Day: April 29, 2017

Yesterday was our own new holiday, Tulip Day at the Mansion. Connie loved hers, and even had a vase to put it in, something I didn’t think of when I bought a bouquet of tulips and passed them out to the beautiful people who live at the Mansion. It was great fun, brightened the afternoon. (If you wish,  you can write Connie at ll S. Union Street, Cambridge, N.Y. I think she would appreciate your letters, she has had to halt her knitting because of the warmer weather, she does not have enough energy to do both.)

Red and I passed out a dozen tulips.

Also, we are raising money for a new printer for the Mansion Activity Room, the printer helps the residents to share their art, letters and also is essential for Julie Smith, the tireless Mansion Activity Director. Printers are not expensive now, they range from $40 to $90, if one includes cartridges. I will hand the money over to Julie so she can purchase the ones she needs (she was too shy to ask for help, the residents told me.)

I’ve already got 40, so we don’t need much more for this one. If you wish to contribute a small amount,  you can sent a check to Mansion Printer, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816 or use Paypal Friends And Family, mark it Mansion Printer, my Paypal ID is [email protected].

Don’t send too much, we don’t need much, and if there is any shortfall, I’ll make it up and if there is any overage, it will go towards the Mansion Activity Fund. Thanks much.

This morning, I honor the Climate Kids, 21 young people marching in Washington today on behalf of Mother Earth, our bleeding and troubled home. They are an inspiration to me, they are suing the federal government for its inaction on climate change, on behalf of their own future and that of their children.

They’ve come a long way to speak for us, for the animals, for the earth.

A selfless and noble thing for kids to be doing in the age of Facebook and Twitter. They are not arguing their beliefs, they are living them, doing good. They feel for the displaced animals, the rising waters, the awful fires and storms. They are insisting that their government represent them and help to save the earth.

I am not here to argue climate change. I think any honest person who looks out the window or walks into nature can see climate change every day, right under our noses. On the farm, we feel it every day – warmer days, drier soul, failing wells, costlier hay, drought and the gradual loss of our winters.

The geese no longer bother to fly south for the winter, they are warm enough right here.

I am thinking of these kids today, in our country, where greed is God, we talk (or used to) of the need to erase the deficit so our children will not bear our burdens. Yet we look away as the ice caps melt, and the earth warms, and cities flood and drought spreads and storms rage.

I don’t wish for my granddaughter to bear that burden.

Today, my heroes are these children, people of conscience and principle and vision. And Pope Francis, who calls upon all of us to tend to our universal mother, the earth. I will nod my heads to them today, and wish them well on their march to the White House.

This is a big weekend for the Round House Cafe, a landmark time for Lisa and Scott Carrino, who have been fighting for several years now to keep their community cafe in our small town of Cambridge, New York.

Like so many other rural communities in America, our town has been challenged, in some ways ravaged by globalism, the migration to the cities, the loss of factory and manufacturing jobs, and the abandonment of the family farm by economists and government bureaucrats and politicians.

No one here is really shocked by the presidential election, not if they’ve been listening. Small town downtowns have been devastated by box stories and online retailing. Scott and Lisa decided to put their finger in the dike and open a community based cafe, the kind of open and friendly gathering place that is the foundation of community.

They hoped to buy their building, but that didn’t work out. They did not give up. The Carrino’s launched a gofundme project that raised nearly $70,000, much of it from the readers of this blog, and they are using the money to build a new cafe right next door, on the ground floor of the Hubbard Hall Arts and Education Center.

Our community is grateful, and intensely relieved. Every Friday night, local musicians play here. High school kids perform and play their music and read their poems at Open Mike Night in the winter. Pizza night has become a cherished community tradition. People bring their laptops and work at the cafe, street people are welcome to come in for hot coffee in the cold.

Maria and I are there a dozen times a week, often for their fresh and wonderful soups and salads. Tomorrow, the first iteration of the Round House will close. Sometime in the next few weeks, the cafe will re-open in Hubbard Hall in a beautiful restored space four times the size, with a full kitchen and a retail store selling baked goods and bread and the works of local artists and artisans.

Scott and Lisa are exhausted, but happy. And they are excited. Their dream is about to come true and we are all cheering for them. And grateful to you. We will be at the Round House at 3 p.m. tomorrow to celebrate the new and bow to the old.