Spring is here! It still looks grey in Upper Black Eddy but besides the tiny bit of snow I see small buds pushing through the leaves, the days are getting longer and my chickens are all laying eggs again.

Speaking of chickens, I had a terrible surprise the other day when I discovered a hawk had killed one of my chickens. It happened despite the fact that my husband built a huge pen after loosing 4 of them to fox. (I saved the fifth one when I chased it down with a shovel. The fox had my last chicken in its mouth and I screamed at it to “Put my God damn chicken down, motherfucker!” and it did!

The poor thing had no tail feathers and was limping around but I nursed her back and she is fine. Every time I go out to feed them she squats in front of me a flutter her wings so I will pick her up.

Since she was the only one left I went to the organic chicken farm down the street where they raise them to eat and gave two chickens a reprieve, my rescue chickens! The same day my husband felt so bad that I felt so bad about my chicken, he borrowed a chicken from our friend Staten Island Johnny. He gave my husband the scrawniest little chicken. Its red crown flopped over one eye and it walked kind of sideways.

They became my crew and every morning until the snow came I would sit out in the pen with them and feed them. It was a meditation of sorts. But with the last snow part of the net roofing came down and yesterday a hawk took the opportunity to have dinner or probably early breakfast. When I came out to feed them the other chickens were all standing around the chicken corpse screaming. (Probably just squawking but I interpreted it as screaming because that is what I was doing.)

I ran back in the house and called my husband, whose country sensibilities can handle this stuff much better than my city instincts. He said he would come home and take care of it but I could not stand the sounds of the chickens and watching them try to nudge their sister to get up so I went out with that same shovel and took the body away.

I know they are just chickens and most people only think about eating them but they bring me so much joy and I learn about being in the moment from my chickens.

These animals are focused on either food or survival. When I went out to the pen to find that a chicken was dead they were all standing around it doing their thing. When I took the dead chicken away they went back to pecking around for food. Whereas I am haunted by the vision of that dead chicken they have moved on. Yes their brains are the size of a pea, my husband reminds me of this anytime I anthropomorphosize them. But for me they are the constant reminder of staying in the moment, letting things go and how holding on to the past has no purpose but to create the perfect condition for sadness and depression. I am not saying I am able to do it all the time but when I find myself going down that road of shame, sadness, guilt or whatever negative feeling is going to take me down, I can breath and come back to the moment.

It is not that I want to walk on some cloud of ignorance or not have feelings. But once I have processed the situation and it is clear there is no benefit from visiting again and again I have the choice. That is great thing.

Hi Everyone,

Today was the first day I felt hopeful there is going to be a spring. I know there always is one but when there is a solid month of white on the ground it starts to feel like it will be winter forever!

I spent the day re-doing this website. I tried to make it as simple as possible. If you have been to my website before you might have noticed how good it looked but how hard it might have been to get around. So I have pared it down to the essentials with links to a secondary website if you want more info.

It finally came to me late last night that I needed to pick one thing and focus on it. I was diagnosed with a terminal illness 19 years ago and then a second unrelated terminal illness 18 years ago! You can read in previous posts how I am still alive so I am not going to go into detail here. Lets just say when you are dying you ask yourself this question, “Am I doing what I really want to do?” The answer back then was, “No.”

So I completely changed my life. I wrote the list and at this point have accomplished all I set out to do. Now going on three years both of my illnesses have been in remission due to new treatments. Almost everyone I knew with these ailments died. I lived and honestly was floundering. I planned a whole life on dying and now I have to ask myself the questions, “What if you have 50 more years left, are you doing what you want to be doing?” The answer was, “I don’t know!” But after some soul searching I came to the conclusion that what I love the most is speaking, being of service and hopefully entertaining at the same time.

So with that in mind I redesigned the website and started to map out a long healthy life that includes a planning for a future. I can see myself still doing this in 50 years if I am coherent and have something to say.

So I am jumping in with both feet to get information about what I do out there and accessible. If you have any questions or comments I would love to hear them! Chow for now. River