I took this blog down for awhile -- for the holidays and to consider what I was doing.  Also, I wanted to think on how the blog might be nicer and effective at making positive changes happen for the benefit of the county's homeless population.

Well.  I don't know what all will happen with the blog hereforward, but I am putting it back online for everybody and anybody to read.  I will be adding new material -- probably rather infrequently.

So.  Hang onto your hats.  Soon, I will release the sleeping tiger from his cage ...

Dorothy Day touted for sainthood

Dorothy Day, the hero of the Delanys who began the soup kitchen that became the sprawling Loaves & Fishes empire on Ahern and North C, is getting talked up as a saint candidate by important Catholic leaders, including New York’s conservative archbishop, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, according to an article in the New York Times, "In Hero of the Catholic Left, a Conservative Cardinal Sees a Saint."

Dorothy Day

We're told that "this month, at Cardinal Dolan’s recommendation, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops voted unanimously to move forward with her canonization cause."

It's not the place for Sacramento Homeless blog to weigh in on the merits or many demerits for Day's sainthood. I am sure the Catholic church has as many oinkers on its registry of saints as it has murderers and thugs on its list of popes. So what if they add another stinker to the stench pile (if that's the case)? I mean, hey, we're talking here about a religion that is responsible for the Crusades, the Grand Inquisition, collaboration with Nazi Germany, and, in recent decades, a vast organized worldwide conspiracy to molest children. I have to conclude that the Catholics do not have an unsullied resume for finding the especially great, good people that have been in our midst. But all that's their business, I guess. Hollywood has the Academy Awards; the Vatican gives out the Sainthood prize. It's all much the same thing: Best Performance in a Leading Role (to then be used for political purposes).

The weird thing about Day, though, is that people glom onto her for wholly [and not 'holy'] political reasons. The conservatives want to use her for her opposition to abortion and the supposed "Big Government, getting ever fatter under Obama", that, they say, weighs against freedom. Totalists, like the leadership at Loaves, cherish her for her unstinting crusade for the needs of the poor, while rejecting (for themselves) her steadfastness and effort to identify with the poor. [Loaves closes on a Friday, with little notice, for the staff to go bowling; then closes on Black Friday, with little notice, for the staff to go shopping. Sheesh. Sure is tough for those employees to have a job that cuts so severely into their social life.]

But what gets brushed under the rug is Day's cartoonish romantic idealism. Day was opposed to fighting the Nazis, for example, and encouraged resistance to the draft in the 30s and 40s. While all wars are terrible, WWII was the one war that needed to be fought.

A person is not a serious thinker if he or she doesn't come to know that we need police in our cities. In the very same way -- because there are bad actors in the world -- we need a military, too. Sometimes, we need to use violent force for completely good purposes. Call me silly, if you want to, but I think it was the case when we declared war on Germany, the US did the right thing. Now, well after the war, there can be no doubt that stopping the Nazis was good and necessary.  I mean:  You think?

Day was also opposed to Social Security. Why? It appears that she had so very much faith in her screwy absolutist thinking that she believed the old who were poor shouldn't have control of their own lives.

Day wrote this as late as 1945, when Social Security was operating and being hailed as a great success by most others:

We believe that social security legislation, now [hailed] as a great victory for the poor and for the worker, is a great defeat for Christianity. It is an acceptance of the idea of force and compulsion. It is an acceptance of Cain's statement, on the part of the employer. "Am I my brother's keeper?" Since the employer can never be trusted to give a family wage, nor take care of the worker as he takes care of his machine when it is idle, the state must enter in and compel help on his part.

What horrible sentiment on two fronts! Day voices an expectation for the employer to be the caretaker of its employees, beyond their working years, on into old age. She basically saw average workers as life-long children who needed a keeper in a never-ended parent role.

The idea of the federal government stepping in to allow the old and disabled to have money to be the authors of their own lives was highly offensive to Day.

Day determined that SHE should look after the poor, if they had no family to help. SHE was what was needed as the dominatrix of a fiefdom for the poor.

