Sylvie has moved into Connie’s old room at the Mansion, and I think this still confuses Red, he sometimes looks around for Connie. The other week, Sylvie asked me if it would be possible to find a carpet for her room, for the space between her bed and the wall.

This, she said, was both for aesthetics and warmth. Sylvie gets cold, especially in her feet,  all year long.

I knew a friend in town was moving from her house into an apartment and I texted her and asked her if she had a carpet she was getting rid of. She did, and I went and got it and got it over to the Mansion. It fit perfectly, and Sylvie loves it.

People are always suggesting ways for me to make this work bigger – talk to colleges, non-profit associations, professional fund-raisers, credit unions, find colleges, corporate sponsors, billionaires and millionaires, hedge funds, banks.

My idea is not to get bigger, but to stay small. Even intimate.

I would not survive the paperwork and politics of the real non-profit world, which is every bit as cutthroat as Washington D.C., I am told. A path to frustration, meddling and burn out. i like what we have. We function on a small-scale. You get to see every person we help, and everything we help them with.

I get to see and know every person I help. And show their faces.

It is personal, intimate, not a giant bureaucracy giving money with strings attached, but a relatively small number of people – the Army Of Good – donating small amounts of money, committing small acts of great kindness. Thankfully, there are a lot of you.

it seems a natural impulse to get bigger and bigger, it is the American way,  my impulse to start out small and stay there. It is the little things that really matter – letters, cards, holiday decorations, air conditioners, carpets, soap and waterproof boots and shoes.

I don’t want my time taken up filling out forms, begging on the phone, listening to conditions, struggling with strings. I want to know people and find out the ways they can be help. We will never have enough money to make everyone’s dreams come true, we can help fulfill their needs and some of their dreams.

None of us are looking for a fight, or eager to start an argument. We are not here to perform miracles or alter fate, we are here to fill the small holes that can make so much of a difference in the lives of marginalized and ignored people.

Sylvie loves to get your letters, but many are returned. She says she returns the returned letters to prayers, she often gets the address or zip code wrong.

Sylvie is deeply religious, the Jehovah’s Witnesses.Someone suggested it might be helpful if your letters included stamped and self-addressed envelopes. It’s a good idea, she worries that people will get upset when they don’t hear from her, she loves her new friends. You can write Sylvia at The Mansion, 22 S. Union Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.