“The TB Nurses are here”. The Roller was his nickname, otherwise Dennis. Dennis and Lawyer Joe rolled cigarettes late at night in the dark, scores of them. They didn’t last long since he and Lawyer Joe smoked them up daily and sold a few on the side. Cigarettes or ‘squares’ sold for fifty cents each. It was enough to pay for the makings and something more so that one could afford a soda drink at McDonalds in Aurora, IL. The Roller and Lawyer Joe used pipe tobacco for their cigarettes. It was cheaper and had a nice mild taste. They went through bags of tobacco like gophers through a corn field. The Roller was a middle aged, former taxi driver with receding hair, glasses and the typical appearance of a smoker. Nano found him a nice, dependable man with a good sense of humor. Nano tried not to think of the death The Roller and other smokers were inflicting on themselves. In Nano’s time, no one smoked for the same reason Earth for the most part had no cannibals.

“The nurses are taking people behind that partition to treat them”, added The Roller.

“What are they treating them for?” ask Nano.

“TB”, by which The Roller meant tuberculosis. “They take them back there for privacy while they take their blood for testing.”

“I don’t see how it is private down there at the end of the veranda”, which is what Nano called the concrete loading platform which fronted the warehouse where the homeless were being housed. The warehouse was a very dirty, nasty, bug laden place with plenty of health hazards, building code violations and lack of sanitary and environmental support. “When you walk out to the street you can see in around the side to where they’re working.”

“Yeah, that’s true, not private, but then again, perhaps we aren’t supposed to look, just pretend it’s private. Nurses like patient privacy, so let them pretend they are having it.” The Roller finished building a square and set it aside to start another. It took only a half minute to make a cigarette.

“If they represent the county health department, shouldn’t they also be interested in other things like how dirty this building is we’re living in?” Nano looked at Dennis.

“Well, yeah, but they aren’t. They’re just here for TB.”

“I don’t understand” Nano shook his head. “People are freezing inside on low temperature days, sweating to dehydration on hot days, getting bitten by mosquitoes and spiders, getting contaminated by the industrial soot inside this building, have no inside sanitation, just a few nasty, mostly full portable toilets, almost no chance to shower, very limited laundry service, cold food when it’s available and often in insufficient quantity, usually poor sandwiches and you get just one of them, we’re near the river where West Nile could be, perhaps poison ivy nearby, catching colds, going insane from this treatment and the Kane County Health Department is only interested in TB?”

“Yep, you got it. Just that. Anything else they don’t care about because we are the homeless.”

“Isn’t it illegal to leave a pet or a young child unattended or in a hot car or a cold car or without food for long or to abuse a pet in any way?” Nano was trying to make it all make sense.

“Oh yeah. You could not only be given a large fine for that, but go to jail a long time too. It’s bad to abuse animals, ask PETA, People Eating Tasty Animals.” The Roller smiled at his joke.

“PETA?”

“Yeah, PETA”. There was a pause while The Roller looked up at Nano for a moment and paused his building of the next square. “You know, PETA”, he could not think of what it stood for.

“Never heard of it”, said Nano. “But how can you have laws where you don’t allow this to animals, but do allow it and much more cruelty to your own kind.”

“My own kind?” Dennis squinted up against the slanting sun at Nano as they sat on the veranda at a dirty picnic table. Flies buzzed around thicker than a swarm of gnats ignoring nearby spider webs. “Oh, that’s right, your from outer space Admiral Nano sir.” He grinned, Nano smiled. “Well, here on Earth that is the way it happens. Doesn’t mean it’s fair or right. Just the way it is. Homeless rate less than pets to ‘normals’. You certainly don’t see a large store dedicated to the needs and wants of homeless people like you do for pets.”

A man rounded the TB nurses’ privacy screens which were aluminum tube frames stretched with cloth. He had a small bandage in the joint of his elbow where the nurses had bled him into a glass tube. Nano shuddered at the primitive nature of it all. It wasn’t just a matter of how medicine was conducted, but mankinds’ attitude about health at this time. To let people suffer, to waive or make exceptions to health concerns so a place unfit to live in could house the neediest seemed primitive and a cruel attitude. True, the staff were doing many things, but they were also largely inept and contradictory from person to person.

Each day the list of hand written rules on the large paper pad hanging near the sign-in desk changed. The rules varied from important to childish. One day something relatively important like do not defecate inside the building or on the building outside or near it constituted a good rule. Below it, could be a childish rule like do not drink near your bed clearly based on someone whining about a minor issue. It could be rules like ‘no smoking except in a designated area’ or ‘don’t sit in front of the fans’. Not that those or any other rule was well or consistently enforced. Nano’s favorite was ‘be dressed by 5:45am’, so the women from across the street at the other facility could walk in to have breakfast without seeing nearly naked men running around. Then again, women showed up much earlier than that and they’d all seen and like to see naked men.

Nano watched as another shelter ‘guest’ was smilingly shown into the medically private area for a TB screening. Nano shook his head while The Roller laid aside another cancer causing cigarette.

“You know” The Roller said to Nano. “The other day a man bought a pack of cigarettes across the street from the Galena McDonalds”. That location is one of most frequented by homeless in Aurora, IL. “He paid over seven dollars for a pack. I told him he could have bought that many from me for five dollars.” It seemed crazy to Admiral Nano to pay for something that when used caused cancer and made you sick. Mankind had some really strange priorities.

“Lawyer”, Nano ask leaning out from his bunk to see the man. “What time is it?”

“About 2:30am” was the response. “I can’t sleep in this heat. I’m gonna use my computer a bit and hope it cools down a couple degrees. Maybe it’ll drop below a hundred in here.” Lawyer returned to staring at the screen where numbers on a spreadsheet highlighted the Wall Street data he studied.

Aurora is the second largest city in Illinois, with the second largest homeless shelter, usually about 150 people, not counting another facility where families lived. Sometimes over two hundred could be found at the shelter. The warehouse was not where ‘guests’ were normally found sleeping or eating. Guests was the term given to the homeless by the church driven charity this shelter was based on. The main facility where homeless would normally eat and sleep was under repair, long over due. It’s ventilation system was being fixed so that a hundred men sleeping side by side on the third floor on thin, filthy pads laid on a dirty floor might have it a bit better there than had been the case for quite a while. Unfortunately, instead of scheduling the work for late winter, perhaps April, when the coldest of winter had passed and the heat of summer had yet to arrive, the work was now taking place in high summer, when the highest temperatures could be expected. During the winter the homeless are exposed to below freezing temperatures by being outside all day long. Protection involves adding layers of clothing. Getting inside a McDonalds or the library when the shelter wasn’t providing shelter for hours a day is also crucial. Strange that it should fall to businesses to do what the shelter sometimes won’t do. It is easy enough to add layers of clothing to counter being cold, but in the current heat wave around the Chicago area, one could only take off so much clothing. The men lay in their underwear at night getting little sleep, enduring till morning and commanded to get up. Then they’d eat whatever cold breakfast was available before leaving to find more shelter some where cool like a McDonalds or the Aurora Library.

