Day: September 13, 2017

Art lives in a corner room of the Mansion near the basement, Bill lives on an upper floor.

Both men have suffered strokes and live in a Medicaid facility. Both men need help. Both men are struggling to regain their health. Both men are different. Art is a fundamentalist Christian with strong views on sin, sex and sexual preference, and Bill is an 82-year-old Gay Men fiercely proud of his sexual orientation.

The two see one another every day, often dine at the same table. They are keenly aware of one another.

Art would like to save Bill from damnation (he would like to save me also) and Bill does not care to be saved, he is yearning to connect with his community and i am helping him make contact with other gay people and arrange for them to visit him. I am also helping him to learn to read again by getting him a boombox and some James Patterson CD’s. We will see that the letters are read to him, he can’t read or write right now.

I am helping Art also. Thanks to the Army Of Good which supports my work, Art has a new air conditioner, his own boombox CD player, letters from people of faith from all over the country (his “ministry”) and a boxed set of CD’s of the Bible, so he can listen to them (his eyes are too weak to read.) He is very grateful for this help, and calls me brother.

Art came to the Mansion to be near his brother, who also lived there. His brother died, and his extreme religious views have isolated him from  his own family, and from many of the other Mansion residents. I feel close to him, and  although we share almost no views on religion, faith, profanity or sexual preference, we are connected in some way.

I see myself in him in some ways.

Once or twice a week, we pray together and Art’s prayers are warm, compassionate, uplifting. He revels in being provocative and controversial, he rattles off a long list of churches he has been asked to leave. He first visited a local church but was asked to leave after he insisted on reading his own prayers.

Today, he told me the story that occurred in Missoula, Montana, where he came from to be with his brother at the Mansion. His brother died soon after he arrived. In Montana, he said, he passed an older man walking on the street and waved to him. The man ignored him and kept walking. Art waved again the next day and the man ignored him again. Art waved to him every day for three years and one day, the man waved back to him, and the two became friends.

“That’s the kind of person I am,” he said. “That’s the kind of person I am also,” I answered.

Beyond that, there is not much that connects us. Except I do like him. In a way, I love him.

Sometimes we laugh and joke together, he has a quick laugh and sharp sense of humor.

I know what he thinks will happen to people like me when I die, because he has told me. He says he acts out of a great love for people.

Art needs a reclining or lift chair, and I have been trying to raise funds for it, and many people have balked at donating money to Art because of views they consider extreme. I am not pushing it, I have taken what money has been sent and added my own and ordered a good and strong reclining chair today, it will come in a week or so.

He is a big man, he needed a big chair.

This is the first time some people balked at donating to a Mansion cause. People have the right to donate or not donate. I asked for help buying a power lift chair for a handicapped resident, and the money came instantly.

I understand how people feel, I went back and forth myself, but it is not my position to judge or argue, only to help, and Art needs a chair,  his back causes him great pain. I have great feeling for Art. Today he told me he loved me, he knew I was a man of God who did good, and he hoped he could save me. Good luck to you, I said.

A friend of mine – she is an evangelical – send me a verse from the Bible to show to Art:

Luke: 6;35 “Love your enemies, do good to them and lend to them without expecting anything in return. Then your reward will be great and you will be sons of the Most High because He is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.”

I feel close to Bill also and this week, I have felt a bit caught between these two very good men, even though that is my feeling, no one has pushed me in that way. Bill is a warm and carrying man. He is not looking for any trouble or conflict, he just wants to get well and connect with his community.

It isn’t that I am taking sides or in the middle of an argument – and these two have already had several – rather, it is much more challenging for me  to raise money for Art than for Bill, Art is not like anyone I have become close to, at least not since I quit reporting 20 years or more ago. I told Art if I didn’t know him and just read about him, I would dislike him intensely.

But there is only so much money to go around. There are always choices to be made, and it is up to me to make them.

Who do I help? Who gets priority? How much of my own values or feelings do I push aside to do what I set out to do – fill the holes in people’s lives? I had a long talk with Art today, and I said I wasn’t here to argue with him or tell him what to do, but I have followed Jesus Christ’s teachings and values also and I believe my idea of faith celebrates tolerance and mercy, not judgement or condemnation.

