Search Results for: How to keep your husband

“… I’m so sad you won’t be here.  seeing your work makes me miss you.  Is that weird? I think it’s because they are so much a part of you and that your whole self doesn’t always come through in texting.  But I see you in them.”

This is what I texted to Suzy, when she sent me photos of the shawls she made for the Bedlam Farm Open House.

Suzy and I keep in touch by texting.  Actually, that’s how we really came to know each other.  I first met Suzy years ago when she and her family were visiting Jon at Bedlam Farm.  She and her husband Joe and their kids have visited the area several times over the years and it was in those visits, seeing each other and getting to talk to each other face to face that our friendship deepened.

Suzy has come to the past few Open Houses, with her spinning wheel, demonstrating that part of her art.  This year she couldn’t make it, but I feel fortunate to have her hand-spun and knit shawls in my School House Gallery.

It’s true what I texted to Suzy.  I see her in her work.  The creative, warm, determined, dedicated  and sensitive person she is.  It’s all right there in the stitches and colors, the choices of wool and the spaces in between.

Suzy will be shipping her shawls to me soon.  I’ll post them all on my blog, so everyone can see them even if you aren’t coming to the Open House.  I am  selling  art from the Open House online too. I can hold a piece for you if you’re coming to the Open House, or I can ship it to you if you’re not.

Right now I have the four photos that Suzy sent me of her quilts today.

Suzy uses some of her own wool from her angora goats and bunny and wool she gets from other fiber artists.  I can tell you from experience, they’re very soft and beautifully made.   Suzy’s shawls are $130 each.

For more information about the Bedlam Farm Open House click here. 

“I’ll send you the photo of me doing yoga” Carol wrote me,  “but then you have to post a picture of yourself bellydancing”.
(Lucky for me,  I got her message on the same day I posted the photo of me in my new purple Bellydancing skirt.)

For years Carol put her art on hold and became a Dairy Farmer with her husband Dick.  But she told me that it wasn’t as though she wasn’t being creative during that time.  When she was farming, which she loved doing, she was storing up images and ideas so when she and Dick sold the farm and she began making batiks again, the images flowed easily from her.

Always an animal lover and deeply connected to nature, Carol looks the to earth, its creatures, and myths for inspiration.  In her batiks, what goes on below the soil is as important as what we see (and sometimes aren’t aware of) on top of it and above it.

Her macro and microscopic imagery often has a mystical feel to it.  The stars burst in the sky and the worms dance though the soil.

Carol sells her original batiks, but she also reproduces them into so many different forms of Functional Art it’s hard to keep up with all she’s doing.

Last year Carol began making her batiks into leggings and now she has a whole line of clothing available though her website Amity Farm Batik.

She won’t be selling her clothes at the Bedlam Farm Open House on October 6th and 7th,  but she will be selling all the other useful pieces of art like trivets, notecards, mousepads and cutting boards along with some of her original work and prints on fabric and paper.

I love having Carol and her work at the Open House.  She and her work so encapsulates the combining of art and farming that has become what the Open House is all about.

You can see and buy  Carol’s art and clothes by clicking here.

For more information on the Bedlam Farm Open House click here.

I look in the mirror and see the bags under my eyes, the crows feet and lines around my mouth  (the same as my mother’s) my jowls hang lower than they used to and the skin under my chin sags.  Then there are those hairs that seem to grow from one moment to the next.

When I turned forty, my mother-in-law at the time, gave me a Nora Ephron book for my birthday.  I don’t remember the name of the book but in the first chapter she talked about the idea of having plastic surgery on the loose skin on her neck.  How it was inevitable.  I don’t know how it all played out, I didn’t get any further.    I understand that most public figures, especially women, wouldn’t be able to continue their careers without altering their looks when they get old,  but that’s not the world I live in.  I’ve never even worn make-up.  I just couldn’t relate, wasn’t interested.   And now, twelve years later, as I watch my own skin give into  gravity and age,  I still feel like I can’t relate.

But what I am thinking about is The Crone.

Before the idea of the one male god, there were many gods and goddesses.  And the work of life and death belonged to the goddess.  Different Goddesses in different cultures, but it was, the work of a female, not a male to bring life into the world  (Not hard to see where that idea came from).

The Goddess was all three Virgin, Mother and Crone.  Along the way, they got separated.  The Crone became the ugly, evil, old lady.  And the Virgin and Mother are seen in figures such as the Virgin Mary.  Barbara Walker in Red Moon Passage, writes how Mary has her power and divinity taken from her through the idea of the Immaculate Conception.  Suddenly the goddess is merely human and  can only experience god through  divine intervention.

I couldn’t help thinking of the TV shows Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie,which I grew up watching.  Both women had magical powers that their husbands refused them to use. And both of these women agreed to give up their powers, but  actually didn’t.  (I guess if they did, it would have been a pretty boring TV show.)  Helps me have faith that the Goddess was just lying low for a while, waiting for her chance to re-emerge.

