St. Paul, Minnesota

Kindness and stories at the bus terminal.  During a spare ten minutes at the end of the route while we wait to return, the driver gets out of his chair, comes back, sits across from us and says "I gotta ask about the baskets."  We're the only ones on the bus.  The conversation moves to journeying, and then to mental illness and empathic sensitivity and how they often go together.  He says: "The people I know who are considered mentally ill, they're regular people, they are just unusually sensitive to what is."  We know some people like that.

In downtown St. Paul a small Asian woman with few words tries on my sheepskin vest.  She offers Caitlin an onion and in a tiny voice she says "I love you" by way of explanation, then gives us all her lettuce.  We laugh and smile and thank her many times.  The farmer's market is closing.

Later, Jim of Grunden's Deli, as we talk about passion in life, he says: "People get stuck!  Even the young ones.  It helps them to see people moving outward."  He introduced us to folks as we sat outside his deli by the farmer's market, Caitlin was sewing a skirt.  Now he's graciously driving us where we need to go, it's on his way.  We are glad we can embody doing something different.