Homelessness is no stranger in urban environments.
Disparity, economic and otherwise, is visible in older rougher parts of cities, worldwide,where no one with money wants to live. Urban flight has created downtown areas where people, who have nothing. sleep on sidewalks and warm themselves, on cold nights, over fires burning in empty fifty five gallon oil drums.
We have homeless in Albuquerque who construct cardboard houses by the freeways. They push their shopping carts down sidewalks and congregate at bus stops. They stand at major street intersections with hand scribbled signs full of bad spellings asking for money. As most of us, who have volunteered to help, or have been homeless, know, this homeless army is Veterans, college graduates, parents, brothers and sisters, friends, people who have run out of luck,people that no one is looking for. Most have dropped out, many are drug addicted or mentally ill. They are lost, covered with anonymity in the midst of plenty.
Even wealthy societies haven’t come up with solutions.
This soul,in the passageway on my way to Colonial Square, is tossing food to pigeons. They come waddling closer as she throws a handful of popcorn out. They are not timid, not afraid.
There is something Biblical about this scene.
When I see someone with nothing, give what they have,Jesus becomes more than just a possibility.
When I remark that I have a cold, Yuri asks if I want some ” Mama Juana? ”
” I don’t want marijuana, ” I answer.
” No, ” she laughs, ” Mama Juana. It is a local drink, good for colds. ”
Berluis shows me a jug which looks like it is filled with bark off a tree, which, it turns out, is. Research says this alcoholic drink was concocted by local Taino Indians who put rum, red wine,honey, herbs, and bark in a jug to make a happy time drink.The drink is good for colds, flu, digestion, circulation, and cleaning the blood.
” It won’t hurt me? ”
Yuri shakes her head ” no” and Berluis pours us all a little into plastic cups, not unlike my golfing crew’s ” birdie juice ” cups.
We drink to the Dominican Republic, and, happily, no ill effects have been noticed.
The alcohol content is subdued and the drink is sweet, not unlike Jamaica Tea.
” You can’t say, ” Yuri explains, ” You have been to the Dominican Republic without trying Mama Juana. ”
People don’t need to have a health reason to drink but having a real cold makes this sampling real good for me.
Learning about local traditions is always a plus, especially when they taste so good.
The last police band i saw was in Cuenca, at a celebration for ex-pats and foreign business development in that Ecuadorian city.
This Santo Domingo events aim is to support women and fight domestic violence in Latin America.This police band provides some of the entertainment. There are uniformed officers patrolling all the tourist destinations in this ” old City.”. and, except for getting hustled to buy things you don’t want or solicited to take a guided tour from one of the many guides in the area, the Zone is very safe.
The police band’s music is contagious, in a good way.
It is good for the police to show their gentle side since most of their job deals with locking up family, friends, and strangers who choose not to follow rules.
Police are still humans, we sometimes forget, who wear guns, handcuffs, badges, drive official vehicles. play in the police band, and put people in jail.
They can never lose their humanity no matter how much bad they have to clean up.
When public servants and institutions lose their humanity, we all lose.
For those who have trouble putting up a shelf on the wall, someone had to build the house you live in, the car you drive. Someone had to educate your kids, grow the food you eat. Someone in the background has to mow your lawn, do your tax forms, listen to your heart, fix the pothole in the street.
In every place Scotttreks goes, people are at work doing unglamorous,tedious, dirty jobs that keep civilization going.
Luckily, people are gifted to do different things.
A world of actors would be all talk and no substance.
In a world without financial men and women, nothing would get paid for.
On a planet without ministers, we would all get big heads and believe the world rotated around us alone..
Without dreamers, there would be nothing new around every corner.
There is always work happening wherever Scotttreks goes.
Working men, and women, are worth celebrating.
If you want to know what people are looking for, count the cars in the parking lot. Tonight, the parking lot is packed.
The dance floor is also packed,dancers barely having enough room to stand. The band is hitting their notes, ladies are dressed to kill, the audience rocks with the steady booming salsa rhythm and yell when a tune is done for another one just like it. Latin music has hot harmony, high note trumpet playing, fluid solos and tight, intricate, group ensembles.
