The Watering Hole, January 18: Falling through the cracks…

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This man is eating dinner. Not bothering to pick through the dumpster and carry home (which he likely does not have) what he finds, he eats out every evening behind a trendy Italian restaurant. Once I saw him lurching along, holding his stomach and groaning. Vary wary, he never spoke, and cast darting glances around as he made his way across town from bin to bin. At some point he realized that I might be the one who was leaving the plate of food tied up in a plastic shopping bag on top of the pile inside, giving me a long look and a grimace.  His only contact with others appeared to be the alcoholics who would wait for him near the grocery store and give him a few dollars to buy a jumbo for them. I don’t know if he is a military veteran or not, but it is highly likely, as there is a VA hospital in town. After an early cold spell around Thanksgiving he disappeared.

People who have fallen through the cracks in our society, brought home with shocking violence as of late, become a burden with potential for greater catastrophe the longer we pretend to ignore them.

This is our Daily Open Thread. Your comments on this topic or any others are welcome.

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115 thoughts on “The Watering Hole, January 18: Falling through the cracks…”

  1. I love the phrase “we look after our own”
    I cringe every time I hear that.
    No, no you don’t look after your own.
    If you did, you wouldn’t hand out the “bootstrap lecture” (another one of my favorites) so freely which enables you to shift the blame onto the victim with such ease.
    And you wouldn’t…
    Oh fuggitall!
    The dipshits and the Sarah Palins of the world can rationalize anything that advances their own agenda at the expense of others.

  2. Raven,
    There are thousands of homeless veterans here in the State of Florida, living out of shopping carts. In the winter, they tend to migrate down to the Tampa area and south. If I need some work done, I find one with steady hands (not an alky) and give a fair wage and a meal (most often, Chinese or pizza). That actually costs me less than a lawn service firm or tradesman.

  3. The Dahli Lama tells us to be more selfish. By that he means, we need to be more helpful to others. Doing good deeds gives one good feelings inside which can be interpreted as a “selfish” act. Yes, let us all be more selfish and helps others whenever and wherever we can.

  4. Thank-you for your kindness Raven, and for having the class to make it look less like charity. In my town most of our homeless have jobs, they just can’t afford to save up enough for a place to live on what they make. In good weather they sleep in cars or outdoors, in poor weather the local churches take turns hosting them. Some temporary subsidized housing would make so much difference for these folks, the Section 8 waiting list has been closed for years.

  6. Cheney makes the transplant sound like an option instead of inevitable. I thought the device was meant to give him time to find a victim donor.

  8. My house is a madhouse these days. “chicken pox” for two. Ugh. Another two words: “encrypted network” my neighbor who so conveniently as well as unsuspectingly provided myself with access to his wireless upgraded and received a password for his network. Well. Yesterday I gave myself 20 minutes to try and hack the pw. I was in after 15, six tries did it. Quite an obvious choice of password there. Now for the backlog in my emails, some unpleasant surprises are already in, then back to normal, unless my good neighbor decides to play around with the settings of his network again.

    Thanks Raven and Walt for picking up the slack I invariably cause. :oops:

  9. A transplant for a 70 year old is ridiculous, unless we suddenly have such a supply of donor organs that some sort of triage becomes unnecessary. Want to bet on whether or not a 70 year old retired schoolteacher would receive a heart? Heck, in Arizona an impoverished 20 year old would likely be allowed to die.

  12. Extremely sad, but probably more to come with the new HOR looking to shrink gummint down so as to drown it in the toilet.

  13. I’m foresee a young healthy male in his early twenties, having an “accident” while out riding his motorcycle on a sunny afternoon. Coincidentally, he will be a match to Cheney’s blood type
    His organs will be harvested and transplanted into “The Dick”.

  14. Outstanding is absolutely correct. What other 70 year old would be on a list like that? All this will mean is that someone in their 30s or 40s is denied a heart–but, hey, they probably don’t have health insurance anyway.

  17. Think Progress is now full of people who would argue with mailboxes. That place needs a digital barium enema.

    Good morning!!

