Leo

Leo is a pseudonym for one of the regulars who comes for dinner. I had the chance to engage him in conversation this week. It's taken years to get to this point; Leo's coping mechanisms include affecting various accents and a jabber/patter when he greets and interacts with people. Eventually I was told by another homeless person that the way to engage Leo in conversation was to ask about his mother. It seems that Leo's mother has been unable to fend for herself resulting in the two of them being homeless since Leo was in his teens. Leo will not say anything bad about his mother, but I've gotten the impression that she's an addict of some sort. Even though Leo was forced to abandon his mother to get away from what Leo has described as "controlling" behavior, her welfare is paramount in his thoughts while he usually has no idea of where she is exactly. He believes that it's his responsibility to find a way to get housing for himself and his mother. He has foregone the normal route of looking for menial work and he claims to be pursuing his creative bent in art and dance hoping to achieve success there. For a while now, his mother has been 'living in another city and being taken care of'' which I interpret to be committed to institutionalized care if not incarceration. Now that he doesn't have to be able to afford a place that can house both him and his mother, I've been suggesting that he can consider lowering the bar and maybe also pursuing getting a regular job.

I have some evidence of what Leo might be like under other circumstances;he's seen me in the library and headed off to the grocery store to purchase dried beans and rice to donate towards dinners on Tuesday nights. He can be quite thoughtful in his responses. In our last conversation I mentioned that it was difficult to gauge whether we were making a difference doing what we were doing. He pointed out a number of thing he would have never experienced if he hadn't come to dinner. He understands that we want to provide healthy options for meals and his take was that even if less people take advantage of that, it was a good thing to be providing that option. It caught me off guard when he suggested that the devil had sent someone to try and kill me because I was doing a good thing and I hadn't let that keep me from continuing to do this and that meant something too.

Holidays

Happy Thanksgiving. Today is a holiday and it's one of the annual holidays where we try to do a special meal to commemorate the holiday being celebrated that week. For Thanksgiving I usually roast a turkey as part of a traditional meal, but this week, I decided to serve ham instead, only to discover that a significant percentage who showed up for dinner expecting turkey do not eat pork and I ended up having leftover ham. Live and learn.

I don't care to cook holiday meals twice the same week, so since I started doing this I've either accepted invitations to celebrate with various friends & family, or on a few occasions I've elected to observe the holiday quietly on my own.

I'm currently relaxing with a cup of coffee at a local fast food place - and it's seemingly just another day gauging by the number of customers here stuffing themselves with burgers and fries. Maybe I'll ponder that on another day, but today, for many homeless, it's not just another day, and that distinction is even more obvious on a day where the temperature is currently a freakish 91 degrees. A lot of the people who come for dinner spend the day at the library; aside from the ability to recharge their phones/laptops, etc. the library also provides a respite when it's especially hot or cold outside. But the library is closed today and will also be closed tomorrow. In cases where the library is a regular haven, holidays end up being more like a penalty day.

It will get even more complicated over the course of the next five weeks or so. Beyond the normal bump to the tax base due to the holiday season, Pasadena also benefits from the tourism that's tied to the Rose Bowl. In an effort the maximize that benefit, the city employs a few protocols to minimize the visibility and overall presence of the homeless in Pasadena. For example, park sprinklers that routinely go off in the early morning hours to maximize absorption will go off for 15 minutes at 8pm during the holiday season; the wet grass becomes a deterrent to those who might otherwise try to sleep in the park at night. I can't blame the city for taking steps to protect their tourist season, but the result is that we now routinely go on hiatus the last two weeks of the year. In past years, we've been at the park the weeks of Christmas and New Year only to have fewer than five people show up for dinner, and I couldn't in good conscience ask volunteers to sacrifice their time during the holiday season to try and prepare a holiday meal. This year, we'll probably do an informal poll among the people who come for dinner and decide based on the response.

Chris

Chris was a former regular a number of years ago. He stopped participating because he didn't like coming to the park. We also disagreed on the way certain things were being done. Even so, that didn't stop him from encouraging people he knew to begin to volunteer helping out with me at the park. Over time during conversations we had at the library, we'd become better friends.

Earlier this year, a mutual acquaintance had made the observation that Chris appeared to have given and had let himself go. He'd put on some serious weight, but claimed to be doing OK. I took him at his word.

