The Army Of Good is on the march, working to give the Mansion residents another memorable and loving and very meaningful Christmas. Being forgotten is a trauma and a draining disease, I think. You have lifted many hearts and spirits with you letters and gifts.
These (and other) socks arrived this week, one is for Red, one for Gus, one for Summer, the Mansion’s rescue cat. UPS is showing up every day with boxes and bags of great stuff for Christmas.
Your creativity and creativity are on full display, many of the Christmas gifts are quite inventive and many are even hand made.
I am dazzled at your quick and very thoughtful and complete campaign. Everyone will have gifts for Christmas, there are beautiful decorations pouring in for the Great Room and the tree, which will be arriving shortly. (Thanks for your many beautiful flowers for Connie’s memorial service.)
Because of you, everyone at the Mansion is excited and talking about Christmas. Everyone will have something under the tree. I can’t wait to see what else comes. Thanks and many blessings to you. The Mansion address is 11 S. Union Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. I’ve seen some beautiful small stuffed animals arrive today, they are much loved as a gift here.
When Red comes in the side door of the Mansion, he makes a beeline for the medicine room/office down the hallway and to the right. Often, there are two or three aides and administrators in their, most are Red’s girlfriends and admirers – he has them all over time.
When he got sick, one of the first things I did was call the Mansion, as some people there read my blog and would know he was sick and worry about him. He’s supposed to not work until next week, but we paid a quick visit to the Mansion today and Hollyanne, who was working organizing everybody’s medical records and medications, was filing when he came in, and Red got a loving welcome back.
The staff and some residents were relieved to see him back.
He went to Connie’s room, as usual, and then we went to the Great Room to listen to a concert by a local musician.
Your Christmas offerings have been streaming into the Mansion, and they are scheduling a special evening before Christmas to open your gifts. Everyone at the Mansion will have a gift, and lots of other sweet things as well – stocking suffers, socks, favors and wreaths, cards, puzzles, holiday books, drawing kits, sweaters and scarves, noisemakers, and photos – the stack is already impressive, and more packages are arriving every day.
Julie Smith, the Activities Director, says she’s never seen anything like it, not even last Christmas, which was unlike anything she had ever seen.
I’m collecting wool hats to give the residents, many of you are sending colorful hats as well. It’s got me all excited about Christmas, and I’ll be at The Mansion in a couple of weeks when the gifts and packages are distributed. Apparently there’s a stocking for me, Maria, and for Gus, and for Summer, the Mansion resident cat the Army of Good saved and paid to neuter and get healthy.
Your letters and cards and photos are coming in every day, thanks, and are much appreciated. I have a new resident list: Winnie, Jean, Ellen, Mary, Sylvie, Jane, Diane, Alice, Jean, Maddie, Joan, Allan, Bill, Richard, John, Helen, Bob, Alanna, Barbara, Peggie, Dottie, Tim, Ben, Art, Guerda, Brenda, David, Ken, Ruth.
You can send them letters anytime and Christmas gifts for the residents to The Mansion, 11 S. Union Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. Christmas is so important to the residents. Some spend Christmas day with their families so the Christmas party is scheduled some days before.
(I should mention that the list changes constantly, and I am not always at liberty to say why. Some of the residents just don’t want to receive packages and letters or can’t read them or use them. Some have no space. Some are taken off the list when they go to hospitals or nursing homes, they may or may not return. People come onto the list, and go off abruptly. Some go off and never come back on. Often, I simply can’t tell you what has happened to them. Privacy laws prohibit the Mansion staff from revealing any medical information, to me or anybody else. If the residents give me permission – Connie did – I can write about their health. I only take photos with the permission of the residents, and most love to be photographed. Many of the residents are attention starved, they are grateful to be paid attention to.)
So the list will change from week to week for all kinds of reasons. Thanks for being patient and understanding. I am thinking ahead to Spring. We are supporting an Irish band for St. Patrick’s day, they will cost about $400, they have to travel a bit to get here.
The recent boat ride on Lake George’s was a very powerful and poignant success, the residents loved it so much, I am working to set up another cruise for next April. The first one cost about $350. In the meantime, small acts of great kindness. Filling the holes in people’s lives. I am supporting prizes for the twice-weekly Bingo contest, it costs about $45 from the Dollar Store to buy prizes for the winners.
