Homeless?

“There’s no such thing as homeless.” This statement, repeated quite often by one of our regular visitors to The Salvation Army in Ashland, is a complicated one. I believe his intent was to challenge social service workers to look at those who self-identify as homeless in a different way. Instead of labeling them “homeless,” he wanted them to be known as people without stable housing, people in need of shelter, or “our friends without homes.” We no longer use words like crippled, Mongoloid, or retarded, or words deemed offensive to describe racial groups, so his point was, don’t use “homeless” either. 

Yet to our friend’s chagrin, the word homeless is still used extensively to describe a lack of housing. The group who gathers to work on solutions for unsheltered people in Ashland County is called the Homeless Coalition. Larger cities often have an intake phone number called the Homeless Hotline, a nice alliterative ring. Nationally, the federal government coordinates the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness that implements the federal strategic plan to prevent and end homelessness. And based on McKinley-Vento federal legislation, public schools are required to provide services to homeless children, creating and maintaining a system that supports students who are experiencing homelessness.

According to a recent Point in Time report issued by the Ashland County Homeless Coalition, homelessness here is on the increase. Federal funds are available to help pay for housing on a temporary basis, but individuals and families struggle to find affordable housing to rent. 

Two local situations have exacerbated the difficulty of finding housing. The first was the recent acquisition of an apartment building by the Land Revitalization Corp, displacing residents in fourteen units, many whose housing was subsidized because of their disabilities. 

The second was a transfer of ownership of an apartment complex to management that is no longer willing to accept Section VIII vouchers for low income families and individuals. So even if they reach the top of the nearly six hundred names on the waiting list for Housing Choice Vouchers that are administered by the Wayne County Metropolitan Housing Authority, it’s quite difficult to find an approved apartment to rent. Why Wayne County MHA? Because there’s never been a housing authority in Ashland County. I told you it gets complicated.

But whether we use the term “homeless” or a more euphemistic term, too many people remain without shelter or precariously housed in Ashland County. These people are men, women and children, on their own or in family units. They may be bearing the weight of mental health diagnoses, escaping abusive domestic situations, wrestling with addictions, working low-skill and low-wage jobs, or struggling to adjust after military service. And even if they get approved for funding assistance, often they can find no vacancies. There truly is no room at the inn.

Here’s a further truth about the terminology: even those who have adequate shelter can be homeless, without a home. Because in a more philosophical sense, a home is much more than a stable roof over our heads. As an unknown poet suggests, “A house is made of bricks and beams. A home is made of hopes and dreams.” A true home has roots and warmth, connection and commitment; a home is a place of belonging.

Robert Frost once said, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” For most of us, he’s correct. But for some of our brothers and sisters, there is no one to know them, to listen to their dreams, to take them in, the ultimate meaning of homeless. 

What can we do? When we listen to and affirm each other, when we offer a seat at the table, when we open our arms to a wandering heart, when we extend grace, the homeless of body and soul can begin to find their way home. Mother Teresa explains: “We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes [neighborhood, community] to remedy this kind of poverty.” That’s when there will be no homeless.

Becoming

One of the joys of reading memoirs is finding connections with the writer, when we sit up and say, “That’s me, that’s my story too.” That aha! moment came early in Michelle Obama’s recent memoir, “Becoming,” as she wrote about her piano lessons with her great-aunt Robbie. In contrast to her aunt’s kindness to her mother over the years, Michelle’s experience of Robbie was different: “To me she was kind of a terror.”

Yes, Michelle, I know about that. Miss Wambsgantz was an ancient German woman with a thick accent who did her best to instill a sense of terror in me as I sat at the piano each week. A bit past her prime by that point, there were times when I doubted if she knew my name, as she often called me “Sonny” throughout a lesson. My first recital piece, “Gosh, I’m Scared,” tends to sum up my experience in Miss Wambsgantz’s music room. Amazingly, after that rather shaky start, music remains a place of joy for me – and, as she proclaimed at her recent Grammy appearance, it is also true for Michelle.

“Music has always helped me tell my story. . . . music helps us share ourselves. Our dignity and sorrows, our hopes and joys. It allows us to hear one another, to invite each other in. Music shows that all of it matters. Every story within every voice, every note within every song.”

