This post is BANANAS. B-A-N-A...You get the idea...

Let's get this week's month's post rolling with some good news: Darrell is in Lincoln Park Community Shelter.

He came back to the EDSSC a few weeks ago to call and see if they had a spot open. I was unfortunately not there to witness the event, as I was at Northwestern Medical Campus for an outreach team meeting, but Abby met with him and got him through.

Lo and behold, they had a spot open and he got it. I was greeted to an awesome email this past Thursday morning from Darrell saying how much he loves his new location and that he's already working with some people at the shelter to "get his life back on track." Lincoln Park asks that their guests do some volunteer work while they're staying at the shelter, and it sounds like Darrell might be coming back to the EDSSC to do his hours here.

All in all, Darrell's in a really good place. Since he's working with case managing professionals now and not some kid in a basement with a degree in Communication (funnily enough, having an intense affinity for AP style doesn't help people find housing...), it's unlikely he'll come back to the EDSSC for case management help. Which means we won't be working together anymore. Turns out that's how some cases are: you do one or two things for a person and they're off to other things. Which is good, but I had expected the work to be more long term. Don't get me wrong, I'm far from disappointed. But for all the stress I expressed over working with Darrell, I thought I would be doing more than making a few phone calls.

No worries, though, I already have 3 new cases to work on, plus I'll occasionally help coworkers with their own clients (I got one of Abby's people on the waiting list for Lincoln Park this week. No big. I just got a free latte out of it.)  So the fun doesn't stop just yet.

Last week, my worksite was actually featured on local news media for our partnership with CITYPAK. You can read more about CITYPAK here, but the basic idea is that we were given a bunch of these high tech backpacks to distribute to 100 of our finest homeless patrons.

See the article right---->here.

The pro of CITYPAK: If you're homeless, it's a great way to keep all your stuff safe and dry. The bag is designed to be an improvement for anyone living on the street and our guests really seem to like them.

The con of CITYPAK: It's a backpack, not a house.

CITYPAK is awesome for a lot of different reasons and will really help a lot of people, but at the same time, I was feeling a little frustrated as we set up our CITYPAK distribution because a kickass backpack really does nothing to solve the bigger problem, which is that the individual using the backpack does not have a house.

But I have to love my worksite, because the wonderful people I work with developed a plan to combat this glaring issue. At the distribution, we had EDSSC staffers signing up anyone who got a backpack for the Chicago Central Referral System.

Read about that here, but for those who are getting tired of clicking links by now, what CRS is in a nutshell is a database within the city of Chicago that seeks to place the most vulnerable of homeless people into housing. The end goal is the get everyone who's in the database into housing, but they start with the people who are most truly in need.

So are you a 65 year old homeless, HIV+ Army veteran who's missing a leg and has been living exclusively on the street for the last ten years? Perfect! CRS will have you placed probably in a matter of days.

CRS has been cruelly funny like that for me. It's the only time I've felt positive about some of the worst situations out there. Sure, everything in your life sucks, but we'll be able to get you into to housing, like, super fast.

I want to call that a silver lining, but let's be honest with ourselves. Most things probably still suck if you're homeless.

But anyway, as we handed out the backpacks, we registered people for the database. It's a start, but one I feel really good about so far.

These were an interesting few weeks for several other, less warm fuzzy reasons as well. For example, we at the Chicago Bernardin  house received a donation of approximately 100 nearly ripe bananas a couple of weeks back.

This is only about half. 

Let me explain a little bit:

My housemate Trish works at the Oak Park Food Pantry out in the suburbs. It's a pretty popular pantry, so they always get large donations and shipments of food to hand out to their guests. The problem is, however, not everything they get can be put out. For example, if they get a batch of zucchini that 2 or 3 days away from going bad, they can't use it because they need to not only have it keep in the pantry, but also have it keep when it goes home with a guest. If they have food they can't give out, they have one of two options:

1.) Chuck it.
2.) "Hey Trish, you live in community, right? I bet you guys could use this zucchini. That way you don't have to buy any at the store!"

You can see where this is going.

So the pantry must have gotten a small forest's worth of bananas two Wednesdays ago, because Trish came home with about two and a half big boxes worth. Bananas in and of themselves are not anything truly worth caring about, but they can be quite distressing in such large quantities. Especially when they are all about to go bad. 

So what do you do with so many bananas?

Well, first thing we did was force a few bags onto our support people, who had the misfortune of being there when the shipment came in.

But after that? The first thought is always banana bread, but here's a fun fact: the average recipe for banana bread only calls for approximately 3 bananas per loaf. Now, I like banana bread as much as the next red blooded American, but trying to convert all those bananas into bread just wasn't feasible. So we had to get creative.

I now present some things I made with bananas:

Banana Split Cupcakes 

Oatmeal Banana Bars

Banana Ice Cream that was really just icy banana mush, but still tasted pretty good when you put some chocolate and peanut butter on top. But then again, what doesn't?

Scary looking green smoothie. Yeah, I drank that stuff. But I got rid of two bananas in the process, so it was all worth it. 

