This week was the first this summer that we didn't have a community group to fill in for the regular crew, so we had our first barbeque of the year. Barbeques are easier because there's less prep. Most of the work is done last minute, except for salads.
Things went very smoothly. More smoothly than last year.
Last summer we opted for having one Dinner a month to maintain continuity while giving everybody a break. The weather was good that day, so we set up on the west lawn in the shade of the big trees.
We bought pre-cooked burgers from the local frozen food place (so we didn't have to worry about food safety quite so much) and borrowed a barbeque from one of the guys.
Borrowing barbeques can be an iffy business. For the yard sale, we borrowed one on the condition that we provide a tank of gas. S and S brought one, freshly filled, and hooked it up. A couple dozen hot dogs later, the tank was empty. Hmmm. "Oh, yeah," said the barbeque's owner, "It leaks."
We all said a prayer of thanks that it had been windy.
So anyway, the one big difference between this barbeque Dinner and the one last summer was how calm it was. Last year there were two big blowups.
One was R. He'd been drinking heavily and got upset at someone. He started shouting obscene names at his nemesis. Problem is that when he gets like that, he's so focussed on the target of his anger that it's impossible to distract him and draw him away. It just goes on and on and on with the recipient getting more and more upset. It's extremely intense and exhausting. First time I saw this, it ended with G. tackling the guy who had just had enough and started going for R. Once the target of R.'s anger had been taken outside, R. calmed down. Which wasn't really fair. Similar situation last summer. It's difficult, because we all like R., but we don't like that side of his personality. Which is why it's so cool that he's been sober now for 7 months.
The second was a one sided food fight over the ownership of a particular salad bowl. A woman wanted it and V. tried to gently let her know that it belonged to somebody who wanted it back. So V. ended up with her hair full of potato salad and mustard all over her glasses, inside and out. We have a few pics of her laughing and scooping salad out of her shirt front.
Someone blamed the whole thing on too much beer and gravol, but it was probably closer to OCD.
Found out this week that one local weekly free paper has cut back their delivery to the Motel to 4 papers. There are 80 to 100 people living there. Plus, the papers that do come contain none of the dozen and a half sales flyers distributed by local businesses.
The other local weekly free paper has stopped delivering there altogether. That's the one that contains the 3 grocery store flyers. So in order to read the flyers and find out what's on sale, these people, living on $400 - 500 a month have to go buy a paper that everyone else gets free.
So I called the first paper to ask why they aren't getting any flyers. She told me that "some" of the advertisers had cut back to 'houses only' and that the Motel falls into the 'apartment' category, so some of the flyers would have been removed. She asked me which flyers were missing, and I said, "All of them." Couldn't get a satisfactory answer as to why they were only getting 4 copies. Or why other 'apartments' get most of the flyers, if not all.
It reminds me of E.'s experience at the bank. There's something fishy, something not quite right, that you can't quite put your finger on.
I have to admit that the bank has to have policies and standards around the opening of accounts. Fair enough. I have to admit that people who live in apartments shop less at certain kinds of stores than do people who own houses. Fair enough.
But the way those policies are formulated smells funny.
You can't say it's discrimination against the poor, because everybody has to follow the same rules. There isn't one set of rules for low income people and one set for middle class. But there might as well be, because the standard used to create the rules is a middle class standard that just assumes that you've got a drivers' license and a passport and a lawnmower and a chest freezer. If you don't, you're just not part of the equation. You're just not there.
It doesn't seem to occur to advertisers and newspaper distributors that maybe low income people need, more than anyone else, to know when ground beef is on sale for $.99 a pound and who's got the best deal on bugspray.
They just figure, if you don't have much money, you won't spend much. So you're not a good investment.
r
Things went very smoothly. More smoothly than last year.
Last summer we opted for having one Dinner a month to maintain continuity while giving everybody a break. The weather was good that day, so we set up on the west lawn in the shade of the big trees.
We bought pre-cooked burgers from the local frozen food place (so we didn't have to worry about food safety quite so much) and borrowed a barbeque from one of the guys.
Borrowing barbeques can be an iffy business. For the yard sale, we borrowed one on the condition that we provide a tank of gas. S and S brought one, freshly filled, and hooked it up. A couple dozen hot dogs later, the tank was empty. Hmmm. "Oh, yeah," said the barbeque's owner, "It leaks."
We all said a prayer of thanks that it had been windy.
So anyway, the one big difference between this barbeque Dinner and the one last summer was how calm it was. Last year there were two big blowups.
One was R. He'd been drinking heavily and got upset at someone. He started shouting obscene names at his nemesis. Problem is that when he gets like that, he's so focussed on the target of his anger that it's impossible to distract him and draw him away. It just goes on and on and on with the recipient getting more and more upset. It's extremely intense and exhausting. First time I saw this, it ended with G. tackling the guy who had just had enough and started going for R. Once the target of R.'s anger had been taken outside, R. calmed down. Which wasn't really fair. Similar situation last summer. It's difficult, because we all like R., but we don't like that side of his personality. Which is why it's so cool that he's been sober now for 7 months.
The second was a one sided food fight over the ownership of a particular salad bowl. A woman wanted it and V. tried to gently let her know that it belonged to somebody who wanted it back. So V. ended up with her hair full of potato salad and mustard all over her glasses, inside and out. We have a few pics of her laughing and scooping salad out of her shirt front.
Someone blamed the whole thing on too much beer and gravol, but it was probably closer to OCD.
Found out this week that one local weekly free paper has cut back their delivery to the Motel to 4 papers. There are 80 to 100 people living there. Plus, the papers that do come contain none of the dozen and a half sales flyers distributed by local businesses.
The other local weekly free paper has stopped delivering there altogether. That's the one that contains the 3 grocery store flyers. So in order to read the flyers and find out what's on sale, these people, living on $400 - 500 a month have to go buy a paper that everyone else gets free.
So I called the first paper to ask why they aren't getting any flyers. She told me that "some" of the advertisers had cut back to 'houses only' and that the Motel falls into the 'apartment' category, so some of the flyers would have been removed. She asked me which flyers were missing, and I said, "All of them." Couldn't get a satisfactory answer as to why they were only getting 4 copies. Or why other 'apartments' get most of the flyers, if not all.
It reminds me of E.'s experience at the bank. There's something fishy, something not quite right, that you can't quite put your finger on.
I have to admit that the bank has to have policies and standards around the opening of accounts. Fair enough. I have to admit that people who live in apartments shop less at certain kinds of stores than do people who own houses. Fair enough.
But the way those policies are formulated smells funny.
You can't say it's discrimination against the poor, because everybody has to follow the same rules. There isn't one set of rules for low income people and one set for middle class. But there might as well be, because the standard used to create the rules is a middle class standard that just assumes that you've got a drivers' license and a passport and a lawnmower and a chest freezer. If you don't, you're just not part of the equation. You're just not there.
It doesn't seem to occur to advertisers and newspaper distributors that maybe low income people need, more than anyone else, to know when ground beef is on sale for $.99 a pound and who's got the best deal on bugspray.
They just figure, if you don't have much money, you won't spend much. So you're not a good investment.
r
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