I was stunned to hear that Chris passed away earlier this week. Apparently he'd required surgery for a hernia, but complications set in and the extended time under anesthesia sent Chris into a coma for almost two weeks. During that time he suffered two heart attacks and the doctors were able to revive him. However, he suffered a third heart attack this past Monday which proved fatal.

Chris wasn't the first and I expect that he won't be the last person I've encountered on the street to pass on, but this one feels different for reasons I have yet to identify.

Ritchie

We serve dinner weekly in a public park in Pasadena. There are people on the street who spend most of their time there. While they tend to come and go, I do know a few who've slept in the park for years. The point is that it didn't seem like much of a big deal when someone new recently began sleeping near the tables where we serve dinner. The first time I met her (I'll call her "Ritchie") she started screaming at me about my serving dinner, a series of F-bombs liberally strewn throughout the tirade, before she abruptly walked out of the park leaving her stuff there on the grass. While we seldom experience behavior like that, I really didn't give it much thought; I've learned not to use a single incident to form expectations of peoples' behavior, though to be fair, I didn't have much expectation of making any sort of real connection.

The following week, I noticed that a gentleman stood up when a woman approached the table where he was sitting. Ritchie happened to be within earshot when I commented on his chivalrous behavior and he said he'd been taught to stand in the presence of a lady. Ritchie asked what was the difference between a woman and a lady. I don't recall exactly how I answered, but it was something to effect of it being a combination of behavior and self respect.

This week, when I pulled up to park, Ritchie approached my car and asked if she could help carry stuff from my car to the picnic tables. After dinner was over and everyone else had left, she asked if I needed help carrying things back to the car. I told her it wasn't necessary and I suggested that she sit down and enjoy the cool breeze and relax for a bit.

We talked for about fifteen minutes. She's overheard me mention the possibility of getting referrals from the mother of two of my music students and asked me about that, and we talked about music for a bit. Apparently she likes to take songs and remix them with a techno rhythm track. She likes rock, wasn't so crazy about country music, but was beginning to appreciate it. I also found out that she was from West Virginia but her grandmother was from Tennessee.

Sometimes, you just never know.

The New Fact

Someone I'll refer to as "A" has been coming off and on to dinner for the better part of a year now. Her four children are currently wards of the state, and she's working towards getting them back. Just this past week she elected to share more of her personal story. She was widowed a few years ago, saddling her with a lot of debt. That along with other things led to a mental breakdown, culminating in "A" attempting to take her own life by overdosing on drugs. This prompted the state to step in and place her four children in foster care.

"A" is now working part time and going to school part time with the goal of finishing her bachelor's and eventually teaching special education. She's also in therapy and she hopes to get her eldest into therapy as well; her eldest still believes that the overdose was the result of an accident.

"A" clearly has a ways to go, but I believe that she's going to be all right eventually. Therapy has been a positive influence in "A"; she describing as reprogramming her crazy thinking. I shared my take on insanity based on Chesteron's suggestion that none of those we consider insane have lost their reason - it's that reason is the only thing they have left. Their universe of facts are so small, they can't help but reach the same conclusion over and over. We can reach new conclusions only we allow more truth to enter our universe of facts. "A" said that made sense, so I asked her what new fact she'd incorporated in her universe. She thought about it for a little bit, and said that she wasn't a bad mother. I suggested that that had been a huge source of shame, and that shame makes us want to withdraw while shame is healed within a healthy community but it's not easy to find among the homeless.  She agreed and said that she had made a few friends at the shelter where she was staying. We talked about a few more things and then we called it an evening.

I don't know how much I actually helped, but I was encouraged to see the progress she was making.

More blessed to receive

No it's not a typo; the phrase as it's known from the Scriptures is that "It's more blessed to give than to receive." I believe in the truth of it. But receiving isn't such a bad thing either.

There's a guy named Jimmy who's started showing up a few months ago. He's now usually camped out on the sidewalk next to the picnic tables when we serve dinner every week although for the last 4-6 weeks he hasn't had dinner and he's stayed seated in his wheelchair on the sidewalk next to his stuff; he likes to smoke, and smoking isn't allowed in the park. Instead of eating, now he typically asks me if I want a soda while I'm packing up.

