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Hope : Stigma of homelessness greater against women Continued from page 1A attributed in part to the shame and stigma society has attached to addiction, particu larly where women are con cerned. “Many people in Augusta just have a hard time accepting addiction as a diagnosed and treatable disease. They think it’s a marter of morality or lack of will power. And that stigma is harsher on women. Society will accept a male alcoholic or addict but not a woman in that same position,” he explained. Dr. Carrier says despite litde support from the local com munity — 90 percent of their funding comes from federal grants — Hope House contin ues its mission. The program offers drug abuse counseling, basic living skills training and Cuisine invented by slaves elegantly prepared for the well-hecled By CARRIE SPENCER Associated Press Writer COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Specially commissioned abstract art is on the wall, jazz on the sound system, white linen on the tables and Dom Perignon ($l9O a bottle) on the wine list. On the menu, below the stuffed portabella mush room appetizer and pan seared scallops, are deep fried catfish, collard and . mustard greens, and maca roni and cheese. Don't for . get the cobbler or sweet potato pie. Soul food has gone gourmet. Brownstone on Main, just " blocks from the Statehouse and downtown theaters, opened last August and was named one of the five best new restaurants of the year by the city magazine Columbus Monthly. Down town attorneys meet clients over lunch, jazz fans watch bands from cushioned benches, and doctors leav ing late-night shifts at a nearby hospital can get din ner from a kitchen open past midnight. “No, this is not the food my grandmother makes. It’s just very good food,” said Danni Palmore, a political consultant and community organizer. Palmore lives downtown and likes the restaurant’s convenient loca tion and quick service for meetings, she said while planning a new project with developer Tony Hutchis over lunch on a recent weekday. . Many traditional South ,fu?n arose from dish - plantation castoffs, wild plants and rations of corn ‘‘f . wv:“i*mw o _ RAT A AR, é‘, T 2 s Uy g *é}@m e o SUIERYINSE FLTH, ROt aids the residents in preparing for their GED or learning a vocational skill. The goal is to teach the women to function in an adult society. The agency has two locations, one on Wrightsboro Road that serves seven women with children and a Milledgeville Road home with a capacity for eight single women. With stays ranging anywhere from one year to 24 months and the ability to only serve a small number, dozens of women are left on a waiting list hoping that they’ll get in before the ill ness of addiction claims another life. Pensola Parsons woke up in a padded room at University Hospital on October 26, 2001. By some divine inter vention shed managed to sur vive the motel room binge. duces maps and city guides geared for black travelers. Among the first was Jezebel in the Hell’s Kitchen section of New York, where owner and chef Alberta Wright has been serving highbrow down-home cooking since 1983. The big-city restaurants occupy prime real estate, Dorsey said. The now closed Georgia's in Los Angeles was on Hollywood’s Melrose Avenue. B. Smith’s first restaurant is in New York a block from Broadway and its Capirol Hill location is in the former Presidential Suite of Union Station. Rapper and fashion designer Sean “P. Diddy” Combs chose one of the poshest Atlanta neighborhoods for the newest Justin’s, which also started in New York. “What's happening in the last five to 10 years is South ern food is getting the respect it deserves,” said Jeff Gillian, who started Brown stone with fellow Columbus music promoter Greg Provo. They noticed the trend while traveling a few years ago. Gillian, also an invest ment manager, has eaten at upscale soul food restau rants in Paris and London. They decided smaller cities were ready. They bought and gutted a three-story building, put ting in wood floors, a gran ite bar and custom-designed wine cabinets. They emp tied the basement and exposed its rough stone -walls as a backdrop to the live jazz lounge. The top floor soon will become meeting space with the same comfortable furniture and appetizing earth tone palette. ~ The restaurant breaks _even on operations, but it (R 0 four yean 0 - ment, Gillian said. If it does L g L ~sld B SR ST AUGUSTA FOCUS She hoped the change of tide would be the beginning of a fresh start but she soon learned she could only remain in the hospital for four days before being turned back out into the streets- they had no residential drug treatment program. But, Pensola said, her story was not to end there. “They (hospital staffers) called Hope House for me and I think