WTH BWB Friday, March 6th, 2026
Greetings Everyone,
Well, I DID it! Here it is, Sunday, March 1, 2026, and it took only one take to make a video to email off to the folks at CBS, the ones that have Steve Hartman hosting “On The Road.” I imagine most of you have seen the feature at the very end of the CBS Evening News.
The feature is so popular that schoolteachers and others share the segment with students. It’s a positive, spiritually uplifting feature. The invitation wasn’t necessarily to have a segment about WTH (even though that would be great) but more to see about getting a feature about furniture banks in general.
I even mentioned the website that shares a map with links to similar organizations all over the United States and Canada. The address is http://www.furniturebanks.org.
So here I sit as I’m watching my favorite “New” older show, “Leave It To Beaver.” The fire department just brought him home after he pulled the fire alarm. He stayed after with that slacker, Larry Mondello, to help clean off the blackboard in Miss Lander’s classroom. Mondello in his signature style, convinced Beaver that the Principal, Mrs. Rayburn had a “spanking machine” in the closet of her office. Beaver went in and when the janitor was locking up, didn’t say anything and subsequently got locked in her office.
Being a news junkie as I likely have mentioned before, sometimes I need an escape from the constant stream of negativity. It’s Leave It To Beaver on streaming and sometimes Hogan’s Heroes. Oh, Dear Lord, I forgot this was ALSO the episode where Beaver gets his head stuck between the bars of a metal fence, again while being with Larry Mondello. Larry just left and Beaver whilst trying to reach a four-leaf clover sticks his head through and “Voila!”
Tomorrow afternoon, I’m being interviewed on a podcast that is co-hosted by a friend of mine, Pat LaMarche. It’s a podcast that’s even featured comedian, Gary Gulman, one of the comics featured in “Last Comic Standing” years ago.
The name of the site is http://sacredlegions.org and the name is based on a quote from writer Kurt Vonnegut
“A saint is a person who behaves decently in a shockingly indecent society.”
–Kurt Vonnegut, the primary inspiration for this website
We had a GREAT Board of Trustees meeting last month. We devoted most of the meeting to talking about strategic planning and the future goals of Welcome To Housing with our mentor, Dennis Wint from SCORE (Service Corps Of Retired Executives).
I also heard from Cindy Campbell earlier this evening. She’s part of the group called 100 Neighbors Who Care. She saw my posts about my mobility challenges and wanted to know if I wanted to keep WTH’s name in the running for the program.
March 7, 2026
The Neighbors Who Care meet, I believe, quarterly and each member of the group donates a certain amount of money ($100 I believe) and then the names of 3 organizations are pulled out of a hat filled with the names of all the agencies nominated by members. From there, three are invited to come to a luncheon and make a brief presentation about their organization. Attendees vote on which one of the three they want to receive the total raised based on the presentations they see.
The reason Cindy asked is because I’ve been pretty open about the challenges I’ve had since I fell on January 17th as I was getting off my stairlift at home and twisted my ankle really badly. She knows what’s up as we’ve been friends for many years. She does news at WQCB Q-106.5 in Brewer. I worked there when they first came on the air in 1986 and left in 1988 after being offered a job with the Maine State Chapter of the March of Dimes.
She was wondering if my challenges would prevent me from participating in the 100 Friends Who Care of Penobscot Valley. Like the Rolling Stones sang, “Wild Horses couldn’t drag me away.” In my case, NOTHING could keep me from presenting if Welcome To Housing’s name was drawn to participate.
I’m still getting used to this thing called “retirement.” My last regular 9 to 5 gig was actually 8:30am-4:30pm when I worked for a great lady, Bette Hoxie, who founded Adoptive & Foster Families of Maine and Kinship Care (AFFM).
I probably have shared before that after our first two years of being under the 501(c)(3) of the Bangor Area Homeless Shelter, we moved over to be under the fiscal wing of AFFM, where we were for four more years.
When I would show board members (back when we met in person) the stack of paperwork for us to become our OWN 501(c)(3) nonprofit, eyes were averted, throats were cleared and so on. Why? Because going out on your own to become a nonprofit… well for many people it can be intimidating as Hell.
What changed in 2017? Bette Hoxie announced that she was going to retire. Most people said, “Oh, nothing will change.”
I KNEW better. As someone who founded something (WTH) I knew EVERYTHING would change. I remember the wonderful lady admin that worked with us at AFFM, Connie Ireland (I MISS HER) who sadly passed away. Connie once told me after I left AFFM and pursued a real estate career, they had to hire at least two people to cover all the things I used to do for the organization.
So, we applied for the 501(c)(3) with the help of Joe Baldacci and a lady that worked for him at the time, Ada Sites. Also, we had a lot of guidance from our accountant, Melinda Workman. I remember our conversation about the thick application that caused so many (including myself) to be intimidated. As she put it, “The ONLY organization that needs to fill out that ENTIRE application is a teaching hospital…You’re not going to be a teaching hospital, are you?”
I grinned and sheepishly said, “Nope.”
Long story short, after all was said and done and we went out on our own, then the great news for AFFM. Bette decided to come out of retirement to oversee the Kinship program. Kinship as you likely know is people who take in their relative’s children like grandparents raising grandchildren, aunts and uncles raising nieces and nephews… It wasn’t until about a year and a half ago that I learned that it even includes others raising kids. It can be someone raising their FRIEND’S children or even NEIGHBOR’S children.
The icing on the cake with providing kinship care in addition to being the right thing to do, and keeping the kids close to loved ones, apparently people providing kinship care can get many of the same benefits and resources that are available to foster parents. People should remember too that often people providing kinship care, especially if they’re older, could be on fixed incomes.
The end of this month at our Board of Trustees is once again working on long term planning or “strategic” planning, (not to be confused with the board game, Stratego) and focusing on the charter of the committees and the fact that we need to add more volunteers to the different committees so they can focus specifically on their goals. I guess the simplest way to put it, is thinking of the committees as “teams.”
A couple of board members and I met Friday afternoon, and they hope to visit the foundation that gave us the $20,000 grant in 2025. I don’t know if the representative and/or the co-founder of the foundation would be willing to meet but the hope is to do a formal in-person “Thank You.”
We’re also looking into applying to Target. A week or two ago, I filled out the online form to allow them to look into our agency to ensure we’re legitimate. This week I went on again and we got approved to fill out a profile and then we can apply for funding.
Well, it’s that time again. I would love to write more, but I need to bid you a fond adieu (or at least a cheese fondue) for another couple of weeks.
Sincerely yours,
Christopher Olsen
Founder and Board President
welcometohousing@gmail.com
(207) 745-1287