But despite it’s large size, Aurora, Illinois has a busted economy, a result of the national recession and typical of most cities and states. The citizens of Aurora are almost entirely unaware of the hardships the nearby shelter and their ‘guests’ were coping with. ‘Guests’, as if the homeless were at a hotel with showers, clean bathrooms and beds. It was an unfunny choice of word to describe those dependent on charity to keep from starving or being naked. True, the local residents had their own problems, but only the generosity of the shelter’s founding churches and others who’d come to help since that time made the shelter possible. ‘Normals’ had their own blinders on.

Nano got up to get a drink of water out of a water jug near the open truck doors that were the entrance to the warehouse. Nano wasn’t quite sure what had been stored at the warehouse. It had been unused for many years till the current dilemma forced the homeless into it. Many legal permits were rumored to have been waived by Aurora officials in order to put the homeless in the warehouse. It was a filthy, dirty, awful place to be. Despite well-meaning cleaning efforts, it was nasty. The actual main shelter had been designed to be an incinerator unit for Aurora. It looked to Nano, judging by the dark soot on every surface of the warehouse, as if the burned contents of the former incinerator unit had been transported across the street to be stored at the warehouse. Perhaps then the burned remnants were then hauled out from the concrete loading platform, or what Nano sometimes called the ‘veranda’. The homeless could not walk on the concrete floors within the warehouse without getting their feet very black with ‘soot’ left everywhere. It covered the walls and windows to the degree you could not see through them. It was pervasive and probably one of those ignored health hazards the city had waived in order to put the homeless men here for as long at it the repairs across the street took.

The warehouse had no internal bathrooms. It had no water fountains, food services, heating or air-conditioning that worked. It did have bad lighting and overall was what one would expect of a bug-laden, unused old building that had gone neglected for many years. Nano, an admirer of history, likened it more to a German internment camp of earth’s last world war. But that of course was unfair to those that had suffered such wartime locations. The water jug was empty. Nano decided to visit one of seven portable toilets that over one hundred men used regularly and located a short distance away from the warehouse near the nature trail running near the warehouse. The public hiked or biked all day past the warehouse where the homeless lived. Nano often felt like a zoo animal as the public stared down upon the denizens of the dirty warehouse. The portable toilets were emptied once per week. Infested with flies and nearly full to the brim Nano tried hard not to breath or smell and made his exit as soon as possible. He wore only boxers and some slip-on shoes and when finished relieving himself, strode the rocky, muddy dirt back to the warehouse.

 Returning to his sweaty bed he laid down once more. Nano thought about Aurora, the shelter, ‘normal’ citizens and the homeless citizens. Nano was on earth to experience how the lowest class of humankind lived in what was at this time supposed to be the most advanced nation on earth. Mankind had some strange priorities.

Part of their programs include a traditional emergency shelter, where you get a bed if you get a bed.

That part is always full, just like the other shelters scattered around Connecticut.

And part of it includes a program where you can reserve a space like the one on the left, that includes a cot enclosed in a half-wall, and a closet that has eaves on the top, just like a home.

I’ve signed up to volunteer there. I want to be a greeter, and maybe host a writing class.

Yet, Nano was interested in learning how homeless people existed, what they thought and their habits. That was why he was here. Today he had ask Father Pope where else homeless people went to stay cool, since clearly only a few had shown up at the Cafe on the few occasions he’d gone there. Father had suggested he go to the McDonalds in south downtown Aurora. Father Pope even came with him to show the way, since Nano was unfamiliar with the area. It was a short walk of about 25 minutes, but the morning was already hot and humid and both sweating when they got there at 7am. It was cool in the restaurant and having brought their computers, they settled onto an table large enough for both to use with electrical outlets nearby.

Over the next hour more homeless came to McDonalds and they usually sat one per table. ‘Normal’ customers came and went as they headed to work, just grabbing a bit or coffee or both. Some normals came inside and sat, but left soon. The homeless were more interested in staying for a few hours or more, so it wasn’t long before a good portion of the tables were occupied with homeless people from the Aurora shelter looking to avoid the hot day and thus keep some cleanliness about them by not soaking shirts in their sweat. Being broke, they hardly ordered food, yet coffee or soda was the norm. That might not be much business income per person Nano realized, but given they came five or six times per week in numbers, it had to be the most regular group to frequent the eatery and thus, a nice steady income that amounted to more than even several sizable families eating there everyday. Unfortunately, today wasn’t going to be a good day at McDonalds for the homeless. After about an hour and with at least half the restaurant tables loaded with homeless a shelter resident came in drunk and sat down by a patron with paint splattered pants and a shirt.

The drunk, Jose ‘Cuervo’, confronted the man loudly, “When you gonna pay me fer the work I did? You said youse gonna pay me. Give me my money!”

“Hey pal, sit down. No need to shout here in public”, said the patron, an self-employed, part-time painter named Henry Diddle.

Cuervo grunted and sat down clumsily. His clothes were dirty from laying last night in some woodsy spot to sleep. He smelled bad and he had several days of beard growth on his sallow cheeks. “I just want my money. You owe it to me fer that paintin job I done.”

“I’m gonna pay you, but I have to go to the bank to get it”, replied Diddle. “You going to be around this afternoon? I can pay you then.”

“No, I’m not falling for that agin”, said Cuervo. “You said that yesterday and last week on Friday. You don’t wanna pay me. You better pay me or I’ll call the police you sonofabitch. Pay me!”

By now the restaurant was all listening to this exchange including the morning manager with an unpleasant look you couldn’t blame her for. Nano thought it was all very interesting. The dynamics were complex. Patrons, both ‘normal’ and homeless, the staff, a drunk confronting a patron, a social conflict about a job done and not being paid for it. Nano thought the homeless looked both nervous and amused. The ‘normal’ people looked disgusted and upset. The staff was trying to ignore the event, but the manager didn’t have that luxury. She was staring at the two men, deciding what course to take, depending on how this event transpired over the next minute.

“Look”, Diddler repeated, “I promise to pay you today. Just let me get to the bank and met me back here later today.”

“No”, Cuervo yelled. He was getting really wild now in his stupor. “You’re lying. You’re a liar. You’re always late with paying people who work for you. Pay me now or I’m calling cops. Pay me goddamit!” he ended fuming, face red and his breath smelling of vodka.