So yes, the Crone is scary and brings death, but she’s not the evil thing we’ve come to see her as.  She brings death as the natural cycle of life.  And as Walker writes, ” The Crone is the most powerful female figure humanity has ever known”. ” …sometimes we need to scare people to get their attention”.

I remember  hearing how in the Iroquois Nation it was the post menopausal women who made the important decisions for the tribe.   I’ve since read that this is true of many ancient cultures also.  I can imagine men wanting a piece of this power.  And the way they took it was by trying to destroy The Crone. Mostly by co-opting and bad mouthing her.

So for me, it’s time to take The Crone back.  She’s not something  for me to fear or try to repress.  She’s something to look forward to, to embrace to work at.

I can already see my Crone power emerging.  In my ability to create the life I want for myself and say no to the things that aren’t good for me.  But I want it to go further than just me.  I think that’s an important part of being a Crone.  I don’t know how this will manifest.  Most likely through my art, but you never know what will happen when you open yourself up to it.

When I think of the Crone I keep seeing a picture from a nursery book I had as a kid of a witch flying in front of the full moon.  It was one of those images that used to scare me, but that I also couldn’t stop looking at.  Now, the older I get, the more I can see myself stirring the cauldron.

It was hard to judge, from inside my School House Gallery how many people came to the Bedlam Farm Open House.  I did know that I was busy selling art and helping design scarves for Kim to sew,  from the time it began  to the time it ended.  (I only got to take on picture of the whole day)  The first time I snuck out to introduce the sheep before a herding demo, I saw the cars parked on the front lawn and up and down Route 22 and was thankful all the people in all the cars hadn’t come into my gallery at the same time.   But there was plenty to do outside.  I missed the  Poetry reading by Mary Kellogg, but knew  it was over when people came to the gallery  and bought out the copies of her first book My Place on Earth.  I also missed Diane Fiore and Kim Giffords readings, but heard the clapping outside my window.

It was great to have Kim McMillan in the gallery sewing scarves and keeping an eye on things the few times I got outside.  Some of the local people who came only know Kim from the Cambridge Co-op where she works part-time.  They were surprised to see her creative side.  I didn’t think I would need any help, because the gallery is so small compared to the Pig Barn Gallery at the old Bedlam Farm, but Kim’s the kind of person who makes you feel like everything will be okay and besides the work she did, I was glad to have her there with me.

At one point Jon opened my Gallery door and there was Frieda on the end of a leash.  It was sweet seeing her with Jon and he later told me she was good and didn’t get into any trouble, but was just as happy to go back in the quiet house as visit with me.

Jane McMillen and her husband Tom showed up towards the end of the day.   As she was packing up her work, I picked out an orange pincushion for my studio and one of her mini strawberry plant pincushions.    Fran gave me one of her mini gardens.  She made it specially for me with a reflecting ball, (like the one in one of our favorite childhood books Jane Emily) garden bench and birdhouse.

Opening the farm and now my studio up for visits seems to me to be about connecting.   It’s convenient and practical to have my business online and I get to know so many people I would never otherwise meet.  But I still have the urge to to have that person to person interaction.  To hang my work on a wall and have someone be able see it and touch it.  To have a true sense of scale and place and experience by literally being there.  To feel Fanny’s gentle lips on the palm of your hand as she takes a carrot from it. Or to rub Simon’s ears as he nuzzles for affection.  To be that close and see each other with our own eyes, not through the lens of a camera or the screen of a computer.  It’s a very different experience and for me, a very necessary one.

When we first moved to the farm I wasn’t sure how we could have events like we did at the old Bedlam Farm.  But it seems we did it.  And now that we know how successful it can be,  we’ll do it again and again.

At one of Jon’s readings a woman came up to me and said she would like to see more of my work. I told her about my website and she said “Oh, I’ve been on your site, but it’s not like Jon’s”. At another point in my life (or on another day) I would have been offended, but I was able to say with confidence exactly how I felt, “Well, of course it’s not like Jon’s, it’s MY website”.

I have to admit, I’ve had my fears about about missing my work and loosing myself in “Jon’s world”. I’ve done this before. I allowed myself to get absorbed in my first husbands life to the point where I lost my sense of self. It’s something I’m very conscious of.

So before the book tour began, with the help of a counselor and Jon’s support, I devised a plan to keep help keep me grounded and centered. I would do small and consistent amounts of meditating. I would do at least 10 minutes of yoga a day and I would sketch and continue to blog. Lastly, I would not feel guilty if I did none of these things.

So far, I’ve been doing okay. The train ride to DC gave me lots of free time to do all these , but driving long hours the past 2 days with book events inbetween left me too tired to do much at the end of the day. But I didn’t beat myself up about it.

So this morning I had some free time with the energy and enthusiasm to do some sketching and blogging. Doing my own work grounds me in ways I don’t quite understand, but I always feel better afterwards. So I’m ready for the day ahead and will deal with tomorrow, tomorrow.