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Many of you have kindly sent your your encouragements to me during these
Dine In, Help Out days, and so this is my final report back to you: it was a good and right thing to do.
Because the fact is that you can spend as much time as you want casting spider webs aside or watching Nick edge new stones into the garden. You can wonder obsessively if the yellow callas detract from the rust callas, if you have any business attempting appetizers, if you are just plain out of your mind for inviting two of the area's top business leaders and their beautiful women into your very modest home. You can wonder and you can worry, and then 6:30 comes, and there's no going back: the party finally begins.
It's not really, in the end, the food that makes a party (thank goodness). No one takes a tour of the garden and judges the stone work. No one searches for spider webs, or if they do, it frankly doesn't matter. People make a party, and last night I had the privilege of introducing two men to each other who share so many things—a talent for dreaming big and acting effectively on those dreams (these men build companies; they build legacies), a distinctly philanthropic lean, a transparent commitment to the families they have built, an abiding love for their fathers, and so much shared interest in farming ways that a good half hour of talk gets given over to the egg-laying-business of chickens.
These men also have incredibly good taste in women, and toward the end of the evening, MA asked if I might talk a little a bit Dine In, Help Out, this May-long initiative sponsored by St. Christopher's Foundation for Children. It's pretty simple, I said. Philadelphia-area residents are inviting friends to dinner in their homes throughout the month of May and encouraging those friends to contribute whatever they might have spent on a restaurant meal that evening to the Foundation. The Foundation in turn is channeling those funds into a
Farm to Families program focused on bringing affordable, nutritious food to North Philadelphia, the nation's second hungriest congressional district.
It's all thanks to my friend, Jan Suzanne Shaeffer, who has a heart the color of her very golden hair and who never works in the abstract. She cares about the plight of North Philadelphians because she has taken the time to make them her friends. She is doing good because good is her passion, her happy gift. I'm hugely uncomfortable in any fundraising role, but I did this because I believe in Jan and I believe in this cause. I have worked way outside my comfort zone, these past few weeks, and I can't tell you if the food I cooked was any good because I was too nervous to eat it. But because of Jan I had, in last night, an evening I'll never forget.
I seek out Philadelphians who make a difference; sometimes I have the honor of calling them friends. Tonight I joined old friends and new at JG Domestic, an innovative Jose Garces restaurant, to herald the launch of Dine In, Help Out, an initiative designed to increase access to fresh, healthy, and affordable food in North Philadelphia, one of the poorest—and hungriest—congressional districts in our country.
The initiative is the brainchild of Jan Suzanne Shaeffer, who isn't just my beautiful and witty friend; she's also the executive director of St. Christopher's Foundation for Children, an organization with an established interest in the people of North Philadelphia. Not long ago, Jan and her board read the devastating
Philadelphia Inquirer portrait of North Philadelphia hunger and began to work toward solutions.
Through its very own Farm to Families, the Foundation is already bringing fresh farm foods to those North Philadelphians whose diets are saturated with health-compromising sugars and fats. Through Dine In, Help Out the Foundation raises the ante—asking friends and families across the region to commit to forgoing "one night of dining out by donating the dollars they would have spent at a restaurant to help bring affordable, healthy, farm-fresh food into North Philadelphia homes."
It is an idea that has caught the imagination of many. It has, moreover, won the backing of those who are pictured here (left to right) with Jan—Philadelphia Media Network CEO Greg Osberg; NBC 10 President and General Manager Dennis Bianchi, Iron Chef Jose Garces (I have all my most important meals at his restaurants); and Montgomery McCracken Managing Partner Steve Madva.
Others of us are proud ambassadors—people who have committed to hosting meals in their homes on behalf of this initiative. I'll be having a small event at my own home in early May (hoping that clean windows, fine Ikebana arrangements, and a newly mulched garden will compensate for any flaws in my menu). I'm encouraging others of you to do the same. It's time, every now and then, to remember how very blessed we are. It's time to come together, over our own tables, so that we might give back to those in need.
Please look for more information here, on Dine In, Help Out's spanking new
web site.
Today I sat in a teacher's room listening to children sort b's from g's, and pigs from bibs, all under the encouraging eye of a reading tutor. I watched a multi-purpose room take on countless purposes and, shortly after noon, absorb the ninth graders of Philadelphia's KIPP DuBois Collegiate Academy. I listened to Kyle Zimmer, president and co-founder of First Book, as she told stories about the revolution that book ownership yields; listened to the mayor of my city compare books to passports; listened as one sponsor after another made promises they plan to keep about literacy, education, and tomorrow. And then I watched as
Dangerous Neighbors made its way into the hands of those KIPP ninth graders, stewards of our future, all. There were so many people who made today happen, and key among them is a young lawyer named Heather Steinmiler, who seems to do many things in many ways on behalf of the children of Philadelphia.
My dear friend Jan Suzanne Shaeffer was in the room today, and it is because of her that I have these photos to share. I looked out, saw her sunny face, and took calm from it as I stepped up to the microphone.
Gratitudes.
Perhaps some of you come to this blog for writing advice (though mostly what I can offer is recommendations of books I've loved or enthusiasm for authors I love...or consolation along this hard journey). Perhaps some of you come to see whether I'm still dancing (yes, I am—waltzing with smooth-shoes John Larson and rumba-ing with DanceSport owner and choreographer supreme Scott Lazarov), gardening (less than I should, but I've got glamorous purples out there this season), and writing (for every 2,000 words I wrestle to the page, I throw another 10,000 away; please don't let that discourage you in your own endeavors). Perhaps you even come for recipes, but I don't actually use or know that many recipes; I feel my way toward my dishes and have never once embarked on a stacked cake, as my friend Kate Moses regularly does, while writing best-selling books with her other hand.
But what I am about to offer you today is better than all of that, better than anything. I am about to offer you some housekeeperly advice. Are you ready?
(Get ready.)
Mr. Clean Magic Eraser totally rocks!!!
(that's it, that's the advice)
I mean, there I was, week after week, trying to get rid of the aftershock of too many hands around a doorknob, and all I ever truly needed was a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. This little item does it all, and I can look fashionable when I use it, thanks to Jan Shaeffer's recent gift of Gloveables...they're lovable (look them up, if you haven't seen them already).
So that's it. That's what this zany-Zumba-dancing-diva-only-sometimes-half-good-writer-with-the-enviable-irises is offering today.
Take it.
Or leave it.
A few moments ago, Jan Shaeffer, the executive director of St. Christopher's Foundation for Children and a friend, called with stunningly sad news about a beautiful young woman—this young woman—whom I'd interviewed and photographed last fall. She had been living in the Ronald McDonald House adjacent to St. Christopher's Hospital, and as part of an annual report project, I'd sat with her a few days shy of Halloween and talked about her life and the ways in which it had been shaped by cancer. She had moved me immeasurably, as I had then written here: The way she spoke with honesty of what was passing her by. The fierceness with which she approached her own survival. Her determination to get well so that she could return to a hospital one day not as a patient, but as a nurse.
Today I learn that she did not win her battle. Today I am remembering her alive.
Oh, yay! Of course your party was a smash - there was no doubt!
Lucky, lucky guests...
So cool that you did this, Beth. Now it's time to kick back and enjoy Mother's Day...
XO
A.
What did you make, that you worried so much over it?
And of course it went well, you silly dear. You were involved. :)
Hello Beth
Glad to know all went well and raising money for a good cause is a good thing.
I am like Q--what did you cook?
Take Care
Best
Tracy :)
I'm so glad it was a success, and for such a wonderful cause. Kudos to you, and Happy Mother's Day!