Country Mouse Monday: bees in the Tenderloin, stranger in a strange land

On Saturday, I had the very great good fortune of assistant-teaching for the Round Rock Honey Beekeeping School, a possibility I wrote about last month in Why Not Just Ask For It? The two classes -- one at 10, the next at 1 -- were held at Glide Memorial in San Francisco.  Taken on its own, that's entirely intriguing, right: bees in the Tenderloin? Who knew (not me) that Glide has a charming rooftop garden project -- Graze the Roof --  that also houses two honeybee colonies?  Amazing.

Despite growing up in San Francisco, I have to say that I had never been to Glide before Saturday.  The Tenderloin is an area that I learned as a child to avoid altogether or move through extremely quickly. Later, in my early 20s, there was a punk club there and the possibility of drugs and danger, but my familiarity was limited.  You might imagine the resulting collision for this Country Mouse, walking away from the parking garage on a dazzlingly beautiful Saturday morning and into the scene that is Glide, so very different from my normal reality, my quiet bird-filled bee-buzzing corner of the paradise that is Marin County.

Naturally, I was early.  

I was supposed to meet the teacher at 9, but my nerves got me there 15 minutes early.  Mostly I was nervous all the way across the bridge and down Van Ness and down O'Farrell, not knowing what I was getting myself into.  I hadn't been looking for a teaching or assistant-teaching gig at all.  All I did was ask a question and here I was, on a day when the sun shone unusually bright and hot even in San Francisco in July, heading in, 6 jars of honey in the back seat, my veil, gloves, hive tool and boots in a bag.  I had everything I thought I might need but had no idea what being an assistant might mean or what the class might be like.  Whatever.  Sometimes I think that's the funnest way to get into things.  Not have an excessive amount of info.  Just go with your gut.  Jump in.

On this morning, walking to Glide, I passed a long queue of people the length of the block and up around the corner, waiting for breakfast.  There were a lot of people slowly making their way in the front doors, there was some yelling, some cute dogs.  There was also, as in all urban downtowns across the globe it seems, a strong reek of pee.    

Wow, where am I?

The kind people at the front desk showed me to the second floor, where I waited for someone to track down the maintenance guy who had the keys to the classroom and to the closet that stored the class props and the 25 bee suits provided by Round Rock.  At some point, the instructor showed up, too, the wheel of his bicycle and his helmet in his hand.  The man with the keys was never found, didn't show up that day, and so we improvised, holding class on the roof all day without helpful props or the advertised bee suits, something many people had signed up just to have their picture taken in. Fortunately I had brought my veil and gloves and hive tool, since I hadn't known what to expect.  Turns out that was a great idea... 

This is not a course for people who live in the Tenderloin.  What's great about it is that it draws people from all over the Bay Area with an interest in beekeeping, whether they're just curious or whether they have always wanted bees or whether they're Groupon junkies.  Yeah, I didn't know there was such a thing, but apparently there are people who sign up for a 2.5 hour beekeeping class just because they've grown accustomed to participating in activities promoted by Groupon.  So all these interested people show up, ready to learn, to tackle this new experience.  

Bees in the Tenderloin?

And what an experience it was.  To get to the rooftop garden requires a long walk up the stairs to the roof.  Arriving there is surprising.  With nothing but the sky above and the sides of other taller buildings, you feel miles away from what's happening below, on the floors below and in the street.  It smells a lot better.  The sights are super sweet whether it's the murals or all of the flourishing plants in burlap and milkcrates, or the hummingbirds feeding from the scarlet runner bean blossoms.  You definitely feel like you're someplace else, not in the Tenderloin; perhaps that's the biggest gift of this garden, for the children who sit and work and play in it as part of Glide's after-school program.

We settled our 10am class down around the picnic table and on stacked milk crates, a bit cozy, explained the situation, smoothed the exit of those who felt unhappy with how things had turned out, and got down to it.  There's a fairly loud ventilation system on the rooftop that must be talked over.  Though we started out in the shadow of a taller building, within 30 minutes we were in full sun.  The teacher broke out his private sunscreen and shared it with the class.  We started in on bee biology.  

And then the fire alarm went off.

I headed down to the lobby to check it out, then back up to relay the message, and grab my bag, then back down to the street, all the while continuing to talk about bees, while we waited for the all-clear. Kitchen-fire out, we headed back up the stairs with the students to the rooftop, where we carried on as best we could.

Bee people are good people.

Here's the thing: the students in the two classes were all there because they were curious.  And that, I think, is my favorite kind of people.  They had chosen to spend 2.5 hours on a Saturday morning or afternoon, learning about bees.  We had a honeymooning couple from Iowa and a man whose wife had surprised him with the class as a birthday gift, a man who now will become a beekeeper 5 years ahead ahead of retirement, fired up from what he learned.  These funny people were willing to have this experience at the epicenter of the Tenderloin, Glide representing simultaneously all that is truest and hardest about human suffering and all that is most uplifting about goodness and service and compassion.  It's a tough mix, but it somehow seems appropriate to throw bees into it, because they're a similar mix of sting and sweet.  

Back down in the lobby, waiting to direct students to the afternoon class, I hung back tucked into a doorway and observed the stream of people coming in for support services and meals and what-have-you, people of all ages and races, some in wheelchairs.  

Glide is a buzzing hive all its own, and I was the odd-bee out for sure, marveling at what I don't see at home, thinking about how easy it is for me to be at peace and content with my life given all that I have, all that we've made from what we were given, marveling at the different paths people take and why and how and all that.  And then headed back up the stairs again, out into the sunshine to talk about bugs.

It was a crazy, crazy day, really, full of the unexpected, some challenge, some unhappiness, and through it all, the bees just kept zooming in and out of the hive, busy at their business, as happy to be on a rooftop in the Tenderloin as they would be to be elsewhere, making paradise really wherever they are.  In all of this, they're the true teachers.  Watching them, talking about them, I remembered how much I love teaching what I love.  I poured myself into it, tired at the end of the day (and sore from the stairs, not gonna lie), and super-happy, lit up by the light in the students' eyes, how excited and entranced they were by the bees themselves.  Learning again an essential lesson.

If we just watch bees, imitate, work hard to create a paradise around us, too, everything will be a-OK.  Sure, there are stings, but oh, how much sweetness, too, no matter where, no matter when.

I look forward to my next teaching experience.  In the meantime, you know where to find me: hanging around a hive somewhere, remembering, learning. 

XX

The instructor's shoes.