Speaking of telling it like it is, I'm over at MamaPop today with my thoughts on the new Great Gatsby movie. Hint: slapping one Jay-Z song in the trailer isn't enough to get me to go see that movie.

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Parent perspective: It’s just a test – even in Illinois

This isn’t just about The Test. Capital T, capital T. What we do to students in the American Public School system is test them and we do it a lot. But, it’s just a test. What’s happening with school testing is the problem. We’re using it in ways assessments were never intended nor does it make any sense. Not to me as a mother of a child whose entire education has been impacted by the over emphasis on using tests to make children feel like everything is wrapped up in that one thing.

I took my son out of private school when he was in 4^th grade.  I was grateful that he received a good, solid foundation of phonics and loves to read and talk about what he’s read with me, but I was sad that he had to leave his friends behind that he’d met 5 years prior when he started Kindergarten. He brought home colorful drawings and the occasional drill-and-kill worksheets, but I knew I had to get him out of that school because they didn’t know the first thing about dealing with a child who learned differently than what they were used to with their population.

In some ways, leaving that school behind was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because some of the things he would learn in the public neighborhood school was superior to the way the private school would go as he got older. A curse because now Mason was under the domain of a system that would test him as much as they possibly could. 

I have many issues with standardized testing for children because, in Illinois, we have yet to experience the continuum of learning that should happen when you take hours and days away from students in order to get them to take the same test in the same way. In 4^th grade he took his first ISAT test, got the results, and felt terrible about himself. In Illinois, we use the Illinois Standard Achievement Test from grades 3-8 and use the results as a measure of No Child Left Behind. Of course, we got the results when he had begun 5^th grade and, by then, we were already on to the drills of the 5^th grade test. The same thing happened every year thereafter and I can tell you, as the mom of a child who doesn’t test well to show what he’s mastered during a timed assessment, testing has always been a horrible time for our family.

Starting in 6^th grade, we saw his classroom academic grades follow suit. He struggled and we fought with the school to get him a 504 Plan to accommodate his needs. Under the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, schools can write 504 Plans to help general education students by making modifications that allow teachers to make accommodations in the classroom.

During basketball season we saw a spike in his grades because he wanted to be eligible to play sports and we experienced a lot of tears during those months. Frustration for school and of not being understood in his learning manifested itself in our home by rearranging his bedroom (taking everything out and allowing him a Zen-like experience) and implementing behavior modification that we hoped would help him become more organized. I had hoped that, because I am a teacher and can speak educationese, that it would help him be a better student and that I could provide as much direct instruction for my son as his teachers did during the day.

By 8^th grade, we failed to get the 504 and the basketball coach, a new coach to the school, found out how much Mason struggled with grades and decided not to allow him on the team so he wouldn’t have to hassle with him.

That’s when my son gave up on school. This trajectory we saw made high school hellish for him (and his parents) and testing just another way to prove he didn’t know anything. Or so he felt. When we talked to him about doing well in school his constant complaint was that he would never get good grades on the tests he took. The ISAT, the Prairie State Achievement Exam, the ACT, and the myriad district assessments absolutely killed the spirit of learning for my son. 

My son, Mason, with his cousin on his recent college graduation.

This proves quite the conflict for me: after he entered high school, I went back to school to earn a Master’s degree in educational administration. I went into the very position whose charge is to ensure that every child is tested. As a young teacher I learned quickly to steer clear of the teacher’s lounge. I didn’t want to get infected with the nasty attitudes of the veteran teachers who pointed a finger in the air and declared, “They keep making us do the same old thing! Wait long enough and something new will come around but it’ll be old! They’ll just have a new name for it!”

I fancied myself as a rebel, an innovative teacher who inspired her students and changed things up with her desks making the shape of a butterfly instead of the aimless rows that lined up for yawn-inducing lectures.  I stayed out of those places where I could be corrupted into hating the system in which I worked.

