Showing posts with label homeless people. Show all posts
Showing posts with label homeless people. Show all posts
You can help a homeless person this Christmas season by giving them something that shows you personally care, or I suggest you can help by giving them something completely impersonal. Or you can just wish each of them a "Happy Holiday" -- that never hurts.
There are a lot of blog posts and Web pages devoted to preparing Christmas care packages for homeless people. Every page includes a list of items, wrapping in warm sentiments. After asking a handful of homeless, and formerly homeless individuals for their opinions, I see they mostly agree with the online lists:
- white socks
- underwear
- deodorant stick
- disposable razor
- Medium, or Large T-shirt
- Chocolate bar
- mini Flashlight with batteries
- disposable rain ponch
- Something called "Weed"
- Rolling papers (Zig Zag white)
- Disposable lighter
- Zipper-lock bag
- Gift card
I know of four homeless, or formerly homeless women, but was unable to get their input for this post. Several guys agreed everything should be in a small backpack. That's sensible. The papers, lighter, and chocolate bar could be in the zipper-lock bag -- any herb should probably be in it's own zipper-lock bag. Food choices should be made on the basis of non-perishability, and two plain facts: homeless people, by-and-large are not adventurous eaters, and a lot of homeless folk -- myself included -- have lousy teeth, and many have no teeth at all.
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Pete admires the green guy's soap art on McDonald's front window.[/caption]
Many homeless, and formerly homeless people call this part of the month "Mardi Gras" because it's when they receive their welfare or disability cheques, which were duly issued this last Wednesday. The party will have already run out of steam for many, but not for all. For some, Mardi Gras is more a state of mind than the state of their wallets.
This evening I came upon two of my homeless friends "frolicking" in the alley just around the corner from the McDonald's at Broadway and Granville. They had the entire brightly-lit loading area behind the Bombay store on Granville entirely to themselves. One of the mildest homeless fellows I know, the "green guy," was aggressively pacing, tracing the letter Z, "zed" -- he declared emphatically -- in the air -- for "Zorro." His most recent dumpster mp3 player was attached to the sort of cheap portable powered speaker we all see in the garbage. The combined low-fidelity ensemble was pumping out Missy Elliott's "Get Ur Freak On." He was wide-eyed, and talking a lot like someone on jib, a kind of street speed: "Don't blink. Don't you dare blink!" The other homeless guy was Florida Pete.
Pete admires the green guy's soap art on McDonald's front window.[/caption]Many homeless, and formerly homeless people call this part of the month "Mardi Gras" because it's when they receive their welfare or disability cheques, which were duly issued this last Wednesday. The party will have already run out of steam for many, but not for all. For some, Mardi Gras is more a state of mind than the state of their wallets.
This evening I came upon two of my homeless friends "frolicking" in the alley just around the corner from the McDonald's at Broadway and Granville. They had the entire brightly-lit loading area behind the Bombay store on Granville entirely to themselves. One of the mildest homeless fellows I know, the "green guy," was aggressively pacing, tracing the letter Z, "zed" -- he declared emphatically -- in the air -- for "Zorro." His most recent dumpster mp3 player was attached to the sort of cheap portable powered speaker we all see in the garbage. The combined low-fidelity ensemble was pumping out Missy Elliott's "Get Ur Freak On." He was wide-eyed, and talking a lot like someone on jib, a kind of street speed: "Don't blink. Don't you dare blink!" The other homeless guy was Florida Pete.
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Two sides of someone who may be going to pieces.[/caption]
On the street most love is tough love so I feel for the person who made this sign, but I'm also wondering if they're taking their meds.
This ratty piece of ripped cardboard was in a business' doorway just on the southwest side of Broadway and Granville. It may or may not have featured in someone's attempt to panhandle. Another homeless person pointed it out to me. Yet another homie who saw it declared, "They're losing it!"
Maybe, but it does at least seem to me that this person is trying to work through some anger management-type issues. The important thing is that they're trying.
Two sides of someone who may be going to pieces.[/caption]
On the street most love is tough love so I feel for the person who made this sign, but I'm also wondering if they're taking their meds.
This ratty piece of ripped cardboard was in a business' doorway just on the southwest side of Broadway and Granville. It may or may not have featured in someone's attempt to panhandle. Another homeless person pointed it out to me. Yet another homie who saw it declared, "They're losing it!"
Maybe, but it does at least seem to me that this person is trying to work through some anger management-type issues. The important thing is that they're trying.
