To Do:

(1) Find a bed.
(2) Figure out food.
(3) Go after contracts
(4) Get at least 5 responses.
(5) Get into a negotiation with at least one contract job.
(6) Get Paid.

Getting there. A good day. Definitely more is getting done when I'm more discriminatory about the help I'm getting and from whom...

Every day is still bringing a new drama, though. Maybe people are starting to get it that the origins of drama aren't with me? That I'm not the only person being inconvenienced with them?

Naw. I didn't think so. ;)

With any luck, though, I'm on the right side of the curve and it appears that I am.

As long as I keep kicking out the proposals the way I have been, the numbers game will play itself out the way it always does and I'll have the extra work I'm looking for.... and, yes, pay.

Jared...? Not sure. Waited two days without him showing up online. It could be because of the holiday week, but maybe not. Until that job brings in money, I'll keep moving forward as if it's not there.

More legal stuff? No. The Nolle Prossed case against me is beyond dead in the water for the complaintant. The question is whether I should actually file suit. I haven't decided, yet. Given the additional trouble she's giving K__, it's a definite possibility. The consensus is that it's a strong case, so... why not?

If someone wants to breach a contract and try to blame it on someone else, that's their problem. Not mine.

Of the completion of CSS osC 2.0, I'm nearly there. Currently rewriting the application to handle both Register_Globals on AND off... and I'm hunting down the code line by line.

I'm happy: 30 CL posts that I've replied to, 2,900+ lines of code rewritten, 4 images resized and ready to be placed, 3 article ideas sketched out... and I was part of an interview spot for K___. :) LOL!

The offer of a bed will help. Got that on my own without help from anyone's friends and family...

Yup. Things seem to be back on the upswing, again. Took long enough, but... at the same time, the bad parts helped K___ get to a place with each other that wouldn't have been possible, otherwise. Maybe the road we took wasn't the easiest, but... where we are now compared to where both of us were with each other a month ago? I prefer this and so does K___.

I think the "problems" will be cut in half for everyone with the disappearance of a certain player. I don't see her leaving as a problem! It's a blessing!

ok... back to work!

The drop in temperature and the rain make it imperitive that I get paid and get an apartment this week. I spent the weekend well and got a LOT done that I just wasn't able to get done when I was in CARITAS and having to leave every day at 4:30. In addition to the contract jobs and the regular job with Jared that I recovered, I also had time to really work on CSS osCommerce v.2.0 and am nearing completion on that.

Every day is now a race.

No Pressure!

There.

What part of this cannot be understood? I am NOT enjoying a warm bed and did not enjoy free food, today. If I was, I would not have been told that I had work and it begins on Monday. The job is going to require that I work much later than 4:30 pm. After I do the work, I'll get paid. After I get paid, I'll get an apartment and will have my own bed and my own food that I earned.

I'll be able to wake up and work whenever I want because the apartment is mine. I'll not only get to sleep in my own bed and cook my own food from my own refrigerator, but will be able to invite over who I want whenever I want and be able to cook MY food for THEM.

I will no longer be homeless. I will be able to provide for those I love as well as myself.

All because I walked OUT of CARITAS, tonight.

What part of that was a bad decision?

I chose life.

Dear CARITAS and Dear Karen and Dear Ray of Sunshine:

I tried it your way. I could not keep my mouth shut and will never keep my mouth shut when I see a thing that is wrong. YOU ALL told me I had a choice between your food and bed, or to go out and live on the streets to get my job. When I BEGGED you to let me just work and keep my job, you cited "rules" and told me that CARITAS just could not allow the almighty rules to be bent. The rules in question?

THOU MAY NOT WORK.

Keep your Thanksgiving Dinner and the rule that we may not leave CARITAS shelter from Wednesday until Friday. I choose to work. I know that means living on the streets and braving hunger and cold, but I choose to work and escape my homelessness.

To anyone who seeks to judge me, go LIVE the system for a week. Hear it with your own ears and see it with your own eyes and don't listen to the people who tell you things are hunky dorey and everything is fine and CARITAS is doing good, charitable work. Live it. See it for yourselves the difference between what people will tell you and the way it really is.