These are only the things I remembered to take photos of. There was also a chocolate-banana pudding made by Anna, which later was turned into a chocolate-banana pie. Gallons of banana smoothies have been blended since. We probably still have upwards of 20 bananas frozen in our freezer for a time when bananas are scarce (I'm pretty sure this will never happen. I think the bananas multiply when we aren't looking. That's the only way I can explain why we still have so many.), and, of course, something like five loaves of banana bread have been made and consumed.

I'm pretty sick of bananas.

As for things I'm not sick of, I recently had my first visitor. The one and only Priya Sirohi stopped by Chicago two weekends ago with two of her friends from grad school. This was awesome for a number of reasons:

Hey pretty lady.

1.) Priya on her own is awesome.

2.) Priya and her grad school friends are good people.

Observe the art. 

3.) They packed a picnic to have in Millennium Park (I brought banana bread, so I wasn't a total mooch).

4.) We went to the Chicago Art Institute. We saw art.


But mostly, I appreciated seeing Priya because she's the first person from St. Louis I've seen in about a month. I admit, I'm a little homesick for that dinky, Missouri city and the friends I have there. Chicago's awesome, but I don't know many people outside the JVC network we have. I have to say it was a nice change of pace to hang out with someone who I don't already live with. Just someone I used to live with.

So shout out to Priya for letting me hang out with her.

Shameless Bean Friendship Selfie. 

Being an organization based in the Jesuit tradition, it only makes sense that the JV's would interact with the Jesuits. Fortunately for us, Chicago is a hub of Jesuit activity. We officially met and hung out with our Jesuit liaison, Jeff, a little while ago. He took us to what could only be described as a kick-ass brunch on Loyola Chicago's campus. Besides the papacy and general bad assery, something the Jesuits are really good at is feeding people. Every meal I've ever eaten with a Jesuit has been nothing short of stellar, and after a few weeks of eating solely oatmeal and cereal on Sunday mornings, this brunch was no exception. My community keeps subtly (not subtly) suggesting that we do Jesuit brunch again sometime, but so far no luck.

The Loyola campus is absolutely beautiful. Like, I wish I had had enough sense to check out schools in Chicago when I was applying for college, because I would have loved to go to school on a campus like Loyola's. That's not to knock SLU. SLU is still better than pretty much everything. But Loyola feels like a close second.

Jesuit Jeff has also offered to set up the girls in my community with some spiritual directors. A spiritual director is someone who directs people spiritually on matters of spirituality and directs them toward things that are...spiritual...

Yeah, I don't really know what spiritual directors do. That didn't stop me from signing up for one though. We have our first meeting this upcoming Monday. I'm about to get some Jesus in my life, y'all.

But in all seriousness, this will be a good thing. Even on this blog, where I so infrequently talk about relevant, important stuff, I've mentioned my struggles with things like church and general God things. My issue, I think, is that I have no idea where to begin with living that Spirituality value of JVC. I think a director might be just what I need to get that ball rolling.

In reality, I'll probably meet with my Jesuit only to learn that I'm beyond saving and that Jesus actually doesn't like me all that much. At least I'll know then, right? Right.

Let's see...other things that are new...

Oh, I cut off all my hair.

All gone!

But that's the end of that story.


See, this is the problem with waiting weeks in between posts: I can never remember stuff I want to talk about. I swear my time in Chicago has been more fun than bananas and haircuts. We've had a few birthdays (Yay Trish, Dan and Sarah!) and a few dinners (Yay FJV Sarah and Julie!) and some general tomfoolery (Wait, what do you mean the Belmont bus stops running at 1:00 am?). I've been reading a lot of good books (Ok, by "books," I mean Game of Thrones. But those suckers are like 900 pages each and holy crap am I hooked) and crocheting in my free time (speaking of "hooked." Get it? Cause crochet hooks? Oh, whatever...) and it's all culminating into the general idea that life is pretty good right now. I feel like I'm doing good things with good people and learning new and awesome stuff.

That felt kind of like a cop out. If I promise to try to update this blog with more frequency, will you promise not to hold it against me?

Awesome, thanks. 

Breaking: There are buildings in Chicago and case management is hard.Bonus pug pic.

Yeah, yeah, it's been awhile. Deal with it. My life is not that exciting (who am I kidding. Yes it is).

Anyway:

You know what the next best thing is to a long weekend? The short work week that follows.

Complete with cheesy, comedic tour guide.

You know what makes a short work week even better?

CHICAGO. ARCHITECTURE. BOAT TOUR.

So right after the EDSSC took off for Labor Day, Fourth Pres. decided to close early that Thursday for a "staff retreat." Otherwise known as "free boat trip to look at buildings on the Chicago River+ Free lunch + Free drinks."

What is simple living? Not this, for sure. But I'm not one to turn down things that are free or boat related, so of course I went. Plus, it was mandatory.

