Today, Maria and I are going to Albany to meet and hopefully photograph several refugees who are helping to put on an art show on March 30 in the lobby of the Capital Repertory Theater In Albany. The company will be performing the “Iliad” that night, it will offer the refugees an opportunity to explore notions of home, and the show is titled “New Beginnings.”
This afternoon, Maria and I are going to Albany to offer any assistance we can to the artists and the show, and hopefully, to take a portrait photograph or two.
The refugee story is complex, powerful and painful. America has always been known as a beacon for refugees struggling to be safe and free, now it is becoming a place known for keeping refugees out and fearing them. It’s a difficult time to be a refugee in the land of refugees, a great and wrenching irony.
The artists come from many different countries and are of different ages. The Refugee and Immigrant Support Services of the Methodist Emmaus Church in Albany are assisting them in the production of the show. This image is one of the paintings in the show.
The Army Of Good is on the march. This morning, the Mansion got the $10,000 it needed to buy a new van. Yesterday, Rachel Barlow got enough money donated to her creative art bag to purchase enough materials for 40 kits. They are a lot cheaper than a van, but just as important.
As of yesterday, Barlow, a Vermont author and artist, had raised more than $400 for her inventive Creativity Kits – draw.paint.create – to give to newly arrived refugee children, many of whom have suffered extreme trauma and abuse in their home countries. Many others like them have been waiting for months, even years, to come to America.
They will be barred from the country once the new immigration regulations and bans take place. But we can help the kids who are already here. Barlow designed the kits to help young trauma victims heal and explore their own creative instincts and find their own voice.
Creativity can do that, I can testify to that, so can Rachel. She knows what she is doing. She has suffered abuse and depression and used her creative gifts to heal and create beautiful things.
Rachel is seeking $900 to buy enough kits for the children who desperately need something like this. She is almost halfway there in just one day. The program is already being closely watched by refugee agencies elsewhere, Rachel hopes it might go national. I believe it will, it surely should.
What’s In A Kit? Go see here. The kits are designed to be simple – watercolors, a sketch book, coloring pencils, a sharpener, a coloring book and a book for young artists on how to draw animals.
Rachel’s landscapes are popular in Vermont, the also publishes a blog.I am happy to have two of her very inexpensive and beautiful landscapes hanging on my walls, I hope you get a chance to take a look at them.
It’s a wonderful idea, a manifestation of the noble spirit. Of empathy, the expression of social justice and a pathway to the highest human potential.
The refugee children are isolated and sometimes, frightened and bewildered. Many of these innocent and helpless children have suffered horribly in their young lives and seen horrendous and traumatizing things.
Most don’t speak English, have few friends, do not understand American customs yet and are increasingly kept indoors by their parents and foster parents, they fear the harassment and persecution that many refugees have experienced.
The kits are inventive, easy to use, well thought out.
They can help children heal, gain confidence, light their creative sparks, all benefits they will use in their new lives. Sometimes the problems of the world seem overwhelming, but this is something we can do that will make an enormous difference and also send an important signal to these children: we are not a nation of stone-hearted people, we welcome them and will work to care for them and assist them and protect them.
These kids spent a lot of time inside or alone.
You can give a donation to this very worthy cause in any amount, $5 is as welcome as $100.
Rachel wants to get 60 of these kids out as soon as possible. The idea of a Creativity Kit is a powerful and timely one. Such a kid is good for any of us, but especially for children coming to a new land and seeking to find their way here.
In one day, she is halfway there. I think we’ll get the rest of the way soon. Thanks much for considering this.
The Abominable Child (I sent her that abominable hat) calls to me, speaks to me. She tells me it is time to go to Brooklyn this weekend to go and see her. She commands me to go on the Amtrak website right now and buy train tickets. She instructs me to call Cassandra Conety and arrange for animal care for Saturday, one day.
