Bookshelf is a series about books by local authors
You can find the “VEO” tag all around, and well outside of, Hartford. Without knowing the person/people writing it, all we can do is speculate about the meaning, but the word literally translates as “I see”. The noticing impossibly appears everywhere, from barely accessible rusted pipes to freshly poured sidewalks. Is it a message to the object it is upon? Is it an affirmation of the person who sees it? Is it I notice you noticing me?
Local author Susan Carey’s book More Than Merely Eyes Can See is all about the practice of seeing those in our community who tend to go unseen. When advocates push for improvements to bicycle infrastructure or bus service, we often hear an obstinate chorus of “nobody uses those things” – these are precisely the invisible cyclists, bus riders, pedestrians.
Carey begins with the story of Harry who walks from his home in the West End to the Friday Gathering in Asylum Hill. As she put it, his “isolation is so intense, that Harry blurted out, ‘When people say hi to me, I know I’m alive.’”
Harry is one of over forty Friday Gathering diners described in this book, and while his loneliness is one of the more extreme examples, that sense of alienation does carry through many of the stories. Those who find themselves on the fringes for one reason or another are in need of connection. Some have built those found families for themselves outside of this weekly event, and others like Harry look forward to Friday Gathering all week because it is their primary place to socialize.
The Friday Gathering began in 2011 at Grace Lutheran at the corner of Woodland and Niles in Asylum Hill. There are many painted benches out front, flowers everywhere in season. It’s one of the most colorful spaces on Woodland Street which tends toward the drab – mostly large residential buildings and one medical facility after another. It is part of my regular commute. I know it well, or, I thought I did until I read Carey’s 2024 book, which revealed an entire world at Grace.
The Gatherings include diners who are both members of the church – mostly suburban and middle-class – and those who are in Hartford and primarily not middle-class. Everyone eats together. As she writes, “soup kitchens serve meals; the Friday Gathering serves relationships.”
The diners’ experiences range from those who have endured considerable trauma to those who have had the amount of loss one might expect by the time they are in their later years. There are those whose visible disabilities have resulted in others making assumptions about what they are capable of, and those whose invisible disabilities have gotten them yelled at by bus drivers who assume they don’t deserve to sit in the front seats. Many of them have families, not always nearby. Housing situations run the gamut, though more than once a diner reports living in a building where the main door was broken or perpetually propped open, inviting other issues like ne’er do wells banging on tenants’ windows and harassing them. There’s the story of one diner who is forced to downsize from the multi-room apartment where she raised her children. She’d taken care of it, made it beautiful with loads of plants, but once the kids were grown and out, forced into an apartment for a single person. It’s the kind of story where what happens is rational – that space could be used for a family who is currently in too small of a space for them – but isn’t kind, doesn’t consider the decades of memories filling the place. We currently have multiple buildings in downtown Hartford that could and should be converted from office to residential use, and I kept thinking about this as I read about various diners’ living conditions – like the person who really needed to be in a building with an elevator, but wasn’t. Imagine if we prioritized people by placing them in the hub, instead of too often the outskirts where getting a meal can mean taking two or three buses, and then having to climb stairs while using a walker?
There is incredible need. As Carey puts it, “The need for food, shelter, and other services is relentless, and no organization can satisfy all the demand.”
Do you hand out sandwiches or housing vouchers and call it a day, or do you develop relationships with those on the other end? Doing the latter means acknowledging that there is no “other end,” but that we are all wrapped up in each other – our success, our safety, our well-being is with each other.
As the saying goes, what you focus on grows.
Darrell, who hosted the Gatherings in their first five years, told Carey: “Authentic community is earthy. It’s laughing and crying, singing and sharing, hugging and holding hands. It’s not a chore.”
It’s simple and it’s complicated. Sometimes, the diners have conflicts with one another. Sometimes, the conflict is with church members. Sometimes, diners become church members. As one host welcomed diners: “This is not a feeding program. We are building community here.”
That’s not just a bunch of words. It’s seen in the ways diners look out for each other, giving rides, putting aside someone’s favorite food for them, finding appropriate ways for someone to help out. One diner, Paul, says: “People want to be useful.” Community-building is messy and people are not homogeneous. Allowing everyone to be useful means acknowledging different physical and intellectual abilities, working with rather than against neurodiversity. From Carey’s telling, the diners at Grace actually do make the effort for everyone to belong – even if they don’t always get it right on the first try.
As I read, I found myself recognizing people even when only their first names were used. Several are or have been involved with the Asylum Hill Neighborhood Association. Another, I recognized from her work on the pollinator garden that goes around the outside of a community garden at Hawthorn and Sigourney. There’s a long wait for the pedestrian signal at this intersection, and I’ve stood in the spot admiring the echinacea and all the butterflies they’ve attracted. Others I realized were people I saw regularly on the Farmington Avenue buses; this is how I came to know that one person who generally looks unapproachable is actually hilarious.
In the book, the focus is never on any single person. Carey weaves together their stories; these are all people in relationship with each other. Their presence matters to one another and their absences are felt. The Friday Gathering is ongoing. There is no neat bow wrapping this all up.
Carey tells me – and I heard this directly from others in a book club talking about More Than Merely Eyes Can See – that some readers learned that people living in poverty have something to offer. The big takeaway for others was the idea of hospitality without strings attached. For me, I was able to see more of the network among people who I walk by daily, stand next to at the bus stop, sit behind on the bus. Whether you’re the more sheltered suburbanite who needs these stories to humanize Hartford residents or a city resident wanting to see and feel seen, this is a compelling read.
As of publication, the Friday Gathering is still happening at Grace Lutheran; the dinner start time is listed explicitly as separate from a prayer circle, so those who do not want the overtly religious aspect can skip that.
More Than Merely Eyes Can See by Susan Carey is available at the Hartford Public Library and at Bookshop.org.