Although separated by a decade and about five hundred miles, our growing up years had many other similarities, as we both lived close to the shores of the Great Lakes (and its accompanying lake effect snow). With our mom at home and our dad off to work, our days were ordered by the rhythm of meals, school, play, piano practice, and our dad’s arrival home. We walked to school and to the corner store, and we both valued our quiet time at home with our Barbies and books. Like Michelle, the world of my early years was contained within a five-block radius. Both the Robinsons and the Streeters were shaped by an extended family nearby, with its joys and sorrows, challenges and encouragements.

My first impression of the wife of a U.S. president was seared into my heart and mind on November 22, 1963. Not long after that tragic afternoon, I sold hand-woven potholders up and down my street to raise money for the Kennedy Library. The thank you note from Jackie Kennedy has a prominent place in a childhood scrapbook, and I’ve been drawn to the First Ladies of this country ever since. Many, like Jackie and Michelle, stepped reluctantly into public life, yet still found a way to forge a path ahead with grace. Post White House, their influence reaches afar. 

It would be tempting to bask in that celebrity, but what I love about former FLOTUS Michelle Obama is the sense that she’s one of us. That theme ran through her book, and was illustrated so well by the text message she received from her mother after the Grammy Awards. “Did you meet any of the real stars,” Marian asked, “or did you run right after you were done?” Ouch!

Michelle’s words speak to me and for me: “There’s a lot I still don’t know about America, about life, about what the future might bring. But I do know myself. My father, Fraser, taught me to work hard, laugh often, and keep my word. My mother, Marian, showed me how to think for myself and to use my voice. Together, in our cramped apartment on the South Side of Chicago, they helped me see the value in our story, in my story, in the larger story of our country. Even when it’s not pretty or perfect. Even when it’s more real than you want it to be. Your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own.

As I finished reading “Becoming,” I knew I made a new friend, even if we never meet in this life. Our lives have intersected where it counts, in family and in service to others. Grateful this day for connections, music and voice.

Gone with the Wind?

In celebration of “Gone With The Wind’s” 80th anniversary, the film is returning to the silver screen this month.” My introduction to this classic film came on its thirtieth anniversary release in 1969. I’m not sure if I saw it at the Star or the Riviera, but I know I watched the 223-minute movie with a boy, a first for my fourteen-year-old self. It was an epic movie, and I was caught up in the drama, heartbroken (spoiler alert) when Melanie died, captivated by the naughty-boy Rhett Butler, and not so sure about Scarlett O’Hara. I did love the young character of Prissy (Butterfly McQueen), with the terror of her wide-eyed words, “Miss Scarlett, I don’t know nothin’ about birthin’ babies.” At fourteen, I had no idea as to how the movie perpetuated a distinct narrative of the South, nor that some of its actors were forbidden from attending the premiere that debuted in a whites-only theater.

Film critic Roger Ebert reminds us of the challenge the film presents. “Remember that when “GWTW” was made, segregation was still the law in the South and the reality in the North . . . The movie comes from a world with values and assumptions fundamentally different from our own.”

How do we make sense of those fundamentally different values, of the legacy of enslavement in this country? We often speak of legacy as a positive contribution, such as money or property, but it can also be something transmitted by or received from an ancestor, with no guarantee of its goodness. We are just as able to receive a legacy of deceit as we are of integrity. Based upon factors such as wealth, education, zip code, gender and race, that legacy may bring an inherent privilege by lineage alone.

As a current-day viewing of “Gone With The Wind” painfully points out, privilege and legacy in terms of racial disparity have deep roots in the enslavement of people of color. I’ve lived long enough to understand how something deemed acceptable within a certain time (or cultural cycle) is no longer acceptable today. As Kate Hudson writes, “[GWTW] is a reminder of a bygone time – both in its subject matter and in its production – and should be understood and digested within its contemporary context. Not in 2019 with a tub of popcorn on date night. Its narrative hurts people.”

I’ve thought about Hudson’s words as I watch the scenario unfold in the Virginia governor’s office, as a photo of a man in blackface and another man in white robes was discovered on his medical school yearbook page. The furor over the photo has been massive, and his handling of the situation has been less than stellar. Now, the admission of a college blackface appearance by the state’s attorney general has been made. I wrestle with the question as to whether a thirty-five-year-old photo or the report of a freshman antic should outweigh a lifetime of responsible leadership.

