mr. Trump, and has read my blog from the beginning. She enjoys both of us, she said. I don’t often hear that, either.
“He just puts it right out there,” she said, “let the chips fall. Might be a lesson in there for you,” she suggested. “Be stronger!”
I told Maria about this and showed her the e-mail to make sure she believed me, and she was taken aback. ”
She said what?,” she said, quite bewildered.
The Internet is a mystical world, I told her. Write online often enough and long enough, and you will hear just about everything.
But Jennie had a point. They say that in America, anyone can grow up to be President, and that seems to be so, so why couldn’t a strange Jewish boy from Providence grow up to have 42 million followers online?
Blogs are very personal, you can use them for anything you like, within certain boundaries. You can use them for good, for money, for power, for vengeance, for political ambitions.
My blog began in 2007 on Memorial Day, and it was always meant to be selfish and self-serving. As publishing began to change, I needed a new way to promote my books and talk to my readers. If I got 20,000 or 30,000 likes on Facebook, my publicist told me, I could be a best seller. He lied.
I never even glancingly thought of using my blog for any kind of general good, or to get power and fame. I just wanted to sell enough books to live.
I was not, I often said, a charity, I was not the United Fund, it was not about doing good. Blogs are expressions of their creators, and the world changed, and I changed. I see my blog as a reflection of our times, of our world.
It took me awhile to think about how to respond to Jennie and of course, I thought I needed to share her message. Any one of us could do this, she seemed to be suggesting.
I could get started on a powerhouse blog by attacking people who attack me – I’ve done that a few times – but that did not draw millions of people to my blog, in fact, many people get annoyed when I do that.
They say I am asking for it by sharing my life, I should just suck it up. I do the same thing the President does when they say that: get lost, piss off, you are fake, go somewhere else.
But I am not rich or famous or powerful, my readers will not stand by me if I slug a little girl on the street.
Maybe my hair isn’t right or I need to work on charisma, or find a better slogan: Make Bedlam Farm Great Again! I’m not good at name-calling, and I don’t like arguing. I am not suited for public life.
I have more than 50,000 regular followers on Facebook, which was once considered pretty good for an author. There are four million visits to the blog online each year, which is very good. But I admitted to Jennie that I was not in the Presidents’ league.
Perhaps I am just not willing to do what it takes to get that big. And not able.
One difference is that Mr. Trump wants to lead and run the country, and the very idea would horrify me: power frightens me, which is a good thing, since I don’t have any. If 42 million people read my posts every day, I might just crack up again.
I have enough trouble running a 17 acre farm and getting a dog to sit down.
I told Jennie one way for me to boost my reach on social media would be to get the President to attack me. People he attacks get millions of followers almost instantly, as well as death threats and hate mail. I don’t really need to go there.
I am not interested in ragging on our President, lots of louder and smarter people do that every day. Since Jennie raised it, I think the contrast between our social media styles is worth exploring. And who knows? He might just call me up to chat about it.
I would tell him to get a donkey or a dog like Gus or Fate or Red. Or a human like Maria. People put up with a lot from me if they get to see them. But he doesn’t need any advice from me.
In the past couple of years, it has occurred to me that you can use a blog or a social media account for good. There are lots of people out there and many want to do good.
When I asked for help in paying the farmer Joshua Rockwood’s legal fees after he was so unjustly accused of animal cruelty, we raised more than $70,000 quickly.
This enabled him to get the legal help he needed, and he was ultimately victorious. Thanks to the Internet, justice was done.
I started out small, and am still small. I raised money for two older sisters whose cats were taken from them after complaints from so-called animal lovers that they had too many. They both lost their reason for living, and we got their cats back (they were well cared for cats.)
Most of you know the rest of the story. The blog has gone on to raise money for older people, and for younger people, for refugees and immigrants, for people with big vet bills, for people who need food and people who need clothes, and people who need to pay off loans they didn’t know they had, for carriage horses and draft horses.
All told, we’ve raised nearly $200,000 for people in need and causes that I believe are worthy. An Army Of Good formed around the blog and we have touched many lives and made them better and easier. I can’t imagine what we might do with 42 million people. What a blast.
It was a shock to me to see how a blog could be used for good, and that is selfish too, because it makes me feel good about myself and about the world. I have never felt better.
It would be great to see Mr. Trump grasp the power of his 42 million followers. Think of the mortgages they could pay, the tuitions they could take care, the burned out houses they could rebuild, the flooded homes they could repair.
Think if every day he and his aides found a worthy American in need – the family of a policeman or fireman killed on duty, or a victim of brutality or sexual harassment, or a child in need of surgery, a widow without heat, a farmer whose cows got sick.
The President could spread a lot of fairy dust around and get everyone’s day started. I could offer quite a list. In one day, Mr. Trump could get every refugee I know a year’s worth of groceries and a down jacket for the winter.
But this would be presumptuous of me, I told Jennie. Why should he listen to me?
But the very idea sort of boggles the mind. Think if everyone with a big blog did that. Jennie did get me to thinking.
The blog isn’t only for good by any means, I write about my dogs and my life and Maria and the farm too, I share my life.
But doing good is where I have found my idea of God, and where I have healed myself and feel strong and meaningful in a difficult time.
Thanks for the idea Jennie, and for your concern. I kind of like my blog just the way it is.
We all have to find our own way in the world, and I have found mine, and he has found his. I’ll just leave it there. I don’t want to disappoint me Jennie, but I think what you see is what you get with me.
And thanks for hanging in there with me all this time.
