in honor of all those displaced due to all manner of circumstances
“Roots are best planted in the hearts of people rather than in a place.”
Mary Lou Mawicke Bruno (Ma)
(Andrew York, ‘Home’)
Tag: homelessness and joblessness (Page 2 of 3)
Thank-you readers, from newest to first-to-follow, for marking this milestone with me. This year, I’m commemorating my third year blogiversary by offering the following quotes and links to past posts for you to peruse. Enjoy!
Quotes: 3 Very Different Men, All on the Same Page
my original hand-scored “Goats in the Garden at Midnight by the Light of the Full Moon”
I am in the world only for the purpose of composing. Franz Schubert
Dad (Al Bruno) ~circa 1945 (?)
Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out your horn. Charlie Parker
Cesar Chavez in Community Garden-photo by Cathy Murphy
When we are really honest with ourselves we must admit our lives are all that really belong to us. So it is how we use our lives that determines the kind of [wo]men we are. Cesar Chavez
Continue reading
note: still visiting with Dad and Up a Creek, but wanted to send this on in the interim.
It’s just not going away, people. Joblessness & Homelessness is still an on-going reality.
Jane is a blogger-buddy of mine. She is an Everyday (American) Canadian*.
Like you. Like me.
This lady speaks candidly and with more courage than I ever could during our own between homes journey. Her journey-details differ from our own, but the pattern is rote: no job – no home. The experiences and feelings felt are similar if not the same in some instances.
I stand with you, Jane. Continue reading
I found this article/youtube last year during my researching of my Giving Voice Series. It was a bit info heavy, so I waited to post it. It objectively details what ‘everyday Americans’ have been experiencing for years, but are unable to articulate. The video is worth the 6 minute view.
Poverty is a major cause of homelessness, that in itself is not a major revelation. What has been surprising to me is the people who I have met in the homeless community who could be any number of people I know today. A cruel twist of fate could happen to most anyone; I have met people who have been overwhelmed by medical bills or who have lost their job and have ended up on the street. There are some people who have chosen this lifestyle and they are in the minority. This 6 minute video explained to me a trend that is growing and should be a cause for concern for all of us. The growing inequality and wealth divide is a problem that is undermining our society and community, and forcing an increasing number of families below the poverty line. By increasing awareness of this, I believe we can and must change this trend. Andy Robbins Photography
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vttbhl_kDoo
While reading through Andrew James Murray’s newly published collection of poetry Heading North I was particularly struck by his poem, Woman in a Café.
Inspired by the memory of a woman who used to come into the café he frequented during his lunch break while working in Manchester, her fingerless mittened hands clutch bunched plastic bags while two worlds converge if only briefly but forever remembered.
Re-printed with permission.
As a WP.org user, re-blogging an article from another WP site is not an easy task. I decided to try my hand at it this time around just because…
According to the WP stats on my Jetpack, the article Veteran Homelessness Hits Zero In Las Cruces has been successfully re-blogged on my site.
If this experiment does not work, please take a look at the article directly by clicking on the above link. Or here
As most of you know, this is something near and dear to my heart. It is even more meaningful as Las Cruces, NM is hubby’s hometown and where The Goat Suite Saga was born.
HAPPY (GRAND)MOTHER’S DAY
(Welcome Home: A Tiny House, Huge Purpose)
LA, the City of Angels…
…at least one angel, shown here caring for his neighbor…
This post marks the closing of what I consider to be the first part of my Giving Voice series. While I have several more relevant articles in various stage of readiness to post, I think it’s time to take a break. Because Giving Voice is an ongoing series, I intend to resume its ‘focus’ after an undetermined period of time.
Instead of composing some sort of summary post, I thought I’d ‘re-post’ a Swimming with Swans vignette I presented here on the blog in 2013. Written at the close of our first stay in Las Cruces during our between homes journey, I think it speaks to the issue of ‘street people’ stereotypes in a positive and personal manner.
In doing this, I am also engaging in a blog experiment that I’m not sure will work! Please bear with me. Both this wind-down post and the archived vignette-post are presented in ‘sticky note’ fashion. Theoretically, this first time published post will be ‘sticky-ed’ first and The Prophet and the Gift should follow without changing its original blog posting date. We’ll see. 😉
Thank you for the many responses I’ve received during this first part of my Giving Voice series via personal e-mail, face-to-face discussions, and of course in the comments section.
‘They had never worried about anything. They never had to go into the kitchen and look into an empty cupboard. I lived a middle class life all my life. That’s all I knew. I dropped from middle class to no class.‘ Continue reading
I find it interesting that unemployment has been an issue of glaringly huge proportions for quite some time within the free market world. That there have been sound ways of alleviating it during the course of these past decades, yet left untouched by those in power is disheartening, very telling and ultimately totally inexcusable.
…Characteristically she covered her own weakest flank – unemployment – by counter-attacking Labour’s record in the 1970’s. ‘In the end Labour always runs away,’ she jeered in her adoption speech at Finchley on 19 May:
‘They are running away from the need to defend their country…They are fleeing from the long overdue reform of the trade unions…They are running out on Europe…Above all, Labour is running away from the true challenge of unemployment.’
Promising to create millions of jobs, she insisted, was ‘no more than an evasion of the real problem’. Real jobs could only be created by gradually building up a competitive economy with profitable industries that could hold their own in world markets. ‘We Conservatives believe in working with the grain of human nature, in encouraging people by incentives, not in over-regulating them by too many controls.’ ‘A quick cure,’ she repeated several times in another favourite formulation, ‘is a quack cure.’
Margaret Thatcher circa 1983 (excerpt taken from The Iron Lady by John Campbell, pg 222)