tcKev.com

I'm writing this at The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf at the Irvine Spectrum Center while my best friend from childhood, Brad, is meeting with a potential donor to his MAF Learning Technologies project. My internet service went out last night and I was "unplugged" for ~12 hrs (strange feeling). So now I'm getting juiced on chai and wi-fi... they make some of the best chai around (it's brewed hot, then poured over ice) and the wi-fi is free!

While catching up on email & twitter, I found several mentions of the second Laundry Love event in Santa Ana last night. Particularly exciting is the fact that the OC Register published a story on the event this morning, and then MSNBC picked it up, syndicating it nationwide!

The publicity is great, and should help to increase awareness and participation... as well as hopefully inspire others around the country to launch similar projects in their own communities. But it's something more that's causing me to tear up in the middle of the coffee shop here. It's the power of story, as I read these quotes from the Register article...

"This is wonderful," said Dolly Annette Arreguin, 55, who was planning to spend Thursday night on the concrete steps of a nearby church. She imagined pulling her newly washed sleeping bag around her and said, "I'm going to be in heaven."

And this one...

"It's a blessing," [Brizi Gonzalez, 60] said. "That's what it is. To me? God, it's wonderful. I get to wash my clothes like anyone else."

Sometimes I can feel like I don't have much... especially as I see all of the wealth that surrounds me in Newport Beach and Irvine. But then I read of those who equate the ability to sleep on the streets in a clean sleeping bag with "being in heaven", and I realize how rich I truly am! I have a bed to sleep in, in an apartment with heat and A/C. I have food to eat, a job that I love, and I don't have to avoid people because I'm embarrassed by unwashed clothes.

The challenges in our communities are so easily reduced to statistics that don't really "mean" anything to us. But there are real people — not so different from you or me — hidden behind those numbers. Here's the link again, so you can read a little more about Dolly and Brizi. And please pass it on, to help our "invisible" neighbors become more visible.

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/laundry-people-santa-2609474-event-group

To those working with Laundry Love and at 511 Santa Ana: I commend you and cheer you on! And I'll see you next month with a roll of quarters...