Day: February 23, 2017

Love and compassion are possible in the days and hours when caring becomes impossible and the heart seems to turn to stone. If we cannot help the helpless, then who can be help? The Mansion keeps my heart from turning to stone, my visits there are a prayer.

Friends, there is so much to do and so many people in need, but I have a very good and urgent cause to bring to you, if you are able.

The Mansion Assisted Care Facility, which I have been writing about for some months now, is urgently – desperately – in need of a new van, they have launched a gofundme project to hopefully raise up to 50 per cent of the cost.

There is little one cold do that would be more helpful to the residents than this. The van takes the residents to their doctors,  out for shopping,  to parks and field trips, to personal and emergency visits with family members.

It is their connection to the outside world. George Scala, the owner of the Mansion, and a conscientious and compassionate person, cannot get full financing from banks – he has tried – because he has spent so much money on renovations and improvements to his facilities.

There is little funding available to help the Mansion – its residents often have nowhere else to go. The stories of the Mansion residents have touched my heart and opened it.

The Mansion is a Medicaid facility, expenses run high and reimbursements are low, and probably about to get lower. I can testify that the care there is loving and above and beyond what is necessary. The staff is not well paid – there are not enough funds – but extraordinarily conscientious and loving, I see it every time I visit there, which is often.

Many of you have been so generous to the Mansion residents as well as the refugees, and I hesitate to ask you for anything more, but if you can help the Mansion get its van, you would be giving the residents a great gift. I first met them when they came in their van to visit the farm, these trips outside of the Mansion are so important to them.

Without their van, their world will shrink drastically.

I will keep on writing about the gofundme project it is up and running and I was fortunate enough to be the first person to donate. It is so complex to manage a facility like this, and Scala does it so well and warmly that I  hope he gets the support he needs for the van. You can help by going here.

When you see hearts turn to stone and it hurts you, I have an idea. Buy a vacuum cleaner for some newly arrived refugees to America for $19 on the gift page set up by the U.S. Committee On Refugees And Immigration. I am not an especially political person, but I strongly believe in compassion, and it seems to be out of favor now.

Every morning, I try and do something about that buy donating a recommended gift from the refugee gift page. You can buy a needed gift for as little as $2 dollars (a prayer rug) or as much as $168 (backpacks for school kids).

People in great need, our new brothers and sisters, are arriving in America even now, before the government moves to ban them in the name of protecting us from these women and children, who have lost everything and need everything. They are here legally, have been thoroughly screened, and are devastated, and now, frightened by their new home, it sometimes seems devoid of compassion.

Many have waited years in refugee camps to come to America, their homes and lives have been destroyed by a civil war they played no part in, other than to suffer. Their children are frightened and bewildered, their mothers and fathers and husbands are trapped behind, they may never see them again.

Your donations have lifted their hearts and spirits and shown them that compassion lives, hearts of stone can become hearts of love and empathy. This is my daily prayer my sacrament, it is inexpensive and important. When you heart turns to stone, do good. Buy a vacuum cleaner or browse the gift page. And thanks, you are making a difference. This will be a long haul, and I am in it.

Dahn Gandell sent me this photo this morning from Udaipur, a beautiful, ancient and mystical city in India, where Maria and the women who accompanied her on this trip spend their final days in India, before coming home. Traditionally, at the end of their trip to India,  they have a Sari party, they each go to a tailor who custom crafts a Sari for them for $23.

I have never seen Maria look happier or more radiant. She must be exhausted, and I can see that in her face, but I also see much more. She went far away, but she came home. She has found herself, I can see it and hear it in her voice.

The women she traveled with are remarkable, as she is – strong, brave, determined and compassionate. To me, they speak of the power of women to change the world and perhaps to save it.

To understand the way men do things, you only have to look at Washington D.C., a place of anger, conflict and self-righteousness, the testosterone charged bluster of our leaders.

To understand the way women do things, you have only to follow this journey to Kolkata, sometimes into the lowest depth of the human experience, where people can reach out to one another, one at a time, to alter lives and destiny.Women seem to grasp what is truly important in life, something powerful men never seem to remember. How to be human.

That, I think, is the path for all of us, and Maria is now on it, where she belongs. It is her path, I can see it in her face. We are excited, I am on that path also, in my own way. Something we can share.

My wife is an amazing women, as are the others with her in Udaipur. Tomorrow, she begins her journey home. I am so excited to see her. I am in awe of these pictures. I told her I can’t wait to take a photo of her shoveling manure in her Sari.

Oh, and don’t forget to check out the monkey video Maria took from her hotel room window.

These are some of the strong and wonderful women who go to India and work so hard to help women at risk there, they help them find shelter and work and avoid the dangers of poverty and sex trafficking. Maria is now one of them, and that is a beautiful thing for me to see.

The energy and color in this photograph speak volumes. Maria is on the left Hannah Gandell next to her, Kiera Jackson from Australia, and the Rev. Dahn Gandell, a warrior for love and good deeds. She first suggested that Maria come to India to teach the women there how to make potholders. It was a brilliant idea, and we are grateful.

These are brave, strong and determined women, they do much good, stand in their truth, and let no one tell them what to do.

I am very proud to love and be married to such a woman. At the end of their trips to India, the women who go on this socially conscious trip have a Sari Party, they each have a Sari custom made for them for $23. It celebrates the end of a grueling but rewarding experience, and marks their love of India and its customs.

I have to blink a few times when I see this, is this Maria there? Yes, and see how she absolutely belongs. In a way, she is gone, in a way she has come home and found herself.

The late Lou Jacobs, one of the world’s most famous and beloved clowns, and the first circus clown I ever saw, has come home to Bedlam Farm. Jack and I haggled a bit – I think Jack builds haggling space into his prices – and he is going to go on a wall in my study, where I can look at him and gain some inspiration.

He will become a muse for me.

Jacobs, a Master Clown,  died in 1992, for many years he was Ringling Bros. star clown, one of the best known in the world. I wrote about finding him in Outback Jack’s shop yesterday. He cost me $200 and I think, for once, I got the best of Jack. To me, Lou Jacobs is priceless, he was the symbol of Ringling Bros with his tiny hat, his big nose, his painted lips and his rebellious Chihuahua Knucklehead, who stole the show again and again.

Because of Lou Jacobs, a great lover of the circus elephants, I became interested in the connection between people and animals, and I saw the remarkable things they could do together, before the animal rights movement made the entertaining of people by animals a crime.

Ringling Bros. will shut down in May, in great measure a casualty of the politically correct but unknowing way in which we have come to see animals and define our relationships with them. Many of the “saved” elephants will be dead soon, or banished to the very few preserves that can afford to take them. There, they will languish and vanish from our consciousness. Most people will never see a live elephant again.

The children of the future will only know clowns, circuses and elephants from You Tube videos, they will spend their time on Snap Chat or Facebook and never see the magic of the circus, or witness the great love the trainers and elephants had for one another. It will be a great loss for magic, for children, and four our imaginations.

The great clowns were amazing performers, athletes, comedians and entertainers, Lou Jacobs will not be forgotten here. I talked to Maria last night from India, and I told her the Lou Jacobs story and she said, as I knew she would, “of course you should have that, good for you!” This is one of the many reasons I love her so much, she understands just who I am and loves me anyway.

When I saw Lou Jacobs in Jack’s Outback Antique shop, I knew he had to end up on my wall, I would never have forgiven myself if I left him there.