Billions Served

A South African billionaire, Patrice Motsepe (photo) says his family will give away half of its money to charity.

The South African Press Association reported that Motsepe said at a press conference Wednesday that it is important for the successful to help the less fortunate.

Forbes Magazine says he is the fourth-richest man in South Africa and the eighth richest on the continent. Forbes says Motsepe has a net worth of $2.65 billion, wealth made in the mining sector.

Motsepe said his family decided to join the Giving Pledge, which was initiated by Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates. The pledge encourages wealthy families across the world to give at least half of their money to charity.

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Connecting with Family & Friends

They don't have jobs. They don't have homes. Yet the homeless are becoming just as adept at social networking — connecting with distant friends and family, even reuniting with lost loved ones reports the Desert News in Salt Lake City.

The Road Home in Salt Lake City says homeless people tweeting and updating Facebook statuses is fairly common now.

The trend was first highlighted by a homeless New York man that has gained national attention. Daniel Morales, 58, hadn't seen his daughter, Sarah, in 11 years. In his search, he sent out a tweet and a picture of her at age 16.  Ultimately, the post led him to his daughter, Sarah Rivera — now a 27-year-old mother of two.  "This is a great moment for myself," Morales told reporters. "I feel rejoiced — getting, touching my daughter again after 11 years."

Elisa Milo fled an abusive husband a year ago. She has been in The Road Home for nine months, trying to care for her 17-year-old special needs son while getting her life in order. While Melo has a cell phone, she uses Facebook to contact her family in Brazil twice per week.  "That helps a lot — reading the stuff they're writing me, telling me to go on and to keep myself healthy," Melo said Wednesday.

Many homeless people do have cell phones, but they have to go to public libraries and other places to connect online for social networking.  "It's a great place for people who don't necessarily have the Internet at home — or even a home base — they can come here and connect with their friends and family through social networking," Salt Lake City library spokesman Andrew Shaw said.

In all reality, the social network may have some negative aspects to it, but for the homeless it also holds a purpose, and that purpose is that almost any long lost friend or family member can be found instantly.

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Determined to Find Home

Pam Belluck, a writer for the New York Times reports today on “Holly”:  an indoor housecat who got lost on a family excursion managing, after two months and about 200 miles, to return to her hometown.  Although homeless, the cat was determined to find home.

Even scientists are baffled by how Holly, a 4-year-old tortoiseshell who in early November became separated from Jacob and Bonnie Richter at an R.V. rally in Daytona Beach, Fla., appeared on New Year’s Eve — staggering, weak and emaciated — in a backyard about a mile from the Richters’ house in West Palm Beach.  Luckily, Holly not only had distinctive black-and-brown harlequin patterns on her fur, but also an implanted microchip to identify her.

Scientists say it is more common, although still rare, to hear of dogs returning home, perhaps suggesting, Dr. John Bradshaw, (Director of the University of Bristol’s Anthrozoology Institute) said, that “they have inherited wolves’ ability to navigate using magnetic clues. But it’s also possible that dogs get taken on more family trips, and that lost dogs are more easily noticed or helped by people along the way.”

Peter Borchelt, a New York animal behaviorist, wondered if Holly followed the Florida coast by sight or sound, tracking Interstate 95 and deciding to “keep that to the right and keep the ocean to the left.”

“It’s actually happened to me,” said Jackson Galaxy, a cat behaviorist who hosts “My Cat From Hell” on Animal Planet. While living in Boulder, Colo., he moved across town, whereupon his indoor cat, Rabbi, fled and appeared 10 days later at the previous house, “walking five miles through an area he had never been before,” Mr. Galaxy said.

When she was found, the pads on Holly’s feet were bleeding and the back claws were reduced to nothing.  Scientists say that is consistent with a long walk, since back feet provide propulsion, while front claws engage in activities like tearing. The Richters also said Holly had gone from 13.5 to 7 pounds.

But during the Good Sam R.V. Rally in Daytona, when they were camping near the speedway with 3,000 other motor homes, Holly bolted when Ms. Richter’s mother opened the door one night. Fireworks the next day may have further spooked her, and, after searching for days, alerting animal agencies and posting fliers, the Richters returned home catless.