To some degree, I have remained a rebel. Sure, my job requires that I contact families whose children don’t show up for the standardized test, but I also get to be the one who answers their questions about missing school for them. One mom called me last year to say that her husband would be having surgery for his cancer and that she was so, so sorry that she was taking her children out of school to travel 4 states away for it during the ISAT.

“Are you joking me?” I asked her. “This is your family. Your LIFE. Take them with you for crying out loud. It’s just a test.”

I still believe that. It is just a test. Just one piece of information we use. But it’s in danger of being tied to teacher evaluations (a truly monstrous idea) and now that some lawmakers have lazily adopted ALEC sample bills and brought them into policy, states are furiously vying for a shot at the almighty dollar and are pushing through the Common Core Standards that will continue to kill creativity for children and provide ample test anxiety for them. Teachers and administrators have not even had time to field-test the standards on assessments. In fact, many teachers I know are apprehensive of using the new evaluative tools that tie student achievement into their effectiveness.

Systemically speaking, it’s wrong and destructive to schools and children like my own who have had their futures shaped by schools using the assessment data in unproductive ways. Experienced teachers know that it’s unwise to test students on material which they have yet to practice teaching especially since states are faced with massive cuts to staff and resources in the midst of this. We aren’t connecting their learning in the ways we’ve been trained and we would do well to slow the emphatic standardized testing campaigns down until we know they won’t hurt children.

We just don’t have the data to support that right now.

There's so much that's bothering me through this challenge. Food is everywhere but it's not for everyone. I noticed at work that someone left a Jiffy Peanut Butter to-go cup in the kitchen and I thought, "That's way too expensive but awfully convenient. I wish I could take along snacks like that." After that, I noticed that one of my co-workers left an empty yogurt cup on the counter and when I bent down to look at it I laughed at the very pretentiousness of the marketing. 

Vanilla agave flavored New Zealand style artisan yogurt. I'm sure you're delicious, but that name cracked me up.

You know how when you buy a new car and then start driving it and it feels like you see it everywhere? You pass other cars and notice it in parking lots and everywhere you go. That's what it's been like this week except you notice all the other cars - the good ones (like yours) and the bad ones (different). I've noticed good food and bad food all week long and make comparisons every time. I read an article about "organic" food and cackled at the line where it talked about how people choose organic because they don't want to ingest pesticides. I call shenanigans. Poor people don't want to ingest pesticides, either, but we produce foods with GMOs and sell it cheaply to them. 

It's all ludicrous and maddening.

I did all that working and writing and supervising while eating poorly designed food in the best way The Cuban could possibly prepare it on a dollar and a half. I've noticed, after 4 short days, that my skin is breaking out on my face and I've lost a bit of weight in some places but my stomach is poofing out a bit from all the carbohydrates I'm consuming. Without being too graphic let's just say that THINGS AREN'T WORKING LIKE THEY SHOULD. We are convinced that carbs make you lazy because they're so lazy. They don't even evenly distribute around your body when you eat too much of them and they're so lazy that they just hang around the middle of your body. 

Carbs can't even make it down past the middle.

Stupid, useless, lazy carbs. 

So, tonight's recap post comes in the form of a message I got from a friend who is a teacher. I've only edited it enough to take out identifying characteristics but that's ancillary to the message.

The message is The Thing.

Okay, something happened today that knocked me WAY off balance, then broke my heart, then made me think of your food challenge (very brave of you, by the way). I took my Scholastic Bowl team to Baskin Robbins on Wednesday as an end-of-season treat. I got my husband to 'sponsor' our trip and I told the kids that they could get anything (but just ONE thing) that they wanted.

They were VERY carefully asking questions like, "Can I get the LARGE smoothie?" and "Is it okay to get TWO scoops?" My husband gave me plenty of money, so I said, "Sure! Anything you want!" We ate until they simply couldn't eat any more (one very little guy even got teary-eyed that he couldn't finish all of his and it would melt if he tried to take it home).

