Skip to main content

Odds and Ends from this week's SN&R

Cover of the 9/30/10 SN&R
Three items in the current Sacramento News & Review got my attention.

One is a Letter to the Editor from Thomas E. Nicolette of Sacramento, writing about homelessness, that says something that is painfully true, but not so certainly and absolutely true as comes off in the way he expresses it.

Nicolette writes,
I live out here in Arden Arcade, and I give to the homeless out here near Howe and El Camino [avenues]. These guys, in their 40s and 50s, will never work again. There is not enough work for even able-bodied 20-year-old kids anymore in the casual labor market.

Let’s be honest here. Nobody wants to hire these guys, period. They are worse off than the Hindu “untouchable” caste. Therefore, since they have been tossed unto the trash heap of humanity, let us not pretend and continue to hold the long-since proven invalid supposition that they could go out and get a job if they wanted to.
Take out the harshness in what Nicolette writes, the universal certainty and the tang of invective, and you have to acknowledge the man is on to something.

By all accounts, we are in for a decade of high unemployment. We homeless guys who are nearer to our deaths than to our births are suffering the worst of the recession now, and we are going to continue to have a doozie of a hard time finding any job, much less good ones.

Because the job market is changing ever faster and ever more radically, younger employees, trained for the culture and equipment of the current employment scene will be increasingly valued, while we will be looked at as has-beens, past our expiration date.
---
The second item of interest is news that the Jade Buddha for Universal Peace will be visiting Sacramento for two weeks beginning on October 3.

So, if y'all have nothing to do for the nine straight days when Fiendship Park is going to be closed, come refresh your spirit in the presense of the 11-foot-tall Jade Buddha, skillfully carved from a single piece of gem-quality jade.

The Buddha will be on display at the Kim Quang Temple at 3119 Alta Arden Expressway. [map] [link to Jade Buddha tour website] [A press release from the Vietnamese Buddhist Community in Northern California relating to the Sacramento arrival of the Buddha statue.]



-----

And lastly but not leastly, the final article in the weekly is an interview with Fiber Girl, Bronwyn Schweigerdt, a Sacramento teacher, author and speaker who preaches the good news of healthful eating.

Her 2002 book The Undiet was a big seller, teaching people how to eat well and make their body physically healthier as a result.  Free to Eat: The Proven Recipe for Permanent Weight Loss is her new book, which, as the title indicates, focuses on weight loss.

Boy, would I like for Ms. Schweigerdt to visit Homeless World Sacramento and do some super-heroine stuff for us, many of whom have been fattened and undernourished by the unhealthful diet of the homeless, which is fully Dickensian.

Oliver, tremblingly comes forward, tray in hand, and makes his famous request: "Please, Sister, I want a veggie."
Here, one Q&A from the interview:

Q. Why did you go to school for nutrition?
A.  Well, I believe I started studying nutrition because I wanted to save the world. I saw so many people getting diseases like heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes at such young ages, and knowing that it’s absolutely preventable—and absolutely reversible, even—it just really motivated me to study nutrition and to help people.
Hooray, you, Bronwyn!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Sex, Lies and Exegesis

Definition: exegesis [ek-si-jee-sis]: critical explanation or interpretation of a text or portion of a text, especially of the Bible. Painting by He Qi , a prominent artist from China who focuses on Christian themes. This piece is inspired by The Song of Solomon. In his May 21 column, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof stirred up a hornets’ nest. His column wasn’t really a column, it was a quiz, titled “ Religion and Sex Quiz .” The questions and what he provided as the answers were provocative, to say the least. We would later learn, in his follow-up, a post to the Times online in the afternoon of the same day, “ Reader Comments on my Religion Quiz ,” that the information that was used to create the quiz came with the help of Bible scholars, “including Jennifer Knust, whose book inspired [the quiz], and … Mark Jordan of Harvard Divinity School.” Kristof doesn’t name Knust’s book, but a quick googling reveals that it must certainly be Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s...

In an act of Collective Punishment, Loaves & Fishes closes its park in the morning on New Year’s Day

Calvin [a "green hat" in Unfriendly Park] makes the argument for continued incompetent management. Hobbes represents me — only, in real life, I don't have that good a coat . In an act of Collective Punishment, Loaves & Fishes closes its park in the morning on New Year’s Day In one respect — and only one — that I can think of, Loaves & Fishes is NOT hypocritical: The management hates the way America is run and wants to turn it into a backward communist country . Consistent with that, Loaves & Fishes’ management runs its facility like a backward communist country. The People’s Republic of Loaves & Fishes. A seemingly minor thing happened on New Year’s Day. A couple of people smoked a joint in Loaves & Fishes’ Friendship Park and one of the park directors, or both of them, determined, at about 10am, that, in retribution, they would punish all the homeless there by closing the park for the day. This is something the managers of the park do all the ...

Loaves & Fishes implicates Buddhism and Jack Kornfield in its June Donations Plea.

The Sukhothai Traimit Golden Buddha was found in a clay-and-plaster overlaid buddha statue in 1959, after laying in wait for 500 years. It's huge and heavy: just under 10 feet tall and weighs 5 1/2 tons. At the beginning of their June newsletter , Loaves and Fishes relates a story, taken from the beginning of renowned Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield's 2008 book The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology . The first part and first chapter in Kornfield's book is "Part I: Who are you really?" and chapter 1 is called "Nobility: Our Original Goodness," which ought to serve as a clue to what the beginning of the book is about, not that that sentiment isn't strewn through-out the chapter, section and book such that what Kornfield is telling us should be crystal clear. Somehow, the not-ready-for-primetime management at Loaves & Fishes have managed to use Kornfield's wise and kindly words in a way that mangles th...