World Central Kitchen and generosity; the flip of ugliness

The pace of a busy commercial kitchen is thrilling. Add to it a shared sense of purpose, compassion, generosity, and smiles, and you’ve got José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen pop-up on Pennsylvania Avenue, here in DC. I arrived just before 8am yesterday morning, donned a WCK hat, and was put to work stripping mint leaves from stems in the rear of the kitchen. Chef Elsa, a volunteer from Lake Tahoe who was overseeing the dip, sauce, and sandwich station where I worked, was all smiles and all business. The requisite black chef pants, a few tattoos, a knit cap. I loved her completely and immediately.

Other volunteers arrived as eager to work as I was, and we quickly slipped into a rhythm. Amanda must have sliced 2,000 fresh rolls, Kay plucked anything brown from fresh lettuce leaves before laying them in orderly fashion on sheet pans, Kristin diced tomatoes and added them to the tzatziki. I delivered the enormous mountain of mint to the guy making aioli with an industrial-sized immersion blender, stirred four vats of the tzatziki with a paddle so large you could have rowed a boat with it, and then moved into sandwich prep. We were in and out of the walk-in. Someone brought around homemade cinnamon rolls.

By 10:45, we heard a line had formed out front. The doors opened at 11, and we were off to the races. At one point, Elsa moved me up to the front line to bag warm steak sandwiches as quickly as the meat guy could get steak from the grill and lay it generously atop the aioli, lettuce, and tomato-prepped rolls we’d just made in the back. Kay squeezed them shut, I took them firmly and gingerly nestled them in the bag.

“Sandwiches, sandwiches! We need more sandwiches!”

We struggled to keep up. Next to me, Hillary scooped steaming quinoa into boxes and drizzled it with meyer lemon sauce before letting the falafel guy add to it.

“Fire soup, fire soup!”

Everyone was smiling, thankful -to give and receive- and so very kind. Many of the volunteers were furloughed workers themselves; Hillary hasn’t been at work or paid since before Christmas. A single mother of three asked if she could have extra food for her children. Of course.

the line out front of WCK; it went around the block.

It was cold outside, and the line snaked around the block (see above photo). One incredible DCer, set to retire next week, brought $640 (what she had in her wallet + what she could withdraw from the ATM) to the line and started handing out $20s. Many people just asked for a hug. She said, ““These are people that I owe a debt to because they’re doing a job on my behalf and they’re not being paid…At the core of it I’m a human being and I live here. I know how hard it is to get back up the economic ladder. We’re pushing people out of their economic social status as we speak. And it’s not going to take a week or two for them to recover.”

WCK served 4,400 meals on Wednesday, 5,568 or something on Thursday, and I later found that we did more than 6,400. I’m sure today was no different. Chef Andrés has just announced that #ChefsForFeds will be expanding across the nation to help feed our citizens until the shutdown is over. If you can donate or want to help, visit https://www.worldcentralkitchen.org/

Yesterday in DC was also the March for Life. During it, in my opinion, we saw some of the ugliest and most exclusivist of humanity. Concurrently, the Indigenous People’s March peacefully protested environmental degradation, genocide, and violence against Native women. My heart was wrecked and my fury was orbital to find teenage boys, led by fellow student Nick Sandmann, from Covington Catholic school in Kentucky mob and ridicule a Native elder (himself a Vietnam vet who  holds a regular ceremony for Native American veterans at Arlington National Cemetery ). The boys, March for Life participants, were wearing red Make America Great Hats, in case you haven’t seen their heinous behavior (video in the attached link), grinning with such ugly, evil, disdain and cheering each other on that I actually feel sick each time I see the footage. Here is Nathan Philips’, the elder, response.

It also emerged today that a recent Covington Catholic grad this past weekend held a woman down, choked and ignored her pleas to stop, and raped her until she bled. He has been charged with one count of rape and two counts of sodomy. This was not his first sexual assault offense.

I struggle to hope for the future if kids like these are part of the youth coming up. They are disgusting bigots, examples of toxic masculinity and entitlement, the worst sort of smug “Christians” who fancy themselves Christ-like but are everything but. Think Brett Kavanaugh! Who must their parents be? Why didn’t the school chaperones, who were at the March too, do something? Should you wish to reach out to Covington Catholic School, its phone number is 859-491-2247. Its address is 1600 Dixie Highway, Park Hills, KY, 41011. The principal’s email is browe@covcath.org, and the superintendent of the district, who was a trip chaperone, is Mike Clines. On Twitter he is @supmikeclines.

I will try to focus on people like Chef Andrés, on the volunteers who came from all over to help, on the woman who handed out $20s and hugs, on all the Facebook friends -some of whom I’ve never even met IRL- who donated to World Central Kitchen since I shared my experience there yesterday. I will hope that there are more fine young people than awful, cruel ones. I will celebrate the good in the world, including all the amazing people who marched today, and hope that we can vanquish trump and his grotesque divisiveness and craven mean-spiritedness before our democracy crumbles. It’s hard to stay hopeful sometimes.

Goodbye 2018: thoughts as we bid it adieu

We returned home yesterday from Christmas with my family in Louisiana, and the trip, an unexpected 12+ hours, was utterly horrific. It involved everything from no available food to multiple missed flights, to gate agents closing the doors in my and the boys’ faces to a “customer service” representative behaving so badly that I ended up sobbing. We finally got home at midnight, and I slept fitfully.

Nonetheless, we are fortunate, and I hold that front and center. We’re home, safe, warm, and so loved. Several days ago, four generations of us played a spirited round of Hearts- Jack, Ol, me, my mom, my dad’s mom who turned 93 that very day. The next day, Mom and I brought flowers to Nanny’s grave. We rearranged the scattered rocks into the hearts shaped by Oliver years ago. Then I hugged my niece and nephew once more. We’re lucky.

