“I’m pretty much Buddhist,” Dean told me the first day we worked together at the St. Vincent de Paul Soup Kitchen in downtown Oakland. “I was a therapist before I retired, and in the service before then, but now I mostly garden and read.”
We chatted as we faced each other on the serving line. Dean is a tall, thin, white man, in his late 50’s or early 60’s, I’m guessing, and he indeed looks like he would’ve been a therapist, possibly of the touchy feely Berkeley variety, or perhaps a junior college professor. In any case, he is soft spoken and has an easygoing, gentle manner, and curly gray sideburns.
