Please Help, Don’t Give

The latest effort by the Nashville Downtown Partnership to curb, if not outright cure, panhandling in Nashville actually looks like a good plan. At least the information they are disseminating is correct – there are no false hopes or factual errors about panhandling in their media. You can see what they’ve got at Please Help, Don’t Give.

Please Help, Don’t Give

The latest effort by the Nashville Downtown Partnership to curb, if not outright cure, panhandling in Nashville actually looks like a good plan. At least the information they are disseminating is correct – there are no false hopes or factual errors about panhandling in their media. You can see what they’ve got at Please Help, Don’t Give.

Knitting Scarves, Etc, For The Homeless

Now is the time to start work on your Winter wear, my dear knitters. I just have one suggestion. Most of the homeless are men. And, well, men like manly stuff, manly colors, manly styles (most of them anyway). And though I appreciate your desire to cheer up the homeless with bright colors and flowery designs, you’d have a hard time getting any man, homeless or not, to actually wear such finery. Believe me, a scarf is enough to warm someone’s heart. The gift, and a smile from a stranger, will do more than dayglow pink ever could. God Bless you for your efforts. Yet don’t for get the homeless women who would more appreciate pretty things.

• knitting.about.com
• knittingforhomeless.blogspot.com
• blogsearch.google.com – homeless knitting

Word Gets Around

Ok, so I will check to verify, but, I had not heard of this incident being reported by any of the news organizations in Nashville. Yet, a Memphis TV station picks this up. It reads as follows:
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – Nashville police are searching for the driver of a vehicle that ran over a homeless man who ultimately died from his injuries.

Sixty-9-year-old Wilbur Lee Helms was found shortly before midnight on June 18th by a police officer. Investigators said Helms appeared to be extremely intoxicated and may have been lying in the road when he was struck.

Helms died Wednesday from injuries that doctors said were consistent with injuries from being run over by a vehicle.

Authorities do not have any clues about the driver’s identity, but said the hit & run incident happened in downtown Nashville, a few blocks north of Bicentennial Park.

Memphis wmctv.com

Don’t Wait Too Long

This song by Madeleine Peyroux could certainly be a theme song for many homeless people – people who are waiting for the world and more likely for themselves to change, before getting back into life. You must hear the song to really understand and feel it. Below are the lyrics. Yes, loss of love is big factor in a lot of homeless people’s lives. To me, the song is about getting back into life.

Don’t Wait Too Long
You can cry a million tears
You can wait a million years
If you think that time will change your ways
Don´t wait too long

When your morning turns to night
Who´ll be loving you by candlelight
If you think that time will change your ways
Don´t wait too long

Maybe I got a lot to learn
Time can slip away
Sometimes you got to lose it all
Before you find your way

Take a chance, play your part
Make romance, it might break your heart
But if you think that time will change your ways
Don´t wait too long

It may rain, it may shine
Love will age like fine red wine
But if you think that time will change your ways
Don´t wait too long

Maybe you and I got a lot to learn
Don´t waste another day
Maybe you got to lose it all
Before you find your way

Take a chance, play your part
Make romance, it might break your heart
But if you think that time will change your ways
Don´t wait too long
Don’t wait
Hmm… Don’t wait

Homeless Number Shuffle

I am seeing this happen all over the country.  “Officials” from every city in the country claim that the homeless population is declining, but all the people who actually work with the homeless say it isn’t so.

For example, we have this letter to the editor of the IndyStar.com. He proves that the homeless population has actually gone up, not down; assuming that the “official” numbers are accurate:

    “As one who spent more than 13 years working full time with our city’s homeless, and having been chairman of the shelter and day services committee of the Blueprint to End Homelessness, I was excited to read “Number of homeless declines” (June 11).

It certainly was a grabbing headline, but far from accurate. In 2005, the Coalition for Homelessness Intervention and Prevention counted 2,080 homeless people in Marion County. In 2007, 2,061 were counted. A headline for a reduction of 19 individuals over two years?

Considering the countless hours of meetings, millions of dollars and much talk, if 19 individuals are all who no longer call the streets home, we are failing. Take into account the number of affordable housing units, mainly by Partners in Housing, that have been added over the past 24 months and we have actually seen an increase in those living under bridges, in shelters and in abandoned buildings.