Dear CARITAS:

No thank you. I'll skip the stuffing, this year. I choose to work and I choose to be a man.

Sean

Bank of America gave $200,000 in unrestricted funding to CARITAS with the intention of furthering employment and long-term stability for CARITAS clients in Richmond, VA. Unless CARITAS removes the condition of having to be in the shelter by 5pm and the Friday search for new beds and otherwise removes the time restraints of those homeless that want to work... the money is wasted.

Bank of America may have just wasted $200,000 on CARITAS.

We'll see. Maybe someone will tell us homeless how this money will REALLY help us instead of CARITAS staff?

As far as Richmond charitable organizations go, CARITAS is a very good one. It's a collaboration between several churches in the Greater Richmond Area to provide, among other things, a bed, food, showers and hygene packs to the homeless. Dental and Medical care is also provided, sometimes.

There's a ton of food, the beds are sleepable and the blankets warm. The rooms are dry and clean. There's a zero tolerance for alcohol and drugs and the staff and volunteers treat the homeless people that pass through the system with a modicum of respect and caring not often found in the shelter systems.

The system requires a weekly trek to "Central Intake" at the Conrad Center until homeless people figure out how to get a Case Worker and are willing to accept a busload of extra requirements in return for the coveted "reserve" status that bows them out of a Friday of waiting for one more week of a bed.

If you are planning to give money to CARITAS, don't.

It may seem ungrateful for a homeless person that depends on the bed and food of CARITAS to talk disparagingly about such a wonderful organization, but one crucial fact turns CARITAS into a gilded cage that entraps the homeless rather than an organization that helps people get back on their feet: It is job unfriendly.

Other organizations such as the Salvation Army would be a much better place for your donations. The extra beds there would allow us to finally escape homelessness.

Here's how the system works and, despite raising these objections to the very highest levels of CARITAS in Richmond, Virginia, I was told in an e-mail that I'm willing to publish that CARITAS is NOT designed for those homeless people looking to work and escape their poverty. I was told that I should look for OTHER options and that CARITAS may not be the solution I'm looking for.

So, here's the reality of the gilded cage of CARITAS:

You have to be at the shelter by 5 pm, which effectively means you have to leave jobs by 4 pm - 4:30 pm. That bars you from any professional, contracting, factory, warehouse, retail and most restaurant jobs.

You have to sit in a chair from about 6 am - 1:30 pm at Central Intake every Friday waiting to renew your bed for the next week. This bars you from any job in the MORNING and early afternoon that requires, even if you're leaving every day at 4:30 to at LEAST be there on work weekdays from Monday to Friday.

Richmond is already a depressed town. There already aren't a lot of jobs. There are MANY people in just my Site 3 who have work experience for professional jobs who can't get them because of this system.

Can we get work exceptions so that we can come in late and avoid the Friday trek to Central Intake? Yes. More trap.

You can get a work exception, but no ride to your site if it's located out of town. If you're a reservist, you have to volunteer for a ton of programs and volunteer work that take you away from your work week. :)

The Salvation army lets you work... there just aren't any beds. I've been waiting for two weeks for one and have lost jobs over it.

CARITAS WILL NOT consider a change. They've "already done this and already thought about this and there's nothing new to what I'm saying and nothing to be done" except other shelters here and in DC ALREADY give homeless people the chance to escape.

Giving money to CARITAS means making a gilded cage more golden. Nothing more.

Donating money to CARITAS means gold to the bars of the cage. Nothing more.

If ANYONE wants to refute me or say, "No! That isn't so!" they are welcome to do so on THIS page and against a person that KNOWS the system and doesn't just talk about it in the abstract from the comfort of oak tables and their own warm beds.

Argue with ME! I'm the homeless guy at the mercy of your charity.

Don't donate to CARITAS until they come up with a viable solution to time and work... not merely words and excuses. It is evil not to let a man work who wants to work. To tell him, flat out, that CARITAS is NOT for people who want to work; that other solutions would be better?