When Ladies get dressed up to dance salsa, they light up the dance floor and have smiles that are contagious.
Tonight, this is a party to be at, especially if you are a little kid on the bandstand.
I thought, at first,the little boy on the band stand was the son of a band member but was told his parents have been bringing him to sing and be on the stage since he was three.
Watching the little boy sing with the band is worth the price of admission.
It never hurts to start any passion early, before you are told you can’t do it and you best find something more serious to do with your time and energy.
Eric, a retired Army Ranger, who patrolled streets of Iraq in full battle gear, has told me violence is a way of life and controlling or neutralizing it was once his mission as well as his livelihood.
When I talk with a man who has had to take another human life, regardless of reason, it makes me listen closer.
At Dion’s Pizza for lunch, the inscription on the man’s T shirt ,ahead of me in the order line, reads, simply, “ Deliverance of Controlled Violence. ”
I am at a loss to fully understand what this means? Is violence bad, or does it depend on what force is used to accomplish? If you use violence to subdue a violent person are you breaking the same law they are? Does this guy’s uniform legitimize his kind of violence? State violence- acceptable? Individual violence not acceptable?
I don’t know violence like Eric ,or this SWAT warrior, but I know about words.
You only need to get a few cattle to head for the barn to get the whole herd moving in the same direction.
Sweet talk and glorious words beat violence any day when you want to control, suppress, or channel human behavior.
The war for our minds is always being waged.
Growing up in the 1950’s, there were only three channels on our new black and white TV. The programming was sports, talent shows, westerns, game shows and nightly news.The broadcast day ended at midnight. In the 1960’s,Johnny Carson got people to stay up later and tucked his audiences into bed.
Back then, we went to our television sets like an older generation went to their radios before us and listened to TV anchors tell us ” how it was.” In those days, we trusted our institutions to do what they said they were doing.
At Wal-Mart this morning, Scotttreks runs into a TV crew filming a segment for the local evening news. These days, entertainment and political correctness saturate each nightly news story and finding truth comes last in third or fourth place.
ThIs news production, promoting a Wal Mart sponsored winter coat drive for kids, is only seconds long but takes a crew of five most of the morning to produce.
I don’t watch news anymore.
News people want to do all my thinking for me and make sure I don’t have trouble coming up with my own answers.
Discerning truth from fiction, I believe, is still my responsibility, as a living being.
Newsmen and used car salesmen have much more in common than we previously thought.
This home on wheels was originally owned by a couple from Louisiana who traveled from town to town with a carnival. They sold kewpie dolls and prizes, and, as far as we know, lived as happy as the Old Lady who lived in a Shoe.
Inside, it is roomy enough for a couple that gets along.
For a couple that doesn’t get along, there is no house big enough.
Thom’s shop is full of heavy steel automobiles from the fifties and sixties, stripped down, in various stages of renovation.Paint and body tools are resting in the shop where they were used last,collecting dust on the hood of a Chevy Pickup or the roof of a Ford mustang.
Hanging on wire lines in the shop’s paint booth are a detached hood and car door, suspended from a cable running from one side of the room to the other. The painter can walk around the hood and car door, unobstructed, wearing his respirator , careful to keep the spray gun moving, not creating runs and catching all the nooks and crannies.
When the final coats of paint are done,my nephew Weston’s El Camino will be a beauty.
Collectors want their gems to sparkle.
When you put lots of time, thought, and energy into a project you want it to be worth doing.
Some photographs resonate.
This photo, hanging on a restaurant wall in an Albuquerque Olive Garden, resonates. It is a black, white, and gray ode to old age.
These three old men have seen history and are sitting on a bench watching life pass them by. Old men often have histories that are burnished and worn like rocks going through a rock shop tumbler. Their rough edges have been smoothed and now they lean on each other as they watch glorious young women flaunting the latest designer clothes, their trim bodies moving against skirts and blouses that can barely contain their curves.
These old men sit and their conversation moves from wars,to divorces,to children,to politics,to sex, to money.
Growing old is unavoidable but sitting on the right bench, in the right place, with the right people, is, in my mind, still a few years off for me.
Fooling myself,however, is something I have experience with.
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