Last night, I held a snugly newborn little girl. She weighed almost seven pounds and was full of that new baby smell. (I always love the smell of their scalp). I hung out in the hospital room with the parents, talking about the hospital food, the new crib their friends at church had given them [...]
Rick and Karen* have been in town about two months. They came from New Jersey, drawn here by the promise of work that did not materialize after they put all their stuff in storage and rode the bus down. Six months ago, he was a hard working construction worker and she was a housewife. Now, [...]
A small, birdlike woman in her late 40’s or early fifties, she is older than most of the folks out here. She walks with a limp and has what my grandmother would have called a lazy eye. Sometimes she sleeps in a shelter, sometimes she sleeps outside and sometimes she sleeps at a friend’s house. [...]
For the last year or so, I have watched Emily*. After a short time, a pattern revealed itself:
Her husband beats her up.
Her husband leaves home.
She announces that this time it is over - she is leaving him for good.
He comes back.
They are together again, and she tells me this time he has changed.
I have watched [...]
“So, what kind of success rate do you have?”
I am meeting with the pastor of a medium sized church, part of [Really Huge Denomination]. We are in a quiet coffee shop, drinking $4 cups of coffee while talking about poverty. Lucky for me, he is buying.
He asks me this question, I am pretty sure, not [...]
My friend John recently wrote a blog post in which he recounted a small scene from his day:
On the way home, at the stop at the intersection of Gorman and Hillsborough Streets, the bus driver opened the door, and a man with worn clothing, unshaven, and an overly-stuffed backpack screamed at the driver, “Man, I [...]
My friend Danny* called last Monday morning and said he was passing blood. He told me he had thrown up blood yesterday. I told him to catch the bus and I would meet him at the Emergency Room at the hospital.
Thirty minutes later, I show up - no Danny. Undaunted (Danny is always running late), [...]
After reading over John Scalzi’s list of what it means to be poor, I spent some time thinking what it means to be homeless.
Here are just a few off the top of my head. I could do this all day, and the longer I do it, the angrier I get at a society as rich [...]
I sit in the courtroom, between a man who smells faintly of urine and the man who I am here to defend before the City of Raleigh. Way back in December of last year, he dared to bow his head in despair on a park bench that belongs to the people of Raleigh, thus bringing [...]
Several folks have wanted me to talk about what I do day-to-day.
“I don’t get it,” one corespondent said, ” You just talk to the homeless? About what?”
Well, I do more than just talk to the homeless, but that is a big part of what I do. I want to show you how one such conversation [...]
