STORIES
I used to tell so many more stories in this newsletter, especially in the old, old days when we walked through the woods, from camp to camp, sitting around people’s fire pits hearing the news of the day.
Maybe Jerry found a chicken, frozen solid and not past the date, in the dumpster behind Winn Dixie and he bought some flour and they all had chicken and dumplings....
or about Eva’s hallucination. Eva was a kindergarten teacher who took to drink after her child was killed in an accident. One afternoon, in a stupor of beer and listerine, she had a hallucination – but not of elephants or giant spiders. She saw little children running through the woods laughing and playing and she held her arms out to them. Soon after Eva stopped drinking and she had her own little apartment and was reunited with her family before the end. Maybe someone who drinks so much but has such a loving heart can have her own special hallucination and then find her way home...
I will never forget Henry who loved owls and felt he could communicate with them. One day he was standing in the parking lot of Shands, where he worked as a janitor. He looked up and saw an owl on the roof and then an owl feather fell at his feet.
It’s different now with so many homeless people, needing so much, but we still have our moments, especially at the small stops. Tuesday night two journalism students who are doing a class project on hunger rode along and they were talking to a beat up old hooker universally known as “Big Booty Judy.” She’s talking to them and our pharmacy volunteer says she has some donations in her car to give me. It’s a bag and sticking up out of it is a brand new fluffy pink teddy bear. Judy is saying, “It doesn’t matter if you’re hungry. People just walk by you. They don’t look at you, or if they do it’s like they’re looking at a piece of garbage. It’s because of how you look. But I’m not a piece of garbage. I’m a human being. I’d do anything to help anybody. I’d give someone the shirt off my back...if I had two shirts...” At that moment she glances over at me and sees the teddy bear and her eyes light up like candles. Of course I give her the bear and she wraps her arms around it...
At such moments I feel like the luckiest person on earth to have this job. To myself, I call them “the Jesus moments.”
Judy has had a long hard path through life, and none of us would have wished it on her. But we have the world we have. It is a gift to know these homeless people and to share such moments.
CHRISTMAS STOCKINGS
The Home Van’s annual Christmas party will be on Thursday, December 22 at 5:45 p.m. in the little parking lot on the east side of the Civil Courthouse. It has been an annual tradition in Gainesville for the past 6 or 7 years. People from all over the community join us and they bring Christmas stockings for our homeless friends (and sometimes home made cookies!). For you newbies on the list, here is how folks do the stockings:
Buy a pair of white tube socks. Roll up one sock and put it in the toe of the other. Then fill the stocking with presents and tie off the top. Here are some suggested items to put in the stockings: candles, batteries (especially triple As), duct tape, chocolate bars, reading glasses, playing cards, small games, crossword puzzle books, small stuffed animals, Vienna sausages, stamped envelopes, pens, small notebooks, lighters...The Dollar store is an excellent place to find stocking stuffers. We have two requests for the stockings:
1. Don’t put money in the stockings. It’s a wonderful thing to do, but it hurts too much if one person gets money in his stocking and another person doesn’t.
2. Make sure each stocking is not made up entirely of utilitarian gifts (like soap and toothpaste). Every stocking should have something pretty and frivolous in it like a Santa Claus candle or a chocolate bar.
We used to have designated drop-off sites for Christmas stockings, first at a volunteers house and then at the Alachua County Housing Authority. The number of people and the numbers of stockings has increased to the point that any drop-off site ends up resembling one of those homes on the TV show about people with Hoarders Syndrome. So now we ask people to bring the stockings to the Christmas party and, if they can, to stay and party with us and meet our homeless friends. If any of you make stockings and can’t bring them to the party, call me (372-4825) and I will make a drop-off arrangements for you.
Peace and love to everyone!
arupa
The Home Van needs tents, tarps, bottled water, Vienna sausages, creamy peanut butter, jelly, candles, white tube socks, batteries, bug spray, duct
tape, books and games. Call 352-372-4825 to arrange for drop off. Financial donations to the Home Van should be in the form of checks made out to Citizens for Social Justice, Inc., earmarked for the Home Van, and mailed to307 SE 6th Street, Gainesville, FL 32601, or can be made online at http://homevan.blogspot.com/
Friday, October 14, 2011
Thursday, October 6, 2011
HOME VAN NEWLETTR 6/10/11
WINTER IS COMING
Mylar emergency blankets and candles – we need hundreds and hundreds of these two items during the winter months. Emergency blankets keep people alive, even when the temperatures go into the twenties. In fact, the homeless folks say that these blankets actually keep them warm on very cold nights and – good news! – they are extremely inexpensive – one or two dollars apiece depending on where you buy them. They can be purchased by the case online at many different sites – for a range of prices. If you shop around you will find a good deal. More good news – they’re light weight – minimal shipping charge. On very cold nights Pat and I drive around and pass them out, and we keep them in the van. When you donate mylars you are saving lives.
Candles are so, so important. A candle raises the temperature inside a tent by ten degrees. Equally important, candles keep people from sinking into depression. When it gets dark at five o’clock and you have no source of light – sitting out in the woods for endless hours of darkness – unable to read, unable to see what’s coming at you when you hear twigs breaking and leaves crunching - that is like being a prisoner of war.
In a way, our folks are refugees and prisoners of the war between corporate American and everybody else.
