Living in a city affords you many luxuries. Food from any region of the world is available nearby. Museums with invaluable treasures open their doors for free. A subway system lets you get around easily.

But a city also shows you the flipside. Homeless people camp in Rock Creek Park just off the bike path, in the three parks near my house, and in the doorways and bus shelter enclosures between the metro and my office. They open the door at the local CVS in hopes of getting a tip so they can buy food. They offer me blessings, even when I tell them I have no cash to give them. (Most are friendly; some are scary. But that’s true of all humanity, isn’t it?)

Estimates place the homeless rate in the D.C. metro area somewhere around 12,000. Given how many homeless people I encounter just in my daily life, I don’t doubt the number, although it saddens me.

Saturday I’m taking part in the Help the Homeless 5K Walkathon. All the money raised goes toward local agencies helping the homeless in various ways.

If you have the ability to contribute, please consider making a donation.

If you follow the link, your donation will benefit my designated charity — Martha’s Table.

Martha’s Table provides 200 low-income, at-risk children, teens, and their families with nutritious meals and supervised learning and literacy activities in a safe environment 365 days a year. McKenna’s Wagon, the seven-day-a-week mobile soup kitchen, feeds meals to the hungry and homeless daily at nine locations in the District. The Community Center for Healthy Living offers a family-centered Laundromat with an associated clothing distribution center and health education programs. Children and teens, ages 1-18 years old, are provided day care, after-school, weekend, holiday, and summer educational and recreational programs. 97% of the youth in the programs progressed to the next grade in school, and all the preschool and toddler-age children advanced to appropriate developmental levels. As part of the children and family programs, parents are educated and trained to enrich and strengthen their home environment to empower their children to thrive.

If you live in the area, please consider walking with me. Every little step matters, particularly if we take them together.

Today is Veteran’s Day. Take two minutes to remember those who died long ago to protect our country and to save our world.

Take two minutes to think about those who are overseas right now. When I see their dead compatriots’ names and ages flash across my tv every Sunday, I am reminded of how young those in the military really are.

In England, every Nov. 11 at 11 a.m., the nation goes silent in honor of Remembrance Day. The whole country. TVs and radios cease broadcasting for two whole minutes. People pause, in silence, for 120 seconds, no matter where they are. Can we do the same thing? Can we take that amount of time out of our busy lives to stop and remember?

When those we need to remember have given so much, how can we not give so little?

I’m setting my cell phone now to remind me at 10:59.

Three beautiful things from the last week:

1. Rudi is a computer person and a self-proclaimed Mac Geek. Because of this, he is periodically called upon to provide personal computer help with friends, family members, acquaintances, and random people on the street. Sunday, he went to help a fellow DC for Democracy member with a laptop problem. Michelle is in grad school and her laptop had had some issues. Another DC4D member, Joanne, had a spare, unwanted, unused Mac laptop gathering dust in a closet and offered it to her to use until hers returned from its repair jaunt. Unfortunately, the second laptop had hard drive issues, so Rudi was called upon to salvage stuff from the second laptop to put back on the first laptop. In the end, Michelle left happy with her original laptop complete with all her work from Joanne’s machine. Michelle had no need for a second laptop, particularly one with a dead hard drive. And Joanne didn’t want her machine back because she hadn’t been using it. So they both told Rudi to keep it!

We have a laptop. We have a laptop in the month when I have to write a novel. We have a laptop so I can go to the coffeeshop and get out of the apartment on weekends and so I can write in the car while we’re driving to Connecticut for Thanksgiving (don’t worry — I’ll only write on the portions when I’m the passenger!).

We so have to pay this forward. Thank you Michelle and Joanne!!!!!!!

2. The Japanese maple by the Indonesian embassy in D.C. has turned purple for the fall season, which allowed me to walk under a violet canopy in the rain on my way to the Metro yesterday morning. This morning was sunny and warm, so I walked the 2 1/2 miles to work, kicking through dried leaves along the sidewalk. The trees were dancing, brilliant against a blue backdrop. The smell of fall has finally permeated the D.C. air and it is hard not to revel in being alive.

3. When I walked to work on Tuesday, I passed by a liquor store that clearly believed in celebrating Halloween year-round. The sign in their back lot read, “Parking for Costumers Only.”

