posted on January 17, 2004 01:56:08 PM newIt is however usually the mayor and city officials or county officials who are to blame for mistreatment of the homeless and not allowing facilities to serve them.
I put the blame where it belongs....with the homeless person themself. The only group of homeless that might get sympathy from me would be the mentally ill. And even some of those refuse to take their medications so they can remain more balanced/stable....and we cannot force them to take their meds...after all they have rights.
City after city has lost their parks to the homeless. The taxpayers are the ones footing the billings for these parks but they and their families can't use them because they've been taken over. I don't blame people for wanting their officials to clean up these areas so they can be used for what they were intended to be used for.....and not outdoor toliets...not camping sights....not so our young can watch drugs being used, unkept hobo's sleeping on the benches....etc. I'd go so far as to bet if the government provided land outside the city limits they would refuse to stay there too. And we can't make people go/stay where they don't want to. So, to me this is the only way the city leaders can deal with the problem.
Anyone who wants help can get help. Either through the government agencies or religious agencies. The majority aren't out there trying to improve their situation, they want it the way it is.
posted on January 17, 2004 02:05:42 PM newFrankly, I'd never considered it my business to become directly involved with my fellow citizens who were down on their luck. That's the guvmint's job, right? That's why I pay taxes, right? But what if I took in just one homeless woman and took care of her? What if all of us found the spectacle of people relegated to grovelling in the street as appalling as Mr. Matsumoto had, and what if we made it our business to do something about it personally?
I think that's a grand suggestion. Might just give you, and everyone else who does experience giving a helping hand, a different prospective on how things really are.
And I think there's a big difference, when discussing the homeless, between the 'down on their luck' homeless, and the chronically homeless. BIG difference.
posted on January 17, 2004 02:11:39 PM new
No, Pat...my friends and I have experienced first hand, working with the homeless....the down and out. I took from your post that I quoted, that you haven't had first hand experience. Gives one a much different perspective. Try it for yourself.
Go down to the San Jose Mission and volunteer there. Go down to the parks and speak one-on-one with these people. Get yourself in a better position to make judgements.
posted on January 17, 2004 02:23:45 PM new
From some of the shows I've seen, many of the street people develop "family units" where they look out for one another and check up and make sure that they are doing okay, getting food, clothing and blankets, etc.
One CBC documentary I saw a few years ago showed the life of a "squeegee kid" and how he ended up on the street and how he survived. They also showed the lives of other street people and it was fascinating. The longer they are on the streets, the harder it is to get away from it all.
It brings to mind "There, but for the grace of God, go I".
posted on January 17, 2004 02:27:30 PM new
Actually, Linda, I have done a lot of volunteer work. That post was written about a time in the 1980's, when I looked for the first time through a foreigner's eyes at the homelessness in San Francisco. I spent the bulk of my volunteerism assisting people with AIDS, who'd lost their jobs, their apartments, and who, at the time, were the most stigmatized of the poor, imo. Fortunately, the gay community in San Francisco banded together and did what no government official or agency was willing to do -- help rebuild shattered, dimming lives.
What I don't get from your posts is why you do the soup kitchen work; you seem to have nothing but contempt for the people you serve.
posted on January 17, 2004 02:54:03 PM new
Pat - Did you not say you thought it was the government's job to care for them and that maybe you [collectively] needed to start helping first hand? If not, then I apologize, but that's sure how I took the part I copied and pasted....no first hand experience on your part with the homeless.
It's not contempt, it's that I came to a realization that the majority of them don't want to do anything themselves, to improve their life. Their drug or alcohol addition is the only thing they worry about each and everyday of their lives. Suggest they go to AA or NA? Naw...they've got one excuse after another for why they don't want to go.
Oh sure, they'll take all the helping hand give-outs they can...but they don't want to use any of their own effort to improve their lives. Like working at a job that's offered to them. Much easier to hit all those helping hands, givers, church based facilities that give out the handouts.
I saw many down and out people who were looking for a helping hand and when that hand was offered, they jumped on the chance. And I have a tremendous respect/admiration for those who have been down and out and took the helping hand when it was offered to them.
But it was my experience that the majority are those who have turned off to life, for one reason or another. They don't want to change. That's why I've said they want to live the way they do. I know it's hard to believe, and until I experienced it first hand I never believed it either. But it's a fact with the majority of the homeless. They don't want to live by societies 'rules/laws'. They don't want to show up to work at the same time each day. They prefer the open 'no rules
lifestyle they lead.
