Day: December 25, 2016

Christmas is nearly over, time for me to look ahead a bit. This week will be dominated by a two-day visit to Brooklyn, (Tuesday and Wednesday) a gift from my daughter who bought me  two nights in a nearby apartment whose owners are away. I’m bringing a worm that rattles, and a rattle that talks back.

Maria and I accepted Emma’s generous offer. I’m bringing two books and my black and white camera, I hope to wander around Brooklyn a bit, it is a wonderfully evocative place to take pictures. We are hoping to take Robin to the Brooklyn Museum if we can figure out the logistics.

New Year’s has always seemed a forced kind of holiday to me, but it is a natural time to look ahead. I ran into a friend at the Round House and wished her a happy holiday. She muttered “God help us all,” and walked gloomily away. I don’t think we’ll be having lunch anytime soon.

My ideas for 2017 are shaping up. I am going to commit small – maybe large – acts of good and kindness and compassion. Soon, we will be meeting the refugee family we will be mentoring in their new life here. I am eager to share that experience. I can only control me, not the nation, not the earth.

My focus will be on doing the good I can do. On avoiding argument as a substitute for communication. On rejecting the labels other people put on me, and on avoiding putting them on others. On keeping an open mind.

I am not living in fear or dread, I hope my writing and photographs and life will encourage, not discourage people, and lift them up, not bring them down. I am not living in a tunnel, I know this will be a difficult year for many people in the country. When I can, I will seek to help the poor and needy, and stand by them and stand in my truth.

I believe that immigration is ingrained in the American idea and soul.

This year will be a strong opportunity for me to define who I am and come to terms with my own values. I am no sunshine soldier (I am really no soldier at all), I love my country and have the highest hopes for it. My idea is liberty and justice for all.

I hope we will always be a beacon for the weary and dispossessed. That’s how I came to be here, that’s how I hope others will come to be here, and I will offer them my open arms. I will take photos every day and work hard to make them better and better.

I also hope to write a fine book called “Lessons Of Bedlam Farm,” and Christmas was yet another lesson.

I much look forward to Maria’s trip to India to help the victims of the sex industry there learn how to make potholders and other fiber arts. This will be a landmark experience for Maria, I am so excited for her. I wish I could be there with her, I would love to see India, but this is not the right trip for me, or the right time.

It’s her trip, period. This year, I will remain faithful to my blog, my photos, my responsibility to capture the light and color of the world, and write about the real lives of real animals. I’m excited about 2017, no one is going to take away from me.

More about 2017 later. Tonight, I’m signing off on Christmas by watching the second installment of Smiley’s People, in honor of my new silver heart pill container, and in memory of General Vladimir.

 

This experience with the Mansion, with Red, the people there and some very generous readers of the blog has clarified my understanding of Christmas, and given me – I am neither a Christian nor a conventionally religious person – a way to celebrate this holiday in keeping with the spirit of the person in whose name we celebrate it.

I have never been able to get past all of the Disney distortion of family life, of the commercialization and the marketing and the hype. I also wonder at the hypocrisy of the many people who claim to be Christian but don’t seem to know what it really means, and I say this with humility, as an outsider and seeker.

The people who have been so generous with the residents of the Mansion, and made them so happy, have also helped me to be clear about Christmas. To give me a way to love it and celebrate. The Mansion is not the whole of my beautiful Christmas experience. I am celebrating my life, my life, my farm, the animals, my daughter and granddaughter.

It was all so simple, really, that I had trouble seeing it through the fog. This is the third of my audio messages, and I hope you all have a great holiday.

I’ve written for years about my own personal search for the spirit of Christmas, and this year, I believe the good people at the Mansion Assisted Care Facility – staff and residents –  have helped me to feel and see what I have been looking for.  I have shed my own troubles and see this clearly now.

Christmas was simple and powerful for me in 2016, the meaning of the holiday is now crystal clear to me.

It is about empathy and compassion, about reaching out to others.

I don’t know if he is the son of God or not, I am still in search of my God, and it does not really matter. I know that what you have been doing with the people at the Mansion was his true message of faith and grace.