The painter looked around, noticing the manager headed this way. He’d run out of options, so he took out his wallet, removed $50 and paid the drunk. “Now that was all I had, but you couldn’t wait, so now I’m broke.”

“Your broke?” shouted the drunk. “Do it look like to you I got money? I ain’t working for you agin and Ima telling everybody what a lying cheat you are.”

“Gentlemen”, said the McDonalds’ manager, a short, robust Hispanic woman, now beside them. “I’m going to ask both of you to leave now. You’re behavior is unacceptable. Yelling and cursing and being drunken isn’t allowed in here. Please leave now and next time, settle your business before you enter the restaurant.”

The two men left, but the manager turned to the rest of the homeless. The homeless looked at her like they knew what was coming and were just waiting for the bomb to drop.

“There is a thirty minute time limit policy in this McDonalds. Either buy something or leave. If you’ve been here a half-hour and most of you have been, please leave unless your going to buy something right now.”

The ‘normal’ patrons seemed to nod slightly and take relief from her words, even though a good portion of them had been here that long too and more. They knew they were exempt to this thirty minute rule, it was for the homeless. The homeless looked unhappy and upset now. They started to pick up their coffee, bags and whatever else they’d brought with them and make for the doors. There was some grumbling about the fairness of it, who was to blame, the drunk or the painter or the manager or the policy, some of those or all of those. Father and Nano exited McDonalds, but past the door while some lighted up cigarettes, Father paused and looked at Nano.

 ”Now you see what happens when someone makes a problem and how things are. We all pay for one person or two’s mistakes or bad habits. It’s not fair, but it’s the way it usually is. They wouldn’t ask all the ‘normal’ people to leave if one of them made a problem, but homeless are all equally guilty by association.”

 Nano nodded, having seen it for himself. It was a lesson of sorts for him, but all he could think to say at this point was, “It’s a strange priority system.”

“What’s your name?” ask one of the two other men who had joined Father Pope and Nano two days back.

“I don’t have a name, that is, one you can pronounce”, said Nano to the group. Pope looked at him curiously, having not ask Nano on the first occasion what his name was.

“What do you mean by that?”, said the same man who’d ask the question.

“Tell me what your name is please”, Nano replied.

“My name is Henry, but people call me NASA, cause I used to be an engineer for NASA”, said the man first man again. Nano smiled at him and nodded, then turned to look at the other man that had come in with Henry.

“My name is Dave, but I’m called Christian Dave, sometimes I talk about God. Kinda depends on who’s with me. Not everyone at the shelter likes talking about god.”

Nano spoke, “Nice to met you Dave and Henry. See, I can pronounce your names, but my name would make no sense to you and I don’t think you could pronounce it.”

“Are you from some strange country?” ask Dave. “Is that why we can’t pronounce your name, like you’re from Poland or something?”

“No, I’m not from Poland. Perhaps the three of you can help me have a good name like you have?” He looked at the Jim, Henry and Dave expectantly. They looked at him, a bit startled, but recovering.

NASA Henry started, “Okay, well, we can give you a nickname. What do you like to do? What kind of things have you done or know. Like I was an engineer at NASA, so I got the NASA thing for a nickname. What do you know about?” They all were into this now, like something unusual to do and helpful for a newcomer.

“I like nanotechnology and I’m an Admiral”, Nano answered.

There was a pause, then they all grinned and started laughing, sure that it was a joke. Christian Dave recovered first.

“Okay, then we call you Admiral Nano. I don’t think you’re an Admiral though. You sound crazy to me. But there are a lot of crazy people at the shelter and that don’t make you bad to hang with.” That was Dave’s opinion and the others nodded, not willing to add anything for reasons of politeness, after all, maybe Nano was crazy and maybe he was just inventive and imaginative.

Nano contemplated the name. “I like that name, Admiral Nano. It fits. Call me that, or just Nano perhaps.”

Father Pope nodded and the rest considered it settled, though of course, their curiosities were really going. However, Dave wasn’t quite ready to let it all rest, so he ask, “What are you an Admiral of?”

There was no easy way out of explaining it so Nano replied, “I’m Admiral of a fleet of interstellar space ships.”

“What?” Christian Dave managed. “Never mind, I heard you.”

Father Pope looked a bit red in the face and NASA Henry was at a loss. “It doesn’t matter”, said Father. “Your welcome to hang with us. Many of us have alter egos or stories we believe.” He looked from Dave to Henry pointedly. “So, from now on, your Admiral Nano, or just Nano. Works for me.” The other two glanced at each other, then at Nano and smiled. It was unlikely to really be over.

 So, that was how Nano had come by his name that day at The River’s Edge Cafe.

It was very hot in Aurora, one hundred five degrees and high humidity. The shelter had not opened as a cooling center despite the notice which proclaimed it would at ninety five degrees. There was no water to drink because someone had put their hand in the ice water container and the staff had decided to penalize all the homeless for one person’s self-centered actions by removing it. Flies were biting everyone and one person had suffered heat stroke. An ambulance had been called to take him off to the hospital. In the city of Aurora, IL, many people were inside air-conditioned homes or businesses, drinking cold drinks, eating ice cream, perhaps at a water park. The homeless could not afford homes, water parks, or often even the cost of a soda at a business so they had an excuse for being there for the cool air. So, a few dozen sat on the grass or at a few picnic tables, trying to ignore the heat and flies or how much they were smelling thanks to their own sweat. In the weeks long heat wave the US was suffering, the homeless were at risk of their health now with little help. No citizens came up the hill to the shelter offering relief to the homeless from the horrendous heat.

“Isn’t the shelter required to open for us? I mean, in order to be an official ‘cooling center’, don’t they have to do that now?” said Cowboy Bill as he removed his stetson and wiped his forehead with a bandanna. Admiral Nano had no idea if he was a real cowboy, but he doubted it since they man was a native Chicagoan. He just liked the hat and accoutrements of that lifestyle.

Frowning cynically, Peter, know otherwise as ‘Fisherman’, replied to the question. “Nah, they don’t got to do nothing if they don’t want to. What staff will be doing is sitting inside where it’s cool, drinking and eating and pretending not to hear us beat on the door. They’re a bunch of lazy assholes. They don’t care if we bake out here.”

