Drugs, dreads, the F-bomb, and a rebranding

Label on sack lunches

Today I delivered four brown bag lunches and this time, there's a new wrinkle: each lunch contains the address of homelessinseattle.net as an effort to starting marketing the Web site to the homeless.

Along with that, Centennian is no longer signing off at the end of these postings. The signoff will be a simple brown bag, symbolizing the meals to homeless people. The point is to avoid branding confusion.

Curses and ODs

Today started and ended with some unsettling experiences. My first encounter occurred in Cal Anderson park, where I passed several men who appeared to be camping in the shade and I spotted a woman on a bench with two bags that appeared to be worldly possessions. I approached her and ashed whether she was homeless. She responded with the F-bomb. I explained that I was distributing meals, was met with more malice, and moved on, recognizing that I need to practice and improve on my technique. I turned right at Broadway, walked a few blocks and met Gigi.

Gigi

"Gigi" is the name I have assigned for the sake of privacy to a lady who stands on a street corner on Broadway. She recognized me. Her plastic teeth make eating the apple I included in the brown bag difficult, but she could deal with it where she lodges, she said. Same for the two Black Forest ham and cheese sandwiches I made that morning.

The couple at the corner

A block farther on, there was a sprawl next to the sidewalk and backdropped by a dumpster. I passed it on the far side of the street, crossed and doubled back, realizing that I was looking at a man and a woman lounging on the sidewalk with their debris and a shopping cart. Did they need food, I asked. She pointed to the shopping cart and said they were well provisioned. But I wanted them to know about homelessinseattle.net. I mentioned the site and said the sticker on the brown bag gave the listing. I left my second brown bag meal with them.

Cancer, diabetes, "free" canes and water

I walked on north on Broadway until Umpqua Bank, then doubled back, encountering a man who was holding out his cap for donations. His name is Mike, he said. As I handed him the third brown bag I learned that he has lung cancer as well as diabetes; no money and inability to acquire health care; and a cane that was given to him by a doctor in Wallingford, for whom he performs minor chores. Being totally broke, Mike stays at homeless shelters such as Union Gospel Mission. Someone gave him water, but the bottle was stolen when he left it outside while using a bathroom. He obtained a second gallon bottle, drank some of the water, put the bottle down, and it disappeared. Mike said he could obtain water at the fountain at the Rite Aid pharmacy at East John and Broadway. That was news for me, because I thought the fountain hadn't been working. Maybe I was thinking of a different fountain.

At Dick's Drive-In I saw a familiar face -- a young woman who frequents the area. She was just getting started for the day and already had a meal, she said.

Dreads and drugs

At Broadway and Pine on the margin of Seattle Central Community College stood a man with a smattering of dreadlocks selling a $2 graphic magazine he had crafted by copying images from the internet. He didn't want a meal, he wanted to sell his magazine. But perhaps the people sleeping by a tree on the lawn would want a meal, he said. I approached them, but they were sound asleep. But this other man, leaning over as if to read, was sitting on a low wall 100 feet away. I approached him quietly and noticed the needle that his right hand was slipping into the vein on the back of his left hand. He remained stationary and oblivious. I walked back toward the intersection of Pine and Broadway.

Cops and the motorcyclist

Police had pulled over a motorcyclist and were citing him for driving the wrong way. I pointed out to one of the officers the man bent over with the needle in his hand and was told they would check on him.

Cardboard storefront

The fourth brown bag went to a woman in the shade along the southern fence in Cal Anderson park. She was trying to connect the cardboard with the fence as if to create a backdrop. I asked her whether she wanted a meal. She accepted it without a smile; she was focused on attaching the cardboard to the fence.
Meals served so far: 39
Ubuntu,

Andre, Kristen, Kenya, and what's his name...

I took one look at the bathroom scales and realized it was necessary to exercise more and eat less, so I headed off to Alaskan Way, and along the way I shared the wealth ... of food. Close to Boren and Madison I met an old friend -- Andre, who had positioned his chair -- a milk carton -- outside the door to Bartell Drugs and was holding a sign asking for help.

Last February I asked Andre if he wanted to go to McDonald's for a meal and he explained they wouldn't let him in there because of his hygiene, but Subway was kinder, so we ate there. The McDonald's is gone now -- there's just a pit filled with construction activity where the Golden Arches used to be, just one more indication of what's going on in the city with the most cranes in the nation. The homeless people who would gather outside the entrance have been displaced as well.

