From The New York Times, which visited the church of occasional Cafe contributor the Rev. Bonnie Perry:
You can drive past the lovely North Side house of Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, and smack into Chicago’s invisible poor.
One block, two blocks, three blocks and there, at the corner of Wilson and Hermitage, is the Tuesday night line of the beleaguered and unlucky, seemingly bending to the horizon.
Whatever the weather, they await the opening of a food pantry run by All Saints Episcopal Church, right across the street from a seven-bedroom, seven-bathroom, 6,000-square-foot home with a wraparound porch, a two-bedroom coach house, gated private driveway and what refined members of the propertied class know as a porte-cochere.
The single file outside is as tidy an economic barometer as any Labor Department news release. Federal stimulus aside, the line only gets bigger and inspires grousing by a few neighbors that the church is “attracting” misbegotten souls from afar.