Goathouse Refuge

Hi friends and family, I realized that many of you could possibly be interested in this conversation… so I decided to post it. The attachment will give to everybody a better understanding of this:

Dear Siglinda,   You know how I support the Goathouse Refuge financially when my own bills are not sky high, and you also know that after my death Goathouse will receive a generous amount of funds, but I must say that the t shirt you are selling is in the worst taste possible no less embarrassing.  I cannot think of any woman who would wear it.     I come from a Blue state, if you catch my meaning here, but the former president (Red) said publically about women to “catch them by their -and used that word.  It is an unkind reference to anatomy and women.   Maybe in the South you think differently, but I’m very very turned off that the shirt was even made to sell to represent something positive: your refuge.  It certainly does not.
Very sincerely,
 Carol

“My decisions to take roads less traveled, and the decision to open an animal refuge, in honor of Muci, and all the animals people have tossed aside, whether for age, illness or behavior problems, teaches us many life lessons. First, that and many people like me who don?t fit the expected life track, that the capacity to love, nurture, and be successful  can rise above all shape and form of obstacles. And, two,  that no matter how tiny or insignificant an animal may be, it has the capacity to love and  be loved. I learned very early in my relationship with the animals that when I felt deep love and compassion for  a sick or wounded or scared animal, no matter which kind of animal, that creature immediately improved and the healing process started. This is one of the criteria I use on choosing the peoples who will care for the animals at Goathouse. And here it comes obvious the difference between people and animals: people don’t often respond to deep love by letting it in and regenerating from it, they need to be absolutely without hope to be able to feel it and to be nurtured by it and then the “miracle” happens and people, immediately have to label you as a “healer” or a “Saint” where there is no need to do any of that destruction with animals. We, the people, lost the simplicity and sincerity of just feeling and accepting things the way they are. Animals have it and know it as they feel it.”

Siglinda Scarpa

Our local newspaper, The Chatham News & Record, did a wonderful article on Siglinda and the Goathouse for this week’s edition.

A place of love, hope, and art for its owner and inhabitants
https://www.chathamnewsrecord.com/stories/a-place-of-love-hope-and-art-for-its-owner-and-inhabitants,6458

Update on Silginda 9/3/20
Hi Everyone, we are very happy to let you know that Siglinda is finally out of the hospital and back home resting with all of her furbabies. This picture is her reunion with Cricket. They were so happy to see each other.

We want to thank you all for your continued thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations during this difficult season. Siglinda still has a ways to go to recover from such a major surgery and will need some rest and physical therapy. As you know though, attentive and loving pets can help ease the stress and heal the body so we know her animals will help to do their part.

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Update on Siglinda 8/22/20

Hi Everyone, we are very happy to report that Siglinda is finally out of ICU. She is no longer in any pain and is eating better, feeling better, and asking about the cats and dogs and goats and the daily work at the Goathouse. We don’t know how long she will be in the hospital because she is still weak and will need some physical therapy. But Siglinda is deeply grateful for all of the many prayers and well wishes she has gotten and continues to receive. Thank you all so much

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Update on Siglinda 8/13/20:
It is with much relief that we can let you know that Siglinda had her surgery this morning and the procedure went well. She is in good condition and of course will be staying in the hospital for several days. We want to thank everyone for your continued prayers and good wishes for her surgery and complete recovery, as well as your support and financial donations. It takes a lot of stress off of Siglinda when she knows that we have the finances coming in to take care of all the cats and the Goathouse expenses each month. We will continue to pass on updates to you as we get them.

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Dear all,

It is with a crazy heart that I have to let you know that on August 13 I will have heart surgery at Duke Hospital. Another adventure!  

No matter what is going to happen, I am here to ask you all to be supportive of the wonderful people who have been working with me for so many years behind the scenes to help all the kitties we could at the Goathouse. If everything goes well I will be in the hospital for 1 week and home after that to recover for at least 2 months. My presence will be sporadic but I will be here and if they didn?t take out my brain, I will read and write as many emails as I can.

Please, be part of the team! Become sustainers! (https://www.goathouserefuge.org/become-a-sustainer/)    Do all you can to help! All these little hearts count on you for their life! There is no job that is ?not my job? if you can help, please, do it, I beg you to be present. We count on you all, we all are Goathouse Family!

