Starting the Week Off Right

Via Digby, this story shows that it's not all con men and grifters in the world:

He is faster than a speeding stroller, more adorable than a kitten, and able to get a stranger's attention with a single courtesy. This is America's latest superhero -- and the only superhero with the power to feed the homeless.

By day, Austin Perine is a mild-mannered 4-year-old from Birmingham, Alabama. But once a week, he turns into this alter ego: a superhero set on feeding as many homeless people as possible. He likes to go by the name "President Austin."

"That's his idea of what the president is supposed to do," said TJ Perine, Austin's father. "I was like, buddy, you have no idea, but hey, I'm going along with it."

And of course, there's video.

There’s a tiny superhero with a special gift for capturing the hearts of the homeless in Alabama

Steve Hartman caught up with the caped crusader @OnTheRoadCBS https://t.co/Wjjs1fbN9B pic.twitter.com/s3Lsh51a0L

— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) May 4, 2018

Antidote: One Good Turn. . . .

One of those stories that shores up my faith in people:

Johnny Bobbitt Jr pictures with Kate McClure and her boyfriend Mark D'Amico https://t.co/odCGDwF63u pic.twitter.com/k1nDNQiGTt

— infowe (@infowe) November 23, 2017

Kate McClure, 27, who was helped by a homeless Marine named Johnny Bobbitt Jr. last month when her car ran out of gas while driving towards Philadelphia, raised more than $100,000 for the Marine through a GoFundMe donation page.

According to a report by the Philadelphia Inquirer, McClure was driving on the southbound I-95 road which goes towards Philadelphia to meet a friend when her car started to choke because it ran out of gas. She pulled on to a nearby exit ramp and just made it to the bottom. It was around 11 p.m. local time, it was dark and she was reportedly alone.

According to the report McClure, who works for the New Jersey Department of Transportation, said, "My heart was beating out of my chest. I didn’t know what the heck to do."

She then called up her boyfriend, Mark D’Amico, 38, who told her that he will come to get her. At that moment, Bobbitt Jr. came towards her and told her to sit inside the car and lock the doors and said that he will be spending his last $20 to buy gas for her, from a few blocks away.

Read the whole thing. And Happy Thanksgiving.

Antidote

To all the crap that's in the news about the Republican candidate, the Republican platform, killer cops and their apologists. Sometimes people just do the right thing:

When police officers were called to investigate a tent set up outside a Georgia college, they didn’t expect to find inspiration.

The officers were called July 9 to a campsite near a Gordon State College parking lot, where they found a 19-year-old homeless student staying in a tent hidden in some bushes, reported The Herald-Gazette.

The officers ordered him out of his tent with his hands up, but they listened to his story instead of writing a ticket for trespassing.

Fredrick Barley had ridden six hours — and more than 50 miles — on his younger brother’s 20-inch bicycle and arrived about a month early for his second year as a biology major, with nothing but his tent, a duffle bag, a box of cereal and two gallons of water.

The student, who hopes to go on to medical school, wanted to make sure he had enough time to find a job before classes began, and he spent his days riding his too-small bike to fill out applications at local businesses.

Click through to read the whole story -- it's the way things should happen. Here's the kid's reaction, in his own words.

Sidebar: It can't be just me -- I'm sure other people feel the same. Short story: I was waiting for the bus one afternoon; a few feet down a man hailed a cab, which pulled up in front of me because the bus was pulling in -- several feet from the man, who was obviously disabled. As the man made his way to the cab, I opened the door and held it until he was in and seated. When I got on the bus, the drive said "That was a good thing you did." I was sort of flabbergasted -- all I could think of to say was "It's just what you do."

What was I supposed to do, just stand there and watch this poor guy, who seemed to have had a stroke, trying to get himself and his walker into the cab without helping?

I don't think I'm weird.

Story du Jour

There are good people in the world. Some of them even wear uniforms to work.

On a cold November night in Times Square, Officer Lawrence DePrimo was working a counterterrorism post when he encountered an older, barefooted homeless man. The officer disappeared for a moment, then returned with a new pair of boots, and knelt to help the man put them on. . . .

