To act or not to act

Sometimes acts of charity present themselves and we have to decide if we are meant to be a part of it and how.

Yesterday evening I was driving on Anderson Ave in Milford when my daughter and I noticed a distraught woman pulled over on a corner of a side street. She was trying to wave someone down and she was upset. The way her car was parked looked like maybe she had broken down or hit something. My daughter said, "pull over Mom"! Normally I would have called 911 and said someone by the road needs help. Obviously, no one else was stopping, either. But since we were in a familiar, busy public area, in daylight, in front of houses and yards and passing cars I decided to stop. 

I pulled over several yards up and left my daughter in the car with the keys and her phone (she's a teenager). I approached the woman along the edge of the yards until I was about 25 feet away. She was so relieved someone had pulled over. She kept a respectful distance so I would know she was legit and we shouted to each other. (This is what it has come to! But better safe than sorry.)

It turned out she had written directions (and apparently no GPS or cell phone) and she couldn't figure out what road she was on or the house numbers. I confirmed she was on the right road and spotted a number on a mailbox across the street. She was going in the wrong direction and the street name changes there which was throwing her off. I got her on the right track and she went on her way. She had been crying, probably out of frustration (been there!), and when I left her she was smiling and calm. All in about 2 minutes of my time. 

The best part? When I got back in the car my daughter was so happy I stopped and helped and she felt I had done a really good thing.

You Are Someone

On Thursday evening I had a last minute change of plans that took me into New Haven. I dropped my younger daughter off at her lesson and headed up the block to a coffee shop I like, to wait. It was 8:00 pm and about 90 degrees outside with thunderclouds rolling in but there were a few people at the outdoor tables. I was next in line when a woman came in, a little older than me maybe, looking distraught and angry. She addressed the barista behind the counter:

"You have to call the police! There's a man falling down drunk on the sidewalk!" 

The barista and she exchanged details but the barista did not appear concerned. It turned out the man was not unconscious on the sidewalk but asleep on one of their outdoor coffee tables and she seemed more offended than worried. In downtown New Haven this isn't as common as, say New York, but it happens. She was insistent that he was clearly drunk and needed help and needed to go to the hospital. When the barista kind of drifted off she stayed, so I asked her if the man was on the city sidewalk. She said he was sitting at the outdoor tables. She felt he should be taken to the hospital to be taken care of. I pointed out that there was a police car across the street when I came in, maybe she could ask them to do a well being check. She insisted that the coffee shop should call the police and have dispatch send them over here. Across the street. 50 yards away. Because it is their table so it is their responsibility. She said, "Someone has to do something!"

Maybe it was her angry attitude. Maybe it was my several months of doing charitable acts. Maybe I was just wanting my tea. I said, "You're someone."

She looked at my like she was Bambi and I was tractor trailer headlights. 

She wasn't offended, she wanted to help. But the reality of the situation in front of her was more than she knew how to handle. I took pity on her and said, "Let's go see what the situation is." For all I knew the man was in respiratory distress and we were wasting valuable time.

When I stepped out I saw an older, black gentleman in sweatpants and a flannel shirt with Yale bookstore bags around his feet. He had his head down on the metal table and he was asleep.There were two men at another table and several people walking by.

I recognized the older gentleman; he had been at a bagel place and other places in the neighborhood when I had been here for committee meetings and dinner. I remembered he had walked with a severe limp and there was a cane on the table now. At the bagel place he had spoken to me at length about something I couldn't understand except "God bless!" and handed out flyers on the United Negro College Fund and promotional notepads from a bank. I still have the flyers and notepads in my tote bag; he was so sincere that it felt wrong to just throw them out.

I explained to the woman that I had met him before and that he was senile, or mentally ill, and probably homeless. Maybe drunk, maybe limping. The best thing to do was let him sleep or direct him to a shelter. That the coffee shop probably knew him, as did the cops in the area. She was much less angry and turned to me with a scared look on her face. "I just want to help him but I didn't know what to do."

And that was really what it was about. 