This winter I hope your generosity will allow us to pass out candles and mylar blankets by the dozens (mylars also make good makeshift tarps) so everyone has all they need of these two amenities.
One reminder: I no longer take in donations of blankets and winter clothing, because I don’t have the storage space. The Alachua County Housing Authority takes blankets and coats (large size coats are particularly needed). Once a week we take our van to the Hospice Attic Thrift Shop warehouse and load in blankets and sleeping bags and coats. The folks at Hospice Attic – who also donate to other small missions – are genuine angels, and there is one very special angel named Mary Lou who sorts out what we need from the vast middenheaps of donations they receive.
Every winter I hope that this is the last winter we will have hundreds of homeless people living outside. But the One-Stop Center is still a distant dream. One bright light in this darkness is Gail Monahan and her allies at the VA. I wish we could clone Gail, about 40 or 50 times. I think she’s gotten more people off the streets, permanently, than anyone else in Gainesville. She is the Albert Einstein of housing. Her goal is to get every single homeless veteran into housing and she is making great progress.
High protein foods also help homeless people survive the winter. Vienna sausages, or any little poptop cans of meat, will be needed more than ever in the months ahead.
Gary, who was treated for tongue cancer this fall and needed donations of protein shakes, asked me to thank everyone for helping him. We have been able to supply him with all the protein shakes he needed and he is making a good recovery. He can now eat applesauce and boiled eggs.
The Civic Media Center has given a temporary home to the St. Francis House Vet clinic. They also passed out bottled water to homeless folks all summer, and make their restroom available to homeless people.
Many thanks to all of you for being part of our Home Van family. The brothers and sisters in the woods appreciate you more than you will ever know.
love, arupa
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Home Van needs tents, tarps, bottled water, Vienna sausages, creamy peanut butter, jelly, candles, white tube socks, batteries, bug spray, duct tape, books and games. Call 352-372-4825 to arrange for drop off. Financial donations to the Home Van should be in the form of checks made out to Citizens for Social Justice, Inc., earmarked for the Home Van, and mailed to 307 SE 6th Street, Gainesville, FL 32601, or can be made online
http://homevan.blogspot.com/
Mylar emergency blankets and candles – we need hundreds and hundreds of these two items during the winter months. Emergency blankets keep people alive, even when the temperatures go into the twenties. In fact, the homeless folks say that these blankets actually keep them warm on very cold nights and – good news! – they are extremely inexpensive – one or two dollars apiece depending on where you buy them. They can be purchased by the case online at many different sites – for a range of prices. If you shop around you will find a good deal. More good news – they’re light weight – minimal shipping charge. On very cold nights Pat and I drive around and pass them out, and we keep them in the van. When you donate mylars you are saving lives.
Candles are so, so important. A candle raises the temperature inside a tent by ten degrees. Equally important, candles keep people from sinking into depression. When it gets dark at five o’clock and you have no source of light – sitting out in the woods for endless hours of darkness – unable to read, unable to see what’s coming at you when you hear twigs breaking and leaves crunching - that is like being a prisoner of war.
In a way, our folks are refugees and prisoners of the war between corporate American and everybody else.
This winter I hope your generosity will allow us to pass out candles and mylar blankets by the dozens (mylars also make good makeshift tarps) so everyone has all they need of these two amenities.
One reminder: I no longer take in donations of blankets and winter clothing, because I don’t have the storage space. The Alachua County Housing Authority takes blankets and coats (large size coats are particularly needed). Once a week we take our van to the Hospice Attic Thrift Shop warehouse and load in blankets and sleeping bags and coats. The folks at Hospice Attic – who also donate to other small missions – are genuine angels, and there is one very special angel named Mary Lou who sorts out what we need from the vast middenheaps of donations they receive.
Every winter I hope that this is the last winter we will have hundreds of homeless people living outside. But the One-Stop Center is still a distant dream. One bright light in this darkness is Gail Monahan and her allies at the VA. I wish we could clone Gail, about 40 or 50 times. I think she’s gotten more people off the streets, permanently, than anyone else in Gainesville. She is the Albert Einstein of housing. Her goal is to get every single homeless veteran into housing and she is making great progress.
High protein foods also help homeless people survive the winter. Vienna sausages, or any little poptop cans of meat, will be needed more than ever in the months ahead.
Gary, who was treated for tongue cancer this fall and needed donations of protein shakes, asked me to thank everyone for helping him. We have been able to supply him with all the protein shakes he needed and he is making a good recovery. He can now eat applesauce and boiled eggs.
The Civic Media Center has given a temporary home to the St. Francis House Vet clinic. They also passed out bottled water to homeless folks all summer, and make their restroom available to homeless people.
Many thanks to all of you for being part of our Home Van family. The brothers and sisters in the woods appreciate you more than you will ever know.
love, arupa
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Home Van needs tents, tarps, bottled water, Vienna sausages, creamy peanut butter, jelly, candles, white tube socks, batteries, bug spray, duct tape, books and games. Call 352-372-4825 to arrange for drop off. Financial donations to the Home Van should be in the form of checks made out to Citizens for Social Justice, Inc., earmarked for the Home Van, and mailed to 307 SE 6th Street, Gainesville, FL 32601, or can be made online
http://homevan.blogspot.com/
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