At Barcamp Philly this last weekend, I noticed the sign you see above in the restrooms of the University of the Arts, where the conference was being held. I appreciated the reminder, however they would have been far more effective, had the soap dispensers beneath them contained any soap at all.

In other news, I did an interview with a reporter at KYW on Friday about buying local for Thanksgiving, canning and some of my favorite holiday recipes. This morning, I started getting emails, messages and Facebook notes from friends and family, saying that they’d heard me on the radio. I have no idea how much of the interview has been airing, but all 24 minutes of it is available online (I imagine that my parents are the only ones who will want to listen to this straight through, but who knows). Links to the recipes I mention are here.

We kissed and parted, Scott heading north to the Comcast building, while I crossed 19th Street and continued down Ludlow. As I was stepping onto the curb on the other side of the street, I noticed that my path was going to intersect that of an older man. I slowed to let him pass, and as I did, he said, “I saw all that love. It’s a good thing.”

He said this while walking, a big, happy smile on his face. By the time I could rattle my brain into speech mode, he was gone. I walked to work, grinning myself, marveling at how a stranger’s comment could turn our mundane, routine little kiss into something joyful and special.

There’s a little Jewish charity shop across the street from my parking garage called the Ort Resale Shop. It’s been there for years and continues to remain, even though the rest of the block has started to improve slightly. It’s run by volunteers and raises money for Ort’s educational programs. They have fairly short hours, open from 10 am until 5 pm on weekdays, so in the past when I’ve worked, it’s been hard to take stuff to them. However, now that I’m working a block and a half from home, I can easily take a load or two to Ort. And so I’ve taken bag after bag of clothes, kitchen supplies, books, CDs and other random stuff over there in the last three weeks.

We managed to come up with another eight bags of stuff neither of us wanted over the weekend and by Monday morning I was itching to get it out of the apartment. When lunchtime came, I ran home and loaded up my black metal shopping cart and wheeled over. They’ve started to recognize me from my repeated visits and so when I maneuvered inside the store, the man and woman who were working greeted me like I was an old friend.

As I unloaded, the woman asked me, “Honey, why are you getting rid of so much stuff? Are you moving?”

I explained that my boyfriend and I were moving in together and that in order to make it all fit, a few things had to go.

She nodded understandingly and said, “I understand, try before you buy. My generation, we didn’t do that and we all got divorced.”

She repeated, “try before you buy” a couple of times and then the man said, “Aren’t those the greatest?” He was pointing at my shopping cart.

“They are really very handy, especially when you live in Center City,” I agreed.

“Mine broke recently. I was coming home from the Acme and the wheels just feel right off. I had to hail a cab in order to get my groceries home.” He said this and looked utterly dejected, as if he was reliving the experience of having his weekly shopping stuck on the curb with no way to make it budge.

My cart was empty by this point in the conversation. It just happens that I currently have two identical shopping carts, as a friend recently gave me one that she no longer needed.

“Why don’t you take this one? I have another.”

His eyes widened and he said, “Are you serious?”

“Absolutely.”

The woman, who had been watching this scene play out, turned to him and said, “You see Harry, good things do happen. After all the shit you go through, occasionally good things do happen.”

Then she looked at me and said, “Dear, you just made his day.”

Harry looked like he was ready to cry as I handed the shopping cart over to him.

I said, “It’s a little squeaky, I’ve been meaning to give it a squirt of WD-40 for about three years now, but I’ve never managed to get around to it.”

He waved my comment away and said, “I’ll take care of it. Thank you so much.”

He tried to give me something from the store in return, offering to let me take a CD or two for being so generous (I declined the offer, mostly because I was fairly certain that I had donated the entirety of their CD collection). As I left the store, I could hear her continuing to say, “See Harry, good things do happen.”

One blog I stumbled across way back then was Beth.  I was pulled in by her writing and the way in which she shared of her life.  I soon started leaving comments on some of her posts and we became online friends, after a fashion.  Her blogging community had several other members that intrigued me and soon I was following Craige (her site seems to be down) and Jen.

These days we all follow each other, and I’ve joined them on a fantastic online discussion group (with a bunch of other folks) where everyone offers up tidbits about their lives, their unique interior quirks and other queries and quandries.  And tonight, I met all three of them.

