MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH . . .

After reading my last blog, one of my blog friends asked who takes my Christmas ornaments down when the holiday is over. Of course I do, I said. And so I thought I’d do a new blog around that . . . and a few other things.

Went back to the ranch and it was really cold. In fact part of the river was frozen.

Couldn’t resist taking this close up of the river rocks. When they’re wet the varying colors are even more vivid.

It took me 2 days to put the tree up so I gave myself the same amount of time to take it down–starting at the top.

While putting it up, I listened to “Hits of the ’90s” on the TV music channel (dancing a bit between ornaments). Taking it down I listened to Governor Christie’s implosion with “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” his staffer saying she “worked the cones” and news about all those elected officials who want to make the poor poorer by eliminating unemployment (having already advocated cutting food stamps) and I wondered why there hasn’t been more mainstream/pop culture pieces about the confirmation of Janet Yellen as the first female Chief of the Federal Reserve. This is a BIG DEAL!! As my wise daughter-in-law said today, “It’s Ironic considering she will have far more influence over our culture in the long run than Miley Cyrus who is referenced every 10 seconds.” This wasn’t said to be critical of Miley but rather pointing out that it’s perhaps sexism why the same media that chases down every second in the development of a pop star coming into adulthood, not to celebrate her accomplishment or development, but rather to wait for a moment when she is caught with an inadvertent exposed nipple, or what have you, is silent on the confirmation Yellen particularly in lieu of what might have been–a repeat of the old boy approach that made it possible for the horrific recession that has hurt so many.

And speaking of women and hurting financially while trying to do it all—parent, survive…Maria Shriver has a new groundbreaking report that explores the lives of millions of women. It’s called The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Pushes Back from the Brink. It’s being released in a matter of days. See the trailer and more information here: http://shriverreport.org/shes-the-one-maria-shriver/

And a few additional misc pictures I took—our windowsill collection of found relics.

And Tulea in her carrying case waiting for the flight back.
Happy New Year!

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32 Comments
  1. Love the view of the ranch it’s breath taking , and I hope to get your new memoir soon! Sounds like a good book to read about mother- daughter relationships…anyways , cool rock colors I love the green one the most,thank you for your inspiration and being a strong woman I can look up to:)

    • Felicia, I’m writing a novel, not a new memoir. It’s so very different. An interesting challenge.

      • Dear Jane,
        Fifteen years ago I met my companera, Sarah Bachrodt. She carried so much energy, that upon meeting her, I spontaneously channelled, and told her the two understandings I live by:
        1. There’s no limit to how good you can feel, and
        2. A single individual can have a tremendous positive influence
        in this world!

        Sarah Is an undiscovered abstract expressionist artist, parent of four adult children, grandmother to seven. She’s too preoccupied with family to market herself! Hew work is exceptional. Perhaps, her art could play some role in your fundraising? She just turned 70, new years day, She is feisty, and her wisdom, and sensibility reminds me of you.
        As a seer, she could see qualities in me, I could not see myself.

        Sarah introduced me to a life process that includes an extraordinary exercise that paradoxically GENERATES CHI within our bodies! The unusually well informed Naturopath who taught us this exercise, guides this process. A Pioneer in Integrative Medicine, he is willing to explain and answer questions.

        This exercise resets all the body’s systems. Plus, when you raise energy in the body, you also have the potential to raise consciousness!

        Please consider taking the most pedestrian low impact exercise and, with me, revolutionize it into the mainstream. Michel, 63.

        • Michel, tell me more.

          • Dear Jane, (re your blog response to me dated 1/14/14)
            I just found out that you responded to me. I had no idea! I would love to tell you more. The exercise lends itself well to musical augmentation, as there are specific rhythms that are utilized and can be synchronized to music. Various artists can provide music, and broaden the appeal to a full social spectrum of partakers. I will ask your cooperation to not disclose future information, as I believe a significant business can spring forth. Plus it could readily become a new standard. Once it is learned, it will likely remain and replace it’s current counterpart. And of course, I will need to communicate with you outside of this public medium. My email is [email protected]. I can be reached at 561 302-9595. I am hoping you might care to speak with Sarah Bachrodt regarding her art. She has warehoused upwards of 200 paintings, a great many measuring 8’X10′. You can reach Sarah at 561 999-3998, or 929-9498 cell. She can get some images to you. If there is a more private (appropriate) email to exchange information, please let me know. I view this delay in getting back to you, as angel work, as I am now much better equipped to move forward. We have somewhat uniquely interesting stories. Thanks for all the good works you perform. Michel [email protected]

  2. Glad to see your keeping Christmas for those of us who are too depressed (financially and for other reasons) to feel it. Our priorities and attentions have become so bizarre and especially glaringly off to those of us who feel left out of the equation. Need to see more of the truth about what is really going on and as always, you help to shine that light. Thanks!