So...I decided that all our efforts, time and money weren't really helping, but rather enabling the continuation of this behavior. So we stopped.
I'm willing to help people help themselves.....but no longer willing to help those who won't help themselves.
--------------------
If I were in real need I would stuff newspaper in my clothing to stay warm and grub in the woods for roots and berries before I would ask some jackass preacher for help.
Edited to post gravid's statement.....while he's obviously not homeless, many of the homeless do feel this same way. It's their choice, imo, to feel the same way gravid states he would. So....I have no contempt for him...or his choice....but I won't worry about him starving or suffering either.
posted on January 17, 2004 03:58:12 PM new
The homeless are better off without encountering someone with a contemptuous and supercilious attitude such as you have described, linda.
posted on January 17, 2004 03:59:17 PM new
Kiara, yes, it is fascinating to see the society and culture of their street life. Must be something innate to humans to tribalize even on the streets.
Linda, I knew a guy who was a brillant engineer. He may have been bi-polar his whole life, but managed. His wife divorced him, his boss was riding his a** and he so he sought the proverbial 'help' that you prescribe they must do. They put him on lithium. His hands shook like he had parkinson, and he could barely get a sentence out of his mouth without a new found stammer. He told me he was used to his brain and body pumping along; he couldnt do his work, and he wanted off the lithium. Well, last I heard he got fired, after 15 years with the same company. He was one of the nicest and most perceptive men I ever met in my life. I almost cried when I saw the effects those drugs had on him. I dont know what has since happened to him but I dont think he is homeless as he was very well liked and resourceful. But he wasnt a crazy man. For the most part he lead a pretty stable life. But my point is, he could have wound up on the streets, too, had he not had support from his family and some money to fall back on.
The so-called help he got, cut off the one remaining stablization in his life, his job. People are guinea pigs for these drug companies and after a few rounds with them, they know it. Some swear the drugs have saved their lives and that's great if people think so, but drugs only quiet the symptoms and are not the cure.
kiara said it best, "There before the grace of god go I." You really should watch your words. None of us were born with a certified guarantee in our hands.
posted on January 17, 2004 04:17:18 PM new
The questions I posed in my initial post were meant to provoke some thoughts on the matter, Linda, as in: Haven't we all considered caring for the homeless the government's job, and maybe -- just maybe, mind you -- isn't it our job to look after our own communities? Not eloquent enough to be a rhetorical question, I realize, but one that elicited quite a lot of opinions, which I've enjoyed reading and discussing.
Truly, I have no idea what the ultimate answer is, or even if one exists; this isn't The Great Depression, afterall. The poverty is different... insidious, I want to say.
According to figures provided by the US Department of Health and Human Services, up to 600,000 men, women, and children go homeless each night in the US. Is this really okay with us as a society?
I used to do volunteer work also. When I started, I was naive and felt sorry for everyone who was homeless. Working with some of the homeless here really opened my eyes.
It's the children of the homeless I feel sorry for.
__________________________________
"I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to the people who sleep under the very blanket of freedom I provide, and then question the manner in which I provide it. I'd rather you just said 'thank you' and went on your way." - A Few Good Men
posted on January 17, 2004 04:35:27 PM new
So, okay, let's shift gears. Let's suppose that those who are homeless and don't want to be have plenty of assistance available to them and can rebuild their lives. What should be done, then, for the "chronically" homeless, those who prefer, for whatever reason, a life on the streets? Anything?
posted on January 17, 2004 05:01:27 PM new
I rather suspect that there are really very very few who choose to be homeless who are not mentally ill.
We used to live in an apartment before we bought our condo and the young couple across the hall from us became homeless and we saw them in the parking lot of a Burger King a couple years later.
He was in poor health and lost his job and could not qualify for disability and after he was out of work for too long it became very hard to get hired again. She worked as a waitress and never made enough to rent an apartment. They lived in their car and were terrified to seek help from most agencies becasue they were certain they would have their children taken away if the authorities found out they were homeless. I suggested they at least go to Florida or California or somewhere the climate was milder.
However they got just enough help from relatives who allowed them to do laundry and occasionally use a shower that they feared going far away where they would have no help at all.
Part of their problem was that they were entirely too honest and would not go in and make up whatever wild story would get them the help they needed.
I must admit we did not help them. The sort of resources they needed to really be helped was way beyond us and we felt no obligation to help them when we were never all that far from ending up the same way if we had a run of bad luck.
