Dear Feastlings,
This rain is tremendous. After last year’s tired little monsoon coughed its weak clouds across the sky to dribble a few paltry drops, I know we all had our doubts about what we’d see this year, and despite the odd tornado warning (!?) it’s felt good to be soaked walking the forty feet to the car at the end of the day.
But I’ve made mention of this before: the rain feels good when you’re in a position to let the rain make you feel good. The bike paths here follow the washes, and so do the people living in tents or under tarps or bridges. So when I ride, that mud that collects when the wash pushes it unceremoniously onto the bike path, inconvenient though it may be, pushes that same mud unceremoniously under the bridge that someone’s sleeping under, or fills an arroyo lined with tarps and garbage with hot, sticky air and columns of flying ants.
I nodded hello the other day as I whizzed past a man seated at a damp concrete picnic table and got a stoic nod in return while he methodically spread out his belongings to repack them in his rolling suitcase to go- where? I couldn’t guess. I don’t know where someone goes while they’re homeless. If they’re lucky, they have a shelter to go to and can work and earn a little something. If they’re lucky, they’re living out of a car, or able to stay on a friend’s couch for a bit. And if they’re not, they’re repacking their rolling suitcase to live in their head, maybe wondering what’s next from moment to moment, maybe plagued by whatever thoughts come and go through a brain shot through with mental illness, or maybe focusing on what chemical will get them emotionally through their day.
So the next series of donation runs will be to the places helping people whose already difficult existence if being further exacerbated by the monsoon. There’s more about them here:
We’ll also be doing a Primavera Cooks dinner- a live and in-person one- assuming there’s no downpour of Delta variant that changes our plans, in late September.
In the meanwhile, we’ll be plugging away at the restaurant stuff as well- our Saturday tasting of river wines this weekend,
and a special menu to celebrate and help raise a few bucks for Mobile Meals of Southern Arizona,
Here, there and everywhere: Mobile Meals 50th anniversary dinner
and the regular daily maintenance of the July menu
https://www.eatatfeast.com/dining/menus/lunch-dinner/
and wine and cocktail lists.
We look forward to seeing you come break bread here with us and your friends, and to sharing some with the people at the various shelters, and to a physical place for the man I saw on the bike path, and a metaphorical place for the rest of us, to roll a carefully repacked suitcase to, and to spread out, exhale, and be home and settled.
See you soon.
Your friend,
Doug