The officer, normally assigned to the Sixth Precinct in the West Village, readily recalled the encounter. “It was freezing out and you could see the blisters on the man’s feet,” he said in an interview. “I had two pairs of socks and I was still cold.” They started talking; he found out the man’s shoe size: 12.

As the man walked slowly down Seventh Avenue on his heels, Officer DePrimo went into a Skechers shoe store at about 9:30 p.m. “We were just kind of shocked,” said Jose Cano, 28, a manager working at the store that night. “Most of us are New Yorkers and we just kind of pass by that kind of thing. Especially in this neighborhood.”

Mr. Cano volunteered to give the officer his employee discount to bring down the regular $100 price of the all-weather boots to a little more than $75. The officer has kept the receipt in his vest since then, he said, “to remind me that sometimes people have it worse.”

This all came to light thanks to a photo shot by a tourist from Arizona on her cell phone. It's gone viral.

Veterans Day Observed

Yesterday was the actual day, but since it fell on a Sunday, the official observance is today.

All I have to say is "Thank you."

9/11

I'm not going to make any grand pronouncements. Observe it as you see fit. but also think about this image. (Via Towleroad)

And read Joe Jervis' 9/11 post. And Jim Burroway has some biography/history on some of the gay men who, one way or another, found themselves in the middle.

How Many Libertarians Would Do This?

Sort of makes the whole Teabagger/Libertarian ideology ring hollow, doesn't it? From the Telegraph:

More than 160 nuclear and civil engineers over the age of 60 are planning to set up a Skilled Veterans Corps to assist restoring control over crucial cooling functions at the tsunami-hit nuclear power plant.

Decades of professional engineering expertise combined with a desire to protect younger workers from radiation exposure have united the elderly workers in a desire to help fix the plant.

Do I really need to say more?

Christmas

After having read through too many screeds by the likes of Bryan Fischer, Ann Coulter, Peter LaBarbera, Tony Perkins -- well, the list is too long to put all the names here -- I thought I'd pass this story along:



Yeah, we are so freakin' self-centered and hedonistic. I have to wonder how The Usual Suspects would handle something like this: what do you suppose they're doing for those in need this Christmas?

Thanks to Joe.My.God.

Gay Boy Makes Good

Remember Jim McGreevey? He's not only turned his life around, he's helping others do the same:

He is in a healthy, happy relationship with Mark as he studies to become an Episcopal priest. He is giving back to others who have made mistakes, often because they were caught up in the circumstances of their lives.

Gay people mostly forgave McGreevey for his affair when it came to light five years ago. We are well aware of the many ludicrous situations that occur because men, particularly in McGreevey’s generation, have been forced to live their lives in the closet. That he is living such an honorable and giving life freed from the shame of the closet is testament to the real Jim McGreevey.

McGreevey volunteers at Exodus Transitional Community at the Church of Living Hope in East Harlem, New York, which tries to help newly-released prisoners learn life skills and handle the significant challenges that ex-convicts face.

News like this starts connections forming in my head, such as the fact that, in most non-Judaeo-Christian societies, those with same-sex orientation seem to occupy a very high proportion of spiritual roles in the community -- one thinks immediately of the North American berdache, men who adopted women's roles and dress, and who were regarded as spiritually very powerful by their community. The men who married them were seen as specially favored. There are equivalent institutions in other cultures.

There is also, in shamanism, a recurring motif of the shaman-in-the-making becoming, at least psychically, a member of the opposite sex. This is supposed to complete him/her and enable the shaman to serve the whole community.

And can we talk about the high proportion of gay men in the priesthoods of various Christian denominations? (It would also be interesting to see a breakdown of members of the "helping" professions -- doctors, nurses, social workers, therapists -- by sexual orientation.)

Edward O. Wilson once posited the development of altruism as a result of genetic economics: if a non-breeding member of a group devotes his/her time to caring for others in the group -- offspring, mostly -- that behavior and the root causes of it (i.e., the non-breeding part) would be reinforced as an adaptive trait and carried on through siblings and their descendants. Can we see the same mechanism at work in the maintenance of same-sex orientation in vertebrates?

No conclusions, but some interesting trains of thought.