Having seen articles in the paper about people living in motels having there children taken away and raids of homeless shelters where the children were removed from the family I feel their fears were valid.
posted on January 17, 2004 05:02:25 PM new
There are a certain percentage of the population that will never have a job or a job that paye enough to lift them out of poverty. That's just the syetem. We've never had full employment and never will.
As far as the private religious charities being more effective, that is not at issue. What is at issue is these private religious charities using tax dollars to promote their religion.
Just remember this-- should using tax dollars by religious charities ever be allowed, then all religious charities will get a piece of the pie.
It has been proven that the most effective rehab program for black prison inmates and drug addicts is through the nation of Islam and they have put in for their fair share of the tax dollars too.
When Pat Robertson and Falwell realized that Farakahn and company will get tax dollars they no longer supported the initiative.
The government has no business giving tax dollars to any religious charity that uses those tax dollars directly or indirectly to promote religion. It offends our Constitution.
posted on January 17, 2004 05:12:16 PM new
"I suggested they at least go to Florida or California or somewhere the climate was milder."
Dammit, man, you make me laugh out loud!
"There are a certain percentage of the population that will never have a job or a job that paye enough to lift them out of poverty. That's just the syetem. We've never had full employment and never will."
Reamond, I simply don't recall, as a child or young adult, encountering "homeless" people -- on city streets, in parks, in libraries, etc. Since we didn't have full employment then (in the sixties and seventies) why is it that there were no homeless people on Bay Area streets thirty years ago? Where were they?
posted on January 17, 2004 05:15:33 PM new
How many of these people want help but don't know where to go? How many can't stomach the self-serving and arrogant attitude of those they meet in the agencies that are trying to help them? What about being told that their job application can't be filed because they have no street address or phone number on the form?
From the documentaries, it looks like they respond best to the workers that have "been there" and are volunteering their help and not judging them.
For the ones on the street that don't want help? Maybe drop off extra clothing like coats, mitts and shoes. Perhaps some toiletries and some food or a blanket. Even if it wasn't directly given to anyone and just left there I'm sure it would be appreciated. Unless some cheapo greedy rich person didn't grab it first and run off with it.
posted on January 17, 2004 05:24:03 PM new
"Where were they?"
Probably in a mental hospital.
Those people who want to sleep on the street when the wind chill is 18 below zero --with all they own in a shopping cart -- dining on trash thrown out by people at a hot dog stand need mental help. Thirty five percent of the homeless fall into this category. Twenty five percent have both mental and drug abuse problems. Of the total homeless, 70% are drug and alcohol addicted.
Isn't it insensitive and callous to refuse help for people who are ill?
posted on January 17, 2004 05:37:38 PM new"How many of these people want help but don't know where to go?"
ASK!
"How many can't stomach the self-serving and arrogant attitude of those they meet in the agencies that are trying to help them?"
Sometimes you just have to swallow that pride!
"Of the total homeless, 70% are drug and alcohol addicted."
And when they CHOOSE to spend the money on drugs and alcohol and NOT to provide for themselves (or their family, if they happen to have drug them into homelessness also), then it is NOT my problem.
I am not particularly fond of working 12-15 hours a day, but I have a child to support in addition to myself. I am accustomed to having a roof over my head and hot meals to eat and nice clothes to wear. It all comes down to what you want and what you are willing to do to have it.
__________________________________
"I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to the people who sleep under the very blanket of freedom I provide, and then question the manner in which I provide it. I'd rather you just said 'thank you' and went on your way." - A Few Good Men
posted on January 17, 2004 05:41:08 PM new
So, Helen, why do you suppose there's been no suggestion (that I'm aware of) to reinstate mental institutions and "warehouse" these people we never had to look at before? Can it really be more costly to house them, albeit behind barred locked doors, than to develop homeless shelters, programs, etc., in nearly every community across America?
posted on January 17, 2004 05:52:53 PM new
Gonna say something a lot won't like.
My wife and I will probably never live in the car or on a steam grate for a simple reason.
I test on the top one tenth of one percent of the population for IQ, and I have mechanical skills. I've been a machinist and mold maker as well as a plumber and mechanic.
My wife was Validictorian of her class and has excellant language skills and ability to work well with people both on the phone and face to face.
Does that make either one of us a better person or more valuable as a human being? NO.
But in this ugly world it means we have the set of skills that will generate income or will at least let us understand government programs to gain assistance.
There are a lot of people that just can not deal with the complicated modern world. They can't even do their own taxes because they can't understand the forms. They can't read a newspaper and understand it - much less exaimine with a sceptical attitude if what they are reading is slanted.