it was on my next to last day there that they told me I'd be able to go. Istill remem ber the day I got to Hope House; it was October 31, 2001 and I was ready to change,” Once at the facility, Parsons struggled to adjust to her new life. Admittedly things like eat ing dinner at the wble as a family and learning how to do laundry struck her as odd because on the streets she says They're not alone in that thought. Patrick Coleman began Beans & Cornbread seven years ago in the business hub of Southfield, a Detroit suburb. He said his black customers often skip the soul food for dishes such as salmon, and he'll see Asians cating collards or black-eyed peas for the first time. “I could see this concept working anywhere in the Midwest,” Coleman said. “In a lot of ways it’s just comfort food.” Other recent entries include the year-old Gook ‘ l I H :‘r gl all Home Free £ ~_ Never use your plan minutes e o . OnIyALLTEL gives you FREE calls between SN A your wireless and home number—every e - minute of every day on select plans. hS ' Get Greater Freedom. - S *" Large calling area e Lots of minutes k" ] 700 Anytime Minutes G UNLIMITED Mobile-to-Home Minutes ” . 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Parsons also said that for the first time, she was learning how to interact with people in a capacity outside of hustling them for money. “In the streets something happens to you; you become cold. You don't care about people and it’s almost like you don't have a soul. But here I got my soul back. Living with my three roommates, we start ed bonding and I learned about unconditional love,” she explained. Parsons says the facility’s Client Services Coordinator Sheila Hatcher also helped her work through a problem that shed kept secret since she was thirteen- she suffered from the eating disorder bulimia. Pen sola explained tearfully that Hatcher confronted her after ies - chef Tom Paige’s child hood nickname - on Cleve land’s east side and Alexan dria’s on 2nd, which opened in July in Seattle. At the two-year-old Sweet Georgia Brown in Detroit, the concept has gone so upscale that a pork chop (grilled) and sweet potatoes (baked with honey butter or as “skinny fries”) are the most Southern items on the dinner menu. As is common in the industry, however, nothing is a sure thing. Upscale soul food has already come and gone in Cincinnati. The noticing the warning signs, telling her that unless she addressed that problem, she would never be completely healed. Hope House has also begun to help Pensola heal her relationship with her family. Her sixteen year old daughter spent the first four years of her life watching her mother use. Parsons said her daughter had to deal with that as well as being away from her mother after a fam ily member agreed to take her in, an arrangement that last ed for 12 years. Hatcher explained that part of the family dynamics training includes inviting relatives to visit in an effort o work through the secondhand effects of addiction. Although in many case rela tives refuse to attend, Parsons has been fortunate in being able to repair her relationship Shark Bar’s Los Angeles location lasted less than two years. The high-end restaurants happily coexist with mom and-pop soul food diners, but traditional dishes such as greens, fried chicken or macaroni and cheese are served on fine china with carved-fruit garnishes, and as Dorsey said, “a little less drippy.” Theyll also be paired with pricier items such as lobster or the classic French duck confit, said Thomas Head, executive wine and food editor at Washingtonian August 26, 2004 with her loved ones. Today Pensola Parsons and her daughter are reunited. She has nearly three years of sobriety under her belt, no longer practices bulimia and is working as a counselor at a residential drug treatment facility for teens. She says the journey “back to life” has been a long and painful one full of grief and shame that she’s still learning to get over but Parsons shares her story because she wants to help others find hope like she did. “I think of Hope House as God’s House. I used to always bad mouth myself. Now I want things for myself. Now I got dreams, hopes...l got ambitions. I want my own home now and because of this place I believe that I can have that and any thing else I work to get. And that feels good,” she said. magazine. “Most of the grits that you're finding in restaurants these days aren't Quaker grits. They're stone ground grits from real mills that grind their own grits and take it seriously,” he said. “It just sort of makes sense that people in looking for the roots of their cooking would turn to the South,” said Head, a Louisiana native. “As long as people stay interested in finding the best ingredients and the best that America has to offer, it’s a pretty stable trend.” 11A