Day was a scary control freak. And it is exactly that that some at Loaves & Fishes admire in sharing her admiration of totalitarian communism. In a totalist regime, the government is pretty much in charge of every aspect of your life. In 1945, when Day wrote the piece where the blockquote, above, comes from, Joseph Stalin was the leader in the Soviet Union and led the prime example of a soviet utopia. Or, I should say dystopia. Stalin killed 61 million of the citizens in his country when he led the Soviet Union and is surely one of the worst villians of all time, or, truly, THE very worst villian, topping even Hitler and Pol Pot, and Mao.

Addendum 1/7/13:  I took the blog down for a spell in significant part because I was feeling ego dystonic for having written a -- what? -- Catholic-hating blogpost!?  Yipes.  Is that ME.  But reading this blogpost now, it doesn't seem so bad to me, I am surprised to find.  I mean, if, say, a Rotary Club in Duluth that had been around, say, fifteen years, has crimes way, way, way, way scaled down for its size and period in operation but otherwise in the realm of the record of the Catholic church, a SWAT team and the Marines would storm this Rotary Club and put everyone under arrest for crimes against humanity.  On the whole, over its history, I think even most rational Catholics would agree that the history of the Church is atrocious.

But, since Catholicism is THE religion -- the foundational church of the world's leading faith -- it slips past its crimes and problems.

Al Franken's SUPPLY-SIDE JESUS -- an animated comic strip

I fear that some readers of this blog will see this viddie as an act of blaspheme. But, if you view the whole of it, I think it saves itself at the end, and that the message -- that there is something awry with the combination of conservative economics and conservative theology -- is valid.

I am IN NO WAY meaning to impugn the Union Gospel Mission and its good work by posting the video. The mission DOES NOT turn its back on people in need; it very much helps people.

But it seems to me that many conservative Christians who are also conservative politically are at cross (no pun intended) purposes. This would include several of the groups that come to the mission to preach. [During the worship portion of one group's services, on the evening after Ann Romney (I think it was) talked about "the country needing to be lifted up" during the Republican Convention, the worship leader spoke similarly and then led the congregation in singing "God Bless American."  Conservative politics wends its way into several services each month at UGM.  But, more so, I am sure, liberal politics is a subject, albeit indirect, when Dean Baker speaks at Trinity Episcopal.  Odd how God can become a political 'pull toy.']

A fully libertarian view of how society should operate is not consistent with Jesus' mostly-liberal message of compassion.

Human beings are BOTH individuals who need freedom to act as authors of their own lives AND pack animals who can mature and thrive only when in the company of others and when identifying with others such to be able to feel the burden of others' troubles.

The twisted politics of Loaves & Fishes and associated charities sees humans as being exclusively pack animals -- thus their politics, linked to the League of Revolutionaries for a New America.

Ayn Randists, like recent VP candidate Paul Ryan, are attracted to the idea (which is also the title of one of Rand's books) of "The Virtue of Selfishness." This every-man/woman-for-him/herself-ideal may sound particularly good to someone with a lot of drive and skills, but it leads to a lonely life [Who likes selfish, full-of-themselves people?] and the ruination of society.

George Carlin -- Dealing with Homelessness

Loaves & Fishes' One-Forty-Two Con Job

A frame from L&F's video. You can see the whole of the thirty-three-seconds-long video at the bottom of this post.

Loaves & Fishes is sending out a donations plea, by email, that reads as follows: “For less than the cost of a Starbucks*, $1.42, you can provide a hot home cooked Thanksgiving meal to a homeless man, women, or child.”

This is, of course, a baldfaced lie, an act of treatchery, to deceive potential donors  -- subliminally if not openly -- that any wee bit of money YOU give to Loaves & Fishes will somehow result in a spectacular amount of great good getting done.

$1.42 donation plea at L&F's homepage as of 11/24/12.

