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I am homeless. This is the second time in a year that I've been so. It ain't easy.

Just about a year ago, I was laid off from a job I had held for four years. It was a pretty good job, doing research, geographic information systems, and data analysis for an institute at a local university. The layoff was unexpected. I drew unemployment for awhile, had an apartment.

Not long after the layoff, however, I went into a deep clinical depression, was hospitalized for awhile and have needed to spend a time recovering. Financially, however, I was a mess, lost my apartment, and spent several weeks in a local homeless shelter. Boy, did I learn a lot.

I got back on my feet, started looking for a job, got an apartment. I was doing all right, then got hit with another bout of depression and had to be hospitalized again.

Hospital bills, other unforeseen expenses, etc. I lost my apartment again about two months ago. So I'm homeless again, living in a shelter program.

I'm pretty lucky. (What?!! . . . "lucky"?!)

Yeah, lucky. Because the county I live in has a shelter which also provides a lot of services: substance abuse/alcoholism counseling, 12 step meetings, mental health care, including a psychiatrist, a case manager, job-hunting assistance, money management counseling, transitional housing, and connections to other services, like medical care. For free. It's not a great place, of course: dormitory living with people in a very wide range of situations, like real street bums, active alcoholics, junkies, crackheads, mentally ill folks, folks in crisis like me, folks who lost their jobs and can't find new ones, folks who lost relationships and/or got divorced and really screwed because of it, disabled veterans, released prisoners, and just damn unlucky, confused, and lonely folks.

But the place is fairly safe and the staff work hard. It got really fucking cold last week and the shelter crammed in as many folks as would fit. Food, clothing, shelter in a life-threatening situation.

This isn't true in a lot of areas in this country. But you probably know that. I read an article yesterday about a homeless man who was beaten to death by a gang of suburban kids. This has happened often in the past few years. It seems it's a brutal sport.

"Street people" are severely marginalized. Prejudices are still ubiquitous. Once in the circle, it's hard to get out. Many cities and communities either arrest homeless folks or just push them outta town (this is called "passing the trash"). Many places have no shelter or programs, other have just the bare minimum. Charity and humanity is in short supply. I know I'll make it through (with some help), because I'm smart, very employable, and resilient. There's sometimes very little hope for many of my brothers and sisters out here.

There aren't many, but there are some folks on our side:

Just Neighbors . . .

The Just Neighbors Mission

The mission of Just Neighbors is to raise awareness of the root causes of poverty and homelessness.

Just Neighbors brings to its participants a deep understanding of the reality of poverty and a deep empathy for people living in poverty. Congregations, nonprofit organizations, colleges, universities, and high schools are using the program to change attitudes, to recruit volunteers, and to empower them as advocates for their neighbors in need.

The entire Just Neighbors experience is designed to foster a sense of community among the participants. It is an engaging, thought-provoking curriculum that offers a wealth of resources and materials along with the flexibility to make the program work in the widest possible range of settings and organizations.

National Coalition for the Homeless.

The National Coalition for the Homeless, founded in 1984, is a national network of people who are currently experiencing or who have experienced homelessness, activists and advocates, community-based and faith-based service providers, and others committed to a single mission. That mission, our common bond, is to end homelessness. We are committed to creating the systemic and attitudinal changes necessary to prevent and end homelessness. At the same time, we work to meet the immediate needs of people who are currently experiencing homelessness or who are at risk of doing so. We take as our first principle of practice that people who are currently experiencing homelessness or have formerly experienced homelessness must be actively involved in all of our work.

Core Principles

* Every member of society, including people experiencing homelessness, has a right to basic economic and social entitlements of which safe, decent, accessible, affordable, and permanent housing is a definitive component.

* It is a societal responsibility to provide safe, decent, accessible, affordable, and permanent housing for all people, including people experiencing homelessness, who are unable to secure such housing through their own means.

* All people, including people experiencing homelessness, who are able to secure safe, decent, accessible, affordable, and permanent housing through their own means need economic and social supports to enable them to do so.

* People experiencing homelessness deserve access to safe, decent, accessible, affordable, and permanent housing through the same systems and programs available to people with housing.

* People experiencing homelessness have unique needs and life circumstances that may be addressed through housing programs designed specifically for them.

* All people should have equal access to safe, decent, accessible, affordable, and permanent housing regardless of their unique needs or life circumstances.

* Universal access to safe, decent, accessible, affordable, and permanent housing is a measure of a truly just society.

National Alliance to End Homelessness.

Our Work
The National Alliance to End Homelessness is a leading voice on the issue of homelessness. The Alliance analyzes policy and develops pragmatic, cost-effective policy solutions. We work collaboratively with the public, private, and nonprofit sectors to build state and local capacity, leading to stronger programs and policies that help homeless individuals and families make positive changes in their lives. We provide data and research to policymakers and elected officials in order to inform policy debates and educate the public and opinion leaders nationwide.

The Ten Year Plan
Guiding our work is A Plan: Not a Dream—How to End Homelessness in Ten Years. The Alliance’s Ten Year Plan identifies our nation's current challenges in addressing the problem and lays out practical steps that can be taken to change its present course and truly end homelessness. The announcement of this plan started a snowball effect that is now felt across the country. The Administration and Congress have adopted significant parts of the Ten Year Plan as policy goals. Opinion leaders have begun to echo the language and key concepts of the plan and communities and states across the nation have taken up the challenge to end homelessness. Hundreds of communities are developing or have implemented plans to end homelessness within ten years. Across the country, the movement is growing. Now more than ever, our nation is poised to end homelessness.