Nano considered this bit of news. To him the word shelter meant a place of safety and respite from the environment and dangers. It didn’t mean home, a place one could claim belonged to them and in which they felt comfortable and had some authority. In this homeless shelter, one didn’t have any authority, even over one’s own actions. To be here was to agree to give up almost all of your ‘normal’ human rights, or at least what Americans thought of as their rights. Here, staff could order you to do anything at anytime or penalize a person according to the unwritten rules of just whatever they decided was an appropriate penalty for not doing what you were told. Respectfully, Nano knew some rules had to be in place, but it seemed highly dictatorial to him so far during his brief stay at this shelter. Now it seemed that the shelter didn’t provide shelter either.

The sound of a heated exchange came to those around Nano and as one they looked towards its source. Up under the metal roofed, outdoor structure under which were a few more picnic tables, dirty and near the source of the flies and the woods on the other side of a chain length fence, a group of blacks were sitting. One of them was a tall, loudmouthed, egocentric male named Fancy Pants, yelling at a black female.

“Shut up bitch!” Fancy Pants yelled, “I don wan hear no mo mouth from you. Yo wan money, go gets it yerself.”

To which the female, Angry Mary angrily shouted. “I lents you money yesterday. You better gib me sum now. And don be calling me bitch. Ima lady an I get ups from dis table and kick yer ass.”

“I ain’t gibin you any money and dat money you gab me you done owed me girl. Remember I gib you dat ten dollars for drinks da other day. Now I wants back what you got left. Gib it to me bitch.”

“I toll you not call me bitch”, Mary said, rising to her feet and pointing her finger into the man’s chest, fully enraged now. “And you’d better call an ambuance, cause I’m gonna kick your ass if you don’t get away from me. Dat money mine and Ima keepin it.”

Fancy Pants saw he couldn’t force Angry Mary to give him his money back. He looked around at his friends who were smiling ruefully, knowing it was a lost cause, but were tactfully not getting in between him and his crazy girlfriend. She’d probably spent the rest of the dollars on buying a cigarette or two from someone rolling them on the hill. Fancy Pants sat down at the adjacent table, mumbling loudly while his girl stared at him like she was planning his funeral.

“Nice”, said Fisherman. “Wonder how long till the next yelling contest up there?”

Cowboy Bill looked at his watch. “I give them a few minutes then someone else will get angry over nothing and threaten to kick someone’s butt.”

 Nano frowned. This shelter had strange priorities.

Nano made his way down the Aurora Library isles to the Science Fiction section. He was much amused by what mankind saw or expected to see in their future and their imaginations. Some of it was accurate, but mostly it was fantasy, which was the next section of books and somehow appropriate. Regardless, he found it entertaining to read and often spent time here looking through the books, sampling them. It didn’t take him long to read a book. By human standards, almost no time at all. He’d seen many of the homeless at the library reading, but with his ability to read pages at a glance, he’d never checked a book out. Perhaps that was presumptive of him he speculated. Those that read seemed to really enjoy the process as much as the sum of the story. He decided to check out a book for the first time and picking one took it to the circulation desk.

“Hello, may I help you”, said the plump lady with glasses behind the checkout desk.

“Yes, you may”, Nano said. “I’d like to check this book out. How much will that cost?”

“Do you have a library card?” the librarian said, after a short pause.

“No, I do not have a library card.”

“Okay, we’ll need to get you one then. Here’s a form. Fill it out, sign it and when you’re done, bring it back up.” She handed him a paper form and he frowned at it, then went back to his chair where Lawyer Joe was sitting. Nano called him Lawyer because he was always in court for some odd reason. In a minute Nano had the form done and returned to the lady at the desk.

“Oh, that was fast” she said. “Let’s see it.” She took the form and started typing the data on it into a computer network terminal. Nano said nothing about the primitive nature of this computer system. It didn’t matter anyway as the tech at this point in time was in constant flux and would soon be obsolete in favor of the next best temporary tech coming along.

“Is this your current address?”, the lady said after a few moments of entering the data.

“Yes, it is”.

“I’m sorry Mr. Nano, but you can’t have a library card”. She said this while not looking the least bit sorry or even concerned. In fact, she appeared rather annoyed.

“Why?”, ask Nano.

“We don’t consider those at the homeless shelter residents of Aurora. Only permanent residents or those with regular mailing addresses can have library cards.”

“Why?” Nano understood that by the use of ‘permanent’ the librarian meant ‘not transient’, that is, the wandering homeless.

“Why?”, she repeated. “Well, because you’re homeless and we want our books back and in good condition. You know we lose a good number of books to the homeless or get them back in poor shape. It’s better for the library not to have to pay to replace those books than to lend them out to homeless people.”

“Isn’t that considered unfair and discriminatory? Aren’t your homeless with the same human rights other citizens in the community have?”

“No Mr. Nano, the homeless aren’t entitled to the same rights as other patrons of the library. Now if you can show me a home address, I’d be happy to let you have a library card.” She was definitely annoyed now, what with being ask to speak about the policy of refusing services to a subset of the population living in the community.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand the logic of your policy. Do not people ‘normal’ people lose books or bring the back with damage? Since they are much more numerous than the homeless population, aren’t the total number of books lost or damaged by the good citizens more than those of the homeless? Also, I thought in America where it’s illegal to discriminate on age, race, religion, and other things, surely one would not separate out the poorest and neediest, those least able to defend themselves for an exclusion policy that is by definition biased and unfair, not to mention unethical. Perhaps you can fill in the missing rational for me, or is it really about money to replace books, or is it you just don’t like to serve the homeless?”

At this point, the librarian was redder than a beet. “Mr. Nano, I’ll have to ask you to leave the library. We don’t need trouble here and your insulting comments are not appreciated. Now leave, your banned for the next six months. Leave or I’ll be forced to call the security guard.”

Nano contemplated the options for a moment, shrugged and said, “I’ll pick up my things and leave. I’d like to leave you with a single thought though.”

“What’s that Mr. Nano”, she said, barely able to stand the delay in his leaving, but his cool demeanor had her off-balance.

“Well, it’s this. Those who withhold knowledge are lacking wisdom. A society lives and dies on how strongly it values knowledge and your library is refusing to serve knowledge to those most in need of it as it does for other patrons. Have a nice day.” That last part he’d heard a few times lately and thought it was appropriate to wishing her to have a more pleasant day. He turned as she stuttered, walked over to his things, picked them up and with Lawyer Joe, walked back out of the library.

“I could have warned you pal”, said Lawyer Joe, “but it’s best if you experienced Aurora hospitality for yourself.”

Nano, sometimes called Admiral Nano, was a nickname given him by a few of those whom Nano had gotten to know reasonably well. When he had talked of nanotechnology and being an admiral, he was given the nickname with a laugh. Perhaps they thought he was insane, but Nano liked the name, it was accurate in it’s own way. Nicknames were useful here. For example, there were a lot of men named Joe, so giving them a nickname helped to differentiate them from each other. There was Door Joe, the man who’d been at the shelter since it had opened many years ago. There was Lawyer Joe, sitting near Nano at the picnic table, a bead of sweat rolling down his cheek as he tried to pretend the temperature wasn’t over one hundred degrees and the humidity way too much. There had been Choo Choo Joe, who only talked about his days working on the railroad, but he had left now, though he had still been seen in the area.