Miraculously, on New Year’s Eve, Barb Mazzola, a 52-year-old university executive assistant, noticed a cat “barely standing” in her backyard in West Palm Beach, struggling even to meow. Over six days, Ms. Mazzola and her children cared for the cat, putting out food, including special milk for cats, and eventually the cat came inside. 

Naming her Cosette after the orphan in Les Misérables, she was taken to Paws2Help to give her medical care and to see if she had a microchip.  At Paws2Help, Ms. Mazzola said, “I almost didn’t want to ask, because I wanted to keep her, but I said, ‘Just check and make sure she doesn’t have a microchip.’” When told the cat did, “I just cried.”

The Richters cried, too upon seeing Holly, who instantly relaxed when placed on Mr. Richter’s shoulder. Re-entry is proceeding well, but the mystery persists:  Are all animals, humans included somehow programmed to search out, make the journey and find their “home”?

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A Homeless Man and His Dog

By Dr. Richard O’Connor

The other day I saw a homeless man and his homeless dog asleep on the sidewalk just outside the subway station at Astor Place. It was 5:30 p.m., quite crowded, and everyone had to step carefully around them, but no one looked directly at them. I'm from out of town, but I visit New York regularly enough that I probably wouldn't have paid any attention either except for the dog. How can a dog sleep like that on a busy sidewalk? What's the attachment between the man and the dog? How long have they been together?

David Brook's marvelous book, Bobos in Paradise discusses an uncomfortable but hilarious look at contemporary Yuppie culture; the people who make a fetish of latte and natural fibers and who view shopping as a means of self-expression. One of his themes is the cooptation and assimilation of oppressed cultures. [For instance] we want to believe we can save the world by shopping, that we support indigenous people by venerating their handicrafts, artifacts, and foods. "We want our material things to be bridges that will allow us to effect positive social change", Brooks states (p. 101). It's a way of rationalizing away our guilt about all the money the new economy seems bent on handing us.

The problem the author sees is that irony is wasted on the shameless. [Case-in-point] last night I saw a new commercial for the Land Rover. It shows a young-middle-aged couple using their $65,000 SUV to rescue a dog lost on a busy highway on a rainy night. The screen fades to black with the single word "Courage" illuminated. See what buying the right car means!

But back to the homeless man and his dog. The shops around the homeless man and dog on Astor Place are full of third world artifacts, places to buy things that make you feel like a good global citizen. So if we're so concerned about the oppressed, how come we all walk around the man and his dog?

 

Because we don't want to think difficult thoughts. It's a lot easier to assume that poverty in the third world is a result of oppression than to entertain the idea that there's oppression in America. We live in a meritocracy where it's still a sin to be poor. If you are poor in this economy, it must be your fault. Either that OR it's mental illness, and there's nothing we can do about that until the right pill comes along. So, since there's nothing we can do for the homeless man and his dog, we pretend they don't exist. Of course, if the dog would only run away from him, then we could use our Land Rover to rescue the pooch. Wouldn't we be proud of ourselves then!

Richard O'Connor, MSW, Ph.D., is a psychotherapist in private practice in Connecticut and Manhattan.  For 15 years he was the director of a large nonprofit community mental health center. Dr. O’Connor received his MSW and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and extended his education through the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis and the Family Institute of Chicago. He publishes a blog at www.UndergoingDepression.com.

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What a waste!

A new report by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers has found that as much as 50% of all food produced around the world never reaches a human stomach due to issues as varied as inadequate infrastructure and storage facilities through to overly strict sell-by dates, buy-one-get-one free offers and consumers demanding cosmetically perfect food.

With UN predictions that there could be about an extra three billion people to feed by the end of the century and an increasing pressure on the resources needed to produce food, including land, water and energy, the Institution is calling for urgent action to tackle this waste.

In the UK as much as 30% of vegetable crops are not harvested due to them failing to meet exacting standards based on their physical appearance, while up to half of the food that’s bought in Europe and the USA is thrown away by the consumer.  Also, about 550 billion m3 of water is wasted globally in growing crops that never reach the consumer.  It takes 20-50 times the amount of water to produce 1 kilogram of meat than 1 kilogram of vegetables. 

