DE-PERSONALIZING THE HOMELESS.

My homeless brother, his dog and his bike.

Wouldn't it be nice if the homeless could just disappear and we could pretend they don't exist?  Or that we, as a society, should not consider them citizens with any rights or anything of value to offer?

It is cold and I worry about Norman being on the ground somewhere during freezing weather. He belongs to a church where he can plug-in his phone and charge it every day and he calls me about every two weeks or so. He doesn't often complain, but his last call was a complaint. San Leandro no longer deals with the homeless. They've hired a company to do it for them.

Norman had been living near a freeway overpass with his tent and belongings hidden in some bushes next to the freeway. An ex-parolee, with jail tattoos found his camp and told him he had to move. Norman picked up his phone, backed up and said "By what authority, sir?"  He answered he was being paid by a  private company.  "What is the name of the company sir?" The guy said he didn't have to tell him but if he didn't move, he'd call the police, and he left.

The ex-parolee, (Norman's assessment of the guy) returned with the police. Norman was arrested for trespassing and held for 9 days in jail. The ex-parolee confiscated his tent, his stove, his phone charger, his letter writing materials, a small file cabinet, his clothing, is bike, everything he owned except what he held in his hand-his phone. The company took his stuff, gave him a receipt that told him where it would be stored. He could pick up his belongings from the  storage center and pay the fees; something he can't do without his bike.  He had two weeks to pick it up. He didn't keep the receipt because he knew he couldn't get his stuff back before he could find another place to put it.

The stove, of course is the big issue, even though it is just a pot dug into the ground with rocks surrounding it. He cooks with paper and twigs and charcoal. It is a fire danger.

Why is it that a dog can pee on a tree in a park, and defecate in public, but a homeless human is not allowed to stop there for a nap? The homeless are dirty and smelly and look unsavory. He isn't allowed to physically stand in any public place or find a place to sleep. Out, out black spot.

And, now Norman is without his sleeping bag, tarp and a change of clothing. What a way to treat other humans,  no matter what brought them to their current condition.

Norman gets social security because he worked and had a home most of his life. His income couldn't pay rent in the Bay Area. He must live in a city where there is public transportation and services.
But some states have learned that is far more cost-effective to offer cheap housing for the homeless than to grind them through the legal system and constantly hound them to go somewhere else.

What the conservative state of Utah learned:

The biggest group, 85 percent of the nation's 580,000 homeless are temporary, mainly men, but also women and whole families who spend relatively short periods of time in shelters or cars until they can get their life together, despite an economy stacked against them.
The remaining 15 percent, the chronically homeless, fill up the shelters night after night and spend a lot of time in emergency rooms and jail. Shelters have on average, 29 beds for every 100 homeless people. This costs roughly between $30,000 and $50,000 per person according to the Interagency Council on Homelessness. And, in extreme cases, like Reno's infamous Million Dollar Murphy, who cost the system-just one man- a million dollars. (Not figured into the average costs.)

The civil model for helping people is counseling, drug rehabilitation, programs to change behavior, medical treatment, but the homeless numbers keep going up and the treatments don't work. In Utah, in Salt Lake City, a guy by the name of Tsemberis thought, we've got schizophrenics, alcoholics, traumatized brain injured people; they can't even get into programs, they can't fill out complicated forms or applications. They can't get to therapy appointments regularly, or on time. Why not give them a place to live an assume they have a right to housing and health care. They ran a large test with 242 apartments.  No questions asked. They have to promise they won't hurt anyone or bother their neighbors. They have a choice to take part in rehab or detox programs. The results were remarkable. After five years, 88 percent of them were still in their apartments and the cost for caring for them a little less than having them on the streets.
New York City tried providing housing for 4,679 severely, mentally impaired individuals who cost the city $40,449 a year. They save an average of $16,282 per person by providing them housing. Denver found emergency service costs in their Housing First program, saved $31,545 per person.

California is supposedly a liberal, innovative state. Why are we treating our homeless worse than before by making it impossible for them to be warm and secure, even with a tarp and a sleeping bag  under a freeway overpass or in the bushes?

ST PATRICK'S DAY-NUDESTOCK

Three Peta activists shed most of their clothing and donned bright green paint to celebrate St. Patricks’ Day and get their message out at the same time: “Meat’s Not Green”. They passed out leaflets about eating a vegan diet.  Abandon meat, eggs and dairy products and go vegan.  The meat industry is a polluter that also gobbles up natural resources. This information and the pictures come from Josh Trujillo’s Seattle blog.


