Sylvie has an office – a hallway at the Mansion, she writes and answers letters, and studies her Jehovah’s Witnesses tracts and literature. She often cuddles with Red while she talks on the phone. He’s fine with it.
Sylvie loves getting letters. You can write her c/o The Mansion, 11 S. Union Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.
You can also write the other residents who wish to receive letters and messages: Ruth, Ken, David, Brenda, Guerda, Art, Debbie, Timothy, Dorothy, Barb, Alanna, Bob, Helen, John K., Allan, Joan, Madeline, Jean, Alice, Diane, Jane, Sylvie, Gerry, Mary, Ellen, Jean, Winnie.
I’m happy to report that Joan will be returning to the Mansion shortly. I don’t know where she has been or how long she will be staying, but I will be happy to see her again.
I remind myself often that going to the Mansion is not about clothes or gifts, although they are important. The best moments are when I come just by myself and with Red. Is was bitter cold today here, and I went to the Mansion late in the afternoon.
The forecast is daunting, freezing single-digit temperatures for days, even weeks.
A woman – I won’t name her – came up to me in the hallway and asked to speak with me. She took my arm and looked directly into my eyes. I could see she was frightened and uneasy.
“It’s very cold out there, isn’t it?,” she asked me gripping my arm.
“Yes,” I said, “it’s going to be even colder tomorrow.”
Seeing how alarmed she was, I tried to reassure here. “But it’s not cold in here, is it?
“No,” she said, gripping my arm. “But I have often been cold and I’m afraid of being cold like that again. I have bad dreams about being cold. Sometimes I think it’s cold her but then I wake up and it isn’t”
I knew something about her life and I understood why she was frightened.
We both sat down on the safe with me and Red came over to her and she s stroked him and began to settle. I told her she would not be cold this week, no matter how cold it got outside. The Mansion had big boilers and heaters in the basement, and back-up generators if the power went out, I told her.
We sat there in silence for five or ten minutes while she touched Red and stroked his neck. She was thinking about it.
There were people here, me included, I said, who would make sure she was not cold, and the staff would make sure she was not cold.
“Thank you,” she said.
We’re not supposed to tell people everything will be okay if we are not certain that this is true, but I was certain, and I took her hand and said “you will not be cold again. Can you trust that?”
And she seemed to, and thanked me and hugged Red and got up and resumed her walk. I don’t think she was frightened any more.
Mawulidi Diodone Majaliwa returns to Bedlam Farm Wednesday, we will head over to Pompanuck Farm and pick up some more wood for his carvings. He will also give me some more of his already quite popular wood carvings.
His chicken and four bird sold instantly, and there is a healthy waiting list of people who want to buy more of his work. We are working to figure out how he can sell this work independently but that might take a while.
He’s coming her along with Ali and the refugee soccer team – they are meeting a group of refugee kids from Rochester, N.Y., also mostly from Asia – who want to meet one another, and maybe do some sledding or snowball fights.
I can’t wait to see them together, I’ll be there. All of these pieces are sold, if anyone wishes to get on the waiting list, please e-mail Maria at [email protected].
I find it is much easier for me to give than take, I am happier giving things than getting things. I am selfish and self-centered, I get myself what I need, Maria says it is difficult to give me presents (although I love the warm wool socks she gave me).
Today, I went to the Mansion during my favorite time to visit, mid-afternoon when my writing work is done, and the Mansion quiets down. Red and I went there around 3:30 and Morgan Jones, the Mansion’s new and much loved director, was in the office.
it is quiet there, I like to come when I’m not bringing something, just to sit and talk with the residents. That is precious time.
“We have something for you,” Morgan said, and that always makes me nervous. She handed me a big card with the signature of all of the Mansion staff and almost all of the residents, it was a “thank you” card to me and to Maria.
Attached was a gift certificate to a local Italian restaurant for $118 dollars, the money was collected from residents and staff who wanted to thank me and Maria for the work we have done there this year.
That’s a lot of money from people who don’t have a lot of money.
I sat on a sofa in the Mansion hallway and read some of the messages, and then stopped, I started tearing up. I’ll read the rest of them tonight. I just never learned how to handle this gracefully. But it meant a great deal to me, Maria also.
When this happens, I get flustered, I can stand up in front of 1,000 people and talk without blinking for an hour, and talk on TV without blinking, but give me something or thank me and I blush, stammer, and mumble. I took the card and got out of the office as quickly as I could, coming back twice to make sure I had thanked everyone.