In the end, engineers have a crucial role to play in preventing food loss and waste by developing more efficient ways of growing, transporting and storing foods.  But overall it is a team effort where Governments, development agencies and organizations like the UN must work together to help change people’s mindsets on waste and discourage wasteful practices by farmers, food producers, supermarkets and consumers.

For more about the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and its work, see www.imeche.org

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Happy New Year: One poll ends and another begins!

One year ago, a Stanford University study of 300 adults concluded that differences between the rich and poor depicted in Charles Dickens classics "A Christmas Carol" and "A Tale of Two Cities" are real. The poor really are more empathetic and compassionate.

Over the past year Homeless In America visitors and readers were asked whether they agree with the Stanford study.  Overwhelmingly, about 66% of HIA respondents totally support the Stanford findings.  However, about 25% were reticent to completely agree with the study, but did not dismiss it completely.  Only 9% completely disagreed with the findings.

Today, a new poll is launched:  "How confident are you that you have being a Christian, living this life and how to graduate to the next all figured out?"  Please scroll down to near the bottom of this main page and vote in this and all the HIA polls.  Your vote counts!

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We Three Kings and Other Counting Issues

How many kings are there really in the Epiphany story?  Tradition prompts us to boldly say three. Emphatically, the story is about three kings!  After all, there is a song about it, “We Three Kings.”  However, if the answer is three, one would only be partly right.  There are actually five kings in this story!  The three kings, also known as the three wise men encounter King Herod on their way to find and deliver royal gifts to Jesus who is also the King of Kings; of course three plus two others makes five.

Interestingly, now factor in this new element that the story is actually about five kings and it becomes broader and richer in message and meaning.  For instance, because the original sin is pride: the evil one boasts to Adam and Eve “You will become like God” in the Garden of Eden.  The original sin of pride immerges as our first parents buy into egotism that originally got the devil kicked out of heaven in the first place.  Now in the Epiphany story, we see King Herod succumb to pride – his feelings are hurt; there may be another king around! And we also witness the resulting power and control that eventually leads him to kill hundreds of children.

The Epiphany story is also about the “pill”, the elixir, the cure for the original sin of pride – humility.  Instead of pride, power and wealth – the King of Kings is found lying in a lowly manger, in utter poverty because there was no room for him in the inn.  In the Epiphany story Jesus not only teaches through the Gospel writers, he also demonstrates in his own body what it takes to be a King, or for that matter to have power of any sort.  He comes to us poor, homeless, living among animals, empty, persecuted by the powerful, a migrant, an immigrant, despised and rejected.  Counter to human wisdom, he actually exhibits all the heavenly marks of a true king.

Ultimately, only the humble wise men could truly see the significance of who he is and what he is destined to accomplish in his lifetime.  Herod did not see or know it; that is because “God opposes the proud” the Bible tells us.  In the same respect God “Gives grace to the humble.”  Only the humble wise men could see God; and for that matter, the poor, dirty and homeless shepherds who were working in the fields some days earlier.

And so this is Christmas.  A time when we celebrate that God’s world is upside down, inside out, opposite and inconceivable to the mind of man.  We are reminded that being clothed in wealthy threads, riches and fortune, power and control, all prevent us from seeing the real Lord.  Christmas also reminds us that the poorest, broken, despised and persecuted among us may actually be the living saints among us too.  In the stories of Christmas and the Epiphany we encounter the true God of the Bible living up to his word when he spoke, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, and my ways are not your ways.”  Isaiah 55:8

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At Age 51 Moving Back in with the Parents

Tony Tolbert (photo), a 51-year-old lawyer from Los Angeles and UCLA law school graduate, proves you don't have to be a millionaire to make a huge difference. Last week, Tolbert began lending his house to a formerly homeless family for a year while he moves back in with his parents.

Tolbert's story was profiled on "CBS This Morning." The Harvard-educated attorney explained that he was inspired by his father's generosity when he was younger. As a boy, Tolbert's father frequently let strangers with no place to go stay in their house. Years later, Tolbert decided to expand on the idea.

 
Tolbert believes that, in his words, "Kindness creates kindness. Generosity creates generosity. Love creates love. And if we can share some of that and have more stories about people doing nice things for other people and fewer stories about people doing horrible things to other people, that's a better world."
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