I don’t tell anyone else how to live, or who with. He has to lie in his own bed. Or chair. Art is a man of great conviction, he does not compromise or back off. His faith is his passion, his life.

What does it mean to help? For me, it means there are no conditions. I’ve come to a place with it. I leave myself at the door and just come in with clean intentions. It was a hard week somehow, but it comes down to how I want to treat people and be treated.  You might get something back, you might not ever.

This seemed to me to be a microcosm of the pain wracking the country, we so hate the people who are different from us. I don’t want to walk in that road, I really don’t.

Art is a good man with a big heart, but he is isolated, he has driven off so many people in his life, including his own family. He asked me if I was going to break off with him as well, and I said no, I wouldn’t, but I didn’t care to be saved either, or doomed because of who I am. And I hoped he would respect the values and beliefs and realities of others, that seemed to me a very Christian thing to do.

So at the end of the week, and with the help of the many good people who seem to be around me, I made a good decision for me. I am helping both men, talking to them, learning about them, filling some of the holes in their lives.

It seems to me there is way too much argument, intolerance and judgment in my country, I don’t wish to be adding to it. My work at the Mansion calls me to listen, not preach or judge.

I am comfortable with these two very different men, I respect them both and the choices they make in their lives have nothing to do with me. I think I landed in a good place for me. Help does not come with any strings attached, compassion and empathy are not only for people I like or who are like me.

Tomorrow, an easier, clearer kind of day. We have bought tickets on a steamboat that will take me and some staff and some residents cruising around Lake George and also getting lunch on the boat. We are all excited about it. The weather is beautiful and the Mansion residents who can come can’t stop talking about it.

Thanks for coming along with me on this journey and supporting it. You can write both men c/o The Mansion, 11 S. Union Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. Art wants to hear from people of faith, Bill would like to hear from other gay men and women.

This picture keeps popping up in my dreams, it was taken with the new Daguerrotype Archomat lens and it evokes – at least for me – the almost mystical experience of walking in the deep woods in the late afternoon with dogs.

The lens creates a soft, otherwordly and magical feeling, it is  not crisp land literal like a digital lens. It is different, and that makes some people uncomfortable. It makes a lot more people happy, and I am flooded with requests for photos, but I want to sell only a few, and only when they are distinctive.

Change is always difficult and it would be great if everyone loved everything. But that is not the way of the world. Anything worth doing is upsetting to someone.

I love the way the lens has captured the spectrum of light in the late sun, and the feeling of the path. So I’m going to offer this photo for sale, it will be printed on archival paper (unframed) and will be 8 1/2 by 11 inches. The price is $75 signed, plus shipping, and it will be offered as a limited edition of 15.

I do not ever compare myself to Monet or any painter, but I am drawn to the impressionist style of photography for shots like this. It is a lot less soft and blurry than the great paintings of that time. I like the mix for me – this and digital both. Sometimes that clarity – the face of a dog – is essential.

If you are interested, you can e-mail maria at [email protected]. She is handling all of our photo and art sales (she gets a commission.)

The Grey Hen declines slowly. She has lost any wariness, she doesn’t sleep in her protected roosts, she doesn’t get out of the way, she clings to Minnie and spends almost all of her time on the back porch. We can’t find her sleeping spot. I think it’s getting close to the time where we guide her quickly out of this world, Maria says she’s not ready to go. T

he way Maria and I work on these kinds of things, each of us can veto a decision about the death of an animal. No argument. If one of us says no, it’s no. Both of us have to keep at it until we feel comfortable.

I hope nature takes it’s course and the Gray Hen dies peacefully and naturally. She is eating enough to survive, but she wanders aimlessly, and never with the other hens. When a sheep does that, you know they are about ready to die. Truthfully, I’d rather shoot her quickly (I’ve done this many times before) then see her get run over, she was too close to the road today, wandering in circles, or picked off by a hawk or coyote or fox or raccoon.

Maria thinks she might recover, so we will give that a chance.

The Rev. Debbie Earthowl led the Memorial Service for Bruce Williamson today at the Mansion (see below), as I have often seen, death is sad but it need not be depressing. This was a service of love and joy, there were no empty seats. I loved the  feeling of the service, it had an almost old time Methodist feeling to it, deeply religious and heart felt, filled with hymns and prayers.

