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1. 

   Georgia Hedrick on March 11, 2010 at 5:40 pm

   Ok. Bear with me. This very article springs up at a time I found something I wrote about a family in the school where I taught. I learned they were homeless. This article in FAMVIN hits MY nerve (and my heart) right dead center.

   This is long, but it is from my heart and soul:

   I KNOW YOUR NAME

   Nothing is the same in the morning for me anymore. It’s all because I know the name of homelessness. It’s name is Jacob.
   I wake up, now, bundled under flannel blankets, and patchwork quilts, wondering: ‘what is Jacob doing right now?’
   I eat my heated oatmeal and toast and hot coffee and wonder: ‘what’s Jacob eating?’
   I take my shower with the thought: ‘how does Jacob do this, and where? How does he manage to show up to school each morning, with an eager face to learn and a cheerful heart to help—how does he manage all this?
   I had met Jacob in the halls of our Elementary School where I taught, some years ago. He was walking to class, but, stopped and greeted me first. I was impressed. Soft spoken, gentle, polite, cooperative—I couldn’t help but notice him.
   Later that year, I had asked him to be the lead speaker in our Martin Luther King jr program and he had agreed. He did well, very well in fact, and I was proud of my decision to choose him as leader. He spoke smoothly. The program ran smoothly. In fact, that whole year was one smooth year of teaching.
   I never knew he lived behind the second tree in an open field right by our plush Lakeshore Country Club. I never knew—until one Friday.
   I had stayed late on that day, putzing about my classroom, doing the stuff teachers do in preparation for new week. As I was leaving, there was a commotion about the front door of the school. The counselor was there plus several other upper grade teachers. Just outside the front door was someone I learned later was a representative of social services. He stood talking to Jacob, his mom, and a younger sister.
   The counselor’s eyes were two blue flames of indignation, as she vented a verbal diatribe against a system that didn’t really want to deal with problems. Another teacher, Jacob’s teacher of record for the year, looked like a rainstorm hovering over a parched field, ready to do what rainstorms do, ready, but waiting, watching, wondering.
   That’s when I learned where Jacob lived.
   “The SECOND tree,” emphasized the teacher with the rainstorm face, “not the first tree. And you have to follow the path. It is a well-worn path, but it is not easy to see from the street. It is lower than the street. You have to follow the path!” She was very exact with the Social Service worker.
   The talking continued. I left to get my camera and my car to see for myself. Down the street in front of the school I drove, and across the wealth of Plumas Avenue to the border street of Moana Lane that separates the prestigious southwest of Reno from the rest of us. In the background, I could see the Lakeside Country Club and golf course. I could see the home for the wealthy retired citizens of this area. And I could see the field.
   Somewhere in that large open space, with its waving tall grasses, grown golden in the autumn, stabbed through and through with Maple and Aspen and Cottonwood trees, I would find ‘that second tree’—and Jacob’s living space.
   I did.
   I found it and more like it. Jacob and his family had others living near them.
   There was more than one living space. It reminded me of my childhood in Chicago when we’d hunker down in open fields, and ‘camp out’ pretending we were in the ‘wild west’ on the frontier, homesteading. I followed the pathways, which led to more open spaces, some five others, well patted down and matted from living, with signs of people having been there. Each area was about 200 feet from the other, where a sort of privacy was given to each by the tall grasses. They could not see each other easily. And they could not be seen from the road or the retirement home nearby, nor by anyone golfing or on the tennis courts.
   This field had dipped down from the road, making itself a natural hide-away. I took some pictures, but I felt invasive. It embarrassed me to be in someone else home, such as it was.
   However, no mistake—this WAS the home of Jacob, at least for now.

