January's Beginning... Once Again
Every new beginning comes from some
other new beginning's end...

The surprise once again awaits us, as another new year starts, bringing all that will be the rest of our life. And once again it is time to begin, to continue beginning- ready or not.

Taking full responsibility for who we are, choosing friends, making plans for personal achievement, consciously deciding day by day where we want to go with our lives, ushers in adventure... the opportunity to participate in the adventure of life. It offers us the opportunity to share our talents, our special gifts with those with whom we share moments of time. We are becoming, every moment of time. As are our friends. Discovering who and what we really are, alone and with one another within our experiences, is worthy of celebration.

Empathy we can give. Empathy we can find, and it comforts... Alone, each of us comes to terms with our grief, our despair, even our guilt.- Hazelden Meditations

Take a good look around your self, inside and out. It is good to keep asking yourself "Why?", and it is also good to realize that, for many things, they simply "are".

...The present enshrines the past.- Simone de Beauvoir

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!!

For the last year I have been including at least one client or people story each month on my pages. Sometimes I wonder what I will soon be writing about, thinking that I will be running out of stories, but then I find myself relaying a story to someone and realize that it is one I haven't yet put down in print...

Jay recently mentioned something about someone who is illiterate and it reminded me of a client I once saw at the state hospital to screen for coming out and working with one of my case managers. We worked with lots of homeless people, but this referral was concerning because the client lived in his truck and was taken to jail and then to the psych hospital after he pulled a knife on the police. He had a long history of not taking his meds when out in the community and so having him seen by one of my case managers was something I thought I would not do and so saw him expecting to turn him down for services. I was expecting this based upon my preconceived notions of who he was, my old tapes that played like old radio shows in my brain.

And so I met with a middle-aged man, one who looked down at the floor much of the time, who looked disheveled, who looked lost. I explained to him what my program was, that I knew he did not take his meds when he was out of the hospital and that I would not tolerate that, that I would insist that he be on injected meds that he would take every couple of weeks. He told me that he would not like to take those meds. I asked him about living in his truck, about what he did with his money. He slowly explained, looking at the floor, that he got money from going around to various hospitals and collecting recyclables, that staff there would save those things for him and maybe give him something to eat. That years ago he had worked as an aide at a nursing home but after a while he could no longer do that. I asked about his disability check, and he explained to me that he paid a check cashing service to cash it when it came, that he did not have a bank account. I asked him why, why didn't he just set up a bank account for his check to be deposited into? He said that he had gone to banks, this homeless, disheveled black man, and that they had told him they did not have accounts like that. He seemed so childlike when he said these things, like he simply took at face value what the bank workers had told him. As I questioned him about this and about why he lived in his truck and did not have place to live, he looked into my eyes and said with deep, deep shame "Ize don't know how to read, ma'am".

It was then that I knew that I would have to talk one of my casemanagers into working with this man. I asked him about pulling the knife on the police- he explained that he did not know what they were doing, that he was scared, that things were not making sense to him. I told him that if one of my case managers worked with him that they could help him to get a bank account, to get a place to live, and maybe to find someplace to learn to read. He looked at me and said "You know, I think I can take that shot medicine you were talking about, yes, I think I can".

Judy was irate with me. How was it that I could consider her working with this homeless man who pulled knives on policemen? She insisted on going to the state hospital herself to screen him. I was delighted. She came there with me, and we met with the client in the dayroom. He remembered me and he remembered that he would have to take shots when he left the hospital. I introduced him to Judy and asked him to explain to her why he lived in his truck, how it came about that he pulled a knife on the police, and why he did not have a bank account. He told her the same things that he had told me, and the shame that flooded over him caused her body to flinch, and she looked at me with dismay and said "You've sucked me into this". She knew then the same thing that I knew, she knew that this was a man who needed help, who had a good heart, who she actually knew how to help and that she could not resist helping him. We set up an appointment for him to come to the office to see her after he got out. It was relatively easy explaining to him the day and time he should come- he could always ask people what time it was, but explaining to him our address, where he was to come was enlightening. The business card with the appointment on might as well have been written in Chinese- it made no sense to him. We excrutiatingly explained where we were located by describing local landmarks- we had no idea if he could make it there.

On the day of the appointment we kept an eye out the window and about the right time we saw him across and down the street, going into stores and asking for Judy, showing them her mental health business card. And we went out to meet him as he made his so difficult way through this world to our door.

I really can't remember whatever happended to him, but I do know for sure that he did not pull a knife on Judy, that he made it to our office more than once. And I do know that, "but for the grace of God", he could be me. He was once a poor boy in the south whose future was not bright, but it did include the possibility of some earthly joy, some love, some family. Mental illness robs many of its victims of these things, and illiteracy can make this puzzle of a world nearly impossible to negotiate.

