Cards Against Humanity, the often-vulgar card game, has launched a limited edition of its namesake product without any instructions and with a detailed explanation of each joke, "why it’s funny, and any relevant social, political, or historical context."

Why? Because, produced in this form, "Cards Against Humanity Explains the Joke" is not a game at all, which would be subject to tariffs as the cards are produced overseas. Instead, the product is "information material" and thus not sanctionable under the law Trump has been using—and CAH says it has obtained a ruling to this effect from Customs and Border Patrol.

"What if DHS Secretary and Dog Murderer Kristi Noem gets mad and decides that Cards Against Humanity Explains the Joke is not informational material?" the company asks in an FAQ about the new edition. (If you don't follow US politics, Noem really did kill her dog Cricket.) Answer: "She can fuck right off, because we got a binding ruling from Trump’s own government that confirms this product is informational and 100% exempt from his stupid tariffs."

Pre-orders for the $25 product end on October 15, and it will allegedly never be reprinted. All profits will be donated to the American Library Association "to fight censorship."

This is the way

Now, I would never claim that Cards Against Humanity is a particularly highbrow form of entertainment; for instance, the website promoting the new edition opens with "Trump is Going to Fuck Christmas" in giant white letters. (That headline refers to Trump's tariffs... I hope.)

"This holiday season, give your loved ones the gift of knowledge, give America’s libraries the gift of cash, and don’t give Donald Trump a fucking cent," the site says.

Some of the cards and their explanations are more literate than you might expect. For instance, English majors and poetry lovers may recognize the source of this quotation, found on one of the game's cards, as the final lines of T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men":

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Cards Against Humanity mucks this up a bit by printing the final line as "Not with a bang, but with _____________" (extra comma, extra "with"). Ouch. But it redeems itself slightly by adding a nice note about the time and context of the composition, noting that the "humor comes from a juxtaposition of the poem's grandiloquent language with Cards Against Humanity's often crude, low-brow jokes." Hopefully, it inspires at least a few people who have never before heard the name "T.S. Eliot" to read some of his verse.

(If you want to give it a go, the greatest hits are probably "The Waste Land," "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," "The Hollow Men," "Journey of the Magi," "Ash Wednesday," and Eliot's long late masterpiece "The Four Quartets." Eliot is also responsible for the poems that served as the basis of the musical "Cats," which eventually became a feature film featuring human performers who at one point in development had feline buttholes. According to reports from inside the production, "The job of editing out all of the buttholes was ultimately left to one crew member who was hired specifically to excise unintended buttholes." Eliot would have hated everything about this sentence.)

CAH has done this sort of thing before. In 2017, the company bought a small plot of land in Texas on the US/Mexico border to "make it as time-consuming and expensive as possible for Trump to build his wall." In 2024, CAH sued SpaceX, saying that the rocket company had moved construction equipment onto CAH's Texas land without permission.

Read full article

Comments

After the demise of Napoleon's Empire, the Congress of Vienna (1814–15) redrew the map of Europe. What is now Belgium was incorporated into the new United Kingdom of the Netherlands. One small area bordering the Netherlands and Prussia, however, was granted an unusual status: a 900-acre strip of land that remained independent and neutral for over a century.

This territory, known as Neutral Moresnet, was 1 mile wide and 3 miles long. In the modern era, only Vatican City and Monaco are smaller.

The peculiar arrangement came about because of the presence of a valuable zinc spar mine, named Altenberg in German or Vieille Montagne in French. In the 19th century, deposits of this kind were rare: one of the few other places in Europe where Zinc was being processed was Bristol. Neither the Netherlands nor Prussia was willing to concede the mine, so they both agreed to administer the district jointly as a neutral condominium in 1816.

Neutral Moresnet had its own flag (based on the emblem of the mining company), coat of arms and anthem (set to the tune of O Tannenbaum), but it did not have its own currency. The French franc was the legal tender, although the currencies of Prussia (replaced by Germany in 1871), the Netherlands, and, after 1830, Belgium were also in circulation. 

Life in Neutral Moresnet was dominated by the mining company, which wasn't only the major employer but also operated residences, shops, a hospital, a school and a bank. It also founded shooting clubs, a concert band, a carnival club and a gymnastics club.

