“And don’t make Clarence feel like he has to earn his seat with money.”

“I won’t do that either.”

On the walk home, I wrote those promises on the back of an old envelope.

They became the first rules of the project, long before we had a name for it.

PART 7

We held our first planning meeting on Monday evening in the church basement.

Eleven people arrived.

I had set out eight chairs, and the extra three stood along the wall until our pastor found more.