We walked back to school, they whipped up a Thank You poster for me to take to my husband for the ice cream treats and while they did that, I cleaned up my room for the day. I put the poster in my bag with ten thousand papers to grade and (gasp) forgot to get it out for my husband last night.

We got it out tonight and I read their comments (here's the heart-breaking part) and FOUR of the kids commented about how much they enjoyed their FIRST TRIP TO BASKIN-ROBBINS. Another one said, "Thank you for my very first banana split!" Seriously. I don't know why this left me speechless, but it did. I mean, these kids are so very bright, they possess so much knowledge, I guess I just assumed...I don't know...maybe that they all came from 'families of means', families with disposable incomes that included trips to BR. I know that probably sounds awful, but after spending all of this time with these kids, I just felt like I knew them all really well and then...anyway, it made me appreciate what you're doing on a whole new level. So I guess what I'm trying to say is this -- thanks for the insight. Seriously.

It's stories like this that make this all give me a new perspective on hunger and poverty. One of my greatest struggles this week is trying not to be constantly infuriated with the way we feed people in the world. On that front, I've failed. My anger is palpable at this very moment.

Thank you for hanging in there with me this week. Together, we've raised $650 for the World Food Program USA and, while this is merely an inconvenience for me, it has been difficult, but only because we can actually fix this problem.

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Everyone who knows me, and even some of you who don’t, knows that when it comes to the kitchen, hubris is my middle name. No challenge is impossible, no recipe too big.

Of course, Kelly understands this side of me better than anyone so it is not at all uncommon for her to sign “Us” up for numerous cooking challenges. This is how this conversation usually goes:

“Oh, by the way, I signed us up for a cooking challenge”

“Great! What is it?”

“We have to prepare an original dish using wheat flour, pinecones and turtle eggs.”

“Umm… OK.  When is it due?”

“Tomorrow.”

“I’ll be at the grocery store.”

So, it was in this vein that I approached this Live Below The Line challenge. In all fairness to Kelly, she gave me ample time to get prepared for it this time but I really didn’t take it all too seriously.

Until I went to the store preparing to feed her for 5 days on $7.50.

Kelly has always been amazed at the speed in which I can get in and out of a grocery store with a week’s worth of groceries. I have actually banned her from going to the store with me because inevitably when she does we have to stop and talk to past students of hers; old colleagues; the neighbor who used to live two doors down. She knows everybody! This always doubles or triples my shopping experience. So I go by myself.

When I do go to the grocery store I stick to 2 simple rules.

1. Shop the edges of the store. Nothing in the middle has any real nutritional value and it tastes terrible, and

2. Don’t buy it if you can make it yourself. It will taste 10 times better. This shortens my time in the store since I don’t have to do the middle aisle slalom.

To stay on budget I could abide by neither rule.

That’s when the seriousness of this challenge began to dawn on me.

Heading into Day 4 I can tell you that my cavalier approach at the beginning sort of shames me. I realize now that for Kelly and I this is just a challenge. 5 days. If you think about it you could do anything for 5 days if you wanted to badly enough. The light at the end of the tunnel is visible even before you begin rolling down the tracks. For the 1.4 Billion people who live like this every day there is no light. Just an endless tunnel.

Although I’m not an official registrant for Live Below The Line I have been eating almost all the same meals as Kelly. My only exception is my morning K-cup of coffee. Yesterday I went over budget for myself by 38 cents so today looks like a long day as I try to make that up.

How this had affected me

I can tell you that the physical manifestations, whether real or imagined, are enormous. Everything from dizziness to moments of confusion doing the simplest of tasks (At one point yesterday I found myself so addle-brained that I had to use my phone calculator to add 50, 24 and 17). The odd part is that hunger isn’t really one of them. My mother, being the country minister’s wife on a tiny budget she is, taught me about stick-to-your-ribs type meals and that has greatly helped in us being full if not necessarily satisfied at the end of a meal.