You see, I’m in New York for the next couple of days for the AWP conference, and when I knew I was coming to town, I asked them if they wanted to get together.  We met up in the West Village and after our first restaurant appeared too busy, we found a place that would offer a table, food and two bottles of wine.   It was so much fun to meet them, especially since in many so ways I felt like I already knew them.  We talked for more than four hours, about life, relationships, blogging, community and the many challenges that life can throw at you.  I knew before heading out to meet them tonight that I’d enjoy their company, but I wasn’t prepared for the amount of fun I’d have or the connection I’d feel.

Internet, once again, you have done right by me.

He said to me, “Excuse me sister, but I was wondering if you could help me.”

Before his sentence was totally finished and before I listened to what he needed help with, I said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.”  Now, normally I listen to people.  I let them talk to me before I make eye contact and try to honestly and sincerely turn them down.  For whatever reason today, I didn’t feel like going through the charade and so I said no without any preamble and without listening to his request.

And he got incensed.  He started ranting.  How did I know what he was going to ask me for, that he was just going to ask me for directions, not money, about how I just assumed something about him because he was black.

There were a bunch of people standing around watching as this man screamed at me, while I stood there against a column.  At one point I tried to clarify that I wasn’t turning him down and that it was more that I just didn’t want to be drawn into conversation, but he cut me off and said, “No, no, I don’t want to talk to you now.  I’ll ask somebody else.”

Chances are that he was going to ask me for money and this was his indignant act to trot out when someone didn’t let him work through his pitch.  It certainly felt like a solicitation for money.  And there was something imbalanced about him that he would scream at a stranger in a train station when she said she couldn’t help him.  But even knowing all that, it made me feel like a shitty, terrible, racist, elitist person for the next hour or so, until I was able to shake it off.

Yesterday I was walking home from a particularly peaceful meditation practice when a man sitting on the sidewalk made eye contact with me.  He looked sort of dirty and was shaking a paper cup at passersby.  When he caught me gaze, he raised his cup towards me hopefully.  I smiled first and then said, “I’m really sorry, but I can’t.”  His face broke out into a huge grin and he sort of ducked his head as if he was a little embarrassed and said, “Oh, it’s okay.  You have a good night.”  There was something so loving and genuine about the interaction that it kept me grinning for hours after.

I don’t know why so much of what I write tends to be about positive interactions with strangers, particularly ones who I encounter when they ask me for money, but there is something about choosing to be kind when it isn’t always the most obvious action, that really resonates with me.

I was on my cell phone as walked past and didn’t pause at first.  But something in her expression stopped me.  I doubled back and took the bottle she held up.  It was slippery with condensation and I could see why she was having trouble.  I twisted the cap off and handed it back to her.  She thanked me and asked if I’d like a bottle of water for myself.  I turned her down, but thanked her for the offer.  She had a Philadelphia accent that sounded much like the one that flavored my grandmother’s speech patterns and I suddenly felt my heart pang for this woman who was reduced to sitting on the pavement in the summer heat.

The poem you see below was printed in Garrison Keillor’s Writers’ Almanac on Friday.  It’s not exactly a perfect match to the experience I had on Wednesday, but there was something about it that evoked a similar sense to the encounter I had.

Tell Me
by Anne Pierson Wiese
from Floating City: Poems.

Tell Me

There are many people who spend their nights
on the subway trains. Often one encounters
them on the morning commute, settled in corners,
coats over their heads, ragged possessions heaped
around themselves, trying to remain in their own night.

This man was already up, bracing himself against
the motion of the train as he folded his blanket
the way my mother taught me, and donned his antique blazer,
his elderly, sleep-soft eyes checking for the total effect.

Whoever you are-tell me what unforgiving series
of moments has added up to this one: a man
making himself presentable to the world in front
of the world, as if life has revealed to him the secret
that all our secrets from one another are imaginary.

I got an email from a friend today, with a picture attached. She and her husband-to-be were recently on vacation up in the Pacific Northwest when, on Bainbridge Island, they spotted this poster, advertising a concert featuring my sister and her friend John. Unfortunately, they were scheduled to come back to Philly before the show (wouldn’t that have been cool if they had gotten a chance to see her perform on Bainbridge!), but they were tickled by the coincidence.

