IN THE ARMS OF THE ANGEL

There were 56 of them.

That we know of.

Their average age was 51. But they were as young as 21, and as old as 70. And the age of four of them was unknown.

Their names were common. Mary, and Robert and Norman, and Stacy and Henry and James. And unique like Adalberto, and Akimoto and Camerino and Diogenes.... and John Doe.

All of them died in the past year. From the the winter solstice in 2009, to the night of the winter solstice in 2010.

A winter solstice, that, this year, was heralded by one of the most magnificent lunar eclipses ever seen by the people of the entire planet.

And on that night, in this week before another magnificent event, the annual recognition of the birth of the Christ, these 56 people were remembered, in song, and word and the soft light of 56 candles. by friends, relatives, and clergy and strangers who gathered in a serene and beautifully decorated park to give dignity and remembrance to their lives.

For most of them, that event, in the celestial wake of that awesome lunar eclipse, would be the only recognition of their place and time on the planet.

One by one, the names were called out by a procession of those friends and relatives and strangers.

And one by one, the candles were lit.

A small flare of glory in that moment of light. And a name put to a face unknown to most of the people who attended. And a few names achingly familiar to somebody who will remember them the longest, and spoken softly and haltingly by somebody who did know and love them.

They died in so many ways. None of them went "gently, into that good night."

They were hit by cars. Or trains. Or somehow, perished in the waterways in and around a great city. They died of exposure. And beatings. And unaddressed, or untreated illnesses brought on due to the ravages inflicted by the physical and emotional stress of having spent a long time living on the street. And some of them were suicides probably brought on by a broken heart.

And for that one night, in that holy place, they were united in the minds and the memories and the hearts of the people who sang the songs, and heard the kind words, and who lit the candles and spoke the names, and shared some measure of the pain the people they were remembering , had suffered in their lives.

And next year, once again, at the winter solstice, in that same park, which for that night will again be a holy place, there will be more friends and relatives and strangers and clergy. and more candles, and songs and words....and names.

And before that night, there will be more cars and trains and waterways, and exposure, and beatings and and untreated medical conditions, and the ravages inflicted by the stress of living without a home, and broken hearts, and suicides.

Remember these people. Remember them now, and love them now.

Before they are only a name and a small flame and a song.

Remember them before they become only a memory, in the arms of the angel.

ALL THE NEWS THAT FITS

"We journalists make it a point to know very little about an extremely wide variety of topics.
This is how we stay objective."

Dave Barry



Today, we're going to talk about the news business.

Andway, were going to talk about the news business as it relates to street puppies and homeless nation.

And today, the news is not good.

Today, well, actually, yesterday, one of the finest newspapers in this country went to press with a story that blackened the eyes of every street puppy who lives in the distribution area of the newspaper.

And they did this by printing a lop-sided, ill-sourced, largely anecdotal, sensationalized, scare mongering diatribe about panhandlers.

And then, today, reprinted that piece of rubbish, in their sister tabloid (tabloid here meaning format of the paper, not one of those papparazzi rags) complete with a reefer( no, the editors weren't smoking reefer, a reefer is newstalk for a headline on the front page with a reference to a page number inside where the story can be found) which included mug shots of two people who were outed in the story as having had "violent criminal records."

Now, that's some reefer!

And a lot of people who read both -or even just one of those - papers are going to believe that every homeless person who puts on a safety vest and goes to the street to ask for money, is a violent convicted felon who is going to push in the window of their car and yank them out by the throat, and probably steal their steering wheel, too.

And a lot of people who read both - or even just one of those - papers will believe that people who put on the same safety vests, and work very hard on Sundays to put together, and then sell newspapers -astonishingly, the very newspaper which printed the story - are probably also violent convicted felons who will push into the window of their car and yank them out by the throat...and probably steal their steering wheel, too.

See, this is really all about the two cities which we visited in a previous post here on Streetpuppy, and their continuing struggle to outdo each other in their haste to lay waste to street puppies for once and for all.

Eventually, that will happen.

City number two will bow to the pressure from city number one, and finally pass the required ordinance, banning anybody from selling anything on the street at all, or heaven forbid, asking for money.

And then both cities, and their politicians will root and crow about how they have found the divine measure to once and for all rid themselves of the unsightly, unwashed, homeless group of misfits who are growing in numbers by the day.

And the astonishing thing about all of this...and that eventual outcome, is that a fine newspaper is right on board with those rooting and crowing politicians,

A fine newspaper whose product is sold on the street every Sunday by all of those unsightly, unwashed, homeless group of misfits who work their fingers to the bone to sell that product for a few measly dollars.

Here's my advice to every panhandler who crosses the river from city number one to panhandle here in city number two. Stay home. Please.

And here's my advice to every person who dons that vest every Sunday and sells that newspaper here in city number two, on the street.

Get another gig. Something. Anything legal.

Don't waste your time with these people anymore.

Let them come over here...yeah, all the editors, and reporters and executives of that paper, let them come over here and put on those vests, and work for hours to put those papers together, and them sell them on the street, come rain or shine or wind or searing heat or biting cold.