I have tried to explain to a few people what we are doing and why and I have come to realize that until you do it you cannot fully understand the problem these people face on a daily basis. I think about the food we have thrown out because nobody wanted “leftovers again?” I think about the times I went to the store and overbought which caused us to subsequently overeat. I think about the times we complained about how we were so full we felt miserable. There are people in this world who will never ever have the opportunity to say that, who will go their whole lives without ever knowing what a full belly even feels like.

Will Kelly and I change any of that in these 5 days? Probably not. And it’s that feeling of hopelessness that I can only imagine these people waking up to every day that brings tears to my eyes as I write this.

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The Cuban and I have decided to continue raising money even though I blew past my goal last night! ($500 was an arbitrary number I came up with that seemed challenging enough and now I realize I should have aimed higher.) It came when I read on Twitter last night that someone wanted to support me and would donate anything over the allotted $1.50 per day that she spent for the week. By the end of the week, we will calculate what we would have spent plus how much the leftover food costs and donate that money.

We have also chosen to donate any leftover canned food and pasta we bought for the challenge to the Central Illinois Foodbank.  (The CIFB also added one of my posts to their tumblr site and how cool is it that a food bank has a tumblr? That is so dope.)

For me, this week, it comes in the form of a can. Of beans. Lots of beans to get my daily allowance of protein.

As with anything I talk about be it food or shoes or technology, I brought it around to education. I always do that. It is unavoidable. 

Some of what I said to the Bidens and the other ladies on the call is mentioned in the video below: that we don't have an achievement gap in schools. We have a poverty gap that manifests itself in the classroom. That's why I vehemently disagree with tying state and federal funding to state assessments. That's why I believe parents have the choice to opt-out of testing. Telling schools they are FAILING when our nation's poorest are trying to eat enough to sustain them to even get their children to school is wrong on every level imaginable.

The other thing I mentioned (I was on a roll, I really am all fired up now) was that when a problem becomes too big for society that we give it to the school system. You'll see what I mean when you watch the video.

Since this is my mid-week check in I would be remiss if I didn't mention how intolerable I've been today at work. My secretary asked me what was wrong because I wasn't myself and I knew it was true. The only time I was joyful was when I took over a classroom for a teacher so I could lead a discussion to preview a book they're about to begin reading: The Giver by Lois Lowry. When I did the pre-teaching I did some vocabulary work on "utopia" and we created a perfect world. They mentioned that everyone would be healthy, educated, and well fed. In fact, the students demanded that I put "bacon" on our Utopian list of a Perfect World. They were dead serious. 

When our classroom discussion came around to healthy eating I was delighted to find that students know what good food is and they understand the politics around it. I shared with them my challenge this week and then, at lunch, a few of them held up their lunch trays full of pizza and salad (nothing too green, sadly, since iceberg lettuce seems to rule) and gave me Sad Face and a Thumbs Down sign. These young children, no older than 13, understand bad food. One boy came up to me and said, "We don't even have cooks. Just people who know how to put a pizza together on a tray or throw some fries in the oven. That's not food."

Basically, this is all connected for me:

The giant corporations and box stores who sell the genetically modified food to the masses to "feed" us.

The organic movement that excludes anyone not wealthy enough to partake in it.

The politics of school lunch programs and what passes for food.

The problems schools and society are faced with that's compartmentalized in a way that muddies the waters so we can't see clearly enough how to fix it.

Those students get it. The adults ought to be able to do something about it.

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Be sure to check out yesterday's post on the math of living on a $1.50 a day.

In the video I reference a James Beard Foundation Award Winning book I'm reading entitled Hungry Planet by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio. If you're interested, here's a link to that.

It's Tuesday night and, by my count, I've been functioning for a very long day at work (that included a 5 hour track meet!) on very few calories. I have updated my Babble blog (if you're really that interested in this Living Below the Line challenge) to show exactly what $1.50 meals can look like. Meals, grocery store planning, and cost per serving are now a part of every moment of the day. (*note: CPS = cents per serving.)