When the mine was exhausted around 1885, the survival of Neutral Moresnet was in doubt. In August 1903, a casino was opened after the Belgians closed all such resorts in their territory, but Prussia soon forced it to shut down. The production of hard liquor in several distilleries also generated income. In 1908, Dr. Wilhelm Molly, the mine's doctor, proposed to turn Neutral Moresnet into the world's first Esperanto‑speaking state, named Amikejo, or "friendship-place". The World Congress of Esperanto even declared Neutral Moresnet the capital of the Esperanto community.

Germany annexed it during the First World War, but the Treaty of Versailles awarded the territory, along with several nearby villages, to Belgium. Neutral Moresnet was renamed Kelmis (in French: La Calamine) and converted into a Belgian municipality in 1920. Today, it’s in the francophone Walloon Region, but belongs to Belgium’s small German-speaking community.

Visitors can learn more about Neutral Moresnet at the Vieille Montagne Museum, housed in the former mansion of the mine's director. Of the 60 border markers for the territory, more than 50 are still standing, and traces of the open-air mining operations can still be seen in the landscape. Kelmis is also the only place on earth where the yellow zinc violet grows. The former quadripoint (Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and Neutral Moresnet) on top of the Vaalserberg is now a tripoint, marked by a border marker. 

The mining company Vieille Montagne survived the dissolution of Neutral Moresnet and continues to exist as VMZINC, a part of Umicore.

Approximately every human being on the planet has been texting me about the Qatar air base story:

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced Friday that the Pentagon has agreed to host a new Qatari Emiri Air Force facility in Idaho, saying that the nation has played a “core part” in securing the Gaza peace deal.

Hegseth made the announcement during an enhanced honor cordon arrival ceremony at the Pentagon for Qatar’s Minister of Defense Saoud bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.

“Today, we’re announcing a letter of acceptance in building a Qatari Emiri Air Force facility at the Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho,” Hegseth said.

Qatar is a small country that has purchase extremely fast, extremely expensive fighter jets. In this Qatar is similar to Singapore, which… also has an airbase in Idaho.

The U.S. Army Flight Training Detachment includes six Army National Guard pilots who fly with RSAF pilots. The arrangement is one of several arrangements the RSAF has with the U.S. military. RSAF pilots rotate through the training station in Arizona to train in desert environments and alongside U.S. pilots.

“It’s the best job I’ve had in the Army by far,” said Denton. “It’s a lot of fun. There’s a lot of uniqueness to working with other countries. It’s rewarding to break through those cultural barriers, and you can see the smile on their faces when they go out and accomplish something.”

While at the OCTC, Denton said RSAF pilots conducted individual and crew-level qualifications and worked with Marine Joint Terminal Attack Controllers to simulate providing close air support. Each engagement is recorded, allowing crews to review their training run while receiving real-time feedback from senior pilots, master gunners and range personnel.

So… it is not an arrangement without precedent. It is true that there are a variety of fishy things going on with Trump’s relationship with Qatar (and some of those are manifesting in the effort to broker an Israel-Hamas deal), and it is quite possible that this represents a payoff for Qatar. But it’s not nearly as surprising or alarming when you appreciate why countries that have basically no airspace might want to conduct training in Idaho, which has rather a substantial amount of airspace.

That said, fun to watch MAGA freak:

Never thought I’d see Republicans give terror financing Muslims from Qatar a MILITARY BASE on US soil so they can murder Americans.

I don’t think I’ll be voting in 2026.

I cannot in good conscience make any excuses for the harboring of jihadis.

This is where I draw the line. pic.twitter.com/24OdLMw14Y

— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) October 10, 2025

Photo Credit:By Airwolfhound from Hertfordshire, UK – F-15QA, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=151156385

The post The Qatar Thing appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

This article is about 34 tons of plutonium that the US government doesn’t know what to do with. The current suggestion is to use it to power nuclear reactors to run all that AI nobody wants. The article lacks historical grounding and thus gets a lot wrong.

There’s a story about that plutonium, but it’s not the one that the reporter, Zack Coleman, tells. And others have forgotten, or never learned, large chunks of the story.

When the Soviet Union was coming apart, President George H. W. Bush moved to convince embattled President Mikhail Gorbachev that the US wouldn’t take advantage of his country’s weakened position. Bush took out of service all of the US’s “tactical” nuclear weapons. Later in the decade, Russia also took a large number of weapons out of service. Each country had about 34 tons of plutonium they didn’t need any more.

They agreed to dispose of the plutonium in some way that would not allow it to be recycled back into weapons. That was the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement.