It's wrong.

Dearest Kelsey:

Nobody in my life has been able to touch me in my heart the way you have been able to do. Every day, you show me in brand new ways a depth and breadth and heart and mind that often humbles me and inspires me. Your voice is a sound that truly begins my day and all the coffees and cigs and hours before that first "Good Morning" from you is merely waiting and merely surviving.

I find my world stopping and at a complete stanstill when the laughter is unable to reach your lips... or worse, when it reaches your lips, but not your eyes.

I know this last month has been made hard for you and that you have felt the sting of persecution even though the intended target was me. I know that you have born the burden of other people's words and actions and you have born mine as well and... often without complaint.

Through hardship that you never asked for, but willingly went into out of love, you yet have always been able to find beauty and loving moments and have always been able to show love, remain wise and offer council and advice and... always your actions have followed your beliefs with an integrity that I will never have words to describe.

People may wonder why I would write such a thing so publicly, but it is only because they long ago stopped building castle walls to blow the trumpet from. That feeling of wanting the world to know what I know about this one woman...? That she is unique and beautiful all the way to her core? That there is only one Kelsey and will never be another? And what is this feeling in me that wants the entire world to know these things?

You blush.

You never want the spotlight or the eyes on you. You're modest in every way that I'm not. You are often the one to touch my arm and slow me down on my path when I would run ahead to a destination and miss the flowers and the lights and the way that a vine climbs a particular tree and creates such a shape. You tell me that I give you the bravery to reach beyond that safe and cautious place, but it is you that teach me (when nobody else has been able to) to be more cautious.

I told you, "there are two people in a conversation," but you are the one that taught me what that meant and taught me to begin living it.

You look so surprised when I tell you that you teach me.

You do. Every day.

Today begins day 1 -- another day 1 and maybe this one will stick.

I love you. My ring and your pendant and there is nobody in the world that will ever prevent us from being able to feel the other when we touch those things. No matter how far away I sometimes must be, I am always there and it is only to close your eyes and reach out to know that my thoughts and my heart are there.

I love you. I'm in love with you. I have always been able to feel the love you feel for me and have learned to trust it.

I love you and, as I begin my day and the big climb up a bigger hill.... it is these thoughts that give me the strength to keep walking and to do it again and not give up.

Yet again.

One more time.

For Kelsey, one more time.

Tags: kelsey love
Current Location: In Front of Coffee, cig and laptop
Current Mood: determined
Current Music: Preisner's 10 Easy Pieces for Piano

The anti-climactic nature of a courtroom is something that I had forgotten about and had never seen from the perspective I had as a participant in a criminal case. The build-up had gone on for months and even as my lawyer, Christopher M. Bradshaw, had reassured me that he had a "stack of case law" to back us up, I don't think he realized that I had probably read all of them the past month.

Nolle prossed.

We anticipated that the prosecutor would try it and planned the objection, but Virginia gives the prosecutor wide discretion to hope that an alleged criminal will somehow provide more evidence over the course of a year when they hadn't, before. So, now my studies on the side when I'm not working has changed a bit:

Is it possible to file a lawsuit for malicious prosecution and fulfill the requirement that a prosecution has been decided in my favor in the case of Nolle Prosequi? Though the court usually regards malicious prosecution with disfavor, Niese v. Klos was settled by the Virginia Supreme Court with the decision that the nolle prosequi satisfied the plaintiff's burden that the prosecution had terminated the case in a manner not unfavorable to the plaintiff in a malicious prosecution case.

The Court reasoned that the entry of the order demonstrated the Commonwealth's unwillingness to proceed. Even though the prosecutor could reenter the charge, it would have constituted a new proceeding and this ruling follows the reasoning adopted by several other jursidictions.

Fine.

But, it's not enough merely to show that I was not found guilty of a crime. The prosecutor certainly proceeded in good faith (though a great deal of bias for which he was admonished by the judge) given the information that was given to him. Therefore, the malice wasn't on the part of the prosecutor. It must be proven that the facts of the case were provided to the prosecutor and known to be false or exaggerated and that the falsity and axaggeration was done with intent and malice.