The tour itself was pretty cool. I would never have known any of the stuff they told us otherwise. Sure, I can't rattle off the fun facts now, but I've been spouting off little tidbits of info to my housemates as we've trekked around the Chicago area (again, ladies, super glad not to have been voted out of the house yet.)

So please enjoy this visual representation of my time on the Chicago River:

Crucial. Revolution Chicago IPA. Fo' free. 

Trump Building. 

This is a building of some significance. 

Also a significant building. 

LUNCH. 

This building follows the curve of the river. Trippy. 

I'm sure this building mattered. 

Bridge. Still architecture, so it counts. 

People live in those. 

Statue of someone hailing a cab. No, really. 

Minor journalism nerd freakout.

I'm basically a Sun Times photographer
because I took this with my iPhone.

More buildings, I guess. 

This building is architecturally important.  

Uh oh. Don't worry, I got another. 

Some building. 

I think this one is important because it
was designed by a communist?

NOT the tallest building in the US. (Thanks for the update, Thomas.) 

Navy Pier Ferris Wheel.

The building next to the Willis tower.

Look at dat skyline. 

That was fun, no? I went home and had a nice nap afterwards. Being a full-time volunteer is not without its perks.

This past weekend was not as architecturally focused, but pretty stellar in way of activity nonetheless. Trish's boss, Michelle, decided she was going to take us to lunch in Chinatown on Saturday. While I'm a big fan of cultural diversity and going new places, I can say with the utmost certainty that I would never have gone to Chinatown on my own decision. It's pretty far from where I live right now and I lack the motivation to do cool things sometimes. So thanks to Michelle for dragging my apathetic butt to south Chicago.

My zodiac symbol means I'm sensitive and
emotional. I mean, I also don't identify with
goats, but come on...

I'm beyond glad we went. Sure, Chinatown is a neat area with some weird things to see, but holy crap can we talk about the food for a second? I like Chinese food, but I've never been blown away by it. After this lunch in Chinatown, I'm a little sad that I wasted so much of my digestive energy eating Chinese food that wasn't this Chinese food. This was one of those meals that I'll still talk about years after the fact because I'll probably spend the rest of my life trying to find potstickers that live up to this experience. Or maybe I'll just need to go back to Chinatown. Real talk: I'll probably go back.

This. This is the place. 

The food was so good, I went home and took a nap after. I seem to be celebrating a lot of my good times these days with naps.

The next day, support people Steve and Colleen took us to a festival to raise money for a hospital that caters to people with disabilities. It was a nice wholesome time that was for a good cause, so I'm really glad we got to check it out.

And now for a story that begins with astounding excitement and ends with some crushing disappointment.

Remember Darrell, my case management project (how dehumanizing does that sound? I need to think of something better to call him, like my "let's fix your life" buddy or "fixer-upper friend." Open to suggestions here.)? If not, check out my post from two weeks ago here. Back? Okay cool.

So, Darrell and I had our first official session about a week and a half ago in which we outlined his goals and discussed what our first steps would be. As mentioned before, Darrell is in a shelter. The shelter he's staying in right now is one of the more popular shelters in Chicago because it is really easy to get a space there. The problem is, however, said shelter seems to value quantity over quality because it's not the nicest place out there. I've yet to meet a resident of this place who likes staying there. Abby, who helped conduct the meeting because she is awesome and I have no idea what I'm doing, suggested that one of the very first things we should do was not only get Darrell out of the shelter, but get him into something more long-term and less awful. There this one shelter, Lincoln Park Community Shelter, in Chicago that has been described to me as the "Mecca of homeless shelters." Not only is it more selective, but the quality of their services is infinitely better AND they have case managers on site to help residents find jobs and permanent housing. The rules and regulations that come with the place are pretty strict, but Darrell is a good guy, so I didn't think he'd have any issues with that.

The way you get a spot at Lincoln Park is not unlike how you win tickets from a radio station. Starting at 9 am on Monday, a potential resident can call the center and ask if there are vacancies. Guests of the shelter either get kicked out or move on to something better quite frequently here, so as long as you are the first to request the empty spot, you get in. At the same time, everyone is trying to get into this shelter, so it's a race to the operator.

Abby proposed this plan of attack: Darrell and I would meet at quarter to 9 on Monday. At 5 minutes to 9 am, we would start calling. We knew wouldn't get through right away, but at least we were getting the ball rolling. Then it was a simple matter of hitting redial until someone picked up or we were told there were no open spots. It was a clunky plan with a low success rate; one of my co-workers once redialed 106 times in a morning and still didn't get her guest a in. But it was the best we had going on.

Darrell and I both made it in on Monday and began the redial process. Redial, wait, hangup, redial. Do that about 60 more times, and you have a good grasp on how I started my week.

Redial, wait, hangup, redial. Wait, hangup, redial. Wait, hangup, redial. Wait, hangup, redial. Wait, hangup, redial. Wait, hangup, redial. Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial.Wait, hangup, redial....."Lincoln Park Community Shelter, how can I help you?"

I nearly fell out of my chair. We got through.

"Yes, I'm calling about vacancies?"

