Maria drew a full house in the Activity Room Of The Mansion. Just about everyone who could came to hear her talk about her trip to India, they peppered her with questions about life there, poverty, art and safety. She talked about the movement to keep women out of the sex trade and her own experience teaching women there how to make potholders. She talked for nearly 45 minutes, it was a lovely thing to do and there was a great deal of interest.
There were a lot of questions about conditions in India, her own responses to the trip. They were very focused and as the veteran of many talks, she had them locked in.
We are planning an Art Show for the Mansion residents, to be held in April. We’ll provide some drawing and painting materials and those who wish to participate will hang their art in the big room. The show will be judged, the winner will get a prize to be named later. Crocheting and fiber works will also be permitted.
Maria put a slide show up on her computer. If anyone has a spare or used boombox that works, the Mansion could use one. They love music and are getting a lot of CD’s as gifts, but can’t play them.
We’re planning an art week to precede the art show, artists will come into the Mansion to teach, talk and share their work. We’re going to pick a date in April. If anyone wishes to help, some basic art supplies would be helpful – some colored pencils, sketchpads and/or or watercolor brush kids.
I’m going to round up some kits as well, Maria is going to help organize the show and provide some support. A good Spring coming up, there is much excitement about the van, which has not yet appeared. You can sent messages to the Mansion c/oThe Mansion, 11 S. Union Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.
I was eager to see when the first piece of art would come out of the Schoolhouse Studio. Maria bitched and squawked all week about not doing anything, being tired and disoriented, but then she showed me this beautiful quilt, the centerpiece is made of out a pillow sham from Udaipur, India.
It seems very different and very beautiful to me, but Maria can speak for herself. I think it is the first of many. It is going on sale shortly for $400 plus shipping. She has a little bit of work still to do on it. You can read about it here.
I hadn’t seen Kelly for some weeks, and we rarely get a chance to talk much at the Bog, she is too busy.
I realized last night that I missed seeing her, even briefly, she has a goodness that comes through in every photograph, and is grounding.
She speaks to kindness and a generosity of spirit that seems to be missing sometimes in the wider world.
And last night I felt and saw and head this first hand, in the two responses I had to the Mansion van.
When we sat down, Kelly came up to say hello, to ask Maria about her trip to India, to take our order.
She came over to me and said quietly, “it is great what you are doing for the people in the Mansion,” she was speaking about the successful gofundme campaign to help them get their new van. Mostly through the blog, we raised $10,000 in a little over a week. I blushed a bit and nodded, I honestly don’t know what to say to comments like that, I get uncharacteristically flustered. But I appreciated it. (I was thinking it was not just me by any means, all kinds of people helped.)
Just minutes before, a good friend had raised her eyebrows when the subject of the man came up, and said she wasn’t happy about the project. “Why didn’t they buy the van with their own money?,” she asked. This surprised me, as I cannot imagine ever having been involved in anything in my life that seemed as worthy or non-controversial as helping an assisted care facility get a van to take the residents to doctors and on field trips. There is a tendency to doubt the motives of everyone, and blame the poor and the needy for their troubles.
This is modern-day America, it sometimes seems our hearts are turning to stone, and there is nothing that does not arouse suspicion, resentment or doubt, or causes division. We are a nation of victims now, of one travesty or another. And the idea of finding facts or truth does not seem to be part of the process.
I told my friend I was surprised, I asked what the problem was. “Oh, you know,” she said, “those places have a lot of money, and they charge the residents for every trip they take. That’s what I heard. They make plenty of money. Why would they need help getting money to buy a van?”
Of course somebody would say that, in our time no good deed goes unpunished. We are a suspicious and divided people and whenever people seek to go to the outside world and ask for help, somebody grouses about it. Not something I quite understand, but have come to expect it. It comes up in a small way in every fund-raising project, to refugees to injured farmers. Why should they beg for my money?
I loved Kelly’s response, it was, as always with her, from the heart and instant. I think I am realizing why I love photographing Kelly so much, and why so many people love the photos of her, her spirit speaks to the highest human potential. She is all about empathy. She didn’t need to doubt the campaign, it just sounded nice that so many people reached out to help.
