Interesting Day

This is going to be an interesting day. This evening I have the quarterly PINCH covered dish dinner party. (People for Institutional and Community Harmony). This is an organization Bob belongs to. It is meant to bring together people from the black community and people from the white community for dinner and a visit. The philosophy of the organization is that if we socialize, we will get to know one another and become closer friends. In our community, most of the black community has chosen to remain segregated on the east side of town. That is they did until the flood of 2007. FEMA and the refinery (the refinery had inadvertently left a valve open at their flooded property and that oil spread over the entire east side community..coating everything with oil) bought out that entire side of town and took down most all of the housing there....about 300 homes. That meant that the black community was forced to either leave town to find housing or move into the existing rental property within the white community. So far that seems to have worked fine. Now we are attempting to get to know one another better.

I agreed to host this quarter's dinner. I knew my house was small and I could only seat six at our dining room table and four more at a card table in the living room. There was also room for two at our breakfast bar. That would have been twelve.

Earlier this week, one of the women whose husband started this organization, called me to see whom all I had invited. I gave her the list of invitees and what they were bringing to the dinner. She called back later to ask me to invite two others that were regular attenders. I told her about my space problems and she said she and another of the white women would draw straws to see which couple of them would bow out...keeping my number at 12. Well, I didn't want that because I wanted to keep the racial balance. So I told her I would put up two TV trays to accommodate all 14. I bought a ham yesterday and will put it on to bake this afternoon.

I doubt that they'll all show. It's supposed to rain and some of the older ones will probably decide not to come. But our little house will have a crowd if they do.