Speaking of coincidences, yesterday afternoon I spent a couple of hours over at La Va cafe doing some work and drinking iced tea. I had been sitting there over an hour when a woman behind me and over a few tables asked the people around her for the wifi password. I spoke up, along with the woman behind me. As I turned around, I realized that the woman sitting directly behind me was actually my friend Ashley. We had been sitting back to back for a considerable chunk of time, without realizing that the other was there. We chatted for nearly another hour, until we both had to get going.

Finally free of the elevator, I headed out to Market Street, to catch a bus down to Old City.  I just missed one and was going to head down to take the trolley, when I noticed the blue light flashing, indicating that they weren’t running.  I stood there for several minutes before decided to take my chances on Chestnut Street.  Halfway down the block, I looked back and saw a bus shoot down the street.  Turning forward, I also saw one leave the stop I was headed for.  I then waiting another fifteen minutes before the bus came at the new stop.

Boarding the bus at my stop was a woman who has lived in my building for years.  She has cerebral palsy as well as some learning delays.  She recently acquired a scooter to help her get around, as the walker she had used for years had become too hard for her.  However, the scooter has also proven a challenge for her, and steering it onto the bus was a Herculean effort.

After watching this woman spend a full five minutes trying to get her scooter into place, getting increasingly frustrated and embarrassed as she struggled, I took a seat at the back of the bus and was immediately accosted by a Mrs. Stein, a woman who lives down the hall from me (it’s like I live in a small town, not the 6th largest city in the country).  She accused me of removing the muzuzah from the door of my apartment.

The muzuzah is a symbol of blessing and protection that Jews are supposed to place on the entrance to their homes within 30 days of buying or renting a property.  The muzuzah on my door was put there by my step-grandfather when he married my grandmother in 1969 (he was slightly observant, my grandmother wasn’t at all).  My apartment is the only home I’ve ever lived in that had a muzuzah on the door.  I’m a Jew by birth but not really so much by practice.  However, there is a large Jewish population in my building, I respect the traditions of the community and so would never think of removing this symbol.  I tried to assure Mrs. Stein of this, but she was adamant that I had taken it down.  Finally she huffed and turned her shoulder to me, to let me know that I had been dismissed.

She got off the bus a few stops later and I watched as the bus emptied as it traveled east.  The woman on the scooter struggled even more mightily getting off the bus than she had getting on.  I reached into my backpack and managed to send my computer cord flying into the aisle.  Finally, nearly an hour after I walked out my front door, I arrived at my location.  It was the longest and strangest 17-block trip I’ve ever taken.

This friend lives in a neighborhood adjacent to Center City, it’s being called the Graduate Hospital area (or G-Ho for short) and despite the soaring housing prices, it’s still sort of a transitional neighborhood. Safe, but transitional.

When I got to her block, I looked around for a place to lock my bike and realized that there weren’t many options. Spotting a metal pole holding up a handicapped parking sign a little ways down the block, I started talking towards it. A group of women and children were sitting out on their stoop, right by the pole I was heading for. Before I even got stopped walking, the older woman (who I presumed was the grandmother of the group) shouted at me, “Don’t you even think about leaving your bike in front of my house.” There was real venom and nastiness in her voice.

I startled and said okay. Then I asked, “Do you have any recommendations as to where I could lock it, there don’t seem to be too many places around here.”

“I don’t give a shit as long as it’s not here.” This came from one of the other women. By this point, they had all moved one step closer to me and were all nodding and uh-huhing.

By this point the unprovoked intensity of their meanness and hostility had made my eyes sting but I looked up at the woman who had first spoken to me and said something to the effect of, “I absolutely respect your right to tell me not to park my bike in front of your house and I’m certainly not going to argue with you about it, but all you had to do was ask.”

She seemed to soften for a moment and then her eyes hardened back up and she dismissed me with a flick of her hand. I had to walk around the corner and half a block up to find someplace else.

I understand why these women didn’t want me to park my bike there. This was their territory and they’ve watched as their neighborhood has changed and many of their neighbors have been pushed out by other people who look like me. They were just doing what they could to protect what they felt was theirs, even if it was just a patch of sidewalk. But it was really shocking to unexpectedly be on the receiving end of such anger.