This portrait is thank you from the family of a Mansion aide who is a single mother with two teenaged children. She is a loving,  hard-working, and valued aide, and the residents love her. She is full of affection and empathy, I miss seeing her work.

I’m helping her feed her family with Price Chopper Gift Cards.

But she doesn’t make enough money to be food secure all year, and neither do most health care workers in America.

It isn’t the Mansion’s fault. The Mansion is a Medicaid facility dependent on dwindling federal reimbursements which is why so many facilities for the aging have been forced to closed down.

But this family should not have to eat at relatives’ homes because they don’t have enough food.

I can’t imagine where the residents would go without the Mansion, they love living there, the staff is loving and attentive and work brutish hours, especially now. They always dread having to leave the Mansion.

As always, my idea of how to help is not to write op-ed pieces for the New York Times or to go on cable news to rant (not that anyone has asked me).

I work with the Army of Good on a small and manageable scale. Small and bounded acts of great kindness.

I want to keep offering gift cards to three or four aides who need some food support, and I would like to keep gathering gift cards to feed the refugee families at Bishop Maginn.

I’m helping another whose husband just underwent major surgery and they are struggling.

In this sweltering summer, I’d also like to purchase some portable room air conditioners for the refugees, like the ones I got for the Mansion residents.

They are low energy and inexpensive and meet state health department standards.

This afternoon I’m going to the Mansion to drop off some gift cards, I only have a few left. I hope you will consider supporting these heroes, these health care workers who work so hard and make so little money.

The country is appreciating their value now. The Mansion aides are heroes to me, and to Maria, and we are planning to honor them this week, I want it to be a surprise.

If you can help support this gift card program, or the air conditioners,  that would be great and timely.

You can buy the gift cards here. You can buy them in any amount, but they need to come to me as the school isn’t fully open yet and gift cards are not supposed to go to post office boxes, although some have slipped through.

This will be a big help for these aides as it was for the refugee families when the coronavirus first struck. The need continues.

If you can purchase the gift cards, or want to contribute to the purchase of a few portable room air conditioners,  please send contributions to me at Bedlam Farm, 2502 State Route 22, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.

I will get them to the Mansion aides, or, if appropriate to the refugee families.

I know many of you are not at ease purchasing things online if so, you can send a donation to me, and I will see the money or gift cards go where they belong. Via Paypal, [email protected] or by check,  Jon Katz, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y.,  12816 or Jon Katz, 2502 State Route 22, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.

It’s an honor for me to do it. And the residents are deeply grateful for the $700 in air cooling units we bought them two weeks ago.

Thank you. This is one thing we can do for some heroes who care for our parents and who may one daycare for us. We are all reminded lately of how much health care workers mean to us, and how under-appreciated they are.

We can do something on a small scale to help.