Day: October 31, 2017

Connie needs help, she urgently needs a lift reclining chair, her existing chair is practically collapsing and she has severe back and other issues that urgently require a new chair that can lift up and down, and help her get up to walk more and move her body in different ways and positions.

Otherwise, she may require more medical treatment than the Mansion can offer. She is in considerable pain.

She needs a new chair urgently, but is reluctant to ask for help, she was preparing to contact an attorney to release some money she had saved or put away. I told her to wait, we would get it for her. Connie does not really know how to ask for help, she is fiercely prideful and independent.

Like a lot of good woman, Connie isn’t all that crazy about men, and we have had some joyous battles. And lots of love.

She told me she doesn’t want me or the Army Of Good to spend any more money on her. I told her not to be a pain-in-the ass for once,  that was up to us, and that got a smile out of her. She said she missed Red and Maria when we were in New Mexico. Me too, a little bit, she said.

Connie is struggling, and we have used most of the Mansion fund money to buy air conditioners for the residents, reclining chairs, for several outings and clothes, and for a new air conditioner for the kitchen.

There is about $1,000 left in the fund and I would like to order Connie an $810 Medlift Reclining Lift For The Elderly.  I could use some help with this one – this model offers free shipping, and will arrive in a week or so. As it happens, I can offer a gift in return for the first 17 people who donate $25 or more for Connie’s chair.

I don’t want to order the chair until I have more money in the fund, there are other needs for the residents, and I manage it closely and well.

An 81-year-old artist named Kay Nohe – she lives in Georgia – just send us a boxed of knitted hats and scarves as a gift and asked that we offer it to people who donate to the Mansion or the Refugee Fund. The gift is timely, I have to say. I don’t and can’t usually offer gifts in return for donations, but this one seems to have come for a purpose.

At least five of these hats were made with Bedlam Farm wool,  but they and Kay Nohe’s scarves are lovely. We only have 17, it will strictly be first-come, first-serve. There are some baby sox in the box as well.

You can donate in several ways. One is by mail, to our Post Office Box, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. Please include your return address, we will wait several days to make sure people who use the P.O. Box get a chance at the gifts.

The second way is to send a donation of $25 or more to my Paypal account, [email protected], please mark it for Connie’s Chair and include your s-mail address.

Maria is close to Connie and wants to help, you can also e-mail her directly at [email protected] and she will respond. If people choose to donate less than $25, that would also be welcome, you can send the donation to the post office box – P.O.  Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816, or to Paypal, [email protected].

If more than $800 comes in, all extra money will go directly into the Mansion/Refugee account to help replenish it. I like to keep it around $2,500. As always, the chair will be gifted to the Mansion. When Connie is done with it, it will be used by another resident in need.

Connie wants to stay in the Mansion and is working hard to remain, her doctors believe she is making progress, but her need for a new chair is both central and urgent. I plan to go ahead and order the chair shortly because of the time element, I will make up any shortfall myself, if it comes to that.

We will, of course, get her that chair.

Thanks for your help and support.

My bookkeeper reminds me that I’ve done a good job this year of raising money for good causes ranging from farmers in trouble to immigrants and refugees, but I also need to remember to raise some money for me and the blog, the bulletin board and engine of the Army Of Good.

And also a place for people who love animals to go and read about their adventures and my adventures with them. Your voluntary payments keep the blog and my photography going, and I have learned the hard way that I need and wish to be paid for my work.

So if you read the blog and enjoy it and find it meaningful – I will always be open honest and authentic with you, even if you don’t like it sometimes – please consider supporting it either through one-time donations or through my relatively new voluntary payment program.

The blog is the story of my life and of my life with Maria and donkeys, dogs, sheep, barn cats, chickens and people. I share my own lessons of life in the hope they will be useful to you, and the number of people who visit my blog suggest that they are.

Publishing has changed, and while I still write books and love writing them, it is no longer possible for mid-list authors like myself to live on book revenues and royalties, they have either shrunk or vanished since the Great Recession and the rise of Amazon.

I have no complaints, I am happy to write on my blog, now with four million visits a year, and take my photos. My blog is now the focus of my creative life, I write every day and love it more all the time.

But it needs to earn some money. I can’t just make a living raising money for other people, I am told. I wish I could.

And I have given away a great deal of my own money. My choice. I don’t like asking other people for money, but I do love being a writer and a photographer.

The trade-off is worth it for me.

All of these donations and  payments are voluntary – the blog will always be free, especially to those who can’t afford to contribute.

I hold no personal or financial information on my site or pages, hackers will find nothing here but lots of photos, they are welcome to them. (I am protected by two very alert security companies and programs, by the way. It’s a very secure site.)

There are one-time donations in any amount you wish, and regular subscription payments (also voluntary) of $5 or $10 a month, or $75 a year.

You quite easily create your own account, I have no access to it, give yourself a password You can cancel it at any time, or decide not to renew – everyone is given that option a week before renewal date. If there is any kind of glitch – it happens very rarely –  money will be refunded to you instantly, I am obsessive about that, you can just e-mail me at [email protected], no questions asked.

I hope to be useful, entertaining and challenging. I will provoke  you and offend you from time to time, it isn’t intentional.

My goal is the goal of any honest writer, to get people to think. I don’t care if you agree with me or not, I’m not running for mayor, and it doesn’t matter.

There are lots of photos of adorable animals, but also pieces about life, growth, spirituality and the work I am doing with refugees and the elderly. A good mix, I think.