Nano hadn’t been at the homeless shelter long, a couple weeks, but he thought he’d done well adapting to this strange new way of living. Most people had homes, automobiles, bank accounts, steady jobs, clean clothes and a relatively decent place to live. The homeless at the shelter had little to none of those things. They were those whom most of society were actively ignoring. Not all of society were ignoring the homeless or their problems, but Nano had noticed that the bulk of Americans were. They were busy with their own lives and too busy to consider how the troubles of a growing number of their fellow citizens were impacting them more and more, usually indirectly.

When Nano had registered himself into this homeless shelter, some of the things he had to do made sense, others didn’t. For instance, it made sense to him to be ask if he had an income. It did not make sense to him to be ask if he was taking any assistance from other government agencies. After all, the shelter was opened by philosophical intent to all homeless and the shelter was not part of a government system. It was a charity. Why should they care if he was or was not being assisted from other sources? However, he’d politely answered all the questions on the form he was given to fill out and those of the lady that took it. Still, he found much of the process oddly irrelevant to the desire not to starve or wanting shelter from the environment.

“Hey, Nano, let’s go to the library, there air-conditioning there and I can’t sit here all day sweating till we’re allowed inside for supper”, said Lawyer Joe. “They should have let us in anyway. It’s supposed to be a cooling center once it reaches ninety five degrees and I know it’s over a hundred now.”

Admiral Nano got up saying, “Yes, it’s too hot to be outdoors all day. I’m dehydrating and they’ve put no water out for us to drink.”

They picked up their bags which contained computers and started the long hot walk to the one of the only places that allowed homeless inside within the city of Aurora, IL. Most businesses didn’t like the homeless and wouldn’t let them in or stay long. The homeless stank, often spoke rudely without manners, shouting and cursing. Nano couldn’t blame them, but then again, the more places that shunned and discriminated against the homeless, the more the problem was condensed and became acute to all society and those living in this area. If businesses opened their doors and tried to help the homeless to survive, then those unfortunate people would have been more dispersed, better served and more likely to find opportunities to change their fates to the better. Well, that is how Nano was beginning to think of things, but then he’d not been homeless very long and only a true long-term, veteran homeless person knows all the things needed to survive. Those are the things society makes a homeless person do that ‘normal’ people have no need to do. Being homeless is being abused with no one interested in helping you defend your rights or freedoms.

Arriving a half hour later, shirts soaked in sweat and not smelling clean, Joe and Nano entered the Aurora Library. They passed by the security guard, but said nothing to him since he never talked to anyone unless it was to order them out or to quit sleeping in the library. Climbing up a floor they looked for a place to sit and plug in their computers. The place had many homeless in it escaping the heat wave that was hovering over this part of the country for weeks now.

“I think before I settle down” said Nano, “I’ll go look for a book to check out. I need something to read when I can’t use my computer at the shelter.” With that he strolled down the isles.

A woman in Lincoln, Nebraska was accosted in her home this week by three masked men. Police have announced that they consider the incident an LGBT hate crime after they discovered derogatory words for lesbians painted on the walls of the woman’s home. Some friends also said that more slurs were painted throughout the woman’s basement.

CNN reports that the victim’s hands were tied, and words had also been cut into her body, but investigators did not announce what those words were. The woman, who is reportedly a 33-year-old, was able to get to her neighbor, Linda Rappl’s, house and ask for help. It was apparent to Rappl that the woman had been subjected to torture for some time.

Investigators also noted that gasoline was poured around the woman’s house and someone had lit it in an attempt to set the house ablaze. Fortunately, the fire did not substantially damage the structure or the woman, although the attempt was made to destroy the house. The woman lives openly as a lesbian and acquaintances have maintained that she is a committed community member.

News of the hate crime spread rapidly across the internet, spurring support for the victim and spawning statements against LGBT hate crimes. Twitter was awash with statements regarding the woman’s attack. One woman said, “Some people make me sick. Why can’t we all respect and appreciate each other?” Another said, “Why is this stuff still happening?”  Yet another said, “This. Has. To. Stop.”

The local community of Lincoln, Nebraska has also taken a stand against the hate crime. Mayor Chris Beutler stated on Monday that:

Hate crimes are despicable and appalling to me and to all Lincoln residents… Lincoln strives to be a community that embraces tolerance and equality. We stand united with our gay and lesbian citizens in denouncing violence directed at any group.

Members of the community also organized a vigil for the victim of the crime on Sunday, which about 500 people attended. Police officials have stated that they will pursue the case until justice has been served.

The woman is reported to be recovering steadily and is now out of the hospital and at an emergency shelter. LGBT rights organizers have stated their faith in the police force to follow the course of the investigation to its conclusion. Although investigators were at first reticent to state that the crime was a hate crime, they later officially announced that they classified the attack in that category.

Read the original story at Care2

English: A chronically homeless individual inhabiting a bus shelter in Porter Square (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the United States, the number of homeless shelters increased in the 1980s due to a variety of factors. One factor was the recession of that time which resulted in more people being unable to afford housing. A second factor was a shift away from single room housing. Though rather limited in size, this sort of housing was cheaper than the alternatives. Back in the early 1990s, some of my fellow graduate students lived in singles, but these seemed to be (like most graduate student housing) relics from another time. A third factor was the infamous closing of mental institutions and reduction in care for the mentally ill. While proponents of the approach lauded the cost savings, some critics saw it is as simply dumping the ill onto the streets.

In the face of this surge in homelessness religious groups, charitable organizations and governments increased the number of homeless shelters. The intent was to provide people with a place to stay until they could sort out their problems and thus be able to have a permanent home. This approach does make a certain sense and did work in some cases. After all, it seems reasonable to infer that people become homeless because of problems (financial, mental and so on) and that once these problems are fixed, then a person will be ready to have a home. Unfortunately, this approach did not prove very successful and there are about 640,000 homeless Americans with about 110,000 of them being chronically homeless.

Fortunately, an alternative approach seems to be having a more positive impact. This approach reverses the old approach: rather than “fixing” people so that they are ready for permanent homes, this approach involves getting the homeless into more home-like shelters or permanent housing. Those who need treatment are given treatment and the results seem to have been very positive: 85% of those involved in this approach remain in their homes rather than ending up back on the streets.

