Search Results for: Madeline

Whenever Red appears in the Mansion hallway, a crowd gathers around him to talk to him, pet him, hold him. Jean, Ellen, Madeline and Alice gathered in a circle  around him, they old me about the letters they receive, the dogs they had, they ask all kinds of questions about Red. How old is he? How many pictures do I have of him? Where did he come from? How was  he trained to be so sweet? Where does he sleep? How much do I love him?  How long will he live?

Often, they ask me the same questions again and again.

I’m starting a new Mansion blog report, regular updates on what I’m doing and what is needed and how your gifts are being received, I want to share as much information with you as I can, to be as open as I can as we continue this wondrous experiment in community and trust, and as our Army Of Good picks up steam.

I want you to know what you are doing with your empathy and generosity. It is wonderful to be associated with so many people whose hearts have not turned to stone.

– This afternoon, I visited a couple living at the Mansion, it was nearly 90 degrees outside, and quite humid.It was extremely warm inside of their rooms. I could see they were uncomfortable, they were spending much of their time on the porch and downstairs, in front of fans. The Mansion is not air-conditioned, it is an old and sprawling old mansion, many Medicaid facilities for the elderly do not have air conditioning.

I went online and ordered a Honeywell 10,000 BTU portable room air conditioner for this couple – they have two connected rooms – it cost $385 plus $27.02 in taxes. It will arrive in a couple of days and I had enough money in my Mansion/Refugee account to pay for it. It will make an enormous difference in the lives of this very sweet couple, they are intensely devoted to one another as they enter this final chapter in their lives together.

And they were suffering in the intense heat.

-The Overbed Table for people who read and draw while in wheelchairs arrived today and Maria and I brought it over to the Mansion. We got it for Jane, who draws constantly,  and for the other residents of the Mansion to use while writing letters or working on watercolors. It cost $149 and I had money in the fund to pay for it.

We see many of them struggling to write letters and paint and sketch in their laps, it is awkward and uncomfortable. The table rolls in and out, it is not a part of the wheelchair.

–Rachel Barlow, the very gifted and successful Vermont artist, has agreed to teach water color painting classes to the Mansion residents, they are very interested. I’ve offered to pay her to teach these classes, I’m not sure yet how much that will cost. She will probably try to refuse the payment, but I will insist. I’m thinking of $25 a class, far less than she would normally be worth.

-I bought a two-year subscription to the Mansion for the Readers Digest Large Print Edition in paper. It cost $24.95, and there is money in the fund to pay for it. Mansion Activity Director Julie Smith says it would be invaluable, there are many puzzles, pieces, facts and stories in this publication, it is very popular with the residents.

– I bought six water color kits for the Activity Room, they cost $114. I chose to pay for those.

-Your mystery books for Connie have arrived, and she says she has enough now for  a year. There are several boxes of mysteries waiting for her to read, and some will be distributed among the other residents. They will all be used and read.

Connie’s back has spasmed again, she is in much pain again, but it seems treatable and she is working hard to get through it. Your books will be much appreciated, and thanks. She says she has enough.

-There is a large wooden closet in the basement that is now filled with soap, shampoo and body wash. The staff will be talking about this for a very long time, they are shocked and very appreciative. They estimate there is enough of these necessary toiletries to last almost a year. How great, and thank you.

-More than a month ago, we purchased a picnic table and six chairs for several hundred dollars (I don’t have the invoice handy) so the residents could picnic and have lunch outdoors. It has been raining almost every day since, but the table made it’s debut on July Fourth.

-The Mansion stories have been collected and sent to Abrah Griggs, the artist and illustrator and book designer who is assembling them into both e-book and print forms. I will have some printed up locally and they will be available for sale. The e-book version will be available on Amazon and the print version will be sold either through the Mansion or Battenkill Books, I’m not sure yet. I’ve provided Abrah with ten of my photographs of the Mansion residents at their story reading. I am paying her $240, she offered to work for less but I’d prefer to pay her what she normally charges and richly deserves.

–Summer the former stray cat is recovering from her spaying last week, thanks to your donations. She is lounging regally around the Mansion office and common rooms while she recovers, Red stepped right over her today and she didn’t move. She is staying inside until her stitches come out.

-The Mansion staff is out searching for clothes for the two residents who need them. They could not find what they wanted at Wal-Mart, they are looking at area thrift shops. They have $100 to spend, paid out from the fund.

I think that’s all for now. I am looking for holes to fill in the lives of the Mansion residents, keeping it simple, small and as inexpensive as possible. Letters and cards and photos matter, you can send them to The Mansion, 11 S. Union Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.

With small and considered steps, we are making a difference in the lives of these good people, often abandoned by the world around them and made invisible to a society that takes all their money.