My kitties and my dogs know that something is happening and they are all over me taking very good care of me. They will be without me for quite a while but they will be very well cared for. If you are out at the refuge, please stop by to see them and give them some extra love. Please, be present, be supportive to our people, anything, anything that you can do is important no matter how small!

Love, and I mean it,
Siglinda

?Courage is grace under pressure.?

Another chapter of my life:

-surrounding homes, what did people do for a living there,

Mostly they worked in the small factories or lived and worked on the farms.

-your parents included,

My father was in the army, he was the head of the acrobatic air squad of the Italian Aviation. He deserted the army when Mussolini became allied with Hitler. My mom took care of the house and children.

-what was the pace of life there?

It was during the war so my mother, my grandfather and uncle were going out during the day to find food and any supply they could get for our lives, punctuated by the airplanes coming to drop bombs or the sirens of the military police rushing through the narrow streets of town. If the bombers would come in the evening my uncle would go on the balcony and shout down the courtyard to shut down the lights and run to the basement and we all would go in the dark humid basement waiting for the bombardment to end and then return to our homes. People always commented on where the bombs hit the town… One summer evening we were at a merry-go-round that was a traveling in an amusement structure that just came in town and the bombers came, everybody ran to the bunker on the square but the people on the chain chairs were left there, with all the lights on and the chairs spinning around. Everybody was very mad at the people who ran away without shutting it down for the people to get off to safety. It was very scary. Fortunately they were not hit but I still feel that terrible fear.  

I was  4 or 5 when I realized there were bad things going on around me. My parents spoke of the war, and our  household became filled with fear when the WWII bomber planes flew overhead, booming through the skies.

My father, left the Italian Army when Mussolini came into power and his negative  writings got the attention of the Gestapo. Their arrival one night in our home, looking for him, left me struck with terror. Their pounding on our door, and the image of their big shoes in front of me, remains a vivid memory to this day. At one point my mother (Maria Giovanna), grandmother (Angelina) (not my grandparents), brother (Sigfrido) and I fled to the mountains and hid (Maybe outside Alagna, but it is a vague memory).

-Did you abandon your home when you fled from the Gestapo?

When the Gestapo came to our house I remember their harsh voices and their big boots, As always I was on the floor in the kitchen, with my little brother playing with paper. They came into the kitchen and said they were going to wait for my father to come home. My grandmother was piling potatoes and I could see her hands shaking. At this point my memories are completed by my mother’s and my grandmother’s memories and telling:  My mother was sick in bed, they went into the bedroom to ask her where my father was, then they stayed in the kitchen to wait. In my mother’s bedroom there was a big armoire in front of a back door. My mother pushed the armoire,  got out and went to look for one of my father’s companions that went to tell my father not to go home and then found a car that came to pick us up, my mom, my grandmother and me and my brother, and took us way into the mountains in a little house on the Monte Rosa. I didn’t see my father through the end of the war, but I remember being hungry, cold, and my mother going out, on a bicycle to find food for us and sometime she would go away for 2 or 3 days and would come home with some people that would be hiding in the basement. I learned later that they were Jews that my father and his companions had saved from being brought to the concentration camps. Sometime later someone would come to pick them up and take them to a safe place outside of Italy.  

Often people ask me where was I born and about my Country, here part of my story? how it began:   

I was born in 1940, in Novara, a small town near Milano, but still in Piemonte, where Milano is in Lombardia. Novara was and is a very rich industrial little town, rich because of the small factories that make machinery that make precision clocks or scales or other precision machines for Switzerland. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novara#Historic_centre

My mother Maria (Giovanna, her Partisan name that she used for the rest of her life) and my father Sergio (Geo was his Partisan name and Geo he was for the rest of his life for all his comrades) I also had a little brother born 1 1/2 year after me.

The center of town was primarily built in the 1800, the buildings of 5 or 6 floors (a lot of stares to climb with heavy groceries bags) often had internal balconies with metal railings–I use to sit on the floor dangling my feet from the balconies and watching the swallows with their iridescent feathers fly around in the center of the courtyard and making mod nests under the roof tiles–during the war we were living on the top floor of one of those buildings with my great grandparents. The outskirt of town was made of little 2 floor family homes with little vegetable and flower gardens that we could see by climbing the little walls surrounding the properties. And then, the farms: Piemonte is called the granary of Italy because it produces more than 80% of the food for the nation, especially grains (Arborio Rice comes from Novara).

