Good Afternoon;
Monday at last,...
Long..(holiday)..weekends with no money and no contact with Rachel, places closed or closing early, everybody disappearing....etc., can be a drag. I just kind of muddled through this past one. The schizophrenic weather was no help either.
Just to keep things in perspective though, did you see the news item the other day about the Belgian man who was thought to be in a coma/vegetative state for 23..Twenty Three!!!!.. years.....but who was paralyzed and aware and awake and unable to communicate? His family kept insisting that he was not a vegetable and finally one doctor believed them and found a way to test him and then to enable him to communicate through a special keyboard. The man, Rom Houben, typed, "I screamed, but there was nothing to hear."
When I was in the car crash that almost killed me in 1990, (Dec. 20th but who's keeping track...lol), I was placed both into intentional paralysis and a coma due to my need for for stabilization for a broken neck and back and TBI. ("Dran Bamage") I came out of the comatose state earlier than was expected..but NOT the paralysis...talk about fear and terror, it was only for a day and a half in my case, but I can fully relate to this man's experience. Unable to even move an eyeball or blink, much less speak with a tube in my throat, or just twitch a finger.
This article has caused me to take a minute and step back and realize that no matter how bad it may seem at the time, whatever I am dealing, or NOT dealing with right now....just how much worse it could be, and has been.
So I want to apologize for some of my whining. (Not all--just some............lol!)
Okay, in the Nov. 28 -- Dec. 4 issue of the Baltimore Afro-American Newspaper
approximately 3,419 people are homeless each night in Baltimore, and the mayor is crowing about placing 250 of them in apartments in the past year. Screw apartments, with all the vacant buildings in Baltimore, many of which are owned by the city and are school or office buildings, what is needed is a simple 'rooming house' or 'transient hotel' type model. Clean and simple rooms, with a lock on the door, furnished or not, multiple shared bathrooms with locking doors..(NOT communal showers)..in the hallways, basic security protocols for safety.....etc. In the next year, easily a full third of the people on the street could be housed with dignity at probably a similar cost. A large majority of us on the street could afford to pay some sort of reasonable rent to help defray costs, ($10.00 a night maybe?, would cut down on the needed gov't. subsidies by that much). Once there is a place to sleep and leave one's personal effects, it frees up many possibilities for employment, training, or education. Enough for now, more thought later.
I'm heading out for my first cup of coffee and to try to find something to eat, I'll be back tomorrow or tonight maybe.....................Dave
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