Given the choice I like kind people better than smart people. But to survive in the information age smart is better. And it better be the KIND of smart that will get you pay.
If you are a master poet or a brilliant gardener or a wonderful mother that is nice but won't pay the rent.
Even if you are a brilliant painter, musician, or writer there is little chance today you will be rewarded finacially for it. The very best of the best may get a break if their product happens to catch the fancy of one of the executives who know little about their art but have set ideas about what is a viable commercial product. There is more product than market.
If somebody is just a LITTLE less than sharp it can be a ticket to the street today. And no matter what the no child left behind people think we all can't be above average. We need all these things we have been discussing for the slightly dull people too. They have worth and need and deserve dignity just as much as the people with talants. And a sad thing is any of those slightly dull people may have a brilliant child that can give much to society and if their parents are living in poverty chances are great society will never benefit from their potential.
That is a grip I have with the Arab culture. They are mostly throwing away the intellectual resources of half their children. It is very hard for any girl to get an education and be accepted as a professional.
posted on January 17, 2004 06:01:34 PM new
About the cost of these people being on the street.
If the cost is spread around in the cost of police service and prisons and emergency rooms then there is no line item that says - for mental health.
So they can pretend there is no cost.
And when a mentally ill person kills or maims someone who would have contributed both their labor and taxes to the rest of us there is no accounting for that as a seperate cost either.
When you have to leave a park or a library because you are afraid of some wild looking person in ragged dirty clothing nobody sets a price on that.
The people who decide these things usually live in walled estates and are driven in a limo to secure buildings and never see such a harsh reality. It is an abstract to them.
If they do a photo op in a soup kitchen you can be sure things are well sanitized and safe before they come in the back door under heavy security.
posted on January 17, 2004 06:01:45 PM new
Our beloved DeSquirrel mentioned a few pages back that New York's Mayor Ed Koch had failed in his attempt to solve homelessness in NYC. Here's an 18-month-old article that talks about Koch, Giuliani, and current mayor Bloomberg and their homeless policies:
June 23, 2002 -- New York Times Once Again, Trying Housing as a Cure for Homelessness
By NINA BERNSTEIN
At the heart of the Bloomberg administration's ambitious new policy to deal with homeless people in New York is an old idea with a whole new life: subsidize more housing and the number of homeless will drop. If the plan succeeds - still a big if - it will move 9,250 homeless families from city shelters to subsidized housing over the next year, nearly triple the number placed this year and well above the 1990 peak.
Much of the increase will come from giving more of the scarce subsidized apartments to homeless mothers and children and fewer to other needy people.
That change is a significant marker of shifting attitudes in the history of
the city's homeless policy.
Two decades ago, the notion that homeless people needed housing seemed reasonable, if unaffordable, to many city officials. In the late 1970's, after years in which urban renewal, landlord abandonment and arson-for-hire had swept away swathes of the city's cheapest housing, more "street people" and beggars appeared on New York's sidewalks. Homelessness became far more visible nationwide in 1981, in the worst recession since the Great Depression, but instead of disappearing when unemployment dropped again, as
most Americans expected, it kept growing.
In the 1980's, advocates presented the problem as a failure of government to do right by the most vulnerable: people who were just more unlucky than others, not different or less deserving. Families sheltered in squalid
Midtown welfare hotels during a city real estate boom became the focus of campaigns for public sympathy and subsidized housing.
In one sense, it worked. The Koch administration adopted a 10-year housing plan that eventually produced 150,000 apartments, 10 percent of them for homeless families. Prodded by court rulings and David N. Dinkins's primary campaign in 1989, Mayor Edward I. Koch vowed to close the welfare hotels by moving homeless families into homes, including an annual allotment of 1,800 apartments in public housing.
In another sense, the strategy backfired badly. As crack, street crime, and anger at welfare mothers increasingly framed public debate about poverty, advocates acknowledged belatedly that drug addiction and mental illness, not just a lack of housing, afflicted many homeless people.
The defining shift came in the first year of the Dinkins administration. Mr. Dinkins had come into office insisting that "a shelter is not a home," and he assigned Nancy Wackstein, a longtime advocate for poor children, as director of his Office on Homelessness. Working 12-hour days, she succeeded in a few months in reducing the number of families in welfare hotels to 150 from 1,200.
But the hotels filled up again, faster, it seemed, than they had been emptied. By 1992, more than 1,000 of the 5,200 homeless families in the city lived in welfare hotels.
