--2 Lesson: You can't judge a book my its cover. It was late--almost 5:00p.m. at the Emancipation Station. Seven of the homeless women from the shelter were preparing to leave. I said to the ladies, we ought to do a video and send it to Harpo Studio, that maybe it would get into Ophra's(probably spelled wrong) hand. We'd say that we needed a place to house women from 6 months to a year to allow women to get a hand up. As we began to plan the house, women began to talk about what they could do--form a coalition to try raising funds, design the layout, do floral arranging to sell and on and on. Needless to say my day on 31st Street stretched out longer than anticipated, but I saw homeless women come together in hope, love, respect, dignity. They said, "People think that just because we are in a shelter that we don't have no sense. We are not dumb, just down. We need a hand up, not a hand out." This was evident in how they gathered to make beef stew today--peeling potatoes and carrots, chopping onions, and humming as if to say. we can. Don't count us out.