Last Friday, the Mansion launched a gofundme campaign to get an urgently needed new van so the residents can get their doctors, take field trips, visit their families, go shopping (and visit parks and farms like mine).

As of this morning, the fund had reached $5,470, or about 55 per cent of the $10,000. It is a wonderful start, and thank you, we have $6,530 to go. The Mansion is a Medicaid Assisted Care Facility, the only such facility for many miles around. They have limited funds, and it appears the funds they receive will be shrinking, according to the new budget proposed by President Trump.

I know almost all of the Mansion residents, and have met all of the staff members. This is a loving, caring facility for people no longer able to care for themselves and without the resources to get to fancier, or more elaborate facilities. Their van is their lifeline to the outside world, it takes them back into the lives they loved and lost and into the wider world.

It is also essential to their health care and emotional well-being. I hope we get get to $10,000, the Mansion’s owner George Scala has raised the other $10,000 necessary to buy a wan, he has spent so much money rehabilitating the Mansion and other facilities he cannot get financing.

In our country, we are great at keeping people alive longer than ever before, but woeful at helping them to lead meaningful and connected lives. We try to shunt them out of sight and away so that we do not see them age and die.  Modern medicine has failed to consider their lives beyond survival.

My photos are devoted to preventing them from being unseen or forgotten, these are not people who should be forgotten. The van is a lifeblood for them.

The stories of the Mansion residents are powerful and compelling. These are not people who wish to leave the world behind, they want to see it and travel through it and be seen and known. Thanks for helping, I hope we can get there. You can contribute here.