Robin is standing and crawling, and Emma says the “golden age” of baby hood is over. They have to be watched and followed all of the time. But Robin remains her genial, outward self. She loves to throw the ball and hold it up, befitting two parents who write about baseball.
Emma and Jay are coming up for a very short visit in a few weeks, we’ll see how Robin handles Fate and Gus together.
Gus and the donkeys are pals, they trust one another. Maria put Gus up on Fanny’s back, and Fanny had no issues with it. Neither is Gus. He is getting to be a farm dog.
We have begun teaching Gus to sit, and he has been responding beautifully, especially for a 10-week-old puppy. We both have our training shoes on for Gus. In the past, Maria has left the training mostly to me, claiming (as she often does) that this was something she didn’t know how to do and wouldn’t be good at.
I can tell this is something she does know how to do and is great it. We are both working in sync on Gus and it is paying off, Maria is a different person than she was a few years ago and she trains with common sense, patience and good instincts.
Gus likes food, but he loves attention the most, and attention is our best training tool with him. This morning, he sat on command, and we are working on lengthening the distance so he will sit down 20 feet away as well as five feet. We work in short bursts, five minutes at a time, two or three times a day.
He makes good eye contact, the key to training. When he is tired or distracted, he loses that contact and we stop training.
Puppies Gus’s age do not have long attention spans or great memory attention, but he is getting it rapidly, With sit, will come “stay,” a tough command for breeds this active and responsive.
When his but hits the ground – timing is essential in dog training, we say “good sit,” and if we do this hundreds and hundreds of times right on cue, Gus will know how to sit. This morning, he really seemed to get it.
Almost every day of the week, I wake up, go to the RISSE website and donate a dollar. It is a small thing for me, but it is a big thing.
It lifts my heart, keeps me grounded, reminds me what my values are, why I love liberty and the American Dream, gives me a chance to help refugee children who have been through enough, as well as their families. These people need to see the true heart and soul of America, my country.
A lot of you – the Army Of Good, it seems, is always ready – have been sending $1 dollar donations, and the money is mounting up, you have sent over $1,000 so far. You can contribute $ 1 directly to RISSE, it is simple, they take Paypal and major credit cards.
I see this dollar thing as a gift to me, the gift of feeling good about my country again.
The point is to let the people at RISSE, the refugee and immigrant support center of the Emmaus Methodist Church, know they the children and families they work with are loved, welcome and supported. Their office building was burned down last year by arsonists, all of the tires on their vans were slashed.
They work so hard and do so much, they are nearly overwhelmed.
This anger and mistrust towards the most vulnerable people in the world is not the real America, and your single dollars tell them so. A $1 donation if meant to be affordable, but it buys a lot of good will and sends a powerful and inspiration message. During this difficult time, it is imperative that the RISSE children and their families see the truth about us.
I am the grandchild of refugees and immigrants, my heart is with these people who have come here to live in safety and prosperity in America, they work hard and are no threat to us, just look at their faces. I have come to know many of them well, and to know them is to love them.
A $1 donation tells them this is still possible, despite the hearts of stone who would shut them out and demonize them. They are part of the American soul, one of our most cherished and stories parts.
Many of you have contributed to the refugee children already – we have supported their soccer team, sent them on retreats, to amusement parks, brought them to nature, bought them art and creativity kits, kitchen utensils, lamps, pillows, blankets, strollers, soap and towels, given them scholarships to art programs, shown them the animal and farming worlds.
This work is just beginning, but we can help in small ways as well. The RISSE dollar campaign is one of them.
The American Revolution was conceived and fought almost entirely by refugees and immigrants.
We are a generous people, who care for others, not just ourselves.
I have heard the stories of these children and their families, they are heart-wrenching and ongoing. Many of their family members – brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, grandparents – have been left behind, shut out of America, the land that offered them so much safety and hope.
Some of the children have suffered horrific traumas and loss, some of their parents have spent years in refugee camps and seen their relatives slaughtered and killed in the most brutal of ways.
A $1 donation costs us little, it is a great gift for this group, which does so much wonderful work on behalf of new refugees and immigrants to America – after school programs, classes in English, bookkeeping, paperwork, finance and job-hunting.
The good people at RISSE work unbelievably hard for shockingly little money. It is a gift to me to send them this message as often as I can with a message of support. For pennies, it helps me endure these angry times, and broken spirits.
I love fund-raising in this way – not just the few any more but the many, if each of us gives a little, we can do a lot. And we know where every penny goes.
Their building has been rebuilt. But too often, these new Americans, our brothers and sisters, confront ignorant and angry people who insult them, tell them to go back where they came from, think they are here to harm them or steal their work.
That is not us, I tell them. That is not who we are.
A dollar donation sends a different message. America is a land of refugees and immigrants, the torch is still lit in our hearts, minds and souls. We welcome them to our country. A $1 says so.
You can donate your dollar (more if you wish) here. I do it almost every day. It just feels good.