Of course, being a former journalist, I I had to check this friend’s report out. I love facts and truth. There was the subtle suggestion that I had been tricked.
I talked to a Medicaid administrator in Washington this morning, I also talked to some people at the Mansion. I learned that at some private payer facilities – people pay out of their own savings for services the Mansion residents can’t afford – residents are charged up to $25 for travel outside of their area.
At Medicaid facilities like the Mansion, there is no charge of any kind for any transportation anywhere, nor is the facility required to provide a van. The Mansion is responsible for buying the van, for insurance, for repairs and gasoline. The Mansion also hires and pays for a full-time transportation aide to drive the residents anywhere they need or wish to go.
Two weeks ago, I was at the Mansion, and their van was being repaired. A number of the residents require regular chemotherapy treatments, they often have to be driven to hospitals and special facilities an hour or more away. The Mansion makes scores of medical trips every week, as well as field trips.
That day, as often happens, staffers were using their own personal vehicles to get the residents to their appointments. That was happening more frequently as the old van was falling apart.
Thanks to the new van, that will not be necessary.
So here is the truth: The Mansion receives no payments or reimbursements of any kind for transporting patients, and they take them on many field trips that are not in any way required.
I ought to say that I have spent a lot of time at the Mansion, and while life there is sometimes painful and difficult, I have never been in a more loving or caring place.
I no longer believe that places like that are to be avoided at all costs. No one wants to be in the position of the Mansion residents, having to leave all that is familiar behind for good. But the Mansion is a very safe place, and a nurturing last resort for many people, they do not make a lot of money, if any, and I would hate to think what would happen to these residents if they couldn’t be there.
The van was a great and good cause, you did a great thing and I thank you. The spiritual change is to open up our hearts and souls in the face of so much anger and distrust, and the challenge is to move through anger and suspicion to a better place. Kelly seems to be there.
Kelly and her response brought this into some focus for me, I think that is the meaning of her photographs and why I am drawn to them. I call it Kellyness.
Since announcing that Chloe is leaving, Maria and I have received nothing but kind and loving and thoughtful messages from people, thank you.
Perhaps times are changing and the animal world is getting tired of judgment and self-righteousness. Maybe we are learning what animals are really like – Chloe will be very happy in her new home, we checked it out the other day, horse-loving people, horses and goats, the best hay, good fences, big pastures. Everything she needs and deserves.
The first dog I ever gave away was Homer, a show border collie who was not the right dog for me. We just didn’t click, and almost everything he did annoyed or frustrated me. I heard myself yelling at him one day to catch up with us – he dawdled far behind on walks, poor guy – and I recognized the voice of my father, scolding me for being a sissy and a bed wetter and a crummy athlete.
I knew I had to spare him the fate of living with me, I am not one of those people who loves all animals equally, I think that is equivalent to loving none of them.
This was the first time I encountered the peculiar belief of some animal lovers that giving away a dog for any reason was a form of cruel and selfish abandonment, even callous abuse. I got one of those Internet brushes with pure hostility.
Homer deserved better than me, and he got it, he went to a young boy and his family down the block, they loved him unreservedly and he loved them back, it was just the home he needed and he thrived there for many years, he died only last year.
In many ways, this was the most loving thing I had ever done for an animal, and it taught me a great lesson about me, and my own need to be more patient and accepting and thoughtful about the dogs I brought int my life.
I hadn’t done my homework. Homer’s only crime was my only crime as a child – he wasn’t the dog I wanted, just as I wasn’t the son my father wanted.
Unfortunately for my father, he couldn’t re-home me. He was a social worker, and it would have looked bad.
Life happens to all of us, it is not a drama, it is just life.
I know how much Maria loves Chloe and I see how difficult it is for her to give her up, even to such loving and thoughtful animal people as our friend Treasure Wilkinson and her partner Donna and their families. It looked and felt like grief this week, she is working through it.
Maria is fine with her decision, it was the right one, but it is also, of course, sad. She expected something different.
She and Chloe have a beautiful connection, but Maria’s life has changed in the past year, she is very busy and her ascending life as a successful artist requires her full attention and almost all of her energy.
