Category Archives: Squalor

Hope and vision

As of March 7, I will have been homeless five years.

This morning I took first concrete steps to get myself into transitional housing.

This is essential if I’m to get job.  For some time, I’ve been living off life insurance policy proceeds, but in the near future, that money will run out.  It’s urgent that I get an income.

The shelter where I’ve been staying is extremely comfortable, perhaps too comfortable, but it has very rigid hours that make it nearly impossible to hold a job while one stays there.  Currently, having to carry my two heavy bags and backpack with me wherever I go, severely limits my ability to commute.  Transitional housing will spell having a place where I can stash my stuff, and freedom to come and go as I please.  I will, for example, be able to take a night job.

Related:  Obstacles to my prosperity

Continue reading Hope and vision

Why you should know about Freddie Gray’s life

Janell Ross’s 12/19/15 WaPo column includes a remarkable statement:

The abbreviated and not at all easy life of Freddie Gray was, to some extent, shaped by Gray’s choices. He was an American and an adult with at least some of the attendant free will that people assume comes with either status.

In the present political climate, I never expected to see such words in print.

Read the article:
Continue reading Why you should know about Freddie Gray’s life

Learning curve

Cornel West channels Martin Luther King Jr. to criticize Obama

Friday 2014-12-26

Learning happiness can take you out of your comfort zone.

So, there can be a learning curve as one comes to tolerate and manage greater degrees of happiness and prosperity than one has been accustomed to.

Some time ago, this short, very thin Korean immigrant with shoulder-length gray hair began coming to the shelter. When he first came here, he was in bad shape; he appeared to have no resources at all.

Continue reading Learning curve

“Son”

I don’t like Elder Conrad.

At the shelter, they compel us to attend chapel every night. A different group presents each night, following a monthly rotation. Elder Conrad and his group come the second Sunday of each month. In nigh on four years, he’s never said a single thing I felt merited attention.

There is one exception.
Continue reading “Son”

“How municipalities in St. Louis County, Mo., profit from poverty”

“[T]he uprising in Ferguson was an inevitable reaction to the institutional racism coursing through the area for decades.” — Jack Kirkland

I’m homeless.  At this writing, I’ve been homeless for exactly 3½ years.

When you meet a homeless man for the first time, you won’t notice his skin color.  Not first.  You’ll notice the condition he’s in.  You’ll notice his clothes, his grooming, his conduct.  Skin color is so far down the list, it might as well be left off completely.

Some disagree. They seem to think race is the only factor in poverty.

Continue reading “How municipalities in St. Louis County, Mo., profit from poverty”

Podcast – I don’t want to live among these people.

That may motivate me to seek my own place.

I don’t want to live among these people.

Related blog post: “Out of reach

Related blog post: “Housing the homeless ain’t that easy

Related blog post: “Chaos overwhelms the poor

Related blog post: “What we need

Music: The Beatles, “All You Need is Love”