This morning, the Mansion was quiet, more than half of the residents had left to be with their families. This year, thanks to the astonishing generosity of the readers of this blog, everyone at the Mansion had gifts to open this morning, and more than one. I could not begin to list the gifts that have been pouring in – soaps and quilts and toiletries and cards and photos and candy and cookies, flowers and scarves, yarn and sewing kits, puzzles and games.

This morning many of the residents wanted to skip breakfast and get right to the tree, everyone got their own bag, everyone was recognized by the outside world, everyone felt the spirit of Christmas, felt connected to the community of people they sometimes feel so apart from.

It is not simple to be aged and in need of assistance in order to live, and perhaps the hardest thing about it is the sense of being forgotten. You changed that reality for these people, every person I talked with, staff and residents, said they had never seen anything like the outpouring of love and generosity you have brought to the people in the Mansion.

I am not a Christian, nor a religious person,  but I am a believer in Christ and his message. “Come, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”

Sometimes i think our culture has turned its backs on the poor, invoking religion but betraying its message. You are faith restorers.

Nobody had to lift a finger, so many of you did so much more than that. And all anonymously, all from the good of your own hearts.

Thank you for lifting the spirits of people at the edge of life, cut off from almost everything they hold dear, ignored by so much of their society.

They are well cared for by a loving and dedicated staff.

But more than anything, I think, they need to know that they are known and thought of, and you would have shed tears to see how happy and meaningful your gifts have been. Person after person tried to thank me, but I did the least – the thanks go to you.

I saw the true spirit of Christmas this week and today, it is in the smiles of the Mansion residents and in the good souls and compassionate hearts of the scores, even hundreds of people who have written them letters, send them cards and gifts and reminded them that people are good, given the chance.

I thank you for helping me also to see what Christmas means, and to make my holiday so meaningful.I don’t need to fuss about it any longer, I’ve got it. There are many Mansions out there. In addition to visiting there, I found the simple beauty in just being still, walking with Maria, sitting with the animals, reading by a wood stove fire. I will not soon forget the smiles and grateful tears of the Mansion residents for the Christmas that has been restored to them.

Of course, it was a dog that started all of this, and Red and Maria and I went to the Mansion this morning to cheer up those who had no place to go. But they did not need cheering up, mostly, they were all talking about your cards and letters and gifts and how much they loved Red. They were carrying your cards, wearing your pins, were warmed by your mittens and gloves, cheered by your flowers and stuffed animals.

Maria sat with Connie before she left to have dinner with her family, and I was so touched by their conversation, they talked about knitting and fiber art. Connie told me that Red was her best friend, she was hoping he could come by on Christmas morning. We did.

There were many gifts for the people there, but your thoughtfulness was also a great gift to me, an affirmation of what I believe in and hope for. Creativity was created, I believe, to lift up the souls of the world.

This was a creative enterprise for sure, if you read the cards and messages and saw the baskets and packages and pins – somebody sent 40 beautiful red pins made out of sea shells and everyone was wearing one. It became the symbol of Christmas at the Mansion.

You have all done enough. I intend to continue my work with Red at the Mansion. I hope some of you will continue to send your messages and cards and good wishes to the residents of the Mansion, they would cherish your greetings as the New Year approaches.

The address there is 11 S. Union Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. You will not see what you have done on the news, the good deeds of good people are not considered as important as the hatred and violence and argument presented to us as the reality of our world. It is not the reality of our world, it is only one reality of our world. What you did is another, a big and important story.

Jesus, in whose name we celebrate this day, said people who care for the poor and needy are blessed, and will inherit the kingdom of God.  And the poor shall join them. “Blessed are  you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”

So nice to know you.

Last month, I was diagnosed with heart angina, and I was given a small vial of nitro pills to carry around in case of an emergency. I told Maria I was secretly pleased by this – in a way – I thought of General Vladimir and his heart pills. I told Maria all about this wonderful character in John Le Carre’s  novel Smiley’s People. My daughter Emma remember the general as well when I told her about the pills I had to carry.