  18. Good morning, and thanks for that video Badmoodman!

    The ice is melting, so off to deliver eggs.

  26. I have a poster of Porsche race cars titled ‘Porsche: Rennwagen from Zuffenhausen’. Wagen being a car, the prefix renn either means race or fast. The German word for gerbil is ‘rennmaus’, so I must conclude they consider them to be fairly speedy little critters.

    No gerbil heart for Cheney. Maybe a mole heart since they’re nocturnal and Cheney prefers to operate in the dark.

  27. I find this particularly creepy and worrisome. Granted, I have low expectations for Alabama, but this is just so wrong.

    Their new governor is apparently only governing born-agains.

  29. Bentley was the dark horse candidate. It was supposed to be Tim James or Bradley Byrne, not that they would be any better. I voted for Sparks anyway.

  30. Remember the scene in Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life” when a couple of guys knock on a door and a woman (I think it was) answers, and they ask, “are you Mrs. so-and-so?”

    “Yes.”

    “And you are a registered organ donor?”

    “Yes …”

    “Then please come along with us. We need a liver!”

    Change that last word from liver to heart, and the scene fits the Cheney mentality like a glove.

  33. zxbe,

    oooo and definitely (in) awe – the gems and jewels in a single drop ~!~ Beautifully captured ~

  36. Thanks hooda. I found unfrozen water in my dining room. Dripping from a baggie with a whole in it into a brownie pan. lol

  37. I had someone describe to me the technique (and I tried it, but the results were so-so). I then found this video on the web to fill in some missing pieces (reflecting the flash off the back is a big key).

    Of course one of my friends said why don’t I just shoot it in high-def video and save the frames as images. (Sometimes technology takes the fun out of things – lol).

  38. Thanks Z. Have your son take a look at the video I posted. And where the guy mentions changing the reflecting sheet to something else, well I used magazine covers, a couple piano lesson books, and anything else I could find that had lots of colors.

  39. Urban Birding and Homeless

    There’s a Homeless encampment about eight – ten blocks from City Hall.
    Many of the river residents find their way to the little church, in the shadow of the twenty story CH, for a hot meal.
    The library is just across the street – where warmth and a good read are welcoming to them.

    Several just like to take in the city – sitting on a bench in the Paseo.

    They are birders – keeping an eye on the Peregrine Pair who have a scrape on the 18th floor of CH.

    These folk areour daily eyes and ears – when we meet in the evening – they’ll give us the run down on the observations of “Clara” and “EC”.
    They are so proud of ‘their birds’.
    A bit of a diversion, for some who have concentration.

    • zxbe, he’s been working on getting pictures of shower water, with some nice results, but he really loves close-up photography. This is just the ticket!

  42. Bellerive said the passport Duvalier used to leave France was issued in June 2005 by the then U.S.-backed interim government of Gerard Latortue. It expired last year

    Baby Doc changed the name of the Tonton Macoute to National Security Volunteers. Same torturous results…
    a despicable evil man.

    He was not lead away in hand-cuffs which make one think – this, unfortunately, may be for show.

    No doubt he’s trying to get his nasty, grubby, greedy hands on the Earthquake Relief money.

  48. Monk nabbed with nun’s skeleton at airport.

    TSA Agent: “Do you have any items to declare?”

    Monk: “Nun.”

    • Some idiot on FB was saying the bomb must have been planted by the Aryan Nations, since the NW is “crawling” with rightwing extremists.

      Informing him that the Aryan Nations lost all their property in Idaho because of a lawsuit, and moved across the country to PA, SC, and NY, the genius still insists the NW is crawling with rightwing extremists — cuz remember Ruby Ridge? Huh? Huh? Remember?

      Okay, whatever. You win. I’ve lived in northern Idaho for over 17 years — seven of those years in the heart of dumbfuckistan — and I’ve only ever seen one guy with tats of swastikas on his face. The rest were all run of the mill racists you find everywhere.

      Oy…

  52. One of the reasons I generally avoid the news is because the “hot off the teletype” phenomenon is worse than knowing nothing.

    It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.

