Do not let anyone tell you that 84-year-old women in wheelchairs are not powerful forces to be reckoned with.

Yesterday, Kathryn Bell, the manager of Joseph’s Dream, the facility whose residents are battling for their birds and flowers, asked me to call her in her office, which I did.

Ms. Bell was courteous, she said she was a reader of my books and asked me for my autograph. I am subject to flattery, of course but I was a reporter for too long to melt after one compliment.

She asked me if I would interveme with Cynthia Daniello, my new friend and a new blogger (TheNeverEndingStory), who is battling the management of her independent living residence in Bedford Va., it’s called Joseph’s Dream after the company’s founder.

Cynthia is one cool woman, she is an author, a poet, and a life-long lover of animals.

Joseph’s son, Joseph Moore, runs, Metropolitan Properties in several southern states. His e-mail is [email protected]. I wrote him again this afternoon.

The company has issued a number of recent edicts which have terrified the elderly residents of this low-income property an hour west of Roanoke, Va.

First, all bird feeders, even hummingbird feeders must be removed by the end of this week or the  residents will be “written up” by the inspectors who are coming to examine their homes. Three strikes and you are out.

Feeding a feral cat is one strike, having an independent, individual garden is another violation, having any kind of bird feeder is now another strike.

This has always been the rule, Kathryn Bell told me, but nobody enforced it until this week.

Cynthia has been one of the few residents  to dare to speak up, many others already  tore up  their beloved gardens this week. “I have nowhere else to go,” one of them told Cynthia.
“I have to do what they say.”

Her apartment is crowded day and night by frightened and angry residents, many afraid to speak for themselves on behalf of their beloved birds and gardens. She has been forbidden to feed a feral cat or keep her warm “cottage” for the cat on her porch.

Ms.Bell said the company offered a “compromise,” a garden club could be formed to approve everyone’s garden choices with the power to turn down flowers that weren’t uniform. No way, said Cynthia, who seems to be leading the resistance there.

Kathryn Bell said she is eager to talk with the residents and reason with them, and she asked me several times to reason with Cynthia and get her to back down. That was te purpose of her call, not negotiating or changing these suffocating rules. Cynthia is not backing down, the company is kidding themselves if they think she can be manipulated.

She sent this e-mail to  Joseph Moore last night:

I told Kathryn Bell I would intervene with Cynthia if the company suspended its insensitive and Draconian rules and agreed to a genuine – not pretend – dialogue with the residents. I said I was sure Cynthia would agree also. She is eminently reasonable and approachable, she is not looking for trouble.

I told her I had called and e-mailed a dozen Virginia columnists, TV stations and newspapers and was just getting started. I will not stop until someone responds.

I got the sense the people in management do not know Cynthia, she has justice and wisdom on her side. It is hard for me to fathom, but neither do they understand the true needs of the elderly – dignity, pride and purpose.

This is no way to treat older people, they are needy and vulnerable, they are entitled to their tiny gardens and bird feeders at the very lease. These are things to encourage, not banish. They matter.

She hemmed and hawed about the negotiations. It was not up to her, she said, it was up the management.

Well, she said, nobody was coming to rip up people’s gardens. But people are already ripping up their own gardens, I said, frightened by the news that inspector are coming to their houses to decide if they are following all of the rules. The company wants every garden to look exactly alike and be of the same exact height.

And even though there is no evidence of any rodent or other infestation around the existing bird feeders – people have had them for years without objection, and even though hummingbird feeders have no seeds and do not attract pests, they all must be taken down. And soon, this week.

People, once again fearing the inspectors – they were just told there will be inspections three times a year – have already started taking down their feeders. One 80-year-old resident has been crying in her house ever since. This is happening right now.

One 83-year-old woman had a humming-bird who visited her feeder every year, and now, she says, he will not know where to go.

Frightening people with rigid and unfeeling regulations – and little or no preparation or discussion – is not compromise. Nobody is listening to these people, everyone is just trying to silence and manipulate them. Everyone knows how vulnerable they are.

Cynthia knows what the people running elder care facilities should know. People in their 80’s with few places to go desperately need to feel they have choices and outlets for their individuality and creativity. They are not all alike, their gardens do not need to be all alike.

One resident was devastated today as she pulled up the beautiful garden she has been cultivating for years so that the “inspectors” could she was accepting the company’s Orwellian gardens, which must be the same in every home. There’s a big hole in the ground where her garden was.

How this might improve the lives and fortunes of the elderly is beyond my comprehension. It is almost a caricature of bureaucratic rigidity and obliviousness.

I will not ask Cynthia to cool things off and calm things down.  That would be patronizing and insulting. She knows just what she is doing.

She is correct to be angry and so are the residents, and I hope a journalist there will grasp the cruelty of what is happening to this powerless people and make some noise about it. I know I would have.

If you can, please send a message to Joseph Moore –  [email protected] – and tell him what  you think of these rules. Ask him to suspend this nasty crusade  before more gardens and feeders are  destroyed, and until someone sits down with the residents for more than a few minutes and tries to truly understand why they are so upset.

People at the edge of life do not need to be upset by the very people they are dependent on for shelter and security. Please, Mr. Moore,  rescind these foolishly rigid rules immediately, and then I will be happy to talk to Cynthia about it.

She doesn’t need me to tell her what to think. She will, of course, make up her own mind. She always does. [email protected].