Power of Positive Giving

I am going to start keeping money in my pocket. Singles, quarters--whatever I need in change for people who are asking for a little help. One of my co-workers was talking about how she does this, so that she doesn't feel vulnerable about taking out her wallet, but can still help out. It may seem obvious, but this seemed like a revolutionary idea to me.

Walking to work and the grocery store, I meet more people who need fifty cents for the bus, or a couple of dollars to get something to eat. Many more people than when I was driving everywhere. It is not easy to type, but when I am asked, I almost always say "no", even when I have it in my bag. And it's been knawing at me. Since Haiti.

It's not that it didn't bother me before. Like many people, I struggle with guilt and doing the "right" thing. But I always rationalize not giving money to people asking for it on the street, either actively or passively. I would give, or plan to give, to shelters, food banks and other services for people in desperate circumstances--this was giving safely, with no risk for me, and doing more good, I would tell myself. Once on the subway I gave a street musician a dollar and the classmate I was with harangued me for fifteen minutes about feeding myself first--I was struggling to get three full meals a day and stay in school. It was a long time before I gave again.

When the earthquake and disaster happened in Haiti in January, I was disgusted with myself. I "shopped" for the right organization to donate to. I chose one I thought had a good plan for getting aid where it needed to go fast, and I am not sorry. But I'm sorry that it took me so long to think of a dollar here and fifty cents there as direct aid for my neighbors. Especially now, when I feel the most financially secure I have felt since I was ten years old.

Many years ago when I was in a bad place in my life--a really lonely place--I read a thrift store copy of The Power of Positive Thinking. I still have it; it's in really good condition. When I got past some of the specific Christian references, I found it really helpful, even inspiring. In one section, Peale talks about buying a bottle of alcohol for a homeless man on Christmas--because it was what he most wanted and needed at that moment. I have thought about that passage many times. I'm still not really sure what I think about it. Maybe what I think about it, and how I feel about it, are different.

For now I am going with how I feel. And when the two guys sitting on the sidewalk outside of the Giant Eagle, the two really friendly guys, wave at me, I can smile back with a lighter heart. I have to carry around more change now, anyway. My three month bus pass stint is over, and I'll need money to catch the occasional bus. It's walk-to-work season.

Big Thaw

Weeks of ice and inches of snow are now a bad memory. Mostly. Seeing these photographs again is a little chilling. But they tell a story of some of the good that came out of those dark days. The alley in the photo below was dug out entirely by hand(and shovel) by a group of our neighbors .


This one just made me laugh in a bratty, rebellious teenager kind of way. I guess it wouldn't be so funny if something was on fire.


I don't know what kind of tattoo artists they are, but these guys make public art.


The image below brings back some of the horror. It was hard to get around, for everyone. Crossing the street was a game. In the thick of it, a bus driver let her guard down and cried as I was waiting to de-bus. She was anxious about her and her passengers' safety, and she was tired from working overtime and the stress of worrying.



When we began to see slips of pavement below the white stuff, we knew the end was near. And the beginning of some serious ugliness. Piles of gritty snow, dank puddles, the usual gray exteriors of February in Pittsburgh. Oh, and everything that had been trapped beneath the winter wonderland. I waited at this bus shelter on Highland Avenue for a few minutes and couln't finish cataloging all of the trash there before the bus came.


See below for the kind of white on the ground that I can get behind. We have been treated to some unseasonally warm weather over the last week, forcing these lovelies out of hiding. We believe we deserve it.