Elmer the husky and I strolled around the park on a Monday afternoon. It was cold and dry with a bit of breeze whipping through the trees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A few minutes earlier we had stopped and I had a pleasant conversation with Perry, a homeless man in his late 60s who lives out of a kind of Conestoga wagon parked in front of an apartment building. He picks up trash all day long and I always tip him a few bucks when I see him working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perry was in fine spirits and he asked me my history of coming to the neighborhood. I told him about my father in assisted living. He asked how much that cost and when I shared the amount, he cursed. He admired Elmer. We said something about the park and then Elmer and I went along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thirty yards away a homeless woman on a bicycle was stopped in the parking lot. She had her possessions strapped across her back and the bicycle, an old mountain bike model. One of the possessions was a large metal pail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She saw me and Elmer approaching and said hello <\/em>and said what a good looking dog<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I asked her how she was doing and she said all right <\/em>with a smile. I put her in her 30s or 40s. She wasn’t addled in any way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We said goodbye and Elmer and I continued on to my car, roughly 50 yards away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I loaded Elmer into the car and turned around to see the woman bicycling toward us, very slowly, a little ungainly. It was then I noticed she wore no hat and it was 40 degrees with colder temperatures forecast for the coming days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Give her one of your extra stocking caps<\/em>, I thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I called out to her, \u201cHey could you use a stocking cap?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She rode up to me and stopped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSure,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I dug out a real beauty\u2014a hand knitted one, brown, green, orange, floppy, groovy, purchased from a real knitter at a craft fair over a decade ago. It was my emergency stocking cap and here was an emergency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I gave her the cap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWow, this is really nice,\u201d she said, pulling it on, then pulling it down low. It looked good on her. Very 70s chic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThank you,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou are welcome. Be careful out there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She rode away, but not before making a subtle adjustment to the cap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I felt good. It always feels good to give new purpose to an item that needs a new one and give it away to someone in need. It costs nothing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Elmer the husky and I strolled around the park on a Monday afternoon. It was cold and dry with a bit of breeze whipping through the trees. A few minutes earlier we had stopped and I had a pleasant conversation with Perry, a homeless man in his late 60s who lives out of a kind […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9307,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9306"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9309,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9306\/revisions\/9309"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}