Skip to main content

Let's Chat About Homelessness: Thank you for your service and the ongoing fight of veterans

I was in the Army a grand total of two years and seventeen weeks.  I had the luxury of having an older brother who was already in the Army on recruiting duty and told me the exact things to ask for because, he told me, the recruiter would not volunteer that information.  I got in.  I got out.

Training was intense, but aside from the Oklahoma City Bombing on April 19, 1995, there was never any thought that I would be going anywhere further than Ft. Carson, Colorado. That morning for about an hour, we thought the world was coming to get us; that we were under attack and I was ready to go.  That was as close to combat as I ever got.

My father was in the Navy, two of my brothers and one of my sisters went into the Navy also.  My oldest brother and I chose the Army.  So did his son and daughter. Spouses, nieces, nephews, cousins...suffice it to say, I come from a big military family.

When people say, "Thank you for your service." it makes me ponder what that means.

Going by the Veterans Clinic on Arcadia in Decatur,  I came across a patch of land that I would like to turn into a garden.  Sadly, I also found a man living in a tent near there.  He is also a veteran and illness has sent him on a different path than me. How can we thank him for his service?  How about give him a garden?  Work with him and others on learning to garden and grow things?  How about we give him and others something therapeutic and educational?

So the work begins.  This week we are going to petition the city for the use of the land.  I have already have 198 households in the area signed up to give us their compostable food scraps to make the soil better.  We have to buy seeds and tools. If you would like to help, you can donate by clicking here.

This weekend we held the Side Hustle Sale and Swap at Waller's Coffee Shop.  We are doing another one on April 6th with this in mind.  Plant and seed sale and joined by a number of local artists to support this amazing cause and the dedication of this garden.

People keep asking me what I am doing and how it all "fits".  This is how it fits.

Today is my eighteenth day out on the street and I am learning a lot.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Let's Chat About Homelessness...

Almost a decade ago, I packed up some clothes, my tent, a cold weather sleeping bag and stepped out of my condo in Chamblee, GA into the cold.  A week before, I had been shopping at REI and got all sorts of things that I would need for my trip.  I bought a new MP3 player and headphones.  It was the end of October, so I bought some long johns.  I didn't need too much else.  I am an avid camper and hiker and 30 days outside was not much of a push.  I locked the door, slid my keys into my pocket, and went to the MARTA station. I wasn't going hiking or camping though.  The idea that this was simply another camping trip was the first thing I had to get out of my head.  I wasn't going to the woods.  I was going to Little Five Points.  Little Five Points, or L5P was a little neighborhood close to the center of Atlanta.  Then, it was the center of the Bohemian South.  It was exotic and weird and there were people there playing music ...
2 comments
Read more

Let's Chat About Homelessness: The Homeless and Humanity

People have asked the same question, or some derivation of it, of me several times in the last 48 hours "do you get to bathe?" yada yada yada, hygiene... Last night, there were storms that rocked the area.  When I was a kid, I would watch the flashes and I was told that if you counted the seconds between the flash and sound of thunder, you could tell how far away the storm was, some convoluted childish logic about each second being a mile.  Last night, there was no time to count and not only could I hear the thunder immediately, I feel my skin perk up and the rumble of the earth beneath my feet telling me that it was close. It was very close. Not miles away, but yards...feet. I found cover beneath an awning and bundled up against the wind and rain.  The last thing on my mind was body odor. I woke this morning, hungry, not thinking about smell. A lot of homelessness from my observation, is about dignity and little ways of maintaining it when you are out and about....
Post a Comment
Read more