Tonight he asked me if I wanted some pie or some cake. I was going to pass but he continued on, mentioning that he'd bought them yesterday for his birthday.  So I pulled out some extra plates,knives & forks, had a small sliver of cake, and we talked about some of our favorite comfort foods. Nothing fancy: fried bologna sandwiches with melted cheese with or without mustard. Different ways to make eggs with potatoes (no onions for Jimmy)..

I packed up, and as I was leaving, I told him 'happy birthday'.

Jimmy smiled, for the first time I can remember.

Book Covers

The maxim: Don't judge a book by its cover just seems so trite. But there's a reason why it's a maxim. I got reminded of this recently. It's easy to categorize people mentally based on appearances, especially when you deal with a certain segment of the society over a period of time.  But I got reminded recently that appearances can be deceiving.

Dinners in the park are for most part a pretty orderly affair; sometimes there are people waiting at the curb, and they help me carry stuff from the car.  Everyone tends to let the ladies and/or disabled folks, when there are any, go first.  One week while I was still setting up, someone came up to our tables, cut through the line, and began poking through the stuff asking what was for dinner. The person happened to be male, probably about 6'2", about 300 lbs, with unkempt hair and a scraggly beard.  Everybody kinda got out of his way, and I got the impression that they were familiar with him. The first impressions that went through my mind were along the lines of how everyone was clearly intimidated by his size & his brusque manner and my first instinct was to categorize him as a bully.  I told him politely that dinner that night would salad, rice and whatever main dish we happened to be serving that night, but we were still geting ready. We'd start serving shortly and if he got in line, I'd make sure that there'd be enough left for him to get a full plate.    I was pleasantly surprised when he responded. "oh. ok." and he went to the end of the line.  This person, who I will call "C", has come back most weeks.  While he's clearly a bit rough around the edges when it comes to social skills and boundaries, I've sensed no malice.

The lesson got reinforced yesterday morning. There's a man who sits at a street corner you have to pass by if you take a certain freeway exit in Pasadena. This street corner is blocks away from any sort of building or available parking; you have to make a deliberate choice to walk there and sit there. He usually has a pit bull chained to a fence. A lot of people occupy corners like that, usually sporting a sign stating that they need help. Yesterday as I was pulling up to that corner, I happened to make eye contact, and I said "Sorry." He promptly responded "Did I ask you for anything?" to which I replied, "No. But we made eye contact, and I wanted to make sure you knew that I saw you." He then said "I just like to spend a lot of time here." Then he wished me a good day, and I did likewise before I drove off.

I could stop here and have a nice trite blog post. However, there's a flip side; the book covers we write for ourselves, consciously and sub-consciously. It seems to me that we'd all benefit from a third party review of ourselves and the image we try to craft for ourselves. Some folks probably stretch the truth. Others find seeming modest ways of emphasizing things they're proud of: a current TV show features a character who was called out for using the phrase "I went to school outside Boston"  as a disingenuous way of announcing the fact that he went to Harvard. That comes with the territory when you have an ego.

Then there are folks who go the other direction and have written book covers that discourage people from trying to read the book, typically to minimize the pain/fear of rejection.  I know that I do this. I know this needs to change, but this involves going back and revisiting some unpleasant memories and frankly, this terrifies me. Yet it must be done if I'm going to take the steps needed to get BK where it needs to go.

Building

I haven't posted anything recently. and I should provide an update.

Last year, a dinner program at Villa Park Thursday nights was de-funded, resulting in there be no meals being offered on that day during the week. As there is someone else providing food in Pasadena (at Memorial Park) on Tuesdays in the afternoons, the decision was made to switch to serving dinners on Thursday nights. We start this week.

We've also begun to explore the possibilities of a coalition of sorts; along with the serving of food on Tuesdays at Memorial Park, there's a group serving meals in Pasadena at Grant Park on Monday nights. I've approached both of these groups to gauge how well our goals and agendas mesh, and in both cases, it looks like there's a good fit; there's interest in coordinating with a goal of providing meals at a common location, ideally a building dedicated for that purpose. Moreover, as I continue to work on soliciting corporate donations in the food realm, they're open to having BK provide food for their nights as well. The hope is that by joining up, we can make a more attractive presentation to potential donors/

We've also been soliciting feedback from other individuals and groups that have worked with the homeless in the past to become aware as we can about potential issues and concerns as we work on preparing a comprehensive proposal. There's a lot of uncharted territory here.