I have a personal stake in this – I worked in a program to convert the nuclear weapons parts to a storable form of plutonium. My team designed the storage cans – three levels , the outer two welded shut. As far as I can tell, that design is still in use.

The Russians intended to use their plutonium in reactors. That was a possibility for the US, but we had a very vocal faction that wanted deep geological disposal of the plutonium. Deep disposal was far too expensive, and the insistence on it stalled the program.

The Russians moved ahead and produced fuel for reactors. The US was stuck. In 2016, partly because he was generally pissed off at the US, Vladimir Putin suspended the agreement. It wasn’t entirely unreasonable on his part. This week, the Russian Duma formally withdrew from the agreement.

But the 34 tons of US plutonium didn’t go away. A committee formed by NNSA recommended that the plutonium be diluted with a magic powder that would make it unusable and stored in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Carlsbad, New Mexico.

The composition of the magic powder is classified. I have my doubts, although I have been assured by someone in the know that it will work. Whatever. If we put it in WIPP, it’s pretty much gone forever, swallowed by the salt.

BUT

The processing of the plutonium would have to be done by Los Alamos and Savannah River, which are supposed to be ramping up to make more plutonium parts for nuclear weapons. WIPP’s license with the State of New Mexico would have to be modified. All that takes time. So we’ve still got the plutonium. Enter the Trump administration.

Colman’s article is confused, because he doesn’t understand that history. There’s more history, too. There have been many attempts to use plutonium in the fuel for nuclear reactors, and none has been successful. They’ve worked, more or less. Russia has the most experience, and they use plutonium regularly.

The problem is that manufacturing and handling nuclear fuel containing plutonium is more difficult than for uranium alone. That makes costs higher. The plutonium doesn’t add anything to energy generation to offset those costs. That’s been true in the US and other countries.

A gaggle of new nuclear reactor companies have new ideas on how to design nuclear reactors. One of them, Oklo, is interested in the plutonium. Chris Wright, Trump’s Secretary of Energy, was on the Oklo board. Oklo wants to provide power for AI. Sam Altman was also on its board, so we are at the intersection of new reactor design, AI, and conflict of interest.

AI looks like the next big economic bust, exacerbated by the nuclear reactors that will not be built.

Oklo’s design is a metal-fueled, liquid-metal-cooled, fast reactor. Plutonium is better adapted to a fast reactor than to today’s commercial designs. But the history of such designs is not as sunny as Oklo makes it sound. Oklo probably doesn’t have the facilities to manufacture plutonium fuel. They would take years to build and install.

Contrary to the quotes in Colman’s article, NNSA does not need this plutonium for its pit program. There are gobs of plutonium around. That is what the agreement with Russia about the 34 tons was intended to address.

So the article is a mess. We seem to have consigned the history of the 1990s and the response to the end of the Soviet Union to the memory hole. I don’t know why.

The post A Guy Walks Into A Reactor Shop With 34 Tons of Plutonium… appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

“Hurry up, a wall of rain is coming at us.”

My father’s words are cut off by the creak of the cemetery gate.

The living are not frequent visitors here — the overgrown grass and a fallen tree blocking the path make it clear that those beneath the ground spend most of their time in solitude.

I haven’t liked coming here since I saw shovelfuls of earth thrown onto my grandfather’s coffin. But today the graves will tell me something valuable.

I will finally learn the names of relatives I never knew.

Genealogy has been gaining popularity across the world. For some, the search for roots is a unique hobby, while for others it becomes a lifelong pursuit. People everywhere take DNA tests, compile family trees, and explore online archives to learn about relatives abroad, ancestors lost in war, and their true origins.

In Ukraine, the exploration of one’s lineage carries profound meaning. It is a way to restore a history that others tried to tear out page by page.

It is also a way to grasp what Ukraine might have been were it not for countless occupations, and to understand the price that was paid for us to be born.

Researching one’s family line is a chance to reclaim the names erased by different regimes and to feel a stronger foundation beneath their identity — one that helps them find new strength for resistance.

After all, behind nearly every Ukrainian family, some ancestors fought for freedom.

Since his school years, my grandfather had been fascinated by researching the history of everything around him: our family line, the village where he grew up, and even the objects he found under his feet.

I still remember how the cabinets in his room sagged under newspaper clippings, coins, stamps, medals, badges, and simply curious historical artifacts.