As we close out 2018-Tom and I well-fed and Nutmeg purring next to us, the boys with our other nieces at my mother-in-law’s having the best time (they are such great cousins) and a slumber party- there is no way that I’ll make it to midnight. That’s fine.

I know I’ve not been in this space nearly as much this year as in past; I think that’s how things will remain, for a variety of reasons. In the meantime, I  thought I’d leave you with a few of my thoughts before one last episode of Killing Eve.

1. Thank you. From oldest to newest, those I’ve met through and because of Em-i-lis continue to make me feel so lucky. Eli, Amanda, Christine, Elan, Monika, and on and on. I love knowing you. I’m glad you’re out there.

2. Follow your heart and your inner voice. That sounds cheesy, especially this time of year, but what I mean is, trust yourself. If someone isn’t actually a good friend, leave or change the relationship. If you’ve always want to try something, do. If you want to meet someone or get to know them better, reach out. If you think some help might be positive, find it. Therapy is great.

3. Consider the difference between healthy competition and its ugly kin, toxic one-upping. If you’re a parent, please keep in mind what messages you share with your children. Don’t make their worth contingent on diminishing other kids’ value. Don’t snitch, don’t try to out, don’t compare. It’s ugly, it’s sad, it invalidates everything your child might be or is. It makes them see others as competition versus colleagues. It makes you, well, you figure it out. There’s room for all of us. There really is. Be the good. Please.

4. Politically, for those inclined, the fight is ahead of us. After Trump, we will need to heal. It will be hard and it’s going to take a very long time. Stand your ground but remain open. Relativism serves no one. If everything is offensive, nothing is. Some things are wrong. End of story. Others are based on perspective, worthy of discussion. For racism, for example, there is no room. It makes all of us less. For real, fact-based political discourse, there is all the room. It makes all of us better. Please consider your beliefs malleable. Those who act as drying concrete only serve to entrench polarization. Read. Be informed. Be willing to learn. Be willing to change if the facts suggest it worthy to do so. Stand for what is right.

5. Be kind. Be generous. Give. Serve. In any way, in all ways you can. Your family, neighbors, strangers, animals, the earth, those in dire need. I promise you that generosity feels so good. I know that most if not all of you know that. I’m just thinking about how kindness really goes such a long way, and how much so many need some right now.

6. Words matter. They impact and count, so be accurate, think before you speak, respond rather than react when you can. Try to steer clear of nuance’less thinking; little is black or white. 

Goodnight, be well, here’s to a 2019 that is truly better for all of us.

Thoughts and musings and miscellany

I met with a student this morning; seeing her always makes me happy. All of my students do. I love teenagers that aren’t mine. I say that without knowing of course, being that my boys are not yet teens. But if moods are an indicator, and if moods get worse as teen years advance and if all my friends relay accurate information, well, then, I maintain that I love spending time with teenagers that aren’t mine.

In any case, I am so grateful that I took the plunge and started Elucido. Through it I’ve met some really wonderful people, and it feels enormously good and fulfilling to do something beyond parenting. Something that utilizes my education and skills in a broader way; something through which I earn money; something through which I enlarge my community and can give back.

Earlier today, this popped up in my Facebook feed, a memory from three years ago:

Stunning, isn’t it. Thank you, Roger Cohen. (This was in one of his columns in the New York Times.)

I’ve been thinking a lot about community lately- those we are born into, grow up with and in, choose, make, opt out of and away from. Those we participate in directly and indirectly, in real life and online. I feel lucky to be part of many communities. Through them and in them I feel tethered to life and the world. I feel a duty to them. Not in a drafted, forcible sense, but in a compassionate obligatory way. I think that’s what holds society together. It’s stewardship. Connection. Loving thy neighbor, if you will.

I see this sort of intermutual care in so many of my communities. Meal Trains, a call for cards to a recently separated friend, acts of goodness in honor of a child gone too soon, candles lit by agnostics in houses of worship on behalf of believers in need, neighbors driving neighbors to the train, people boosting each other up left and right, from near and far.

We need this love, more of it. We need it for the people we know who are scared or hurting, who are sick or divorcing, burying a child or having one. We need it for elders who live alone, for neighbors who lose beloved pets, for those who are stressed about finances, for those who struggle with mental unhealth and benefit from stigma not at all. We need it for our brothers and sisters of any sexual orientation or religious belief or cultural heritage.

And yet for all of this beauty I do witness, I am equally struck by the appalling intolerance and bigotry and outright celebration of lies that is as pronounced. Where compassion knits people together, ugliness rips the threads that bind. Why do so many still opt for the latter?

I am deeply sorry for all who hurt. But for the life of me I cannot figure out where lying and making lynching jokes (Cindy Hyde-Smith) and cheating to win (Brian Kemp as one of many examples) and extolling Christian virtues while excusing the complete abdication of them in your leaders gets us. I know this sounds naive. But the bar for decency seems to be getting lower and lower. Or maybe it’s a divide between what constitutes decency? What decency is worth?

I read this excellent article this morning and urge you to do the same. “Why Is Being Held Accountable So Terrifying Under Patriarchy?” Is it about accountability? About white male dominance? Is it simply about being right and wanting what you want?

Can we, instead of rightness and winning, seek diligence and discipline? Can we seek to honor truth and effectiveness, discarding falsehoods of all kinds? Can we make the gestures? Can we perhaps look to connection and tolerance, rather than walls and guns, as ways to keep bad things, bad luck as Cohen may have called it, at bay?