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Money, the gift that never disappoints. Click on the image to enlarge.[/caption]
Two nights ago, was a wonderful, warm evening; I found lots of interesting people, and things to have fun with -- the bodacious woman from Africa, who thrust a giant tub of rice and beans on me (yummy!) and "something to eat it with" -- an astonishing dark sauce made of liquid fire and crunchy pan scrapings. She called it by a name. After I tried it, I called it names also. Later on there was this nice man who called to me from his third floor balcony. He asked me to wait, he had something for me. Probably bottles. Third floor apartment dwellers love to drop bottles for binners, in bags, or otherwise. bags of beer cans are a splashy treat. Glass bottles are something else again -- "Dude! You almost had that!"
The gentleman returned to his railing and said, "here." and down fluttered a folded-square $5 bill -- I knew it before I saw it, because he'd done this years before, and I didn't realize who he was, and another binner, a few years earlier, told me of a resident in this apartment building dropping him $5.
It was a nice thing, and I told him so, he said he liked how I was always "out there trying." How nice to be appreciated. For years, right below his apartment, on the second floor, was a nice guy who always encouraged me, and commented how tidy and professional I was.
In the lanes, binners are under constant scrutiny -- not from everyone, just a select few. Foremost would be building managers, many of whom keep track of binners, Santa-style, finding out who's naughty, and who's nice, and occasionally bestowing favours, like bags of bottles, or blue bin access. Many residents -- home owners, and apartment dwellers, do the same. I could make a list of Fairview residents who are such serial Samaritans that they earn nicknames among the larger binning community. There have been two people who became known as the "Budweiser lady, " owing to the prolific amount of Bud cans they put out. There's the "menthol cigarette lady," who takes a few drags off a cigarette, puts it out, and back in the pack, until she has a small carrier bag full of packs of hardly-smoked menthol cigarettes, which she leaves, hanging on a dumpster, and has done so for years.
People who are homeless -- who "present" as being homeless, are, often, treated as being invisible; ignored like they're not there. Some homeless folk take it badly, some take it in stride, and some take it as a challenge. It's not true, of course, they are all too visible to "regular" folks, who, surreptitiously, watch the "hobos" like hawks -- they just pretend to not see them, on the streets at least.
I'll never forget an encounter I watched carefully back in 2005 at a bus stop on the busy South-West corner of Broadway and Granville. A panhandler who failed to get any change from a woman was yelling and swearing at her. She didn't flinch, didn't pay the slightest mind. The panhandler gave up, and walked away, at which point, this woman literally sagged, like a deflating balloon.
Money, the gift that never disappoints. Click on the image to enlarge.[/caption]Two nights ago, was a wonderful, warm evening; I found lots of interesting people, and things to have fun with -- the bodacious woman from Africa, who thrust a giant tub of rice and beans on me (yummy!) and "something to eat it with" -- an astonishing dark sauce made of liquid fire and crunchy pan scrapings. She called it by a name. After I tried it, I called it names also. Later on there was this nice man who called to me from his third floor balcony. He asked me to wait, he had something for me. Probably bottles. Third floor apartment dwellers love to drop bottles for binners, in bags, or otherwise. bags of beer cans are a splashy treat. Glass bottles are something else again -- "Dude! You almost had that!"
The gentleman returned to his railing and said, "here." and down fluttered a folded-square $5 bill -- I knew it before I saw it, because he'd done this years before, and I didn't realize who he was, and another binner, a few years earlier, told me of a resident in this apartment building dropping him $5.
It was a nice thing, and I told him so, he said he liked how I was always "out there trying." How nice to be appreciated. For years, right below his apartment, on the second floor, was a nice guy who always encouraged me, and commented how tidy and professional I was.
In the lanes, binners are under constant scrutiny -- not from everyone, just a select few. Foremost would be building managers, many of whom keep track of binners, Santa-style, finding out who's naughty, and who's nice, and occasionally bestowing favours, like bags of bottles, or blue bin access. Many residents -- home owners, and apartment dwellers, do the same. I could make a list of Fairview residents who are such serial Samaritans that they earn nicknames among the larger binning community. There have been two people who became known as the "Budweiser lady, " owing to the prolific amount of Bud cans they put out. There's the "menthol cigarette lady," who takes a few drags off a cigarette, puts it out, and back in the pack, until she has a small carrier bag full of packs of hardly-smoked menthol cigarettes, which she leaves, hanging on a dumpster, and has done so for years.
People who are homeless -- who "present" as being homeless, are, often, treated as being invisible; ignored like they're not there. Some homeless folk take it badly, some take it in stride, and some take it as a challenge. It's not true, of course, they are all too visible to "regular" folks, who, surreptitiously, watch the "hobos" like hawks -- they just pretend to not see them, on the streets at least.
I'll never forget an encounter I watched carefully back in 2005 at a bus stop on the busy South-West corner of Broadway and Granville. A panhandler who failed to get any change from a woman was yelling and swearing at her. She didn't flinch, didn't pay the slightest mind. The panhandler gave up, and walked away, at which point, this woman literally sagged, like a deflating balloon.