Bladder cancer, stolen cane

I recognized Andre right away and he remembered me. Another Subway sandwich? I asked. He said no; he needed to get money for meds. Not only is he diabetic, he now apparently has bladder cancer. And somebody had stolen his cane, a nice cane he had hung on the tree behind where he was sitting.

I went inside Bartell,  broke a $20, and gave him $5. Then I asked again if he wanted a sandwich. He said yes. He rose and slowly ambled toward Subway -- he can't walk fast -- leaving his materials behind. Shouldn't he take them? I asked. No-one would want then, he said.

That lying bathroom scale

He ordered a sandwich. I got a foot-long tuna, cut into two sections. Remembering what the lies my bathroom scale was telling me, I figured there would be people who needed it more than I did. And if I didn't buy something myself, Andre might have felt strange.

Andre was having second thoughts about his property on the street and wanted to get back to his perch and belongings, so we exited the Subway. On the sidewalk a woman joined us and  thanked me for buying a meal for Andre. She's also living on the street, and they are friends. I gave them each a business card, with my contact information inked out and a new address: homelessinseattle.net, along with my email address: rds@homelessinseattle.net. I explained that I was building a Web site with an index of services for the homeless.

The stolen backpack

It was time to head downhill, but I didn't get 100 feet before I ran into a man selling the Real Change magazine. I asked him whether he might want a tuna sandwich. He explained that he had his backpack stolen, along with a spare pair of pants and some money. He had put the backpack down, and when he turned around, it was gone. He was not giving up hope that it would turn up. (He had been on the street less than two weeks.)

I walked to Alaskan Way and turned back. On the way up Madison, I encountered a young man by the Library who was engaging pedestrians to talk with them about his organization that addresses working conditions in Seattle. Was it "Washington Works?" The organization's name escaped me. But his didn't -- he is African American, and his name is Kenya. Nice young man. I made a point of him remembering homelessinseattle.net, by handing him a business card. I think the two organizations can help each other help the homeless.

Seven years on the street

At 7th and I-5 I encountered a man facing downhill traffic where cars stop for the light and holding a sign asking for help. He said he had been homeless in Seattle seven years. He got the second half of my tuna sandwich. Not 100 feet away there was another individual lying on the concrete beyond the sidewalk, with his legs toward the street and his head cradled in, and covered by, an arm, as if he were trying to capture what silence he could as he slept. It made me wonder whether he was more in need of that final sandwich.
Meals served so far: 35
Ubuntu,

What if you're injured?

This afternoon, while walking on Broadway on Capital Hill, I encountered a young woman in a wheel chair sitting at Dick's Hamburgers near Denny. I asked her if she would like a meal and purchased a cheeseburger, coke and fries for her, acquiring in the process a free tall paper cup of ice to help her with the warm two-liter coke bottle she had by her side. Cost: $6.28.

She said her name is Lynette, and that she had been homeless for 3-4 years, but only in the wheelchair a few months, due to an injury. That raised a question: What does a homeless person do if they are injured -- who do they turn to? That will be something to include in the index for the upgraded Web site, homelessinseattle.net, which we hope to have operational within a month. The roughed-in site can be found by clicking the link in this paragraph.

Meals served so far: 32.
Ubuntu,

New "Homeless In Seattle" Web site

In the last posting I announced creation of a Web site to assist the homeless in obtaining services, and my enrollment in a class to update my Web page authoring skills. My initial efforts led to my awareness that there are "content management systems" (CMS) which can be used to create a Web site without the complexities of writing Web page code to create and manage the site. So I have abandoned my class, and my original domain name, replacing it with homelessinseattle.net. An image of the mockup follows:

Initial mockup of part of the home page of the new Web site to serve the homeless

The disadvantage of using a CMS is that some functionality may be sacrificed. The advantage gained is that a simpler method may be used to create the site and it may become easier for colleagues to maintain the site without extensive training. Also, backups to the site are facilitated, so that if it crashes it will be easier to restore.

The program I've chosen to use to create and support homelessinseattle.net is Joomla, a popular program for building and maintaining Web sites with a great number of support resources to draw on, as well as online training. The training, elegance of the program and available resources lends promise that this effort will be more sustainable.

More to come...

