Letting the world know

Last week out of the blue I received an email from Google. What? I’m not in the habit of receiving electronic missives from large internet conglomerates, and I nearly deep-sixed the thing until something caught my eye. There was a mention of Koch’s Deli, about which we’ll need some history.

About a million years ago, I was a little newbie freshman at the University of Pennsylvania. I had been transported straight from the very rural Yakima Valley to the bowels of West Philly. At the Philadelphia airport I immediately had my purse stolen as a welcome to the City of Brotherly Love. As I’ve mentioned before, I bought a funky bike, which I painted with big eyeballs and happily rode around the West Philly slums, a complete innocent. Because the newly built Penn dorms for women were full, I ended up with a group of lively freshie-friends in an adjunct hotel 10 blocks off campus at 40th and Walnut. (A murder on our street corner in our first year there was nothing we wrote home about.)

In our junior year, my Penn-girl buds and I decided to move off campus to Buckingham Place in a three-story row house. We loved it, specially since we were that much closer to Koch’s Deli at 4309 Locust Street: double-chocolate milkshakes, Reubens with kraut, massive club sandwiches, hoagies of all varieties, with always a line out the door and everything enormous and delicious. It was the undisputed favorite in our household (unless someone was going down to South Philly for cheesesteak). When I ventured back to my old neck of the woods in 2017 for a Penn reunion, I noticed that not that many folks knew about Koch’s; and this included current students on the Penn campus, which had now grown to gobble up many more blocks of West Philly bringing it even closer to Koch’s door.

I put a marker down for Koch’s on Google maps on May 11, 2017 and totally forgot about it. And now Google was emailing me to say, “Look at your impact: 1,500,000 views on a place you added! You made a difference. Thanks for letting the world know about this.” I hardly felt like I was a hero for pointing out the obvious, but maybe by then Koch’s was a hidden treasure except to us old fogeys. The youngest Koch brother and the last of the family line, Bobby, had died; and though the deli was under new management, it still had the same “More Meat for Less Dough” ethos; the same unbelievably ginormous sandwiches.

Koch’s, founded in 1966, has since remodeled (it was, admittedly, a total hole-in-the-wall) and now they have hundreds of admiring likes and shares and notes about the generously-portioned and amazingly-priced real-deal food. (See Koch’s link here: tinyurl.com/4njdzukt) So, then I did feel pretty good about that pin-drop.

Peninsula Wild Care is making a difference

This got me thinking about that phrase “making a difference.” How does one make a positive impact in this world? What does it take to change something for the better, or to help someone feel better about themselves?

Our Peninsula community is known for all sorts of people and activities that improve life in all kinds of ways. In the midst of sometimes unprecedented meanness and the certain misguided folly of our divided nation, how can we individually add some positivity? I think it’s so worth meditating on this because even a small gesture — a smile, a kind word, a modest donation — can make a life better for someone.

To follow on a story I posted a couple months ago, one effort that’s making a difference on the Peninsula is Reva Lipe’s Peninsula Wild Care which now is a fully-certified mammal rescue center. As Reva says, “We passed our inspection of Jan. 21 and we got our official rehab permit on Feb. 2. We can serve Pacific and Wahkiakum counties and can take in all species of squirrels, bunnies, opossums, chipmunks, and mountain beavers. In fact, we are tending to a chipmunk right now. She was found on a trail at Cape Disappointment all curled up in a ball and cold. A hiker wrapped her up in a sweater and brought her into the Oceanside Vet. They hydrated her, saw no obvious injury, and now we’re keeping her until she can go back to the wild. She’s eating and improving — she was standing up today grooming herself for the first time.”

It’s just one chipmunk, right? But you remember this story perhaps? One day an old man walking along a beach littered with starfish washed ashore by the high tide noticed a young boy throwing starfish back into the sea. The old man admonished the boy “They are thousands of starfish on the beach — you won’t be able to make much of a difference.” The boy bent down, picked up another starfish and threw it as far as he could into the ocean. Then he smiled and said, “I made a difference for that one!” (The story here tinyurl.com/rhf5m2aw.)

Wild Care needs volunteers for care and transport, and funds for food, medicine, and cages. Give them a call if you can help: 360-214-2754.

The ripple effect

Making a difference can also have a ripple effect on others’ potential good deeds; it establishes a model to follow — it creates an event that inspires. Why, even this week at the Olympics — amid the doping controversy in skating and the skiing snafus — some of us were introduced to an act that certainly made a difference. Livo Niskanen, an athlete from Finland, won the gold medal in the 15 kilometer men’s cross-country skiing classic. As one news account noted, “Livo Niskanen collapsed across the finish line with a time of 37:54.80, but instead of going off to celebrate or recover, he patiently waited for every one of the 94 competitors behind him to complete the race.”

The absolutely last finisher was Columbian Carlos Andres Quintana who was one of his country’s flag bearers and didn’t start cross-country skiing until he was 33 years old. He crossed the finish line 20 minutes later than Livo, who was still there waiting to give Carlos a congratulatory hug. Carlos said of Livo, “He’s a wonderful human being. I will never forget this moment!”

Pull Quote

Making a difference doesn’t have to be expensive or grand or even heroic. Often it happens quietly behind the scenes. Check out the South Pacific County Community Foundation (spccf.org) for loads of worthwhile groups where you can still make a 2021 donation that’s tax deductible.

That’s not just sportsmanship — that’s about being a human one can be proud of, that’s about making a difference and influencing others to do the same. I’ll bet we can all name people who’ve affected us in this way. I had a second grade teacher, Miss Irene McPherson, who changed my life; she started me off as a writer. My sis headed up a program that got the first kids in their families to college; many of them still keep in touch and thank her.

Making a difference doesn’t have to be expensive or grand or even heroic. Often it happens quietly behind the scenes. Check out the South Pacific County Community Foundation (spccf.org) for loads of worthwhile groups where you can still make a 2021 donation that’s tax deductible. Or give your time to an organization that’s aligned with your passion. Register people to vote. Walk dogs at the Long Beach shelter. Read to youngsters. Help at a soup kitchen or food bank. Or just recycle. Every little bit counts. Sometimes it’s just one chipmunk at a time!