My father always joked that he had Google before it was invented — because grandpa had the answer to any of his questions.

And it was precisely this curiosity that helped trace our family history back seven generations — if you count me.

“He’s been sitting there for days with a voice recorder,” my grandmother tells me as she greets me in the yard.

Shortly after, I hear for the tenth time the stories of our family history: how one of our ancestors, once among the wealthiest merchants of the Russian Empire, lost his entire fortune at billiards in just two days; how another fell asleep and woke up during his own funeral; and how yet another kidnapped a princess from the Caucasus, forcing him to flee and eventually settle in the northwestern oblast of Volyn.

I came across roughly the same stories on the creaking tape recorder that my grandfather now uses to preserve this knowledge. There were over 120 recordings at one point — and I’m sure there are even more now. At times, his stories sound like fiction, but who am I to argue with someone who has spent his whole life searching for truth?

What I wanted was to follow a similar path myself — to learn something about my mother’s side of the family. I had heard almost nothing about it.

The first step is to ask the oldest members of the family, since they are usually the ones who know the most. The more I can get from them, the less time I need to spend in the archives. Still, I remain critical because names and events can often become distorted in memory.

“Researching a family tree requires a long-term effort. You start with your parents and grandparents. If there are great-grandparents still alive, you interview them too — anyone along the direct line. Then you move on to talking with the siblings of your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on,” explained genealogist Serhii Fazulianov.

Older relatives sometimes refuse to speak about their past or their family’s past, still burdened by the fear of life under repressive regimes. For example, some families decide to keep silent regarding a relative fleeing the Holodomor, an artificial famine engineered by the USSR in 1932-1933.

Yet this is precisely the information that helps you understand what your lineage has endured. Preparing my grandmother for a conversation about her ancestors, I set out to collect as many names, birth and death dates as possible.

I also wanted to find out whether anyone in the family had been involved in World War II, survived the Holodomor, exile, or repression. These are the key moments that help establish the geography of the family’s migration and provide additional leads.

Firstly, my grandmother was reluctant to talk, insisting she knew nothing about our family line. But two hours later, we had managed to track down more than 70 relatives on my mother’s side. At times, the memories were confused or contradictory, but it was a solid start.

“Your great-grandfather came to Volyn, fleeing hunger in the Dnipropetrovsk region. He was just a little boy, traveling alone without a ticket. The famine there was terrible — all they had to eat were roots from the grass. His family was just trying to survive, to keep from dying,” my grandmother said.

And indeed, I found archival records of people with the same surname who had perished during the Holodomor in the district he came from. I still need to find out whether this was just a namesake or a distant relative whose blood now flows in me.

My grandmother still recalls stories of how our ancestors hid in the forests, passing letters or other supplies to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, who fought for Ukrainian independence during the 1940s to 1960s.

One of my great-grandmothers, according to my grandmother, was even exiled to Magadan in the Far East Russia, and all of her husbands were repressed for their pro-Ukrainian stance.

Her stories also include some collective farmers who worked in Soviet rural households. And occasionally even committed communists, like my great-grandfather Panteleimon, who forbade my grandma from voting in elections and smoked a pack of cigarettes in record time.

Still, these stories are full of gaps. My grandmother does not remember the exact names of most distant relatives, nor when they were born. The fact that my lineage stretches across only a few villages works in my favor: local cemeteries can tell a story that even the oldest family members no longer remember.

Through local cemeteries, I can uncover the names of family members, their date of birth and death, missing from the family tree. Still, it is not that simple.

Living under different regimes, or simply due to clerical mistakes in the records, names and surnames often appeared differently from the ones we knew within the family. For example, it was thanks to a grave marker that I discovered one of my great-great-grandfathers was officially registered as Kiryk, even though everyone had always believed his name was Kyrylo.

Many families faced the problem of Russified surnames — authentic Ukrainian surnames altered with suffixes like -ov, -in, or -ev. That’s how the Kravets lineage turned into the Kravtsov family.

People with Ukrainian last names were considered of lower status, and in Soviet times, this could even become an obstacle to career advancement.

Old family photographs hold a unique value, not just because they show us what our ancestors looked like, but because they hold a story.

“On the backs of photos, there are often notes: who the photo was for, who it’s from, or even who exactly is pictured. That alone can help fill in the gaps in your family history,” explained genealogist Fazulianov.

Remember how I was told that my great-grandmother had been exiled to the Russian far east? In reality, she lived in Karaganda, in northern Kazakhstan.

