Life After Windbird, Day 120: Great Day in Nashville
Date: Saturday, December 10, 2016
Weather: Partly Sunny; High Temp 42, Low 25 degrees F
Location: At Home with Patsy and Joe in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee
My niece Janet and I headed into downtown Nashville this morning. The second oldest church in Nashville is the First Presbyterian and they give space to the group Janet volunteers for on Saturday mornings. We spent our morning selling copies of Nashville’s award-winning street paper, The Contributor. The program gives economic opportunity to the homeless and those suffering from poverty. These people come in and buy the newspapers at 75 cents a copy and then go out on the street and sell them for $2. They get to keep the profits and they use this money to pull themselves out of poverty. There are wonderful success stories, and I truly enjoyed meeting the men and women who take advantage of this program. They are obviously serious about their newspaper sales, and at the same time, there exude joy through their seriousness. I left there feeling better about the world than I have in weeks.
Janet and I had a barbecue lunch on Broadway Street that houses Nashville’s honkytonk bars. And then we headed to the Tennessee Performing Arts Center to meet up with Patsy, Joe, and Monica. Somehow Google Maps on Janet’s phone had us walking in the wrong direction, but looking at the map we finally realized the mistake. I got Google Maps up on my phone and we headed back the way we came, all the way through town, and finally arrived at the Center to see Nashville’s Nutcracker. The Nashville Symphony played the music and the dancers from the Nashville Ballet were fantastic. It was a beautiful Nutcracker presentation. We then drove back to Mt. Juliet for dinner and headed home. It was a good day here in Nashville . . . despite the cold.
