The National Weather Service defines a blizzard as a dangerous winter storm that is a combination of blowing snow and wind resulting in low visibility, and sometimes with strong winds. I think I just met one outside in the pasture, I’m grateful for the shelter and dry ground our animals can stand on.
Still, it is an impressive thing, this one looks like a true howler. You go out and shovel a path and turn around, and the path if completely covered with snow. You go inside and make a pot of tea. I keep Red inside mostly because the sheep can’t go anywhere, and Fate loves being in the snow, she doesn’t seem to notice it.
I love photographing the winter pasture, I’ll try to keep up with it. More photos later. Here, I swim in blessed solitude.
There is a custom up here in the country where I live, at a certain point in winter, usually the beginning of March, the farmers and long-times in my rural town simply decide its Spring, and don’t pay much more attention to winter.
Today, the for-profit cable weather channels, the ones who make money by frightening as many people as possible in the name of protecting us (I can only imagine how much Comcast and NBC Universal sit up at night worrying about me), war warning of a huge snowfall of 10 to 20 inches, a series amount for anyone, let alone a farmer with animals out in a field.
I know this hat trick by now. There will be huge snowfalls in some places, perhaps even here. But if they get too specific, lots of people will tune out and go live their lives rather than freak out about another piece of bad news. The non-profit weather sites actually will tell you if it’s going to snow where you live, as opposed to the top of a mountain in Maine, or parts of Long Island
Farmers can tell you too, their bones almost always know.
If you follow the National Weather Service, you might not sign up for all those emergency news alerts beamed into your smart phone, saving your life and sending a lot of money to the weather channels. Some might call that ghoulish, the weather channels call it public service. You have to make up your own mind.
The National Weather Service map says one to three inches tonight, and one to three inches tomorrow, possible turning to rain at some point. Up here, we call that Spring. If I only listened to the Weather Channel, I would have grabbed the emergency weather kit they sell, or began evacuating us and the dogs.
I drove by Carnell, a farmer up the road and asked him what he was thinking.
“It’s Spring,” he says, “I’m not worried about winter anymore. It’s a Spring sun, a Spring sunset, and whatever comes will be gone in a few days. As far as I’m concerned, its Spring.”
This is typical of the locals, I asked Carol in the Rite-Aid what she heard about the storm tonight. Normally, she is near hysterical when it come to the weather forecast, she watches every cable weather channel she can for hours. Today, he was yawning. “It doesn’t matter any more,” she said. “Spring is just about here.”
Kelly at the Bog said the same thing. Mention of snow gets a shrug.”It will be gone in a couple of days anyway.”
I like this philosophy. I take all of the alarms seriously, as the Commissar should. I’ve been alarmed and stressed, just as so many people tell me I ought to be, I get mail quite regularly warning me that Gus might be stolen at any minute by a stranger driving by the house, or boil to death if I take him out for a car ride when the sun is out.
(If anybody kidnapped Gus, they better have some Nature’s Miracle and lots of paper towels in the car, or it will be a long drive.)
I’ve been diligent this winter – plenty of firewood, cleaned the wood stoves, checked the oil heater, had animal-friend ice salt handy, gave the animals grain and good hay., scraped the snow off the roof, had candles and emergency lights on hand.
Maria calls me the “Commissar Of Ice And Snow,” (actually I call myself that, she just humors me) and I’m with Carnell, winter is over. It feels like Spring, the light is Spring, I’m done worrying about winter, we are in defiance.
I drove to the market yesterday to stock up on food just in case, but that’s it. It can snow as much as it wants, it’s Spring. Winter is, after all, a state of mind.
I took the dogs out into the pasture and ran the border collies and threw a red and yellow ball for Gus. He loves chasing the ball and paid no attention to the snow. It’s Spring for him too. I’ll check in later.
I am happy to report that this time, I bought the last item on the new-new-new-new-new-new RISSE Amazon Wish List this morning, a some labels for $7.95.
We are giving RISSE a good run for their money, putting on a great show of compassion and commitment and empathy.
It becomes more and more apparent each day that the refugees and immigrants who have come to America or hope to come will be facing greater and greater obstacles, indifference and cruelty over the next months and years.
Most of us understand the refugee and immigrant experience, and feel close to it. I am committed to staying with this work, we are needed as never before. I don’t argue my beliefs here, but it is my wish to keep this flame, the American Dream, burning, even if many of our fellow citizens have forgotten what it means.
The RISSE Amazon Wish List is a wonderful way for RISSE to tell us what they need and for us to contribute when and if we can. It is my idea of a long haul, low cost way of letting our new brothers and sisters know they are loved and welcome here by so many people.
I think this will be a long haul, and it looks like many of you in the Army Of Good are making a long and great commitment. I thank you. The RISSE staffers are tired but exhilarated, they say they have never experienced such generosity and support before, and they are deeply grateful. The children are dazzled, they have new games to play, new ways of learning their math and languages, places to sit in the iibrary.
Every thing you send will be put to great use, and immediately, and slowly, the RISSE school is filling up with laughter and color and joy. RISSE hosts after school classes for 200 children and 1,000 adults. They are the only place these families can go to get the help they need.
As soon as it stops storming, I’ll go back to RISSE and take more photos so you can see what you have done. Thanks. I’m sure the wish list will be re-populated shortly. You can follow it here. This is the sixth time in a week that the list has sold out.
