It's Thursday, and I'm busy getting the promotions and the and the book signing scheduled. Hope everyone is doing well.

Today, I want to add a story I did for the Sacramento Press on the homeless. It's short article and I think you all might enjoy it.

Raymond…

He sleeps in alleys, under bridges, in doorways and open fields. He wakes infested with slugs, leeches, or ants, or any number of local insect. His name is Raymond, and he’s homeless.
The circumstances that lead to his current situation are not relevant. The lack of compassion or understanding of us as a community is.
He says that he can’t work because he suffers from chronic, untreated schizophrenia, but the medication he needs to control it is not available to him because he can’t keep a job and get medical insurance. He’s scared to death of the county mental health facility, so he suffers. He lives as he can, eats whatever he can find or beg for, and tries to leave everyone else alone.
Just last month, he was attacked at a homeless camp and robbed of the precious few items he could call his own, a plastic bag of toiletries, and his notebook. He suffered a bruised rib and contusions on his face and back. But he survived. He has since managed to replace the toilet items, but the notebook was never found. It was his catharsis, his way to record the small things he could manage to cope with and remember from day to day. The telephone numbers of the few people he could call when his life got too hard to handle, and pictures of his family, long since behind him.
Raymond has been homeless for seventeen years now. He has been in and out of mental health facilitates and jails from Seattle to San Diego. Each time he is incarcerated, he is treated for the psychological problems he has lived with all his adult life. But when he is released, he is forgotten, the pharmaceutical treatments are stopped suddenly, leaving him to cope with the debilitating withdrawals and to return to his dismal, paranoid existence.
He once was a well man. He once had a family, but he can’t remember most of them. He once had a job, but when the illness set in, his employers let him go.
I have heard more than a few people say that they sympathize with the homeless, but they don’t want them housed near them. They say they identify with the hungry, but they don’t want to help feed them. They have compassion for the children with little clothing, but they won’t cloth them.
The circumstance surrounding the plight of the homeless is not relevant to society’s responsibility to care for them. Not just the City, county or State governments, but the community as a whole.I’m not advocating we house homeless families in our homes. But when there are a myriad of vacant and seasonally used buildings that could house them at least for a time to keep them from the elements, I say open those doors.

Let me know what you readers think.

F.D.