Same Cafe

I was watching NBC Nightly News on TV tonight and saw something that made me cry. Because I'm 60 and have watched so many friends and relatives die now it doesn't take much to make me cry these days. (I lost 3 relatives this year including my mother and my wife lost her father).

There was a Cafe in Denver I believe it was called the Same Cafe. The idea behind it is a great one for giving dignity to newly out of work people who have lost homes and jobs and live in tents or on the streets. The restaurant is a way for people to preserve their dignity. The restaurant allows people to pay for food or to work for food. So the end result is that people who have extra money give more than the meal costs 2 or 3 times and those who don't have money still eat but have to sweep or wash dishes or cut up potatoes or something like that. I find this to be a really great idea.

Those who have been homeless for years might not be interested in this. But for those who are willing to work their way back to a real life this is a way to do that by preserving their dignity.

I had one experience that was difficult to recover from when my Student loans didn't come through on time and I had already moved out of my house 500 miles away from my university with my family. I took the university at their word and went to pick up the grants and loans after putting all my furniture in storage. However, when I arrived I was told that they would only pay for my tuition and books and everything else would arrive in 2 or three months. Gee Thanks!

So, because of our baby we couldn't make this work because we had no place to stay near the university. So, we wound up near our furniture in storage 500 miles again away from the university staying in our van in the woods in below freezing temperatures for 2 months until we could arrange a home to move into.

So, the lesson here is: don't move out of your home or apartment until you get a check and you cash it and it is good in regard to ANY student loans or grants at a university. Because all sorts of things can and do happen.

But, this lesson taught me just how difficult it is to recover from something like this. It is not like the late 1960s or even 1970s or even early 1980s. Then there were social systems in place that people did almost anything and survived.

Now, all this has completely changed during the Clinton Administration and since. If you had ten chances to survive in the 1960s and 1970s you might have 1 chance or even -1 chance now in today's world. The world is just that much more cruel than in the 1960s or even 1970s even here in America. Though my experience was in 1989 it likely is as bad or worse now to get help when something goes wrong. So, it is important to create friends and allies when you get into bad situations. If you are too proud to ask for help you or your family might just die. This is today's reality.