The original idea was for me or Maria to sit on the back porch in our rocking chairs, chatting and drinking tea. The animals had a different idea. From the beginning, the barn cats and chickens have taken over the back porch and made it their own. The humans have never sat there. Maria’s Fiber (Rapunzel) chair is a welcome addition for the animals, the barn cats love to sleep there and now the hens have taken up sitting there and observing the world.
The Rapunzel Chair is part of the soul of the porch, and it is only fitting it is used by the hens. It was especially cozy out there this morning, the gray hen studying things as the sun arrived.
We got a big fat fig off of our Fig Bush today, it was delicious. It has an especially refreshing and light taste. We have about a half-dozen more figs on our new bush, which has to go into the basement to ride out the winter. I think we will be expanding this idea of growing more of our own food. The fig was about to explode, it was so ripe. All that watering, perhaps.
As of this morning, people have sent, mailed, messaged nearly $6,000 to support Maria’s trip to Calcultta, India next February to help former sex trafficking victims and slaves learn how to make potholders and other art and find sustainable and safe sources of income.
She was invited to come by a socially responsible tour group that works to help women in India and Africa. On her Indiegogo crowdsourcing page, put up just two days ago, she asked for $6,000 and has already received nearly half of that amount (that $3,000 is included in the $6,000 figure above.)
Included in the $6,000 figure is a matching grant for $1,000 – Maria got it for raising $2,000 in 48 hours. The money means Maria is definitely going to India. She offers her thanks on her blog today.
The outpouring of support has been overwhelming, and Maria is, frankly, moving back and forth between exhilaration over the trip and trauma at being the object of so much support and assistance. She does not know how to ask for help and she is never comfortable receiving gifts of any kind, not even on Christmas or he birthday. I can testify to that.
When I think of Maria, I think of Anna Freud’s powerful writings about the disconnected self. Sometimes, Maria (and I) feel like five-year-olds, frightened and overwhelmed by the demands and realities of the grown-up world. I told a therapist after a panic attack that i felt like a little boy with a farm and book contract and a grown-up lover. She told me to go talk to the little boy. His photograph is up on my wall, I talk to him every day.
Sometimes we feel like the strong and committed adults that we are.
We both know that much of our work is about integrating the self – the adult and the child have to meet. I have told that five-year-old boy in me and tell him that things changed, we are safe now, I love my life, and I got the girl.
In a sense, Maria and I are on the same journey. In many ways, we are very different.
This trip is bigger than her, she is beginning to see that. And it is scary.
It is about seeing her true nature, understanding who she is, introducing this remarkable strong and gifted woman to the child who was never told how special she is or encouraged to find herself and live to the limits of her potential.
That is happening now. For her, getting thousands of dollars from people all over the country is as terrifying as it is wonderful. She does not believe she deserves a penny of it.
She goes back and forth from one emotion to the other. Out of this, she will find out who she is, I have no doubt of it, and these women in Calcutta are very fortunate, they are about to meet a person who will affect their lives, just as she has changed hers.
I think the little girl is going on the trip, along with the rest of us.
This morning, Maria went out to the pasture and sat down with the donkeys, wonderfully intuitive creatures who seemed to know she need some support. She sat with them for half an hour, they sensed her unease, while the other animals went out to graze. They were supporting her, I could see it. It is a big moment.
We are deeply touched and grateful for this support – this is wonderful cause, and not just for feminists. These women desperately need help and the idea that the simple and beautiful potholder – a staple of Maria’s work – can help lift them up is especially meaningful to her.
The donations have come swiftly and in a variety of ways. Some are coming into our Post Office Box, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. Some came to her Paypal account – [email protected]. Then she put up the Indiegogo page.
I believe strongly in this project, I am not amazed by the support, although it has come more quickly and enthusiastically than I could have imagined. In her time with me, many people have found good reasons to trust and love her and her art. We are all on this passage to India.
A couple of people have, as might be expected, squawked that we have no right to ask for support for a journey we cannot afford. I disagree. We have every right to ask for whatever we wish to try to help and encourage people in any way we possibly can, with any money we can receive.
We do not, in fact, have the resources to make this trip or to help all of the people we would like to help. And in this new world, we can.
Each of you have the right to contribute or not. I do not believe that only wealthy people can help the needy, or that other people have the moral right to make these decisions for us. Not my idea of liberty. You will know precisely where the money goes, and for what.
We may not have the resources, but we have our work, our spirit, our creativity, and our blogs. We are not saints (at least I’m not) but we are trying to do good, and this trip to India is a rare and very powerful opportunity to do that.
Maria limited her crowdsourcing request to $6,000, she does not like to ask anyone for money.
We’ve been going over things, and I believe this trip will ultimately cost around $8,000 when all is said and done. It will disrupt her work, her income. There are a lot of ancillary costs. She will – I guarantee this – want to help as many of the women she meets as possible.
She will want to come home with boxes of wonderful Indian fabric, the country is famous for that. She will want to write about the experience, thank her contributors and supporters, then re-adjust to the life of the artist, and integrate all of the things she has seen and heard.
Artists, like writers, live inside of their heads, and her busy head is about to go on a wild ride. I write this because I know she will need and put to good use every penny she receives. I know it will be used well.
So thanks again for your support, that which has been given, that which is to come, both financial and spiritual and emotional. She will head to Calcutta in the chariot of angels, her true nature riding shotgun every step of the way.
If you wish to contribute to the Indiegogo.com project in support of the trip to India, you can do so here.
Rosemary and Izzy, two beautiful Romney wool sheep, were much loved. Their owner was evicted from their home and could no longer care for them, two friends took them in and started looking for homes. We took these two, Rosemary and Izzy – barbed wire was embedded in Izzy’s wool – and they are thriving here.
I am much struck by their groundedness, presence and their beauty and the beauty of their wool. There are two other Romney sheep looking for homes, one is a ram we cannot take. The other is another gorgeous and unshorn Romney ewe with silver wool – also very unusual and very beautiful.
As Rosemary’s wool begins to grow in, I am struck by the nature of it. And I am taken with these sheep.
Rosemary is a beautiful animal with great dignity and individuality, and she has rekindled my on-again off-again affection for sheep (I do not love sheep, I am too close to the dogs.) The problem with the remaining ewe is that she is a jumper, she has jumped many fences and we live on a busy road and cannot be careless about that.
I am thinking we will take a chance on her – Maria agrees. Zelda was a jumper also, and a break-out artist, but sheep are fairly predictable. Once they bond with the flock – and this silver ewe already knows Rosemary and Izzy – she will have no reason to jump and no desire to jump.
More than anything, sheep want to be with other sheep. We are guessing she jumped because she was hungry.
When we went to get Rosemary and Izzy, this silver ewe – I don’t know her name – went after Red and they had quite a brawl, and he bit her on the nose and marched her up the hill. My plan will be to let her settle, bond with the sheep and appreciate our grass (she hasn’t had any grass for a long time) and settle in, get used to the dogs, get to know me and Maria.
Very few of our animals have ever tried to run off. Life is good here,and there is nothing outside of the fence better than what is inside. We are discussing it today, but making tentative plans to get her on Saturday. I think it’s the right move, these three Romneys will transform our block and give Maria some beautiful wool to sell as yarn, which she very much loves to do.
We will not shear until October, when the shearer comes to our Open House on Columbus Day Weekend. All of our sheep will be here for people to touch and see and meet. I’m thinking Red and I can handle the new ewe.