"I thought that if you just provided 8,000 units of permanent housing for a couple of years, you'd address the problem," Ms. Wackstein said in an interview that year. "I failed to understand that the universe of potential
homeless families is very large."
In retrospect, some analysts point out, the rise in shelter applications coincided with the start of a new recession, but politically, the idea that subsidized housing could cure homelessness was dead.
Now the idea is back, with fresh vigor, not only in New York City but nationwide. More sophisticated research, the expensive growth of an improved, service-rich shelter system, and the galloping rise in family
homelessness in the welfare-to-work era have made it inescapable, say veterans of homeless policy debates.
In the last year of his mayoralty, even Rudolph W. Giuliani, who had strongly rejected subsidized housing as an answer to homelessness, found himself scrambling with little success to add rent subsidies, federal
vouchers and more public housing apartments to the dwindling pool of low-income housing the city could offer the surging number of homeless families.
It was like a U-turn. Joan Malin, Mr. Giuliani's first homeless services commissioner, recalled that in 1995 the mayor had been determined to shrink the soaring shelter population the way Richard J. Schwartz, his senior
policy adviser, was shrinking the welfare rolls: tighten eligibility rules, deter applicants at the front door, and eject those who failed to meet new work requirements.
"I have vivid memories of very painful conversations at City Hall," Ms. Malin, now chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood of New York City, said recently. She recalled asking permission to offer day care, a
restaurant allowance or social services to mothers and children denied shelter beds under new eligibility rules before sending them to try to crowd back in with angry relatives.
"The mayor looked at me and basically said, `No. What Richard's done in the welfare system is what you need to be doing.' " said Ms. Malin, who resigned in 1996. "It became his mantra."
The courts eventually ruled against Mr. Giuliani's bid to deny shelter to homeless mothers who did not meet strict new welfare requirements and to put their children in foster care. With additional hurdles to clear, half the families who were ultimately found eligible for shelter had to apply five times. While their eligibility was under review, many bounced between 10-day temporary shelters and the Emergency Assistance Unit in the Bronx, where children and their parents routinely slept on the floor through the night.
At the same time, Mr. Giuliani reduced subsidized housing placements from the shelters to a 10-year low, and let the pipeline of city-owned apartments dry up, convinced that the lesson of the Dinkins years was, as another former commissioner put it, "If you build it, they will come."
They came anyway, as the Coalition for the Homeless and the Legal Aid Society had warned all along. By February 2001, the number of people lodging nightly in the shelter system equaled the 1980's peak of 28,737, and Mr. Giuliani's last commissioner of homeless services, Martin Oesterreich, exclaimed in an interview, "I can't screw the front door any tighter."
In a booming rental market, many private landlords would not tolerate the bureaucratic delays involved in accepting housing vouchers. The Giuliani administration, like the Koch administration in the 1980's, turned more and more to hotel rooms, which cost about $3,000 a month, far more than
permanent apartments.
Last July, the number of homeless families with children in the system surpassed all previous records, and that trend has only accelerated. Last month, a record of 33,887 homeless people slept in the shelters each night,
including 14,553 children and 11,612 adults in 7,879 families.
Research using the city's own computerized records, and supported by respected national studies, shows that any such record of homeless people catches only one in four of those who experience homelessness at some point during a year - and overestimates the share with chronic impairments.
"Personal difficulties, such as mental disabilities or job loss, may increase vulnerability to homelessness, but they cannot explain the high number of people who fall into homelessness every year," said Martha Burt, a
national authority on homelessness who directs the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan research organization. "Only policies that expand the availability of affordable housing to people with below-poverty incomes will
ensure stable homes for these individuals."
A New York University study that followed homeless families who entered city shelters in 1988 and a random group of families on public assistance who had not been homeless found that only one factor - subsidized housing - determined whether a family in either group was stably housed five years later. Of those who received such a subsidy, 80 percent met the definition of stability - living in their own apartment for at least a year. Among those who did not get a housing subsidy, only 18 percent were stably housed.
"Education, work history, mental illness, childhood trauma, substance abuse, experience with the criminal justice system - nothing else we could measure made a difference," said Marybeth Shinn, a writer of the study, published in 1998 in The American Journal of Public Health. "The basic message is that subsidized housing was both necessary and sufficient to create housing stability." She added, "We conclude that housing cures homelessness for families."