"Well, m'am, our waiting list for females is very long. You probably wouldn't be able to get a spot for..."

"Oh, no! No, no, no, no, I'm calling for a man. Our guest. Darrell. I'm calling on behalf of Darrell X who is looking for a vacancy."

That changed everything.

"Okay then. Tell Darrell to be here tomorrow at 10 am and we'll see what we can do."

I almost cried. We got Darrell a spot. On the first round of calls. I asked him for a high five and spent the rest of the day in the warm after glow of a case management success. I told everyone who would listen about my awesome luck. I was marginally not awful at the case management things.

But you know what they say about that asshole Murphy and his stupid law. This was way too good to be true.

We got an email from Darrell the next day that was frought with confusion and disappointment. He had been at the shelter at the appointed time, brought all the appropriate documentation with him and waited patiently for his admittance.

And the shelter wait listed him. Turns out our information was bad: getting though on the phone the first time didnt get you a spot in the shelter, it got you a spot on the waiting list to get into the shelter. This place is so popular, you basically put yourself in a lottery just for the chance to wait to get in. No promises about getting a bed, just that the shelter might consider you. Might.

I was more than a little crushed when I found out. Abby assured me that this was still a victory, as we're closer to getting Darrell a better place to stay when we were when we started, but I can't tell Darrell that. Not when he has to go back to the crappy shelter. Not after we assured him we had gotten him in to Lincoln Park.

But we'll keep trying. This isn't a failure, really, but it doesn't suck any less. Cross your fingers that we get him in there soon.

That's too sad of a note to end this post on, but I'm out of things to talk about. So here's a low-rez picture of a pug sitting on a bar stool. Yes, we found a bar with a pug who sits at the bar.

He thinks he's people. Silly pug.

And just like that, everything is wonderful again. 

You want me to do what now?

I've mentioned this briefly, but it's worth bringing up again for the sake of the story I'm about to tell: the EDSSC is working to expand it's case management load. Though our primary function is to provide emergency services and the like, the supervisors have a very forward thinking approach to long term planning in that they know that this band-aid we offer is helpful, but will not enact real, sustainable change in the lives of the people who visit the center. I can pretend that the box of cereal I give Joe Drop-in will suddenly inspire him to compose a resume and apply for housing, but I can also attest that I find cereal uninspiring, so I can't expect Joe to be suddenly inspired either. What is truly needed is dedicated individuals who are willing to work with Joe to find out what he wants for his future and not only provide him with the resources to build that future, but also be with him every step of the way to make sure he stays on track and is finding success. 

We call those people case managers. More commonly found in havens of social work and other places that aren't located in the frigid basement of a Presbyterian church (I spent most of this week wearing two sweaters and long sleeves while sitting at my desk. Oi vey.), case managers are nothing short of miracle workers. When I think about the work they do, I'm reminded of a joke one, David Gaillardetz (who is currently doing cool social justice things in Ecuador. Here's his blog if you want to check it out.) told me in freshman year of college:

"How many social workers does it take to change a light bulb?"

"One, but the light bulb has to want to change."

See, in case management, the concern is not so much that there isn't anyone who wants to work with people who may be struggling, but that the struggling people want to put in the work it takes to turn their lives around. It's not as if they're lazy or indifferent, but that getting back on your feet is hard. Really hard. You can have all the motivation to in the world, but anyone will get discouraged after trying and failing time after time. 

No one plans to be homeless or in poverty. No one went to kindergarten and said "I want to live on the streets and rely on some rando church on Michigan Ave. to feed me when I grow up." No, everyone said they wanted to be a fireman or a movie star, or in some very rare and weird cases, a dolphin trainer at Sea World (that was me. I was that weird kid.)

My co-worker Abby, who has her Masters in Social Work and has been interning/working in the field for a few years now, has been been explaining the ins and outs of case management to me over the last two weeks. She's had some remarkable success with one guest, whom she just found an apartment and has been helping him to furnish it. I've been so impressed with her, but I've silently been glad that I wasn't in her place. Not because I don't want to help people. Come on, I'm in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. I did something very wrong with my life if I ended up here and didn't want to help people. No, I was glad I wasn't doing case management because I didn't want to fail at improving someone else's life. 

I'm a 22 year old kid with no paying job, living in a house I didn't have to find on my own. My rent is paid for. I don't have to worry about grocery money. I have a disposable income I don't have to work for, despite it being pretty meager. What the hell do I know about building a life? I haven't really had to do it for myself yet, so how can I possibly do it for someone else?

Then on Monday, the receptionist at Fourth Pres. called down to let me know that Darryl X (name change for confidentiality purposes) was coming down to see Abby. I dutifully told Abby she had a visitor and she goes, "Oh no, he's here for you."

What. 

My blank stare obviously demanded more explanation. 

"I met him this weekend. He's nice, so I thought he'd be a good first case management appointment for you."

WHAT.

I must have looked like the most pathetic sort of intern ever, because Abby very nicely said, "Go get his contact information and talk to him."