Long, long, cold winters, with a lot of snow and fog. For months at the time we would be walking into clouds without seen anything far from our noses and that gave me a chance to explore my imagination and the joy of getting lost in a cloud!

My home, during the war, was in a building as I described above, the entrance was from the “pianerottolo” landing on top of the stares or from the balcony with access from the French doors into the large kitchen that was the room where the whole family was living and working: My great grandmother would be the first one to get up and start the wood fire in the large stove that was the only source of heat during the winter and the main feature for cooking. She would be using the large rectangular table with magic drawers, one for each one of the family members and job needs, to chop and prepare the food to be placed on the stove to cook. The irons, that would iron the shirts for my uncle and grandfather to go to work, would be on the stove too. I remember going to bed and being so cold the sheet would feel wet, my nose would be dripping and icy and my breath would make little clouds. I would sleep with my head under the blankets… When it was particularly cold my grandmother or my mother would place in my bed a “scaldino” a container of hot coals hanging from a cage-like structure that would keep it safely away from the mattress and the blankets but would allow it to warm up the bed. The rest of the apartment was bedrooms for each member of the family. I particularly loved my grandmothers room because she had a pair of little blown-glass shoes that looked to me like the shoes a princess would wear. Many times I tried to fit into these precious shoes and I even managed not to brake them. My grandmother was a seamstress and she had so many absolutely gorgeous fabrics in her bedroom and all the fashion magazines I totally adored. I spent days after days, going through the magazines without getting bored. The table in the kitchen had a drawer just for her with scissors, needles and threads of all colors, charcoal that she would use to draw a pattern before cutting the fabric. She also had a “manichino” a woman torso in black fabric on a wood post that could turn so she could pin the cloths that she was sawing. she would be sharing the big table with my great grandfather that would be drawing kaleidoscopic stars with various compasses and passing them to me under the table where I was coloring them with pastels that I totally adored. My grandmother would give me little pieces of her precious fabrics and I was making fabulous sculptures or dolls with paper, cardboard and fabrics, always under the big table.  To be continued??

Siglinda

– Companion Animals and Us by Anthony Podberscek

348 pages, Cambridge University Press, 2000

?Over the past thirty years there has been a tremendous growth in interest in the multidisciplinary field of human-companion animal interactions and relationships. The increased interest in human-pet relationships is not surprising considering that pets are kept in at least half of the households in Western societies. What is so special about the relationships people have with their pets? Are we very different from our ancestors in the way we feel about animals? What does pet keeping tell us about ourselves and our relationships with people? Can pets be good for our health? Does having pets help promote empathy for other humans? Companion Animals and Us brings together some of the newest research from a wide variety of disciplines including anthropology, history, psychology, sociology, and human and veterinary medicine to explore these and many other questions. This book will provide fascinating reading for anyone interested in understanding more about the human-pet relationships.?

Dies slowly he who transforms himself into the slave of habit,
repeating every day the same itineraries,
who does not change a brand,
does not risk to wear a new colour and doesn?t talk to whom he doesn?t know.
Dies slowly he who avoids a passion,
who prefers black to white
and the dots on the ?i? to the whirlpool of emotions,
just those ones that recover the gleam of the eye,
smiles from the yawns,
hearts from the stumbling and the feelings.
Dies slowly he who does not overthrow the table when is he is unhappy at work,
who does not risk the certain for the uncertain
to go toward that dream that has been keeping him awake.
Who does not allow, at least once in his life, to flee from wise advices.
Dies slowly he who does not travel, does not read, does not listen to music, who does not find grace in himself.
Dies slowly he who destroys his self esteem,
who does not accept somebody?s help.
Dies slowly he who passes his days complaining of his bad luck or the incessant rain.
Dies slowly he who abandons a project before starting it,
who does not ask over a subject that he does not know
or who does not answer when being asked about something he knows.
Dies slowly he who does not share his emotions, joys and sadness,
who does not trust, who does not even try.
Dies slowly he who does not re-live his memories
and continues getting emotional as if living them at that moment.
Dies slowly he who does not intent in excelling,
who does not learn from the stones from the road of life,
who does not love and or let? s somebody love.
Let?s avoid death in soft doses,
remembering always that to be alive demands an effort much bigger
than the simple fact of breathing?
And only through perseverance do we reach for a wonderful happiness. ? Martha Medeiros