Of course, it's a lie.  Your money, given to Loaves & Fishes, will not move the moon and the stars. It will not buy a turkey dinner for anyone anywhere. Your money, in the amount of one dollar and forty two cents -- or in any high multiple of that amount, which is what L&F hopes to receive from YOU -- will do no more good than what you might suppose.  Here is the truth, folks -- sorry it is so NOT uplifting -- but your $1.42 will do no more than $1.42-worth of good.  That's all. Tops.

One-dollar and forty-two cents won't even rent a lane for a game of bowling at Country Club Lanes.  It is just not much.  But you should hold onto it -- don't send it anywhere -- and find good you can make of it, at home.  With a bunch of piles of "one-dollar and forty-two cent" amounts you can buy yourself or your whole family some Swanson turkey TV dinners.

Loaves & Fishes isn't really having a sale, you see.  This is not "10 acts of glorious good for the price of one act of glorious good" week.  God isn't really multiplying the bread and fish in Sacramento during Sale Week such that "Only YOUR faith that $1.42 is really $142.00 will make miracles happen."  It just ain't so.

What Loaves & Fishes is doing is solely one dastardly thing: To mendaciously, perfidiously get into your wallet or purse and extract as much therein as possible.

What?  You think I'm carrying on about all this a bit much?  You say you know Loaves & Fishes wildly exaggerates things, but you just take it as their mostly-benign way of making their need for donations known?

Sigh. Please, please don't support this crass fall from authenticity. We don't have to become a nation where lying is OK when you get away with it, such that it becomes believed and then a truthy truth. We don't all have to succumb to Romnesia. Romney lost the election, y'all! C'mon!! Support the True, the Good and the Beautiful by telling Loaves & Fishes to go jump in a lake. OR, tell them that you want only truthful, authentic, understandable donation-seeking correspondence sent to you, henceforward. That it is what you are told and shown that is REAL that you might respond to with a donation of your hard-earned money.

You, the donors past, who are seen as donors future, have a lot of leverage to make things better for the homeless. Be courageous for us. Don't be easy, giving your money away, blindly.

Below, Loaves' viddie that came with their texted plea for that one-forty-two:



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* I think by "Starbucks," a cup of coffee is what's meant and not a franchise.

Note: It is never explained why $1.42 was chosen as the mystery amount. Nor is it explained why, in the video, a menorah is the important symbol of this plea for Thanksgiving-turkey meal money. Am I ignorant? Was it Moses who introduced the Thanksgiving tradition in America??

More on Loaves & Fishes' unreliable service

A homeless man tells me today he is greatly gratified and relieved to have gotten into a shelter such that he will be able to take a Christmas-season job he was offered.

Had he not gotten in the shelter, he’d have been subjected to Loaves & Fishes unreliable services and that would have disqualified him for the position.

As reported in this blog recently ["Loaves & Fishes is in the gutter" and "Strike! Part II of the Loaves & Fishes bowling saga"], Loaves & Fishes “missed” a day of providing regular services [showers; locker access] recently so the staff could take a paid day off to go bowling.

There has been some complaint that in reporting on L&F’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, I impugned the integrity of lower-level staff and volunteers. To that, my response is “You're darn tootin’!!”

I hate to bring up Nazis – I’m not calling anyone a Nazi – but the example of so-called Good Germans during the Nazi era comes to mind, here.

Good Germans were people who ‘went along’ with bad policy, claiming to have no responsibility. They saw themselves as good. They were just getting by. They were cogs in the wheel of their society, not decision-makers.

I submit that lower-level staff and volunteers at Loaves & Fishes should have a sense of the needs homeless people have. They are not immune to bearing responsibility. They are not the blithely ignorant subjects of responsible policy-makers on-high. They are adults and with that comes the burden of being responsible for the reach of the effects of ones actions.

To my mind, Loaves & Fishes can rather easily “have its cake and eat it, too.*” They can have Ferris Bueller’s Days Off by leaving skeletal staff to do critical work on some days. Or, by enlisting responsible homeless people to provide aid as back-up workers. But what should not continue to happen is that homeless people’s efforts to work or make court dates or get the full measure of their day is ruined because Loaves & Fishes is continually irresponsible and undependable.
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* Use of 'cake' in this cliche assumes that Loaves & Fishes sees being reliable as a good thing.