Is the evidence that I would present only hearsay? No. The hearsay rule applies to conversations between people that would not be in the courtroom to defend themselves.

Was there evidence of motive? Yes. Several. The main issue for the original complaintant was that I was 40 and not 20, that I argued about a utility bill before agreeing to pay the difference and, in her words, "He just pissed me off!" (paraphrased and maybe misquoted since I wasn't the person that heard this).

"Following" was a threat that I was accused of. The facts of the case were that I was not even on the same street as the original complaintant. As far as I've been able to piece together, I was on one road and seen through a parking lot from a different road at one point and maybe seen from an intersection at another point at a different time. When I fianlly heard the explanation and was shown a map of the rout, I actually laughed. I was relieved.

Other "threats" were similarly provided as "evidence" and excluded context with the purpose of making me out to be the monster I was not. As soon as provable context was introduced, everybody not facing jail had a good chuckle.

So, is there a laundry list of evidence to prove that the allegations were not merely false, but provided knowingly with the intent to hurt someone by sending them through the wringer of our dear Commonwealth's legal system?

You betcha.

Did I suffer damage because of the malicious prosecution and subsequent actions? Yes. I lost a job. I lost posessions that were thrown away. I had a painful flare-up of arthritis in the knees that made it nearly impossible to walk and which was a direct result of my incarceration in a very cold prison with metal beds. I was unable to move ahead with jobs until November 19th and friends withheld assistance until November 19th would be decided. I was barred from my girlfriend's apartment and she had her own rights violated. She was unable to enjoy the rights as a tenent able to invite guests over the way every other tenent in the building was able to enjoy. She was made uncomfortable in her own apartment. She was slandered or libeled when she was accused of violating a protective order by inviting me over to sleep when, in fact, she hadn't and I had never stepped foot on the property after the judge gave the order.

I had no criminal record previous to this. Now, I have a charge against me.

What's the monetary value of such a lawsuit?

Actual damages I totalled at $7,900.

For pain and suffering, mental anguish and the other suits I'll be filing for sometimes multiple counts of slander, libel, defamation of character? Similar cases that I've researched have settled at amounts ranging from $40,000 - $80,000 and those numbers... just don't even seem very satisfying.

The nightmares and panic attacks that my girlfriend suffered through in anticipation of a court date that she should NEVER have had to worry about? The inconvenience of having to follow a protective order that I should never have been subjected to? The shame? The public humiliation?

I think the money wouldn't even begin to cover it. I think a formal letter of apology from the complaintant and her father would have to be the first step. An agreement to work a full 120 hours with homeless people both in the shelters and in the soup kitchens would be appropriate and maybe an eye opener. A complete replacement of the suitcase and the items in them (the one chessboard can not be replaced and was my only memory of Beirut from an artist now dead). An agreement to allow my girlfriend the OPTION at any time to be excused from her lease if she should wish it and whenever she would wish it. First, Last and Secuirity on a 2 bedroom apartment in The Fan complete with co-sign from the complaintant's father.

Yup.

That 'might' begin to help me recover from the deep anger and resentment I feel and would really help in allowing me to move on with my life.

Let's see what a civil court judge has to say about that...? It'll be expensive to argue no matter what and... I'm a pauper. Hard to get me to pay legal fees with money I don't have partly due to the complaintant's actions.

From now, though: It's November 20th. A day after the 19th and I have a lot of work to do to get myself back on my feet. Again. This time, a lot of people are depending on me to do it, so... here we go.

To Do Task #1: Move on.
To Do Task #2: Work.

Tags: malicious prosecution lawsuit
Current Location: The Aether of the Internet
Current Mood: VERY annoyed
Current Music: A Thousand Kisses Deep -- Cohen

Joseph Heller couldn't have designed a better system. For those of you (most of you being in Richmond and Arlington) who read my journal, welcome! I know that most of you are NOT people who like to actually read, so I'll save you the Google Search and say that Joseph Heller wrote "Catch-22" from which the common phrase originates.