   This city is not poor. We sponsor major car show events, National Air Races, Hot Air Balloon Races and National Bowling events. We have Casinos everywhere with their high rollers and big winners. We have big losers too.
   We also boldly call ourselves a ‘right to work’ state which means no union protection is very possible. Unions do not have to exist here. Pay is mostly minimum wage.
   Yet, housing is upwards from the hundred-thousands plus. Rents start at $500 on up.
   This is a play-town that caters to money, not people. It is inevitable that we produce people who have lost everything. And here’s the irony: our revered and need-to-be-popular City Council recently turned down a well-researched, well-planned and in fact, award-winning in its plans, Homeless Shelter. NIMBY.
   This is a city, built on and supported by tourists and their interests, and this town wishes to look good, homeless free, at all times. The nagging, haunting face of homelessness is a plague upon a dream.
   Our city council has painted the face of homelessness clearly for all to recognize. The homeless possess the face of the elderly who prefer to beg or collect cans in their stolen shopping carts rather than go to work. Our city council has declared ‘anathema’ to this scourge upon the city. By denying any permit to build a shelter within the city limits, they feel that the homeless will disappear.
   Our city council does not know Jacob.
   Nor does it want any introductions.
   Because, once it knows homelessness by name and face, it would know that its face is a child’s face, and nothing would be the same anymore.
   Be assured of this infallible fact: the face of homelessness is a child’s face. Age has nothing to do with it. It is the face of the dreamer and the wanderer. It is the face that still believes in Sanctuary in Churches and Schools. It is the face of hope-eternal ignoring despair. It is the face that forever echoes the search of little E.T.: ‘Home…home…’ It is the face of hope.
   It is the face of those who move and move and move, until there is no end to their moving. It is the face of the searcher, the seeker. It is a child’s face.
   The face of homelessness lives in motels—until money is gone. It lives in trash bins for a night, or by the river if the weather is warm. Sometimes, it lives on roof tops. Sometimes it lives in cars, parked somewhere for the night. Sometimes it bands together, like packs, or gangs, as the city-council calls them.
   The face of homelessness is not a pretty face. It is a face that makes our city look bad.
   Homeless children make our School District test scores look bad, as well. The homeless do not value school, the District says, since they don’t do their homework consistently, and they enter and withdraw from schools with yo-yo regularity. The best thing the District says of them is that they don’t watch much TV and that many of them are children of school age.
   Yes, they are children in their vision and in their dreams and in their education.
   Children.
   What do we do—we ruling powers, we majority structure persons, we who are in charge? What do we do with children who are homeless? And all the homeless ARE children.

   Several solutions come to mind, along the lines of Jonathan Swift’s MODEST PROPOSAL. Let’s call it ‘HOPE’, meaning, Homeless Options Program Everywhere. HOPE sounds good.
   1. We could sell these homeless to other countries to do slave labor. This way, less of their country’s children will be used for slave labor, and more of our country’s citizens will be taught to work. Also, a profit can be made on the sale which can then be used to clean up the areas in this city the homeless have ‘ruined’.
   2. There is no subtle way to say this, so I must just say it: we could slaughter and cook the homeless and sell this meat to the areas of the world in need of food. This would raise our profit as well as lower the demand by the rest of the world on the World Food Bank.
   3. We could jettison the homeless into outer space. There is certainly plenty of room out there in the galaxy and this would give the space program another reason for another Shuttle to go into space.
   Any one or combination of the above would have positive effects on eliminating homelessness in this city.
   Just think: fewer beggars on the on ramps or on the corners. Fewer children to lower the scores of schools, and no gangs, since all wandering marauders would be whisked away.
   No. No. No. Do not be indignant and sputter and spout over my solution. This is HOPE. These solutions are humane. At least I am doing something! To ignore the problem and do nothing is inhumane!

   What about Jacob? What was done for him?
   Nothing.
   Well, first we made much ado, and then, we did nothing.
   He’s gone from our school now, following wherever his mother took him. Too much attention for her, I think, and it had no real resolution except to take her child away from her.
   They are gone.
   She’ll find another open field, another tree, another trash bin, another abandoned house or shack or rooftop. She and Jacob will keep on moving.
   Homelessness, because it has been allowed to exist for so long in our city, is now more than a social problem. It is a sub-culture, a way of life. And, as long as it stays hidden from the prestigious side of town, it will continue, develop, and grow.
   Until each homeless face has a name, and a personality, it will continue.

   Nothing is the same anymore for me. I have learned the name of homelessness. I have seen its face. I cannot pass by open fields or gaping trash bins without wondering: are you there, Jacob?
   Are you okay?
   Homelessness, your name is Jacob. You are everywhere I never wanted to
   look—until now, until I knew your name.