I broke down the prices of my food over at Babble and it looks like this:

MEAT

Tuna (2 meals per can) = 68 cents per can, 34 CPS

Hot dogs are .75 cents for a package = 9 CPS

FRUIT

Fruit bowls in syrup $1.69 for 4 of them comes out to 42 cents – We quickly realized this was too expensive so I won’t get to eat fruit this week!

PROTEIN BEANS/EGGS

Kidney, black and Great Northern beans are 59 cents a can, come in 3.5 servings = 17 CPS

Pinto beans are $1.19 but there are more servings (7) so it comes out to 17 cents, too

A dozen eggs ends up being 10 CPS

 

Today's Menu

Breakfast 

• Oatmeal 7 CPS
• 1/4 c. milk 7 CPS
• cinnamon/syrup 6 CPS

TOTAL: 20 CPS

Lunch

• Ramen (no spice packet) 18 CPS
• hot dog (not beef, not turkey, quite frankly I don't know WHAT it was made of) 9 CPS
• Oyster crackers 5 CPS

TOTAL: 32 CPS

Snack

• 2 slices bread 6 CPS x 2=12
• Peanut butter 12 CPS
• Jelly 6 CPS

TOTAL: 30 CPS

Dinner

• Tortilla (baked into a shell in the oven) 12 CPS
• Tomatoes from a can 17 CPS x 1.5 servings 25.5 CPS
• Beans (mixture of kidney and pinto) 17 CPS
• Rice 6 CPS x 2 = 12

TOTAL: 66.5 CPS

Breakfast 20

Lunch 32

Snack 30

Dinner 66.5

DAILY TOTAL: 148.50 CPS which translates to just over $1.48 for the day.

It's amazing how many people are trying to offer me food since they know I'm doing this, but I have to decline each time. First, there was that ridiculous cookie moutain at work and then today while I was out of my office for a meeting someone came in and brought me a plate of cookies just to be nice (without knowing I was doing this). It made me realize how readily food is available to me but also that if I were living below the line of poverty how I would have gladly taken it no matter how bad it is for me healthwise.

If you watch the short video above, you'll also hear me talk about the stereotypes of poor people and how we assume they're lazy because they're sluggish and that's because they DON'T HAVE THE GOOD FOODS IN THEIR BODIES. I watch schoolchildren every day who I know are living in poverty who are so grateful for a school meal when I know that the meal is full of processed foods and dyes and GMOs. How can we educators expect those little ones to come to class ready to learn when all they want to do is sleep off the crappy foods they've put in their mouths. 

That sounds like a generalization, but it's not. This is daily life for students. It makes me want to go buy fruit and grains and delicious avocados and green smoothies and all kinds of things for them. You know, food that helps you think.

That's it for today. I'm more cranky than usual and am frustrated by the lack of food choices for people. I'm frustrated by the fact that my own school is in a neighborhood that is a FOOD DESERT with no grocery stores close by but junk food on every corner. I'm frustrated that I'm hungry and tired and that I can't fix this problem in the world with the snap of my fingers or the writing of a blog post or the taking on of a 5-day challenge. 

Aren't you frustrated, too?

That's when I got jealous. So, SO jealous that I couldn't have sweet, delicious fruit. 

The Cuban is going out of town next month and mentioned that, after having done all the shopping for my Live Below the Line challenge, he will get a daily stipend from work of $25 to eat. 

That's when we were blown away by what seemed decadent. 

Some quick lessons we're learning:

Even though they are fresher, frozen vegetables are far more expensive

We didn't even go near the chicken or beef in the store - that was out of the question

If I wanted oat meal they would be from quick oats, not whole

Bread would have to be store-bought, not baked fresh at home

It's a shame that I can't have baked bread from home this week. It's fresher, has no preservatives, and tastes delicious. 

My friend, Jeannette, showed me the book pictured above (how funny that I photographed it on a pile of BANANAS WHICH I CANNOT HAVE) about nutritional healing and eating well, and as hard as I'm trying I find it impossible. One tip I got that was helpful that I keep telling people about is that if you combine beans and (hopefully) brown rice you form a complete protein which I am missing this week out of my normal diet.

