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.