In the novel, the General, a fictional but dapper and mysterious Estonian refugee living in London, is mysteriously murdered in a city park. George Smiley is called out of retirement to investigate the murder.

He learns that the general, one of his old and very loyal secret agents, had stumbled across information that would lead to a final confrontation with the brilliant Soviet spymaster Karla, who nearly destroyed the British Secret Service by infiltrating spies into it, (remember Kim Philby) and who also managed to end Smiley’s career in disgrace. In an effort to emasculate Smiley, Karla also destroyed his marriage to the lovely but faithless Anne.

I am a  Le Carre and Smiley fan.

(General Vladimir was partly modeled after Colonel Alfons Rebane, an Estonian emigre who ran the Estonian unit of the Secret Service’s Operation Jungle in the 1950’s. Le Carre worked as an intelligence officer for both MI5 And MI6, the British domestic and foreign intelligece agencies.)

When I was diagnosed with angina – a part of the heart is not receiving enough oxygen and when stressed, can cause pain – I remembered that General Vladimir had heart disease and also had angina. He carried a silver pill case with him at all times, Smiley found it on his body when he investigated the general’s death.

I told Maria (and the puzzled cardiologist) that I was pleased to be carrying the very pills that the brave and admirable General Vladimir carried before he was killed by Karla’s agents.

Maria went to see a local jeweler named Tim Shea, who lives in Salem, N.Y. and is a very gifted and much loved craftsman  (he made our wedding rings) and for the last month, he has been figuring out how to build a silver pill case for me, much like General Vladimir’s.

He said it kept him up nights figuring out how to do it. He did a beautiful job.

So I have a silver pill case.

It even has a secret latch to keep it from opening. That makes it all the more magical.

I told Maria that she better treated me with exquisite care and sensitivity, or I would have to take a heart pill. She seems unimpressed.

I was shocked by this gift, I could never have guessed it, and amazed at Maria’s creativity and also her understanding of how much I would love this silver pill case.

It is an amazing gift to be known like that, and to be with so sensitive, creative and intuitive a person. This gift was very personal and took a lot of thought and trouble. Only an artist.

So I wanted to share this domestic spy story with you.  I never guessed, could not have imagined this present.

A wonderful Christmas present, I’ve put my heart pills in it already, it will always be with me. Thanks to Maria. And to John Le Carre, Emma, George Smiley and Genera Vladimir.

Smiley is one of the great fictional characters in modern literature, I believe. I am not as dapper as General Vladimir, but I hope I can be as brave. He carried his heart pills in his silver case for many years, through all sorts of dangers. Mine will carry me.

Merry Christmas to you from Bedlam Farm. For those of you who celebrate this day with family and in joy and peace, many blessings. To those who find the holidays difficult and sometimes sad, peace and compassion to you. Here at the farm, a quiet day.

Maria and I will celebrate our love and life together, share our day with the animals. This morning, we (and Red) will go to the Mansion to say hello to those left behind today, with no families or places to go. This afternoon, we hope to go see our friends the Gulleys, who are hard at work on their dairy farm, as usual.

Tonight, a quiet meal at home.  Finally, Scott and Lisa Corrino took a day off, the Round House Cafe is closed.

This week will be a quiet week, we are going to New York City Tuesday and Wednesday to see my daughter and her family in Brooklyn. I hope to write another chapter in my book “Lessons From Bedlam Farm.” There sure are a lot of lessons.

Christmas is a strange holiday for me. My Jewish immigrant family celebrated Christmas, perhaps in an effort to feel American. I a not a Christian, but I celebrate Christmas in an effort to locate and find the spirit of Christ, which is, to me, about love and empathy and caring for the less fortunate.

Maria and i got up early to feed the animals, now we will exchange some gifts. How lucky I am, and how grateful I am to have her and this new kind of community around me, an Army Of Good. I think my Christmas was defined by your generosity to the residents of the Mansion. That has made it one of the most meaningful Christmases ever for me.

I will be checking in later. I wish for you a loving and meaningful day.