We made a grocery list based on what we thought we could get and The Cuban stuck to that, thinking of ways to make whole meals and provide me with protein choices. Below are is grocery list and later I will share how much each of these cost, how we combined them cost-wise, and what meals we created.

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MEAT

My only options, on this budget, are tuna or hot dogs. (Not even real beef hot dogs, either. BOO.)

PROTEIN BEANS/EGGS

Kidney, black and Great Northern and pinto beans, a dozen eggs

VEGETABLES 

Green beans, sweet peas, carrots, sweet potatoes

CARBOHYDRATES 

Whole grain white bread, beef and chicken Ramen (without using the spice packet), Whole kernel corn, Whole potatoes in a can, Elbow macaroni, Penne rigate, Quick oats, White rice, Flour, Oyster crackers 

Corn in a can is THE DEVIL. Normally, I hate it, but I know it will provide sustenance for me this week. I haven't eaten it in about 10 years. 

TOMATO SAUCE/GRAVY

canned, diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, sloppy joe sauce, tomato soup, BBQ sauce (will be super expensive, too)

SEASONING - Bouillon cubes and that's pretty much it. They are cheap and can be used in a lot of ways.

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I'm trying to use every platform I have in order to spread the word, so please check out my Babble posts if you're interested. Day 2, here we go!

Stay with me, folks! Today's menu, bland as it was, will be spiced up later this week (I wanted to look forward to something!) Here's what I had:

Lunch: Plain ramen noodles (no spice packet) with chicken broth for flavor

Dinner: Quinoa with navy beans (made in a large batch to last the week)

Of course, I drank lots of water all day long. Tomorrow I'll have a recipe from The Cuban who is seriously challenged with cooking for me. In our home we eat well and, naturally, make sacrifices elsewhere because food is important to us. When he shops he always takes a menu so he doesn't overspend and he makes sure we use all of our food. Weekly we have about 2 nights of leftovers and sometimes he creates a whole new dish from it. 

You know how people cheer you on during a marathon and you look forward to that? Even though this is a small sacrifice to make for the greater good of spreading the word about poverty and food and the politics of it, I truly appreciate all the "attagirls" and suggestions and recipes my friends are sending me. 

Honestly, there's no greater cause I care about at the moment. I want people to eat well, but really I just want the world to be fed. 

What's Live Below the Line?

I begin my journey of spreading awareness of worldwide hunger by vowing to live on $1.50 a day for meals. To do this required a lot of planning, visiting a grocery store I rarely go to (Aldi) and plucking things from the garden though not a lot has sprung up already. Today's meals will include ramen from Aldi's that I bought for $1.69 for 12, chicken broth, and water to drink. Naturally, I will be soooo over ramen after this week.

To prepare for this mentally, I've been watching videos on the Live Below the Line YouTube channel to see how others are going about it. I watched this video of Sister Sparrow (the band) (though, if I were more awesome than I am then I would have named one of my children "Sister Sparrow") as they prepared to Live Below the Line with me next week. In fact, there are a couple other folks joining me as well.

Dresden wrote about it already on her blog for Babble. 

Jessica at Found the Marbles has some factual information about Live Below the Line.

Also joining me are my friends Heather, Laurie and Morra as well as a few celebrities (Ben Affleck, Sophia Bush) and a politician (Hunter Biden). These people all wear many hats.

The questions I have about eating have helped me think through this carefully, but I've gotten a lot of questions from friends so I put together a FAQ.

What do you mean by "extreme poverty"?

The World Bank defines that to be in financial terms that are easy to understand. In the poorest countries of the world, people are living off of $1.50 a day. That's less than the coffee I drink every morning. In terms of how many people are actually living that way, you'll have to wrap your brain around this: 1.4 billion. 

How does Live Below the Line work?