CHIP has changed its leadership, and so has the Indiana Coalition on Housing and Homeless Issues. I hope more changes than the nameplates on the corner offices.”

Bob Goodrum

Former director, Light House Mission

A Comment Made At Another Blog

“What bothers me is the conservative belief that the market rules all. Contrary to that belief, the market is not some magical Solomanic entity–it is an ideological construction (one might even say fantasy) that rewards having money with more money. If we award leadership to the folks with the biggest stash (i.e., those who have been rewarded by the market), we abdicate the bedrock American value of freedom and give up all moral high ground. Despite the trumpeting of “family values” that one hears from the right, the insistence on the market as THE yardstick reveals that conservatives don’t really care about any values except the value of the money in their pockets (e.g., compare the revenue that porn brings in versus the combined revenues of ABC, CBS, and NBC [http://familysafemedia.com/pornography_statistics.html]).

The market is amoral, people. Don’t rely on it to determine the political landscape of our country.” – kmm

Read the whole story at Nashville Is Talking

The Waiting List

Waiting For The Call Home. Do you remember that post? On the 24th of May, I applied for housing through the homeless services division of Metro Social Services, here in Nashville. It’s been more than a month and nothing has changed. I’m still homeless. Waiting.

If anything, this is proof that getting off the streets is no easy or quick task. Services for the homeless are very limited. Often, homeless people become jaded for all the disappointment that comes with trying to overcome their homelessness – for all the promises made, and all the hopes dashed on the rocks of an indifferent society.

T.S. Eliot Quote

 

You still shall tramp and tread on endless round

of thought, to justify your action to yourselves,

weaving a fiction which unravels as you weave,

pacing forever in the hell of make-believe

which never is belief.

 

T. S. Eliot

T.S. Eliot Quote:

You still shall tramp and tread on endless round

of thought, to justify your action to yourselves,

weaving a fiction which unravels as you weave,

pacing forever in the hell of make-believe

which never is belief.

T. S. Eliot

Be A Human

Chris said, “You can be a cool, hip, cynical city-dweller and internalize a crippling fear of the people all around you, or you can, you know, be a human being.” Read the rest of his enlightening post at My Quiet Life.

Will Rogers Quote

    “The 1928 Republican Convention opened with a prayer. If the Lord can see His way clear to bless the Republican Party the way it’s been carrying on, then the rest of us ought to get it without even asking. “

Online Addict Getting His Fix

At lunch time today I met with Tech Geek/Good Samaritan who installed the proper drivers into my new laptop.   I was surprised by my own gleeful excitement as I was again able to surf away.   I’m definitely Internet dependent.

Agressive Panhandlers

UPDATE: Please let me reiterate. Panhandling is the act of asking for money or other things from another person. Aggressive panhandling is the act of using threats, force, or other forms of coercion, in order to obtain things from another person. There is a big difference between the two.

Just how many people can one agressive panhandler offend in a day?

A lot.

I’ve been getting reports recently, even from people sympathetic to the plight of homeless people, that they’ve been overly bothered by an aggressive panhandler. May be it’s just one guy, or maybe a couple of them, but they have been a nuisance.

Although I am in favor of a person’s right to panhandle, I am certainly against any kind of coersion on the part of the panhandler. Hopefully, the police will find who is doing this and deal with them properly.

Still, lets not treat all homeless people alike. Most homeless people are law abiding citizens who only want to be left alone. It’s a matter of separating the wheat from the chaff. For the chaff amongst the homeless make life miserable for other homeless people as they do for the rest of the citizenry.

There are a lot of new faces amongst the homeless. No doubt some of them have been dumped onto Nashville from other cities – cities that found these particular individuals to be just as much a nuisance.

Drivers

Well, it looks like I’ll be getting drivers for my newest used laptop tomorrow – hopefully.  and then I’ll be back in business.  Hopefully, that’s all that’s needed to get this Dell back on line.

 Today I attended a meeting of homeless outreach workers concerning the coordination of services.  When I get this laptop fixed, I’ll post on it.   Keep your fingers crossed!