Day: February 7, 2018

I’ve squawked plenty about the downside of the new digital world, and not enough about the good side, for which I apologize. and resolve to do better.

This morning, a beautiful start to the day, a message from Karla, somewhere out in the heartland. She wrote “I was delighted by your post about Joan, and watching the video and seeing her connect with the questions. She  seemed to be very happy and interested and engaged.”

 

“I am so thrilled by this idea, that I contacted our local library, to see if they could get behind the idea.”

Her library said there was no elder care facility in her district, so undeterred, Karla is checking with the local Senior Day Center in her small town and contacting the people at reading2connect. She is looking for elder care facilities in adjoining towns to see if she can bring this new idea about reading and memory to them.

These books are published to help revive memory and reading for elderly people with memory loss. I am just beginning to work with them, they bring me great hope and joy

“Again, thank you for being an inspiration to us, to focus on the good that we can do, rather than on the ills of the world. It is empowering.”

Thank you Karla, that is such a sweet inspiration to get. Joan could not pick up a pencil at the last art class, or draw a line, but the activities handbook from reading2connect brought memory and joy back to the fore for her.

It is storming pretty impressively outside, but I am supposed to be at the Mansion at 2:30 this afternoon and Karla has inspired me to try and make it through the snow. Maria says I am a snow pussy, and this may be true,  but I want to read more with Joan.

I think anger and compassion are both viruses, they can be transmitted. It is quite wondertul to think that someone so far away can see this video and be inspired by it. It is easier to hate than to be compassionate, but it is never rewarding to hate, it is the poison candy of the soul.

 

There is something iconic and inspiring about Maria’s Schoolhouse Studio. As best we can tell, the studio was  built as a one-room school house around 1800. Sometime after World War II, it was moved from nearby Shushan, N.Y. and used as a workshop and storage shed.

When we bought this farm, the first thing we did was fix the old schoolhouse up, putting in new electricity and baseboard heating and lighting. Maria has put together an amazing amount of work in the studio, she loves it and has made it her own.

In a storm, it has a special meaning, I love to look over at it and think that something magical will come out of there today. It warms me up and sheds light. Fate is in there too, the pair of them conspiring to create, even in a storm, especially in a storm.

Maria and I began our relationship when I offered her the use of a barn in the old Bedlam Farm. It was the beginning of my resurrection.

I remember that October day in 2003 when I moved into my first farm, the first Bedlam Farm. A howler of a storm from Canada welcomed me, and I got a good dose of an upstate New York winter, the storms here can re-arrange the soul a bit.

Winters have their own identity, like people.

They can just be cold, or they can  just be warm, or they alter the chemistry of you and your life. This is one of the those, I was standing out in the pasture to say hello when the snow – reportedly the biggest storm of the season – arrived just on time, minutes before 10 a.m. I watched it come on the weather map on my Iphone radar,  I could see the world disappear just down the road as it headed for the farm.

This one got my attention – bitter cold, driving snow, lots of wind. My old frostbite injuries kicked into gear, but I do not need the patch from my eye surgery.

The donkeys see and hear all, the sheep were out grazing in the ice when the snow started falling, the donkeys had been in the barn for awhile. The old-timers say donkeys can hear snow, the farmers used to use them as warning signals, when a donkey goes into the barn, you get into your house.

They looked at me curiously, as they often do, as if to wonder just what the hell I was doing standing out there in a sweater. My camera froze and so did my fingers, I came inside.

Maria woke up full of herself this morning, whatever bug she had fled overnight. She did just about everything she tells me not to do when she gets sick, and there is little stopping her. She was out shoveling manure in minutes, fixing the stuck and frozen gate, shoveling the walk, cleaning out the chicken coop, feeding the cats in the basement, yelling at me to go inside.

The dynamo inside her control center has healed, and returned.

I did what I could before she got to it.

I moved the cars, rushed into the post office, salted around the worse ice, brought out the shovels, watered up the tanks for the animals. And of course, took pictures. I love to take photos of the winter pasture, always beautiful in its own way.

It just took a few minutes but the roads are covered in ice and snow. I don’t care to drive today.

Last year at this time, another storm, the one in which Maria set out for Boston’s Logan Airport and India, she left in a blizzard and came home in one.

At least she’s not in India today, we miss her in blizzards.

There is something snug and cozy about a storm, if you are prepared and we are prepared. Around here, I’m called The Commissar of Snow and ice and I take my work seriously. We have plenty of firewood, food, books, veggie pizza,  heating oil, and we are blessed to be able to work at home.

Soon I’ll be out shoveling out the paths and trying to pull the heavy snow off of the roof.

I don’t think I’ll get over to the Mansion today, but it will be there tomorrow. I’ll do a photo album of the storm, I expect it will be worth it.