I will occasionally bloviate about a  political issue if it pertains to me or affects my life, but that is not the focus of the site. I have lots of people reading me who voted for Donald Trump and many who voted for Hillary Clinton. By and large, we all get alone. It can be done.

There are many people out there who love to fight, I am not one of them, even though I lose my temper too often reading Facebook messages. I do not permit hostility of any kind on my site or pages, it is the one rule that is not ever broken. I do not argue my life or my views, take them or leave them.

Please consider supporting my work, the blog and my photos depend on it. You can choose one time-donations here, or voluntary payments here. Both are very much appreciated, and also quite necessary.  It’s been several months since I’ve asked, but I can’t pretend to be rich.

If you prefer or are one of the surprisingly many people who are not online, you can also donate by sending a check to my Post Office Box, Bedlam Farm, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.

The donate buttons are at the bottom of every post, the “voluntary payment” tab is at the top of the home page.

This life and work is expensive.  Blogs need maintenance, photography costs a lot of money, and I’ve given away more than 50,000 photos, I do not watermark or copyright my pictures.

And if you benefit from it, please consider supporting it in a way that works for you. In the digital age, writers and artists need to be paid for their work if they are to survive in our culture.

We take Paypal and major credit cards. Thanks for your support.

Thanks, J

I call them the devil dogs, these two have formed an unholy alliance of Hell-Raisers, there is wickedness and mischief in their eyes. They tear through the house, dig holes in the yard, eat revolting things and throw them up on the carpet.  They never tired of chasing one another, stealing each other’s toys and hiding them, wrestling and playing hide and seek.

They rarely rest and are inexhaustible, racing from one thing to another, missing nothing, curious about everything, bristling with life and energy.

They hop into bed, shower us with kisses, stay underfoot, are eager to hop in the car and go on their adventures. They have friends and admirers everywhere, and are endlessly fussed over, plied with biscuits, hugged and kissed.

I guess the truth is I love having devil dogs, and so does Maria. They are full of life, and their boundless energy is infectious. I would have thought that border collies and Boston Terriers were completely different species, but the truth is, they are very much the same.

They are smart and tireless and challenge you to do the same. If you lapse, they will call you on it.

If you love one, I discover, you will soon enough love the other, and if you survive the first year or two of life with them, you will know great love and joy.

The prophets said that every tomorrow is a gift of God, our destiny is to live in the present.

This morning, I dug out an old Shel Silverstein quote that touched me once, he said “listen to the musn’ts, child. Listen to the don’ts. Listen to the shouldn’t, the impossibles, the won’ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me…Anything can happen child, anything can be.”

Listen to dreams, wrote the poet Langston Hughes, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.”

Hope is a feeling of expectation and a desire for certain things to happen. In a sense, it is an act of faith. I believe faith is one of nature’s greatest gifts to us, we are the only living thing on the earth known to feel it. To me, it is the most precious gift, not to be wasted on despair and argument.

Merriam-Webster has a deeper definition of the idea. To hope, they say, is to cherish a desire with anticipation. To want something to happen or be true. To hope for the best. To desire with expectation of obtainment or fulfillment.

For me, the tyranny of our time is being trapped in the whirlpool of argument and grievance,  the sinkhole we call politics that is sucking all of us into the ground beneath us. I do not look to the left or the right for fulfillment, or to Fox News or CNN, or to a prosecutor or a President to save me. I look inward, inside of myself, the truly sacred space.

And  I wait for our own kind of Messiah, a leader who will unite us and see past our differences and care for the poor and know empathy and give us hope. He is or she is out there, waiting to take the call.

I hope – I have faith – for the best, and I am full of desire for fulfillment. I reject the tyranny of the hater and the victim and the angry cynic.

Hope is a profoundly religious idea, and religion has been pushed aside by feckless faces on screens. In the  Koran, Allah commands his followers to never lose hope. “So be not of the despairing…” – The Holy Quran, 15:55.

In the Bible, Psalm 42::5, Christ asks: Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted with me?

Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.

In the ruins of Jerusalem in 70 CE, Rabbi Akiva ben Joseph comforted the Hebrew faithful with his faith in the prophecy that the city would rise once again. In the 12th Century, Maimonides noted in his “Guide To The Perplexed” that “the world is ordered and beautiful, even if it seems ordered against us.”

I am not a conventionally religious person, nor am I a Muslim or Christian or a practicing Jew, but when I read these passages, I wonder where the perplexed can go today in our fractious and divided world for hope and comfort. I know where I go. To me, my sacred space.

I understand why people of faith found so much more  hope in their religion than people who turn to cable news or seething websites for hope and truth. They are condemned to disappointment, they will never be fulfilled, they will gorge themselves on judgment, hatred and conflict.

There is no hope in the news of the day, or in the eternal conflicts of ambitious, arrogant and greedy men.

That is the death of hope to me. I do not trust hope to the arguments of the day, I’m not sinking into that hole. it’s my job to find it and nurture it like a beautiful garden. I try to water and weed it every day.

Today, I’m going to the Mansion Halloween Party, and I will find hope there, in doing good, loving and being loved, in reveling in the miracle that is life. I am full of admiration for the people who struggle to bravely to keep hope and love alive in their lives even as the light fades.

Every day is a gift to them, a succession of small miracles. Yesterday is the past, tomorrow is uncertain, perhaps this is why they call today and every day the present.