I have a post-Election hangover (not at all related to extreme jubilation, immense amounts of candy corn, and a post 3 a.m. bedtime, I’m sure), so I’m going with a meme today.

Via Book Moot:

Do this…
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next four sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don’t you dare dig around for that “cool” or “intellectual” book on your shelves. (I know you were thinking about it.) Just pick up whatever is closest.

Even in the feeble streetlights, I could see, up and through that glorious haze, that I had never seen that woman before in my life. “Ain’t you Bertha’s boy? Got a brother name Freddy that married Dolley and Pritchard’s girl? You Bertha’s boy what went to Korea? Ain’t yall’s pastor Reverend Dr. Miller over at Shiloh Baptist?”

Taken from the title story of All Aunt Hagar’s Children: Stories, by Edward P. Jones. Jones is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who lives and places his stories in D.C.

If you feel like playing, please do.

Get out there today and exercise the most powerful right you have as an American — voting. Without a populace that votes the idea of a democratic republic just doesn’t work.

I don’t care whom you vote for (okay, that’s an outright lie, but it’s much more important to me that you vote at all than that you vote the way that makes sense to me); it’s only relevant to me that you cast your ballot — be it on paper, in a booth, or on a computer.

Follow your conscience; whether it tells you to vote for a specific person, against a certain person, or in support of a party philosophy is between you and your ballot.

And, remember, you don’t have the right to complain later on about the outcome of the election or the decisions politicians make or that your taxes have gone up if you can, but don’t, vote today. Seriously — if you start complaining, I’m going to ask.

Congratulations on being an American today. The potential that every election holds is one of the things that makes this country great.

Edited to add the following two items:
It occurs to me that if you have children, you should take them to the polls. Yes, they’ll have to be patient and hang out while you stand in line. But the best way to create future voters is to demonstrate to them today the importance of the act. So, yes, bring the kids along with you when you vote. They don’t have to go into the voting booth with you. And they can run around the polling location a bit if it’s large enough to accomodate that. But it’s important that they get to see that voting is worth standing in line for or stopping off on the way home or making a special trip for.

Also, relevant to D.C.-area readers only: Once you’ve cast your ballot, make sure you stop by your local branch of Olsson’s. They’re giving a discount on certain items (like most merchandise? I don’t have my newsletter in front of me…) when you show them your “I voted” sticker.

Five days out seemed like a good time to look back on the NaNoWriMo progress made to date.

Day 1: I roared out of the start, completing 2,017 words on the first night. This much progress was made in less than four hours, during which time I also was able to eat dinner and talk to my MIL on the phone. I was impressed with myself, perhaps a little cocky. I felt confident that I could write a 50,000 word novel and still have a life.

Day 2: Hubris is an amazing thing. 619 words. I did not turn the tv on. I did not pull out the knitting. It had been a long day at work and Rudi went out for the evening to a meeting, leaving me home alone. I think that a better strategy would have been to take a 30 minute nap and then to have gotten up to write because I was clearly exhausted. I did manage to Swiffer my ceiling, so the evening was not a total loss.

Day 3: Little writing was expected to get done this evening because I had long-standing plans to see a movie with friends. Of course, the movie was sold-out. But we went out for tea instead. The good news is that the victim of the story was named through a joint effort by my friends. When I got home, I fell asleep on the couch instead of writing. Total words: a big, fat 0.

Day 4: Painful, painful, painful. I hate novels, writing, and everything about them. I am miserable. Rudi is miserable. Why am I doing this again? Think of how much knitting I could have gotten done by now this month if I weren’t supposed be working on this stupid thing. The day was lovely and I spent it all inside. I feel like Sally Brown in It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, after she skips out on trick-or-treating and a party to sit outside all evening waiting for something she thought would be even better. Is it possible for this to get worse? I eke out just over 600 words.

Day 5: Before going to bed on Day 4, I decide that Kat has the right idea and that I need more micro-goals in order to get where I need to go. So I wrote out a whole page of numbers. This helps some. As does actually leaving the house during daylight hours. The word count currently sits at 5,515. I’d like to get in another 535 words before bed because that will be double what I had when I started the day.

Encouragement is welcome (and necessary).