The Peta ladies are tastefully covered for most sensibilities. But, we are a culture that shuns the naked body and public nudity as though there is something wrong with the natural human body uncovered. But, Seattle also hosts Nudestock, you know, like Woodstock?  Only it is a nude fest. People disrobe on street corners, go to work on public transit sans clothing, enjoy a parade and nudity in general.


There’s just something fun about getting nude and enjoying the breeze, so  they say. And the watchers don’t seem to mind one bit.


Peta activists were present at Nudestock along the parade route too. This time protesting the use of animal skins.

Looks like a fun crazy day whether you participate or observe.  Everyone smiles, no one is being ugly or in your face. I like it! And, the top o’ the mornin’ ta yuh whether yee be green or orange.

SHOULD WE END THE DEATH PENALTY?

On  November 6th, 2012,  California voters will be presented with Proposition 34, which would end the state’s death penalty and instead require mandatory life sentences, without parole, for condemned inmates.
Specifically, Proposition 34 will:

• Repeal the death penalty as maximum punishment for persons found guilty of murder and replace it with life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
• Apply retroactively to persons already sentenced to death. (725)
• Require persons found guilty of murder to work while in prison, with their wages to be applied to any victim restitution fines or orders against them.
• Create a $100 million fund to be distributed to law enforcement agencies to help solve more homicide and rape cases.

I have a friend who is dead set against this bill. He espouses the idea that death by injection as cruel and unusual punishment is “bull”. And, I agree. However, the people required to kill 725 people are civil servants who work for the system. The find it difficult to participate in killing another human being. Physicians find it difficult to administer death to a healthy person. Life in prison is by some estimates a harsher punishment than death. Over the years, I was  a supporter of the death penalty. The recent spate of people released from prison, and death row, across the country, found innocent of their crimes after yeas in prison, made me change my mind. Most of them were exonerated by DNA testing. The expense of the death penalty alone gives me pause. It costs more to follow the “safeguards” with appeals and extra legal maneuvering before a man is executed, a process that often takes years, than it is to keep him for life.  I think voters should approve Prop. 34, for all the reasons below:
The death penalty doesn’t work. It has been proven that it does not deter heinous crime, especially in the drug crazed world we now live in.
A crime carrying the death penalty isn’t qualified equally in communities around the state. It depends on a seated judge’s interpretation.  Juries are harder to seat when they are faced with the power to condemn a person to death which greatly adds to the cost of trials subject to the death penalty.
Proponents have spent years trying to speed up executions, including creating a Habeas Corpus Resource Center in 1998. And yet,  California has only executed 13 condemned murderers since 1992. More condemned men have died while waiting on death row than have been executed.
Supporters say California could institute laws for speedy executions as they do in Texas. But we’d do so risking the same kind of legal errors and unequal application that has tarnished Texas’ judicial system. Killing innocent people, does not go down well, nor should it happen.
Ending the death penalty would save California courts $50 million annually for appellate litigation according to Legislative Annalists.  My friend claims that is because attorneys  pad their fees and take advantage of the governments deep pockets. If that is true, more the reason to do without the death penalty. There is no doubt that money would be saved because in all respects, death penalty cases are much more expensive to put to trial.
And, in California, looming is an expensive upgrade to the death row at San Quentin.
Altogether, ending the death penalty would save California about $100 million in the first few years, and about $130 million in subsequent years, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
Under Proposition 34, the same prisoners  would be given jobs in prison, unless they posed too great a risk to be with the general population. Like other murderers, these inmates would have their pay deducted for any debts they owe to victims of crime.
Supporters of the death penalty say it is an affront to the families of victims to see these murderer’s live while their loved one died by those same hands. But how long must they wait when the system is not working? And, what guilt would they feel if the convicted man were executed and another inmate confessed to that crime sometime down the line, which has happened? Or, if DNA evidence proved him innocent after the execution?
How can we as humans, claim we abhor violence and then engage in it?
Manson, a heinous killer, is still in prison and routinely comes before a parole board and repeatedly, and endlessly (he complains) will be turned down. Prop. 34 would do away with those expensive hearings that come up every so many years, and the attorneys who represent them in these hearings. There are monsters in society and living with no hope of parole can allow the prisoner to accept his situation and engage in work that provides some small restitution to victims. It is simply more humane.
The Sacramento Bee made this point: If California were to implement life sentences with no possibility of parole, high-profile murderers such as Ramirez and Rhoades would no longer get the attention they crave and often receive on San Quentin’s death row.They’d live out their lonely days behind bars and die in relative obscurity. That would be a just end, and one that we all could count on.
I would add to that. No murderer should be allowed to make money on the sensationalism of his crime by publishing a book. He can write it, but he cannot publish it.

