I brought Tim a new camera, a Powershot Canon 5G that is about 10 years old, I got it online for $50. I also got a card reader, a battery and cable and have ordered an instruction booklet. Tim is creative, he loves to paint and draw and write.
He is undergoing major surgery In September and will be away from the Mansion for months, perhaps even longer. He has given permission to say one of his legs is infected, and will be amputated. He needs oxygen now, and his room is warm in the summer, so an air conditioner is on his way.
The air conditioners I buy are all gifts to the Mansion, if residents leave, they will revert to someone else there. I am fond of Tim, he is a familiar sight in our town driving up and down Main Street in his motorized wheelchair, he often runs errants for the residents.
Tim is genial and active, I wish him well and hope he returns to the Mansion soon.
The air conditioner is arriving on Tuesday, and I will come back and show him how to use the Powershot. I have a feeling this camera will be important to him in the coming weeks and months.
You can write Tim if you wish c/o Tim, The Mansion, 11 S. Union Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.
At the Mansion today, I found Joan sitting in her favorite chair in reverie, she told me she was thinking of riding in a beautiful boat on a lake with someone she loved, she wasn’t sure who it was, but it was a beautiful and clear Spring day.
Outside, a storm approach, there was rumbling and lightning, and that, I saw, was what Joan was looking at.
Some small acts of kindness today.
I sat and read to Bob, who is gravely ill with cancer and is soon being transported to a nursing home in Connecticut. I will spend some time reading to him Sunday afternoon.
I got a small Samsung used flat screen TV for Ruth and Ken. Ken is very ill and spends most of his time in their room, they both asked for help in getting a small television so they could watch it together.
I brought Tim a used Canon Power Shot 5G camera along with battery and charger and card reader. I helped him set it up. Tim is having a leg amputated in September and will be in a rehab facility for several months at least.
I purchased an air conditioner for him, his room is warm and he is now on oxygen and needs the AC to help him breath. Tim never asks for anything, this was important.
He is, we believe, the last resident in need of an air condition. Before the oxygen, he said he didn’t want one. Helen thanked me (and you all) profusely for hers.
Small acts of great kindness that make a difference.
For some time now, I’ve had this vision – it started as an actual dream – about the refugee soccer team, now called the Albany Warriors. In the vision, Ali and the team are on a hop-on, hop-off tour bus riding up and down Manhattan, and stopping at the ferry wharf that goes out to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.
At first, I dismissed this as a fantasy of mine.
All of my forbears came to America through Ellis Island, but none of the soccer team’s families came that way, they almost all few here from United Nations refugee camps in Asia and Africa and the Middle East.
I assumed this was a remote idea for them, and didn’t want to push it on them.
Last month, I was at one of the team games and sitting on the bench with several of the players. I asked them where they would most like to go, and they surprised me by saying, all at once, “New York City and the Statue of Liberty.”
None of them had ever really traveled out of Albany once they came to the United States.
They said they had been learning about it in school and they thought it as a place it would be beautiful and inspiring to see. They seemed more connect to it that our own people.
So many Americans have forgotten the Statue of Liberty, and turned from its message.
I decided then and there that the soccer team must go with Ali, who has never been there either. Maybe I can come along on this one, since my grandparents came through Ellis Island.
I have been there once, it was a very powerful thing for me.
I have come to believe that this is something the soccer team ought to see, in a sense, it is the heart of America and the American experience, one these children have in common with so many Americans in so many ways.
I began putting a small amount of money aside each week, and started reaching bus and ferry fares and ticket prices. I am more than halfway there. This morning, I had gathered information to call up Ali and tell him about this idea.
“Wow,” he said, “nice, this would be the greatest thing,” which is his highest compliment and praise.
So next week, at our regular meeting we will sit down together in our “office” and go over costs and bus arrangements and sights in Times Square worth seeing. I need to figure out precisely what it will cost to do this, and the trip will need to be a one day trip.
Ali says he will take as much of the team as he safely can in his van. It’s a straight three hour drive for him, right down the New York State Thruway.
In her great poem, once considered to be the true anthem of America, Emma Lazarus called the statue the “Mother Of Exiles.” You can keep your ancient lands and your storied pomp, she cried out with silent lips, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddles masses yearning to be free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore…”
Yes, I see why these boys want to go there, and I see why they need to go. So we will start planning in earnest, and maybe I’ll add an extra ticket to the list of people going.
My artist wife had pulled into the minor but bubbling flap over her new Vulva Flying Potholders (Why Flying? Because it represents freedom), they have already sold out twice on Etsy, and there is a waiting list for some more.
I believe she is making some more, they will go on sale next week. She does not have a long attention span but loves to stir the pot. I guess we have that in common.
