Happenings.

1) After finding out months ago that Lars's phone is no longer in service, I ran into him on the street the other day. He said he got a new number, so I got it from him, and he was walking with 2 very short brown-haired people from the U.P., who turned out to be his parents.

2) On Sunday night a (white) friend from my program who's also an ordained minister called me up to see if I wanted to go to a year-end awards/appreciation/fund-raising banquet for area ommunity organizers since someone from his church dropped out last minute, so I went...

The place was like half-white, half-black, and the waiters were all Mexican. The two white women at our table said they were vegetarian when they served them dinner - a piece of beef, a breast of chicken, mashed potatoes, and green beans! - but then when they brought out the vegetarian option, a pile of white rice and some steamed broccoli and carrots, they were like, "I'd like other one back," and then they preceded to polish off the beef. At the end of the night, my friend and a (black) guy who goes to his church ("Lamar") and I were talking about that, and my friend said that they must be recovering vegetarians, and Lamar said that they definitely feel off the wagon.

Later, too, Lamar said they probably shoot up ground beef.

Also, one (black) minister at the function - dreads, nice dark suit -gave a talk where he asked everyone to raise their waterglass and thank the people who carry the water when water rolls down like justice (a biblical allusion), and afterward my friend said that last year during the election the guy had a better speech, since he said that there was a mighty river of water of justice flowing, but there was a bush blocking up the river, but we were lucky, since our God burns bushes.

3) Sunday when I did a local free walking tour of sites associated with a famous U.S. murder that happened in my neighborhood, I started talking with this short 40s-ish black woman in the group, and somehow she started talking about how her parents had taken care of her and her husband's kids the previous so they could have date night, and then her and her husband ended up driving up to the Mexican neighborhood at one-thirty in the morning to get some beef tacos.