My Wife

My wife is the best person in the world! No kidding! She has a heart of gold and good sense to go with it. If everyone were as kind, yet strong as she is, what a lovely world we'd live in.

She has a tough job - assistant director of the soup kitchen in Trenton, NJ, a typical eastern city with a large population of very poor (homeless), poor (welfare) and working poor (they have jobs but thyey still don't earn enough for decent housing and food. Most of the people who eat at the soup kitchen (they don't serve soup, by the way, but provide about 3000 "dinners" a week) are "street people". That means that among other things they don't own much and defend it right up front, and are easily goaded into defensive in-your-face behavior. Yet she quiets down skirmishes and bans fighters from the kitchen -- they get their meals at the door and cannot enter the soup kitchen proper for a period of anywhere from a day to several months. And they say, "Yes, Ms Cathy -- see you in a [appropriate time interval]. Have a nice day."

These are people who, as they say, you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley! I couldn't do her job for more than a day.

So on a daily basis, she juggles the needs of every conceivable range of personality and never loses her cool. What a woman!

Incidentally, you can support her work by volunteering some time and making a donation.
Trenton Area Soup Kitchen