I’m catching some collateral fire for the vulvas, even I had nothing whatsoever to do with their creation. I did put a photo of that up on my blog and this seems to have annoyed some of the endless legions of grumps and prudes who prowl the Internet for moral turpitude and live to tell other people what to do and think.
I supposed I’m flattered at my age to be immoral, even in the most collateral of ways. I am proud to be an avowed and public supporter of Vulvas, to my knowledge the sight of them has killed or grieviously injured no one.
A dozen women have labeled the vulvas on my blog “disgusting,” or “revolting” or “gross,: I fear they do not care for their own bodies or the bodies of other women.
“Do I have to look at this garbage on your blog?,” asked June from Mississippi?
Absolutely not, I replied. My blog is not, alas, mandatory reading. All you have to do is go away.
Bob L send me a longer comment, he must be retired or unemployed, he said he was concerned about the morality of the people around me. He was unhappy with the explicitness of depictions of sexual activity on my blog:
“At least Etsy has not lost common sense as far as artistic license: “If you are selling mature content, we ask that you understand that there are differing sensibilities around the world and that you try to be respectful… When deciding whether mature content crosses over the threshold into pornography, we take into consideration how realistically mature image or images are portrayed, and the explicitness of depictions of sexual activity or content.”
Q: Do you think the parents of the refugees you are assisting would want their sons “exposed” to this topic about female genitals since you have mentioned in your blog posts the soccer players read your posts?”
Answer: I had the pleasure of answering him, as it happened, I was with some parents and children of the refugees I am assisting the day the photo of the Vulva potholders came out on my blog, and they all got a good laugh out of it. They all said they wanted to meet Maria, she seemed much more interesting to them than me.
They were much impressed at the idea that people would pay $25 plus shipping for a fiber representation of a women’s vagina, and I sold two right on the spot. I think they wanted to know how she pulled that off.
Perhaps I need my own public policy statement about my blog: “Warning. We think here at times, and in between, we take cute photos of animals. We write pretty much anything we like, and take photos in the same way. We are not responsible for the corruption and moral pollution of any photos of dogs, donkeys, barn cats or vulvas. Come here at your own risk and watch your children. You never know what might happen when a child sees a vulva potholder. They might turn into instant sex maniacs or worse, immoral artists. They might grow weeds out of their ears! Note: We do not photograph the vulvas of donkeys.“
Poor Bob, I hope he never comes across an image of actual sexual activity itself, he might lose it altogether, he seems to think I am a conspirator of Stormy Daniels(no such luck.)
As to the soccer players themselves, they seemed utterly disinterested in the vulva photo or discussion and played games on their smartphones. Two Iraqi mothers clapped in approval when I showed them the potholders on my Iphone.
I wonder who Bob thinks these people are? They have all seen a lot worse, including people who really do get hurt. Is it proper, I wonder, to patronize people?
I think Bob must not get out much if he thinks the Bedlam Farm blog has content so explicitly sexual that women and teenagers from the Middle East and Asia cannot handle the sight of a Vulva Potholder. He best not go and see the penises and vulvas hanging all over the Vatican Museum, or any good museum, for that matter.
I told Zekra, one of the Iraqi women (she is Muslim) about Maria’s idea that Vulvas were a symbol of femininity and nurture, (I am rather a big fan of them myself) and she was quite puzzled by the idea that any image of them was immoral.
She said they were represented all over the sculpture and vases and paintings displayed in Iraq’s famous museum in Baghdad.
Maria, I said, was doing her bit to show them as art, as something beautiful, as artists have done for centuries until men like Bob got into it and decided they know better than women what is moral and what isn’t.
Bob did not reply to my comments of course. The righteous rarely stick around to take it.
He seemed just seemed like another pompous man to me, but the women who felt their vulvas are “disgusting” or “gross” and should be hidden forever from public view seem sadder and more mysterious to me.
Is it a good thing to hate a critical part of one’s body like that? I don’t wave my penis around, but I would never call it disgusting, (just brave and determined and smaller than it once was.)
I love women and every vulva I have had the pleasure of meeting, I don’t mean to glorify or romanticize them, there are plenty of female jerks, but I think the days are fading when people like me can tell them what they can and can’t create or say or write or do with their own bodies.
That it in itself something that crosses into the threshold of hypocrisy and domination, something we might all take into consideration before we speak or send messages online.
And good riddance.
In the meantime, those disturbing Vulva potholders are flying out of here.
if you want to see more disgusting and gross and explicit content, I’d get right over to Maria’s Etsy page or blog. She is probably cooking up some more mature content at the moment (beware, her fiber goddesses have breasts!).