Words. That's right. I was capable of using words. I grabbed a clip board and some paper and made my way to meet Darryl. 

"HI. I'M KRISTEN. I'LL BE HELPING YOU WITH WHAT YOU NEED TODAY. WHAT DO YOU NEED TODAY."

I probably wasn't shouting, but I'm sure I was doing something wrong. Darryl didn't seem to notice anyway. He very nicely told me Abby had spoken with him about finding a job in the field he was studying. Also a place to live. 

"GREAT. HERE'S MY EMAIL. SEND ME YOUR RESUME AND WE'LL SET UP A TIME TO MEET NEXT WEEK. WHEN ARE YOU FREE. I'M HERE ALL THE TIME."

When I got back to the office, I accosted Abby immediately.

"TEACH ME CASE MANAGEMENT SKILLS."

She promised we would review later. Okay, that was good. She'd tell me what to do, I'd find Darryl an apartment and a job and then maybe solve world hunger and the crisis in Syria after lunch. 

I don't think the EDSSC realized the mistake they made. They just gave me a life to fix. I have no authority to tell anyone to do anything with their life. You want to ride your bike down the highway with no helmet? You probably have a better understanding of your situation that I ever will, so go ahead. I don't have a good reason to stop you. You want to go on an all frosting and Cheetos diet? Sure, maybe that works for you. What do I know about anything anyway?

I know nothing. Think Jon Snow and subtract everything he could possibly know about and you have me. 

We had a staff meeting the next day dedicated almost exclusively to Case Management 101, which happened at an excellent time, seeing as I have zero experience in the area. Dan asked the group what some of our concerns were about case management. 

"I'M ABOUT TO RUIN SOME POOR GUYS LIFE."

I didn't say that, but it's the same idea. 

Again, I must have looked terrified, because we took up too much time in the rest of the meeting trying to reassure me. They gave me some of the best advice they could have: don't see it as fixing someone's life. See it as a research project. 

See, I can do research projects. I've done enough of those in school that by the time we had finals in senior year, I could bang out a fifteen page research project in a day (this is less of a skill and more of a testament to how bad I let my senioritis get). Suddenly, the entire prospect of taking on a case didn't seem so daunting. All I had to do was put in the hours to find places that would benefit my client. Once I found all the sources, I just had to piece them together to create something new and readable...er, manageable.

So now I'm slightly less terrified, but I don't really see this as any less of a big deal. This isn't working in a soup kitchen to fill high school community service hours any more. This is the big leagues. 

Whatever it is, it's going to be interesting.

That was the most excitement I had all week at work, however. It's pretty good that things are mellowing out. It means I'm finally getting used to my job and the city. 

Short post this week then. For those who will inevitably wonder, as everyone else I've encounter today has, my weekend was good. Relaxing. Shout out to Tolton for the kickin' backyard barbecue/beach trip and to the city of Chicago for hosting a free jazz concert that's so cool, even Lupe Fiasco showed up (and did some Jazz-Rapping). And to my community, for not yet kicking me out as I continue to talk in circles about my increasing panic that we might be sending troops to Syria. And for putting up with me in general. Super appreciated. 

As always, thanks for reading.   

Tales of Protesting, Cooking and a Discontinued Childhood (now with pictures!)

Starting a blog post is the worst. A nifty trick I learned while working at The University News (shameless plug because I can’t let go. I totally followed all the news stories about Biondi’s planned Sept. 1 departure. Judge me.) was that sometimes, the best way to start writing a story was to begin in the middle and then develop a beginning and an end later on. I rarely if ever wrote my lede (Google it. I’m done being the journalism nerd.*) first. It was usually the last thing I would write because I would need to tell the entire story first to really grasp what was the most important nugget of information and to think of a creative way to present it.

I do that with blogging too. Except I don’t have a tidy structure to follow, so I just begin wherever and see where that takes me. I could try to write a lede, but I know that’s likely a lost cause. Obviously everything in my life is extremely important, so it would be impossible to pick what to present as the MOST important. Ah, the struggles of being painfully interesting.

Let’s see…we left off with me expressing my enjoyment of this new city.

I still really, really like Chicago. But as the days grow shorter and August fades into September, there is something looming over this city. Every Chicagoian knows it. Some may even still fear it. We are haunted by a phrase ever present in the back of our minds, echoing as we enjoy our discoveries in this new place:

Winter is coming.

Yes, Chicago is basically a bigger Winterfell (Yeah, that’s a Game of Thrones reference. I won’t even bother to pretend I’m not a nerd about this one) and every Chicagoian is a Stark. I can’t even express my love of the city to anyone who lives here because I know they’ll just tell me I’ll hate it come winter. The sad reality is that they are probably right. I can’t stand being cold. This fact tends to surprise people because I’m from the northern state of New York. We not only have some pretty gnarly winters there, but it sometimes snow so much school gets canceled for a week.

So let me clarify: I am capable of existing cold weather. Doesn’t mean I like it.