While this approach seems to have merit, there is the stock concern that the state funded programs are wasting the taxpayers’ money by supporting free-riders. Somewhat ironically, the troubled economic times that increase homelessness also decrease the funding available for such programs and also gives some support to claims that scarce financial resources should be better used, perhaps by allowing more tax breaks for the job creators. As such, there seem to be two main arguments against funding such programs with state money.

The first is a utilitarian argument. Because of the recession, there is less state money available than what was normal before. As such, it is even more important that the money be spent effectively. Putting money into shelters, programs and permanent housing for the homeless would yield less positive results than using the money elsewhere (such as deficit reduction, tax breaks for the job creators or maintaining infrastructure). As such, the money should be spent in these other areas rather than in addressing the problem of homelessness.

This argument can, of course, be countered by showing that the money spent on addressing homelessness would be less than the cost of not addressing the problem. If this is the case, than the cost argument favors spending the money rather than incurring the costs that can be avoided or mitigated by spending.

While homelessness is clearly bad for the people who are homeless, it also is rather costly to society as a whole.

One area of cost is the medical costs of homelessness. On average, homeless people average hospital stays four days longer than comparable non homeless people. This costs about $2,414 per hospitalization. Also, since homeless people tend to not have insurance, the cost is born either by the state (that is, us) or by those with insurance (in the form of increased premiums).

Not surprisingly, people do become homeless because of medical problems and medical problems are also caused by being homeless. Those who are homeless are more likely to become ill than those who have homes and are more likely to suffer from problems of greater severity. As such, homelessness adds a burden to the health care system, especially the emergency rooms. Addressing the problem of homelessness would help reduce these costs.

Another area is crime and prisons. People who are homeless tend to spend more time in prison than the non-homeless. In some cases, they are arrested for “general” criminal activity, but they are often arrested for breaking laws that are aimed specifically at the homeless, such as laws against loitering and begging.

While prisons can be quite profitable for the private companies that run them, it costs an average of $20,000 a year to keep a person in prison. The specific costs vary due vary. For example, a prison stay in California costs $47,000 a year. While those who profit from prisons will not see it this way, reducing homelessness would be a good thing because it would mean fewer people in prison and thus lower the cost to the taxpayers.

A third factor is the cost of emergency shelters—the traditional homeless shelter. These shelters are considerably more expensive than the cost of a permanent residence. As such, permanent housing would provide a savings over temporary shelters.

Naturally, it is reasonable to wonder what impact the permanent home programs might have on the cost to society of homelessness.

One program resulted in a savings of $2,449 per person each month compared to the cost of temporary shelters. A study in my home state of Maine  showed that the permanent housing approach yielded a 57 decrease in the cost of mental health services, mainly due to a 79% reduction in the cost of hospitalization. In Los Angeles, a study showed that putting four people into permanent housing saved over $80,000 per year.

Of course, this savings assumes that the temporary shelters would be funded. For those willing to allow homeless people to live on the streets, this sort of program would not yield the highest savings. After all, the cost of housing the homeless on the street would be nothing. Of course, this would not reduce the other costs associated with homelessness and would almost certainly increase them. After all, people living on the street are more likely to get ill or injured and also more likely to be arrested.

Of course, the medical costs could be addressed by changing the law so that people can be refused even emergency medical care if they cannot pay and ending all state-funded treatment programs for addiction and mental illness. That is, we could entirely abandon the homeless, other than providing them with prison when they are arrested. Of course, there would still remain the question as to whether or not this would result in a cost saving. After all, the abandonment approach might result in a large enough increase in number of homeless people being imprisoned to offset the savings from abandonment. Naturally, this does not take into account the moral cost of abandonment, just the financial cost.

Overall, the evidence does seem to be that providing permanent housing for the homeless would be a cost saver, though perhaps not as big a cost saver as comprehensive abandonment. The second argument is a moral argument or, rather, various moral arguments. One stock argument is based on the idea that we have no moral obligations to others and hence it is not the case that we should provide such support to the homeless. On this view, we could provide such support, but we are not obligated to do so.

A second stock argument is that providing such support is immoral because it creates a culture of dependency. That is, by providing the homeless with permanent homes and treatment for any health problems they might possess they are learning to depend on others and will be unable to carry their own weight. While not supporting them might seem harsh, the argument is that this sort of “tough love” will enable then to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

While this line of reasoning has some appeal, one obvious reply is that this approach seems analogous to addressing a broken leg by refusing to treat it because putting a cast on a broken leg will just make the person dependent on the cast.  As with a broken leg a person whose life is broken needs support until she can stand on her own again.

One reply to this is that while this might hold for those who will be able to stand on their own, it does not address the problem of those who will remain dependent on support forever. These people, it can be argued, are just parasites and should not be supported.

I do, of course, agree that someone who is just free-riding the system should not be supported. However, the number of people who will become homeless and unemployed just so they can free-ride seems to be rather low (but more than nothing). After all, most people want to be self-supporting rather than dependent on others. To deny people who need the support to rebuild just because some small percentage of people would free-ride seems as unreasonable as getting rid of handicapped parking because some people will get decals for those spaces that they are not really entitled to.  It can also be countered that supporting a free-rider in such a program would be cheaper and less damaging than having them free-riding on the alternative system.

Another stock moral argument against providing support for other people is that those being supported are stealing from the taxpayers by having their housing and treatments being paid for by others. As such, the homeless are morally in the wrong and we should not enable their theft by allowing such programs. Alternatively, the homeless people could be cast as being pawns used by the politicians who are stealing money from taxpayers and giving it to the homeless. Or, for extra immorality, the homeless and those who enable such support can be seen as being in wicked (or at least misguided) cahoots.

One obvious reply is that by this sort of reasoning we all spend years as thieves. After all, as children we live off our parents (or whoever is keeping is alive), we steal education from the state (or whoever is paying for it), and until we pay enough in taxes to pay for all the public goods and services we use we are stealing every time we walk down a public sidewalk, drive on a public street or go to free a public park. We also steal from all those who have come before us and who enabled us to live in a modern society with technology, medicine and such. That is, we are all beneficiaries of the labor, money and ideas of others. As such, it would be somewhat hypocritical to regard the homeless as thieves because they are assisted by others.

The obvious reply is that the non-homeless who do pay taxes (and presumably pay off their financial debt to their families) eventually pay back what they stole (or borrowed) from society when they were young thieves. Of course, the same could be said of the homeless—if they are able to return to society and work, they can repay what they owe to others.

This does not, however, address the problem presented by those who will either never be able to return to contributing to society or who will not be able to repay what they cost society, perhaps because of mental illness. The obvious reply to this is that it would seem unreasonable to see such people as thieves. It could, of course, be argued that we should be rid of those who cannot support themselves—but this would be a different moral argument than the one based on thievery.