It is no secret that a a large number of homeless on this country are people who are mentally ill and have fallen through the cracks of the health system - by accident or choice. The emergency rooms are overwhelmed already and I didn't think having the city (therefore us) pay for an ambulance to pick this guy up so he could nap or dry out in a bed already needed for someone truly in medical distress and then be sent back out to he street two hours later was the answer. There is no easy answer. As an individual, we can join outreach programs, volunteer in soup kitchens, make Blessing Bags, donate to shelters and churches and programs. But when faced with that one guy asleep on the street, what do you do?

In the end, she seemed calmer and I went inside and got my tea. I decided that when he woke up I would offer to buy him a sandwich. I should have expressed that to the woman, but didn't. When I came back out she had gone to get the police officers across the street. An officer was very calmly speaking to the man and explained he couldn't sleep on the street. He eventually walked the man around the corner - probably to the bagel place. The woman was clearly trying to help the officer during all of this, though it was kind of dramatic. In the middle of it all a young man in a wheelchair came zipping by, called her name and said, "Let's go!" and she walked away. But I guess she had taken my advice, that she was someone. And that's a step in the right direction.

After the situation moved on, the two gentleman sitting at the other table started a conversation with me about it. One of them said, "He probably needed the sleep in a safe place!" and he pointed out that one loss of a paycheck or one mental breakdown or crisis and any one of us could be in that situation. 

I don't count this as a charitable act, but I hope I helped one person realize they don't have to wait for someone else to do something. And I learned that I could do more that think about doing something and then the opportunity may pass me by - I have to speak up or act first. I resolved to pack some more of the Blessing Bags I posted about on Facebook a while back and make sure I had a few in the car. I'll watch for this homeless gentleman when I'm back in the neighborhood, I'll buy him a meal and give him a bag. Because I am someone.

When One Door Closes Hold Another One Open

In February, I attended a performance of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra at Yale's Woolsey Hall (above). Woosley Hall is a beautiful venue with an amazing painted ceiling, an amazing pipe organ, an amazing rotunda. (It also happens to house one of Yale's dining halls, which looks exactly like Hogwarts' dining hall. But I digress.)

It also has several beautiful but heavy entrance doors around the curved facade. In mild weather these are often propped open. But, as you may recall, this past winter in Connecticut wasn't what you would call "mild". I had met friends for a pre-concert dinner and we rushed inside together, entering a warm lobby full or people dressed in layers. We began unwrapping our scarves from around our faces and unbuttoning our heavy winter coats, glad to be indoors.

I turned and faced the entrance doors to watch for another friend. And I saw that, like us, people were rushing into the warmth as fast as they could and as far away from the doors as possible, letting them slam behind them. Then I noticed a tiny, elderly man in a long black coat with snow on his shoulders. He was struggling to hold open one of the thick, heavy wood and metal doors, (seriously, they're like a bank vault). It was obvious he was on the losing end of the struggle. I dashed back to the doorway and held the door open by leaning into it and letting him pass. He declined and I saw that behind him was his posse - they had just disembarked from a bus from an assisted living center and were waiting for this one poor guy, I think they called him "Muscles", to hold the door open for all of them. There was about a half dozen in their group, of an average age of 85, and almost every one had a walker, a cane, or two, or a wheelchair that had been tilted into a wheelie and rolled up the shallow steps. No one in the group was moving fast. But all around them were young people and older people, walking straight and upright and fast into the doors (including the one I was holding), flowing around them like a stream around a rock.

All of this happened in a matter of a minute, of course. But it left an impression on me. I had a short but illustrious career as a companion to an elderly client in a nursing facility when I needed a second job a couple of years ago. The few hours a week I spent in that facility gave me empathy and insight into the life of the elderly that I never had before. I learned how difficult it is maneuver a walker or a wheelchair for a nurse, let alone the patient. I learned that patience is a virtue because few of us move as fast when we are that old, by choice or not. I learned that it was easy to pass over an older person as slow and in the way, forgetting that - if you are lucky - you will be there someday. I have done it, many of you have, too.

So I got out of the way, held the door, and stuck an arm out to stop the flow of the stream. The stream diverted to another door without hesitation. I stood in the wind and swirling snowflakes against the door as "Muscles", leading his wife by the arm, and his posse moved into the rotunda. Another man pushed a woman's wheelchair, others moved walkers over the door sill. They each thanked me as they passed. My response was no problem, happy to do it, but my teeth were chattering so I'm not sure how it came out.