Homelessness is fundamentally an economic problem. These and other groups, agencies, and programs are trying to address this. Especially under the regime of the Doubleduh-Chainey Gang, it seems an impossible task. But we must try.

On a personal note, we're doing a fundraiser here at P!to keep me alive (and in cigarettes and bus fare) as I look for a job. My finances are trashed and I can use whatever help I can get. Please. Just donate what you can, if you can - I'll be more grateful than you can imagine.

Thank you.

Be at peace.

"LBJ took the IRT down to Fourth Street USA, When he got there what did he see? The youth of America on LSD! LBJ ... USA ... FBI ...CIA ..."

(Lyrics from original HAIR Musical)

For a moment, forty years ago, it looked like the radicalizing political effect of the Vietnam War together with the US Civil Rights movement would synthesize with the upcoming 'drop out', psychedelic culture that swept the youth of North America.

US Homeland Security demand for DNS master key alarms world

Slashdot and Cryptome report that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is demanding the master key for the DNS root zone - a demand that has other nations alarmed.

BBC News 24, the international version of Blair TV's media war machine, has just announced a decision by the British Ministry of Defence to 'allow' the 15 navy ex-detainees to sell their stories to the press. This will only be permitted after the stories are vetted by their commanding officers!

What blatant propaganda from the British corporate state!

One thing is certain, Tony Blair's idiotic behaviour during the Anglo-Iranian maritime dispute did no one any favours, least of all the 15 British service personnel who were detained in Iran for just under a fortnight.

Blair and his cohorts did a lot of huffing and puffing, insisting that the Iranians had grabbed the sailors whilst in Iraqi waters. This is the front that the British, with an orgy of jingoism from its media, have put up all along.

I'm on the verge of having this story published that is set in the context of a teacher discussing with his students what an inarguable nightmare Bush and his enabling Republicans are. Most of the students are portrayed by people of notoriety so it has a lot of humor despite how infuriating it is. I'm sending it out to like-minded people to help get the buzz going. Hopefully the following samples of praise I've received for it, along with an excerpt, will intrigue you enough to put this on the top of your to-do list. If you're averse to opening attachments from strangers you can access it from my yahoo group UndoBush where the preface and corresponding political cartoon are: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UndoBush/ http://www.geocities.com/hail111mary/The_Switch.doc

"I was blown away by how brilliant it is." --Dell Long, B.B. King's former PR manager

My father did not leave me any riches, but at his deathbed he whispered to me something that is even better─a good piece of advice: “If you exploit alcohol,drugs (crack,marijuana), sex (prostitution, pornography), and gambling, you can be rich in no time but poor in spirit. If you read books you will be wealthy and also rich in spirit. You choose.” Kristen and I believe that books are the sure road to a good life, and that fervent belief is shown in Kristen’s book reviews and articles.

Get your website flooded with visitors and readers for FREE!

kristen at Blogger.com

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A discussion about belief by PaulEdward Snyder as posted in PBA (Progressive Blog Alliance) prompted this review. Whenever doubt assails me, I turn to The Tragic Sense of Life and my faith is quickly restored. Faith and reason. The man of flesh and bone. Immortality. These are the themes Unamuno discusses with the ardent --fanatical I'd say--hunger for God. Thinkers such as Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Spinoza, he discards, preferring the passionate and suffering ones instead:

Among the men of flesh and bone there have been typical examples of those who possess this tragic sense of life. I recall now Marcus Aurelius, St. Augustine, Pascal, Rousseau . . . Kierkegaard─men burdened with wisdom rather than with knowledge.

There are some fine translations of this book, but I prefer J. E. Crawford Flitch’s who has taken the trouble to add his own Endnotes. Believers as well as unbelievers could well profit from Unamuno’s book.

What a lovely juxtaposition: One Mexican and one American: Two unyielding women poets. Paintsgalore our American muse from Florida sings with the same sweetness and vigor as Sor Juana Ines did. And both understand men, no doubt. While Sor Juana (the first feminist of the Americas) rebelled against the machismo of her times, Ashlee (Paintsgalore) does, too. But her message is cryptic and yet firm. But, let me not spoil the delight--let me not hold you back from the ecstasy of fine poetry:

From Kristendom in the Big Apple: Rockefeller Center

Latin Americans have a different sense of time from Americans. To them, “mañana” means in the near and far future, never tomorrow. While Americans are impatient, unwilling to wait, Latinos wait things out. Then from the future they long for an earlier time. With this preamble in mind, we can begin to understand their time. Garcia Marquez packs in one hundred years of teeming life into an instant of insufferable solitude. Likewise Borges turns one minute into a year for a character to finish writing his play and not leave it undone as he is about to die. Cortazar in a short story splices an Aztec war with a motorcycle ride in the Twentieth Century. And this is no exaggeration: Marciano Guerrero in his debut novel—The Poison Pill—turns an instant into eternity when God allows the protagonist to see the seventh day for which there’s no evening, or night, or motion—only God. Eternal peace.