"Do Life Together"

Round Presents

I got two delightful handmade birthday presents yesterday:
Julia knitted a cap modeled on the fly agaric mushroom [photo inset], 
and Jenise crocheted me a stuffed penguin (a Japanese amigurumi pattern).

Soon this morning I'm heading out into the filthy weather---sleet on top of rain that froze on top of snow--and a snow storm predicted for later. The public schools have preemptively closed today, but SVDP is open.

I must really love it to head out into this windy cold.
In fact, I do--I'm looking forward to working in thrift on my birthday! It suits me so well--especially coupled with writing for the place.

"Do Life Together"

My next article for them is a full-sized article, not a newsletter blurb, on Mentorship, based on the experience of the manager who came up through the failed city of Harvey, IL, south of Chicago, that he calls hell, where addiction and violence are just normal.

This is the talk he gave about it. 
My heart sank when I saw it was 30 minutes––that's 12 more than a long TED Talk––but I was totally held by his storytelling.

If you watch it, don't worry that the sound is bad for the 1st minute--after that, he picks up the mic, and it's fine.



I interviewed him last week. 
"We mentor with how we live our lives," he said. A key thing for him was seeing his own mentors "do life"--seeing how their private and public lives matched, how they were the same in each arena.

I'm looking forward to trying to weave the way he talks and sees thing into my Economist-inspired writing. 
I told him that do life together was my favorite line from his talk.
Was that a slogan from SVDP or somewhere else? I asked.

"Did I say that?" he said. "I don't even remember, so I guess it's mine, just something I said."