Valentine of the week
(This actually happened the Saturday before V-Day, but I'm counting it as part of the holiday week because... uh, because I can and if you're splitting hairs to that extent then somebody didn't get enough chocolate and hugs)
I took a great group of people out to one of the smallest downtown missions/homeless shelters on Saturday morning, and we had a great time throwing together lunches and getting to know the guys in their recovery program. The lunches were truly works of art, since what we had to work with was a bizarre collection of donations they had scraped together for the day, including:
* Krispy Kreme donuts (TONS of these)
* Airline peanut packets
* Halloween candy
* Twizzlers
* Deep fried tofu bits (yes, really)
* BLT sandwiches (premade, from some big company)
* Sushi
* Baked potato chips
* Granola bars
* Individual-sized salads in plastic clamshells
Those plus the PB&J sandwiches we whipped up made for some interesting menu planning. Once we thought we had enough bags of goodies, we packed everything up in crates, grabbed some large pots of hot chocolate and cups, and hit the streets.
The mission we were volunteering at hadn't had a project like this before. They traditionally just served meals in their building and hadn't tried bringing their meals on the road (we were seriously the first group to try this for them). Luckily, the 20+ people in my group had great attitudes and we quickly learned how to find and approach groups of homeless folk without either frightening them or becoming frightened ourselves.
On the third city park we hit, I met a lovely man who would be the highlight of my week. My job during the chaos of our food distribution was initially to wrangle people and dispense hot chocolate, but after a while my drink was taken from me (all those energetic volunteers!) and I switched to taking pictures of everyone and yelling "HEY! You wanna sandwich?!" to anyone who looked remotely hungry.
**I would like to hereby apologize to all the non-homeless Saturday commuters, by the way. I didn't mean to imply that you looked like street people, we just had an awful lot of sandwiches and yelling is fun.**
This lovely fellow saw me and zoomed in like a lazer. He already had his hands full with his lunch, but he followed me as I circled the group, mumbling something I couldn't understand. I brought a friend over to help translate and he said "uh... he's saying "picture" I think". I held up the camera and immediately he posed. Mystery solved, I set out to document this model to be.
Here's an artsy profile shot:
And here is his specialty, the "wait for the moment right before the shutter goes and pull a face".
There were more, but I think you get the point. He was lovely, and I felt bad that we eventually had to say goodbye and move on to another park. Maybe next time I'll bring some props and we'll do a real photo shoot. And I'll make sure to bring a translator, since my understanding of his insistent "picture" plea was just about matched by his understanding of my "There's a nice shelter down the street a couple blocks where you can have a bed and food".
At least I know he got his Krispy Kreme food group requirement for the day. Sometimes you just do what you can.
posted by LadyJay @ 11:06 AM
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