  3. Happy New Year (again), lots of love, success and good health! It’s kind of sad to say goodbye to Christmas and get back to reality. Anyway, 2014 will be a great year. This Is Where I Leave You will be coming to cinemas. Yay! 🙂

  4. hey jane

    you have a lovely home.

    love renate form the netherlands

  5. It is a lot of work to take down a Christmas tree, but so worth the joy it gives for the short period of time it is up.
    1 out of every 3 women are in or on the brink of poverty in America? Wow. It certainly makes you stop and think. Ever since you wrote about the media, and how most of our news is presented to us from the man’s perspective, I think about that often. (Forgive me for not looking back at your exact words, but I believe that is what was said.) how different things might be if women had a stronger voice. Women need to continue working on speaking up more and becoming even more assertive. I think, sometimes, we are just so busy trying to just get by, that we forget the importance of letting our voice be heard. It is same about the bottom 99% of us.
    By the way, Tulea is soooooooo cute!

    • Yes, That’s why Gloria Steinem, Robin Morgan and I co-founded The Women’s Media Center

  6. Great photos as always. Neat to see the other side of putting the tree up. Your ranch is so beautiful. I’d want to be there all the time 🙂

    • me tto, Rain. Used to be. Lived there 7months a year when I wrote my memoirs. Now trying to claw my way bck into a film/TV career—not so easy at a late age.Miss my ranch

  7. I sure hope someone was holding that ladder while you were reaching the top of a 14 foot tall Christmas tree! You look so graceful doing it too! I took the angel off the top of my 12 foot tall tree. I felt like a drunk monkey trying to reach for a banana that was too damn high up. Short Christmas trees for my family from now on! 😉
    Hope you have a peaceful, healthy new year!

  8. Dear Jane,
    I just fnished reading Patricia Bosworth’s wonderful biography about you and am once again blown away by your passion, your ever-evolving self, your engine to live, seek, be, learn and grow. Bosworth’s book compliments your memoir (My Life So Far), which I read and loved when it first came out a few years back. Reading your story in your own words, cadences and voice, sliced through the media stuff that too-often crowds out truth and obscures the information we receive. There’s so much to be said for your willingness to fail, fall, get up again. So many of us don’t. Thanks for all you do, for daring. As for allowing both vulnerability and courage to co-exist in your life, as it does for all of us (humans), I think this is our human dilemma–to understand our contradictions. Anyway, not to get too oblique, I’m thrilled to find your blog today and look forward to learning more about The Women’s Media Center.

  9. Dear Ms. Fonda,

    This is somewhat unrelated to your latest blog entry, but I have just finished reading “My life so far”, and I have to tell you that I have read the book in seven days. I just couldn’t put it down.

    I usually read it at night, when my husband and the baby were asleep (since that was about the only time I had for myself), until 3 or 4 am. Despite being exhausted in the mornings, and having to listen to my husband complaining all the time “What’s more important – Jane Fonda or your sleep?”, I can tell you it was worth it. What a book! What a woman! What a life!

    I actually started reading the book from somewhere in the middle since I purposefully skipped the few first chapters for fearing they might be too painful to read (my mother committed suicide when I was 14, and my father was totally inept at showing emotions), but I did read them. Just about! With a lump in my throat!

    Anyhow, to cut this monologue short, could you give us a tiny hint what is your novel about?

    All the best, and looking forward to your new literary endavour.

    Snezana Bjelotomic
    Serbia

  10. I love love love your “relics” sill…. I hope I ever get to go there; regardless of you being there physically. (Albeit that would be awesome) You are clearly there, even if you are not present: and I love that.

    • I looked at this again. I don’t know why you make me feel better ?? somehow, but you do. I still have not been back to Orlando yet, since moving, so I still don’t have your letter back, or that address you gave me. I might be able to make it next weekend. I saw a new counselor yesterday. Real person Spirit Mother thinks it would be good for me to have someone closer to where I live. She will see me when I can manage that, but… I feel like crap. I don’t want to see someone else.

      I wish I really knew you.

      Sorry….