Ubuntu

Program Pause

It's April 18, and there has been a pause in the 100 Meals program.
Results so far: 30 of 100 meals have been distributed, and enough street intelligence has been gathered to persuade me that developing a Web site for Seattle's homeless, discussed in the March 17 post, is worthy of serious examination.

I have enrolled in Web 120, a Web-authoring class, at Seattle Central Community College to see whether it's possible to brush up on my skill set to create such a site, while discussions with others on the feasibility and desirability of following that route continue.

Domain created

I have created a domain, homelessinseattle2017.com. The "2017" was added when I discovered that my original idea for a name had already been locked up. Here is the initial placeholder image while I proceed:

Washington state allows senior citizens to enroll in college classes for $5 plus lab fees and books, but the hitch is that you need the instructor's permission, there has to be a vacancy, and you can't be officially enrolled until a week after the class starts. That delay has put me in catch-up mode, so this plan has significant obstacles. However I took the same class a few years ago, so if the technology has not changed dramatically, there's a great possibility that I will have the skill set to create a suitable Web site that can be useful to the homeless.

We'll find out.
Ubuntu,

Postscript:

Got stir crazy and decided to walk to Ivar's for exercise. Took along a brown bag just in case. Good thing, because I saw a young man asleep on his feet in a dry spot next to a window. Asked him several times if he was OK. He finally sleepily opened his eyes and looked at me. I asked him if he was exhausted, or on drugs. He said he did drugs, which wasn't quite what I asked him. He did respond to my offer of a meal. I gave him one of the meals I had prepared for the young couple in my alley a few days back. I had kept it in the fridge, and it was still OK.

I walked from there toward the waterfront, stopping to talk with a spare changer at where the freeway bridge meets 7th Avenue. I asked him whether he was going to be there for a while, and promised to bring him some fish and chips. He asked me what that was. That was strange... When I got to Ivar's I reached for my wallet and realized I hadn't brought it, so I hustled back up hill to apologize. He wasn't there when I returned.
Meals distributed so far: 31.

Soup and sandwich skips

There's a driveway that leads to the alley behind my condo, and the couple was sitting there in the shelter of a garage, with their dog. I walked by, greeted them, paused, and asked if they had lodging for the night. They didn't. They looked like they were pretty together, so maybe they weren't homeless in the conventional sense. Perhaps I acted too rashly. But I asked if they had a meal for the night, and they said no. So I asked if they would like a soup and sandwich, and they perked up and said yes. I told them to wait and that I would return.

At the condo I whipped together two ham and cheese sandwiches, garnished with mayo, mustard and a sweet red chili pepper spread. Placing each sandwich in two nested paper bags, I added to each package a fruit cup, two fig bars, a couple cheese balls and a Pink Lady apple. In a plastic Glad refrigerator container with snap lid I added a combination of Pacific organic roasted red pepper and tomato soup,  kalamata olives, chopped onions, carrots microwaved to tenderness, and Sweet Baby Ray's Barbecue Sauce, over which I had melted Tilamook chedder cheese slices. I found a large sack for the Glad container and threw in a couple of spoons, napkins and paper towells.  It took less than 10 minutes and I headed for the alley.

When I got there, they were gone without a trace.

No problemo. I returned to the condo, refrigerated the sack lunches for another day and ate the soup. It was delicious.
Ubuntu,

Bananaman

Today I became Bananaman. Yesterday I picked up a big flat of bananas at a food bank I support. They weren't going to last until food bank day -- Tuesday -- so I relieved the bank of the fruit that was doomed. Part of it got peeled and frozen for my fruit smoothies. I gave a few to a couple neighbors in the condo. Some are still in a kettle in my fridge, for safe keeping. And most of the rest ended up in a small shopping bag which I carried downtown today enroute to meet up with a friend.

At Madison and 12th, I offered some to three transients standing out of the weather in a doorway. All three declined.

I walked along Broadway, then headed downtown, passing a church with a low wall along the sideway, and I planted a few bananas there for someone to discover. When I reached the freeway I left some bananas besides some tents that appeared to be unoccupied, and turned left, walking along the boundary by the freeway where I spotted several tents. I deposited a few bananas at one and there was a disturbance in the tent, so I said I was leaving the bananas. The resident thanked me. I asked him if he would like some more, and he said yes. So I left about 10 ripe but not-too-ripe bananas, emptying my bag.

No meals, but good fruit for the folks on the street.
Ubuntu