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.
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| 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:
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| Banana Split Cupcakes |
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| Oatmeal Banana Bars |
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| 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? |
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| 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:
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| Hey pretty lady. |
2.) Priya and her grad school friends are good people.
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| Observe the art. |
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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