Let's see how fast those ill-sourced, largely anecdotal, lop-sided, sensational stories about all the 'convicted, violent felons' knocking on windows disappear from their pages.

PLAN B vs MURPHY'S LAW

Every Street Puppy needs a plan B.

But, here in Homeless Nation, if you're not careful, the failure of Plan A can directly affect your ability to carry out Plan B, thus turning Plan B into Murphy's Law.

You remember Murphy's Law, right? It's the law which states that if anything can go wrong, it will...at the worst possible moment. And that law has a sinister way of mysteriously turning many a situation into one big world of hurt.

We're going to give you a few scenarios here which will further illustrate this amazing trick.

SCENARIO # 1.

You are relatively new to this homeless thing and haven't adjusted yet to street life, and you're , lonely, and you miss the friends you used to have, and the wife who left you when the money ran out, and then a nice person asks you if he could please use your food stamp card to go to the grocery street across the street and buy a few items for his sick mother.

In return for which, he will give you cash for the items, if you will just wait outside the store.

And you say, ok, but you need the card back real fast because you haven't eaten all day, and you need to have some dinner before you keel over.

PLAN A. you give the nice person your food stamp card, along with the pin number and you wait outside the grocery store while he buys a few items for his sick mother, and you think of what you will buy with the cash he will give you in return. Maybe a cold beer.

PLAN B The nice person does not return. You never see the nice person again, or your card. So of course you miss dinner. And you discover the nice person has used up every penny on the card for whatever . You starve for the next month, and maybe for good if the food stamp police find out you were dumb enough to do such a thing, and revoke your food stamp card.

SCENARIO # 2.

You have secured a 31-day bus pass through some nice charitible agency. It was given to you in the hope you could use it for transportation to find a job.

Another nice person asks you if he can borrow your bus pass. He, too, needs to visit his sick mother.

He will just run up to his mother's house, tuck her in and give her some vicodin for the awful pain she's suffering from the mugging and be right back with your bus pass.

PLAN A. You have some doubts because of what happened with your food stamp card, but, you haven't lost your faith in human nature yet, so you loan him the bus pass, and you wait at the bus station for him to return from his mission of mercy.

PLAB B. You stand at the bus station all night, until you are thrown out by the security guard. You have no bus pass, and no way to travel around to find a job. And the nice charitable agency who gave you the bus pass figures out what happened and never gives you another bus pass.

SCENARIO # 3.

You have a cell phone, given to you by yet another charitable agency in hopes you can use the phone to call your OWN sick mother, or maybe..find a job

But, hold on, another nice person is really needing a phone right now. He needs to call his wife who thinks he is cheating on her and smooth things out or she is going to throw him out of their sleeping spot, and throw all of his clothes into the river.

PLAN A. You don't want that to happen, you're homeless, too and you know how important sleeping spots are, and clothing...and wives. You give him the phone and of course, he needs privacy to make the call. So you walk a few feet away.

PLAN B. You turn around, and....he's gone. With your cell phone.

You don't get another phone out of that charitable agency because all of the phone calls placed on that phone over the next few days are made to drug dealers. Who were caught and then turned in the person who made the calls, and he was caught too, with your phone.

And so after you get out of jail you realize you have no cell phone, no bus pass ,and no food stamp card. And now you have a police sheet.

And while you were in jail, somebody took over your sleeping spot, and your clothes are all gone from the hiding place it took you a month to find, and none of the other puppies will talk to you because they think the police may be watching you...and that you might possibly, be a jinx.

And all you have left that means anything at all to you, or has any value, is the watch your late father gave to you. ...on his death bed.

You want to jump into the river.

But wait! Who is that...over there. It's a woman. Hmmm...kind of a good looking one, too.
She's motioning to you. She wants you to sit beside her on the bench.

And she has what looks like a bag of...soda. Yup, cans of cold soda. And some munchies.

PLAN A. You sit beside her. And hey, it's not soda in the bag...it's beer. Cold beer. And she hands you an open container of the cold beer. And she is admiring your watch, and she wants to take a closer look at the watch, and she smiles at you, and gee whiz......when she smiles, she looks so much like your ex wife.....

PLAN B. We probably do not need to go into detail here, do we?

HIGGLEDY, PIGGLEDY

We here in Homeless Nation are stunned to learn of the recent higgedly piggedly hijinks in the international diplomatic community

What were we thinking of? Or rather, what were our fearless leaders who roost at Foggy Bottom thinking?

Foggy Bottom being what the United States State Department is called by the Inside the Beltway crowd. Foggy Bottom because it is located in Washington D.C., where it is foggy a lot as it once was a swamp. Ahem.

We only heard about the situation because one of those diplomats who created part of the muddled higgledy piggledy mess generated by the release of supposedly encrypted cables between Foggy Bottom and U.S. Embassies around the world to the news media, is right here. In Homeless Nation.

Pendleton Stanford Heddington IV. And Pendleton Stanford Heddington IV is on the lam

And he wants what every diplomat who is on the lam wants. Political asylum. And diplomatic immunity.

