I was touched and surprised this morning when one of my blog readers messaged Maria and offered to buy a portrait to give to one of the people who might not be able to afford it. We were moved by Anne’s offer (I don’t yet have permission to use her full name).

We live in a time when fear and hatred seems to rise up like some nightmarish boil, but the blog has taught me again and again that there are so many good people out there, always looking to do good.

Maria and I turned ourselves inside out to make these portraits as inexpensive as possible. But we know that some people in the photos can’t afford to buy them.

Our friend George Forss printed the photos for than $16 apiece, far less than a photo printer would normally charge. Maria scoured the Internet find cheap but solid picture frames for sale, and we drove quite a good distance to get them.

The same with mats. Still, it cost us about $1,000 to mount the show, with all of that, and I certainly was not doing the show for money, there is no chance of earning a profit, nor was I meaning to.

This was a labor of the heart, for my own satisfaction, for the town I live in and love, for the idea of community, which I believe in. I make my money as a writer, not a photographer, and I have given more than 50,000 photos away for free, I don’t watermark or copyright any of my pictures, people are free to use them any way they wish.

So I wasn’t thinking of making money.

When the show comes down, I was planning to see if I could give some of the photos to subjects who did not have the money to pay for them.  Anne offered to buy one of the photos and let us decide who ought to get it, and we choose Treasure Wilkinson, a woman with a great big heart and little extra cash. To her, $150 is a very big deal.

I am very happy to be able to give her this portrait.

This show was my idea and Maria’s,  it is my project, no one needs to feel obliged to contribute to it in any way, many people just send Maria money for her trip to India.

A number of people have made the same offer Anne did, and I have decided to accept it. If anyone wishes to buy any one of the photos, we will see that one of the portrait  subjects gets one. There are six or seven people in the show that don’t have the resources to buy one of their photos, I think, and I was planning to contact them after the show and see if we can get them one.

Don’t feel any pressure to do this, but if you want do, you can call the Round House Cafe (518 677-2233) and talk to Scott Carrino directly, or you can e-mail me at [email protected] or Maria and [email protected].

We will make it happen. Scott is the person handling purchases of the photos, the Round House will get a commission that way, it will help them raise the funds to buy their building. So we will refer any purchases to him.

People are so good when given the chance, and our blogs are a community unto themselves. These days, I believe in the healing power of small acts of kindness, it is what we can all do, perhaps it is all that we can do. “Love is our true destiny,” wrote Thomas Merton. “We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.”

I am fortunate to be making headway in my search for the meaning of life, I believe that love is our true destiny, even as so many of us struggle to find it.