  11. Happy New year Jane! Love the photos of the ranch, I hope to get to Santa Fe in June!

  12. Jane, realizing that you yourself actually decorated that gorgeous tree and then took it all down impresses me as much as the two Oscars! Wow!!

  13. Hello Jane,
    MY name is Fonda, and yes that’s my first name.
    Well, my whole name is Xenophonda(Greek),and for short , they call me Fonda.
    Any time they ask me my name and i tell them Fonda they also ask me if i am related to Henry , or Peter Fonda. 🙂
    Well..I like very much the pictures of your Ranch !
    Looks great !
    I would like to sent you few pictures of my Art .
    Is an email that i can use and attach my pictures so you can see them ?
    Have a great Happy new year Jane,
    My best wishes to you and your family.
    Thank you,
    Fonda.

  14. Awesome pictures Lady Fonda. Thank you for all you share.

    @users of this blog, is it just me or is this woman the smartest, most talented, most beautiful, sweetest, and super sexy person on this earth?

    thx!

    D a n a

  15. Dear Jane,

    I just watched The Butler. It was a hard movie to watch, and absolutely beautiful. You look brilliant, marvelous acting.
    I dearly hope to see you in more movies.
    Every single time I see you, you are fabulous, gorgeous, and brilliant.

  16. I was very touched by your support of / pride in Meryl Streep’s (third deserved) Oscar win two years back. Have you seen “August: Osage County”? Without question or hesitation this is the finest film I have seen — ever. Raw, searing, authentic, cathartic, moving and important. Meryl does something so incredible in this movie — it seems to go quite beyond acting (a craft for which I have deep appreciation, but very little understanding). Julia Roberts has transitioned in quite a lovely way from young ingenue to seasoned actress. What a year in film. I can’t understand why there has been so little love for “Lee Daniel’s The Butler”. That was a fine film deserving of, at the very least, the tenth best picture nominee slot. But, as with any other industry, I’m sure that Hollywood has its own set of internal politics.

    Remember how I left my job four months ago, because I knew I deserved to be treated with at least a modicum of respect by management? On Sunday, I received a phone call out of the blue. The company changed management at two levels. When the new regime conducted interviews with the staff, all of them said: “Bring Peter back. The place hasn’t been the same since he left. And, yes, he was mistreated.” Jane, I’ve always wanted my very own “Oscar” — aka validation from my peers. And, now I have it. And, I am going back. Health insurance, advancement opportunities. Each day that I remember who I am (God’s Divine Creation) keeps improving upon the last. Much love and appreciation to you, always!! You’re my idol/friend.

  17. I am going to Orlando this weekend. I’ll get the “appropriate address”, and write to you. I did sort of inadvertently ask my counselor if she felt it okay ?? for me to to do that (write to you); she did not respond, which means, to me, that that is not up to her. I saw the new counselor; I don’t dislike her, and that is kind if disappointing; hard, anyway. Real Spirit Mother is named Black Jane. Jane, I’m sure, somehow attributed to you. I have a million things in my head; a whole other story to tell… I really don’t kneel how you became part of it, but, you did, you are. I would love a response of sorts, just an ?? acknowledgement. I do not want you to post this. I will write to you; and I get it, that you probably will not write back. Understand, though, that you are part of this. I hope that matters to you. It does to me.

  18. Jane, I want to thank you so much for introducing me to yoga. I love your am/pm yoga dvd. I find it very enjoyable. I want to get a copy for my mom, but Target is all out. I guess I’ll investigate buying it online. You are BEAUTIFUL!

  19. Beautiful photos of your Ranch, and Christmas Tree. Thanks for sharing with us! I’m anxiously looking forward to reading your new novel, too!!

  20. Jane,

    I’m the blog friend who asked you who takes down your Christmas tree! I’m glad to see you do it with loving care. Great pictures. Reminds me of all the trees I took down. It’s nice to see someone who gets on that ladder like the rest of us common folk! Cheers!

  21. Xoxoxo.. <—-infinity

  22. Jane
    if you sometime come to Uruguay I invite you to our ranch ,a peace place like the name indicate,and share your soul way with us ,it is a wonderful thing when somebody find the real way to the real life that is waiting for all us after this short time in this last outpost of the universe .
    will be an enormous pleasure to joint and compare similar experiences of full human sucess and satisfaction and the finding of the real and unique way to universal happiness.

    jorge

  23. our ranch Peace location is here http://www.estanciapaz.com

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