It was a hot day, almost 100 degrees downtown. July 19th and thirty years before, Stacey Gillar was born. The thought of attending her birthday party
later in the evening bouyed my spirits as I filled up the truck cab with flowers. I drove downtown around 4:30 and surveyed Congress Avenue for a
good street corner. A lot of people sweating waiting for the bus, folks on the sidewalk, watching the traffic idle as the hot wind blew exhaust dust
over everything.

I started giving away flowers and soon realized I would need help. One of the people passing by offered to be my aid and soon we had given out every last carnation. We enjoyed the hours and we met each other and many other people we might have never come in contact with. Not everyone wanted a carnation that day but some did: bus drivers, people stuck in their cars in traffic, people walking out of work, people smoking cigarettes on the corner. We vowed to try the project again.