Many of you are proposing Amazon gift pages, but that is not appropriate here. The updating and maintenance of the page would be a complex process, not for me and not for the Mansion staff. Outsiders couldn’t really know what it is needed, and it isn’t something I would care to do. This is working. Let’s keep it simple and clear.

After all this, I think we have about $700 left in the Mansion/refugee fund, from which these funds are drawn. If you wish to contribute to this fund – I use it for the refugee kids and the Mansion, you can send donations to my post office box, Bedlam Farm P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. You can also send donations through Paypal Friends and Family, my ID is [email protected].

Please mark all checks or donations as going to the Mansion Residents, or the Refugee Children, so I can make sure the money goes where it is needed. We are doing a lot of good, I believe, and it is better to do good than to argue about doing good, or so I believe. P.S. The donation button at the bottom of each blog post is for the maintenance of the blog, it goes to support my blog and my work.

I love having the Mansion residents line up to read me your letters and show me your photos and cards. Today, they were all walking around with feathers, a member of the Army Of Good send everyone beautiful feathers today.

As I grow older, I have come to grasp the power and beauty of simplicity. Confusion said life is really quite simple, but human beings insist on making it complicated. The animals teach us that simplicity is eternal, and one of the great lessons of life.  I am only beginning to see it.

I have been working at the Mansion for more than a year now, I can hardly believe that much time has passed, and I have seen so much life come and go there.  So much love and loss and courage and acceptance. And so much sickness and death.

The work there, which began before the Army Of Good, has touched a deep chord in people, and I am grateful and also recently engulfed in ideas for expanding the work, adding to it, trying new ideas.

They speak to the love and generosity of people from everywhere, and I appreciate them, even when they sometimes make me sigh. People don’t suggest new ideas for things the residents don’t need or don’t care about.

There are calls to nationalize the program, urging me to advocate similar programs all over the country. Ideas for new technical systems for distributing and reading books, including e-books. Ideas to form new groups to facilitate the movement of gifts and messages, new social media pages to share ideas and support, more details about personal lives to make letters more relevant, an Amazon gift page.

Questions about shipping old clothes and shelves of books regularly, boxes of puzzles, soaps and shampoos from hotels. They come every day.

I couldn’t list them all  really, and they all have got me thinking and once, even praying.

I realized a couple of weeks ago that I had done a poor job of describing life in the Mansion. I need to capture the feel of the place. People are needy there, they are sick there, and frail. Many struggle to walk, others have memory problems, some have breathing and balance problems. There is a reason they are all in the Mansion, it is because they can’t care for themselves any longer.

The residents are diverse, but one thing unites them, they have little money, because the Mansion is a Medicaid facility, they must have lost or given away all of their resources. No two residents have the same needs, or are the same. No two residents have the same kinds of families.

I thought long and hard on these ideas.

Uncharacteristically for me, I am against much change. This week, I talked to some of the staff and some of the residents as well. I think our program is working well. The Mansion residents have what they need, and then some.

That is the point for me. I am not playing God, we will not part these waters.

When there are problems – like the soap and shampoo or the residents in need of clothes – I am hearing about them now, and more quickly than before. If the challenge is to provide them with what they need, an even greater challenge may be not to give them what they don’t need or more than they need. Big hearts want to give big gifts, but the lives of the Mansion residents have shrunk, they live in small rooms with little space.

Their lives tend to be narrow and devoted to routines.

Reading is a struggle sometimes, even with large print. They need clothes, but not too many. Most are not going anywhere except to the doctor’s. My idea is that we fill the holes in their lives, but we can’t alter the nature of their lives, and shouldn’t try.

I care for them, but don’t wish to be ambitious on their behalf.

Some are frightened of change, and easily overwhelmed. It was frightening and difficult for some of the residents to receive letters from strangers at first, they had never heard of such a thing, they couldn’t figure out how to accept and trust them, or even believe people would care that much.

But they have learned and are learning.

Two residents need some clothes. The others do not. Two want more books. The others don’t. There is one Kindle reader in the building, and she plays games and does puzzles. The others shudder to even think of one.

Survival and acceptance are the challenges of the Mansion. Two residents passed me in the hallway the other day.

They had this conversation:

What time is it?

I don’t know.

What day is it?

I don’t know, does it matter?

What’s going on?

I was going to ask you.

Nothing is going on, really.

Just like yesterday.

Just like every day.

Do you know what the hell is going on?

Not for years. See you at dinner, whenever that is.

So I think our system is working well. So far, the residents have gotten everything they might have needed, and everything they have asked for or that the staff  has suggested. They usually get more than they need, which is nice. When that happens, we take the overage to other institutions and donate them.