Basically, I signed up with a team of people and we chose our charity, World Food Program USA. If you know me, you know that I work in education and get to see what our children eat daily. Most of the time, I'm bothered by the choices we serve American children, but I also know that they have things like fruits and vegetables available to them in a way that poorer children don't. Friends have donated directly to our page that we set up and, for the duration of this week, I'm eating on $1.50 a day and have spent only $7.50 for the entire week.

Where does the money go that you raise, Kelly?

Good question (which I've gotten several times already). It's going to go directly to the World Food Program USA (@wfpusa on Twitter) and for every $250 we raise that will provide 1,000 school meals.

Where do I come in?

I'm glad you asked! First, you can support me by just encouraging me. Leave me a note or comment here to help me get through the day. That will mean a lot to me because I thrive on things like that. Or, give me food advice. What suggestions do you have for me? How can I really do this? What food choices would you go with if you had to live on $1.50 per day?

If you'd like to donate, please visit our team page or my personal one.

Next, spread the word! You can use your voice to let your friends know what's happening this week. 

Come back and visit. My goal is to post often so you can watch my progress.

What I wanted was a shorter line at the coffee house inside the hotel and I walked toward the corner where I knew I could get something at the bakery. 

What I got instead was a 30 minute chat with Richard. He wore a nice, warm coat and scarf. It's 61 degrees in Chicago today and I'm wearing a sundress and a sweater. Neither of us seemed overtly warm or cold. We were comfortable. 

Richard approched me slowly as I searched my bag for my phone and I knew what he wanted. I grew up here. This happens all the time. Except this time he reminded me of someone. Naturally, he is thin and looked, to me, fairly hungry. It was in his eyes. 

Richard reminded me of my father. His look, his teeth, his hair. Instead of giving him money I asked, "If you could do anything differently in your life, what would that be?" He told me right away he was 61. I figured he must have some wisdom to impart. "I'm not judging you," I quickly added. "I just want to know what to tell my students if they ask."

"I would stay in school," he said. "But I would go to suburban school. These city schools can't put one more kid in them."

Suddenly, I felt like that guy from Humans of New York. Richard gave me permission to photograph him and I kept thinking this was Humans of Chicago. It's fascinating to listen to stories. People want to control the narrative. 

I wanted to pull out my camera, spend time interviewing him, and helping someone else see his story. He obliged me with the camera (my phone) and then asked to use it to call Ruth. He wanted to tell her to come meet him beause now he had breakfast.

I forced that banana in his hand, his only hand, and he stuffed it in his pocket. "You eat that banana, alright? I mean it. You need fruit." He laughed, quietly, at me. I was part mom, part principal. All business.

In 30 minutes I learned that he used to get in trouble for "talking white", that he learned to play the coronet even after losing his arm, and that he worked for an industrial laundry company when he lost it. 

"My Ruth, she's my girl, she's smart like you," he told me. 

Then, "Thank you for seeing me. You didn't look past me."

Then, "Jesus will bless you today."

Then, "I believe He has a plan for me. You must got one, too."

Then, I walked back into the hotel and met Rane. No coffee in hand. Much better lessons in my soul, though.

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Next week I'm living below the line and raising money for food. I'm passionate about food and poverty and taking care of one another. It occurred to me that I spent more money on Richard and Ruth's food this morning than I can eat on all next week. Ironic, right? Below The Line page found here. 

Everyday when I hit the trails, I need that something that gets my body and mind in the same place for running. I cant really get behind the repetitive techno music which you can find on every workout/fitness mix that is sold nowadays which is just the "Top 40" but remixed. I need that music thats orchestrated to make you feel like a badass, inspires you to keep on persevering, or gets the rhythm pounding in your ears, thats the music that I want to hear and to be expressed more. Its whats calms me, but pushes me harder.

Right now, my mom does more yoga than hard core working out (running and weights) and this is her favorite to both listen to, relax to, and get her Ashtanga on to (whatever that means). It's by James Blake and it's called "Retrograde".

I hope you enjoyed these and that they inspire you to get moving! What are your favorites to always move to and do your workouts?