We both recognize, I think, that visitors smell like old fish if they stay too long, so we do not stay too long.
it is a beautiful train ride from Albany to New York City and Maria is coming too, so we will hold hands and stare out the window together. I am happy to rub her tired feet most of the way, I am fond of her feet. it is a lovely ride.
I am bringing my camera, to take my own photos of my granddaughter.
Robin and I are already communicating in a mystical way, through these photographs.
She asks me sweetly if I can bring her some toys, I am famous for choosing toys that babies love but parents hate, you know, those tacky, loud and annoying ones. Not wholesome or organic in any way, toys rarely seen in the better parts of Brooklyn.
At this age, babies are like puppies, easily bribed. And already rebelling.
The Abominable child, like her grandfather has a meaningful stare, and also an eye for mischief and subversion. Our stare is about the only physical similarity we share I think, and lucky for her.
We will be plotting and scheming together against all authority by noon on Saturday. I’m thinking she might call me Gramps. I will persuade Emma to let me walk her through the streets of Brooklyn. At first, Emma was reluctant for anyone to walk Robin, now I think, like many young parents, she wouldn’t mind a break. And she trusts me not to lose her or drop her, especially if Maria is around.
My daughter Emma has turned out to be wicked and devious in this, she has sent me a stream of photos showing the Abominable Child being adorable and her gaze is quite penetrating. I said I wasn’t into cute, but she is pretty cute.
She will be a handful. She is rumored to be heading for the farm in a few weeks when it is warm to see her first donkey, sheep, pony and border collie.
I think she will not soon forget a visit like that. We re not as hip or organic as Brooklyn here, but we have our own wild time.
Yesterday was the first day in weeks that the farm seemed normal, that we had come back to ourselves. Maria’s trip to India was intense, more exhausting emotionally and physically than expected. Yesterday, things seemed to resemble their former selves Maria was holed up in her studio working on some mysterious new quilt – right out of India, I should think, the snow and ice were melting on the Ed Gulley Memorial Bridge, and I am beginning to finally focus on my book “Lessons From Bedlam Farm.” There were sure a lot this month.
Life as we know it here cannot remotely be gone without Maria, she is the heart and soul of the place, a love force and a creative force. Maria has taught me the meaning of loving energy, it left a black hole when it was gone. Today, a new chapter continues, I am going to Albany to meet some refugees who are putting on an art show in Albany at the end of the month. It’s called “New Beginnings,” and it will feature art that celebrates and explores the idea of home.
Also today, gratitude for the successful gofundme campaign to buy the Mansion its new van, and more good news: Rachel Barlow just ordered 40 new Creativity Kits to help the traumatized and bewildered refugee children who have recently come to our area. This is shaping up as a meaningful day. Glad to be alive.
Congratulations and thank you from me, from the staff and residents of the Mansion Assisted Care Facility in Cambridge, N.Y. and certainly, from me. This morning, we reached the $10,000 gofundme goal that will enable the Mansion owners to purchase a specially equipped van for the elderly and impaired.
It will arrive any day now, just as their old van is expiring.
George Scala, the Mansion’s owner, will pay the remaining $10,000, special vans are expensive. I thank the Army of Good for a mighty victory. We have challenged the very false notion that our hearts have turned to stone. They are filled with love and generosity.
The new van will have steps that are lower and ramps to help people get in and out. The old one didn’t.
Some of you seemed to have sensed what this new van will mean to the Mansion residents, it will be their lifeline and pathway into an outside world that sometimes seems to have left them behind. The van will take them to doctor’s appointments, to field trips and parks and other places to visit, it will enable them to visit sick friends in the hospital and family members who can’t come to them.
You have opened the world to these loving and curious people, and to the loving and caring people who take care of them.
In a time when many our doubting our compassion and generosity, you have shown yours. You truly are a special community, an Army of Good. If donations continue to come into the project, they will be put to good use on behalf of the residents. Thanks again, I do not really have words. That is unusual.
I know I speak for the residents and staff when I say thank you, it is very much appreciated. This gift will change lives.
