Cat and Shanmao's blog

No sooner had I finished my rant about homelessness a few days ago when I ran across an aritcle in the current issue of San Francisco magazine.

The journalist describes how he accidentally befriended a homeless man in his late 30s who had quite an interesting story to tell. Only homeless for a few years, he had previously been earning a solid six figure salary as an executive assistant, drove an expensive car, and seemed positioned for great things. The death of a lover threw him into a depression that, combined with a drinking habit, eventually led to skid row. The author got to know him pretty well, cross-checked the facts of stories he told, and even got involved in trying to help him off the street. Although there is no happy ending, we learn that the homeless man will have to overcome his alcoholism before being able to truly sort his life out.

While visiting Jean and Mi I opened one of Mi's photography books and was randomly flipping around. This particular book was about the work of Josef Koudelka, a Czech photographer who was active during the communist era and in the present era。Here‘s an interesting answer to an interviewer's question：

What did you think about the West after you left Prague?

Koudelka: I have always considered myself lucky to have been born in Czechoslovakia sa that I didn't get used to certain things that were taken from granted in the West. I left Czechoslovakia when I was already a man. I was 32. I was strong, healthy, and not naive. I had my opinions about things. I didn't need a car and all the things most people had. Unlike us, Western photographers had passports; they could go wherever they wanted. They had more money, more opportunities. But often they didn't go unless somebody paid got everything ready for them. At least, that's how I saw it back then. I decided to try not to conform. I wanted to stay different and keep my healthy anger as along as possible

In 1988, I had an exhibition in East Berlin. A young man came up to me and said my photographs had made him realize the meaning of freedom. I understood what he meant. Without the freedom to travel I wouldn't have been able to make many of those photographs. Nevertheless, I also had to say that when I lived in Czechoslovakia freedom for me meant mainly being able to do what I wanted, and, within our limited freedom, I was able to find space for my work. I didn't need to go somewhere far away to take photographs. I knew that if I was worth anything I had to prove it here in my country. When I left, it seemed to me that keeping that kind of freedom was even harder outside Czechoslovakia, because at home, although there wasn't political freedom, the lack of another freedom - the freedom to make money - forced us to do things we believed in, that interested us, and that we liked to do. We knew that if we became engineers, we would make less money than street-sweepers. In the West it was different.

"Work helps prevent one from getting old. My work is my life. I cannot think of one without the other. The man who works and is never bored, is never old. A person is not old until regrets take the place of hopes and plans. Work and interest in worthwhile things are the best remedy for aging." - Scott Nearing

Blog written by someone who was formerly homeless on how to 'live homeless well'.

http://guide2homelessness.blogspot.com/2004/10/introduction-to-project.html

Points of interest:

You can live homeless 'well'. Presumably this means that there is a spectrum from comfort to discomfort, happiness to unhappiness, health to sickness, and being homeless does not mean you are fixed in one single location in that spectrum.

There are laws against being homeless. The author points out that the usual method of enforcement is the criminalization of sleeping in public (a decent, as opposed to 'indecent', involuntary action).

Making homelessness illegal prevents a nomadic lifestyle (unless you have connections to those in the 'homed' world). Nomadism is arguably laughably out of date in the 21st century, but we should at least acknowledge that we've codified turning of the page on a lifestyle that humans lived for 10s of thousands of years.

Actually, a little surfing on the wikipedia turned up the phenomenon of 'modern nomads in industrialized nations'. Freetekno soundsystem is a community of DJs and other people who own a sound system and vans to carry it. They organize 'freetekno' parties. A 'soundsystem' is a group of people (tribe?) who get together. Some soundsystems are travellers with no fixed address, who simply caravan from on freetekno to another :) Sounds like they must still either have a place to crash though or must rent a room in a hotel or motel.

Interestingly, the wikipedia entry on homelessness distinguishes it from 'nomadic cultures where that condition is considered normal'. I find this interesting, nomadism is seen as a quaint holdover in those in other cultures where this is considered normal (read: undeveloped 3rd world countries), while in our developed society, the same condition is necessarily an illness.

Homelessness as realized in the US and Canada and probably every other 1st world country is a lifestyle that I don't choose and don't imagine would be that fun right now. However, I think it is worthwhile to reflect on the far-reaching implications of making this condition illegal and socially unacceptable.

I've discovered a Russian website that has a good collection of sheet music. Be warned that some of the sheet music may be under copyright in your country. Some of the works are by composers who are still living. Other works fall into the life+50 (i.e. copyright extends 50 years after the author's death), eg. Shostakovich, while others fall into the life+70 category, eg. Bartok.

Here's a site with some classical music audio files, and again, some of these are likely to be under copyright in your country so download at your own risk. There's quite a selection. For instance, you can compare Bach's Well Tempered Clavier as played by Richter and Gould. The website's author includes a number of his own performances. The sound quality has been reduced to lower the bandwidth.

Saw this story online:

http://www.cbc.ca/story/arts/national/2005/01/07/Arts/fearfactor050107.html

• "CLEVELAND - A viewer who claims the reality show Fear Factor made him ill is suing the U.S. network NBC for $2.5 million U.S. Austin Aitken, a 49-year-old paralegal in Cleveland, says he became ill after watching an episode of Fear Factor in which contestants ate rats mixed in a blender."
  

This reminds of an incident while skiing near L.A. On the ski school slope there was one beginner snowboarder who was going straight down and screaming as she went. She wiped out just before a class of small kids. The instructor shouted at her:

"If you take out one of these kids it's going to cost you a lot of money!"