Period.
(Originally posted 05/21/12 at Trojan Horse Productions.
Reposted 2018-02-08.)
Tag Archives: The Homeless Blogger
* Advice for job-seekers
(Originally posted 05/19/12 at Trojan Horse Productions. Reblogged 01/18/18.)
Plan that, after you obtain your high school or college diploma, you will work continuously until you retire.
At all costs, do not allow yourself to become completely jobless.
It’s much easier to find a job if you’ve got a job already. Among people who make hiring decisions there is tremendous prejudice against people who are jobless. And any gap in your employment history will provoke pointed questions in an interview.
If you find yourself in an unacceptable job situation, do your best to endure in that situation until you find another. Don’t leave the first job until you have found the second. Otherwise you’ll not only have no job, but you’ll also have no income.
Walking off a job, the several times I did so, was the one specific thing I did that has the most to do with my becoming homeless.
talk show host, on air talent, radio talk show, the homeless blogger
* Work
(Originally posted 05/18/12 at Trojan Horse Productions. Reblogged 12/28/17.)
To get from Point A to Point B, you must move.
At this moment, as I write this, I am living in a pit.
I am homeless.
I face a choice: do I want to get out, or stay here?
Continue reading * Work
* Integrity
I will not suggest you go anywhere I myself haven’t gone.
(Originally posted 05/17/12 at Trojan Horse Productions. Reblogged 12/07/17.)
* Job search update, 02/03/14; and other news
Bookmarks:
Job search update
Crisis for D.C. homeless families
Job search update
(Composed 2014-02-01)
Things are moving full steam ahead on my application for a Secretary II position with the City, as I’ve probably described in previous posts. The hours are 8:30-4:30, which under normal circumstances will let me get to the shelter in time to (1) actually get in and (2) take a shower each day. I will need to phone the office Monday morning 02/03/14 to confirm that all’s in line, and possibly find out a start date.
Continue reading * Job search update, 02/03/14; and other news
* Issues with upcoming posts
In the process of “recycling” old posts on Wednesdays, I am now coming upon a number of posts with which I’m not completely comfortable. I probably would not write them, now or in the future, the way I did at the time; but I’m also still not sure exactly how I’d write them differently.
At the time I wrote those posts, I supposed my homelessness would be brief, and William Tell would soon enough become a public figure able to speak to what he saw as the pressing social issues. My homelessness continues eighteen months later, and my perceptions of those issues have changed.
Continue reading * Issues with upcoming posts
* My homeless self: White “resentment” and black power
“Generations of slavery and discrimination make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower classes.”
Do you agree with that statement? If not, you harbor resentment toward blacks.
That is the premise, not the conclusion, of a recent study by three political scientists. As reported by James Goodman in the October 6, 2013 Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, the study’s conclusions seem indisputable. I question its premise. I ask whether “resentment” was the best or right thing to measure; whether this criterion statement was the best or right way to measure it; whether the criterion statement is factual, and if so, whether it matters.
Continue reading * My homeless self: White “resentment” and black power
* The End of Anger, by Ellis Cose (2001) …
… is a slim volume for $24.99. The description on inside front dust jacket concludes it “may well be the most important book dealing with race to be published in recent decades.” That strikes me as presumptuous. The front matter includes a list of the author’s other titles, from which it appears he seldom writes about anything else.
Yet the portions I browsed remind me of something I want to do on my own show. The preface examines in some detail changes in public opinion polls between 2008 and 2010. I don’t attach the weight to these facts that Cose does. But if, for example, the President’s approval rating rises with one group and falls with another group in the same time frame, I would like to find out from listeners whose opinions changed and why; to examine with listeners how their thinking works, and on what bases their opinions change.
(Originally posted 05/12/12 at Trojan Horse Productions. Reposted 10/26/17.)
* The Gospel vs. George F. Will
David Farenthold, “Austerity is a hard nut to crack”
George F. Will, “2013’s lesson for conservatives”
Farenthold asks what’s best for the country. Will asks what’s best for conservatives. That difference illustrates what Trojan Horse Productions and The William Tell Show are all about.
Continue reading * The Gospel vs. George F. Will
* Taking off for the weekend
The mission principally serves two groups.
First (in too many ways) are the “clients,” 450 men enrolled in the 12-month residential drug-and-alcohol treatment program; for which reason they are commonly called “programmers.” Each of them has a permanently assigned bunk and some form of closet space, and can use the mission as a mailing address.
I need to keep in mind that, but for the program, most of them would be homeless.
Second (in too many ways) are the “guests,” no more than 60 homeless men on any day, who are provided accommodations overnight; for which reason we are commonly called “overnighters.” We must vacate the premises no later than 6:00 a.m. daily, cannot leave anything behind, and cannot return until 3:00 p.m. We cannot use the mission as a mailing address.
Note the distinction between “clients” and “guests.”
At the end of the work day one day last week, I walked toward the parking lot carrying my two heavy bags. Programmer W____ P__ came toward me, walking in the opposite direction, and said, “Bill, you look like you’re taking off for the weekend!”
I said to myself, even programmers don’t get it.
He can take off for the weekend; I can’t. I have nowhere to go and nowhere to come back to.
The way he saw me is the way I look all the time.
(Originally posted 05/10/12 at Trojan Horse Productions. Reposted 10/05/17.)
The Homeless Blogger 