About 30 seconds later we were all inside and I rejoined my friends, three gentleman who said "where did you go?"

Reasons Angry Ostriches Kiss

Right now you are saying - "ok, she's finally lost it with the blog titles!" But stay with me, peeps, there's a point!

When the unthinkable happened in Newtown, CT it affected so many people outside that small town in a small or large way. Like after 9/11, many people had the urge to do something, ANYTHING, to make this all mean something. To make some of the pain, the confusion go away. To balance the evil left in it's wake with a saturation of good back into the world.

When Ann Curry of NBC suggested on air that we do 26 acts of kindnes in their memory, a modern movement was born. But really, it was born again. We have been seeing something along these lines on bumper stickers since c.1983. Possibly inspired by a woman named Anne Herbert who says she scribbled "Perform random kindness and senseless acts of beauty" on a placemat in California around that time and it took off in the public psyche from there. Thirty years later, it has become a touchstone for making society a happier, friendlier, more connected place.

Which is why I was amazed when a writer/musician friend referred to a comment I made on Facebook page asking what RAOK stood for? I thought he was kidding. So did the person who's page I commented on. He claimed that his was not an abbreviating family, at which I LMAO and told him he should tell the truth ASAP, IMHO. He began guessing, starting with - you got it - Reasons Angry Ostriches Kiss.

So, this post is for him and for everyone else who's pulse is not on the "newspeak"* of social media. 

The reason angry ostriches kiss, Anthony, is because someone came along and practiced a Random Act Of Kindness that made them forgive and forget. And that is a good thing. Kindness - maybe planned on my end but random for the recipient - is supposed to have just that effect. A brightening of someone's day. 

As you know, I kicked off my challenge with acts of kindness dedicated to the victims of Sandy Hook School including tags, ribbons, names and a bit of an itinerary. But I am still doing them, because they are good to do. it doesn't require money, fancy packaging, pre-planning. It can...but it doesn't have to. They make me feel good. They make the recipient feel good. They make the people around the recipient who witness it feel good. 

My next post will be about some RAOKs that I have performed since the beginning of my challenge, spontaneous and not. Stay tuned...and please share any RAOKs you have done.


*1984 by George Orwell, who, thanks to the invention of social media, wasn't too far off.

Photo credit: lalosleft shoe on 5/10/12, taken at Denver Zoo http://lalosleftshoe.deviantart.com/

The Procrastinators Club Meeting Has Been Delayed...But I'm Not Going

Procrastination. It is a slippery slope paved with good intentions. And good intentions are, apparently, very slick.

When I started this project, I warned you – regular blogging is a challenge for me. (First defense of a serial procrastinator – blame others!) No, really, it started before there were blogs. Cleaning out my childhood room after I married, I found a whole box of diaries and journals with an entry every day for a week, then every week, then several months, then nothing. For someone who dreamed of being a writer, I didn't do much recording of my life!

A blog is public, though. People expect the next installment. (At least, I hope they do!) When I was in marketing and had to consider bloggers for advertising, my first move was to see how frequently they post and dismissed those who faded away or post randomly. Ah, karma.

I don’t procrastinate in my professional life. I meet deadlines and reach goals as a point of pride. I can use lots of excuses about my personal time – I’m looking for a job, I’m busy with charitable committees, I have two teenagers home for the summer who need me (ok, maybe not need). I have a household to run, community commitments, Facebook posts are easier,blah blah blah.  So, don’t we all? Excuses don’t help me encourage others to join me in charitable works, do they? And that was my goal.

This, for me, is about fear. Not laziness or lack of commitment. It's about an unwillingness to just post SOMETHING, an update, a paragraph, because the gentle readers might think less of me. (No one passes judgment on me better than me.) I missed one week and suddenly I thought I had broken a "perfect" pattern that I had to correct, which led to a second week missed until I could do it "right", and that led to writer's block and a freezing of my typing fingers. The good news is, it’s not too late to catch up! The charitable acts did not fade away, have never stopped and continue to grow. I have plenty of good things and people and groups to write about. 