From the outside, Homelessness looks like a problem suffered by alkies and druggies and lazy people who could very easily get out of the situation if they only applied themselves as ferverantly to that endeaver as they do to their vices. It's surprising to see, due mostly to the circumstances of a bad economy and the types of personal trajedies that can affect any person, the number of homeless that were only just recently a Banker, a Real Estate Agent, a Roofing Contractor, a Married Man, Widowed (widowered? What's the male gender of a widow, anyone, in the past tense?), a homeowner that lost their home in a fire, a tenent that lost their uninsured property in a water main break that also got their home condemned.

As many of you know from rumor, my own was a PTSD episode that is well documented by physicians, psychiatrists, therapists and many of my closest friends. One minute you have an apartment, the next moment, "poof."

These were the people that once looked down their own noses at people that were in the plight that they're in right now. They once walked past people that were homeless without seeing them and maybe gave some pocket change on a good day. Now, they WERE the people they had once despised. Maybe one of you that are reading this will someday experience it... one in seven Americans do.

I got a chance, over the past few days to talk to several of them about this Catch-22 of this situation and, it's agreed by us and the staff and everybody else familiar with the homeless solution, that a person that willingly submits to the Richmond Solution of homelessness is willingly giving up nearly all chances of ever getting out of it.

When you really see it for what it is, the Richmond System isn't the support system it purports to be. It's far more sinister than an enabling system. It is a trap with no logical escape.

The issue is time.

Here's how it works (and see if you get the big joke):

Central Intake at The Conrad Center:
With very few exceptions, it is impossible to get any bed in a shelter without a referral from Central Intake. It's located about 40 minutes (remember that we're all walking) from the center of town across the street from the Prison in a forgotten, empty valley in Richmond. It is closed on Saturday and Sunday (despite claims that it's open on Saturday) so if you find yourself homeless on either of those two days, please find a way to stay warm: You're screwed.

You sit in a room on a weekday from 9 am until your name is called. My name was called some time after 11 am, this last time. I've waited until 1 pm, before, without getting a bed. It was a waste of a day.

You then get a referral IF there is an open bed that lasts until the next Friday... at which time, you have to repeat the process. So, for all intent and purposes, try to get a job that does not include Friday mornings and possibly the afternoon.

CARITAS:
An example Shelter is CARITAS in which you're bussed to another town every day. You have to be IN THE DOOR by 5:00 pm. If you're walking, that means dropping whatever you're doing by 4 - 4:30 pm. This will, of course, preclude you from any office job, most restaurant jobs (busy times and shift changes are usually after 4pm except for breakfast places, which are hard to find), contracting and construction jobs, etc. The further requirement of not being able to work on Friday mornings make the job search that much harder. Even if you get a work exception and are allowed to come in late, the 40 minute bus ride may translate into about a 4 hour walk. By the time you get to your bed, it's almost time to go. You've missed all the food, anyway. What's the point?

If you're over-qualified for most of the minimum-wage jobs that WILL accommodate your schedule, you can always lie on your application.

Your Bag
Most shelters do NOT allow you to store your belongings. You must take them with you. This means going to a job with a huge bag filled with all of your belongings. There is no choice. It is possible, as some homeless try to do, to hide your bag in a bush, or in nooks and crannies such as an overpass or bridge, but every other homeless person is looking for your bag, so it's advised not to do that if you don't want your stuff stolen. When the employer sees your bag, of course, you'll probably have at least a few days of work before everybody complains about you and he/she has to fire you. That's how long it takes to come up with an excuse to get rid of your ass.