Today, several vital archives in Ukraine have been digitized: in particular victims of political repression, the Holodomor, and the executions at Babyn Yar, the ravine in Kyiv where the Nazis killed over 100,000 civilians.

Ukraine is currently one of the leading former Soviet republics in the declassification of Soviet-era documents. Back in the USSR, tracing your family tree was nearly impossible; ordinary citizens were denied access to the archives. Even now, the declassified materials are far from complete. The Soviet regime repeatedly tried to destroy any evidence of its crimes.

Another invaluable resource includes church records, which were kept by the clergy in official registers. These documents recorded births and baptisms, marriages, deaths, and more.

To make things even more complicated, until the 18th or 19th century most peasants didn’t even have surnames. People were known simply by their first name and father’s name, or a nickname.

Western Ukrainian lands, which were then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, began officially recording names and family ties in the 1780s. But in the territories ruled by the Russian Empire, that didn’t happen until after the abolition of serfdom in 1861. Before that, even people from the same family could end up with different surnames.

And even if your relatives did somehow end up in the historical records, there’s no guarantee you’ll ever find out. Both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union routinely relocated archives to Moscow or St. Petersburg or destroyed them outright.

Since the invasion of 2014, Ukraine has lost access to the archives in Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk. During the full-scale invasion, more archives have been damaged in fighting or fallen under occupation.

Russian archives, where you might also uncover records of your relatives, have always been difficult to access. Since the full-scale war, they’ve become even more closed off. In 2021, for instance, the Russian Ministry of Defense classified World War II-era Red Army documents once again.

From the beginning, I knew this would be a long shot with little guarantee of big success. Any traces of my family’s past may have been lost, destroyed, or relocated thousands of kilometers from Ukraine.

A weary sigh is inevitable.

I’m yet another generation forced to gather historical memory grain by grain, like trying to lift sand with a fork.

But we have no other choice: this was the life’s work of my grandfather. Letting it remain trapped in a creaky old voice recorder would be a crime.

By restoring the memory of my past, I can finally understand who I truly am.

NEWS OF THE DAY:

By: Aidan Stretch

Good morning to readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands.

RUSSIAN DRONE KILLS FRENCH JOURNALIST: A Russian drone attack killed a French photojournalist on Friday in eastern Ukraine, according to Reuters.

The drone struck Antoni Lallican near the eastern Ukrainian town of Druzhkivka, killing him and injuring an accompanying Ukrainian photographer, Hryhory Ivanchenko. This was the first time a journalist has been killed by a drone in the war.

The head of the Ukrainian Union of Journalists, Serhiy Tomilenko, says that “by targeting journalists, the Russian army is deliberately hunting those trying to document war crimes.”

CZECH ELECTIONS COULD JEOPARDIZE UKRAINE AID: On October 3/4, Czechs are voting in parliamentary elections which will likely bring right-wing populist party ANO to power. Czech Prime minister Petr Fiala’s current pro-Ukraine coalition has the lowest public support of any administration since 2013. Pre-election polls suggest a coalition less friendly to Ukraine will likely take power with ANO’s leader, billionaire Andrej Babis, as prime minister.

According to Politico, Babis’s victory is especially concerning for a Prague-led ammunition initiative that has delivered millions of rounds to Ukraine — which Babis has pledged to cancel.

UKRAINE’S DAMAGE TO RUSSIAN OIL LIKELY OVERSTATED: According to Carnegie Politika, Ukraine’s strike campaign on Russian oil refineries has inflicted less damage than previously reported.

While the Washington Post has reported that Russia has lost 38 percent of its oil refining capacity, the real percentage is likely lower, says Sergey Vakulenko, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

“Russia’s oil refineries are facing a lot of problems—but things are far from catastrophic,” he wrote. “How the situation develops in the coming months depends on whether Ukraine is able to maintain the pace of its strike campaign, or even ramp up attacks.

Dog of War:

Zoriana met this dog during her morning walk today. It’s getting colder every day, but he didn’t seem to care about it, just looking at the autumn leaves while his owner was typing something on her phone.

Stay safe out there.

Best,
Mariana

Oh so tired.

If there is an award for “non-employee staying at a Five Guys restaurant for the longest period of time” I most certainly won it today.  I was at Five Guys from 1:55 pm to 8:20 pm.  Whew!!

