HELTER SHELTER

Homeless nation is partially populated -some would say littered - with thousands of  structures, ranging in size from a Chicago style bungalow of the late 30's, to behemoth concrete structures sprawling over an entire city block.

These structures, sometimes called shelters, or havens or harbours or ministries are filled with street puppies seeking shelter from the elements, or havens from, well, each other, and/or food and and help with finding jobs and clothing and footwear,  and underwear, and deodorant and toothpaste and shampoo, and most important of all, a place to sleep every night without fear of rolling over and falling into a river.

Whatever they are called, and/or  for whatever purpose the streetpuppy has landed in one of these shelters, havens, harbours or ministries, these structures are not not to be thought of as any kind of permanent fix in the life of the street puppy who either walked through or was kicked or dragged  through the door behind which they will find a lifestyle that is more fun than a barrel of klingons. 

These shelters are merely a stop on the way -the hope is - out of Homeless Nation, indeed a portal through which shimmers the light which  beguiles every street puppy into thinking he/she can and will make it through this detour in the life and all will be well on the other side of that portal.

And in each and every one of these shelters, behind all of those doors, and through all of those portals, lies the crux of the whole problem with homelessness. 

For each and every street puppy, at some point in the trek through Homeless Nation, it must be determined if this journey is a detour, or was, in fact the destination.

And many of the shelters, havens, harbours and ministries are, er, staffed with people who are in charge of making that determination.  Kind of like a triage operation, except the victims are walking and talking.

Anyway, that is what the staffers in these shelter places are supposed to do, and some of them have even gone all the way through college to  study how to do this.

Yup.  It's right there on the curriculum thing, all of the courses you need to get a degree in "Helping Street Puppies get off of my street, and your street, and onto their own street."  Or something like that.

Let's see, these are courses which the college attendee starts attending well into the Junior year when the attendee...or the attendees parents have figured out that junior or missy is going nowhere with a degree in "DJ spinning for dollars,"  or "Designing Apps for ordering gyros over the cell phone from another county," or "Making a killing in the trade of cheetah pelts."

Yup.  Every shelter, haven, harbour and ministry in Homeless Nation is filled not only with Street puppies who are -maybe- trying to find their way out of Homeless Nation, all of these places are cluttered with people who, armed with some social this or that diploma and a few months of internship in a hot dog stand, are there in the shelter for one purpose...to make the life of the street puppy so miserable, the puppy will, at  one point bolt, even though it has not been determined  if the puppy is indeed a visitor, or a future casualty.

They hate their jobs, the hate the people they are supposed to be serving, they hate the surroundings...bleak by any standard, and they hate the fact that they have to pretend to like what they are forced to do until that major job at K-Force or Bio-tech opens up.

So, having all of this hate and disdain for the puppies, brings out the worst in them, these care-givers, these guardians of the gate into Klingon territory, these master minds of the knife in the back trick, they turn to the practices which get a lot of them fired....when they are caught doing the things they do so well.

These guardians cheat the street puppies out of money intended for them;  they force them into personal liasions using the threat of expulsion from the shelter; they sleep with the husbands of the women street puppies; they sleep with the wives of the male street puppies, using the power they hold as a counselor to them both; they obtain a job as the "addictions counselor" using the guise of a recovering Heroin addict and all the while robbing the ministry of money in order to pay for an ongoing Heroin addiction;

They steal all of the good food which rolls into the shelter from kind and caring citizens and use it to allow them to feed themselves and their families high on the hog, while the puppies are scarfing up eight month old sausages;  They  unleash their hidden bigotries upon to young women who are struggling to learn to cope with a baby and the concept of working by brow beating them endlessly until the puppy is totally beaten down;  They use their power over the simple things, like, leaving a tooth brush in the wrong place as an excuse for a tongue lashing, and a punishment added if the street demurs.

In short, what you have staffing most of these so called, shelters, havens, harbours, ministries, et all are, largely a bunch of  misfits who do not have a clue as to how to guide a street puppy anywhwere, except straight into the hands of the many misfits and charlatans who line the streets of Homeless Nation waiting for new meat to stray out of those shelters, either in banishment or absolute frustration with the system.

Granted, most of the puppies who wander into these shelters, are not exactly flavor of the month.  In fact, many of them are what we, back in Chicago would call "Mean Motor Scooters." And they are lookin' to work the system, and victimize the rest of the puppies, and create the kind of mayhem which exists in most shelters.

But there are the innocents who are there out of absolute necessity and who are truly on a detour, and not at their destination, and are the butts of endless jokes of the Mean Motor Scooters for their pieties and grace.

 And there are some angels.  Once in a while you come across some angels in these shelters.  Seldom, but it happens.  And these angels should be given the National Legion of Honor Medal for their truly heroic and loving and charitable work and attitudes and care and guidance through the mean streets of Homeless Nation.

And, you never know...maybe one of those  Klingon staffers, one day, well...just two pay checks away from, you know where, and then, then you will see...were these staffers on a detour through Homeless Nation....or was that shelter,  their own destination.

It happens.