And I am distributing wool hats for the residents as the winter approaches. There is little cost involved there.
That’s where we are, there’s about $1,600 in the Mansion/Children’s Refugee Fund. Donations can be sent to Post Office Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y, 12816, or via Paypal, [email protected]. Many thanks to you for supporting this work. It has been the greatest gift to me, and hopefully, to you.
Let other people argue, we just commit small acts of great kindness.
Red went back to work today. Dr. Fariello said no running or intense exertion until the end of the week. She said I could bring him into the pasture. I took him out this afternoon – he was pretty sick earlier this week, a fever of 106 – and he went into his focused crouched. I let him do one outrun, and also took him briefly to the Mansion today, just to say hello.
Many of the residents read the blog and they were worried about him. So it was just light work for him today, I did what I was told. Red is on the mend, not quite himself, but eating well and eager to get to the sheep. Come and see. This is the second video taken with the new Iphone X.
Great news. Our friend the Rev. Dahn Gandell, who works with refugee kids in Rochester, N.Y., is coming to Pompanuck Farm the last few days of December, and she is bring some refugee children from Burma with her. They also play soccer.
The RISSE soccer team has a lot of kids from Burma, and Ali (from RISSE, the refugee and immigrant center in Albany) is eager for the two groups to meet. Ali says they intend to wear their new uniforms (above), we’ll see if a game came be conjured up.
The kids have called themselves the Bedlam Farm Warriors, not something I asked for. it is kind of cool.
i’m going to Albany tomorrow to meet with Ari and the soccer team. I’m also meeting with Mawulidi Diodone Majaliwa, I wrote about him a couple of months ago, he is a carver from the Congo who was forced to leave all of his tools behind.
You may recall the Army Of Good raised money to buy him some new tools, and we went out into the woods and helped him pick out some wood. He’s bringing some of his first carvings to our meeting at RISSE tomorrow. They will be for sale.
I hope to offer them on my blog and/or Maria’s blog this week in time for Christmas. This is exciting, you have given him the tools to honor the work his grandfather taught him, work he thought was lost to him.
I’ve also talked with Ali about helping the soccer team ice-stake on some Saturdays this winter at a n rink outside of Albany. It will cost about $7 a child, and I’m bringing a check for the first visit. It will cost roughly $100 to get the team to the rink, depending on how many come.
Thanks to the members of the Army Of Good for contacting Ali about sending Ukelele’s for each of the kids, that could be wild. Also a check to pay for additional indoor soccer tournament fees this winter.
I am trying to focus our help on keeping the kids together and busy and active during an upstate New York winter, the first for some of them.
Most come from single parent homes, and there is little money or transportation for them. Few of the families have cards, Ali is working with me to make sure they have healthy and fun things to do. He is their lifetime to the outside world, and few of them have seen snow or sub-zero temperatures.
In the hard part of winter, they will be stuck in apartments, I will work with Ali to get them out and with their friends. The federal subsidies that were available to them and their families are disappearing rapidly. They will need help. This is a major focus for me in the coming months, it will not take a lot of money to get them to movies, skating, practicing indoors, some outings.
I’ll keep you posted on all of these activities. This is sacred work for me, the true soul of America.
We’ve send them to see Spiderman, paid for birthday parties, soccer uniforms. I’d like to get them to some other movies. I hope, with your help, to keep supporting them through the winter, and then again when soccer season cranks up.
This is so important, to see them together is to see how much they love and support one another. Their lives would be harsh and lonely with this connection. Ali, my brother, is a saint. He calls me a savior, but he is the one reaching out to these kids.
I want to keep helping him.
The December meeting with the children from Burma will also be important to them, they rarely get to see other refugee children from outside RISSE, they are already excited about it.
If you wish to contribute you can send a check to my post office box. P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816, or via Paypal, [email protected]. We have about $1,500 in the Mansion/Refugee Fund, thank you. It was getting low there for a bit. Please mark your payments or checks to Refugee Fund or The Mansion, or both.
All donations go into a separate account, overseen by a bookkeeper an an account. Every penny goes where it is supposed to go.
This is not big sky country, there are hills, even mountains all around. Our farm has some big sky around it, and photographers love big sky. Today, the sky was gorgeous, sun popping in and out of the clouds. I got there just in time, the sun drops out of the sky these days like a cannonball.