The care has a lot of meaning for me, I will hang it up on my office and will not soon or perhaps ever, forget. This is a gift I could never give myself and would never have without those thoughtful people.
A sweet, sweet, Christmas gift.
P.S. the Mansion Sleight ride was postponed again due to cold weather, we’ll try again later in the winter. Someone new is coming to the Mansion this week, I might have to reactivate my Thrift Shop network.
The “blog,” a clunky term for such a revolutionary form of personal communication, came of age in the early 90’s and has mushroomed into one of the most powerful forms of expression in human history.
The term “blog” comes from “weblog,” a hierarchy of text images, media and data, all arranged in chronological order, and that can be seen in an HTML browser. Blogs are many things now, but most often, a blog is frequent, even daily chronological publication of personal thoughts, something that can be linked to other sites and blogs on the Web.
A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web, and in recent years, artists and writers have moved almost en masse to blogging as form of survival as publishing becomes more corporate, market driven, narrow and marginal.
Blogs are moderated, that is the author approves comments before they are published. In this form I can eliminate much of the hostility that has plagued the Internet since it’s creation. There are lots of broken people out there.
Blogs have also become one of the fasting growing forms of expression for tens of millions of people – there are about 40 million blogs in America now – who would otherwise have little or no access to conventional forms of media and communication.
A leading cable channel, in contrast, might have two or three million viewers at peak times, that is a fraction of the number of blogs being published every day.
Blogs are, without question, the most vibrant, creative and exciting forms of communication on the earth. They are future, they allow individual voices to grow and flourish, but they are also connected to other voices. There is something quite wonderful about that.
Although I still write books and loving writing books, my work is focused on my blog, bedlamfarm.com, and Maria’s blog, fullmoonfiberart.com is now essential to her creativity and her life as an artist, she sells almost everything she makes on her blog.
We almost never know what the other one will write about. Maria’s blog is different from mine, she writes about her art and her own development as a woman seeking to find her voice and strength. She writes almost daily, but less frequently, my blog is my art, she has her art.
My blog is my heart, in many ways.
I write all day, she makes beautiful things all day. Our blogs support our work. We almost never see the other’s work before it is published, but will almost always read each other’s work at the end of the day, we often talk about what we have written, or about the art discussed, or the photographs published.
Maria’s blog has also grown steadily and greatly developed in range. She often publishes videos and has become an accomplished photographer and writer. The blog has been good for both of us, it often helps us to understand our own lives and goals and troubles.
In the morning, I get up early and write on my blog until early afternoon. Then I do chores, work as a volunteer, try to support the refugees and immigrants.
In the evening, after dinner, Maria and I both retreat to our computers, she sits in the living room, I go to my study.
I consider my blog my great work, a living and radically new kind of memoir. I have written several memoirs, I consider my blog a literally memoir, written memoir form. The writing is informal but faithfully reflects my life, for better or worse.
The blog is my natural medium, it never feels like work for me and I have a rich and often sparky dialogue with the people who comment on my work. I’ve found that many people like to express themselves strongly online, but are furious of their own words or presumptions are challenged.
I believe we are all responsible for our words, online or off, you as well as me.
This dialogue has taught me a lot for all of its frustrations and limits, it is important to me.
The blog is teaching me what it means to be authentic, and that is a liberating thing for me and for my writing.
Lying or withholding information would be, in my view, unethical, cheating the reader. I try to be open and honest. I like to say you get the good Katz and the bad Katz, but you always get the real one. I owe that to the blog, you could hardly do it in a book published every few years.
It is ironic that this form of communicating should be so important to me, and to Maria. We are truly well suited to one another. My blog reaches far more readers than my books, and has become my primary creative work. There are millions of visits a year to bedlamfarm.com and several thousand people regularly contribute to the blog’s continuing free publication. Those voluntary payments or donations are important to my financial well-being and my creative life.
I believe they are the future for mid-list writers like myself, I am excited to be helping to pave the way. this is the new life of the writer, it is the life for me.
I loved this image of Maria settling down to write on her blog tonight, just as I set off to work on mine. I hear her clacking away on her laptop, she sometimes likens my own typing to a kind of ballet, a dance across the keyboards
I love that image.
On my blog, I am free to write in my own voice, my own language. There is no editor to tell me what to say, or squawk about my grammar, no marketing department to tell me what is permissible.
In this medium, I believe my writing is maturing and deepening. The blog is very free, and thus freeing.
Writing every day is like running every day. Your creative circulation is good, your creative muscles strong, your stamina grows. Thanks for being here.