The Mansion basement has enough soap and shampoo to last until next summer, and that is a miracle.

I am looking for small things, not big things. A table here, a painting there, a book here, coloring books there, letters and cookies for the holidays. And some larger things  occasionally – a picnic table, a van, an air conditioner or two. I am pretty fussy about those.

We have done very well, the Mansion is somewhat transformed.

Your donations are small and effective, they come in slowly and quietly and steadily as needed. They go out quickly and carefully, it is really a beautify rhythm, a dance of trust and connection.

I am not a politician or social worker, people should give whatever they wish to any institution they like, but I only recommend things that I see and know, not that I haven’t seen and don’t know. Our knowledge of these people is what makes us want to help them, without that, they are just another faceless cause in need of money.

And many facilities are not like the Mansion, many that I have visited with Red or Izzy do not care to be as open or caring. I can’t recommend them all. They aren’t all alike. I’ve never seen one like the Mansion, not a Medicaid facility.

People should make their own decisions and do their own research.

The residents dread sudden change and new technologies. Many just can’t use them. They have no space for lots of shoes, blouses, pants or other clothes. They don’t remember things, they stress easily.

I don’t want to create or join any new organizations, except possibly one that is for politicians who will get things done and work together and help the poor. The Mansion isn’t Goodwill, some things are needed, some things are not.

So that is what I have been thinking. We do the best we can for as long as we can.

This is not broken, we don’t need to fix it., add to it, or change it.

I don’t want to make it more complicated,and I don’t think they could handle it, or that I could handle it. The drive to make things more complicated is very human, as Confucius suggests, and very generous.  And I will be forthright: I am busy, busier than ever before in my life.

But it is the simplicity is just what makes it work.  A lot of people give a little and it works. So I’d prefer not to make it more complicated. That’s my simple and mundane idea.

Every staffer says the same thing: the best things to give are the simplest: letters, photos, notes. And they are free.

If you wish to write to the Mansion residents, here are the names of those who wish to receive gifts:

Jean, Ellen, Mary, Gerry, Sylvie, Jane, Diane, Alice, Jean, Madeline, Joan, Allan, William, John K, Helen, Constance, Robert, Shlrley, Alanna, Charlotte, Barbara, Peggie, Dorothy, Arthur, John R., Brenda, Bruce, John Z.

Many of the residents try to answer as many of the letters as they can. But letters, like gifts, cannot carry any expectations.  You might get a response, you might not. That is the nature of life in the Mansion. And the nature of selfless giving itself. We do it for us.

It was just a couple of days ago that I asked one of the Mansion staffers if there was anything in particular that the Mansion residents needed. I ask all the time.

Two of them took me aside and told me that many of the residents run out of money in the middle of the month with the small accounts they have. They run out of soap, shampoo or body wash. They had no way of really cleaning themselves.

People who labored for 40 and 50 years and saved every penny to retire safely couldn’t afford to buy soap while the average U.S.Congressmen or women average $750,000 a year in income. It just boggles the mind.

But today is not a time to argue but to celebrate. Packages came quickly from all over the country.

And so quickly. Tuesday, I ran out to Rite-Aid with Maria and we bought some emergency supplies.

I posted a message about it on the blog. That was just a few days ago, the staff took me down into the basement storage area to show me what today’s mail and delivery trucks (and a puzzled postman) brought. They took over a special cabinet to store the stuff, and more is on the way.

Some of the soap and shampoo and body wash has already been distributed (“everybody here smells sweet today,” one of the residents told me. Everyone asked me to pass along deep thanks.)

In one sense, this is the most important photograph I have ever taken at the Mansion. It embodies the mission and the way in which we can really help these people. We can’t change the realities of life or aging, but we will try to fill the holes in their existence,whenever we can.

We have come together in a fractured world to form a community whose only purpose is to do good in a time when doing good seems strangely out of fashion, and where mercy cries out for a place in our lives.

Mercy lives in the Army Of Good.I love how we use technology to do good rather than to argue. I sometimes think of all the good that big Twitter account in Washington could do it if was devoted to helping people, just one every day.

I had no idea this soap and shampoo stuff was a monthly problem for so many people there, their monthly allowances are small and sometimes, they run out of their medicines before the end of the month. They don’t usually tell anyone, they simply do without for a few days or weeks.

I am amazed at all of this soap, shampoo and body wash – good stuff – that arrived in so short a time. The residents should have their soap, body wash and shampoo for months to come, and I will keep an eye on it.

The Mansion staff was incredulous, and also very happy to be able to distribute these essential items. This is a human dignity issue and whenever I need to feel good and  hopeful about the world, I will go down into the basement and open up this cabinet. Many thanks, the Army of Good is sporting a halo tonight.