What, then, about people who could return to society but elect to be free-riders? That is, their situation is entirely a matter of choice and tomorrow they could be at a job earning enough to pay their own way. In this sort of case it would be reasonable to regard these people as thieves. After all, they are taking what they could earn by honest labor and there would be (by the scenario presented) no justification for them receiving support. However, these cases seem to be rather limited in number (but more than none, I am sure). As argued above, the fact that a very few people might exploit something intended to help people in need does not give an adequate reason to treat everyone in such a program as being an exploiter.

In light of the above arguments, providing permanent housing for the homeless seems to be both a cost saver and morally acceptable.

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“We’re getting a lot of renters that are totally ignorant to the fact of their landlord is in trouble, their getting the knock on the door saying hey you’ve got x number of days to bet out of here, this house is foreclosed and they’re like, ‘oh my God what do I do?’” recounted Kia Croom with the Greater Richmond Interfaith Program (GRIP).

Croom said she has seen more clients walk through GRIP’s doors because of what is considered something of a foreclosure epidemic in the region.

KCBS’ Dave Padilla Reports: [audio_link url="http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/nyc.podcast.play.it/media/d0/d0/d1/d0/dS/dY/d8/10SY8_3.MP3" name="KCBS Cover Story: How Children Are Affected by Richmond's Foreclosure Crisis" artist="Dave Padilla"]

Because of the number of families in the area, it also means countless small children become homeless. Croom counts about 175 homeless children in GRIP’s emergency shelter program each year. About 85 of them are children age 5 and under – a 10% increase over last year.

“Children will either tend to isolate or they will tend to become aggressive when they can’t have their way,” GRIP childcare teacher Karen Shoji detailed the obvious signs of stress these children experience.

(Copyright 2012 by CBS San Francisco. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

Julia Zion

Editor’s note:  This is the story of Julia Dorothy Natalia Zion of Pottstown.  Julia is the organizer of the Wednesday Community Meal in Pottstown.  We did a piece on this last week asking for donations and volunteers to help Julia out.  Here is her story!

On Wednesday, June 27^th, I hosted my third Pottstown Community Meal  for about 40-50 people at the nice little park at Washington and Chestnut streets.  While I had prepared and hosted two other meals, this one was special. See, I was homeless for about a year. From Pottstown, I moved from couch to couch, from one shelter to another, finally ending up back in Pottstown at the Ministries at Main Street shelter, which at the time was being housed at Christ Episcopal Church on South Charlotte St. There I met one of the most amazing groups of people I’ve ever met. That experience changed my life and led me to where I am today.

The night before I came back to Pottstown, I had just spent the night on the streets in the Walnut-Locust Subway concourse in South Philadelphia. Not a great place, but it was somewhat sheltered from the elements. I did not know where to go, but I was told by a friend from Occupy Norristown to call up CHOC, the county run homeless shelter on the Norristown State Hospital Grounds. I called them up, but they were full. They recommended that I go up to the shelter in Pottstown. I thought, “Eh…I lived a year in Pottstown. It wouldn’t kill me to go back up there. I’m familiar with the town.” So, I put together the $4.50 that I needed for SEPTA and made my way up. It was November and the nights were cold. I was told to go to 75 Main St, which I found out was across the river in North Coventry, at no earlier than 9 pm and no later than 10 for intake. I got there and from step one, I was treated with the utmost of respect and dignity, something I didn’t get within the Philadelphia city run shelter I was in for 3 months. I was a bit scared since I had never been in an “emergency shelter” style program before, but I grew used to it. It helped that the staff and volunteers that ran the shelter were a mix of former homeless and people who had been volunteering for a long time. I became very comfortable there. I let my guard down, sometimes a bit too much, but the way the shelter was run made it easy to do. I sometimes stayed up chatting with other guests or with staff. Sometimes, I would just lie down on my mat and surf the web on my phone, trying to forget where I was.

Unlike the experience of some, my experience was a positive one within the shelter. There were two problems, though. One was that the shelter ran from 10 pm to 8 am only, leaving a 14 hours with nothing to really do. I wasn’t really thinking about finding a job up here. I wasn’t sure if I was staying in town. I still thought I might move back to Philadelphia at some point. The second was that we had to take all of our belongings with us every day, minus the bedding that the shelter provided. So, I had a trusty folding shopping cart. I took it everywhere and I got looks. I wasn’t allowed to have it in the library or, eventually, at the community college. I was even politely told at a local diner to walk out the back door that they never used because I had my cart. I was treated worse than a second-class citizen. I was treated like a third class citizen. Second-class citizens at least are allowed service or allowed in a store. It was a totally different story when I would get a chance to park my cart somewhere for the day. I got none of the looks. I got none of the prejudice. I got treated like a regular person walking down a street. It was amazing how people still judged by the cover and not by the content. The prejudice against the homeless is still around and it’s ugly.

Now that I have a small apartment here in town, I can look back at all of those experiences and think about where I was and where I am today. Then, my thoughts come to those who are not as fortunate as I to have a roof over their heads. We are a society that doesn’t give many homeless and poor people a fair shake. As much as the religious community does stuff within the auspices of their churches, sometimes, congregants walk out that chapel door and don’t participate in what they are being taught. Sometimes, they take what they’ve learned about serving and helping the poor, use it in church, with a church sponsored dinner or food pantries, and then walk away saying they’ve done the work of the lord, doing their one good deed. Sure, serving food at a community dinner is a wonderful thing, but when you leave, do you do anything else? Do you instead go back into your homes and forget about all the people who were hungry and needed that meal until the next time you serve? This is the problem with people these days. I’m not trying to knock religion at all. I’m saying that serving the homeless and poor populations should not end at the church parking lot. It should continue onto the streets and in the parks. It should continue at the encampments in the woods and in the back alleys where people sleep. People, no matter how much money they have, no matter how they look or if they push a cart everywhere deserve the same amount of respect regardless of life standing. This does not happen in Pottstown. Cheryl Atkinson was allowed to lay dead in a very visible park at a very visible fountain for 8-12 hours before someone saying, “Ya know? Maybe we should do something.” What does that say about this town and it’s residents?

The community meal on Wednesday nights was first run by Pastor Kork Moyer, the same pastor who runs the Ministries at Main Street shelter during the winter. He has seen his numbers for his actual church dwindle to the point where he and his wife could no longer get the support and wouldn’t have the time to do it themselves. So, he gave up on the dinner. I saw an opportunity and picked up the responsibility for myself.