Homelessness and its plague of frequent death

“And our bodies are earth, and our thoughts are clay, and we sleep and eat with death.”

The people of Homeless World Sacramento die frequently, with homelessness itself seeming to be the plague that offs us.  A lantern in a tent blows out and two are asphyxiated from the gas.  Their dog dies, too.  A man’s face (and the brain that had animated it) is destroyed from the blast of a gun. Over the course of a long string of besotted years livers are poisoned by alcohol to the point of not functioning. Death ensues. [Homeless persons don’t get liver transplants.]  The homeless dead are carried off in the motorized carts of modern day and most are discarded in our day’s potter’s fields after being turned to ash.

Conventional citizens die, too, of course.  But their deaths are much less frequent.  They live longer, after all, and usually die quietly behind the veil of hospitals and nursing homes.  These deaths are sterile, offstage, and followed by a dignified obituary.  Things are wrapped up and sealed off in a ritual.

Homeless people die openly.  Often tragically.  And by causes unnatural.  Interventions to save the vulnerable are less available and less successful out here than in the prim, swanky halls of conventional citizens'.

Many homeless people stake out paths to kill themselves and diligently stay apace on their descent to oblivion.  Denizens in homeless climes are more histrionic and can be socially askew, and death frequently comes suddenly and is -- up until the last breaths anyway -- unemotional.  There’s nothing to cry about until you’re gripped with fear.

“By the description of the guy, it would seem to be either Casper or Overhill that died on the light rail,” someone at the mission said. “People thought he was asleep.  It held up train service, through-out the system, for over an hour.”

“Overhill had been falling out of his chair in chapel a lot in recent weeks,” I said.

“But Casper hasn’t been around.  He’d disappeared into the streets,” someone responded. “I bet it’s him.”

It turned out to be Overhill, whom I knew as ‘211,’ since that’s what he told me to call him.  Steel Reserve 211 was the name of the cheap high-alcohol lager he drank in large quantities. 211 (the man) could do magic tricks with his agile hands and dexterous fingers.  He was truly amazing.  When there was call or opportunity for his trickery, 211 would sober up in an instant and your dime or quarter would deftly disappear (into his pocket).

When I first became homeless, over four years ago, Sacramento’s most prominent homeless people were Gremlin and Chongo. It wasn’t their noticeable names that made them foremost:  Gremlin was a small, wirey soul with fiery red hair.  He was as absolute in his bravery as he was in his loyalty to friends.

Chongo was known for his balance, his intelligence and fearlessness.I first saw him waiting for a 15 bus downtown.  He was weighted down with eight pieces of cases and bags, tied together in a crazy bundle that all was twice his volume and three times his weight.  He was a famous rock climber who became a retired legend and long-time homeless Sacramentan. He wrote the science column for SHOC’s homeless newspaper, Homeward Street Journal.

When a friend of Gremlin’s was attacked by a guy with a knife, Gremlin leaped into the fray.  Valiant Gremlin died; the friend didn’t.

Chongo, death defier that he ever was, lives on.  A very long New YorkTimes article about the man tells us of his exploits across ropes at high altitudes and climbing near-vertical and -impossibly-difficult slopes.  Today, he lives at the edges in Homeless World, proving all the more how death cannot snatch him.

One winter, kindly Bernice found a patch in Capital Park where she could sleep, keeping her things nearby.  A beast of a man, heavily tattooed, stabbed her for no particular reason other than he could. She died. The killer, with blood on him and his knife, was filmed by a hidden camera when he wandered past a light-rail stop.

Lovely Bernice, a small middle-aged black woman, was dead.  I knew her only very slightly, but it was a hard thing to get my head around.

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The quote that begins this essay is from the 1930 film version of All Quiet on the Western Front.