We are making some history here, they will be talking about the Army Of Good for a long time.
In the meaning, I could use some help with my end of the refugee work, the boy’s soccer team, the new girl’s basketball team (we have acquired uniforms for them), the Powell House Youth Retreat, the Session 3 Indoor Soccer Tournament, and hopefully, some outdoor programs for the summer.
If you can, please donate c/o Jon Katz. Post Office box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 129816, or via Paypal, [email protected]. Please mark checks or payments “refugees” or “Mansion,” and thanks. Your money – every penny – will go precisely where it is supposed to go.
One of the things i love about my life these days is that I find myself doing thinks I never did or through I would so, even a few months ago. The walls and barriers around me, put up many years ago and fortified through much of my life, are coming down, crumbling or just perishing of their own way.
When I encounter something I am afraid to do, or makes me uncomfortable, or triggers my skepticism, I am inclined to do it, try it, open up to it.
Gus has megaesophagus as you know, an incurable disease that blocks the esophagus from passing food down into the digestive tract. We can keep him going a long time, it seems, but the outcome is almost always the same. We are closer to Gus for this, in the way parents bond so powerfully with children who are handicapped or chronically ill.
Dogs are not children, I hope I never cross that boundary, but we are doing everything we can for Gus, we have come to love him a lot and we wish for him to be comfortable if possible, and to heal if possible.
With megaesophagus dogs, the idea is to hold them upright for 10 to 15 minutes, in the hope that the food – he’s on a special diet – will slide down more easily into the digestive track. If this doesn’t happen, the dogs can become ill, they contract pneumonia, are stricken with malnutrition, or starve to death.
It was Maria’s idea to put on some of her meditation music, in this case Krishna Das, and turn the exercise into a meditation. When it’s my turn to hold Gus, I now do the same thing, a greater departure for me than for Maria, I think.
Mediation has been important to me but I have never applied it to a dog, let alone a sick one. What is surprising is the very striking calming effect this music seem to have on Gus. I took a video of this this morning so you can see this for yourself.
Gus is a very active dog, he is rarely still for long, like most Boston Terriers. He sees to take a deep breath, almost to sign, and settle into the arms of the person holding him, often putting his head on our shoulder. Sometimes he closes his eyes and seems to be meditating himself.
Could this be healing Gus, I sometimes wonder? The truth is, I don’t really know. It feels like it sometimes, I think this is healing him somewhat, and since we’ve been meditating, his regurgitating episodes seem to be fewer.
I believe in perspective, not in the emotionalizing of dogs, I don’t like turning them into psychics or therapists or mystical beings. When the time comes, Gus and I will not be meeting on any bridge.
The experience of dealing with chronically ill dog with an incurable medical condition has scrambled my beliefs a big. Gus is not a spiritualist or a mystic, and neither am I. But this process seems valuable to me, I feel some good is being done.
That could be my imagination, or wishful thinking, so I’m happy to share it. Maybe others will see it also.
Maria has stepped out of her artistic safety zone – her blog – a bit and opened up a Full Moon Fiber Art shop on Etsy, the world’s most popular artist sales site.
She isn’t changing her blog or backing away from it, the idea was to give people who like her art a chance to buy it simply and quickly and 24/7. She is using it to sell potholders, wool and some smaller hanging pieces, sketches and posters (like “Show Your Soul.”
She will continue to sell her quilts and hanging pieces from her blog, which she loves dearly and writes and shares her art on daily.
Etsy calls itself the new global marketplace for creativity, and i think that is a fair an accurate statement. It’s become a Godsend for many talented artists who have no way to display their work, and successful artists drawn to the large audience there. Maria was wise to create and maintain her very successful and popular blog.
But creativity also requires change, I think, and she is putting her toe in a big ocean.
I admit I’ve been nudging her towards Etsy for some time, but you do not get to tell Maria what to do with her art. She’ll do it when she’s ready, and if she’s ready. At heart, she’s a snoot, and a cautious one.
It only took her about 10 years.
She’s selling a lot of things on Etsy already, nearly 20 potholders and a lot of wool in less than a week.
That’s just the start, I think. There are millions of people shopping for art on Etsy, I think her potholders and wool (and perhaps some smaller fiber pieces) have found a happy home. I’m a fan of Etsy’s, I buy all of my presents for Maria and others there, it is an efficient, friendly and simple-to-navigate site.
Maria loves it already, and will be updating it regularly. As of now, she is nearly sold out. There are three potholders left (including the one above), some “Show Your Soul” presents a timely gift these days and 17 skeins of Bedlam Farm wool, all that remain from our sheep shearing last Fall.
I think this is a big step forward for Maria, nothing will change about her blog, but it will make it easier for people to buy her stuff whenever they want, and expose her remarkable potholders – which she has turned into an art form – to more people.
Same with the wool the other eclectic things she will put up there.
Knowing her, I suspect it will also inspire some new ideas. It already has. Get ready for snails in one form or another.
Her blog will remain the same, she will never back away from it. It is home base for her life and writing and art and videos and photography. But she will also have a new home on Etsy,
Watching Maria grow as an artist and a thoughtful marketer of her own work has been one of the joys of my life. With Maria, I always get the feeling she is just getting started. She loves to make art, and she loves to sell it too.
And a happy one, looks like. Congratulations to a gifted artist with heart and good luck. You can check it out here.