Marla Cilley, aka the Flylady, is a free online mentor to people who take on too much and overwhelm themselves with their household, their family and social commitments and end up putting things off until it is a bigger deal than it has to be. She encourages her “Flybabies” to have routines, “DO IT NOW!”, jump in where you are and take baby steps. She explains that procrastination can come from a kind of perfectionism – "if I can’t do it exactly right, all at once, perfectly, I will put it off until I can", and that time never comes. I am definitely in this club. But that approach is often unrealistic. Taking a small step, breaking a project into manageable pieces – that avoids the feeling of being overwhelmed. One of her suggestions is making Wednesday “Anti-Procrastination Day” and doing something, anything you have put off. It can be scary or tedious at first, but once it is done it feels SO much better. And here it is, Wednesday.

So here I am, jumping back in with both feet. Taking a baby step. This project is a positive one; I refuse to allow myself to create guilty or negative feelings about it! Yes, it’s my project, my rules, and nothing has stopped the charity activities. I set out to challenge myself in all aspects of this project and sliding down that slope is easier than climbing up the hill. But the summit is a better view.

Please forgive me for my absence on the blog and calendar. I have a plan, a routine and baby steps and you will be seeing much more than just Facebook posts for the rest of the year. There are still 192 days left in my 45^th year and I hope you will continue to join me in making them great days for people who need a helping hand.

Calling All Phones!

If you have been paying attention (or read my banner) at all you know my goal for the year is 45 charitable acts. I was a little worried this was too much. Especially since I am counting several instances as one, in certain cases. To keep myself on track I set a bar of 5 charitable acts per month -  45 divided by 12 is 4.5. In January I accomplished 7 plus some ongoing missions that are not yet complete and counted. Pretty good start!

My last act for January was to collect and donate cell phones to benefit local domestic violence shelters through Shelter Alliance. The Birmingham Group, which runs a program for victims of domestic violence, is headquartered in Ansonia, CT. They offer emergency shelter, transitional housing and many other forms of support. They also have a lovely thrift store in Derby, My Sister's Place, that I have donated to and my mother volunteered for in the past.

I have sent cell phones before, but this time I sent out a call for others. Two friends brought me their retired hardware. I went to the Shelter Alliance website via the Birmingham Group website, printed a free mailing label and packed 'em up.

(Please note, I am an over-thinking doofus. I read the instructions "attach batteries to phone", took them out and attached them to the outside. When I read it again, I realized they meant KEEP IT IN THE PHONE. So, you will not need rubber bands. Just common sense.)

Shelter Alliance will recycle the phones - either refurbish for use or sell for parts and metals - so it doesn't matter how old or out of date they are or even what condition they are in. I suggest you take out the smart cards and destroy them. They also suggest you erase any hard memory stored in the phone. (You can see more information in their FAQ's.) 

Depending on the phone, their fund gives .50 to $30 per phone back to non-profit partners through their Shelter Alliance Emergency Fund, including Birmingham Group.

Soooo..are you hoarding old phones because you know not to throw them away but want to do something with them? This is easy! And will benefit your local shelter wherever you are in North America! Go dig out those phones and let me know if you sent any and how many!

Word Of The Day: Tutor

I have been a little remiss in getting to this next installment, my apologies! I have been busier than expected but wanted to give this post my full attention and some background information.

Early in the year, the New Haven Symphony Orchestra put up a post on their Facebook page asking for substitute tutors for New Haven Reads. Anyone who signed up would receive a voucher for two free tickets to one performance in the NHSO season.* 

The substitutes were necessary because New Haven is a college town, (Yale, University of New Haven), and a large number of their regular tutors had gone home for the winter break. I called and asked a little about it and found it was easy to sign up and easy to do. And being an avid reader myself, I wanted to help pass that on in any small way I could.

A little about New Haven Reads: Founded by Christine Alexander in 1998 as a free book distribution program for local children, it grew into a free tutoring center for grades K-12. Over 400 volunteers tutor over 500 students a week, one hour at a time. There is a very long waiting list of students, too.

