"This is not Little House on the Prairie."

 I climbed the ladder to the open loft at the thrift store where next-season's clothes are stored. I wanted to see my workplace from up there--even just ten feet up, it was different, and cool.
Mr Furniture walked by, below, and I called out, "Mr. Furniture! Let's build a tree house up here!"

"San Francisco," he said, "This is not Little House on the Prairie."

God, he cracks me up. He's spot on about a lot. He has blind spots too. He told me, for instance, that the government was implanting tracking devices in Covid vaccines.
I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and said, "They don't have to. We carry them voluntarily."
He laughed and said I had a point.

This and next week, the store is hosting a crew of young men in their first year at the seminary--studying to become Catholic priests. Being at the store is part of their J-term investigation into the reality of poverty. They come in pairs, each for a couple hours.

I was out with a cold so I missed the first couple groups, but two days ago, a wonderful guy named Joe helped me with toys. So helpful! He is from Idaho, and told me a lot of his cohort are from the Midwest states around--not local.

Joe's BA is in History, and he was eager to ask me about George Floyd and the City. I haven't had such an in-depth animated conversation about the whole shebang, maybe ever. (Most of us are in the middle of it, so we don't back up like that.)

I went home that night and thought, these guys aren't really here to help us, they're here to learn. They won't see the whole picture by helping in the back.

Yesterday I went in and asked E.D.  (exec. dir.) if I could take the guys for a walk. "Sure," he said. "Good idea."

I am now the official tour guide for Walk into Poverty Tours.
I start with the bathrooms:
"We closed the bathrooms to the public due to Covid but no one wants to reopen them because we had such problems with people shooting up in there, stealing clothes, leaving body fluids outside the designated receptacles..."

We go outside:
"Here is the bullet hole in our window that's been here for a few months. It's a shame because we just got all new windows after they were smashed in the uprisings after the murder of George Floyd a mile away."

"Those guys standing over there are dealers. I'm not advising it, but you can probably get anything you want from them. They won't bother you if you don't bother them. My coworker Supershopper Louise walks to work down that alley next to them. She says they are always helpful, "Do you need help getting over that curb, ma'am."

I showed them the black pool of ash and melted snow. "I find this so disturbing, but I try to reapproach and see it differently." I bent over and plucked a floating piece of half-burned wood from the pool. "Look," I said, handing it to each of them. "Isn't this beautiful?"

"Let's walk down Louise's alley to where she lives--in apartments on top of the old Sears building. On the ground floor is an indoor mall of global markets. A lot closed due to Covid, but it's coming back."

We talk to the owner of a Mexican grocery. "What would you recommend to these guys as the best Mexican food?" I ask.

"My favorite," he says, "and a lot of people's, is mole!"

They did not know mole, so he explained--a dark sauce made with different kinds of chiles, and chocolate--but not sweet.

"This neighborhood is like a geode," I told the guys. "Rough and dingy on the outside, but you open it up, and there's a shining center. A lot of love, a lot of good energy--people who want to make it better, against the odds."

I told them that the nearby Native housing project suffers one of the highest death rates from opiods in the City.

But there's also Native groups like Dream of Wild Health. DWH reclaims vacant lots to garden with children, planting, among other things, the traditional Three Sisters--corn, squash, and beans. They also teach foraging classes, showing how to identify and use plants that grow all over. (The flat leaf of the common weed plantain (not the banana) is a healer.)

I did two tours yesterday, two guys each, and they all, I think, found it pretty exotic and interesting.
And through them, I saw more clearly how intense it is, where I work, and what I (we) do. And how much I know and have to share, too.
"I like how passionate you are about this," one of the guys said.

I talked to Big Boss afterward, and he said (again) that I have a gift of preaching. This is high praise from him. I was careful not to get too preachy--tried to present the facts in a balanced way (good and bad)--and I acknowledged more than once that this was just my personal view--I am not a manager or anyone official.

I guess I'll do this next week too. I think it's SUPER important for these men who will hold a lot of power to understand better what it's like on the bottom---not just the suffering, but the innovation, the genius-level survival tactics, the humor. 

When I left work I saw this little boat floating in an icy ditch.