Political asylum is granted by a nation to a person seeking shelter from another nation if he has a reasonable fear of persecution in that other nation. That's another way of saying, he isn't exactly flavor of the month there right now.

Diplomatic immunity is listed as the number one tool in the diplomacy toolbox the U.S. State Department gives to all of those mostly Ivy League people who are sent abroad to other nations to practice the art of conducting negotiations with representatives of other nations, and to employ tact in order to gain a strategic advantage in a calculated and polite manner.

In other words, when dealing with the other nation's representative, lie through your teeth..and don't tell him he has spinach in his.

Well, we didn't know what to think at first. Political asylum? Diplomatic Immunity? What a concept in Homeless Nation. We don't even have a State Department. Or a cable machine.

But, ole' PinHead Pupster....yeah, we had to change his name. He insisted. And substituting Pin for Pen was ok, but the preppy in him just couldn't get with Puppy. So Pupster it is.

Well, PinHead, poor dear, was right in the thick of it when a lot of those cables were flying back and forth between his overseas U.S. Embassy post and Foggy Bottom.

And when the Swedish person from Wiki dropped the dime on the United States State Department, well, ole' PinHead wasn't fired. He was evacuated by a bunch of U.S. Marines aided with close air support, right ahead of a death squad which was making straight for his office at the the U.S. Embassy.

Seems a lot of foreign nations were very put out by the things PinHead and people like him were putting into their cables about the people they were sent there to employ tact with in order to gain a strategic advantage. Especially the cable about the Important Russian Guy allegedly having an uh, inappropriate relationship with the Italian Important Guy. Whoa.

Well, during the debriefing -which we needed to conduct in order to decide if the PinHead could stay - we needed to determine exactly why he had decided to come to Homeless Nation for political asylum and the necessity of diplomatic immunity on top of it.

We don't have a lot of Ivy Leaguers here. Anyway not yet. And we were a wee bit suspicious. After all he had been paid before to employ tact to gain strategic advantages. What if he was actually going to covertly mount a military coup here? Take us over and do things US embassies sometimes do in other countries to uh, level the playing field.

And Pinhead knew he needed to convince us of his sincerety, so he came clean. Seems the State Department gave him a list of the countries he could be sent to after a reasonable length of time on sabbatical, and the healing of the identity changing face lift.

PinHead was given a choice of either, (and we are NOT making this up, it's in the CIA factbook!)
Akrotiri; Vanuatu; Dhekelia; Lesotho; Burkina Faso; Clipperton Island, or Djibouti.

Well, we were not surprised. Given those choices, any pupster would have opted for the relative comfort of Homeless Nation. For one thing, we don't require a passport.

But we were still suspicious. And worried. Who would be looking for him? Was he hiding something? Was this all a plot to see if we had spinach in our teeth?

But Pinhead had something to trade for our asylum, and diplomatic immunity.

His diplomatic skills and tradecraft. And PinHead had done his homework on Homeless Nation.

And, as he diplomatically pointed out to us, we do have diplomatic situations with other nations. Situations which need the finesse of a fine, calculating, tactful, polite diplomat like Pinhead.

For instance, he could successfully deal with the situations with all of the little rogue nations within Homeless Nation.

We do have a growing problem here. A lot of different colors, and languages and lifestyles and personalities and agendas mixing it up together. And all of us being in the same boat, too. Whew. Sometimes, we start throwing more than cables at each other.

PinHead's solution is to start up his own Department of the Interior. Well, for that, we have to give him head knocking privileges. And we are taking that under advisement.

And then, he very tactfully and politely pointed out the diplomatic situations with surrounding nations. You know, the citizens who live right along side us, and do not recognize us as a sovereign entity. (His words not ours.)

Pinhead is going to open back channels to those surrounding nations.

Back channels is diplomacy lingo for unofficial channels of communications between states or other political entities used to supplement official channels, often for the purposes of discussing highly sensitive policy issues, and all the while, calculating the strategic advantages.

Like when a street puppy falls off somebody's porch and they're not supposed to be there anyway, who gets sued?

Or a street puppy is way too energetic washing a motorist's windshield for spare change, and it needs to be detertimed who was at fault for the vehicle hitting the fire hydrant if the vehicle was still moving.

Or when a street puppy falls into the river, like who has jurisdiction to pull him out?

Or, the street puppy panhandling issue. Oh brother, are we glad Pinhead is here. Wait until he sees the councilmen and and the commissioners he has to deal with. That alleged thing between the Russian guy and the Italian guy will seem like a cake walk.

Talk abut highly sensitive policy issues and strategic advantages!

Well, Ok, so we're going to give him a try out. PinHead is our new diplomat sans portfolio. Complete with political asylum, diplomatic immunity, back channels and all the other bells and whistles that come with important diplomatic postings.

And, while we're at it. We're going to suggest to Pinhead that, maybe he could throw a little of that diplomatic finesse and tact and politeness into persuading the nation of Djibouti to throw some foreign aid our way.

And we're no slouches here in Homeless Nation when it comes to international strategies. We'll let him know, if Djibouti doesn't come through with the dough.....well, diplomatic immunity or not, it's the nation of Burkina Faso for Pinhead!