The Peanut Butter Plan (Miranda)

The peanut butter and jelly solution (a video from The Quotidian who filmed PBP 2)

The Peanut Butter Plan or PBP is now in its fourth month.  I've barely involved myself in this effort to provide food/comfort/care to the hungry because I haven't really been around, but that doesn't mean it's not worth writing about.  Co-run by Jory John and Ryan Lewis, this program  (or community?) gets together once a month to make pb&j sandwiches, then distributes them around the city.  In my case, the city would be San Francisco, but PBPs exist around the country.  If you're interested, you can go on facebook to check out the group and join up with a nearby PBP or start your own in the area.

     PBP number 2, pictured here, was pretty fun, more like a calm party than a do-gooder event, in fact.  We sipped wine, socialized, heard some live music, and had this guy named Manny, a legitimate artist, draw pictures for us (mine was a picture of myself lounging on a gigantic peanut butter and jelly sandwich while eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a glass of milk).  And then, after feeling cozy and relaxed and privileged and comfy, we picked up a few breadbags of sandwiches, and headed out to the night cold and downtown near the TL (tenderloin district) where a lot of homeless people hang out.  We wandered around handing out sandwiches and getting a lot of thanks from the people.  One guy who rejected a sandwich was very apologetic. "sorry," he said, "but I can't eat that.  I just got out of jail.  guess what they serve us everyday in jail."  As great as PB and J can be, I don't think I'd want much of that after being forced to eat it for however long he was in jail.  

     Anyway, whether you think the PBP is a good idea or not, it's important to keep in mind one of the group's core ideas-- small actions have a large impact.  By giving a person a sandwich, we were definitely doing more than alleviating their hunger temporarily.  We could see the moods of the hungry people improve because someone, anyone was showing them a little attention, not acting like they had rabies or scurvy or were dangerous.  

A little action can make a big difference.  When I was younger, I used to say to myself I was going to do at least one nice thing everyday.  Sometimes it meant giving someone a quarter, other times it was helping old people on the bus or giving some really lost person directions (I'm not even kidding, I did these things).  Today a co-worker was telling me a story about seeing someone crying on BART all the way from the mission to Oakland.  She didn't know whether to ask what was wrong and try to help or to leave the girl her space.  We all thought about that and then one person said, "I would have offered her a tissue."  

I'll be blogging again soon because at this moment in time I feel like I have a lot to say.  I'm going to talk about my tarot card reading and unemployment and the beach, and maybe other stuff.  Less emo, I promise.