Sadly, Mrs. Alexander passed away in 2011 but she has left an incredible legacy of literacy and community service for others to continue. 

The program is run by certified educators and the tutors work within the guidelines set by them, which makes tutoring easy. The lessons are fun and made to motivate, reward and encourage literacy. In the hour the student spends with a tutor, the student has a set number of tasks including some pretty cool learning games on the computer, reading out loud, a workbook, and their own school homework if they choose. At the end of each session they choose a game to play from the game shelf - all familiar to me and sneakily educational like Battleship. Plus each student can take up to five children's books of their choice from the library shelves, not to borrow but to keep. Every week. And they also have books for adults in the community.

This brings me to another of their functions that needs volunteers - the book library. They accept donations of books for all ages and have volunteers sort them, distribute them and shelve them.

I went for my first tutoring session a few minutes early for training. I was nervous that I am not a natural teacher. 

The staff at New Haven Reads understands this.15 minutes of instruction in the few steps needed and our group of new volunteers was good to go! All I had to essentially do was guide the student through the required tasks for the required times, help them with any rough spots,  then make a quick note to summarize how it went. I could do that!

My first student was a second grader, a young man who thought it was really funny when I told him I was new and he'd have to take it easy on me! These kids know the ropes and were showing me where everything was kept and what was what. He started with the workbook, moved to the computer games and did some reading out loud. Then we played Go Fish as his game, and he won 2 out of 3, handily.

I was immediately struck by how serious he took the lessons. If he was unsure of a pronunciation or the meaning of a word, he asked. I found this to be true of all the students I sat with or saw there - they were not afraid to ask questions, and then follow up questions, until they understood context and usage. Words I take for granted may not be in a second grader's everyday vocabulary, such as "thrill". He had to choose an image in his workbook that would represent the word. The images included a roller coaster and he hovered over it with his pencil a moment then asked, "what does 'thrill' mean"? 

(Do you know how hard it is to describe thrill to a second grader in his terms??? I've never had to explain it to anyone before. I gave away the answer and went with the roller coaster explanation.)

Another student, a young girl also in second grade, at first stalled quite a bit. But when she sat down and focused I saw that she wasn't disinterested in the reading, she probably just didn't feel like being at a desk with me when there were friends to hang out with. In fact, she was very sharp. She whipped through several pages of the workbook in a short time. An example paragraph that described trout spawning and dying was outside of her realm of experience. She asked me why it swam the wrong way in the river and why it died there and didn't return to the ocean. She wasn't just learning pronunciation, she was learning about the natural world. It was sparking an interest to find out more. 

My experience was that all the students I encountered in my brief substituting stint were happy to challenge themselves with sounding out new, big words. They were fine with being corrected and repeating it until they got it right. They all took at least one book home with them. 

I attempted to add two more sessions to my original commitment, but life got in the way. I have asked to be added to the substitute roster and when college breaks and other happenings leave New Haven Reads short on tutors, I will be given the opportunity to fill in. I look forward to it.

In the meantime, I am stacking up books for donation to their shelves and checking their wish list against the book store sale racks. They are currently very low on children's books. (Picture books and the Diary Of A Wimpy Kid series are especially in demand!) If you would like to join me in donating books or supplies, see their website for details at http://newhavenreads.org. Or to learn more about tutoring, see their Volunteer page, and contact Keri to sign up (her email is there). She and everyone at New Haven Reads was fantastic to deal with. 

I know I have a lot of teachers, writers, librarians and readers on my blog and Facebook followers list. But you are not required to be a literary type to help. What I brought to the table was being able to patiently guide a student for an hour, and fall back on my natural tendency to be the grammar police my love of reading and words. This was an extremely rewarding experience made all the better by a great staff of organizers.

You will notice my countdown banner went from 43 to 39. (Ah, if only my birthdays went that way...) This month I have also made a donation of household goods to Helping Hands Thrift Store and Furniture Bank and gave time to my daughter's school in their bookstore on two afternoons.

I am updating my events calendar as more and more opportunities come my way!

*Of course, as I have made my rule, I am not keeping these Symphony vouchers. I will be donating them to a school auction fundraiser.