The impending Chicago winter gives an almost sinister sheen to Lake Michigan. When I drive past it on my express bus going home, it’s scenic beauty almost seems to be whispering, “I’m going to make you so miserable in a few months. Get ready to hate everyone and everything.”

Lake Michigan is actually pretty scary, you guys.

Terrifying. 

Luckily, my commute is generally confined to temperature-controlled buses, so when winter finally does descend on the city, I'll only need to be out in it for like, ten minutes on a bad day.

I just wrapped up my first full week at the Elam Davies Social Service Center, which shall now forever be referred to as EDSSC because not only is abbreviating after the first reference proper AP style, but it'll save me like, two seconds of typing time. Looking back now, I'm not sure anything really exciting happened. Besides the saving the world and eradicating poverty bit. That’s always exciting.

The only day of work that really stands out to me this week is Friday, when the gravity of what I’m doing finally hit me in one of the worst ways possible: I had to turn a guest at the center down for services. EDSSC offers emergency food and clothes to guests, but you can only get these services so many times a month. If a guest has gotten a full set of clothing in one month, for example, they are not eligible for clothing until the next month. Food is a little more lax, as we have a bagged lunch program three days a week that we often offer to guests as an emergency food option, but even still, if a guest gets a bag of food from our pantry on Monday, they cannot get another one come Friday.

Emergency food and emergency clothes are supposed to be saved for emergency cases. More often, we encourage guests to make appointments for the food pantry or clothing closet. I like this model better because it puts the majority of the responsibility on the guests: they must make and keep the appointment, and in return they get to pick out their own items with a greater variety of choice. Emergency food and clothes are more of a Band-aid for the bigger issues, where as appointments can potentially sustain a guest for a much longer amount of time.

One guest has been to the center nearly every day since I started a week and a half ago. He received food and clothes and made appointments for both the pantry and the closet. Then there was a mix up (likely my fault because I was still learning the system, but no one pointed fingers at the new girl, thankfully) and he received additional clothing the next week when he shouldn’t have. We decided it wasn’t a big deal and that we would just have to explain the rules more carefully to him the next time he came in.

Well, the next time he came in, I was the lucky sucker who had to explain to him that no, we can’t get him food and clothes right now because he got both already and yes, he would have to wait until his assigned appointments. I was wrong in thinking this would go over smoothly. I didn’t expect him to beg me to bend the rules and certainly didn’t expect such desperation from someone we had already assisted so much already. Our guest was visibly upset. I can handle being a stickler. I can’t handle not being able to help someone in need when it would be so easy to walk back and pack him a bag of food.

I did what I was supposed to do, which was give him some resources for other places that could help him and reminded him of his upcoming appointments. That didn’t make him any happier. Instead, he sat sort of moping in our lobby until security swept by and asked him to leave.

The worst part was that I had to walk past him multiple times to get other guests emergency food and clothes. That situation is just crappy for everyone.

I get why the rules are there: we don’t want people to become dependent on us. We want just the opposite, which is why we are currently working on expanding our case managements and housing projects. But it doesn’t make it suck any less when you can’t help someone who needs help. It’s not like you can even rationalize a way in which this guest doesn’t need help. He’s homeless.

I felt really overwhelmed by the situation and I can’t figure out why. I didn’t necessarily do anything wrong, but no one left the interaction going “I got something good out of this and can now continue my Friday in a pleasant manner.”

That sort of set the tone for the rest of my day, unfortunately. I missed getting to go on outreach this week because I was registering a guest who refused to give me any accurate information. No sir, I don’t believe you own the Drake Hotel and I don’t believe Chanel clothing store referred you to us. I can’t help people if they aren’t being honest, so once again, no one got anything good from the interaction.

I’d been looking forward to going out with Good Neighbors again all week, too.

I was so bummed, I went out and spent some of my stipend on a box of 70 green tea bags to keep in my desk. I rationalized the purchase in four ways: 1) Buying things is proven to make you happier. This is the result of a consumer society that thrives on and encourages the over-consumption of goods. While this is not the best society we could possibly be living in, all the social cues to go out and purchase things are alive and well. I am not a consumer drone, just a product of my unfortunate environment (humor me). 2) My office is really cold all the time. I wear long sleeve shirts and jeans to prevent hypothermia, despite it being 90+ degrees just outside my very tiny basement window. Having easy access to tea would be a good way to keep my blood from freezing. 3) Green tea is, like, super good for you. Everyone one says so. And 4) I just like green tea, okay?

So now I have 70 tea bags in my desk. Maybe I’ll add a counter to the blog so y’all can keep track of how much tea I drink at work. Wouldn’t that be exciting? (Again, humor me. I’m out of ideas as to how to make this blog fun.)

The protesters congregating in front of the Bean. 

