Search Results for: bingo night at the mansion

The return of the Mansion residents has been delayed for two more weeks as the repair and restoration project continues. The new date is February 1, hard news for the staff and the residents.

This afternoon, I went to the Mansion and proposed a series of outings for the residents who remain in the Mansion and those who have been evacuated to the Danforth Adult Care Center. My idea is that we take two to four residents out at a time for lunch or a drive for a cup of coffee, just to let them get outside.

The residents love to be taken outside, and love to eat out, they rarely get a lot of variety in their food, there are too many health and other restraints. I’d come by, with Maria if she can come, and we’ll pick some of the people up who need to get out.

It’s not a simple thing. The families have to be notified and given permission. There have to be at least two aides of there is more than one person. So it takes a lot of planning and schedule shifting and permission collecting, these are the parts I can’t do.

What I can do is plan the outings and drive them there and back (some will need wheelchair and walker help), and I ‘ll be happy to do that. Maria suggested that we also plan some tea parties, have tea and bring cakes and cookies and  talk to people who want to talk. The Mansion staff was enthusiastic about the idea and they will meet on Monday to try to figure out how to help me do it.

I’d like to do five to ten outings over the next two weeks, the give the residents something to look forward to, to get them outside and stimulated by a different environment, to ease their boredom and fear, and  to give them something to look forward to.

I went to call the Bingo game at the Mansion tonight with Maria – there are only six or seven residents left in the Mansion for now, and I brought puzzles, games, books, and some paper trains and crafts. They need these things more than ever, they were grateful for the 10 DVD’s I brought them yesterday.

These displaced elderly people are struggling with their new circumstance, often depressed and disoriented. I think this is the time give them some hope and joy and connection in their lives. The time for them to go home is coming, not quite here.

This is the critical part, coming up I could use some help with outings, if you care to contribute  you can do so via Paypal, [email protected] or by check, Jon Katz, Mansion Fund, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. You can also donate easily by using major credit cards by clicking on the Support The Army Of Good button at the bottom of each post.

I thank you and the Mansion residents thank you. Small donations are as welcome as larger ones.

Good news. Perhaps someone was listening today.

The residents are coming home soon.

It doesn’t make sense to me that prayers always work, if that were true, there would be no bad news. I sometimes feel that good energy works and moves through the ether, but I’m not sure of that either.

Either way, I offered a prayer for the Mansion residents and their families and the staff this morning, and invited everyone out there to join, perhaps the state regulators were listening.

By the end of the day, the Mansion had  passed a battery of what are believed to be final tests, and are now free to begin the process of returning the residents to the Mansion. If any group is capable of generating good energy, it would be the Army Of Good.

There remains some work to be done, I don’t know the details and it isn’t my business.

I am told that this  could take a few days or up to a week, nobody knows exactly how long. This is very happy news. A failing asbestos test would have been a nightmare for the Mansion and its residents. And the familes are drained from their worries and disruptions.

What does seem certain is that the residents will be coming home soon, and I thank all of you for our prayers and good wishes and support. This was a remarkable week.

I went to the Danforth tonight to sit with the residents while they had their dinner, it was a glum and virtually silent group at the table. They need to get home.

One of the state regulators has apparently complained that I shouldn’t be at the Danforth since I didn’t ask for permission to go there.

I will be going there every day unless someone throws me out. I have full permission to see the Mansion residents and photograph them, and I would not, of course, take a picture of anyone who didn’t agree in advance. I’m not looking to take photos of the Danforth residents, that would be inappropriate.

Let them throw  me out, it’s been awhile since I was tossed from anyplace. I’ll be there tomorrow morning ot read some stories.

(I had a very successful visit to the Hackett Middle School in Albany, Friday afternoon, and met a remarkable young woman named Eh K Pru, she is an eighth grader fro Myanmar, and has spent much of her life in refugee camp. She is an honor student,  impressive and much loved. Her teacher Kathy Faso talked to me about what a wonderful student Eh K Pru, how bright, hard-working and social.

We are going to get to work getting her a full scholarship to the Albany Academy. I’ll write about this on Monday.)

It was a good day today, I am tired but very happy. The residents will be delighted and relieved to lean they are going home soon. They just have to get through another week.