AFTER THE RAINS

After heavy rains, I couldn’t mow or have weed eating finished. Had my guys repair fences and remove a huge spread of blackberry bushes around the property. They chipped away at a couple of old stumps I’m always running into. I like things to be ship-shape when I leave, but the maintenance here is heavy.
I caught up on the inevitable paperwork inside, while they worked outside.   Time to play picture roulette and see what comes up in my files.

A big hole in the ground.

My daughter and grandson in a haze of smoke around the campfire.

Not sure why I took a picture of this barn in Monroe, Washington. Maybe because the silo looked like a space ship.  I do like old barns, but, I think I’ll toss this one out of my files.

Sexy shoe?  Now, that’s more like it.

I grabbed this from a story about this famous painting having been recovered after many years of being “disappeared.”

The gate to an animal sanctuary. Just read a horrible story of the abuse elephants suffer. This, after an elephant shocked by an electric fence turned on her new rescuer and killed her. If it were up to me, no animals would be allowed to be used in side shows and circuses for profit. It all too often ends up in horrible misery for the animals. In fact, this recent episode about the abused elephant was that she was being cared for and calmed before being sent to this very sanctuary here in Calaveras County.

A Matt Bors cartoon. Whoops, hadn’t thought of anything political for a whole day. Well, it is pretty funny.

Another shoe picture.  Well, with that, I’d best hot foot it into the kitchen and get my house spruced up before I leave.

HOSPITAL VISIT

In every life comes a visit to a hospital. Minimizing those visits is my goal and I’m pleased to say my “injury” will not result in surgery, something I had dreaded.  I learned it pays to eat properly and exercise. It has once again held me in good stead. While visiting the hospital for a test, I saw for the first time this sign:
Two of them, in fact. One in English and another in Spanish.  I knew that safe surrender has been advertised in the news, and radio, perhaps on television. I knew that  fire departments and hospitals encourage safe surrender of babies, if, as a new mother, without resources, or for any reason, you wish to give up your newborn. I had never seen a safe surrender sign before.
Unfortunately, in some states, it is still a crime to abandon your infant.  It usually begins with a young person, scared to tell her parents she is pregnant.  She doesn’t know what to do, or where to turn. She is completely incapable of taking care of a child or supporting it. Poverty is often a factor for her and her family, and the father.  The good news is that mother’s no longer need to abandon babies in a locker, or a dumpster, or on someone’s doorstep. Horrific tales of abandoned babies dying by being attacked by feral dogs, or smothered in plastic bags occurred for many years. Now, in most states,  there is a safe haven. Estimates indicate that over 600 children a year are abandoned in the United States.
I’m curious to know if our high schools provide  safe haven information for teens, the young girls most likely to find themselves in a situation with an unwanted pregnancy and the terrifying prospect of limited choices.   It doesn’t have to happen – it is heart breaking.  Abandoning a newborn to the elements is  almost sure death for the infant and a crime.
A Safe Haven facility in California is: Any Hospital, Staffed 24/7 Fire Rescue Station, or Staffed 24/7 Emergency Medical Service Station, with no questions asked, totally anonymous, free from fear of prosecution…… A compassionate approach that saves lives.
Safe haven laws in all states that have them are essentially the same.  They offer safe havens for newborns, and they offer:

• Privacy No one will ask your name.
• Legal You will not be breaking any laws.
• Safe Your baby will be given medical care and placed in a good home.
• Supportive You will be offered medical care and counseling.

I was glad to see the sign and hopefully, the word is out to every teen or young mother faced with the uncertainty of an unwanted pregnancy.
While waiting for my test, someone considered the soothing effect of an aquarium.  It is endlessly fascinating to watch fish swim about and temporarily remove troubling thoughts.