The Vision Taking Shape

With each day, I become more convicted that it's not about the food (though we will always endeavor to make it as healthy and tasty as possible) as much as the atmosphere we hope to facilitate before, during and after the meal. There's been some thought to going back to a format that includes a devotional/inspirational time after the meal. I have mixed thoughts on that, but if that proves to be most helpful, it's what we'll do going forward.

It just so happens that one of the BK board members has an association with the CFO of a international corporation, and said corporation apparently has a philanthropic budget that goes into eight (8) figures, and where the funds go is totally at the discretion of aforementioned CFO. A sizable chunk of that could earmarked for BK. The feedback from the other board member is that we need to be able to document supplying at least 300 meals a week. As there is no realistic way BK could document that kind of volume, we would have to solicit donations, ostensibly at a corporate level. This would lay the groundwork for soliciting the kind of donation that would allow us to get into a long term lease for a space that would function as food prep area, service area, office space (requiring the hiring of staff), with possible expansion into offering bathing/laundry services as well.

Again, there's no way we could hope to expand BK that quickly, so the idea is to reach out to other groups serving meals in the area on other nights, and explore the possibility forming a coalition, with the goal of creating the need for a local area community center that has different groups offering food on different days, with BK doing the main administration of the building.

One of the first things to do is take the step of moving from Tuesday to Thursdays; someone else named Marchall already provides food at Memorial Park (a few block north of Central Park) on Tuesday, and the dinner program at Villa Park nearby on Thursday nights has been defunded and there is no one serving food on Thursdays.

Initial candidates to approach include someone named Mike (who has a pretty unique story of his own) who feeds the homeless on Sunday nights. There's another group that serves food Monday nights at Grant Park, Marchall on Tuesdays, and BK would round out the schedule on Thursday nights for a total for four nights to start with room to expand.

The idea at this point would be that on a given night, a group serving dinner would be responsible for providing sufficient manpower to get the food prepped and served as well as volunteers who would facilitate creating an appropriate atmosphere during the actual meal time.

As for the type of building we'd hope to acquire by purchase or long term lease agreement, the following thoughts come to mind:

- a former restaurant/fast food operation; there will already be areas set up for food prep & food service, with the space to accommodate 75-100 people seated for dinner.
- a location within walking distance of public transportation, ideally more in a commercial area (so as to minimize the concerns of area residents)
- room to include office space;
- potential room to expand to provide ancillary services as funding and manpower permits;

We also need to identify potential allies to assist in getting past any concerns in terms of permits, what have you.

And of course, we need to contact the groups mentioned and also try to identify any other groups we can work with.

This is the vision at this point. We are looking for feedback/input to help us get our arms completely around this, not to mention some areas to gauge fixed costs for utilities, insurance/security, legalities, etc. If you have any to share please comment on this post, comment on our Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/barrys.kitchen.2016/

or send an email to: barrys.kitchen.2016@gmail.com or to BarryFChin@gmail.com

Random?

I usually assign a title before I start an entry because it helps to keep me focused. This time, I'm blogging because I think something significant happened, but I'm not quite sure what it was.

When 6pm rolled around yesterday, I feeling kinda down because all I'd managed to do was sleep most of the day fighting off a sinus infection that's going around when I had planned to spend most of the day working on my ebook on music theory. So I headed out to the library hoping to isolate myself and get 3 hours in before the library closed at 9pm. Shortly after I got there, I got an invite from "Rob" inviting to treat me to dinner at a local taco truck. So I left to meet him, to discover that "Charles" (a pseudonym for another former Tuesday night regular) was there as well. After dinner, we decided to head over to a McDonald's to hang out and take advantage of the $1 coffee special.

We'd just all gotten there and found a table when "Bart" suddenly showed up. "Bart" is another former Tuesday night regular who hadn't been around for at least a year. We found out that he'd been working out in Beaumont tending horses but had recently come back into town. Bart seemed to think that this was some sort of divine coincidence as he claimed to have been thinking of me the past week. The way the conversation went, maybe it was. I'm not going to go into the details, but I'm curious to see how this turns out.
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I originally posted this last night, and I now see that one thing I neglected to mention is the kind of impact that chance encounter had on my spirits as I went from feeling I wasn't accomplishing anything to a sense that I was accomplishing something on an entirely different level that I hadn't been able to appreciate before. Perhaps I'm reading too much into what happened yesterday.