She just doesn’t have the time to give Chloe the work and attention we know she wants and deserves. There are also the dogs and donkeys and sheep and cats. We don’t want to have more animals than we can know well and love.
I gave another dog away a decade ago – Clementine – a beautiful yellow Lab, who went to live with a wonderful health worker in Vermont and got the active outdoor life I could not really give her. She gets to run every day, all over the Green Mountains. I love thinking of her doing that.
And Pearl, who went to live with my daughter in Brooklyn. All of these dogs had the most wonderful homes with doting people and lived long and happy lives (Clementine is still alive), all had better lives than I could have given them.
My dogs now – Red and Fate – all have great lives in so many ways and are much-loved, as you can perhaps see. I have learned a lot about how to get a dog that fits into my life. I don’t get dogs because they need to be rescued, are “cute, or are seen on TV or in a movie. I don’t get dogs to make me feel righteous, but to join together in a long and deep partnership.
For the dog’s sake, it is not always about rescue, there is never only one way to get a dog.
Rescue is sometimes a wonderful option, as it was with Frieda and other dogs of mine, but it is more about the hard and careful work of thinking and researching and asking questions. For me, getting a dog is not an act of morality, but of diligence. Lots of dogs suffer at the hands of humans who use them to feel good about themselves.
Sometimes the right dog is in a shelter, or being rescued, sometimes they are with an ethical breeder. It takes a lot of work to get a great dog, it rarely happens on impulse. And few people bother to do it, so many see the acquisition of a dog as a statement.
I never tell anyone where to get a dog, that is arrogant and obnoxious. The best dog for you is the one you will love and can care for and who will be content and fulfilled living with you.
Same with a horse.
So many dogs are acquired for the wrong reasons, or do not turn out to be the dogs people wanted. Many spend their lives being ignored, shut up, yelled at, even abused. I see people yelling angrily at their dogs all the time. Horse trainers tell me it breaks their hearts to see horses spending their lives standing around with nothing to do, as was almost the fate of the carriage horses in New York. The carriage horses, the trainers tell me, are the lucky ones.
Dogs and people are different. But like us, they need to be encouraged and affirmed and loved.
We need to accept them for what they are, and not always succumb to the arrogant and greedy messages of many dog trainers selling their books and videos – that any dog can be transformed, can be trained to be anything to anyone, if you are just strong enough and tough enough. This makes people feel stupid and hopeless. If you get the right dog, you won’t have many training problems, and if you do, you can most often easily overcome them.
It isn’t true that all dogs can be miraculously transformed to meet our needs.
We end up blaming ourselves and then the dogs when they can’t be what we wish, and that is just another form of abuse. Sometimes you have to love them by looking in the mirror at yourself and letting go. Every animal is not right for every person.
I am not one of those people who loves all animals, or even all dogs. Love for me is not unconditional, there needs to be conditions. I want my love to be earned, not demanded.
And just because a dog needs a home doesn’t meant it should be with me.
I love some dogs and are indifferent to most. For me, to love all animals is to really love none, because the term has no meaning if it is applied so randomly. I don’t love raccoons in the way I love my dogs. I love Red and Fate to death, they bring me continuous joy and pleasure, and I try to do the same for them. It just works.
I admire Maria for making this decision about Chloe, it would have been easy enough just to keep Chloe and take pictures of her. She was causing no trouble, and we have the hay and the barn. Money is not the problem.
But Maria realized she was getting busier and Chloe could do better, and felt obliged to try to do better. Good for her. That is selfless love, the purest kind.
Animals do not make career and lifestyle choices. If they have love, good food and fresh water, shelter and the company of their own kind, they are quite content. Contrary to popular and narcissistic human belief, animals do not wallow in grief when they are re-homed That is a human projection of our needs. They get on with life.
Animals belong to a different universe, their true connection is to one another, they come and go in our lives.
Millions of dogs are re-homed every year, I don’t know of one who died of grief or lament for having been moved. Think of the thousands of Katrina dogs who have successfully re-homed.
A few days after Chloe goes to Treasure, she will be just fine, and if for some reason she isn’t, she can come back here at anytime.
Chloe is going to a better place, even though she is loved and will be missed, and you can’t love anyone or thing much more than that.