Linda I. Gibbs, the Bloomberg administration's commissioner for homeless services, said 26 percent more families applied for shelter in the fiscal year ending this month than in the previous year. Conservatively, she added, the city projects another 26 percent increase in applications next year, not because anyone expects new housing subsidies to draw more families to the shelters, but because the trend is unmistakable.
"They're really here," she said, "they're really homeless, and all these resources are being put into place to meet this very real demand."
posted on January 17, 2004 06:05:36 PM new
"So, Helen, why do you suppose there's been no suggestion (that I'm aware of) to reinstate mental institutions and "warehouse" these people we never had to look at before? Can it really be more costly to house them, albeit behind barred locked doors, than to develop homeless shelters, programs, etc., in nearly every community across America?"
An effort has been made to hide the problem by locating the shelters miles from the downtown area. In order to avoid facing the problem, an effort is made to relocate the homeless from well travelled areas and crews go around every night to look for those who might freeze to death.
A good program will have to identify the needs of each individual case. Some may need to be hospitalized and some may be able to function in a shelter. Both facilities will be necessary.
The homeless that we see sleeping on the street are likely in need of mental help. The program will have to be backed up with money and resources including affordable housing for those that are able to move from the shelter.
posted on January 17, 2004 06:25:57 PM new
I like kind, smart people the best, Gravid. They are rare, but over the course of a lifetime I've managed to hold onto a handful. It will annoy you, I suppose, to learn that you and I are quite alike; high IQ, common sense, and practical knowledge, to boot. I learned a trade (and other skills) rather than become a lawyer, figuring when push came to shove, I'd be better off knowing how to build my own shelter and grow my own food than some idiot versed only in suing to steal what he/she couldn't manufacture. Like you, my life choices haven't made me rich; but I go to bed at night confident that I haven't spent my day screwing someone out of their inheritance, and I know that the work I do (when I do it) will enhance (as opposed to disrupt) someone else's life.
I'll meetcha in the forest one day, grubbing for berries and roots, heh...
posted on January 17, 2004 06:35:31 PM new
"An effort has been made to hide the problem by locating the shelters miles from the downtown area. In order to avoid facing the problem, an effort is made to relocate the homeless from well travelled areas and crews go around every night to look for those who might freeze to death."
Yes, Helen, so much money/time/effort seems to be poured into concealing the homeless as opposed to effectively treating at least the mentally ill amongst them. I wonder why? I haven't looked into it at all, but I know that pendulums swing and it seems to me we're long overdue for the pendulum on this issue to swing back to the days when mentally ill people were simply "carted away". Why do you think that's not happening now?
posted on January 17, 2004 06:50:03 PM new
It's not happening now because it's easier and less costly to hide and ignore the problem. These poor people are considered expendable and not worthy of our money or time. You can see the indifference of Linda and wgm for example. The conservative right is only interested in subsidizing the drug and insurance industry.
posted on January 17, 2004 06:55:26 PM new
Aw, come on, Helen... forget the soup kitchens for a minute and focus on the cost of booking hotel rooms and building shelters versus re-opening thousands of abandoned mental hospitals. How can it possibly be more cost-effective to create new, temporary structures when we've already got far more substantial buildings sitting idle?
posted on January 17, 2004 07:06:12 PM new
Like Bagdad and Halliburton. lol
I should add to my previous comment that the insurance industry will be opposed to providing mental health for the insured. Some veterans, for example have insurance...some do not...what a disaster.
posted on January 17, 2004 07:40:27 PM new
I think we had the Baghdad/Halliburton discussion over a year ago, and that we were right, and that they have won.
As to the rest, I dunno, Helen... maybe Life moves at such a pace today that one either keeps up or lands on the street. Tough sh!t.
This afternoon, I walked to my local Rite-Aid store. On my way home, I passed a pigeon who'd obviously been hit by a car and was now flapping and panting his life away in the street. I couldn't do anything for that dying bird except pray, and I prayed all the way home. That vision got me thinking, though: what if that hapless bird had been the last of its species? Did I really think my prayers would ease its suffering? What if all of us prayed for the homeless in the same way? Are they a dying breed?
(I've been a quasi-Hindu for years, and am now on the road to becoming a Catholic. God and prayer are not mere "concepts" to me, and while I understand the need of some to eschew their value, I have concrete evidence in my own experience that proves prayer works, and that belief in something greater than my miserable self, or my miserable politics, or even my miserable country makes me just bearable enough to my fellow human beings on any given day... )
This is not a You or Me world, you guys; it's a You and Me world...