FOOD and STREET COSTS
This is just the very beginning hurdles you'll have to overcome. There is a higher cost to living on the streets, believe it or not, than living in a home. Because you can't cook your own food or store it, for example, you're forced either to rely on Soup Kitchens (Different place every day and each place a slightly different time) which you must spend time walking to, or to purchase prepared foods if you somehow have the cash to do so. Medication, with the VCC, is $4 per prescription. If you get sick or hurt, expect to spend the entire day at the bottom of the MVC uninsured totem pole and don't EVER tell them that you're homeless or you deny yourself the entire list of medical solutions that fall under the term: Narcotic. That means you'll be prescribed motrin because, as we all know, your homeless ass is a druggie and can't be trusted with actual pain relief. The fact that 40% of homeless people suffer pain from exposure to the elements or the harsh conditions of prison such as arthritus is irrelevant.

DO NOT STOP
Homeless people may not stop moving. Even the Richmond Library offers no refuge. If you stop for longer than a couple of hours, you'll be asked to leave. It does not matter if you have a legitimate purpose, there.

DO NOT PEE, POOP or EAT
You will not be allowed access to any bathroom in any facillity (and that INCLUDES Daily Planet, which serves homeless people). If you stop to eat, you'll be asked to leave. If you're caught humiliating yourself by having to find a place to deficate outside, you will, of course, be arrested or ticketed.

STAY AWAY FROM POLICE AND NEVER ARGUE
You have no rights. If a cop wants to search your bags, let them. If they ask you to move from a place you have a constitutional right to be at, move. If they want to search your coffee cup to be assured that it is, indeed, coffee, then you must let them. Never argue or you will, as I saw for one poor guy who knew too much about his former rights, be roughed up and possibly arrested for some unrelated charge such as disturbing the peace.

GET A JOB!
Oh.... and, for christ sakes: Get a f***ing job, you bum!

:D

A Diversion Program is needed
The long term costs of housing homeless people that don't want to be homeless, but are delayed in, or prevented from their attempts to work their way out of the situation MUST be higher than the costs of a very few, simple solutions that would remove the walls that block their escape.

There must be a cadre of staff who have BEEN homeless (many homeless shelter staff have been homeless) to handle the specific cases of those homeless who (1) do not do drugs or drink and (2) are willing to work, save and get an apartment of their own. The staff must be trained to understand those homeless who do not fit within the traditional stereotypes of homelessness and who may be qualified only for non-traditional or professional jobs with job compensation sometimes involving mechanisms for which no pay stub wll be available.

Consideration for the image of the employee must be paid with no attempt to get "proof" letters from employers who often would not be receptive to management-level employees who need such letters. Other proof, or a preponderance of evidence must be sufficient to qualify a homeless person for such a program.

Office clothes and shoes for at least a week's worth of work is needed. Most homeless with the ability to get professional jobs (usually also a limitiation in the ability to get non-professional jobs due to over-qualification) are barred for the simple reason of clothing.

"Appeal of Policy" recognizes that the "rules" of a homeless shelter as they are designed only for the staff cannot act as a trap for the homeless people the shelters seek to serve. On a case-by-case basis, there must be a mechanism in place for a formal appeal for exemptions from rules that, in an individuals case, should not apply, or for which the application of the rule proves an undue hardship.

Staff and volunteer training should be provided on an ongoing basis to provide both with the resources to recognize the peculiar needs of various classes of homeless people in a non-stereotypical way. A lack of such training or a lack of breadth in the training result in an inability to deal with certain needs or problems in an appropriate way by many staff upon whose sole discretion rests help provided to the homeless. Inappropriate and 'wrong' conclusions are drawn by untrained staff about the needs, motives, lives, habits and intent of homeless so that, often, cruel, restrictive and unnecessary hardship is often placed on the homeless persons with tragic results.

In a single shelter, I recognized and identified 5 separate chronic psychological disorders among a very small population of men: Bi-polar (manic-depressive), Depression, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Schizophrenia, Borderline Personality Disorder. I, myself, am recovering from PTSD and I've only met two other homeless people who legitimately suffered from it in the male population, though I imagine a much higher percentage in the female population where rape and abuse would be more common. Both men had been in the military and their accounts were detailed and accurate enough to believe the veracity of their alleged military record. I did not pursue the questions about why they were not receiving care through the Vet's administration.