Oh that Jonathan! Why does he have a toaster in his cart? It even has toast in it, and look, he has jam. I think that if I understood Jonathan, nothing else would make any sense. Click the images to enlarge.
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Bobo doesn't have a leg to stand on! -- Credit: Les Bazso/PNG[/caption]
Used to be that that phrases like, "it's a dog's life," and, "working like a dog," stood for a hard life. We might want to consider "working like an under-paid Filipino in Canada on a limited work visa," instead, because, a "dog's life" is pretty cushy these days. My morning paper wanted me to know the sad plight of Bobo. Under the headline: SPCA hopes public can help save poodle's leg, Cheryl Chan reported how the British Columbia SPCA is appealing to the public to raise $2000 to save Bobo's leg from the chopping block. It might have been covered in your paper also. The story really had legs.
I know two fellows, one formerly homeless gent who, I'm told, probably will have a leg amputated, and another, who is homeless, who has one good leg, and one which has been a growing disaster from below the knee down, for a few years. In the latter fellow's case, it's always been"treat-then-on-the-street," though his care providers have known his leg couldn't really heal in his living conditions. A more common scenario -- which I've heard of many times -- is typified by the case, a few years ago, of homeless dumpster diver Bradley, who came down with an ugly-looking spreading rash. I strongly urged him to get to a hospital, which wrote him out a prescription for antibiotics and told him to go find a way to pay for them. That's what happened with my Bell's Palsy diagnosis. The pharmacist said the four medications in my prescription "were covered," so I was lucky, particularly as I kind of think they really weren't.
So what point could i possibly have? I'm not saying Bobo should be put down, as would've certainly been the case 20 years ago, but also I don't believe, in this day and age, anyone is going to the public to raise even a dime to improve the chances that a homeless person's leg can be saved from amputation, whereas, I believe that 20 years ago the health care system would've given him a better level of care in the first place so his leg never got so bad as to potentially require amputation.
Conservative Free Traders used to say a strong tide floats all boats, and it seems now, that Bobo and my homeless friend Limpy (soon-maybe--to-be Stumpy), are in the same boat, only Bobo's in First Class, and Limpy's in Steerage.
Budgets are tight, and attitudes, and priorities have changed. It's just one of my pet peeves, I guess.
Bobo doesn't have a leg to stand on! -- Credit: Les Bazso/PNG[/caption]Used to be that that phrases like, "it's a dog's life," and, "working like a dog," stood for a hard life. We might want to consider "working like an under-paid Filipino in Canada on a limited work visa," instead, because, a "dog's life" is pretty cushy these days. My morning paper wanted me to know the sad plight of Bobo. Under the headline: SPCA hopes public can help save poodle's leg, Cheryl Chan reported how the British Columbia SPCA is appealing to the public to raise $2000 to save Bobo's leg from the chopping block. It might have been covered in your paper also. The story really had legs.
I know two fellows, one formerly homeless gent who, I'm told, probably will have a leg amputated, and another, who is homeless, who has one good leg, and one which has been a growing disaster from below the knee down, for a few years. In the latter fellow's case, it's always been"treat-then-on-the-street," though his care providers have known his leg couldn't really heal in his living conditions. A more common scenario -- which I've heard of many times -- is typified by the case, a few years ago, of homeless dumpster diver Bradley, who came down with an ugly-looking spreading rash. I strongly urged him to get to a hospital, which wrote him out a prescription for antibiotics and told him to go find a way to pay for them. That's what happened with my Bell's Palsy diagnosis. The pharmacist said the four medications in my prescription "were covered," so I was lucky, particularly as I kind of think they really weren't.
So what point could i possibly have? I'm not saying Bobo should be put down, as would've certainly been the case 20 years ago, but also I don't believe, in this day and age, anyone is going to the public to raise even a dime to improve the chances that a homeless person's leg can be saved from amputation, whereas, I believe that 20 years ago the health care system would've given him a better level of care in the first place so his leg never got so bad as to potentially require amputation.
Conservative Free Traders used to say a strong tide floats all boats, and it seems now, that Bobo and my homeless friend Limpy (soon-maybe--to-be Stumpy), are in the same boat, only Bobo's in First Class, and Limpy's in Steerage.
Budgets are tight, and attitudes, and priorities have changed. It's just one of my pet peeves, I guess.
Jezibelle Knucklez. a South Granville prospector -- she knows secrets, yes she does!Another Jezi post ►
This is my friend Marnie. She's just appeared behind me at McDonalds. She says she went to church service, and she just ate at Tim Hortons: chili, 7-up!
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