Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
99 New: Flagging
I went to a big veterans breakfast this morning because Street Angels, the organization I work with, was getting an award. There were maybe 150 veterans there, most very old and most white men. They represented a dozen veterans organizations – the Marine Corps League, Disabled American Veterans, and so on.
The program started a little late which surprised me it being the military and all but it felt good like a family waiting at the table while Mom finishes the gravy in the kitchen. We were patient and glad to be there, all of us Street Angels in our garb – Hope Dealer on the front of our shirts and the Street Angel logo on the back. Wings, yes, but tough wings.
An older guy – I think he was one of the higher-ups – came to our table to congratulate us. He riffed a bit on how tough it is to deal with homeless people. He said he’d watch the cops do it and well, it’s really tough stuff. “It takes a lot of balls to do what you do.” I love a good compliment, especially early in the morning.
At the speaker’s end of the very large room hung an enormous American flag. I feel sick about our country in so many ways but I love the flag like a nine-year-old Boy Scout (I’d say Girl Scout but we never much dealt with the flag, we were busy sewing badges on our sashes).
At the beginning of the program, we all stood to say the Pledge of Allegiance. And in that moment, I really did pledge my allegiance to the intention and the concept and the philosophy of my country. And I felt a belonging to a country that I needed to feel this morning even if the room was not filled with the broad beauty of the country we have – the races and ages, the genders and ideas.
Street Angels won an Americanism Award. They won it for doing street outreach with seriously tough homeless people which was something, for some reason, these old veterans thought was worthy. It made me think very highly of them. Also winning was a motorcycle group called Guardians of the Children who take their bad selves and their big black Harleys wherever a child is being threatened or abused and they stand vigil. Picture an abused kid scared that his abuser will return to hurt him again. So the Guardians of the Children are a pretty bad ass group and sure looked the part (they’re probably all accountants in real life) and it felt good to be a Street Angel hanging with the Guardians hanging with the ancient military veterans, some in walkers, moving so slow. We were, at least temporarily, comrades in this life.
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
the guardians and the angels together – a winning combo. and not one of them perfect, yet all of them perfect in what they choose to do to help others.