Blog 1652, 5 October 2018, Friday
Dear friend,
We spent Tuesday with a lot of people whose values and mine syncopate. NEWSFLASH: “syncopate” means to shorten, not to work together as I’d always thought. So we didn’t syncopate, we agreed so closely that we let our values flow together as we learned about the latest news from The Plaster House. With a luncheon at the Woman’s University Club of Seattle and an evening at the Barbee Mill on Lake Washington, we spent twelve hours. Amazingly, we had four people who spent all twelve hours with us and did most of the work while I stood around wondering what next to do and Jean spoke to everyone she could see, find, or hunt down. Two years ago we met in the same places and raised money for a new dorm, guesthouse, and offices at The Plaster House. This time our needs were much less, trying to find money for the added staff (I think it’s $10,000 a month for a staff of 40) and then $4/day for food, clothing, and support for children, each of whom average a stay is four to six weeks. The average cost per kid, from pickup to evaluation to surgery to healing is $850. In 2016 they helped 700 kids through the miracle of medicine. The budget for the year is $350,000. Can you realize how cheap that is for changing so many lives, actually giving a kid a lifetime of being normal?
The Plaster House (do look it up on the web: theplasterhouse.org) takes my breath away. The people we stood with make me proud, grateful, and humble by their presence. They aren’t afraid to care. Either that or they’re hopelessly romantic warriors willing to fight for change toward the betterment of life for kids, adults, animals, housing, etc. Sometimes I wonder what I’m doing in their midst, I’m a grumpy pessimist who can’t even do that well.
Wednesday and Thursday were spent in therapy-free mental free-fall crashes. Next Tuesday we do it again, a one-show The Plaster House program in Olympia/Lacey. A week from today Jean flies to Minnesota to attend her sister’s (Marion) memorial service, she’ll be gone over the weekend. As of today we can expect rain and rejoice any day the temperature actually hits sixty. Winter cometh with soggy steps. LoVe,
Jeannmarv
jeannmarv2013 