I wanted to keep this meal going because I want to give back to the community that gave me so much. This place is an amazing ray of sunshine at the farthest reaches of Montgomery County. I have met some of the best people, been a part of some great activities and frequent the vibrant High Street markets on a regular basis. I love this town and wanted to give back in the only way I know how, which is to cook. (I am a culinary student, by the way.)

I also saw a need. All the community meals run by the Cluster are in church basements. That can get quite boring from time to time. Why not jazz it up a bit and hold one every week at a park with a pavilion, amphitheater seating, a playground, even electrical outlets.

Finally, I am trying to do this as a kind of protest over these idiotic and discriminatory laws trying to clear the streets of homeless people. In Philadelphia, I would be arrested for holding these meals outside. There is now a ban on groups serving the homeless outside in Philadelphia and similar laws have sprouted up in places such as Orlando, Florida. All these laws do is force the homeless elsewhere so the rich and business owners can forget they exist and do nothing to fix the problems that led to the homeless being there in the first place. It’s like the homeless population is being treated like vermin and it is wrong. This is why I decided to get the Occupy movement involved. I was looking for a way to join up again and helping the community serve the homeless and poor and treat them with respect and dignity is something that Occupy is totally about.

That being said, the Occupy Pottstown movement came through like gang busters this week. The first two weeks of the meal had drained my food stamps and finances. So, without the wonderful people from Occupy, there would not have been a meal this week. I got in contact with a few people through a friend in Occupy Norristown and the whole thing exploded into a dinner that serves 40-50 people with about 12 of them being help. We had burgers and hot dogs. We had potato salad and pasta salad. We had desserts. We had a donation of hummus and pitas from iCreate Café on High Street. We had someone playing banjo. We even got a $25 gift card donated to us by Giant Supermarket to help with some of the costs. This was just amazing and it was a real community effort. In all of 3 days, we put together a meal that served the community and got loads of smiles and gratitude. People are excited about the meals to come.

I think Occupy Pottstown has the right attitudes to keep this type of effort going for years to come. I think I have the energy and skills to keep this going and growing and thriving. We have a nice core group of people up here who are energetic, full of ideas and up for a challenge. We put together a meal that served 45-50 people within 3 days! That is just amazing and they deserve most of the credit. We had donations coming at us from friends of friends. We had ideas coming from anywhere. Heck, we’ve also had an offer for someone to come play a didgeridoo at the next meal. The community came out strong to eat and to help.

To come from losing my home in April of 2011 to running my own community meal in June of 2012, I have grown quite a bit. I used to be a very selfish person until my best friend almost broke ties with me. It jolted me into reality and from then on, I have done things I never thought I could. I have become a part of organizations that I never knew existed for which I never had the need before becoming homeless. I want to make a difference in this town. The homeless are treated horribly here by the general public. Why else do you think someone like Cheryl Atkinson could be left by the side of a very visible fountain in a very visible park on a very hot day for 8-12 hours before being noticed? Why else was I getting all those stares when I pushed my cart around town? It’s sad and that needs to be changed. I hope the Wednesday Night Community Meals can change opinions…one plate at a time.

Occupy Pottstown helping with last week’s meal!

The Aaron & Margaret Wallace Foundation

and
¿eX-whY AdVentures?
Presents:

James Ahmed Rasheed’s “Entourage” with Trader Joes’s Capt. Randy Holland on drums in a “Tribute to Legends of Jazz” Show!, May 26, 2012, 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM at Trader Joes’s, 2742 Pinole Valley Road, Pinole, CA.

Trader Joes’s, one of our strong supporters and 20 year partner in our Community Free Food Program allowed AMWFT and ¿eX-whY AdVentures? to produce an In-Store promotion with a Live Jazz performance by James Ahmed Rasheed’s “Entourage” with Trader Joes’s Capt. Randy Holland on drums! The response was incredible with many customers turned fans, dancing in the isles while shopping! Outstanding!

The many standing ovations and applause echoed throughout the store as the mellow jazz sounds were accentuated by the ringing of the cash register! The customers-turned-fans and store staff were caught totally by surprise as the Pinole store Capt. (manager) Randy Holland sat in on drums for the second set with the Jazz Trio! Everyone was simply BLOWN AWAY!! And the Dude has chops, he can flat out PLAY!

The customers-turned-fans shamelessly testified how the shopping experience was soo much greater, more intimate and engaging, as they stayed while shopping longer and bought more! They unanimously requested that the in-store promotion be held at least weekly and perhaps over the weekends! The store staff was trilled with the event success and asked that Corporate institute it as a weekly promotion.

This was The Aaron & Margaret Wallace Foundation’s “Thank You” to Trader Joe’s for 20 great years of providing us with the ability to serve over 30,000 a month of those most in need in the Northern California Community from our 14 locations from Fremont in the south to Fairfield in the north.

Watch the video performance of “Entourage” with Randy Holland in Trader Joes’s “Tribute to Legends of Jazz” Show!

Thank you ALL sooo much!

Abdul-Jalil
President

BORP Sponsor Poster

Those of us who work at Austin’s House don’t take any credit for this really wonderful story, but we sure were glad we got to be a part of it.  Two elementary school aged siblings came to stay with us after a particularly heartbreaking set of circumstances disrupted their foster care and potential adoptive placement.  These kids had been back and forth between a biological parent and various foster homes for many years, but despite the hurt and loss they had endured, they remained upbeat, funny, challenging and loving.  They knew their caseworker was looking for an adoptive home for them, but she told them to be patient because she was determined to find the perfect home.  And they were patient beyond belief, despite all the normal anxiety and fear about such a big change in their lives.  The months they waited to hear about an adoptive home also gave them time to begin to deal with the emotional reality of severing ties with their biological parent.  Luckily, they had a very loving caseworker and therapist to help them begin this life long process.

In late summer, we heard that an adoptive home had been identified in another state.  Later, the adoptive parents came for an extended visit to meet the children and help them learn about their new family, home and community.  Photos and stories and laughter dominated, but the adults had some serious discussions too—about loss, and hurt and helping children finally, at long last, to feel truly secure.  The Austin’s House staff fought off tears when we heard the parents, over and over, tell the children that they would be moving to their ‘forever’ home.  No ifs, ands or buts.  No trial period, or ‘we’ll see how it goes’, or having to hope that this family will really like you.  I know this family doesn’t consider themselves heroes, but they are heroes to us.

Finally, after all the official t’s were crossed and i’s were dotted, I had the privilege of taking the children to the airport to make the long trip with their caseworker to their new home.  I know this will be a long journey for the children and their new family, and perhaps one that will never really end.  But who better to take this journey than these two wonderful children and their perfect, forever and ever family?