I’m guessing many of us have flipped through our own yearbook pages and photo albums, wondering what shameful reminders of youthful indiscretion or foolish behavior are lurking there. In that light, I have sympathy for public figures who have been “outed” for unwise behavior from their early years, tempted to offer them some defense because I know how life was back in the day. I’m not suggesting that racist behavior should be ignored, but might these situations open the door to soul-searching dialogue instead of condemnation? Can we recognize that reveling in the downfall of another human points that same condemning finger at ourselves (see John 7-8)?

“There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave . . . it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind.” These starry-eyed words filled the screen at the beginning of an epic film in 1939. Now, in 2019, is it time for another “last bow?” What will be the legacy of this decade?

Funny? At What Cost?

Super Bowl LIII. Can this possibly be the fifty-third battle of the top two teams in professional football? Are the Patriots really taking the field again, while the Browns and the Bills are home, crying in their beer?

The NFL has had its issues in recent years, but even with the Patriots’ repeat appearance, the specter of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and the shadow of Kapernick’s bended knee, millions will settle in front of their wide-screen television on Sunday night. Will the wily old veteran in his signature hoodie outwit the wunderkind whippersnapper? Will karma allow the Patriots to rebound from the embarrassment of LII or will the Rams conquer all?

It’s likely that many viewers have more interest in the side stories: the first-time appearance of male cheerleaders, commentator Tony Romo’s uncanny ability to predict the next play, the halftime performance by Maroon Five, the Puppy Bowl, or Gladys Knight’s attempt to “give the anthem back its voice.” Still others will replenish their snack bowls during the football action, returning to their seats in time for the commercials, rumored to cost their sponsors a cool $5 million for thirty seconds of airtime.

Those commercials. Remember 1979, when Mean Joe Greene tossed his jersey to a kid as he drained the boy’s proffered bottle of Coke? Ray Charles sang for Diet Pepsi in 1991, and Cindy Crawford went a step farther in 1992 as she introduced a new Pepsi can, her young admirers responding, “Is that a great new Pepsi can or what?” In 1993, Larry Bird challenged Michael Jordan to a game of Horse, the winner rewarded by a Big Mac and fries. And year after year, the Budweiser spots manage to tug on our heartstrings with their patriotic Clydesdales and faithful canine companions.

Many ads are designed to bring laughter along with product recognition. Frito-Lay tops my list, with its snow globe/vending machine throw, the father-to-be and the ultrasound, the elderly couple who battle over a bag of chips, and the two-rule little boy: “Keep your hands off my momma, keep your hands off my Doritos.” Over the years, Snickers has engaged the talents of Betty White and Robin Williams, M & Ms went with bare-breasted dancing candies, and Morgan Freeman pitched Mountain Dew. A favorite of the 1984 Super Bowl was the eighty-one-year-old Clara Peller with her insistent, “Where’s the beef?” 

Having watched clips of funny home videos earlier this week, and now viewing these Super Bowl commercials on YouTube, something nagged at me from the recesses of my high school memories. As the cobwebs parted, I thought of the reaction of Michael Valentine Smith, Robert Heinlein’s main character inStranger in a Strange Land. As a Martian, Michael came to earth with no concept of human thought or experience. As he tried to make sense of humor, he said: “Find me something that really makes you laugh, sweetheart . . . a joke, or anything else – but something that gave you a real belly laugh, not a smile. Then we’ll see if there isn’t a wrongness in it somewhere and whether you would laugh if the wrongness wasn’t there.” He later added, “I had thought – I had been told – that a ‘funny’ thing is a thing of a goodness. It isn’t. Not ever is it funny to the person it happens to. The goodness is in the laughing itself . . . a bravery . . . and a sharing . . . against pain and sorrow and defeat.”

While troubling me at the time, Heinlein’s observation hasn’t kept me from laughing at Super Bowl commercials or reaching for laughter even in tough times. As River Jordan understands, “Sometimes, in the midst of the darkest of situations, something funny is still funny.” But I hope it’s helped me be more aware of “the wrongness” when the laughter comes at the expense of another’s pain. 

Maryanne Radmacher-Hershey finds the right priority in her blessing: “May your walls know joy; may every room hold laughter and every window open to great possibility.” When in doubt, choosing joy as the filter through which our laughter flows becomes a practical antidote to the temptation of shaming another, even on Super Bowl Sunday.