Tonight, Maria and I went to the Mansion to call the Friday night Bingo Game. There were only a handful of people present, but I had fun trying to call out the numbers with my opera voice. There was a lot of laughing. They might just throw me out first.

It was a long day, I’m tired. More later. Thanks.

I almost never pray, I am not conventionally religious. Even when I was being wheeled into open heart surgery, I didn’t pray to any God. I simple asked the fates to let me see Maria and my daughter (they were waiting) when I came out the other side. And I did.

I’ve learned that a spiritual life belongs to each of us, not to any one church or faith.

Today, I woke up and was drawn to pray for the Mansion, for the residents, the staff and the families. They are in my head and dreams.

This water and damage drama has gone on for more than a week now, and I can see the toll it’s taking  on the aides, who miss their residents, George, the Mansion owner,  and on the residents themselves, who are increasingly depressed, confused and bewildered.

Their building is dry and clean, and ready for them to return. Everyone says so. I  respect the work that the state authorities have done, I can see much of it was necessary.  But the work that needs to be done has been done, and  it’s time to move forward. I don’t care to fall into the trap of hating and blaming government, I’m sure their workers are acting in good faith.

But at this point, the Mansion is safe. The residents come first.

At this most fragile time of life, they have been upended, their lives turned upside down at a time when they most need stability and compassion. It’s time to get these people home.

And I won’t lie to you,  this is wearing on me as well, it keeps me up at night. It is hard to watch.

But I’m not a resident or an aide or member of anyone’s family.

It’s my job to help, not to need help, but I’ll step out of myself and offer a prayer for the Mansion, it is a time of great need for this community. So join me if you wish, you can pray to any God or no God, or just to the universe in general, or the fates, is what I most often do. But that’s a personal choice, not for me to dictate. I generally pray to the Light, as the Quakers taught me.

I have come to believe in the power of good energy:

Dear Fates, this morning I ask for you to hold these people up to the Light. They are deserving of your attention and compassion. Please let the people in power lift their shut down of this facility and permit the laborers to complete their work.

These are your children and our children, and they are in need. They are vulnerable and dependent on us. We are called to speak on their behalf.

Several of them have already taken ill in their temporary home, it is not the place for them, it is not where they wish to be, it is not where they should be. Please bring them home.

I ask you to life the spirits of the dedicated people who work at the Mansion, their souls are fraying, their hearts are breaking. Please give them the strength and courage to stay hopeful and see the joy in their work, even now.

Most of all, I ask you to hold the residents of the Mansion in the light. They are good, hard-working people,  they have struggled with life all of their lives, and now, they sit on the edge of life, so few days ahead of them, so many struggles in every hour. They are deserving of peace.

There is pain we can’t avoid, and there is suffering we can avoid. Please honor this difference and end their needless suffering.

A good and loving and safe home is sitting empty, waiting for them, there are people they know and trust ready to love and care for them.

I pray for you to collect all this energy – from the Mansion, the staff, the families, the residents themselves, the  Army of Good, me and Maria, and let them come home.

Tonight, we will go to the Mansion and host a bingo game for the four residents who remain there. I pray that by then, we will all know when the residents are coming home.

Thanks much for listening.

My work with the residents of the Mansion began as a great experiment for me. Like most people, I was busy living my life and paying my bills and trying to get my head straight.

I tended to ignore those places where the elderly came when they could no longer  take care of themselves. I had no  sense of what went on behind those usually landscaped and quiet doors.

It was my hospice volunteer work that  brought the elderly to my attention, they were not what I expected.  They are quite full of life and love and longing.

I started going to the Mansion, a Medicaid facility in my town once a week with Red, I got hooked there. I loved the staff, the aides with big hearts, Katie, then Morgan, now Kassi, the Mansion directors I’ve worked with,  were all open to me and the work I wanted to do.

Each one is a remarkable person, they work unbelievably hard and care unbelievably much. When I think of all the difficulties I had working with some of the refugee groups, I think of the Mansion. I have never had a difficult moment there.

It was there I came to understand the proper scale, I call this work Practical Good In The Real World. We don’t make miracles, we will the holes in people’s lives when we can.

.They let me in, always supported my work, always welcome it, always trusted me to write honestly, never once tried to tell me what to say or see.