    – ‘Sherlock Holmes’ from Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet

  54. Just wanted to let everyone know that Jane and I have both deactivated our Facebook accounts. (And I also quit playing Farmville, too.) We have serious privacy concerns, and we also do not like the idea that Goldman-Sachs will be able to get their hands on any information FB has about us. It may be too late to prevent that, but at least they won’t be able to use their new ownership stake in FB to “monitor” my life. (They’ll have to use one of their other insidious means to do that.)

    Of course, if any of you wishes to contact us, just about all of you (Critters, especially) have our e-mail addresses. The choice is your own as to whether you wish to keep using FB, but I would recommend against it.

  55. badmoodman: “indolence should be a goal and not a starting place.”

    I agree, otherwise we’d never get anywhere.

  58. Quick heads-up. Mark Kelly (Gabby Giffords husband) will be interviewed on 20/20 this evening. ABC. 10-Eastern. (about 10 minutes from the time of this post.)

  60. While I see your concern, Wayne, all info you’ve ever had is filed away as we type.
    There isn’t any move you make, unless off the grid entirely, that can’t be traced, if an agency wants.
    Do you have a cell phone?
    Do you have a home phone?
    Do on-line banking?
    Use a debit card?
    A credit card?
    Have a bank account?
    (most banks and credit unions push customers to on-line business).

    AT&T – out here anyway discourages sending paper bills to customers forcing on-line payment.

  63. Exactly ebb.
    All digital info is being collected and stored.
    No matter who has it, it is potentially valuable and will be sold.

  71. Raven nice imagery of digital info being filed away for ‘fun and profit’.

    —-

    Badmoodman – excellent description of the troll!

    ——

    Yes, it’s a troll – a very piss poor parody troll or just a very annoying gnat that buzzes the ear.

  73. Gary, dead cows seem to bring out good humor (no pun intended on the ice cream truck of youth).

  77. ok, I skipped most of the comments…sorry.

    re: Cheney & Heart…might be the first time a donated organ rejected the host!

  83. 2ebb: my mind immediately went to the Gary Larson cartoon titled “The Horrible Truth about Whipped Cream.”

    The Military camp at Bristol Ren Faire have a functioning, 1/2 — 1/3 scale trebuchet. They use it to fling cantaloupe into the nearby lagoon. (The swans were none too pleased, but when last I was there seemed to have figured out the schedule.)

  84. Like BnF, I haven’t read all the posts yet, but a bomb in Spokane? Not how I remember the place from my childhood.
    If you have a dead cow around here you call 1-800 DEADCOW. I’m not making that up.
    And yes, someone somewhere has everything you ever put on the internet. Fortunately it’s too much stuff to really sort well. Gary can explain why.

    • Outstanding, apparently it was a nasty bomb with shrapnel placed along a parade route. It wasn’t a dud, it was disarmed by the bomb squad. Scary stuff. It’s SPOKANE, for heaven’s sake!

      Love the dead cow number. :D

  85. Great, no need to travel overseas to get blown up by an IED.

    The 1-800-DEADCOW folks won’t come to my home anymore. I haven’t needed them for nine years, thankfully, but last time they said my driveway was too awful for their truck. How nice a truck can it be if you’re going to put a dead cow in it?

  87. Had to go do a ‘bed check’ of the local Peregrines. – Checking their roosting spots -
    it’s truly thrilling to know where a bird is abed.
    These urban Peregrines pick some odd spots: one on the Marriott; one on the Residents Hall at the University.
    The one on the Water Tower – fully exposed on a horizontal pipe near the roof.
    She’s the only one that doesn’t ‘tuck-in’ to a three sided/protected spot.

    Life is good when one can gaze upon a Peregrine (or four) – day or night~

  88. Six months ago the Genghis Kahn exhibit was in town – fascinating fellow!
    Full size Trebuchet on display – damn thing wouldn’t fit in my backpack!

  90. The Siege at S’mores

    Blue flaming hot white goo flung at breastworks,
    Caramello bar breaches honey graham gate, melts.
    Castle yields.

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