But what a grand event it turned out to be!  A neighbor who works with Five Guys corporate reached out a couple of months ago and asked if Kindness Activist would like to hold a fundraising event at the new restaurant in Arlington.  It is a historic location because they built it in the same location as the very first ever Five Guys.  Of course, we said YES to a fundraiser.  I mean, we love finding creative ways to raise money to spread kindness, and who doesn’t love Five Guys food?? 

I have seen schools and sports clubs advertise these events at restaurants but had no idea how it worked.  I asked lots of questions – could I bring cake to share with guests, what times could it be, how did the percentage split work, would take-out orders count…  We set a date for a Sunday afternoon in September, then the store emailed to apologize and explain that they learned the events had to be during the week.  We chose a date (September 25) and the hours stayed the same as we had arranged for the weekend date – 2:00 pm – 6:00 pm.

As the event grew closer, I realized the times were not ideal…  It was a THURSDAY, and most people would be at work during those times (or commuting).  Oops.  But I had asked so many questions already…  I decided to just go with the flow, not rock the boat, and test it all out so I could better understand the whole concept.

Today I put on my Kind is Cool shirt and packed a roller bag of things to do.  I told David, “I don’t think there will be many people.  I am looking at this event as a day to learn the ropes, and to have 4 hours of free time to sit and get things done!!”.

Only, I was wrong.  Oh so wrong.

The first person must’ve walked in around 2:10.  I saw her even before she came in the door.  She peeked inside, changed her mind, and started walking away.  But something made her turn back…

I thought I may have recognized her as a pantry guest.  I gave her a big smile, which she returned.  We exchanged pleasantries about how lovely the weather was and she made her way over to my table and sat down.  I realized I did not know her – but I would soon.  We talked for a good 20 minutes.  She told me several sweet stories.  As we talked, I folded colorful sheets of paper I had brought. I planned to make LOTS of Daily Polls for our street corner today.  I thought that would be a fantastic use of time – getting ahead on that task. 

I think I finally asked her what she planned to eat.  “I haven’t had any food since breakfast!” she declared.  “Do you serve turkey burgers??”.

Ahhh – she thought I worked there!  It was quite funny.  “I thought you were folding menus or something,” she said.  I invited her to come sit back down as they prepared her meal and we continued our conversation.

Then the first “official” guest came, a very sweet neighbor.  She joined my new friend and I at the table.

And I can confidently say – there was not a moment of “silence” or slow time after that.  There was a steady stream of people – far more than I imagined.  It was fun seeing so many neighbors!  I got to talk to many, many people.

Two people who wanted to attend but couldn’t sent donations.  They asked us to use the money to treat someone to a meal.  Challenge accepted!!

 

At first, we thought we should use it to buy food for people experiencing homelessness.  Only, there didn’t appear to be anyone in that situation around the restaurant at that time… 

 

Then we thought treating someone at the bus stop would be great – but if you were waiting for a bus, you might not want to go inside to order a meal…  You might miss your bus!  We considered buying meals and walking down the street a bit to give them to people experiencing homelessness in another area where we felt they would certainly be.  But really – half the fun of eating out is getting to pick what you want to eat, right??  It didn’t feel “right” for us to choose and just drop the food off.

 

So, we got the great idea to offer meals to people getting OFF the bus.  An intrepid crew of 3 kids and 1 adult went out to choose the first person!

 

It didn’t take long for them to walk back in.  “We found someone!!” they said.  And sure enough they had.  It was a woman who looked like she was probably coming home from a day in the office.  She was delighted to be treated to a tasty meal!! 

 

As we waited for her dinner to be prepared we chatted about Kindness Activist and the work that we do.  She was very interested and hopes to get involved in future events.  She asked if she could take a selfie, because she wanted to post about her wild experience of getting off the bus and being surprised and delighted by kindness.

 

Surprise!!  Free meal for you!

Next up was 2 young men.  They were a bit confused about what was happening – why was Five Guys giving them free food?  We explained the fundraiser, and the generous donors who wanted to buy strangers meals.  They both ordered very carefully, not wanting to spend too much of the money.  It was very sweet.

 

It's your lucky day - free dinner!

Next up was another woman.  She was so happy!!  “Is it my BIRTHDAY???” she asked incredulously.  Nooo – but it is your lucky day!  That meal used up the donated funds and so we thought we were done with spreading kindness (while at a kindness fundraising event!).  But we were wrong.