That is rarely true at most elderly care facilities or non-profit institutions. People like me wandering around make many administrators very nervous, just ask RISSE. The Mansion never has anything to hide or fear, always made me feel at home.

I had visited a lot of assisted care places by then, and the Mansion was/is unique.

For one thing, the setting is warm and home-like, no antiseptic Holiday-Inn like buildings with long corridors and shiny floors.  Because it was a family home, it feels like one. Most of the people who go there get comfortable right away.

The Mansion was build as a mansion for the very wealthy McLellan family, and it has a warm and home-like feel.

I don’t quite know how they manage to do it, but they seem to find the nicest, warmest and most caring young people to work there. I don’t  feel the warmth and caring for other places the way I feel it at the Mansion.

The Mansion is a Medicaid facility, they don’t get the richest people, or have the biggest budgets. The residents have  many needs, often small, often quite personal, these needs  are accessible to people like me.  They have very limited resources. And they are accessible people like you, the Army Of Good.

I have worked hard to earn the trust of the staff and residents, and slowly, it has come. I will never violate that trust.

Here, we can actually afford to help people. I am a whiz now at buying special order socks, underwear, bras, sneakers and shoes, nightgowns, bathrobes, scarves, hats and jackets, large print books, realistic baby dolls and stuffed animals.

I am known at every Thrift Store in the area, and I can navigate the most remote corners of Amazon in a blink. I went to visit my Mother-In-Law Christmas week, and she let drop that she needed new cotton socks. I was on my Iphone in a flash and the socks arrived two days later. She couldn’t quite believe it.

The Mansion resident’s needs are not large like the refugees, they are small, like people at the edge of life who have never had much and who always expect little.

Doing this work, I developed my idea of small acts of great kindness, practical good, real work for real people in the real world. An act of good every day.

This fits with the people who call themselves the Army of Good. Some are my readers, many are not. They live all of the country, they send me $5 bills and  checks for hundreds of dollars, when it is needed.

We are not a wealthy army, the Mansion residents give us the opportunity to do good without being billionaires. I am grateful to them for that. “I live in Kansas, far out in the country,” wrote Janet,”the Army of Good gives me the chance to do good and feel good.” Let others demonize an quarrel with each other.

We do good, we don’t argue about what good is.

Today, I brought small things to the residents torn from their familiar places so suddenly, and feeling so frail..

When I first saw Sylvie on Friday, she was so shaken she had to get into bed, I was worried about her.  She didn’t look like Sylvie, she had no hat, or colorful skirt, or letters to write. She seemed lost.

But I know Sylvie well, and I know what she needs.

She needs her religious texts, which I brought today. She is a devoted Jehovah’s Witness, part of a congregation that loves and supports her.

She needs paper, envelopes and stamps, she has lost enough stamps to supply a real army. Rumors are she has 1,000 tucked away in a drawer. But she doesn’t seem to remember that.

She needs a hat with character and color. She wears a different  hat each day. She needs Red to sick ‘his cold nose,” as she calls it, into her hand. She does not need or want stuffed animals. She will sometimes – rarely – play Bingo.

Sylvie needs someone to hear the beautiful and sometimes sorrowful stories of her life, the dog who ran a way, her diplomat father who took her across Europe after World War II,  the boy friend who died, the illness in her head that sent her to one institution after another.

She never seeks pity, or complains about her very difficult life. She puts her faith in her God.

I brought her a hat today, a green winter cap, I brought her a Tote  Bag from India to add to her Tote Bag collection – she has a dozen. I asked her what she puts in all of the bags, she said she wasn’t sure yet.

I brought her three packs of note cards, a score of envelopes, a dozen pens and pencils, and yes, 50 first class stamps. God knows where they will end up, most likely not on letters. I brought her two African Violets,  set in a plastic bowl, no need of a vase.

One by one, these small things settled her, made her feel at home, made her feel secure and safe, helped her to understand that she was going home in a few days, that is was all right. She said Jehovah would take care of the rest, she would talk to him and pray to him.

When we left, she followed me into the hallway and shouted; “I love you, Jon. I love  you Red. Please say hello to Maria.”

I love you, too, Sylvie. I think that’s the part I never expected, that’s the part that helps me to understand these hard-working young women who work at the Mansion, and who care for our mothers rather than go to McDonald’s for a pay raise.