Hannibal King enjoyed every fourth Thursday at the Shelter for Starving Artists and Underpaid Academics.

Every fourth Thursday is long range planning day, when the three and a half members of the board, along with the cook, janitor, and anyone else that might be looking for an excuse to get out of the house, convene in the basement meeting room of the shelter to discuss very little ­— but, take a very long time doing it.

Usually, long-range planning meetings are nothing more than the opportunity for a handful of people to sit around a big table and feel important by discussing the things that were discussed four weeks earlier, at the previous long range planning meeting. The members of the Board are heavy on the planning aspect, but woefully light on the doing part.

However, this meeting was different.

“Our enrollment is down,” began the Board chairperson, Adele Bertram. Concern and slight halitosis were in the words leaving her mouth. “We are down to just two resident clients, Sylvester the artist and someone going by the name of Andrew.”

Sylvester is one of those artists that is best known for the fact that he only has one name and not because he is such a brilliant artisan. His forte is painting fire hydrants to look like tin soldiers — in abstract. Instead of accolades, Sylvester usually just gets arrested for defacing public property.

Originally, he came to the shelter to help serve food as part of his community service sentencing. He stayed, not because the food was so good (it isn’t), or the cots are so comfortable (they aren’t), but because the price was right (it is hard to beat living life on someone else’s dime).

Andrew is in a witness protection program that also has funding problems. To save money, Andrew was given a new identity as a homeless academic living in the shelter.

Adele continued to explain that most of the funding for running the shelter did not come from donations provided by FOG’M (the Farternal Order of the Grand Misconception) fundraising drives, but from several large grants that were based on the number of people the shelter actually served.

“We need to consider different ways to raise funds,” offered Lady Grey-Fogg — a spinster heiress of a long ago depleted fortune associated with holding a title, back when such things actually meant something. “We need to find a funding source that will give us money, regardless of the number of people we serve. The high level of our intent to do good work should be more important than how many people we are actually benefitting.”

“We need to consider more creative ways to save money,” responded Horace Granger — a stockbroker before the Grand Recession and current custodial consultation at the shelter. “If less money is coming in, then less money should be going out. We could save a lot of money if we quit serving meals and quit letting people stay here.”

“I think we should look at the fact that we only have one starving artist and one guy using the shelter as a place to hide out. Maybe that means the artists are no longer starving and the academics are no longer underpaid,” came the considered opinion of Hannibal King — the lead volunteer hash-slinger at the shelter and all-around, controversial thinker, of pot-stirring thoughts. “Perhaps the crises is over, we’ve done our jobs, and it’s time to go home.”

The three and a half members of the board (Sylvester, as a resident at the shelter, is a non-voting member) stopped for a moment to ponder the validity of Hannibal’s position. Could Hannibal be right in thinking the problem was solved and it was time to move on?

“Nahhhh,” came the unison response — each person aghast that they considered, for even that brief fleeting moment, such a thought.

There had to be a different answer. Whoever heard of a crises intervention organization, actually bringing a crises to an end?

 

Larry Wilson is a mostly lifelong resident of Niles. His optimistic “glass full to overflowing” view of life shapes his writing. His essays stem from experiences, compilations and recollections from friends and family. Wilson touts himself as “a dubiously licensed teller of tall tales, sworn to uphold the precept of ‘It’s my story; that’s the way I’m telling it.’” He can be reached at wflw@hotmail.com.