On Wednesday, I decided to check out a protest at the Bean that I found out about on Facebook. It was a mixed group of Veterans for Peace and members of the LGBT Liberation group in Chicago who came out to protest the way the Obama administration handled the trial and sentencing of Chelsea (then still being referred to as Bradley) Manning. I'm not sure where I fall on the matter, as I didn't follow it as closely as I should have when it was still making headlines, but I'm always intrigued by issues of speech. I feel like that's what the recent discussions of how to deal with whistle blowers comes down to. Sure, whether or not they are harming their country and putting lives at risk is also a factor, but part of what makes our country so unique is how liberal we are with our protection of speech. Some out there might disagree with the use of the word "liberal" here, but in comparison to other countries, we're pretty easy going. But dealing with confidential information, like in the Manning case, tends to muddy the waters a bit. It's not as if the information she released was false, nor did it cause as much harm as administrators were saying it did. Did the public have a right to know about that video, or was this a gross violation of an agreement to keep this information confidential. And this situation also will bring more question about how to deal with Snowden. Shouldn't the public have a right to know that their government has this kind of access to their information? But at the same time, how much harm does widespread knowledge of such a system cause?

I'm just thinking out loud here, because it's my blog and I can do that. I have nothing of any real substance to say on the matter. So sue me. 

Shameless Bean selfie. How could I not?

But anyway, I wanted to check out the protest to see what this side of the aisle has to say on the Manning matter. It wasn't a very well attended demonstration, but I got some literature and checked out the Bean area a bit. I've still got a soft spot for people who try to create change by standing in one place and yelling into a megaphone. 

As far as other things I do in my free time these days, I’ve really taken to heart a simple living-tip they gave us at orientation: Don’t actually buy stuff, just visit the stuff. Sounds weird, but its basically just window-shopping with zero ability to buy anything. When you visit stuff, you just check it out and then leave. Kind of like visiting relatives. I realized recently that I’ve been visiting stuff even before I was a JV. I would always browse stores to kill time or to pretend I could afford things. It’s not as lame as it sounds (yes it is). But anyway, my work location is a prime stuff-visiting spot. Last week, I went Crate and Barrel and visited a laundry hamper that cost more than my entire August stipend. This week, I went to Trader Joe’s and visited the liquor. It was all oddly satisfying.

So when it rained on Thursday this week, I decided that was the day I would visit the stuff in the Water Tower Place Mall. It kept me out of the rain and allowed me to get my pseudo-shopping fix.

I don’t know how many of my readers are familiar with this mall, but it is where the American Girl Doll store is located. American Girl is a cherished brand of my childhood. All the cool kids had an American Girl doll. They came with so many accessories, there was no way you could ever get bored with them like you would with Barbie (there’s only so many times you can play hair dresser…). To top it off, they all had such interesting back-stories. There was Josephina, a Pueblo Indian girl trying to navigate her desert landscape and changing culture. There was Addy, a slave girl who escaped north to freedom, but only ever wanted to be reunited with her father and brother, who were sold to a different owner. There was Felicity who…did something. I was never really sure what made Felicity interesting, besides being a colonial kid.

Naturally, I had the coolest doll of all: Kirsten Larson. 

LOOPS.

Not only was her name very similar to mine, but she also had a super unique story. She was a Swedish immigrant who, after losing her best friend to cholera, moved to the icy tundra that is Wisconsin. There, she did things like be a pioneer and meet Native Americans and fight off bears. Plus, she had the best hairstyle: two pigtail braids in LOOPS. LOOPS dude.

I decided on this rainy Thursday to go visit Kirsten and see what sort of new fun things the company had put her up to. As I strolled down the aisles, I felt an impressive wave of nostalgia as I passed Molly and Kit and Josephina and all the new dolls they’ve come out with and…

Hold the phone. Where was Kirsten?

A feeling akin to losing my bus pass swept over me, despite not having actually lost anything. But I did what I always do when I think I’ve lost something: I check everywhere three or four more times because usually, I just overlooked it and it’s been there the entire time and NO, AMERICAN GIRL DID NOT DISCONTINUE KIRSTEN.

I circled the store so many times I think I was worrying the nice looking sales clerk. No Kirsten. Still in denial, I booked it back to work ten minutes early to consult Google. Surely I was just going blind and they didn’t actually stop selling Kirsten, right?

Wrong. They pulled Kirsten from the shelves back in 2009. I was more than a little devastated. American Girl discontinued a part of my childhood. What was so wrong with Kirsten? Is the blonde-haired, blue-eyed doll suddenly perceived as threatening to young girls? Was her status as an immigrant too controversial for the times we live in now? Does the universe actually just hate me? Who knows, but all these questions won’t bring Kirsten back.

I spent the rest of the afternoon being unreasonably bitter. Sure, the kept Josephina, easily the least amusing of the group. She’s got all sorts of new and exciting stuff going on, while Kirsten is collecting dust in some warehouse somewhere. And what the hell is with all these new dolls? Why do we need a doll that looks like a hippy whose only interesting tidbit is that she’s from the ‘70s? I bet she does something stupid like meet Richard Nixon or something. Yeah, whatever. Kirsten fought a bear.

I lamented the situation to my housemates on our walk to the Salvation Army to buy mugs. I’m sure it didn’t help me as I continue to try to prove that I am not a crazy person and that I’ll be easy to live with for the next year.