Other good things were happening at the Mansion today. Their cat Summer was spayed and in residence. Connie is healing up. Two staffers went to Wal-Mart to spend $100 on the residents who had no money to buy new clothes or shoes ( no need to send clothes, thanks, or shoes). Tonight, they have their new clothes and shoes (all paid for).

I ordered an overbed table for Jane, so she can paint in her wheelchair.  The table cost $149, people can donate by sending a check to P.O.Box 205. Cambridge, N.Y., 12816 or via Paypal Friends and Family, [email protected]. If you send money, please mark it for the Mansion or the Overbed for Jane.

And everybody in the Mansion has soap and shampoo for some months to come.

What a sweet day. Gus and Red both came with me today, Gus is close (a few weeks) to doing regular therapy work.

I have an updated list of residents, for those who wish to write them at this address: 11 S. Mansion Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.

Jean, Ellen, Mary, Gerry, Sylvie, Jane, Diane, Alice, Jean, Madeline, Joan, Allan, William, John K., Helen, Connie, Robert, Shirley, Alanna, Charlotte, Barbara, Peggie, Dorothy, Art, John R., Brenda, Bruce, John Z.

—Art appreciates corresponding with people of faith, or people interested in spirituality. Connie could use some paperback mysteries.

May a million cherubs swoop down from the sky to kiss your cheeks and shower you with blessings.

Shirley is a big dog lover, and she took to Gus, on his third visit as a therapy dog. He is doing very well, used to being handled, affectionate and calm. His attention span is not long, but that will change in time, I think. The Mansion residents already love seeing him, Shirley and Robert moved in together, they are the only married couple in the Mansion. They are waiting for a big room to open up so they can be together.

But they are happy to be in a place where they can be cared for, Bob says it is a relief not to drive anymore or have to shop. Shirley held Gus to her heart for a long time, it was pleasing to see it.

The Mansion is quiet on holidays, it is my favorite time to visit.  There is a sense of peace there, and the passage of time is comforting.

The Mansion residents stop me in the hallway to tell me about the letters they are receiving from all over the country. Some are making lists of the locations where the letters are coming from, and the list has every state in the United States except Alaska. There are also letters from England, Spain, Belgium, and Mexico.

Gus has the makings of a great dog, he has melded perfectly with our lives so far. He just gets life her and fits himself in.

You can write the residents of the Mansion c/o The Mansion 11 S. Union Street, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. The current names list are Bruce, Allan, Sylvie, Jean, John Z, Tim, John R, Alanna, Peggie, Ellen, Joan, Brenda, Connie, Alice, Madeline, Mary, Barbara, William, Brother Peter, Diane, Helen, Jane, Dottie, Anita, Richard, Gerry, Charlotte, Arthur, Shirley and Robert.

A new Bedlam Farm Posse is shaping up, Gus is joining the pack.

This morning, we put Gus out with the big dogs for the first time, today marks his first week with us. Red accepts him fully, even when he chews on his claws, and Fate still keeps her distance, grabbing Gus’s toys whenever she can and hiding them around the house.

Yesterday we realized that every one of Gus’s toys had disappeared, we found them all in a corner of the room behind a plant.

Gus is more of an indoor dog than the border collies, he loves to hang out inside with us. The border collies are more outward focused, they love to sit by the pasture watching the sheep. But Gus also loves to be with the dogs and stays with them whenever they are outside.

I am worn to a nub after the very successful refugee children retreat at Pompanuck Farm, the dogs have all made a complete recovery.

I think we have another dog content to be near the house and with no interest in the road, but it is only a week so we have more to learn about him.  Dogs are pack animals, they love to stay with their pack.

This morning, Gus tried to run with Fate out around the sheep. She made it about 20 feet and by then Fate was almost out of site, and Gus sat down looking puzzled.

Today, another chapter in the of Gus and of me. At 1:30, the Mansion residents will read the stories they have written in our workshop together, I will read some of them, and some of the authors will read their own.

There will also be a Fourth of July party preceding the readings, thanks in no small measure to the gifts and cards and photographs you have sent. Gus and Red will be the attending therapy dogs, I get to be the story reader and also a judge, we will pass out ribbons for the best stories.

Your messages and gifts to the Mansion residents have had a profound effect on life there. Thanks again, you can write to the residents care of The Mansion, 11 S. Union Street, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. Here is the latest list of Mansion residents who wish to receive your messages: Bruce, Allan, Sylvie, Jean, John Z., John R., Alanna, Peggie, Ellen, Joan, Brenda, Connie, Alice, Madeline, Mary, Barbara, William, Brother Peter, Diane, Helen, Jane, Dottie, Anna, Richard, Gerry, Charlotte, Arthur, Shirley and Robert.