While a informal poll showed that 30% of the people drank to excess or took narcotics, a quarter of the 30% admitted to drinking and drug abuse AFTER they had become homeless rather than before. 100% of that group admitted to giving up or feeling that their situation was hopeless.

Of the people that drank to excess or took narcotics, a majority of them also showed signs of depression and many of them admitted to being prescribed anti-depressants at some point in their life, though only 1 person was currently taking meds and 6 people, though they had prescriptions, did not have access to the funds necessary to fill their prescriptions.

Admittedly, these were very informal polls taken in a small population, but the numbers fit closely with what I had predicted and with what seems to be national averages where statistics are recorded.

Given this, staff training that does not take into account the behaviors and needs of homeless with additional psychological needs does the homeless a disservice in several ways. While it's understood that resources do not allow for a cadre of psychologists to act as overnight monitors at shelters, basic concepts and situational discretion certainly can be taught and a knowledge base can certainly be started as a resource to help staff and volunteers understand the nature of their charges and those they seek to help.

Conclusion
The Richmond Shelter System has a long way to go before it becomes a system designed, not merely to "help the homeless" but also to help people who DO NOT WANT to be homeless and who are actively trying to work their way out of the system. There is nothing more cruel than the speech given to the homeless on the bus ride to CARITAS shelters admonishing them not to be "complacent" when it is the system, itself, that entraps the homeless into the system. On any given night, there are 700,000 homeless people in america. Every single man, woman and child reading this article at this moment has an equal chance to become homeless at some point in their life, no matter how comfortable their present situation. How long that term lasts; how easy it is to recover their former life and put homelessness behind them depends on the forward-thinking ability of the decision-makers that design the system that's intended to help them.

A single, Board of Directors dinner exposing the board member, sometimes for the first time, to the homeless they are charged with helping is NOT enough. The system cannot be looked at, abstractly, from the comfort of oak tables. The problems, issues, system design and operations of the shelter systems have real consequences for homeless people and the unintended consequences of poor system design have a deliatory effect on the ability of the homeless to mainstream.

Get a job?

We'd love to.

-- Sean Rice

I never knew I had so many "friends" in Richmond who were so interested in my life and writings. Arlington! Even Villanova, PA!

In Richmond, a person came on the 17th to these pages connected to vcu.edu and was using an Internet Explorer 7.0 browser using Windows XP. I know that isn't Kelsey, because she uses a Mac and I know it's not me because I use FireFox. So, where the hostname is saf.vcu.edu, I'm pretty positive that the router and server weren't located in the KI or Sculpture building. This same person has visited me on November 13th six times, November 16th three times and has visited me today twice.

Another person in Sterling, VA and using a Mac OS X and Safari 531.9 has visited a few times on the same days.

Oh! I see Kelsey using that Mac and Firefox 3.5.5 and hitting my LJ a lot and I can see that she's hitting it from her house on Floyd Street: Gotta love Verizon. ... but, I already knew she was a fan.

On November 15th, another Windows IE user (Vista, this time) was in Richmond to visit and I notice that a lot of these Richmond people were hitting me at nearly the same time: A conversation? "Hey look at this?"

Yes, I see the Arlington and Petersburg hits. The one from NY... Can see the computers and the monitors and the operating systems and the browsers and locations on a google street map.

There's a verb, "To lurk," which Princeton defines as to "lie in wait, lie in ambush, behave in a sneaky and secretive manner." I thought my e-mail must be broken, for surely with all this reading of my journal SOMEONE would have left an anonymous comment, but no. Lot's of visits, but nobody seems to have anything to say.

It's too bad, but I understand: For some people, coming onto my LJ so often 'might' be a violation of the protective order that they are as equally bound by as I am. Further, it would be embarassing for some people to be seen as "stalking" me far more than any of my actions will be seen as "stalking."

Don't some of you have homework to do, or something? :)

Tags: drama, urstalkingme
Current Location: Everywhere Nowhere Here There
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Prelude in D-flat Major