There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love.- Thornton Wilder

Be the change you wish to see in the world.- Ghandi


Our work is at least half of our life, so much of our waking time on this earth. You are being paid to dream- don't forget that.

If you click on the work dreams picture it will take you to a site that pokes fun at all of those motivational calendars and such- maybe you will get a chuckle...

Well, I am tired, a bit under the weather...

I can help one person today.
Today is not your day.
Tomorrow doesn't look good either...

There are as many ways to live and grow as there are people. Our own ways are the only ways that should matter to us.- Evelyn Mandel

We are quickly moving on, into this year, into 2003, into the rest of our life.


Life is amazing. It slaps you in the face over, and over, and over. Then, all of the sudden, when you aren't really looking for it, life gives you what you have always wanted. And you did not even know that it was what you wanted or that it really is the only important thing in life. Perhaps someone touches you exactly like you have always wanted to be touched, as if you had been waiting your whole life for their presence and you not only didn't know that that was what you were waiting for, but you didn't realize you were missing so much for so long.

I am obscure, and transparent. Maybe that is unusual


The greatest gift we can give one another is rapt attention to one another's existence.- Sue Atchley Ebaugh


I have been sick with a bit of the old flu/cold bug, given to me by my dear, dear friend Jay. But he has fared worse- he is in the hospital with pneumonia. He scared me. He is getting better; life has had it's say.

"We all want to matter to others... we have to give it away in order to keep it... in life there are no accidents. Those people close to us and those just passing through our lives have reason to be there. Giving attention to another's humanity is our calling."- from Hazelden Meditaions, Each Day A New Beginning

Kira has made it through 4 months, 120 days, of sobriety. Her star is bright, and so is she.

Out of every crisis comes the chance to be reborn, to reconceive ourselves as individuals, to choose the kind of change that will help us to grow and to fulfill ourselves more completely.- Nena O'Neill

"HOOTERS" Calendar Courtesy of an E-mail from Carol...
















If you would like, you can place your curser over the calendar, right click and select save as...

Enjoy!?

There is song I have caught a bit of on the radio recently, by Pearl Jam,
and its lyrics say something like:

We are born,
and we know for sure that we will die.
The time in between,
is ours.



Then again, I also recently heard the old Eagles tune "Desperado" (a favorite of my friend Ken) on the radio
and its words also struck me more than they have in the past:

Your prison is walking,
through this world all alone...
You'd better let somebody love you,
before it's too
late.


A recent e-mail from Jay about dog letters to God had one that said:
"Dear God: If a dog barks his head off in the forest and no human hears him, is he still a bad dog?"

It made me wonder:
If you're in this world
all alone,
can anybody see
me?


Somehow, the ideas of the two songs and the e-mail have struck me as related.


All friendly feelings toward others come from the friendly feelings a person has for himself.- Aristotle

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor in America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.-Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967

I found this timely quote, given the activities of today, on a site that a young man started as a high school project and kept on with because of the pull of the subject... If you click on the image above it will link you to his interesting site.




A lot of good men seemed to get shot when I was growing up in the '60s, and they all seemed to be Democrats or "Liberals"- what's up with that? Both images here link to a Stanford site about a MLK Curriculum and other things they are developing.




The movie "Bullworth" is interesting; it came out a couple of years ago. The main character, a politician, at one point proclaims that "we need to keep **cking each other until we're all the same color". It's a movie worth renting, but it offers only a long-term solution. In the meantime we might be best to reconsider Rodney King's plea once again.

CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG??

"Why then do you try to 'enlarge' your mind?
Subtilize it."
- Herman Melville, Moby Dick



Click Picture for INTERESTING Link....

The W-2's have arrived, and we are contemplating our fates.. myself owing money unexpectedly.

Carol found an easier tax form and sent it to me- check it out at right. The politicians have been promising to simplify tax returns, and they have finally delivered.

Ah yes, simplicity.

Life is confusing, with lots of mixed messages. Sometimes it is amusing and at other times it is disheartening. At any rate, I thought I would add my own mixed message...

The picture at left is of a ceramic figure that Christian stores sell, having them in many different sports with Jesus playing with children. But... what will happen to the child with the gall to tackle Jesus?


CLICK ME, I AM THE GRATUITOUS LINK...
(I take a long time to load, so don't bother if you don't want to wait :)

And on that note...

Good Day, or Month!

CLICK for ongoing writings/quotes from JUDITH VIORST'S book: Necessary Losses
(Last Added to 12/29/02...)

If you have comments on my topics or content, please send them to me at:

Comments received from responding humans and my responses can be accessed by clicking on the picture of Ken's 1962 Wheel Horse Garden Tractor at left;
Ken was the originator of the idea for this...

Music: Click on Lips (Should be loaded about the 3rd try...) Cat Stevens, from "Tea for the Tillerman", "Into White" Page Created January 2003