There are some things that can life your heart and break it at the same time, and one of those was the moment in Bruce Williamson’s Memorial Service at the Mansion when resident Bob Bathers and aide DorLisa Wheat sang Amazing Grace.

That was when the tears started to flow from almost everybody gathered to say goodbye to Bruce Williamson, who had lived in the Mansion for a decade, longer than anyone else.

There were more than 100 people at the service, so many people in  our small town showed up – merchants, neighbors, friends, people who saw him sitting on his Main Street bench every day.

In fact, a committee has already been formed to install a plaque on Bruce’s bench, he was there almost every day.

You can learn a lot about someone by seeing who comes to a memorial service and what they say, and the outpouring of affection for Bruce was powerful. On the Army Of Good list of Mansion residents, he was “Bruce,” or “Bruce W.”

As much as it was a service for him, it was also a stunning demonstration of community, which lives and thrives in my town. A dozen merchants from Main Street came, Bruce had come into their stores or they saw him on his now locally famous bench.

I didn’t know Bruce as well as I have come to know the other residents, in part because Bruce never seemed needy, despite has many health troubles. Whenever I saw Bruce, he asked me – a volunteer with a therapy dog – how I was, and what I needed.  Once in a while, we sat together on his bench, and talked easily. He was not one to ask for help, he seemed much more interested in helping.

At first, I thought he was a member of the Mansion staff, he was so helpful to people. He pulled chairs out for people in the dining room, he went to the store buy things for them, he opened doors and checked on the, and always had a good morning for them.

Inside a place like the Mansion, there is a complex, ever changing social system, almost everyone is in a different place, and almost everyone is in the same place. People are there one day, gone the next. Death is never a shock.

But this was different, Bruce was special, he stood out. He was one of those sunshine people who always has a good word for everyone and in instinct for empathy. That is a rare thing anywhere in our world, some people are just built that way.

On his bench, he came to know much of the town, people waved to him, looked for him, often sat with him. He seemed to know everybody.

An elderly woman down the block stood up to recall the time Bruce offered to help take her cart back to the grocery store for her, they became friends. People brought him their coins – he had a coin and antique bottle collection. He seemed to be an Ambassador of Good, the Mansion staff adored him and was devastated by his death, I have never seen them so broken up.

Bruce and I were both born in the same hospital in the same town – Providence – and we had some fund sharing memories of life there. In his obituary, the family thanked the people who wrote to Bruce, “to share their lives while brightening others and building a kingdom of heart.”

DorLisa, who sang Amazing Grace at the Memorial Service, came to Bruce’s room in his last and difficult days to sing the song to him every morning. Talk about grace.

I hope those of you her on the blog from the Army OF Good who wrote to him do know how much he appreciated that and enjoyed your messages.

Bruce was a prince in the kingdom of heart, and the people who  dwelled in that world crowded into the Mansion to honor their prince and say goodbye. I’ve been to a number of memorial services, I am hard-pressed to remember one that was so genuine and filled with love and appreciation.

The Mansion is no stranger to death, but it lifted my heart to see Bob, who is ill himself, and DorLisa sing Amazing Grace. There are few hearts in our sometimes hard world that wouldn’t melt in that room today. It was a gift to me there, the conflict and divisions and angry noises of the outside world seemed especially far away. They were not in the Great Room of the Mansion.

Red came with me, and I saw that he was especially drawn from across the room to Bruce’s sister Blaine, he put his paw on her arm again and again, he seems to always know just where to go, where he is most needed.

I have worked in hospice, assisted care and dementia units for some years now, but the Mansion feels like family and home now. At the Mansion today, the staff and Mansion were subdued – we came back in the afternoon to check on everyone. The Mansion had a broken heart today – you could feel it, even the normally ebullient staff were subdued. They will be back to normal in the morning, life and death are not different things there, but two parts of the same thing.

Sometimes grief and tears are necessary, they help us to move on.

I love many things about my town, but I love this powerful sense of community most of all. Here we are known, and sometimes even loved. This afternoon,  I saw a dozen residents and half the staff in tears and washed in sorrow.  Even the ever-cheerful Peggie was crying much of the day.

They were cleansing their pain in a way, saying  a poignant goodbye to a prince in the kingdom of heart.