 

Because I looked out the window and saw a man who looked exactly like the “target audience” that we had thought we wanted.  He was smiling in the sunshine.  He may have not had shelter.  And he looked hungry. 

 

I rushed outside before he could leave and asked, “Hey – would you like a hamburger and fries??  They are really tasty”.  He gave me a big smile and said yes, yes he would.  So, in we went.

 

The line was a bit long at that point and I told him it would be a few minutes before his turn.  “Mind if I sit here while I wait?” he asked.  “Sure.  I will hold the place in line,” I told him.

 

And he sat right down on a seat.  A seat in that clean, air conditioned, nice restaurant.  A seat that he probably usually would not be allowed to take. 

 

Moments like that humble me and make me consider my privilege.  I can pretty much walk into any establishment I like, order something – anything, maybe just a soda or cup of coffee.  I can cool off.  Use the wifi.  Go to the bathroom…

 

I can.  But many cannot.

 

As he sat and rested, he called me over.  He had been studying the menu.  “Do you think I could get a BLT instead?” he asked.  “Yes sir, a BLT sounds delicious!  What to drink?”.  He said he didn’t want a drink.  “No drink???” I asked.  “Hey, how about a SHAKE??” I offered.  Ahhh - now a shake got his attention.  He examined the shake menu and decided vanilla was in order.  “Want whipped cream on that?” I asked with a grin.  He flashed a mischievous grin and declared, “Why yes!”.

 

When it was almost my turn to place his order, a neighbor came up and handed me a $20 bill.  “For his food,” she told me.  No – I explained that we would buy it with kindness funds.  “No, no, I want to”.

 

Kindness begets kindness.

 

When the man’s food was ready he picked it up and headed out.  I was in another conversation at the time so didn’t get to say goodbye. 

 

Another neighbor and her 2 daughters came in a bit later and as I greeted them I explained that man outdoors had just been treated to a delicious meal thanks to someone’s generosity.  The woman teared up.

 

“My daughter…” she said, pointing to her young girl.  “My daughter…  We saw that man outside, and my daughter asked if we could buy him some food.  But it is so hard.  You know, to kind of assume someone’s situation and that they need food…”.  She wiped away tears.

 

What a beautiful connection.  And such a true sentiment.  It is difficult to find a way to ask that won’t be offensive or belittling.  And sometimes the ask is not accepted.  In fact, that happened today.  One beautiful neighbor asked someone who looked hungry if she would like a free meal, and the person declined.  It’s awkward when that happens, but that can’t stop us from being open and kind.

 

Another person cried today, too.  Who would’ve thought that an afternoon in a burger joint would bring tears, but it did.  A neighbor was standing looking at the menu and I greeted her and asked how she was.  At first, she gave the usual, pat answer of being fine.  Then she confessed that actually she wasn’t fine.  That it had been a very hard day.  “Hey, I had that kind of a day just yesterday,” I told her.  I don’t know her well enough to know if she is the hugging type, but I couldn’t help myself.  And as we hugged, I felt her cry. 

 

Some days are hard.  Hugs are good medicine.

 

All afternoon people came and went.  They chatted.  Some drew pictures for the Five Guys bulletin board.  Some gave suggestions on how we could use the funds raised.

 

Neighbors met neighbors.  They sat at tables and dined together.  They told life stories.  They shared the experience.

 

I thought it would be quiet.  I thought I would “get things done”.

 

And I did get things done. 

 

Not the things I packed into my little bag.

 

But the things that NEEDED to be done.

 

Laughing.

Listening.

Talking.

Giggling.

Hugging.

Caring.

Eating.

Serving.

And being kind.

 

Speaking of kind, the restaurant extended the event an additional hour.  I am not sure when we will find out how much money we raised.  But I know one thing – however much it is, it is enough.

 

Christina, the neighbor who works for Five Guys Corporate and reached out to see if we would like to have a fundraiser

Because the kindness shown today was incredible.  People being patient with lines.  Being patient with new restaurant employees.  Being open and brave enough to sit with strangers and talk. 

 

And people showing up.  Supporting this little thing called Kindness Activist. 

 

The work continues.  I came home to find a box of pantry donations on the porch, and the Amazon person delivered 5 more as I sat on the porch to write this story. 

 

The boxes can wait until morning.

 

Tonight - I will rest.

 

And think about the beauty of a community coming together for kindness. 

 

And burgers.

 

Don’t forget the burgers.