Today is my youngest brother’s 65th birthday, and a good occasion for me to pay tribute to him as an inspiration and role model.
He’s six years my senior. We have two other brothers, one 7½ and one 9 years my senior.
Let’s see if I can compose this before my Net access runs out for today, 45 minutes from now.
I participate on a certain online discussion board. My premiere antagonist is a man who got trounced by a playground bully in fifth grade. He never fails to seek to re-enact that battle with me (or any of certain others), hoping for a different outcome this time. He casts his opponent by turns as the bully he wants to be or the chump he fears he was; and interacts with those projections. It has nothing to do with me. He might as well be playing with his G.I. Joe dolls.
Andy Kessler’s 07/08/13 Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Summer Jobs for the Guilty Generation,” is little different. In his quotations of others’ expressions, I hear compassion; he hears guilt. I hear gratitude; he hears guilt. I hear hope; he hears guilt. What’s up with this?
Kessler projects his own guilt feelings onto his son’s generation. That’s easier than owning them, but solves nothing.
Continue reading * Andy Kessler: Guilty as charged
The job search feels like an endless exercise in futility.
I recently launched a new hobby that may help me persevere.
It involves the unusual tactic of seeking emotional discomfort.
Continue reading * Nemesis of the morning glories
Proverbs 29:18: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”
I saw it any number of times while teaching: give a child a musical instrument, or the discovery of any other talent, whether art, or sports, or some special interest; and it just transforms that life. The vision of the excellence he or she can achieve, the beauty she or he can create, unlocks vast positive energies. The mediocre-at-best student comes to excel in every subject. The child who was awkward and socially withdrawn begins to shine.
Continue reading * Unlocking the vision
Courage and despair hang in the balance for a homeless radio talk jock wannabe.
“You’ve got to pay your dues
If you want to sing the blues,
And you know, it don’t come easy.”
— Ringo Starr, “It Don’t Come Easy”
Many years ago, when I first conceived the ambition to become a radio talk show host, I quickly selected that song as virtually a theme for my show. Life is difficult. My heart’s desire was to equip people to face life’s difficulties head-on.
My life circumstances were far more comfortable at that time than they have become since. Now I’m asking myself if I’m paying my dues; if I can sing the blues; and whether I myself will face life’s difficulties head-on.
Continue reading * Paying my dues, singing the blues?
A ‘village’ of mentors keeps Trayvon Martin’s friend, Rachel Jeantel, on track
Tom Joyner: “Did it work? The short answer to that is no.”
At first glance, the story of Jeantel and her “village” seemed to me to epitomize the principle I set forth in “Don’t come uninvited.”
Here’s a success story.
Rashema Melson, 18, will graduate on June 11. She lives with her mother and two brothers in one room at the D.C. General homeless shelter. [William Tell’s note: This is the same facility that housed Relisha Rudd.] Her father was killed when she was 7 months old.
What will you talk about at graduation?
I’m going to talk about how Anacostia pushed me. People feel like Anacostia is this place where all the ghetto kids go and that Anacostia is really easy, and I’m like, “No.” My speech is going to be dedicated to all the teachers who pushed me and who I could talk to in a time of need and who helped me when I didn’t have anything like food or clothing.
Your mom must be excited about your being valedictorian.
My mom knows how happy I am to be valedictorian, but sometimes she tells me to stop stressing and to relax and just live life. I’ve been stressing for years about grades. It has to be A, A, A, A, A. I can’t accept a B. I’m going to be the first one to graduate and get out of college and get a real job, something that can really help us.
Dawn Loggins presents a similar success story:
Harvard-bound homeless grad ‘overwhelmed’ by ovation
Dawn Loggins, Student, Heading To Harvard After Being Homeless, Abandoned By Parents
Girl, 18, who grew up homeless is accepted into Harvard
(Reblogged 04/04/19.)
(Originally published 09/15/12 at Trojan Horse Productions. Reblogged 03/28/19.)
Teddy is an old man. He wears a rosary around his neck, and never fails to “testify” in chapel. “I talk to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost every day,” he says. Every time there’s an altar call, he runs right up there to get born-again — again. Five times a week, he’ll do that.
He got barred out a year ago for selling someone oxycontin.
Friday night 09/07/12, he came back. He insists to everyone that he’s never been here before, and said he wants to get into the program.
Aside from those things, he hasn’t changed at all. Still all the same empty religious talk.
Sunday night he said he changed his mind about the program. They require you to sign over all your benefits, and he’s not willing to do that. That tells me you don’t want to get well.
I get bad feelings every time I see him.
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Sitting outside waiting to be let in, Wednesday 08/29/12 Fallon and a couple other guys I don’t like too much got into reminiscing about how this shelter used to be, years ago, before the renovation. This upset me.
(Originally published 06/15/13 at Trojan Horse Productions. Reblogged 03/07/19.)
No comment. Read the story.
This is a good thing. Many young men are eager to step up to the plate and, in these circumstances, overcome the disadvantages of their own background.
Give ’em a chance.
We mammals aren’t reptiles.
In 2010, I set out to write a little book that would set forth exactly what I believe Jesus really taught. I entitled it The Way of Peace. Here is the first section of that text, entitled “ABOUT THIS BOOK.”
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Matthew 11:28-30: Jesus said,
Come to me, all ye who labor and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; …
and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
All my life, I have been concerned for people who seemed to me to have a harder lot than they deserved — who were loaded down with heavy burdens.
In time, I came to see that I likewise carried needless heavy burdens.
Life is difficult enough even without them. Jesus speaks here of a way to live without them. Life’s inherent difficulties cannot be avoided. Needless difficulties can be avoided, and one’s life will be far more pleasant as a result. I humbly believe I have come to understand what Jesus meant, and that is what I seek to set forth here.
Continue reading o The Way of Peace
The Homeless Blogger 