A Good Day

Today is a particularly good day.

Last night I picked up "Rob" from the Greyhound bus station. I've shared some of his story in past entries in this and other blogs. The short version is that he's met someone and wants to settle down in LA and he wants to participate regularly as a volunteer every week. He also tells me that his girlfriend who will also be moving out here wants to help and that she's a great cook.

I wish everyone could share the same kind of experience knowing that you've made a difference. Some of you could be doing the same kind of thing. It would be great if you'd consider joining us on Tuesday nights, but more than anything, please consider doing *something* to try and make a difference.

One on One

We had a light turnout this week.  Often when this happens, it prompts an internal debate over what constitutes a successful night. It didn't matter so much to me before, but now I imagine that to impress people enough to encourage to support BK financially, I need to be able to document measurable accomplishments, create a buzz, what have you. But that's not me.  Actually, I consider what happened this week to be pretty significant, as I was able to connect in a significant way with a regular for the first time.

"Donald" (not his real name, I will never use anyone's real name unless given explicit permission to do so)  deserves an honorable mention anyway; recently he became aware that I was funding BK entirely out of my (dwindling) resources and he's brought me bags of beans and bags of rice to contribute to the cause (the only person to do so).  He was grateful just to have someone provide meals for him and content to have beans and rice. The first time he did so, I wanted to give him a hug but I had no idea how he'd take it.

Apparently Donald's been on the street all of his life. His mother is also homeless, and Donald usually has no idea of where she is, which is a constant source of concern for him. He's a difficult person to figure out. He often greets people in song "__________, you know you're a personnnnnnn...." in some cases, getting on their nerves resulting in them telling him to shut up. He always says thank you in line, but usually with an affected accent of some sort. In general conversation, he's typically throwing out non sequiteurs and/or double entrendres. But then every once in a while, he'll throw out something extremely lucid that's left me wondering...

Donald is typically identifiable from afar because of his signature green shirt and scooter he pedals around Pasadena.  During the summer months you can see salt stains on the back of his shirt from perspiration. Tonight I asked him if I could give him a couple of my t-shirts and he responded by telling me that he recycles shirts regularly, and he chooses to wear green shirts all the time to support greenpeace and only one person has ever noticed.  The conversation moved to what he'd done to get by financially, and a side of Donald I'd not seen before emerged. Donald's been on the street all his life because of choices made by his mother, yet Donald is driven by the idea of making enough money to be able to put his mother into a stable  environment and a roof over her head. He's not pursued conventional jobs because he's seen other people get fired for no good reason - and he doesn't want to risk getting a job, and then losing it letting down his mother in the process. He's also aware that the types of jobs for which he'd be able to land would not allow him to provide both for himself and his mother, so he hopes to be able to do so exercising his creative gifts in music, dance and art. He acknowledged my observation that becoming an adult did not mean he had to act as a parent, and his priority should be to take care of himself but he's driven by concern for his mother's plight.

I wonder what Donald would be like had he had grown up under different circumstances, and I hope that there's a way for him to still get there. It's beyond my scope, but I'd like to think that if he was able to connect with the right person(s) it'd be a start.

We need more people to come out hear the stories of people like Donald one on one.

Changes

Tonight marked the first homeless feeding for BK in 2017. Circumstances led to getting to the park about 45 minutes earlier than we normally do, and someone who regularly came to dinner in the past happened by.

This person, who I will refer to as M, told me that they stopped coming because of certain individuals who were also coming for dinner. Apparently these certain individuals would encourage M to try various types of drugs, which M has no interest in doing.  M did not stay for dinner. That made me feel sad - especially since we were serving one of M's favorites that night.

After dinner, I mentioned M's comment to the folks who stayed to talk. The consensus was sympathy for that position; and a number of people made the observation how there were new faces showing up among the homeless, and a common characteristic was an overall lack of respect, for want of a better way to put it. One person told of how he invited some newcomers to share a spot he'd found, only to have these newcomers basically desecrate the place by relieving themselves there, among other things.

I'm not sure what to make of this.