I once traveled to Kenya’s Maasai Mara and journeyed through untamed backroads in a hatch-top jeep. In less than 48 hours, I’d traveled not only across the globe but back in time.

“I’m voting for God’s Kingdom to fix this mess,” she said and with that, Alice, 93, closed the door and left her groceries forlorn on the stoop of her Loma Portal home.

Last week, Project-19 took me to City Heights, an urban blend of African American, Asian, and Latino communities bustling with energy. My SUV loaded with grocery boxes, I meandered its gridded streets scanning from side to side in search of a coveted parking spot. Past experience taught me not to improvise parking in City Heights, lest I attract a menacing glance or boisterous admonition not fit for print.

In the northern hills of San Diego lies Rancho Bernardo, a master-planned community dating back to 1962. Signs bearing aspirationally-named subdivisions like Playmor and Fairway Vistas welcome its residents with subliminal possibility. As I drove my Project-19 route through this carefully manicured community, I wondered... whose dreams had faded enough to need a humble box of groceries laid upon their doorstep?

Pacific Beach is a seaside community in San Diego known for its young residents and raucous party scene. Yet dwarfed by the lively din are the barely-detected sounds of the Greatest Generation, nonagenarians born just a few years after the 1918 Flu Pandemic

My Project-19 route was a little different this week. Instead of driving from home to home, I spent most of my effort shuttling grocery boxes through the hallways of a Hillcrest low-income high rise for seniors. As I glanced at my recipient list, I read a dozen Soviet-era names that harken back to the October Revolution.