Speaking of the house, we have a new cooking rotation that started this week. My designated day is Monday.

So, it’s finally happened. I had to cook for my housemates. I was first in the line up of our new and improved “Anna from Virginia Should Not Have to Cook Every Meal in this House, Even if She Enjoys Doing It and Everything She Makes Tastes Like It was Prepared by Angels in Tiny Chef’s Hats” weekly-cooking schedule. Monday’s are slow days at the office, so I knew I would be able to leave on time and make it home to prepare a dinner for five. Problem is, I have zero creativity when it comes to cooking. The food I prepared for myself in college consisted almost solely of eggs, oatmeal and whatever I could throw in a pot that would make enough food to feed me for a week. I don’t have a refined palette in any sense of the phrase. When I drink wine, I don’t pick up on fruit flavors or subtle hints of wood. The best I can do is correctly identify that I am, in fact, drinking wine. Wine that was probably made from grapes. I’m the same way with cooking; I just don’t get fancy.

I won’t lie, having to cook for an audience created some anxiety. My jokes about accidently giving everyone food poisoning were mostly fear-induced premonitions. I would be the girl they told stories about at JVC orientation. The Chicago JV who was so bad at living in community, she killed off her housemates the first time she tried to cook for them. I was going to be one of those lost cause JVs who would go down in history as what exactly a JV shouldn’t be.

All because I can’t cook.

The Sunday night before, I gathered up all the cook books in the house to try and find some ideas of what to make. What do normal people make when they cook for people? I didn’t want to make pasta, but I didn’t want to completely try and fail at something fancy. The cookbooks weren’t helping at all. There some weird stuff in those books that are clearly just there to be filler.

I wracked my brain for things my mom used to make that always went over well. She did make a mean corn bread for a woman who lived her entire life in the north. I texted the twin to see if she could remember the recipe, which she fortunately did.

Alright, so we were going to be having corn bread. Problem is, corn bread isn’t a meal. Corn bread is at best a side dish. What do people eat with corn bread?

The obvious answer is barbecue  Or it should be, but I’ve been a vegetarian for like nine years now, so meat is never my first resort. I wouldn’t know how to cook meat even if I wanted to anyway.

Then I got it into my head that corn bread and chili were a good match. I did have a pretty good recipe for veggie chili that I’ve used before, but that was also when I was still cooking for myself and didn’t care if what I was eating tasted edible. But it was the best idea I had all night, so I settled.

I booked it home from work that Monday so I could have enough time to get everything ready. 

Naturally, I way underestimated how much time it would take to get everything ready. Six o’clock rolled around and all I had to show for my dinner efforts were kitchen counters littered with knives and spoons and bowls, but nothing anyone would call “food” yet. I didn’t have enough regular chili powder for the recipe, but I found a bottle of “Mexican” chili powder, so I settled for that. I don’t believe it was actually any different than the regular chili powder, but I was still really concerned that this different spice would ruin everything. Plus, it was hot as a sauna in hell in that kitchen. Our house doesn’t exactly have air conditioning and I had the oven and the stove going at once. I was sweating and stressing out. I was like a sitcom episode where the show’s token bachelor tires to cook for himself. I wistfully thought back to a time when I could have just ordered a pizza and called it a day.

Thankfully, everything somehow came together around 7:15. Even better: people seemed to like it. The best part? No one died.

Tune in next week for a new episode in Kristen’s Cooking Dramatics: Adventures in Eggplant Parmesan. Pray for me.

The only other exciting thing that happened this week was that my community finally met our support people. Community support people are generally former JV’s who’s job it is to hang out with us and make sure we all don’t starve to death. Last week, our support people were on vacation in Cape Cod, so we didn’t get to meet them until this Thursday.

Turns out, they’re this adorable newly wed couple who go by the names Colleen and Steve. They had us over for dinner and then took us to get ice cream. It was awesome, mostly because we didn’t have to do any of the cooking. Props to Colleen and Steve. I’m genuinely looking forward to getting to know them better.

Wow, this was a long post. Do y’all remember when I was like “blogging is hard because I don’t know what to talk about?” It’s a great talent I have that I can make a short story super freaking long. Can you imagine how long this post would be if I didn’t actually have things to write about? I feel like I could probably write a novel out of nothing.

But that kind of wraps things up.

Thanks for reading. You rock.

PS: I want to get a library card. To do that, I need mail. If you feel like being generous and sending me a letter, shoot me an email at kmianogm@gmail.com and I’ll give you my mailing address. Thanks in advance.

PPS: I know the font style randomly changes in my posts. I don't know why and nothing I do to fix it works. I apologize for the inconvenience. 


*Lede- the most important line of a news story. Tells you the who, what, when, where, why, and occasionally, how. Not necessarily the first line you write, but burying the lede is often frowned upon in conservative news writing, as the idea is usually to get all the information upfront and to the reader as quickly as possible. And with that, I reassert my journalism nerdiness.