It's cold.

Today I feel like a real Northwesterner. I have on my boots, my warm sweater, and my trench coat. I'm armed with an umbrella in my bag (but I probably won't really use it, it's looked down upon my the real Seattlites so I hear), and I am sitting at a small coffee shop sipping my caffe latte that, yes, was adorned with latte art before I swirled it all up.

It's suddenly become winter here. I'm not really sure how that happened. It was so incredibly nice from the time we got here until middle of October. Now, the majority of the past week has been cold and rainy and there is no reprieve in the forecast until Wednesday. The good thing is that people here seem to fight this. They live with it with grace, enjoying the excuse to stay inside for a bit, spend time in coffee shops, art galleries, and pubs. I don't mind it, I guess. As long as the snow stays away, I can handle the gloom. And I can definitely handle it is it means I get to drink the best coffee in the world. I read a really interesting article the other week about the history of coffee in Seattle. Maybe I'll tell you about it later on this week.

Today I want to talk about homeless people. This weather really has me thinking... where do they go? We have a park right next to our apartment where a lot of homeless people gather. In nice weather, they would be out there soaking up the sun, talking and playing music, and even playing hacky sack with some teenagers who came by. It seems to us that homeless people here are not treated so much as the "other" as they might be elsewhere. You see little things like police chatting with them, parents bringing there kids to the park to play in the water fountain even though there are tons of homeless, and people chatting with them if their dog wanders up and they start to pet it and make friends. It's a friendly environment that I must say I did not expect. Everywhere else I have been, I see homeless people begging and the people around them actually going out of their way to ignore them.

I've learned from a friend that Seattle has some of the best programs for the homeless in the whole country, so homeless people actually flock to Seattle to seek the benefits. We see them everywhere because it is relatively easy to be homeless in this city.  You see low-income housing projects going on everywhere, food pantries galore, and churches that also act as shelters. This is not to say that the homeless problem is solved in this city. I'm sure I don't know the half of it.

But what I do know and love is that the homeless people in our neighborhood aren't "scary" like you may think of others you encounter in big cities. We see the same people everyday. It's almost like a community of homeless out here. One thing that I think is really great is this newspaper called "Real Change," which homeless people contribute to, but it is run as a way for them to make income. They purchase each paper for 25 cents and sell it for a dollar, keeping the difference. It comes out once a week, and we make sure we buy one every Sunday on the way back from the market from this one man who is always selling it near our apartment. They always have some really great articles about aid, which catches my interest. This week we opened the issue to find a friendly face inside-- the guy we buy our paper from each week was featured as the best seller. It talked about him and how seriously he takes this work, and it made me like him even more than I did before. This man stands outside of a drug store down the street every single day. I think I have only walked that stretch once without seeing him. The article said that he worked about 45 hours a week selling papers. He treats it like a real job and understands personally that it can make "real change." I'm not sure if this man has a home or if he sleeps in the elements every night, but I do know that every single time I pass him he smiles a huge smile, calls me "ma'am" and wishes me a great day. I just saw him on the way to the coffee shop, actually, and he asked me if I wanted a paper and I told him I got one yesterday and saw him in it! He smiled and blushed a little and said "Oh, that's true. Thank you, ma'am. Have a wonderful day."

I realize more and more how sheltered I was growing up in the suburbs. I didn't encounter homelessness and poverty every day. Not that it wasn't there-- it was just hidden on the other side of the tracks. Are we going out of our way to ignore the reality of what is happening to our neighbors? Are we pretending it isn't real just because we don't see it every day? I know I found it a lot easier to forget about when I didn't walk past it each day. Just this summer, when I was home in Collierville, I went to the grocery store and was approached by a man who I have seen my whole life, walking and riding his bike in the streets of our town, saying "Amen" in the middle of church services (think hard, C'ville people, and you'll know who I'm talking about). He came up to me, not recognizing me, and asked me for money. He was begging, in such a wealthy suburb. This man who I know came to both churches I attended, who knew many many wealthy people in the town. And he was asking me for any spare change. It was clear that he was not getting help that he clearly needed. But why? What's a good solution? What if, even in the suburbs where we keep poverty hidden, we gave them a way to help themselves? This newspaper, "Real Change," is doing a great thing in this city. It is giving people not only a job, but ownership of it. They are responsible for the work they do and the money they make. It gives them a way to rise up on their own and be proud of it. And rightfully so.