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Life is good.

MISSED THE COMET

A neighbor, down on his luck, had the ambulance at his door three days ago. He is suffering from congestive heart failure. Home from the hospital, he invited me and another neighbor over to play RummiKub. A tile game with similarities to all rummy card games. Fun and lively if you are competitive,  and casual if you like to curse politics between moves. We all decided we’d have to hold our noses to vote and pick the least damaging person. Not exactly the way you want to decide the leadership of your country. We also wanted to check out the comet as it streaked toward the moon or earth or missed the moon and earth. Unfortunately, by the time we remembered and got outside,  the event was over. But, the moon was surrounded by a beautiful aura and some pattern of visible dust in the sky. A lovely clear night to view a gorgeous moon. The view was worth the burrs I got in my shoelaces tromping around Brian’s darkened back yard.  And, we guessed that it missed since we didn’t feel anything earth-shaking.
Brian has an oxygen bottle with a pump delivering him air wherever he is. It has a 50 foot hose and we threatened to step on it if he didn’t behave.

His sister, Anita, mimicked his nose tubes. Hey, life is short. Might as well laugh. The next comet might be “the big one.”

GET A CAMEL.

People swear by their own special cures for ailments or bad habits. Some people swear by the health-giving benefits of owning a dog or a cat. It has been scientifically proven that pets provide many healthy benefits besides unconditional love.
I just finished reading The Good Good Pig, by Sy Montgomery. Sy developed an unusual and adoring attachment to a pig she named Christopher Hogwood.  She claims all pigs are intelligent, sensitive souls. They love and crave company, and contact. They have a sense of humor, enjoy a good joke, appreciate music. Certainly nothing you’d expect from a relationship with a pork chop.

In her book she mentions E.O. Wilson who had ten thousand ants living in his office at Harvard. He would look at them through his microscope and could actually detect individual differences in them, much to his awe and delight.
Ants and pigs  don’t necessarily cure anything except  the blues, but Sy and her friends and neighbors clearly doted on this pig and claim to have learned much about humanity from him. Mostly that animals aren’t corrupted by greed like humans are. Now that is a truth one can count on.
But, I think if I were to get another pet, it would be a camel.

Consider that if we have a planetary holocaust, the Sheiks of Araby will outlive us all. They are used to an inhospitable land of desiccating heat; they have camels to provide transportation and food, plus dung for fuel. Camels  can live on practically nothing; you can seek shelter beside them in a sand storm, take liquid from their humps and then their milk has ten times the anti-bacterial and anti-viral properties of cow’s milk. It’s naturally low in fat, and has triple the vitamin C.  It is the closest thing to mother’s milk. Camels also have an insulin-like protein that survives the digestive tract.  I’m not sure why that is important, maybe their spit is good for you.
My advice to you is if you spot a camel in your travels, you might want to latch onto that baby.
But, in the meantime, I got another remedy in my mail from elmhurst:  “To ward off cramps in a foot or toe, take your thumb and first finger and gently squeeze the area just below the nose. This may have to be repeated for a very bad cramp or charley horse, but it works.”
Thank you for that.
And, Donna Parker questioned Elaine May’s balsamic vinegar cure for hiccups claiming her family’s cure is best because you can cure hiccups anywhere. You won’t be carrying along a bottle of balsamic on the plane or a picnic, right?  She has a point.
Donna’s cure: “Fold your hands as if in prayer interlocking the finger’s except for the index ones. Concentrating on getting the index fingers as close together without touching and before you know it you no longer have the hiccups.”
I almost wish I’d get the hiccups so I can try some of these cures!  I know for a fact that animals get hiccups, I wonder what works for them?

SO MANY GODS

In my local paper, I was dismayed to read an advice columnists letter from a woman who attended one church for the 30 years of their marriage and her husband attended another. Her husband died but her pastor refused to ask the congregation to pray for him because their churches were  fundamentally different.
Oh, woe is humanity in the hands of men. 

Its Christmas Time. A time of peace and good will toward others. We are at war. Its a religious war with people killing themselves and other people in the name of God.  Banish religion and keep God. 
 I'm reminded of Ela Wheeler Wilcox's simple words.

So many gods, so many creeds

so many paths that wind and wind.

While just the art of being kind

is all this sad world needs.

(Ela Wheeler Wilcox)